For the source text click/tap here: Yevamot 111
To download, click/tap here: PDF
A new Mishna walks right into the waters of who disqualifies whom from staying married to a yavam if that yavam has sexual intercourse with his yevama and then his rival wife.
Depending on the status, standing, etc. of the women in question, the yavam's greediness might lead him to lose his partner(s). Minor girls, deaf-mute women, and halachically incompetent women are compared to each other. If a yavam marries each one of these first and then has intercourse with the second, who is exempted from yibum? Who is encouraged to refuse? Who is told that they should divorce? Who stays married?
We explore Prof Judith Hauptman’s classical study of the status of women and THE PICTURE THAT EMERGES from many Talmudic passages, that society in the rabbinic period was both sex-segregated and patriarchal. Was it permissible, in such a society, for men and women to engage in social and intellectual exchange of ideas?
This leads us to the marvelous medieval “Sefer Ha'maasim” of The Poor Bachelor and His Rich Maiden Cousin” and its relation to the Romance of Tristan/Beroul (and it later music/operatic versions ending with Wagner’s monumental opera.