<HTML>Dear Rabbi Berger,
I am responding a to an old question because, for some reason, a
week's worth of the list was held from my mailbox until yesterday.
Jack Bieler asked about Yibum in Megillat Ruth, and the assumption
that the Goel had to marry Ruth even though there is no technical
requirement of yibum except with a brother. The Ramban in Breishit 38:8
offers an interesting explanation. There he is dealing with the story of
Judah and Tamar and the fact that Judah gives his daughter in law to his
second son after the first dies. He suggests that the idea behind yibum,
that the deceased should have someone perpetuate his name, is an idea that
had appeal to the Rabbis, so they developed a custom that whenever a
relative redeems the land of the deceased, he should also marry the widow.
Thus the Goel was not expected to fulfill technical yibum, but rather he
was to enact a custom whose roots were in the mitzvah of yibum.
Mark Smilowitz
Torah Academy of Bergen County
Teaneck, New Jersey</HTML>
