Positive Commandment 217 (Digest)
Circumventing Levirate Marriage
"And she shall remove his shoe off his foot"—Deuteronomy 25:9.
If the brother of a married man who dies childless does not marry his widowed sister-in-law [See Positive Commandment 216], the widow is commanded to remove her brother-in-law's shoe [as part of the chalitzah ceremony described in the Torah, and she is then permitted to marry whomever she desires].
Our sages tell us that performing levirate marriage is preferable to employing chalitzah to release the widow and brother-in-law from their bond.
The 217th mitzvah is that in a case when a yavam will not marry his yevamah, she performs chalitzah on him.
The source of this commandment is G‑d's statement (exalted be He), "She shall remove his shoe from his foot."
The details of this mitzvah are found in the tractate devoted to this subject, tractate Yevamos.
You are already familiar with the statement of our Sages, "Performing the mitzvah of yibum [i.e., marrying the yevamah] is preferable to performing the mitzvah of chalitzah."
For this same reason they called the tractate "Yevamos," even though it gives equal coverage both to the laws of yibum and those of chalitzah.
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