THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN HALAKHIC JUDAISM

By Saul J. Berman

This article originally appeared in Tradition, Volume14:2 1973

INTRODUCTION

The strident voice of an intelligent, energetic and well-organized minority can often completely
overshadow the real expression of the large constituency whom the spokesmen claim to represent.

Jewish women are not an organized constituency: they have no elected spokesmen, no leaders
designated to interpret their beliefs and feelings to the rest of the world. Any attempt to generalize
about their condition, particularly about a matter as internal as their religious state, is fraught with
multiple dangers, not least among which is the ascription to them all of the views of a minority among
them.

We would indeed fall prey to this particular danger were we to assume that the voices calling for the
liberation of Jewish women from their enslavement by Jewish law and Jewish society, were in truth the
expression of the majority of Jewish women today.

We may rather assume, certainly within the Orthodox community, that most observant women have
been able to discover a life of fulfillment and religious growth within the existing patterns of Halakhah.

Certainly the growing number of young women engaged in Jewish studies in yeshiva high schools and on
the college level, the growing number of girls being reached by Yeshiva University Torah Leadership
Seminars and NCSY, augur well for the ability of the religious community to successfully integrate young
Jewish women into its existing social and religious structure.

However, relegating the excited voices to a minority does not mean that we can safely, or ought morally
and religiously, simply ignore them. Minorities of one generation have a strange way of becoming the
majorities of the next. Fingers pointing out manifest injustices seem often to become transformed into
fists banging through walls of resistance to rectification.

The purpose of this paper will be threefold. Firstly, I would like to describe the sources of discontent, the
issues which have given rise to the public campaign to change the position of women in Jewish law.
Secondly, I would like to offer an analysis of the legal components of the status which Jewish law assigns
to women. Thirdly, in the light of my analysis I will attempt to evaluate the justice of the complaints and
make some modest proposals for confronting the problems. Given the great complexity of the general
area of the status of women in Jewish law, and the paucity of reasoned studies of the matter, I will not
presume to offer a comprehensive analysis of the status, nor a thorough proposal as to what changes
might ultimately be possible in this area of Jewish law. If, however, this paper encourages such research
and opens the questions for serious discussion, I will be gratified.

I
As I have read or heard them, the basic issues around which the discontent centers are three in number.
Firstly, and perhaps most important, is the sense of being deprived of opportunities for positive religious
identification. This concern goes beyond just the demand for public equality through being counted to a

minyan or being given the right to be called up to the Torah. The focus is more significantly on the
absence of even private religious symbols which serve for men to affirm the ongoing quality of their
covenant with God. The fact that Jewish women are relieved of the obligations of putting on Talit and
Tefillin, of praying at fixed times of the day, and even of covering their heads prior to marriage, and have
traditionally been discouraged from voluntarily performing these acts, has left them largely devoid of
actively symbolic means of affirming their identities as observant Jewesses.

An interesting byproduct of this absence of covenant affirming symbols is the emphasis which Orthodox
out-reach groups have placed on dress standards. Not wearing slacks has been treated as if it were a
revealed mitzvah, equivalent to Tzitzit as a sign of one's commitment.

The Orthodox community has argued so vehemently in its battle with non-normative variants of Jewish
commitment that content without form is short-lived and not successfully integrated by the individual or
passed on to children. This same argument is now being cast up before us by the women of our own
community who feel the need for a greater degree of form and structure to give proper expression to
their deep religious commitments.

The sense of injustice which arises out of the first issue is intensified many fold by the disadvantaged
position of women in matters of Jewish Civil Law, particularly areas of marriage and divorce. >From her
complete silence at the traditional wedding ceremony, to the problem of

Agunah, the law seems to make women not only passive, but impotent to remedy the marital tragedies
in which they may be involved. There is no need to describe at any length the psychological impact of a
woman knowing that the event of marriage places her totally within the power of her husband. In case
of failure of the marriage, his whim can, and in so many cases has, prevent her from ever building a new
life for herself. Few Orthodox rabbis have not been faced with

Agunot of reluctant husbands, or with the offspring of the second, illicit, marriages of such tragically
mistreated women.

The feeling of being a second class citizen of the Jewish people is almost unavoidable when the
awareness exists that men are almost never subject to the same fate, that a variety of legal devices exist
to assure that they will be free to remarry no matter what the circumstances of the termination of a
prior marriage, and despite the will of the first partner.

