Gender Issues in Jewish Law: Essays and Responsa (review)

Abstract

New York: Berghahn Books, 2001. 230 pp. $19.95.This book contains eight essays and eight responsa on various issues associated with Judaism and gender. While several of the essays contain historical overviews of specific topics or types of decision-making, the focus of the volume is modern responses to gender issues within Jewish law.One issue explored in many of the essays is the extent to which extra-legal concerns influence legal decision-making. This argument is set forth in Elliot Dorff's essay Custom Drives Jewish Law on Women. Dorff's essay serves as a critique of the Conservative Movement's attempts to transform the legal role of women. For the past thirty years, this effort has focused on responsa that analyzed legal texts; the underlying assumption was that the status of women vis-a-vis Jewish ritual could be changed only if there was sufficient textual support. Dorff argues that earlier legal opinions and their textual justifications were, in fact, post facto reflections of what was determined by custom in the first place (p. 82). Dorff reviews ways in which he believes custom influenced legal rulings about women in ancient and medieval Judaism before turning to contemporary Conservative Judaism.The claim set forth in Dorff's essay is strengthened by the work of other contributors to this volume. Rachel Adler's essay Innovation and Authority explores a 1985 responsum by Zvi Schachter on the subject of women's prayer groups. Adler notes two points of in the responsum. First, the author seeks to render a halakhic decision on a phenomenon...which involves behaviors in which classical halakhah had no interest (p. 4); the respondent must fashion from silence arguments to forbid a practice he finds objectionable. Second, because we have many writings on women's prayer groups from the participants themselves as well as their rabbinic supporters and detractors, we can more fully appreciate the social milieu in which the responsum was formulated. Finally, Adler's piece underscores a feature common to all halakhic decision-making, whether Orthodox or liberal, the tendency of decisors to talk to and with each other while ignoring the voices of the outsiders whose acts provide the content for the elite conversation (p. 5). In her analysis of Schachter's responsum, Adler demonstrates that custom, rather than legal precedent, shapes a Jewish community's notions of the proper sphere of women.This idea is also evident in and Women's Suffrage, David Ellenson and Michael Rosen's essay on rabbinic responsa about the political role of women in the Jewish State. three responsa reach different conclusions, but all three indicate the influence of social custom on decision-making. While one respondent argued against women's suffrage while the others supported it, all three responsa indicate a lack of legal precedent for extending or denying women the right to vote. Each decisor's opinion reflects his vision of women's status in Judaism and the extent to which suffrage might impact that status.The role of custom in Jewish law is also the theme of Halakhah, Women and Gender, Richard Rosenthal's consideration of the evolution of the prohibition against women wearing men's clothing.The collection also offers the reader a window into the evolution of law and custom in Reform Judaism. In his essay The Woman in Reform Judaism, Walter Jacob reviews the Reform Movement's treatment of women from the early nineteenth century to the present. responsa, most of which were written in the 1980's and 1990's, deal with concerns surrounding divorce, homosexuality, and women's observance of Jewish rituals previously observed only by men. …