Halizah

Halitsah or chalitzah (Hebrew: חליצה, romanized: ḥəliṣā) in Rabbinical Judaism is the process by which a childless widow and a brother of her deceased husband may avoid the duty to marry under the biblical system of yibbum (levirate marriage) The process involves the widow making a declaration, taking off a shoe of the brother (i.e., her brother-in-law), and spitting on the floor.

[2] However, the yibbum law is still presumed to be in force, thus making a childless widow who remarries someone other than her brother-in-law without performing the halitsa ceremony an adulterer.

In the presence of town elders, the widow recites a prescribed formula which scolds him for not building his brother's household, loosens the shoe of the brother-in-law, and spits on the floor.

It is believed that when the ceremony is performed publicly, the humiliation and the shame that the brother and the widow feel is meant to break the bond that they hold.

All investigations into the concerned parties are conducted the previous day, on which both are instructed in ceremony details, and on which the yebamah (widowed sister-in-law) is not allowed to eat.

[8] On the day set for the halitzah, immediately after the morning service, when all the people are still in the synagogue, the three judges and their two assistants, who also act as witnesses, meet at the appointed place.

After these preliminary details, and after the yabam makes a public declaration that he has not been forced by outside influence to submit to the halitzah, but acts of his own free will, the ceremony commences.

The yabam must have his right foot, on which the shoe is placed, washed very scrupulously, and after he has strapped it on he must walk four cubits in the presence of the judges.

From the incident in the Book of Ruth (4:7–8), which certainly refers to this ancient custom, it seems the loosening of the shoe symbolized a transfer of rights, and had no stigma attached to it.

[13][14] The Reform view, as expressed in various treatises written by the leaders of the movement, and as adopted at the different rabbinical conferences held in Germany and in America, is that the ceremony of halitzah is not essential to the remarriage of the widow.

The Philadelphia Conference (1869) resolved that "the precept of levirate marriage and of halizah has lost to us all meaning, import, and binding force."

The Second Israelite Synod, held in Augsburg (1871), passed a resolution to the same effect, adding that "for the sake of liberty of conscience, however, no rabbi will refuse, on request of the parties, to conduct the ceremony of halizah in a proper form."