The third issue has less to do with specific Jewish laws, but is more related to the Rabbinic perception of
the nature of women and the impact that it has had on the role to which women are assigned. No
objective viewer would claim that Jewish women are physically or socially oppressed. They tend not to
be beaten by their fathers or husbands, and they tend to have free access to the not insignificant wealth
accumulated by Jewish families. However, Jewish women have been culturally and religiously colonized
into acceptance of their identities as "enablers."

Jewish society has projected a uni-dimensional "proper" role for women which denies to them the
potential for fulfillment in any area but that of home and family. The Psalmist's praise of the bride
awaiting the moment of her emergence to be married to the King, "All glorious is the King's daughter
within the palace" (Psalms 45:14), has been taken as if it mandated her remaining "within" her home.
Our apologetics have relegated women to the service role; all forces of the male dominated society
were brought to bear to make women see themselves in the way most advantageous to men.

The blessing recited by men each morning thanking God "for not having made me a woman," is seen as
simply symptomatic of a chauvinistic attitude toward women, intentionally cultivated by the religious
system as a whole. Part of that process involves the citing of statement out of context, such as "women
are light minded" (Shabbat 33b). Another component of that process is the childish giggling which
afflicts grown men in their study of such passages as if the assent to this secret truth were a form of
covert rebellion against their mothers and wives.

Taken together, these three issues, deprivation of opportunities for positive religious identification,
disadvantaged position in areas of marital law and relegation to a service role, are at the heart of a
growing dissatisfaction with their religious condition by an ever increasing proportion of young
Orthodox women.

How are we to respond to this dissatisfaction and implied threat of disaffection?

The first step is to call a moratorium on apologetics. It is one thing to recognize the problems and to
attempt to understand the theological halakhic, economic and cultural factors which produced them. It
is proper, and indeed vital, that we discover and define the values and/or social conditions which gave
rise to the position of Jewish women. It is a completely different matter, both dishonest and
disfunctional, to attempt through homoletics and scholasticism to transform problems into solutions
and to reinterpret discrimination to be beneficial.

To suggest that women don't really need positive symbolic mitzvot because their souls are already more
attuned to the Divine, would be an unbearable insult to men; unless it were understood, as it indeed is,
that the suggestion is not really to be taken seriously but is intended solely to placate women. Could we
really believe that after granting women this especially religiously attuned nature, God would entrust to
men �with their inferior souls �the subsequent unfolding of His will for man as expressed in the
Halakhah?

It is time to admit that we have attempted through our apologetics to make a virtue of social necessity.
We have striven to elicit voluntary compliance by women to a status which men need never accept. It is
analogous to telling an unemployed worker that he ought to be thankful that he has no job since the
economy requires a rate of 5 % unemployment and he therefore has the great honor of enabling
everyone else to make a good living. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Jewish women to accept the
idea that their own religious potential is exhausted in enabling their husbands and children to fulfill
mitzvot.

It is time to stop talking about the reluctant husband �Agunah problem and to do something about
resolving it. Many women feel that if that same problem affected men, the Halakhah would long ago
have made some ameliorating provisions. The attempt to suggest that refusal by women to pliantly
accept the fate to which they are subjected demonstrates a lack of faith in the Divine Will, would be
more convincing if the evil decree fell more equitably among both men and women.

Apologetics will only serve to exacerbate the problem and to convince increasing numbers of women
that the Rabbis are engaged in an all out battle to keep women subjugated. Lack of seriousness in
approaching these problems will only serve to confirm people's worst stereotypes of religious
backwardness and refusal to accept women as real people.

The distinguishing line between apologetics and explanation is exceedingly thin. In attempting the latter
one may fall easily into the former, and indeed what is satisfactory as explanation for one person may
be mere apologetics to someone else. Meaning exists so often only in the eye of the beholder. Despite
this danger, and while recognizing it, it is vital for us to examine those laws and social practices which
seem to be unjust to women. When all is said and done, these laws were the total preoccupation of
centuries of Jewish sages and scholars. Indeed, these were the very same sages and scholars through
whose interpretative skills capital punishment was virtually abolished; through whose legal creativity the
task of the transformation and eventual elimination of slavery was accomplished; and through whose
social awareness a Jewish social welfare system came into existence which is unmatched to this day for
its sensitivity to the feelings of the poor.

