Why Are We So Hung Up On Polygamy?

In the March 2015 elections in Israel, two Muslim polygamists were elected to the Knesset on the United Arab list. Numerous news outlets reported this fact and questioned whether it would be proper to seat two such men in the Knesset. Why was this issue being raised? Why should polygamy disqualify a political candidate? Why, in an era when we accept single mothers, gay couples and people living together without marriage, are we fixated on polygamy? This issue is being raised not only in Israel, but in other western nations as well.

[Author’s Note: I use the term polygamy as it is the term known by most readers. The proper scientific term is polygyny (many wives). Polygamy is a general term which includes all forms of non-monogamous marriage, including polygyny, polyandry (many husbands) and group marriages.]

In recent years here in Israel, certain haredi (ultraorthodox) Sephardi rabbis have pressured the Chief Rabbinate to lift the ban on polygamy for Sephardi men. This is not a fringe group of rabbis: former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yoseph was their leader until his death in 2013. Today, Yoseph’s disciples have founded an organization Habayit Hayehudi Hashalem (the Complete Jewish Home) which continues to advocate that all Sephardi men — who are childless and economically able — be allowed to marry a second wife.

This fixation on polygamy has appeared elsewhere in the West. For example, last year in oral arguments at the Supreme Court of the United States involving the right of a Muslim inmate to grow a beard, Justice Antonin Scalia questioned the compromise proposed by the plaintiff’s attorney that the beard would only be a half an inch long. He queried the attorney, “Let’s assume in the religion that requires polygamy — could I say to the person: ‘I won’t have three wives, just let me have two wives.’ I mean, you’re still violating his religion, it seems to me, if he allows his beard to be clipped to one-half inch, isn’t he (Mears 2014)?” This use of polygamy as a “firewall” against any social change is not unusual for Justice Scalia. A year earlier in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case (Fisher 2013), Scalia linked same-sex marriage and other social ills with polygamy, stating that “The Constitution neither requires nor forbids our society to approve of same-sex marriage, much as it neither requires nor forbids us to approve of no-fault divorce, polygamy or the consumption of alcohol.”

Historically, polygamy has also been linked to slavery (the “twin barbarities” of the 1856 Republican Party platform), women’s suffrage (Gordon 1996) and even arranged marriages (Csillag 2014). Kurtz (2006) questions whether polygamy is amenable to freedom and democracy. Walker (2013) speaks of the damage polygamy does to the women and children in these situations.

On the other side of the debate, can polygamy be seen as an issue of religious or civil liberty? The platform of the Libertarian Party in the United States advocates the decriminalization of polygamy (as an issue of privacy). In December 2013, a federal judge ruled parts of Utah’s anti-polygamy law as unconstitutional (Walker 2013). Though the judge left much of the statute intact, he ruled that the state’s ban on “religious cohabitation” is unconstitutional (this case was supported by the ACLU). In other words, only a formal marriage license makes a marriage, and “cohabitating” is not enough. This was the first crack in the legal wall which has kept polygamy illegal in what was once the heartland of polygamy in the United States.

This ruling follows numerous news programs, reality shows and entertainment programs which center on polygamous families and have portrayed them as sympathetic and “normal” (“Sister Wives”, “Big Love”). Many legal and social scholars have wondered (some in fear and others in joy) whether the increased acceptance of same-sex marriage (and the recent Supreme Court decision) has reopened the discussion of polygamy and other alternative marriage practices. Turley (2004) questions the different standards where individuals can legally live in a variety of consensual sexual relationships with any number of partners so long as they do not formally marry. Individuals (primarily religious) who want legal commitment in their lives are punished for a recognized religious practice.

This paper will look at the place of polygamy in the West and how it is playing in the current public debate on marriage practices. It asks whether the current changes in public attitudes toward gay marriage will by legal and logical necessity alter public attitudes toward polygamy in the West.

A Very Brief History of Polygamy in Judaism

The Bible gives evidence to the fact that polygamy was an accepted part of the social order. Sarah gives her handmaiden to Abraham to bear a child in her stead. Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah and then quickly arranges a second marriage for Rachel (and later Jacob marries two concubines, making four wives). Though society and tradition permitted polygamy, these stories are far from positive depictions of family relations. Sarah demands the expulsion of Hagar and her son, an act very difficult for Abraham (he needs assurances from God before he does it). The relation between the sisters Rachel and Leah is far from idyllic. In fact, the marriage of a man to two sisters is later forbidden (Leviticus XVIII: 18).

The biblical text also makes rules which limit polygamy for kings (Deuteronomy XVII: 17) and directs the behavior of polygamous men toward their first wives (not to diminish their food, clothing or marital relationships, Exodus XXI: 10). One senses from the text that (except for kings) polygamy was rare in the biblical era. Polygamy is permitted but definitely not encouraged nor considered an ideal (unlike the Mormons’ interpretation of the text). In fact, I would say that the torah is an anti-polygamy document. Only twice in the Bible (excluding kings) are polygamists mentioned without an infertility problem (Lemech and Esau).

