pose, be flexible, allowing some people to hold on to old and familiar customs, giving others time and support in getting used to new ones that have evolved over the last fifty years in many of our congregations, and simultaneously allowing those in our movement who are so inclined to shape further, new customs that will enable women to function even more fully within our community.
The Role of Customs on Women’s Status in Biblical and Talmudic Times
When one studies biblical and talmudic sources on the role of women, it becomes clear very quickly that the legal status of Women was not equal to that of men. Given the role of women in other ancient cultures, that should not be surprising. At the same time, one also does not find delineated a clear status for women subservient to that of men in all respects. Instead, one finds a patchwork of laws, in some of which women are indeed equal to men, while in others they are clearly at a legal disadvantage. Examples of this abound, but a few will suffice to make this clear. None of the biblical stories or laws depict a woman propos
Ing marriage to a man or instituting a divorce, and later rabbinic
law specifies that only a man may institute those procedures.’ That would argue for women’s subservience. On the other hand, Women are specifically included in Deuteronomy ’s command that all Israelites are to hear the Torah read every seven years,’ and the Torah ’s rules about accidental homicide, which specify that they apply to“a man or a woman,” are used by the rabbis to tend all of the Torah ’s tort laws to women perpetrators and Victims as well. Thus in some ways, women had a lesser, and in Some ways an equal, status vis-a-vis men.
Moreover, there is a discrepancy between what the law says nd what we read in our sources’ reports of our history. On the one hand, when interpreting Deuteronomy ’s discussion of Ppointing a king over the people, the rabbis limited eligibility for Sovereignty to men.* Deborah, however, had long before been the political and military leader of her people, and in times close to what was probably the era of that rabbinic ruling, Shelom