It has often been suggested that the ethical strength of a legal system and its jurists may be gauged by
their treatment of the powerless; the poor, the alien, the widow and the orphans. By any such test,
Jewish law and its Rabbinic jurists would stand high, if not at the very pinnacle, among the legal systems
of the world. It is difficult to conceive of these same jurists setting out with malice aforethought to
subject their own mothers, wives and daughters to the most blatant forms of injustice and inequity. It is
crucial, therefore, for us to see these laws and practices through their eyes if we are ever to achieve a
Jewish perspective as to how to proceed in the future.

II

Any serious attempt to understand the condition of women in Jewish law must begin with the
recognition that womanhood does not merely represent membership in a group like doctors or
merchants. These latter groups do indeed form classes of people for whom special laws apply which are
directly related to their common activities, but their membership in the class does not affect their total
legal relations. Womanhood, on the other hand, within Jewish law, constitutes an independent juristic
status, shaping to varying degrees every legal relationship and being characterized by a special set of
rights and duties determined extrinsically by law rather than by contractual agreement. 1 It is this very
concept which was intended by the often misconstrued Talmudic dictum "women are a separate
people." 2
This fixing of the rights and duties of a group through conferring upon them a separate legal status was
never an accidental or random occurrence in legal history. The function of status conferral was usually
both for the protection of the individual members of the class and for the more comprehensive purpose
of determining the basic structure of society and protecting this structure from disturbance. 3 But these
purposes can sometimes be so broad as to make impossible the formulation of a single descriptive
principle to encompass the reasons for the existence of the status as well as the particular modifications
of rights and duties through which those goals would be achieved. 4

Indeed the Talmudic sages made not a single attempt to formulate a general principle governing the
status of women. The closest they come is in the attempt to define under a single heading the
affirmative precepts from which women are exempt.

Thus, the Mishnah states:

All affirmative precepts limited as to time, men are liable and women are exempt. But all affirmative
precepts not limited as to time, are binding upon both men and women. 5

Even this principle, so extensively cited by subsequent Jewish jurists, is found by the Gemara to be
inadequate as a general principle.6 The Gemara rather found that there were affirmative precepts
limited as to time which were yet incumbent upon women, 7 and on the other hand affirmative
precepts not limited as to time from which women were exempt. 8 Thus, the statement that, "Women
are exempt from affirmative precepts limited as to time," is found to be descriptive of

some9 of the laws regulating the status of women, but is inaccurate as a general description, and is
certainly not a useful predictive principle.

Having thus entered into the question of women's exemptions from obligations, let us pursue this
matter further. Maimonides lists a total of fourteen positive commandments from which women are
exempt.10 Of those, only eight are affirmative precepts limited as to time,11 while the other six are not
so limited. 12 But beyond these, the Talmud identifies at least six more affirmative precepts, equally
limited as to time, from which women are not exempted; 13 to which may be added four affirmative
precepts of Rabbinic origin, also limited as to time, as to which women are also equally obligated with
men. 14

These facts make it impossible to explain women's exemptions exclusively in terms of the absence of
need for time conditional commandments. 15 While the argument which Rabbi Rackman makes, that
the laws of Niddah invest women's natural cycle with an awareness of sanctity of time which makes
other time-bound commandments unnecessary, is attractive; it nevertheless is not consistent with the
data. Women are obligated to fulfill as many positive precepts limited as to time, as the number from
which they are exempted. Some other principle or principles must have been operative in determining
the specific set of obligations and exemptions which constitute the legal status of women.

As is evident from what I said earlier about the significance of status conferral to the total structure of
society, it would be folly for me to attempt to incapsulate the determinants of the status of women in
Jewish law in a single principle. There are, aside this, two other major sources of complexity in the
treatment of these issues.

