Jlem rabbinical court refuses to let widow of 13 years marry

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sequoia

Tue, Sep 09 2014, 10:51 pm

The problem with all of these rules is that they were enacted at a time when women were THINGS. Thus, giving a woman SOME miniscule measure of power and protection was a lot better and more progressive than none at all.

In the intervening millenia, however, many of us have come to the conclusion that women are PEOPLE who are entitled to the SAME rights as men.

ectomorph

Tue, Sep 09 2014, 10:54 pm

Anyone read last week's parsha?

לא תהיה אשת המת החוצה לאיש זר

It's right there in Parshas Ki Seitzei.

ectomorph

Tue, Sep 09 2014, 10:55 pm

Sequoia: You're talking about Hashem's commandment.

sequoia

Tue, Sep 09 2014, 10:59 pm

ectomorph wrote:

Sequoia: You're talking about Hashem's commandment.

Right. Which was great at a time when women had no agency, no rights, and no earning power. When a woman "belonged" to either her father or her husband. When, as Dolly correctly pointed out, a childless widow may well end up alone, unprotected, and homeless, of no use to either her own or her husband's family.

It isn't actually like that anymore.

Dolly Welsh

Tue, Sep 09 2014, 11:38 pm

Sequuoia, the law is designed to protect the most vulnerable, even if they are uncommon. The most ugly, stupid, from the most pitiful family or no family at all, the most vulnerable woman. She can be anybody at any time. She does not go away. Modern times or no, there can always be an unlucky one.

Even a clever, educated, energetic childless widow with lots of agency can have got sick or hurt in the same event that killed her husband. She may not have much agency right now, or even for a long time, or ever again.

We just do not know who is going to need rescuing so we institutionalize rescuing everybody. If they don't want or need it, fine, then we do chalitza.

The Rav Gershom thing is another matter. The principle is in place that you don't abandon your brother's childless widow.

I know what you mean, Sequoia. I agree it is describing, facing, life at its rawest. But sometimes this law might be all that saves a woman, as literally as that can get.

I see nothing here about the woman being a thing. Yes, it is indeed about her being unable to feed or defend herself. Well, that can happen, at times. Lo alenu.

I think you may have it backwards: if women were a Thing, a childless and quite possibly infertile former daughter in law, would indeed be an undesirable thing, might be sent packing.

This law says, no, she is not a Thing; even if she is no use to your family any more, whether for affection or children, you can't discard her as a used-up Thing. No, she's a person. Things have to be useful. People, no. People have to be considered, even when they are no longer useful for what you originally wanted from them: wife and children for your son.

It would be barbaric to be able to say: our son's not here any more, and there aren't any kids, so what do we need with you. Scram.

This law is the height of civilization and is very pro-woman. It secures the rights of women not to be ejected from society just because they can't have children. It says women are not just useful for having children, but are valuable as individuals.

Tablepoetry

Tue, Sep 09 2014, 11:43 pm

Scrabble123 wrote:

As I stated before, I don't like the question or the topic (so yentaish and not refined),

Yentaish? Unrefined? Excuse me, we aren't whispering about Sarah Cohen and her kids behind her back. We are discussing this from an ideogical, sociological, halachic, human rights perspective. Each person from a different angle.
If people never discussed court cases because it's yentaish, nothing would ever change.
The rabbanical world needs to hear our voice. They cant pretend they exist in a vacuum.

Tablepoetry

Tue, Sep 09 2014, 11:49 pm

Dolly, the law is not to protect poor and possibly ugly widows. If that were the case, it would be enforced even if she had five kids.
The law is to ensure the dead male has progeny in his name.

ectomorph

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 12:38 am

sequoia wrote:

Take it up with Hashem.

Scrabble123

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 1:19 am

Tablepoetry wrote:

I was referring to discussing the children.....

Dolly Welsh

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 1:21 am

Tablepoetry wrote:

Dolly, the law is not to protect poor and possibly ugly widows. If that were the case, it would be enforced even if she had five kids.
The law is to ensure the dead male has progeny in his name.

Wait. A widow with even one kid is of interest to the dead husband's family and will not be neglected by them.

The kid will always connect the families, and make her of interest and make them take notice of her circumstances. If the kid is still little, it needs her to develop properly; they wouldn't take him/her in, and dismiss the mother. And an older child would act as a defender of the mother, and insist she be taken care of.

It is the childless widow who is in the cold wind.

The progeny of the male aren't all that necessary; his brother is the same tribe and he has children, usually. I think that progeny thing is a cover story for the real intent, of taking care of the woman.

