Responsum: On Apostasy and Levirate Marriage

Yehuday Ga’on

8th Century

If, when she married her husband, the yabam was [already] an apostate, she does not require ḥalitsah from him. If the husband [himself] became an apostate, and she was compelled to remain with him, and he died childless in his state of apostasy, then she has no ties to the yabam, as he is not considered his brother, and she does not require ḥalitsah [in that case] either.

Translated by Avi Steinhart.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.

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If a married man dies childless and has a surviving brother, Jewish law requires that brother to marry the widow. This is termed levirate marriage. This Hebrew responsum deals with the question of what happens if one of the two men had converted out of Judaism. The yabam is the husband’s brother, who would be obligated to marry the widow, and ḥalitsah is the ceremony that exempts them from the obligation.

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Creator Bio

Yehuday Ga’on

8th Century

According to Sherira Ga’on (ca. 906–1006), Yehuday ben Naḥman Ga’on trained in the academy of Pumbedita, at the time located on the Euphrates, in Iraq. He then served as the head of the rival academy of Sura, to the south, from 757 to 761. A staunch traditionalist who was purportedly blind, Yehuday was concerned with upholding the rulings of the Babylonian Talmud and the principles of his teachers. He wrote more than one hundred responsa, but scholars think that the traditional attribution of the legal code Decided Laws (Halakhot pesukot) to him is unlikely. In the late eighth century, Pirqoy ben Baboy claimed to be a student of a student of his and recounted some of Yehuday’s battles with Palestinian Jews.

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