In the Talmudic period, the right of polygamy continued, but was limited formally to four wives. The taking of additional wives is grounds for divorce for a woman who had previously been a single wife. When a man takes an additional wife, he must treat them all equally (each has her own home, etc.). Polygamy, if done properly, can bankrupt a man. Most significantly, not one Rabbi in the Talmud is known to have had a second wife. The great Middle Ages Rabbi Moses Maimonides (a Sephardic Rabbi) also expressed a opinion against polygamy, but accepted it.

The change from expressing monogamy as an ideal and forbidding polygamy outright occurred about one thousand years ago in Germany (for Ashkenazi Jewry). Rabbi Gershom Ben-Yehudah (960-1028, called “our Rabbi Gershom the light of the Diaspora) and his associates lived in a particularly difficult time for the European Jewish community. They sought to reduce the friction between the Jewish community and their Christian neighbors and to answer some new problems which had developed in Europe. These rabbis issued a series of regulations (takanot); the most important, of course, was the ban on polygamy. They also made divorce more difficult so that men could not “dump” their wives to remarry. The new regulations were for “these lands” (Germany and France etc.) and for a defined period of time (about 250 years). After that period, monogamy was so well entrenched that the takanah became tradition and continues to this day.

The rabbis left two small loopholes: 1) levirate marriage and 2) the Rule of 100 Rabbis. The rabbis preferred that women bound to marry her husband’s brother through the levirate should release the man from the obligation if he was already married. However, they realized that there could be situations where a woman would prefer the security of the levirate marriage and so left open that possibility. The Rule of 100 Rabbis was the direct result of the new regulations. The changes in divorce law required the woman to physically accept the divorce decree from her husband. If she was incapacitated or mentally ill, she would not be legally able to accept the divorce. In those cases, the husband had to find 100 rabbis in four different “countries” who would agree to sign off on the second marriage. In the Middle Ages this was very difficult and rarely done (today unfortunately, it has been abused by husbands to force the hand of their wives in divorce disputes, see Amit 2001).

In the Muslim world, Sephardi Jews continued to practice polygamy should they so desire. However, a codicil was often written into Sephardi marriage contracts obliging the husband to get his wife’s permission to marry a second wife. Over the last millennium, the two traditions existed simultaneously. There is some evidence that Sephardi Jews living in Germany occasionally married additional wives with no opposition from the local Ashkenazi rabbis. This tolerance of polygamy continued in the land of Israel. In fact, when the British authorities tried to ban polygamy and to declare the children of additional wives as illegitimate; the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog defended the right of Sephardi Jews to continue the practice.

This pluralistic approach to polygamy ended soon after the state of Israel was declared when in 1949, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion‘s government made polygamy unlawful (New York Times 1949). Chief Rabbi Herzog and his Sephardi counterpart, Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim, both Zionists, felt that one united Jewish tradition should be developed in the new Jewish state. In 1950, they convened a large conference of rabbis to discuss the issues separating the communities, first and foremost among them polygamy. The conference decided to ban future polygamy while “grandfathering” existent polygamists. However, like Rabbenu Gershon, they left a loophole: Sephardi men would be permitted to marry a second wife in circumstances where both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Chief Rabbis signed off on the request; in practice, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis have steadfastly refused to sign off on such requests.

In the 1970s, this issue reached a climax. Chief Rabbi Yoseph agreed to certify the second marriage of a childless man (he had always emphasized the fertility issue) but the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren refused to sign the certificate. The petitioner took his case to the Supreme Court in Israel which refused to change Goren’s decision. So for all practical purposes, polygamy has been unlawful in Israel since 1950.

The History of Polygamy in The Christian West

The early Christians restricted marriage practices in many ways. The early Church banned divorce, polygamy and even the remarriage of widows. The rich and powerful (kings and nobles) continued to have mistresses. These women and their children often served as “back up” families (some kings had several such families). The sons in these families were sent to monasteries or the military; the daughters often were married into other powerful families (in Britain, the prefix “Fitz” to a name often reflects these children). If the legitimate wife did not give them heirs, they would “legitimize” these sons (often in their wills or on their deathbeds). For example, William “the Conqueror” was such a “back up” son. His enemies called him the “the Bastard” for that reason. This practice of rich and powerful men having an additional family has continued to modern times; the Francois Mitterand case quickly comes to mind.

The Protestant Reformation altered many marriage practices to return them to the Old Testament model. It is well known that Luther permitted divorce and the marriage of the clergy, but polygamy was also renewed. Though Martin Luther disliked polygamy, he could not find a reason to forbid the practice. However (like Ovadiah Yoseph), he limited the practice to childless men. In fact, the Lutheran clergy permitted Phillip of Hesse to marry a second wife (but to remain married and retain his political connections through his first wife).