The first source of additional complexity is the fact that the Talmud itself records serious debate as to
whether women are indeed exempt from the individual positive time-bound precepts. Out of the eight
laws where exemption is ultimately granted, only three involve explicit and uncontroverted Talmudic
exemption, namely

Sukkah, Lulav and Shofar .16 Of the remaining five, there is substantial debate regarding three of them,
namely

Tzitzit 17 and Tefillin18 (which constitutes two separate commandments according to Maimonides, one
for Tefillin of the arm and one for Tefillin

on the head ). 19 In these cases, positions were taken by some authorities to the effect that women
were equally obligated with men. In one other instance, that of the counting of the Omer, the Talmud
nowhere specifically provides for exemption of women, though Maimonides insists they are exempt
since it is clearly a time-bound positive precept. 20 In the final case, concerning the recitation of the
Shema, While the Babylonian Talmud does explicitly indicate exemption for women and records no
dissenting opinion, 21 the Jerusalem Talmud implies that there may have been a dissenting opinion
arguing for obligation. 22

Similarly, with regard to the six time-bound positive commandments where obligation is affirmed,
substantial debate is recorded. In only two of those cases is there no Talmudic dissent; as to fasting on
Yom

Kippur ,23 which while positive in form, involves only refraining from the five kinds of physical pleasure
specified by the term Innuy; and as to assembling once in seven years (Mitzvat

Hakhel )24 where the written Torah specifically includes women in the directive. 25 In relation to each
of the other four mitzvot falling into this grouping, namely: Kiddush on Shabbat, 26 Matzah on
Pesach,27 rejoicing on festivals, 28 and sacrificing and eating of the Pascal lamb, 29 the Talmud records
opinions of sages who argued in favor of women's exemption. 30

The significance of these debates lies in the implication that for many of the Talmudic sages, neither the
world view of Torah, nor the social order of Jewish society, would be totally disrupted by the adoption of
what came to be the dissenting opinions. Indeed, it was with apparently complete equanimity that the
scholars were able to discuss the possibility that women were truly obligated to wear Tefillin and Tzitzit ,
and to recite

Shema at the appointed times. Despite the breadth of consequences adoption of such dissenting
opinions might have had, the positions were neither written out of the literature, 31 nor attacked as
subversive of the accomplishment of Divine Will. This makes our attempt to define the status of women
much more complex. Any formulation must now not be so narrow as to totally exclude these dissenting
positions from inclusion in the Jewish perspective.
A second source of complexity in attempting to define the status of women in Jewish Law, is the nature
of the changes that have been experienced within the law itself. For example, it would appear that
during the

Tannaitic period there were three distinct positions as to the relationship of women to the mitzvah of
Talmud Torah. While the Mishnah 32 reflects the extreme positions of Ben Azzai arguing for obligation,
33 and Rabbi Eliezer propounding that it is prohibited to teach Torah to women, 34 the Tosefta 35
suggests an intermediate position in which women are not obligated to study Torah, but would not be
prohibited from doing so. Amoraic discussion already reflects only this intermediate stance, clearly
indicating the absence of obligation36 but not pursuing the prohibitive character of the position of
Rabbi Eliezer. 37 This centrist stance would equate the study of Torah with other mitzvot, such as Shofar
and Lulav, in regard to which women, though not obligated, remained free to fulfill them voluntarily.

However, this position fades during the period of the

Rishonim, to be replaced with variants of the more extreme position of Rabbi Eliezer. Maimonides,
Jacob b. Asher and Josef Karo gave full effect to the prohibitive statement of Rabbi Eliezer, but limited it
to teaching the Oral Law, permitting for women the study of the written law, though hesitating to allow
men to teach even that to women. 38 Among Ashkenaz scholars. Rabbi Eliezer's position also came to
the fore, but with exemption granted to allow for the teaching of functional as opposed to theoretical
Jewish knowledge, whether in the written or Oral Law. 39

Among the Acharonim, two divergent approaches have manifested themselves. On one hand, the
stringencies have been carried even further to the point of serious consideration being given to the
possibility that it is even prohibited for women to study the Oral Law by themselves, 40 and for men to
teach them even the complexities of the Written Torah. 41 On the other hand, two more permissive
lines of thought have also begun to emerge. One such line constructs its case for permission to teach
women both Written and Oral Torah, on a purely functional base. Thus the Chafetz Chayim and others
have argued that the fact that Jewish women are beneficiaries of a secular education makes it
mandatory for us to assure that their knowledge of Scripture and Rabbinic thought be sufficient to
preserve their identity as Jews. 42

A second line of opinion developing among the

Acharonim is even more interesting because for the first time since Ben Azzai it speaks in terms of an
obligation of women to study Torah, albeit a limited one. Rabbi Josef Karo already suggested that
women are obligated to study those laws which pertain to them. 43 But its Shneur Zalman of Liadi who
formulates a broad principle by which women are obligated to study all laws of the Torah, both Biblical
and Rabbinic, except those concerning mitzvot which they are not obligated to perform.4 4

The flux thus evident in the history of Jewish law makes it a quixotic task to describe in simplistic
generalities the position of women within Jewish thought. These problems and many others will have to
be treated in great detail before any truly accurate comprehensive statements can be made in this area.
Indeed, because of the vastness of the material and the paucity of basic legal analyses, much of what I
will say in the coming section of this paper will be quite tentative in character.

