Chapter 1

Innovation and Authority

A Feminist Reading of the “Women’s Minyan” Responsum Rachel Adler

On 13 Kislev 5745(December 13, 1984), five faculty members of Rabbi Yitzhak Elhanan Seminary at Yeshiva University issued a brief proclamation on a subject unprecedented in Jewish legal history.! The proclamation announced that it was forbidden for women to participate in separate gatherings for prayer, for Torah reading, for reading the Book of Esther, or for Simhat Torah pro­cessions. Lacking both documentation and argument, the proc­lamation departed radically from the conventions governing classical responsa, but subsequently one signatory, Rabbi Zvi Schachter, buttressed its halakhic conclusions in an extensive and heavily documented essay published in Yeshiva University ’s halakhah journal, Bet Yitzhak? The first responsum, as many of its critics noted, cannot really be analyzed, since it is more of a ukase than a responsum, offering neither argument nor evidence.’ This paper is concerned, therefore, with the content and implica­tions of Rabbi Schachter’s responsum, which has been wide­ly circulated and much quoted, both in subsequent decisions in

I TR: y Notes for this section begin on page 27.