HALITZA: A CEREMONY OF RELEASE

Orthodox:

Based on Deuteronomy 25: 7-10, this ceremony is to release the widow of a man who died childless to marry someone other than her brother in law. Although the union with a brother’s wife is consider incestuous, and is prohibited in the Torah. In order to "avert the calamity of a family line becoming extinct," the brother of the defunct is obligated to marry the widow as to continue that man’s name.

That marriage is called aYibum or Levirate marriage. The brother could however refuse to marry the widow of his brother. In that case the Torah provides for this release ceremony. If it is the women who doesn’t want to cohabit with the brother in law then?

Rabbinical law requires the surviving brother to "exercise his right to refusal" and to release his sister in law, so she can marry someone else. On moral grounds the rabbis’ felt compelled to prevent levirate marriages in this day and age.

Reform:

According to the law in Deuteronomy (25:5-10) a childless widow is not free to marry anyone except the deceased husband's brother or next of kin. The first child born of the new union is considered the child of the deceased man. Should the next of kin refuse to marry the widow, the Bible outlines a special ceremony to release the widow and permit her to marry the man of her choice. This ancient ceremony, known in Hebrew as Chalitzah and in English as the Levirate marriage, has no significance in modern life. Accordingly, at a conference of American Rabbis held in Philadelphia in 1869 and at another conference of rabbis in Augsburg, Germany, in 1871, this ceremony was declared unnecessary for Jews of the present time.

Agunah
The Agunah is the woman whose husband disappeared either through desertion or through an unwitnessed death. Under Biblical and Talmudic law the fact of death may be established only through the corroboration of two eyewitnesses. Later authorities relaxed this law in the case of an Agunah, and accepted the testimony of a single witness, even if he were otherwise "incompetent." This law has resulted in tragic situations for many Jewish women. Reform Judaism accepts the law of the state governing such situations, and makes such laws part of its religious code of guidance.