Despite the inherent difficulty of defining the precise social function of any legal status, and despite the
special complexities inherent in debate and legal development, certain broad patterns seem evident as
to the status of women in Jewish law. The most striking of the patterns is the absence of a specific role
definition for women. Had the Torah intended to preclude for women all roles but that of wife-mother-
homemaker, the means of doing so were easily at hand. Much as the law clearly prescribed the
obligations of a husband to his wife, 45 the obligations of a father to his child 46 and the obligations of
children to their parents,47 the law could have made mandatory for women not only marriage and
procreation but also the entire range of household duties which would have defined an exclusive role
for them.

Despite the dissent of Rabbi Yochanan ben Berokah, the law prescribed that women were not obligated
in the mitzvah of procreation. 48 Beyond that, the one attempt by the Mishnah 49 to define precise
household obligations for a wife is immediately modified by two principles. Firstly, someone else may
substitute in the performance of those duties, and secondly, the motive of the prescription is to avoid
idleness which might lead to idiocy50 or to sexual immorality. 51 While Maimonides prescribes five
forms of personal service by wife to husband as the minimal level of household obligations, 52 he
indicates elsewhere that these are viewed as correlative to the husband's support of his wife. 53 Indeed,
the parties to a marriage may by prior agreement eliminate almost all mutuality of obligation of both
financial support and personal service. 54

Thus, the law ends up mandating for women, neither marriage, nor procreation, nor specific household
duties. Jewish law does not then define with any precision whatsoever a "proper" or "necessary" role for
Jewish women. While not demanding adherence to one particular role, it is nevertheless clear that since
for most of our history, our continuation as a people depended upon the voluntary selection by women
of the role of wife-mother-homemaker, the law would and did encourage the exercise of that choice.

Indeed, the Torah modified the civil and religious demands it made upon Jewish women, to assure that
no legal obligation could possibly interfere with her performance of that particular role. If a woman
elected to discover her fulfillment in the relation to her husband and children and in the shaping of a
home, no law would stand in the way of her performance of that trust. It is for that reason, I believe,
that the primary category of

mitzvot from which women were exempted were those which would either mandate or make urgently
preferable, a communal apparance on their part. It was the mandatory departure from the home which
would constitute the greatest threat to the proper performance of household responsibilities, and it was,
therefore, from those obligations that women were relieved of responsibility.

In the light of this proposition, we can understand why there was complete unanimity as to the Torah's
having exempted women from the mitzvot of
Succah, Lulav and Shofar. These acts were of necessity performed outside of the home, in the latter two
instances, preferably at the central sanctuary. 55 We may likewise understand why it was necessary for
the Torah to specifically inform us that women were obligated to attend the reading of the Torah at
Hakhel, and why it was so obvious that they were included in the mandatory restrictions of Yom Kippur.
Finally, we may now better understand the reason for the debates as to whether women are exempted
from such

mitzvot as Tefillin, Tzitzit and the reading of the Shema. For while obligations such as these need not
involve communal appearance, and can adequately be fulfilled at one's own home, their very
association with communal worship would create, and indeed has created for men, a powerful religious
preference for their performance within the context of communal presence. We can readily see the
development of debate premised on whether obligation should be preserved due to the possibility of
private performance, or whether exemption is implied by the preference for communal appearance. 56

The underlying motive of exemption would then be neither the attempt to unjustly deprive women of
the opportunity to achieve religious fulfillment, nor the proposition that women are inherently more
religiously sensitive. Rather, exemption would be a tool used by the Torah to achieve a particular social
goal, namely to assure that no legal obligation would interfere with the selection by Jewish women of a
role which was centered almost exclusively in the home. However, it is vital to emphasize that even with
these exemptions, the wife-mother-homemaker role is not the mandated, or exclusively proper role,
though it is clearly the preferred and therefore protected role.