One group of Protestants, the Anabaptists, outwardly supported polygamy (Arthur 1999). Their founder Bernhard Rothmann took 9 wives. Some of his followers rebelled against the Lutherans in the city of Munster (1532-35). The leaders of the rebellion claimed the biblical right to polygamy. The leader, John of Leiden, identified with King David and insisted on the right to marry 16 women. The rebellion was eventually put down and the leaders executed. The main rallying cry, which united the other nobles against Munster, was to stop the polygamy

Polygamy (called “plural marriage”) was renewed by leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the official name of the Mormon church) in the 19^th century. It was practiced publicly from 1852 to 1890 by a large minority of Latter-day Saint families (between 20 percent and 30 percent). The territory of Utah was refused admission into the USA because of the practice. Polygamy was often linked to slavery as a “barbarity” which was insufferable to the modern world. The Mormon church officially banned polygamy in 1890; it continues under the radar to this day in a variety of splinter factions. Polygamy is often referred to as “the Principle” by modern practitioners of polygamy which demonstrates how central it is to their way of thinking. Today almost all the cases of polygamy in the USA are Mormons of some kind.

Discussion

As noted above, there has been pressure by certain haredi Sephardi rabbis upon the Orthodox establishment (primarily the Chief Rabbinate) to lift the ban on polygamy for Sephardi men in Israel. This is not a fringe group of rabbis; they were led by the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yoseph. Rabbi Yoseph was considered by most Sephardi Jews in Israel (and the world) as their leading rabbinical authority. He was also the spiritual leader of the Shas political party (the largest religious party in Israel).

The formal request of Rabbi Yoseph and Habayit Hayehudi Hashalem is to permit childless men to marry a second wife to fulfill the commandment of “be fruitful and multiply”. Other Rabbis have asked this right for men who only have daughters; for others the request appears to be one of general principles (all Sephardi men should be able to marry another woman without rabbinic or legal interference). In many ways, the generality of the request makes it even more unusual. The rabbinic courts and rabbis in general are very conservative; they tend to respond to practical, specific problems and not ask general or theoretical questions of their own. They judge problems on a case-by-case basis where mitigating circumstances can limit the precedence.

Why should a former Chief Rabbi raise such a issue? Perhaps, in private, some of his congregants have appealed to him to solve a problem. This is not evident from the public record; the mechanism to request a second marriage which was created by the Chief Rabbinate in the 1950s is rarely used. One could suggest that Rabbi Yoseph is responding to pressing new social or demographic changes (such as a marked shortage of males of marital age). Again, the demographic make-up of Israel does not show an exceptional shortage of men of marital age (Central Bureau of Statistics 2014).

Socio-biological reasons also do not seem relevant here. Rabbis have no problems in other areas (like premarital sex) to tell their congregants “no”. Rabbi Yoseph himself was widowed for many years and never remarried which is very unusual for a rabbi in haredi circles. Finally, polygamy is counter-indicated for most Sephardi Israelis economically. Rabbi Yoseph’s constituency (and electoral support) is poor and working class; very few could really afford to support two households.

Why raise such a controversial subject, when the potential number of people to benefit from the change is so small and the political price potentially very high? Rabbi Yoseph’s political movement (Shas) is based on Oriental Jews (primarily from North Africa) who have returned to their roots and have become more stringent in their religious practice. These Jews arrived in Israel during the mass immigration of the 1950s and have remained poor and alienated from the social elites. The motto of the party is “to return the crown to its old place”. The “crown” is the torah (the Jewish tradition in its broadest sense); the “old place” is centrality in the life of the community (now the State). There is another important meaning to the “old place”, Sephardi Rabbinic dominance. The members of Shas seek not only to personally “return to their roots”, but also to restore the Sephardi tradition to dominance in the Jewish world.

I would suggest that when Rabbi Yoseph spoke of polygamy he was making a political statement and that he is not really arguing for the right of a few rich men to marry a second wife. Polygamy is a symbolic weapon which attacks three rivals of Rabbi Yoseph in one “blow”. The three rivals are 1) secular Israelis and modernity, 2) the religious Zionists (or modern orthodox) and 3) the Ashkenazi haredi establishment.

Anti-Secularism — Rabbi Yoseph and his political followers tend to blame secularism for most the problems suffered by the Sephardi Jews in Israel (poverty, crime, drugs etc.). They feel, for example, that the secular world which they met in Israel when they immigrated in the 1950s destroyed the patriarchal Sephardi family and its values. Rabbi Yoseph founded a new school system, which emphasizes religious values and devalues modernity. The ban on polygamy is seen as something modern, an expression of western or European values. That the secular Zionist leadership pushed for the ban, only strengthens that perception. Advocating a return to polygamy strikes a blow for traditional values over general secular notions of social equality.

