“Will you give this woman Chalitza?”
“Certainly I will, if she wishes it,” replied the brother-in-law.
Turning to the woman, the rabbi asked, “Do you wish to receive Chalitza?”
Tom Hammond saw how the light of a great eagerness leaped into the eyes of the beautiful Jewess, and how her face glowed with the warmth of a sudden colour, as she replied,
“I do wish for Chalitza, for I desire to marry again.”
The rabbi’s assistant gave her certain instructions, and she knelt before her brother-in-law, and with the thumb and finger of her right hand—she dare not use the left, however difficult her task might prove,—she began untying the knots in the lace fastenings around the ankle.
It was no child’s play to unfasten the shoe. The knots had been drawn very tight; but she was very determined, and presently a deep sigh of relief broke from the breathless, watching congregation, as, taking the shoe from the man’s foot, she flung it sharply down, twice, upon the floor.
She rose now to her feet to complete the ceremony. The law of spitting in the face of the man had been modified to meet the views of a day less gross than when it was carried out in full coarseness.
The brother-in-law took a couple of paces backwards, and the beautiful widow spat on the place he had stood a moment before.