The attempt to foster a particular social goal through class legislation defining the status of a segment of
the community is, as I indicated earlier, a common practice in the history of law. However, the
development in Western law from status to contract, allowing the individual more complete self-
determination as to his rights and obligations, has made status based laws seem unduly restrictive of
individual self-expression. It is admittedly very difficult for an American raised with almost a sense of
sanctity of individual rights, to accept a stance which gives not only primacy to the social goal, but then
assigns to the individual a status which would encourage the achievement of that goal. Yet, that is
exactly what Jewish law seems to do. Placing its emphasis on the communal need for the maintenance
of strong family units as the central means of the preservation of the Jewish community both physically
and spiritually, the law assures that nothing will interfere with that goal. The obligations, and thereby
the rights, of the individual will be governed in part by the overriding character of that social interest.

We now arrive at the second element of our proposition as to the status of women, that the exemption
from obligations results in a loss of rights. While not self-evident,57 it is clear in Rabbinic literature that
the exemption of women from obligations of participation in communal worship results in their
disqualification from being counted to the quorum necessary to engage in such worship. For each
member of the minyan must stand equal in obligation and capable of fulfilling the obligation on behalf
of the entire Minyan . 58 The absence of such mutuality, of equality of obligation, prevents the
constitution of an Edah or community, and prevents the individual with lesser obligation from fulfilling
the
mitzvah on behalf of one with a different and greater degree of obligation.59

Similarly in civil matters, the fact that women are relieved of the obligation to testify, 60 results in their
inability to be part of the pair of witnesses who bind the fact-finding process of the court.61 No slur on
the testimonial veracity of women is intended. Rather, the law

Much remains to be written on these matters and hopefully some of it will come by the hands of women
dealing creatively with the corpus of Jewish law. But if my analyses have been appropriate and I have
not overstepped the boundary into apologetics, then we are in a position to at least reach some modest
conclusions as to directions in dealing with the problems raised at the outset of this paper. In a legal
system which is contract oriented, the basic laws are those which guarantee the rights of individuals.
Those laws are then modified or limited only to the extent necessary to secure certain basic social
interests. That pattern is reversed in a status oriented legal system, where the basic laws are those
which assure the social interests through status conferral. However, those laws are then modified to
assure the highest possible level of individual rights achievable in consonance with the desired social
goals.

Thus, in Jewish law, while the goal of family stability seems to be the motive force behind many of the
elements of the status of women, the law recognizes that women are disadvantaged by that position
and attempts to compensate to the extent possible. A central role in this corrective process is played by
the laws of Niddah. These regulations prevent the wife from being seen purely as a sexual object even if
she elects the preferred role. Not only is the sexual relationship prevented from becoming the total
relationship between husband and wife, also the wife's role even within that relationship is not one of
total submission. On a second level, the laws of Niddah address the service role of the wife and perform
the same limiting function as to that role, namely prevent the service role from being seen as the
totality of the relationship and the wife from being seen purely as a service object or servant. It is of
crucial significance, as the Talmud points out, that those very forms of personal service which are
initially obligatory on a woman, are the ones which she may not perform in her husband's presence
while she is a Niddah . 63a

The corrective process is also reflected in the assignment of power to the court to act on behalf of a
woman in compelling her husband to issue a divorce to her. These steps indicate very clearly that the
accomplishment of the underlying social purpose of a particular status should not be viewed as a carte
blanche for imposing on members of that class all disabilities which flow from their status. Rather, any
side effects which are disadvantageous and also are not necessary for the achievement of the social goal,
are to be eliminated by secondary legislation. 63b

In the light of this analysis we may suggest that on one hand, the exemption from communal presence
seems to be a central element of women's status in Jewish law, necessary to assure that no mandated
or preferred act conflict with the selection of the protected role. But, on the other hand, many of the
elements of the three areas of problems delineated at the start of this paper, are accidental side effects
of the status conferral, which in themselves contribute nothing, and may ultimately interfere with, the
attainment of the central social goal. If such be the case, it is the unavoidable responsibility of religious
leaders to do all within their power to eliminate these detrimental side effects.

