bigamy and polygamy were punished by the severest type of excommunication in European Jewry.59 Bigamy led to excommunication in Egypt too, though in the case of compulsory levirate marriage, Maimonides sanctioned bigamy provided the wives were equally treated–‘one night with this one, one night with that’.60 A male became adult at thirteen, when he could make up a quorum for the services and put on phylacteries, and from the early thirteenth century this point was marked by the bar-mitzvah, meaning he had come under the yoke of the commandments.61 Then he was married as soon as convenient–
