Dharma and Halacha by Ithamar Theodor Yudit Kornberg Greenberg & Yudit Kornberg Greenberg

Author:Ithamar Theodor,Yudit Kornberg Greenberg & Yudit Kornberg Greenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781498512800
Publisher: Lexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2018-07-04T14:04:09+00:00

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Chapter 7

Lethal Wives and Impure Widows

The Widow Marriage Taboo in Jewish and Hindu Law and Lore

Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia

Parallel study of Jewish and Hindu sources of law and lore pertaining to widow marriage reveals an extant taboo in both traditions.1 The Biblical high priest may not wed a widow, nor, prima facie, may Brahmans—the Vedic priestly class. This suggests a common link between the need for maintaining pristine purity for priestly rites and the sense of greater ritual impurity inherent in widows. Ritual-legal necessity aside, both Jewish Halakha and Hindu Dharmaśāstra accumulated layers of attitudinal taboo, each along its traditional evolution, much like dust on well-worn wagon wheels, as impure widow practicum yielded lethal wife taboo. While the Talmud deems a twice- or thrice-widowed woman “lethal,” due to physical malady or astrological inauspiciousness, tradition evolves to increasingly treat her as religio-legally barred from marrying. Śāstra tradition comes to stress widow-culpability—due to her lack of nurturing capacity, past incarnational infractions, or astrological inauspiciousness. Śāstra manuals increasingly slate widows for ascetic privation, lest indulgence harm the extra-worldly status of the deceased,2 till an alternative arises: Satī. She may ascend her husband’s pyre as fire retires her blame. Yet even as these taboos spread, scholars in each system challenged them, using similar, while tradition-specific, hermeneutic tools and rhetorical styles, to unravel law (dharmaśāstra/halakha) from taboo (kusaṃskāra/makrūh), to weigh competing oughts: systemic preservation and shock-of-conscience remedy; to spare the vulnerable from harm3 inflicted under guise of law. We examine two such scholars: twelfth-century Andalusian rabbi Moses Maimonides and nineteenth-century Bengali pandit Īśvarcandra Vidyāsāgar—each of whom, within their singular milieu, freed women from the mire of the widow marriage taboo.

130Authoritative Treatises and Legal Source Strata

In her masterful comparative work, Veda and Torah, Barbara Holdrege depicts both authoritative treatises and corresponding systems, “brahmanical,” and “rabbinic,” in a manner akin to expressing commonality between plant types:

Two species of the same genus of “religious tradition,” as ethnic-based communities that define their notions of tradition-identity in terms of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural categories; as “textual communities” that codify their symbol systems and practices in the form of scriptural canons; and as religions of orthopraxy that delineate their concern for “correct practice” in elaborate legal systems, sacrificial traditions, and purity codes. The essential feature that unites these various aspects is that of embodiment: embodiment in a particular ethnic community with a sacred language, social structure, and practices that are constituted in relation to the Word embodied in scripture. (Holdrege, 1996, 403)

Articulating systemic commonalities of these “embodied communities,” each in their terms, sets the stage for our foray into rabbinic and brahmanical widow marriage polemics. We begin by sketching out each system-specific authoritative legal source hierarchical schema.

Torah and Veda are respective names for the scriptures of Jewish and Hindu law. While the former is taken as revelatory, and the latter, cognized (Holdrege, 1996, 325). Scripture, highest on the legal source totem pole, trumps lower proof texts for religio-legal rulings. Derabbanan, rabbinic law, and smṛti are codes of remembered tradition, each seen as second tier legal source in their particular system.

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