Releasing the Widow

Chalitzah (the drawing off of a shoe) is the ceremony that releases a childless widow from the biblical institution of levirate marriage. The Torah provides that when a man dies without children, his brother should marry the widow so that the dead man's line is continued; if the brother declines, the widow performs chalitzah, in which, before a rabbinical court, she removes a special shoe from his foot, spits on the ground before him, and recites the biblical formula declaring the refusal. The rite frees her to marry another.

Over time Jewish authorities came to prefer chalitzah over the levirate marriage itself, and in most of the Jewish world the marriage option was set aside in favour of the release, a preference formalised in the modern state of Israel. The ceremony, with its archaic gestures preserved intact from the biblical text, is a striking survival of an ancient legal institution within living practice.