Jewish Widow, to Remarry, May Have Rare Halitza Ceremony

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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