06 Sep PARASHAT KI TESEH: THE MESSAGE OF YIBUM

Towards the end of Parashat

Ki-Teseh, the Torah

presents the Misva of

Yibum, which applies when

a married man dies without

children. His brother is required to marry the

widow, and the child born from this marriage

will be considered, in some sense, the

offspring of the deceased. If the brother

refuses to marry the widow, then he must

perform a special ceremony called “Halisa,”

whereby he wears a special shoe which the

widow removes from his foot. (Although it is

clear from the Torah that Yibum is preferred

over Halisa, nowadays, Halisa is performed

when this unfortunate situation arises, for

reasons which lie beyond the scope of our

discussion.) Various different approaches

have been suggested to explain the meaning

and significance of Yibum and Halisa.

Rabbenu Bahya (Spain, 1255-1340)

suggested, quite simply, that the Torah

commands the brother to marry the widow in

order to keep the deceased’s wealth in the

family. Since the deceased had no children, his

only inheritor is his wife, and if she would then

marry somebody else, all his wealth would

end up in a different family. As people

generally wish for their wealth to remain in

their family, the Torah commanded the

brother to marry the widow. In explaining the

significance of Halisa, Rabbenu Bahya writes

that Yibum has the effect of bringing the

deceased back to life, in some sense. As the

Torah writes, the child produced by the

brother’s marriage to the widow “shall be

named after the deceased.” Since the deceased

in effect caused this child to be born, as his

brother was required to marry the widow

because of his death, the deceased – who had

no children – is considered as having a legacy

and presence in this world through the birth of

that child. And so if the brother refuses to

marry the widow, he essentially causes the

brother to “die” again. He consigns the brother

to no longer have any chance of leaving a

legacy in this world. The brother therefore has

his shoe removed – a symbol of mourning,

conveying the message that his refusal is

causing his brother to “die” once again, in that

it denies the brother an opportunity for a

spiritual presence in this world through

offspring. But the removal of a shoe from the

brother’s foot might also send a different

message. The Zohar and other sources speak

at length about a person’s ability to elevate his

father’s soul in the next world. By performing

Misvot in the father’s merit, a person brings

great blessing to the deceased father’s soul. In

fact, a son’s Misvot performed in the father’s

merit have a greater effect upon the father’s

soul than those performed by the greatest

Sadik in the world. The Gemara teaches that

one is required to honor his parents both

during their lifetime and after their passing.

When the parent is alive, the child is to help

him here in this world by caring for him and

respecting him. When the parent passes on,

the child is to help the parent in the next world,

through the performance of Misvot.

Elsewhere, the Gemara comments that a child

is “Kar’a De’abu” – “his father’s leg.” The

commentators explain this to mean that a child

has the ability to enable his parent to “move”

even in the next world. Once a person leaves

this world, he no longer has the ability to

perform Misvot, and so he no longer has the

ability to build himself, to elevate himself, to

grow and develop. The only way this can be

done after death is through one’s offspring,

whose good deeds are attributed, to some

extent, to the parent who produced the

children and trained them to observe the

Torah. The child is the parent’s “leg” in the

sense that he grants his father the ability to

continue “walking” even in the next world, to

be elevated and raised, through the

performance of Misvot. This might be the

meaning of the Halisa ceremony. The shoe is

removed from the brother’s foot to sharply

reprimand him for denying his brother a

“shoe” – a child who would be able to carry his

soul further in the next world. The Torah gave

the brother the opportunity to produce a child

that would be considered the child of the

deceased, and would thus elevate the

deceased’s soul to infinitely greater heights in

the next world, but he chose not to seize this

opportunity. He thus removed his brother’s

“shoe,” his means of achieving greater

elevation. The greatest thing we can do for our

beloved family members who have left this

world is to involve ourselves in the study and

observance of Torah in their merit, through

which we elevate their souls to ever greater

heights for all eternity.