Firstly, it is vital for religious leadership to recognize the reality of the religious quest of Jewish women.
While the law assigns them a distinct status, it does not suggest that their essential religious condition
stands at a level any different from that of Jewish men. If a Rabbi is concerned with whether a man has
prayed three times each day, he must be equally concerned with the daily prayer of women. If a Rabbi
worries whether a man's feelings about kashrut are sufficiently strong to keep him eating kosher outside
the home also, he must be equally worried about whether a woman's experience with kashrut is
sufficiently meaningful to assure that she observes the laws in a way which is fulfilling to her and which
communicates positive feelings about it to her husband and children. In brief, women must be made to
feel that their own religious development is a vital concern to communal leadership, and that the
community will seek out means of enhancing their religious growth.

A small number of religious women have begun donning Talit and Tefillin daily, and have, in so doing,
discovered a vital source of religious expression and strength.64 It seems to me very unlikely that that
particular form of religious observance will become widespread among Jewish women. However,
constantly increasing numbers of women are attending synagogue services with some regularity, and
that trend can be expected to intensify with the increasing liberation of women from the home and with
the spread of Eruvin in religious communities. Under these circumstances, relegating women to the back
of the synagogue, both physically and spiritually, will only assure their gradual disappearance from
religious life. Building committees, and through them, synagogue architects, must be sensitized to the
necessity of designing structures which demonstrate that in the appearance before God, men and
women are equal. Mechitzot, while crucial for the achievement of proper prayer, must not constitute
insurmountable barriers to the approach to the Divine presence.

These structural concerns must be accompanied by changes in the expectation from religious women by
communal leadership. There is no reason why unmarried women should first make their appearance at
some point towards the end of the Torah reading, nor is their any reason why Rabbis should be more
permissive of talking in the women's section than they are of such demeanor among the men. Lesser
demands reflect only one thing, less significance to the endeavor.

Equal in significance with prayer is another mode of worship, Torah study. If Torah study is to occupy
such an important place in the life style of Jewish men, how can we expect it to play no role whatsoever
in the lives of Jewish women? Whether justified on principled or purely functional grounds it is clear that
when the intellectual development of a Jew in secular areas exceeds his or her intellectual development
in Jewish knowledge, it leads at best to fragmented personalities performing mechanical religious duties
and at worst to total disillusion and disaffiliation. Aside from this danger to the Jewish identity of
women, the failure to educate women Jewishly deprives Jewish scholarship of most valuable resources
which we cannot afford to lose.

Most important of all in this area, we must encourage women to develop in a creative fashion whatever
additional forms they find necessary for their religious growth. I would not presume to know what new
religious developments could emerge from Jewish women consciously setting for themselves the task of
discovering customs expressive of their religious feelings in contemporary society. Their practices might
involve their own form of public worship to follow and supplement the standard service, but expressive
of women's sensitivities. It might involve the creation of new religious artifacts or of new patterns of
communal study. Only one thing is certain, and that is that the creative religious energies of Jewish
women remain a major source of untapped strength for the Jewish community as a whole, and those
energies must be freed.

The second problem area is that of the position of women in matters of civil law. In the absence of
Jewish political autonomy, most issues of this sort are moot. However, the problem of the

Agunah of the reluctant husband continues to plague Jewish ethical sensibilities. The Talmudic sages had
already resolved this problem by designating the court to act on behalf of the wife and allowing them to
physically compel her husband to consent to the issuance of a �get .�65 This solution worked well until
the Enlightenment, and the loss of Jewish judicial autonomy. Since that time, Jewish jurists have been a
colonized people. Deprived of their powers, they have rationalized their impotence as a desirable state �
if we can't do anything, then it must be not desirable in the eyes of God for us to do anything.

Indeed, this area almost more than any other, cries out for rectification. If it is true that Jewish legal
process is completely stymied by this problem, a premise which I am most reluctant to accept, then that
still does not absolve religious leadership of their responsibilities. If neither the conditional �get, �nor
the conditional

"ketubah" are halakhically acceptable, then perhaps we ought to turn to the civil courts to solve our
problem for us. Historically in American law, ante-nuptial agreements in contemplation of divorce have
been considered to be void as contrary to public policy.66 However, some recent developments seem to
indicate a good possibility for a more positive judgment at the present time.67 Perhaps at this time,
every Jewish couple who marry should sign a standard form contract under which both parties agree
that in case of dissolution of the marriage by either civil divorce or annulment, each will consent to and
execute the issuance and acceptance of the Jewish divorce. The validity of such a "get," issued by a
proper Rabbinic court but under order of a civil, non-Jewish, court, is already recognized in the Mishnah,
68 and is cited by subsequent authorities. 69

If the legalization of such an ante-nuptial agreement would require enabling legislation, then that course
of action is certainly possible. I can not believe that we may interminably badger the state for money for
Jewish education, but cannot marshall the necessary energies to accomplish the rectification of this
severe injustice.

