There’s another domestic dispute ritual in this week’s list of laws, and this one is weird, rare, and though hard to believe, still sometimes conducted. The Ritual of Extraction - Halitza - was last seen in NYC in 2021, as hundreds of Hasidic men filled a hall in Brooklyn to witness This shaming ritual , complete with a special shoe, focused on one woman - an older widow who more or less followed this biblical script. A similar situation is caught on tape in a religious jewish ceremony in Tehran, Iran (!) - in 202o. It follows this exact recipe:
וְנִגְּשָׁ֨ה יְבִמְתּ֣וֹ אֵלָיו֮ לְעֵינֵ֣י הַזְּקֵנִים֒ וְחָלְצָ֤ה נַעֲלוֹ֙ מֵעַ֣ל רַגְל֔וֹ וְיָרְקָ֖ה בְּפָנָ֑יו וְעָֽנְתָה֙ וְאָ֣מְרָ֔ה כָּ֚כָה יֵעָשֶׂ֣ה לָאִ֔ישׁ אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹא־יִבְנֶ֖ה אֶת־בֵּ֥ית אָחִֽיו׃
“The brother’s widow shall go up to her dead husband’s brother in the presence of the elders, pull the sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and make this declaration: Thus shall be done to the man who will not build up his brother’s house!” Henceforth he shall be known in Israel by the name of “the family of the unsandaled one.”
In line with patriarchal norms, the idea that a widowed woman belongs to her husband’s family and must marry one of his relatives is not unique to ancient Israel, or Jewish law, and is found across ancient cultures. The woman is seen as the family’s procreative property.
But what’s unique in today's chapter in Book of Words' which describes the laws related to ‘Levirate marriage’ option is that it focused on an unusual dramatic ritual reserved for what happens if it doesn’t work out. Including a special shoe. The Torah describes a situation in which the dead man’s brother refuses to impregnate the widow. Her consent is of course assumed.. A strange ritual is then conducted - that does not appear in any other of the Near-Eastern traditions and has puzzled scholars since. One of the remarkable facts about the way this ritual is proscribed is that the offended woman herself is at the center of this elaborate shame-inducing ritual, complete with her spitting, removing his shoe and making a public declaration.
Catherine Hezser, a historian, analyzed this unusual ritual and the shoe symbol for its “reflection of the role of women in the respective societies... A ritual that once served to express female anger at being refused by the most natural suitor, indicating her liberation from male domination, may over time have become a meaningless formality, a means of coercion, and an affront to the sensibilities of both parties involved...One may speculate why a shoe is used as the central ritual object in the Halitzah ritual. Explanations range from associating the shoe with ancient forms of property transaction to seeing it as a symbol of the female sexual organ.”
The removal or loosening of the shoe ritual is already mentioned in the biblical story of Ruth, verifying this ancient custom as a symbolized transfer of rights. Some later rabbis—Yechiel of Paris, for instance—say the removal of the shoe symbolized the entrance into a state of mourning - from that moment onwards the man is to be regarded as dead to the woman and to some of the family. Perhaps as retribution and a warning for other men.
The rare occurrence in Brooklyn is among the hopefully last time this old ritual still takes place. Levirate marriage has been outlawed earlier in the 20th century by most Orthodox rabbinic leaders and by all progressive movements.
As Heszer concludes:“Since the nineteenth century, progressive Jews have seen the halitzah ritual as a symbol of women’s subjugation within ancient patriarchal society rather than as a ritual of liberation from marital restrictions. ..Within the modern context, at a time when women refuse to identify themselves on the basis of their ability to bear children and when they are financially independent, the meaning of halitzah is overturned: it has become a reminiscence of patriarchal oppression and female dependence on men.”
The Halitza shoe belongs in museums, not on people’s feet or in public ritual use. Not anymore. Women and men, and all of us, with respect to our past, deserve less shame and more redemptive options. We need new rituals to replace the old ones, rituals that help us honor human dignity, and offer hope, even when and especially when - dreams die and become disappointments. Maybe we need new rituals when we wear new shoes for the new chapter, and spit-shine them for the path ahead?
All week long, through this week festival, echoed in the chapters coming up in the Book of Words, other rituals will emerge, marking life’s up’s and down’s, all sacred transitions.
Happy Holy Days of Huts.
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Thanks for the videos. Big time educational. They didn't teach us how to do it at HUC and it's not in the Jewish Catalogue. A pity the chassidim wouldn't allow the woman to be filmed doing the deed. The Sefardim allow the delicacy of her spitting on the floor rather than in his face. At least I now know what a bet din looks like. Given Rabeinu Tam's temporary prohibition of polygamy for us Ashkenazim, chalitzah is moot unless the chaluts (!) is unmarried. Perhaps the truly ancient gesture could be reworked as honoring family rather than shaming family.