הייבום בספר היובלים מא לאור פרשנותו של בנימין אלנַהאוַנְדי לסיפור יהודה ותמר (בראשית לח)

Benjamin al-Nahāhawndī was considered by the early Karaites as one of the precursors of their movement, and therefore they learnt his legal interpretations, but with considerable criticism. The difference in outlook between Benjamin and the Karaites is demonstrated clearly in their respective interpretations of the levirate laws. The prevailing Karaite halakhah is that the designated levirate brother (Deut 25:5) is not to be understood as a brother by birth, but rather as a member of the larger family unit or tribe; this is deduced in light of the law that forbids one to uncover the nakedness of a brother’s wife (Lev 18:16). Benjamin, on the other hand, believed that the levirate duty should be performed by the brother by birth, but only in the event that the widowed sister-in-law was a betrothed virgin. If this was not the case, the commandment which forbids uncovering the nakedness of a brother’s wife would be violated, and thus the levirate duty should not be performed. In dealing with the levirate law, the story of Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) should be considered. Judah ordered his son Onan to perform levirate marriage with Tamar, his sister-in-law, following the (childless) death of his brother Er. After Onan’s death, Judah prevented his youngest son, Shelah, from performing his levirate duty. Most Karaites argued that this story cannot indicate that a brother must perform levirate marriage with his sister-in-law, since the levirate commandment, like the prohibition against uncovering the nakedness of the sister-in-law, was given only at Mount Sinai. Benjamin, however, considered the story as evidence that the two laws mentioned above were already in force during the life of Judah; he emphasized that the two brothers, Onan and Shelah, were obligated to perform levirate marriage because Tamar, according to the story told in Genesis, remained a virgin. It is well known that according to the Book of Jubilees, many commandments were given before the revelation at Mount Sinai. The author included the levirate commandment among them. In his rewritten story of Judah and Tamar, he stressed, more strongly than in Genesis, Tamar’s virginity after her marriage to Er and Onan. Many scholars have tried to decipher the levirate law the author of Jubilees had in mind when he rewrote the story of Judah and Tamar. My conclusion is that, like Benjamin after him, he believed that the levirate duty should be performed by a birth-brother on the condition that the sister-in-law was a virgin. His rewritten story was meant to prove that Tamar, who gave birth to Judah’s descendants Peretz and Zerach, was never impregnated by any Canaanite seed. The Karaites claimed that Benjamin was influenced by the “cave sect,” an ancient sect that had disappeared from the stage of history, and was named by this name because its writings were found in caves. My previous research has taught me the closeness between Benjamin’s legal interpretations and those found in the Qumran scrolls and the Book of Jubilees. The case before us demonstrates another instructive example of Benjamin’s proximity to the legal exegesis of the Book of Jubilees.