Chalitza shoe

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Chalitza shoe, New York, 20th century
Chalitza shoe, 19th century, Jewish Museum of Switzerland .

The Chalitza shoe is footwear that is used for a ritual in Jewish marriage law. This ritual is still necessary to this day so that a childless widow receives approval from her husband's family to enter into a new marriage.

Development of the Chalitza ritual

In the Torah ( Dtn 25.5–10  EU ) there is the ritual of Chalitza (taking off shoes). It had the function of getting an unmotivated man to marry his widowed and childless sister-in-law and thereby secure her a recognized position in a patriarchal and patrilineal society. If he refused, the widow should do the following in front of witnesses: “Pull the shoe off his foot, spit in his face and exclaim: This is how one treats someone who does not build his brother's house!” (Deut 25.9) The shoe here is a sign of dignity: the poor had no shoes. The ritual was dishonorable for the man, but also expected the woman to do typical slave labor. The advantage for the woman, on the other hand, was that the ritual ended the hopeless state in which she had been since her husband's death: “The right to a widow is withdrawn from the brother-in-law and his family, and from now on she is free to marry who she wants. "

In late antiquity, entering into a marriage-in-law and the Chalitza ritual were considered equal options; the rabbis removed the connotation of humiliation. The widow no longer spat at the brother-in-law, but spat in his direction on the floor. Now it was also determined how the shoe had to be made with which the ritual was performed: “If you grant the Chalitza with a shoe, your Chalitza is valid, with a felt sock, your Chalitza is invalid with a sandal if a heel piece is attached is, (it is) valid, but if there is no heel on it, (it is) invalid (when the straps of the sandals are fastened) from the knee down, your Chalitza is valid, from the knee upwards, your Chalitza is invalid . ”In everyday life, sandals were the usual footwear, and the Talmud mentions that the Chalitza ritual was usually performed with a sandal. The Mishnah text quoted ensures that sandals are suitable for this purpose.

In Ashkenazi communities, marriage-in-law was already uncommon in the Middle Ages, so there was no alternative to the Chalitza ritual. The reform movement abolished the ceremony because a symbolic punishment of the brother-in-law would be pointless if he could not enter into a marriage-in-law in a monogamous culture; besides, the ritual is degrading for the woman. The Conservative Judaism also avoids the Chalitza ceremony, but not its abolition, but by a clause in the marriage contract ( ketubah ). In Sephardic communities, marriage-in-law was still common in the 20th century, but was forbidden in 1950 by the Sephardic chief rabbinate in Israel in order to ensure equality with Ashkenazi practice in marriage law.

In Israel , which has no civil marriage , about 20 to 25 Jewish women per year are in the situation of performing the Chalitza ritual with their brother-in-law after the death of their husband, which gives them the freedom to enter into a new marriage with another man . It happens that the brother-in-law refuses to attend, which makes remarriage impossible for the woman. Above all, it is criticized that the chief rabbinate invites outsiders as spectators to the Chalitza ceremony.

Texture of the Chalitza shoe

The congregations or the marriage court ( Beth Din ) apparently started to provide a shoe for the Chalitza ritual as early as the time of Maimonides , which was never used in everyday life. Maimonides defined that the shoe used should be a shoe made from the leather of a pure animal that had a heel piece. It was not allowed to be sewn with linen thread. The Chalitza shoe resembles a shoe that was common at the time of the Talmud (i.e. in the early Middle Ages) and is similar to ancient Roman shoes. In the 19th century, the Chalitza shoe was described as a shoe made of corduan leather . The upper and the sole were sewn with a white leather strap, and straps were attached to each side of the shoe, also white and of unequal length. The shoe also had three wide straps with incisions on the right and three somewhat narrower straps with buttons on the left. When putting on the shoe, these three buttons were attached to the foot, then the long white strap was looped three times around the calf and tied with the short white strap to form a loose loop, which was then loosened during the ritual.

Web links

literature

  • Catherine Heszer: The Halitza Shoe: Between Female Subjugation and Symbolic Emasculation . In: Edna Nahshon (Ed.): Jews and Shoes , Berg Publishers, 2008, pp. 47-63. ISBN 9781847880499 . ( PDF )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Catherine Heszer: The Halitza Shoe: Between Female Subjugation and Symbolic Emasculation , 2008, p. 48.
  2. ↑ Karin Finsterbusch : Deuteronomy. An introduction . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, p. 143, note 303.
  3. ↑ Catherine Heszer: The Halitza Shoe: Between Female Subjugation and Symbolic Emasculation , 2008, p. 51 f.
  4. ↑ Mishnah Jevamot, xii 1b.
  5. ↑ Catherine Heszer: The Halitza Shoe: Between Female Subjugation and Symbolic Emasculation , 2008, p. 53 f.
  6. ↑ Catherine Heszer: The Halitza Shoe: Between Female Subjugation and Symbolic Emasculation , 2008, p. 58 f.
  7. ↑ Catherine Heszer: The Halitza Shoe: Between Female Subjugation and Symbolic Emasculation , 2008, p. 57 f.
  8. ^ Judy Maltz: Activists Urge Israeli Rabbinate to Regulate an Ancient Jewish 'Spitting' Rite . In: Haaretz , March 3, 2015.
  9. ↑ Catherine Heszer: The Halitza Shoe: Between Female Subjugation and Symbolic Emasculation , 2008, p. 57.
  10. ^ Moritz Mordechai Duschak: The Mosaic-Talmudic marriage law with special consideration for civil laws . Vienna 1864, pp. 121, 124, 126 f.