Consider; without this procedure, no family would risk their daughters in marriage more than a day's ride away. A daughter, far from family, would be at terrible risk at any time, if they did not have children.

A very new bride, with no children yet, could suddenly lose her husband at any time, and, if far away, and not much loved by his family (and they aren't always) could find herself in quite a bad situation if not in an interconnected, well-policed society.

Not all societies are like that. It is only in such societies that women have agency.

And not all widows have much jewelry to sell or parents at all. A friendless woman without a job and no family can be in big trouble in a short time.

This can happen to absolutely anybody. You can be beautiful and intelligent and professionally trained and it can still happen. This is all that protects us when we leave our original family with no other contacts or resources. It states clearly we are not only valuable as sources of children.

Even if you are, say, a certified and degreed registered nurse. You are suddenly widowed. His family were never crazy about you, and there are no kids. So, you get a room and try to get a job. Do you automatically do fine? Do you automatically get a job before your money runs out? Are you automatically fine because your parents will help? Can they? Will they? What if they are no longer alive? Does everybody automatically have supportive family or friends?

No. They don't.

The plight of a slightly OLDER childless widow is terrifying. Her parents aren't around any more. Nobody thinks she can have kids with a new husband, and she isn't so pretty any more. Her husband's family was never close to her especially. She also put in time taking care of him, instead of advancing her education. Now she's widowed: if his family doesn't have to do something formal for her like yibum, oh dear, what?
I suppose they could give her a sum of money and call themselves nice people. But when it has run out next year, and her job prospects with few or rusty skills aren't great, in three years, they could be passing her in a doorway, barely recognizable.

Sorry to be grim but that's what's being prevented by yibum.

If she had had even one kid, it would have been quite different.

Tablepoetry

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 1:27 am

Scrabble123 wrote:

I was referring to discussing the children.....

Again, nobody here knows who they are. It's a discussion about something much, much bigger.
And yes, it is relevant to know whether beit din decided to be meikel or machmir with them.

Frumdoc

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 2:16 am

I have a recollection of reading in an English book describing that in Gemara times, if a woman was widowed with young children, her children were taken/ remained with and were raised by her husband's family, while she was expected to return to her father's family, alone, and then remarry if possible.

This may only have been the case if there were no other children (read:sons) to carry on the family name.

The importance of continuing the paternal name is emphasised in more than one halacha, yibum is the obvious. But once the child has been born for the dead husband, I didn't think the marriage was supposed to last, I was under the impression that this was a "short term" arrangement to produce offspring, and then the woman is divorced, and the child kept by the paternal family.

I don't know if this was halacha or custom. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

Tablepoetry

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 2:46 am

Dolly, if this were indeed such a useful custom for the woman, meant to protect her, we would have heard of at least one case where the woman took advantage of her 'rights' and married her late husband's brother, not because she fell in love with him, but for reasons of security.
Never heard of such a case. Have you?

Which means we can assume that today this kind of 'protection' - if it ever was protection for the woman, rather than for the man's name- is no longer relevant.

The protection is no longer relevant, but women are being hurt and exploited in its name. What for?

Halacha doesnt exist in a vacuum. That's why we have things like minhag hamakom, and different psak for different people. Context is taken into account. And IMO, the beit din for whatever reason is choosing to ignore modern context.
That must change before stories like this spread around and half of Israel refuses to marry via beit din.

Imogen

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 2:54 am

[quote="Dolly Welsh"]

The progeny of the male aren't all that necessary; his brother is the same tribe and he has children, usually. I think that progeny thing is a cover story for the real intent, of taking care of the woman.

Dolly it is indeed true that a childless widow in yibum was afforded some protection in a male world, once of course she has a child. The child borne from a yibum union is given the name of the dead son, not the living brother, so if Joel died and Sarah had through a yibum union through his living brother Natan, the first chld from Sarah and Natan is referred to as ben Natan, it is a halachic requirement of yibum to continue the name of the deceased. The greatest blow in the jewish world is to be left without an heir or line of continuity of "yimach shemo" may his name be wiped out.

Imogen

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 2:58 am

Whoops sorry!! if in my eg Sarah had yibum union with living brother Natan, baby's name continues the name of deceased brother, eg Baby ben Joel.

Dolly Welsh

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 3:46 am

I agree that carrying on the dead husband's name is done and important here. I shouldn't have minimized it.

The idea that such a marriage was temporary, sort of, until she had a child, is hearsay.

