the man’s sandal, pulls it off his foot, holds it in her hand, spits in his face, and proclaims, “Such is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s house.” Thereafter he is known as “the unsandaled one,” and his children are likewise taunted with that epithet. (1)

This amounts to a kind of coercion compelling him to marry her, for once he knows that such treatment has been prescribed for the woman to inflict upon him, he may feel too ashamed and humiliated—at the removal of his sandal, the spitting in his face, and the distasteful nickname whose disgrace will cling to him and his offspring—to do anything but wed her. Yet if his disinterest and aversion toward her are so great that he considers all of this easier to endure than being burdened with her, and he can readily bear it in order to be free of her, he is not forced to marry her.

That, according to them, is what the Torah contains. From it they derived a subsidiary ruling: the man may actually want the woman (2) and love her, while she detests him. For this case they devised a statute that is sheer injustice and scandal. When she appears before the judge, they bring him along and coach her to say, “My brother-in-law (3) refuses to raise up his brother’s name in Israel; he does not wish to marry me,” although he is infatuated with her. They thus oblige her to lie, claiming that she desired him but he refused. Once she speaks those words, the judge requires him to stand and declare, “I do not wish to marry her”—though marrying her is the very height of his desire—and they order him to lie against her. He then removes his sandal from his own foot, except that here there is no seizing (4)—nor any beating (5); rather, he is spat upon.