Believed in One Direction

About This Talk

Chapter 3 is a law of evidence rather than of ceremony, and it is openly asymmetrical: a man's statement that he has a son or sons is accepted and releases his wife from both yibbum and chalitzah, while his statement that he has a brother or brothers is not accepted and does not forbid her to other men, since we assume he meant to bind her after his death; where it is already presumed that he has brothers, his denial at the time of death is rejected, as is his denial that a presumed brother is his brother, and where no presumption existed but a report circulates that witnesses abroad will testify to a brother, she must take it into account and wait until those witnesses are brought and questioned. Where a man claims to have fathered a child born outside marriage, the son is his for inheritance but the matter stays in doubt for yibbum, since the mother could have been with another man, so his widow performs chalitzah and may not perform yibbum. A single witness establishes the death of her husband so that she may perform yibbum, or the death of her yavam, or that her husband fathered a son, which releases her with no chalitzah at all, and even a servant, a woman, or a gentile speaking in the midst of conversation is accepted for a yavam's death, because where a fact will certainly become known a witness is unlikely to lie, and because the Sages extended the leniency so that the daughters of Israel would not be forced to remain unmarried; the five women barred from testifying to a husband's death are barred as to a yavam's too, and nobody is believed where they stand to gain, so a yevamah's word about her yavam is rejected because that prohibition carries only lashes and she may treat it casually, a yavam's word about his brother is rejected lest he desired her, a woman's word about her sister and a man's word about his wife are rejected where the point is marrying the sister, and there two witnesses are required outright, since the single-witness leniency was granted only to free a woman who would otherwise remain unmarried. Two widows married to two brothers who each report her own husband's death are both forbidden, each on account of her yavam; if one has a witness to her own husband's death she is still forbidden, because her impediment was never her husband, and the one with no witness is permitted, since that witness established her yavam's death and her own word covers her husband; children break the tie in favor of the woman who has them, a surviving brother performs yibbum or chalitzah with both, and if he marries and then dies they are forbidden again as before, while if he marries and divorces them they are free. Where she went abroad with her husband alone and reports that a yavam was born to her and died, her word is accepted in either order, because the source that would bind her is the source that permits her, whereas if she left with her husband and her yavam her word is not accepted at all; reporting her husband's death before her son's is accepted, reporting her son's death first is credited only in part, so she performs chalitzah and not yibbum, and even that only where she was already forbidden to the priesthood or says they were alone in a cave, since otherwise an onlooker might conclude that a priest may marry a chalutzah, and she is left bound until witnesses come. A woman whose husband went abroad with a second wife must wait to learn whether that wife bore a child, and only one already forbidden to the priesthood may perform chalitzah nine months on, while the wife who was with him waits ninety days like any yevamah; she need not suspect that a mother-in-law overseas bore a son before her husband died unless that mother-in-law left while pregnant; and a woman told the deaths in the wrong order who remarried must leave her second husband though her children are legitimate, while one who performed yibbum on a reversed report must leave him and her children are not.