Anyway. While the present case has the widow having children with another man later, it certainly must have been common for the widow to be unable to have children, and that is exactly why she and her late husband didn't have any.

So in many cases you would hardly be marrying her to get a child! What son to carry on his name? That's why I said what I said.

Maybe in some cases a child could indeed come. But, you see the unlikelihood. Yet she must be married.

As for one not hearing of this kind of marriage nowadays, we can't see into the past. We can't see into the world of pre-World War I Europe. We can't say such marriages were essentially fictional and didn't really happen. Maybe Ruchel knows but I don't know what happened there. That isn't that long ago. My father was born around then; this is not ancient history. Such conditions could easily come back. We have had ONE CENTURY of electricity, modern conditions, so far. My father remembered the first telephone in the neighborhood; the doctor had it. A car was a novelty, and everybody ran to look.

Without modern conditions, meaning easy communication and travel, yibum could be more needed for women.

I only meant to say that once you are taking yibum this seriously, as in this story, that goes both ways.

Their obligation to either marry her, or let her off. This seems to me in place: and that leaves her with the ability to insist the brother marry her. And if that's not to his taste, and it wasn't, then she has him in the wrong, and he must let her off. A beth din would enforce her rights to one or the other. This way, for some years, she got neither; I don't see how that could be.

I guess it seems to me that she is the plaintiff and in the principal position. That's why she does the spitting, not the brother in law. She is giving the orders. She has a right to him marrying her.

But I am way out of my depth here, and I don't know anything about this particular case.

Last edited by Dolly Welsh on Wed, Sep 10 2014, 3:59 am; edited 1 time in total

m in Israel

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 3:46 am

Tablepoetry wrote:

Actually, it is not a Halachically acceptable option anymore. Basically under normal circumstances ones SIL is considered a relative and a man is not allowed to marry his former SIL (Vayikra 18:16 -- "ערות אשת אחיך לא תגלה".) So for example if a couple gets divorced (with or without children), or if a man dies when there are already children, the husband's brother is not allowed to marry his brother's ex-wife. Only if he is chayuv in yibum is he allowed to marry her. This is actually one of the very interesting aspects of this Halacha -- that a normally forbidden relationship is allowed in a situation where the widow is childless. In any case, because of this if a man has the wrong intentions when marrying the SIL it could be considered a problem Halachicaly, and so in recent years poskim have not allowed yibum at all and instead of just used the second option of Chalitzah to avoid any problems. I'm pretty sure that no Orthodox Rabbi today would allow a yibum marriage.

Tablepoetry

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 6:05 am

Dolly Welsh wrote:

Their obligation to either marry her, or let her off. This seems to me in place: and that leaves her with the ability to insist the brother marry her. And if that's not to his taste, and it wasn't, then she has him in the wrong, and he must let her off. A beth din would enforce her rights to one or the other. This way, for some years, she got neither; I don't see how that could be.

I guess it seems to me that she is the plaintiff and in the principal position. That's why she does the spitting, not the brother in law. She is giving the orders. She has a right to him marrying her.

.

How is she the plaintifff? How could a beit din 'enforce her rights to one or the other'? No beit din, not in Israel or anywhere, can force a man to marry a woman he doesn't want.

And it seems a beit din can't force a man to perform chalitza either, not even in Israel, where maybe there should be laws punishing men who don't 'release' their sister in laws. Certainly not abroad, where you can't force a man to participate in some ancient custom if he doesn't feel like it.

There are a million reasons why a man might not want to perform chalitza (he never liked his SIL, this is his chance for revenge; out of loyalty to his brother, so she can't 'betray' his memory with another; out of greed for money; out of hatred of ancient religious customs....the list goes on and on).

I see a situation with so much potential for abuse it's scary. I definitely don't see the widow as the plaintiff here. She's at the mercy of her brother-in-law's personal quirks and values.

Last edited by Tablepoetry on Wed, Sep 10 2014, 6:08 am; edited 2 times in total

Tablepoetry

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 6:07 am

m in Israel wrote:

in recent years poskim have not allowed yibum at all and instead of just used the second option of Chalitzah to avoid any problems. I'm pretty sure that no Orthodox Rabbi today would allow a yibum marriage.

Ahh....so yibum is no longer used as 'protection' at all? Only the option for abuse and exploitation remains?

Tablepoetry

Wed, Sep 10 2014, 6:21 am

I will add. What happens if the only brother is 3 years old? I heard that the woman has to wait a decade until he can perform chalitza. Is that really true?

And if so, again, how does this protect, rather than abuse, women?

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