REMEDIES FOR IMPEDIMENTS TO MARRIAGE
On the other hand, a man is forbidden to make a mistress of his slave.” Maimonides admonished his readers not to dismiss this iniquity(@von)'’® as inconsequential:
Do not think that this is a minor sin because the Torah did not prescribe flogging for one who violates the prohibition; for this liaison also causes the son to turn away from the Lord, in that a son born to a maidservant is a slave and not an Israelite . The result is that holy seed is profaned by becoming slaves."
When Maimonides compared this grave iniquity with the alternative of a valid and lasting marriage with the freed slave, now a full-fledged Jew , he knew that violating the prohibition was merely“a sort of sin.” In comparison with the severe“iniquity” of living with her as a non-Jewish slave, the forbidden marriage appears to be the better of two bad alternatives and therefore permissible. He had no doubt as to which was the lesser evil, for he had so decided in a number of similar cases.
Rabbi Moses Galante , who became the rabbi of Safed in 1580, ruled on an unusual case of the deception and coercion of an intractable brother-in-law who refused to give halitzah(release from levirate marriage). Rabbi Galante describes the unusual case as follows:
In his time there was a case of a sister-in-law who[waited for] yibbum(levirate marriage) for two years, and a fire raged among them every day on account of the various claims and quarrels between the relatives of the brother-in-law and the relatives of the sister-in-law; for the brother-in-law said that he wanted to perform yibbum....One day the sister-in-law’s relatives advised
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