The third problem area is in one regard the most sensitive of them all. In the previous two areas, it was
obvious that many of the specific disadvantages were side-effects of the status of women, unrelated to
the achievement of the social goal of family stability. Given their totally non-productive character it was
simple to suggest that they be ameliorated. This third area, however, that of the projection of a uni-
dimensional "proper" role for women and its relegation of women to the service role, seems closer to
the stance which we have defined as central to the social goal, namely the creation of a preferred role
for women.

Firstly, there is a critical distinction between a mandated role and a preferred role. Jewish law, as we
have seen, specifically refrained from mandating for women the exclusive role of wife-mother-
homemaker. It may very well be the case that throughout most of human history there were no
alternatives practically available. But are we to assume that the Torah did not foresee the current
developments and therefore simply failed to make adequate provisions to further eliminate such
choices when they would become possible? On the contrary, it would seem to me that we would be
compelled to conclude the exact opposite, that the Torah specifically intended to keep alternative
options open in expectation of a time when they might become possible.

If such be the case, that the Torah pledged itself to maintaining role options, then we must not wantonly
foreclose such choices. Indeed, perhaps we ought to look more closely at the potential for enrichment
of the traditional role which becomes possible through its supplementation with meaningful
engagement outside the home. We may discover that such enrichment furthers rather than detracts
from, the accomplishment of our social goal of family stability. And if so, it may behoove us as a
community to provide for our young women alternative role models to help them integrate the
realization that being a good Jewess does not mean forgoing creativity and fulfillment beyond the
context of the role of homemaker.

On the other hand, the law does protect and thereby indicate a preference for the more traditional role
which has home and family as its most exclusive dimensions. Since society now allows for the election of
radically different roles, it becomes increasingly vital for creative religious minds to offer meaningful
expositions of why this preferred role ought to be chosen over all other available options. It may very
well be the case that the investment of one's total personality in the endeavor of shaping the soul of
growing Jewish children is the most fulfilling way in which a person's energies may be used. It may also
be the case that women are either inherently or by socialization more capable of making the kind of
total commitment necessary for the maintenance of constant love and devotion which form the
religious character of a child. All this may be true, but women will have to be convinced, not compelled,
to submit to its logic.

Furthermore, we will have to communicate more clearly that election of the traditional role does not
mean self-relegation to the service role or the role as enabler. The achievement of the social goal of
family stability is not to be at the expense of the souls of Jewish women. Their integrity as religious
personalities will have to be emphasized more forcibly both to men and to women themselves.

These steps, small though they be, may lead in the direction of a more fulfilled Jewish womanhood of
the future, and as a result, a more perfected total Jewish society.

NOTES

1 vis. G. W. Paton, A Text-Book of Jurisprudence, Second Edition, 1951,

2 Shabbat 62a. The basic issue at stake in the Talmudic discussion is that the definition of "ornaments" is
different for men and for women, and that the legal consequences as to carrying on

Shabbat differ for each group.

3 Julius Stone, Social Dimensions of Law and Justice, Maitland Pub., Sydney, Australia, 1966, pp. 138-141.
We cannot, however, totally exclude the occasional function of status as a means of exploiting the weak
rather than protecting them. vis. Paton, Ibid., p. 321 and pp. 252-253. Despite the absence, as yet, of
systematic studies on this issue in Jewish law, I would suggest, that this motive is not present.

4 This difficulty would not arise in relation to the status of the mentally incompetent. There, the
protective purpose and the disabilities related thereto could be relatively easily formulated into
descriptive principles. The status of the minor might be an intermediate case.

5 Mishna Kiddushin 1:7 (29a).

6 Kiddushin 33b-34a.

7 Id. e.g. eating matza, rejoicing on festivals, and

Hakhel (assembling).

8 Id. e.g. study of Torah, procreation