The Story of Jewish Polygamy

Abstract

Abstract This Article examines intersection of law, religion, and culture in evolution of polygamy in Jewish tradition. It traces development of Jewish thought on polygamy over time by assembling and analyzing relevant discussions, arguments, decisions, and biblical interpretations from time of Hebrew Bible passages, when plural marriage was an accepted part of Jewish society, to early Middle Ages when practice was formally and conclusively rejected. In doing so, Article attempts to untangle various influences--both practical and doctrinal, internal and external--on evolution of marriage law in Jewish communities. These findings highlight mutable nature of marriage norms within a religious community, adaptability of religious doctrine to practical needs of community, and potentially progressive force of religious morality in advancing women's rights. INTRODUCTION: POLYGAMY AND RELIGION IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE Judaism's relationship with polygamy has always been fraught with tension and perhaps can best be summed up by fact that word for co-wife in Hebrew is tzarah, literally trouble. As many know, practice of polygamy was once considered part and parcel of Jewish culture, at least in theory, but nowadays that is no longer case. The story of Jewish polygamy has no clear-cut ending; there was no one defining moment or document that shifted Jewish societies in Western Europe away from polygamy and into monogamy. But over time, these norms did shift for reasons we examine in this Article. For past several years, issue of marriage and of marital forms in particular has been a prominent feature on both national (1) and international stage. (2) Efforts to lift prohibitions on same-sex marriage in this country and abroad have inspired people on all sides of political spectrum to speak about virtues of monogamy's core institution and to express views on who should be included within it. (3) While public discourse over marriage in United States and around world has focused primarily on gay marriage, issue of legalizing plural marriage has been gaining considerable attention in recent years. (4) In United States, TV shows such as TLC's Sister Wives, HBO's Big Love and Showtime's Polyamory: Married and Dating have brought concept of plural marriage into nation's collective living room. Polyamory, practice of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with knowledge and consent of everyone involved, has even been called the next civil rights movement. (5) The discussion of polygamy presents valuable angles for reconsidering contemporary marriage debate. First, plural marriage raises novel questions beyond those presented by gay marriage because it turns not on idea of who can be in a marriage, but rather on very institution of marriage itself as consisting of a two-and-only-two part unit. Second, plural marriage, unlike gay marriage, represents an alternative bundling of marital principles that may be described as traditional within a broad range of cultures and religious communities. (6) In this context, an examination of what a religious tradition has had to say about marriage over time can inform our understanding of what religion is capable of saying about topic today. This Article will focus on history of polygamy in Jewish tradition and will examine why, after millennia of experimentation, a religion walked away from a practice it had once legitimized. We will follow this history through various streams of Jewish law and tradition, and watch as debate slowly shifts from a question of legality to morality, from could to should. We will focus on three historical realities over time that make sense of this evolution: First, all of Jewish law is, at its core, an act of holding multiple values in a dialectic tension. …