Sephardi Family Life in the Early Modern Diaspora by Lieberman Julia R.; Bernfeld Tirsah Levie; Davidson Hannah

Author:Lieberman, Julia R.; Bernfeld, Tirsah Levie; Davidson, Hannah
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1084922
Publisher: Brandeis University Press

Germaniae, Frederick de Wit, Amsterdam, ca. 1690. Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Amsterdam.

Marriage and the Conjugal Household

Menasseh describes four possible types of marriage, rejects the first three, and concludes that only the fourth is the ideal marriage.23 The first type is motivated by greed (avaricia) on the part of the groom, in order to obtain wealth by marrying a wealthy woman. “This type of marriage [he says] is the most common in our times,”24 but it cannot end well as wealth can disappear and, with its disappearance, the love between wife and husband will also end. Marriage between members of the same socioeconomic class is therefore recommended by Menasseh: “It is a prudent commandment to look for comparable quality in a marriage.”25

The second type of marriage is one based on honor; that is to say, when a man marries a woman because of the fame and reputation that he will gain from her relatives. This marriage also has little chance of success as inequality in nobility and birth (nobreza e nacimento) will soon lead to disagreements.26 The third type of marriage is one based on the beauty of the body; that is to say, the woman’s beauty. He quotes the rabbinic treatise Ta’Anit: “Young man . . . do not fix thine eyes upon beauty, but consider the family.” This marriage, says Menasseh, is called a marriage of pain (dor) because of the sure pain it will bring to the life of the husband—given the transitory nature of beauty, it will soon end as a result of a possible illness, disaster, or natural aging. Finally, the ideal marriage, according to Menasseh, is one based on prudence; that is, the marriage to a woman who possesses qualities such as virtue, honesty, and prudence.27

Menasseh explains the biblical and rabbinic traditions that give parents legal rights to marry off their children and select their partners, with the consent of their sons and daughters.28 In fact, parents and community leaders in Western Sephardi communities had a great deal of control over the marriage of their children. In Amsterdam, throughout the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth centuries, a marriage that took place without the knowledge of the bride’s family was penalized with herem (a ban) by the lay leaders of the community.29 Menasseh also recommends that marriage take place at about age eighteen for men and age thirteen for girls, as customary in Jewish tradition. To compensate for the girl’s young age—that is, not yet being mature enough to govern a household—Menasseh recommends that the newly married couple reside in the parents’ home until they are ready to set up their own household.30 Allusions in the text suggest that an early age of marriage, as well as a relatively small difference in age between the partners, was mostly an ideal that did not necessarily reflect reality. Furthermore, the text also indicates that marriage often was decided on the basis of financial interests relevant to both families, and that these marriages frequently did not end well.

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