Chapter 4
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Custom DRIVES JEwisH Law oN WOMEN’
Elliot N. Dorff
The thesis of this article is that we err if we try to decide issues concerning the status of women in Jewish law on the basis of the texts and legal arguments that have come down to us because they were all post facto reflections of what was deter mined by custom in the first place. The Conservative Movement’s commitment to be honest to the historical context of Jewish law in the past and present thus requires us, on the one hand, not to be too constrained by specific texts that limit the role of women, for they were only giving retroactive legal justification for what common practice was at the time. On the other hand, we must not take undue advantage of texts that might be interpreted as allowing for women as well as men to do certain things but that, in historical context, were undoubtedly never intended that way.
In our own day, then, we must pay much more attention t0 the continuing development of custom in these matters, allow” ing for diversity of expression without being too insistent on either the letter of Jewish law as it has come down to us on these issues or on the egalitarian agenda. We should instead, I pro”
Notes for this section begin on page 103