ABOUT THIS BOOK

A long overdue study of agunot based on exhaustive research in rabbinic sources, memoirs, and communal records.

Noa Shashar sheds light on Jewish family life in the early modern era and on the activity of rabbis whose Jewish legal rulings determined the fate of agunot, literally “chained women,” who were often considered a marginal group. Who were these men and women? How did Jewish society deal with the danger of a woman’s becoming an agunah? What kind of reality was imposed on women who found themselves agunot, and what could they do to extricate themselves from their plight? How did rabbinic decisors discharge their task during this period, and what were the outcomes given the fact that the agunot were dependent on the male rabbinic establishment?

This study describes the lives of agunot, and by reexamining the halakhic activity concerning agunot in this period, proposes a new assessment of the attitude that decisors displayed toward the freeing of agunot.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Noa Shashar is a lecturer at the Sapir Academic College in Israel. She is the author of several books, including Vanished Men: Agunot in the Ashkenazi Realm, 1648–1850 (Hebrew), Not on Bread Alone: The Krell Murachovski Family Histories, and Mazkeret Rishonim: A History of the Levin and Miller Families from Mazkeret Batya & Rishon Lezion.

REVIEWS

“The Marital Knot examines halakhah’s impact at its most consequential and personal. Shashar engages an astounding array of sources and analytical methodologies, and her insistence on combining the theoretical with the processual, the intellectual with the sociocultural, introduces a critical dimension to the accepted narrative about iggun.”

— Tamara Morsel-Eisenberg, New York University

“In this insightful book, the complexities of Jewish marital law are brilliantly unpacked. The author skillfully illuminates the struggles faced by agunot, weaving together historical, social, and legal perspectives to offer a deeply empathetic exploration of a crucial topic within Jewish legal and social discourse.”

— Michael J. Broyde, Emory University, and former director of the Beth Din of America

“The Marital Knot masterfully interweaves women’s voices from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, revealing a rich tapestry of law and culture in which human destiny resonantly whispers, seeking in vain to reclaim what was lost, reliant on—yet confined by—halakhic law and societal norms.”

— Maoz Kahana, Tel Aviv University

“[Shashar] bridges the gap between halakhic scholarship and social history. The result is both rigorous and humane: a history of law that reads as a history of feeling. Shashar . . . deepens our understanding of gender, law, and emotion in early modern Ashkenaz, and her archival method is both original and illuminating.”

— Contemporary Jewry

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
Introduction
Section 1: Widows and Yevamot in the Ashkenazic World in the Early Modern Age
Section 1, Part 1: Widows in the Ashkenazic world, 1648–1850
Section 1, Part 2: Yibum and halitzah
Section 1, Part 3: The halitzah trap
Section 2: Dead Men, Chained Women
Section 2, Part 1: “Bitterly she wails”: Agunot in times of persecution and war
Section 2, Part 2: Two tales of murder
Section 2, Part 3: Identifying the dead in the interest of freeing the agunah and taking revenge
Section 2, Part 4: “Nothing of him was ever found save a shoe and belt”: Freeing an agunah
when the corpse is missing
Section 2, Part 5: The agunah wife of Lemli Wimpe of Metz
Section 2, Part 6: Death of a merchant: Gutta and Avraham Heckscher of Hamburg
Section 3: Troubled Marriages
Section 3, Part 1: Scenes from marriages in conflict
Section 3, Part 2: “Concerning the agunah whose husband left for distant parts”
Section 4: The Riddle of the Sources
Afterword: The agunah, the decisor, and the suffering
Glossary
Bibliography