WUNRN
Please See 2 parts of This WUNRN
Release on Halitza.
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TO REMARRY, JEWISH WIDOW
MAY HAVE RARE HALITZA CEREMONY
September
22, 2010
A Jewish
widow ran into an unexpected snag when she was planning to remarry. A rabbi
said that according to ancient law, she would need to marry her brother-in-law
unless he freed her in a ceremony known as halitza.
JERUSALEM
(WOMENSENEWS)--Sarah (a pseudonym), was in her mid-20s when her husband died in
an accident.
Once her
grief had begun to subside, one of Sarah's friends introduced her to her
brother.
"We
took it slowly, but eventually I found myself coming out of the darkness,"
Sarah, who lives in central Israel and requested anonymity, recalled recently.
"Life became sweet again."
In order to
marry, the couple, who are not particularly religious, had to register at the
stringently religious Rabbinate, the sole government agency with the authority
to grant Jewish marriage permits.
No civil
marriage exists in Israel and non-Orthodox marriages performed in the country
are not recognized by the state.
When Sarah
presented the registrar with her late husband's death certificate, he asked if
her deceased husband had any children. When she said no, he asked whether her
late husband had any brothers. Sarah said yes.
"Then
you need to do the halitza ceremony," the registrar told her, she said.
"Otherwise you won't be able to marry, ever."
With the
wedding just weeks away, Sarah felt she had no choice but to agree to perform
the ancient ritual spelled out by the Old Testament. According to the Torah, if
a man dies without leaving children, his brother must marry his widow in a
ceremony called yibbum.
To prevent
such forced marriages--which reportedly still occur, though very rarely, in
highly traditional Sephardic Jewish communities--most rabbis strongly encourage
halitza, in which a man's brother relinquishes all claims to his sister-in-law.
In the
ceremony, which is meant to be public, the woman kneels before her
brother-in-law and removes a special handmade shoe from his foot. She is then
required to spit on the ground next to him and recite several verses.
"The
presumption is that the brother-in-law brings disgrace upon himself and his
family by refusing to marry his brother's widow," says an entry in the
Jewish Encyclopedia.
Ceremony
'Humiliating'
"It was
humiliating for me and it was humiliating for my brother-in-law," Sarah
said of the ceremony. "It was like something out of a biblical play, only
we were forced to do it in the 21st century. And what if my brother-in-law had
insisted on marrying me?"
The plight
of agunot--women whose husbands cannot or will not grant them a
"get," a Jewish divorce--is fairly well known because it affects
thousands of women.
Halitza
impacts far fewer. Each year halitza only affects about one or two Jewish women
in the United States and between 15 and 20 in Israel, estimates the Rabbinate.
Although
Jewish law requires all widows in this position to do halitza, some cases fall
through the cracks and the ceremony isn't performed, said Rivka Lubitch, a
rabbinical court advocate whose articles often challenge the rabbinic status
quo.
Rare as it
is, halitza continues to evoke feelings of helplessness in the women it
touches.
"In
halitza, if the brother-in-law doesn't want to marry his brother's wife, he has
a way out," said Elisheva Baumgarten, director of the Heller Center for
the Study of Jewish Women at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. "At the
same time, he can refuse to free the woman but the woman cannot refuse to marry
the man."
When halitza
was first conceived, women throughout the world were considered the property of
their husband's family.
"Society
in general was patriarchal and women belonged to her husband's family,"
Baumgarten said.
Strategy
for Control
Marrying a
deceased husband's brother through yibbum was a strategy designed to control
fertility, sexuality and the family's assets, whether they be progeny, money or
business ties.
"The
late husband's honor was at stake, as was the family's continuity. It's not
anything we feminists should be happy about, even though what the Jews did was
appropriate for those times," Baumgarten said.
Lubitch, who
also works at the Center for Women's Justice in Jerusalem, said that marrying a
brother-in-law protected some women in the old days.
"Yibbum
worked out well for some women who had nowhere to go after their husbands died,"
she told Women's eNews.
But Lubitch
said the commandment became a practice that could be used against women by
forcing them to marry against their will.
The custom
also creates opportunities for abuse. Although less common than in the past,
there continue to be stories of men who have no intention of marrying their
brothers' widows but extort money from them in return for their freedom.
Even in
cases of goodwill, halitza is fraught with anxiety.
In a 2009
article on the subject, Lubitch described the case of a 60-year-old woman whose
first husband had died 40 years earlier, and who had married and divorced in
the interim. When she went to the Rabbinate to marry a third time, the
registrar noticed that she had never received halitza from her first husband's
brother whose whereabouts she did not know.
When the
brother was located, he turned out to be diabetic and his legs had been
amputated.
"Since
the halitza ceremony requires a husband to wear a shoe and to walk a few steps,
a man without legs cannot carry out the halitza ceremony," Lubitch wrote.
"We might assume that the woman is allowed to marry without halitza. But
no. She's stuck."
The woman
was spared only because a rabbi was able to determine that the brother-in-law
was impotent, and therefore could not fulfill his conjugal obligation under
yibbum to bring children into the world.
Searching
for Alternatives
Lubitch, who
is an Orthodox Jew, has urged influential rabbis to find ways to free both men
and women from the burden of halitza.
"I
can't say 'Do away with it' because it is in the Torah. What I am urging is for
them to find ways around it, just as the rabbis have done in other
matters," she said.
Lubitch
offers two potential solutions. The first, called shtar halitza, which she
terms "far from perfect," would at least ensure the widow's freedom.
Just prior to the wedding, the groom's brother would sign a document promising
to immediately perform halitza in the event of his brother's death, or incur a
heavy penalty.
The second
solution harks to medieval times, when some rabbis included a clause in the
Jewish marriage contract (ketuba) stating that yibbum would not be required if
the groom died childless.
