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Today we move into Seder Nashim, the next major section of Mishna.
Just a heads up that the material may get complicated at times, and may also seem a little strange. I will do my very best to zero in on the essential ideas, so that even if the details become hard to crack, we‘ll nonetheless always walk away with the gist.
The mitzva of “yibbum” (levirate marriage) is driven by the desire to perform chessed for a deceased man who has left behind no children. The mechanism of "yibbum" involves the deceased man’s brother marrying his late brother’s widow, with the hope that together they will have a child that will serve as a remembrance to, and a kind of this-worldly presence of the deceased brother. There are however two complicating factors:
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For any number of reasons, the “levirate marriage” may not be a good idea for the people involved. (In fact, for many many centuries already, the halachik system has taken the position that our default setting is to err on the side of its not being a good idea, in particular within our monogamous framework.) The Torah provides for a ceremony called “chalitzah” that negates the need to perform this mitzvah. Much more on all of this, later.
2.Levirate marriage is halachikly surprising altogether, as it represents an exception to one of the general laws of forbidden sexual relations, the one which forbids the sexual relationship between a man and his brother’s wife, even after the brother’s death. This will indirectly figure into the opening Mishnayot here.
The main idea driving the Mishnayot in the opening perek is straightforward. Both Beit Hillel and Beit Shamai agree that “yibbum” cannot be done, and in fact doesn’t even apply to begin with, if the widow and the brother are otherwise forbidden to one another. For example, if the widow is his wife’s sister, or if she is his daughter or granddaughter. (The Mishnayot give numerous other, pretty funky, additional examples.) But Beit Hillel’s understanding of this law goes considerably further. In a case in which the deceased brother had two or more wives, if any ONE of those wives is forbidden to the brother, then ALL of the wives are excluded from the mitzva of “yibbum (or the need to have “chalitzah”). For Beit Hillel, if the brother were to marry ANY of those wives, he (and she) would be engaged in an illicit sexual relationship (“your brother’s wife”) and the resultant children would be mamzerim (halachik bastards)!
Beit Shamai on the other hand, believes that this law does NOT extend in this way. Meaning that the brother can of course not marry the one wife among his late brother’s wives who is forbidden to him, e.g. his daughter or his wife’s sister, but he performs a mitzvah through marrying one of the others, and the resultant offspring is the very fulfillment of the Torah’s intention. This is quite the stark difference!
The last Mishna in the perek presents the surprising fact that despite this difference, Beit Hillel and Beit Shamai did generally marry between their two communities. How did the Beit Hillel community make sure that one of its members didn't marry a Bet Shammai-it who was born of a “yibbum” marriage which Beit Shamai regarded as legitimate and ”kosher”, and Beit Hillel regarded as forbidden and mamzer-producing? The Gemara explains that the Beit Shamai community kept meticulous records of the marriages (and the "yibbums") within its community, so that everybody would know which small number of people could not marry Beit Hillelites. And as the Mishna implies, this was but one instance in which the two schools kept careful records, so that they would both be able to preserve the practice of – in the vast majority of cases – freely marrying between the two communities.
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