The Stand against Religious Zionism — The two Chief Rabbis in 1949 saw themselves as Zionists and strove to unify the two traditions. Rabbi Yoseph first came to prominence in the public as a critic of the two Sephardi Chief Rabbis who preceded him (Rabbis Uziel and Nissim). He felt that their desire for national unity was spoiling the Sephardi Jewish tradition. He also felt that they were “giving in” to the dominant but incorrect Ashkenazi Rabbinate. In his later years, he criticized the unified prayer book of the army and demanded that Sephardi soldiers pray separately from their Ashkenazi companions (the army prayer book is too “Ashkenazi”). The desire to reinstate polygamy shakes the very essence of the religious Zionist perspective.

Yoseph and the Ashkenazi Haredi Establishment — Rabbi Yoseph felt that he was ignored within the haredi world. The Ashkenazi Rabbis did not consider his books important nor did they value his opinions. Advocating polygamy reminds these rabbis that they “gave in” to outside pressures, changed tradition to fit in to the European world and strayed from the way of our forefathers. Polygamy says that Sephardi Jews are closer to the tradition, purer in their observance of Judaism and less assimilated into the modern world. In other words, the Sephardim are right and the Ashkenazim are wrong.

Rabbi Yoseph is attempting to turn back the tide of modernity and Ashkenazi dominance of religious life. Polygamy is a way to emphasize this goal. Even if no one ever uses the option, he has made a principled battle and won. The desire to reinstate polygamy can be seen as a symbol of the uniqueness of the Sephardi religious worldview and a test of their growing political strength.

The Polygamy Debate in the United States and How It Compares to Israel

What is the present status of the debate over polygamy in these two countries? Is there any chance for a change in the status quo?

Similarities to the Israeli Case

There are two similarities between the two cases: 1) the request to recognize polygamy in the USA also centers in a specific religious community (LDS and some fundamentalist offshoots vs. ultraorthodox Sephardi Jewry). These are very religious groups who want their marriages sanctified and recognized (secular men can just take a mistress and will not care that they “live in sin”). 2) The decision to end polygamy was made by the religious leadership to acquiesce to the secular authorities (statehood for Utah vs. Zionist religious unity in Israel).

Differences to the Israeli Case

The differences are much greater. 1) The Mormons who desire polygamy are a tiny minority of the US population whereas Sephardi Jews are a majority in Israel (though Rabbi Yoseph’s brand of orthodoxy is a minority, it is a large minority). 2) The purpose of polygamy is different. Polygamy is considered a religious principle for the Mormons (in fact, they call it “the Principle”). In the original doctrine of the LDS Church, the good Mormon man must have many wives and many children (to bolster his status in the world to come). In the Jewish tradition it is a necessity for fertility (even one daughter is would disqualify a request for Rabbi Yoseph). 3) In Judaism, monogamy is a regulation and not a strict rule (as in Christianity) and is only one thousand years old in part of the Jewish community (as oppose to 2000 years for most Christians). 4) Sephardi Jews ask for the right to take a second wife (more is unheard of in the last 500 years); the cases in the USA are frequently much higher, especially for the leadership. 5) In Israel there must be an infertility problem or a medical problem. In the Mormon case, it is from the desires of the men.

Finally, the language of discourse is also very different. I think the historic linkage of polygamy to hated institutions like slavery has removed it from the field of religion in the USA. Though principle supporters of polygamy (like Turley 2004), try to convince us that it is an established religious right and a question of religious freedom, 2000 years of Christianity monogamy makes it look “unreligious” (basically a bad behavior). In Israel, these links do not exist; the proponents are monogamous respected Rabbis. It was a top-down request by a prominent legal and religious authority (Rabbi Yoseph) who was not asking for himself but speaking on principle for a whole community. If Rabbi Yoseph could not make headway, I find it hard to see how these Mormons splinter groups (bottom-up cases of individual families caught by the legal system) could do any better.

The link to same-sex marriage (absent in the Israeli case) seems a legal and technical ploy in the American case. Homosexuality is seen as “nature” while polygamy is merely “culture”. Therefore, discrimination by sexual preference is seen as “racist” in many circles, but polygamy is seen as a choice. Perhaps that is the reason that the scare tactic has not worked for same-sex marriage, but seems strong in polygamy. Though the rapid advances in same-sex marriage have surprised many observers, I do not see it effecting attitudes toward polygamy.

Polygamy is the social custom that almost everyone loves to hate. Liberals see it as a sign of inequality (gender and class), as primitive (twin “barbarities” of the first Republican platform) and as antithetical to democracy and progress. Conservatives see it as damaging to traditional families, as a foreign institution and un-American. I do not think that changes in same-sex marriage can alter those feelings.

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