Such a
clause "would not be a violation of Jewish law," said Rabbi Michael
Broyde, a judge for the Rabbinical Council of America and a law professor at
Emory University in Atlanta.
Sarah wishes
that she and her late husband had requested such a clause in their ketuba.
"It
would have prevented a lot of pain," Sarah said.
####
Michele
Chabin is the Israel correspondent for the New York Jewish Week, Religion News
Service and the National Catholic Register. She has been reporting from Israel
for more than 20 years.
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HALITZAH - THE CEREMONIAL RELEASE
FROM LEVIRATE MARRIAGE
Halitzah appears in the biblical book of Ruth in which Boaz, a close relative of Naomi, agrees to marry Ruth and act as redeemer for Mahlon, her dead husband. He may only do so after a closer relative than Boaz formally relinquishes the right of redemption by removing his sandal and handing it to Boaz. They have a son Oved who is the grandfather of David--from whose line the messiah will come. Reprinted with permission from The Jewish Religion: A Companion, published by Oxford University Press.
Halitzah [literally] "taking off" the shoe [is] the rite by means of which a widow whose husband has died without issue is released from the bond of levirate marriage [in which the brother of a childless man is obliged to marry his widow].
In the book of Deuteronomy (25: 5-10) the law is promulgated that the widow of a childless man is obliged to marry his brother, but if the levir ("brother-in-law") refuses to marry her, he has to undergo the rite of halitzah:
"But if the man does not want to marry his brother's widow, his brother's widow shall appear before the elders in the gate and declare, 'My husband's brother refuses to establish a name in Israel for his brother; he will not perform the duty of a levir.' The elders of his town shall then summon him and talk to him. If he insists, saying, 'I do not want to marry her,' his brother's widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull [from the root chalatz, hence the name halitzah] the shoe off his foot, spit in his face, and make this declaration: 'Thus shall be done to the man who will not build up his brother's house!'" (verses 7-9).
From this [passage] it appears that the purpose of halitzah was to put the levir publicly to shame for refusing to do his duty of marrying his brother's widow. The widow is considered bound to the levir in that she cannot marry anyone else until she has been released by halitzah.
In the rabbinic sources the opinion is expressed that while it is clear from the biblical passage that the ideal is for the levir to marry the widow, "nowadays" he should not be allowed do so but must release her through halitzah. The reason for the change is that since levirate marriage involves a man marrying his brother's widow, an act otherwise forbidden, the levir must be motivated solely by his wish to carry out his religious obligation and it can no longer be assumed that the levir's intention is "for the sake of heaven." Another opinion is recorded, however, that levirate marriage has priority over halitzah. The difference of opinion continued for centuries, some Sephardi and Oriental communities following the opinion which prefers levirate marriage to halitzah.
The Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel introduced the law that halitzah is always to be preferred for all Jews in the state, whatever their original practice was. Obviously, once the ban on polygamy had been established, halitzah was the only option in any event where the levir already had a wife.
There is evidence that sectarians in early rabbinic times understood literally the reference to the widow spitting in the levir's face but, according to the rabbis, the word befanav has to be translated not as "in his face" but "to his face," and the widow simply spits on the floor in front of the levir.
The halitzah rite, as now practiced with great solemnity, is based on the elaborations found in the Talmud and the [medieval legal] codes. A court of three rabbis, to which two others who need not be rabbis are added, meet on the previous day to establish the place where the rite is to be carried out, usually but not necessarily in the courthouse. On the next day, the widow is expected to fast until after the halitzah has been performed. She and the levir appear before the court and she recites in Hebrew the words in the Deuteronomic passage, and he recites the declaration that he does not wish to marry her.
A special shoe made of leather with straps, the property of the court, is given formally as a gift to the levir, who puts the shoe on his right foot and walks in it a few paces. The widow then bends down, holds the levir's foot in her left hand, unties the shoe with her right hand, removes the shoe, and casts it aside. She then spits in front of the levir and recites the Deuteronomic declaration: "Thus shall be done to the man who will not build up his brother's house." The court then offers the prayer: "May it be God's will that the daughters of Israel will never have to resort to levirate marriage or halitzah."
Orthodox and Conservative Jews still observe this time-honored rite, requiring the widow to obtain the halitzah release before she can remarry. Some, perhaps many, Jews have given expression to a marked aversion to halitzah on the grounds that the levir is humiliated for failing to do his duty when he is no longer allowed to carry it out. The spitting has also been seen as repugnant, and some people have morbid superstitions about the rite, aggravated by the custom in Eastern European communities for the levir to rest his back against the board upon which the dead are washed before burial.
Against this, widows left without a child by a deceased husband have been known to value the rite as affording them psychological relief--by denoting a complete severance with the past in order for a new life to begin. The problem of the agunah [a woman who has been deserted by her husband or whose husband has disappeared without giving her a bill of divorce] can arise where the brother-in-law refuses to participate in the halitzah rite unless he is given a substantial sum of money. Rabbis usually seek to persuade the brother-in-law not to engage in this form of blackmail but their efforts are not always successful. The Chief Rabbinate in the State of Israel has coped with this problem by introducing a law according to which the brother-in-law is obliged to undertake the maintenance of the widow until he agrees to participate in the halitzah rite.
Another instance of agunah in connection with halitzah is where the only brother of the deceased is a minor. Since a minor cannot perform halitzah, the widow has to wait until the boy reaches the age of 13 before she is free to remarry. So far no legal remedy has been found for this problem.
Reform Judaism in the 19th century rejected the requirements of either levirate marriage or halitzah, although Reform rabbis have been known to participate in the rite if the widow feels herself bound by conscience not to remarry without halitzah.