Wills are legal documents that dictate how a person’s assets will be distributed after his or her death. Although rabbinic law prescribes a strict order of kin succession derived primarily from the Bible (Numbers 27:8-11), the earliest rabbinic legal texts also permit individuals to use two basic types of will to transmit their property to both relatives and non-relatives in other ways. The first is a deathbed will that can be changed or voided if the testator recovers (alternately termed deyatiqi, from the Greek diathēkē; and, in Hebrew, mattenat shekhiv me-raʿ); the other is an irr…