Sotah 050

15:
According to modern critical scholarship, this third text is to be dated sometime during the 7th century BCE. By this time the process of urbanization had become advanced: when people live in towns the task of assisting the needy gets transferred from the tribe (which gradually ceases to have any meaning in a non-agricultural economic base) to "friends and neighbours". Thus, the ancient law of levirate marriage became a burden – not only to the brother-in-law but also, gradually, to the sister-in-law, as women became less and less dependent, and began to hold property in their own right. The halakhic problem is that levirate marriage is a requirement of the Torah and the ceremony described in our quotation from Deuteronomy is also required in order to release the parties from the liaison caused by the death of the woman's husband. The term used for levirate marriage in Hebrew is 'Yibbum', and the term used for the 'divorce' ceremony is 'ĥalitzah'. (The Hebrew word is connected with the verb "to take off a shoe".) Modern courts will not permit Yibbum and will require ĥalitzah in all cases. As women became less and less insistent on being accorded their rights through Yibbum, so the ceremony of ĥalitzah became more and more distasteful for both parties: what was intended originally as the attempt by a desperate woman to shame her late husband's brother to "do his duty" by her, now became a meaningless ceremony of degradation. From mishnaic times onwards various means were developed to obfuscate the more strident aspects of this ceremony (which is required by Torah law, not rabbinic legislation). All involved, including the members of the Bet Din, are required to fast until after the ceremony; the "shoe" that the woman must remove from the man's foot is a special 'ceremonial' sandal provided by the court… But this still leaves the unpleasant episode of expectoration (even though the amount need not be measured!) – and the seeming untowardness of the whole ceremony, particularly since it is mandatory.

16:
Ĥalitzah cannot be ignored, since it is an institution of Torah law. However, every effort should be made to obviate its necessity. It seems to me that the most obvious avenue to pursue in this regard is the one called "conditional divorce". This is a device whereby the husband writes a bill divorcing his wife if certain circumstances should ever arise. Thus should he die prematurely she would be a divorcée and not a widow, thus obviating the whole issue of ĥalitzah if she is childless. But this requires bold and creative thinking from rabbinic authorities far greater than I can ever aspire to being – and I do not see such thinking at this time.

17:
Our mishnah links together the fiancée and a woman waiting for levirate marriage because both are 'half-married', as it were. The fiancée is waiting for Nissu'in and the other woman, while legally and halakhically linked to her brother-in-law simply by the death of her husband, has not yet been formally married to him by Yibbum (or 'divorced' from him by ĥalitzah). Therefore, the sages take the opportunity offered by the wording of the Torah to excuse them the ordeal of the 'cursing waters': these two women are 'a wife who is not under her husband', so the 'husband', if he suspects their infidelity during this period, cannot make them undergo the ordeal. However, these women cannot collect the money in their Ketubah.

To be continued.