n Drives Jewish Law on Women 85
The Talmud’s discussion and rulings, then, indicate clearly that neither a legal analysis of biblical verses nor even a rabbinic attempt to generalize over the practices of their time was the ground for determining what women may or may not do. That, instead, was decided on the basis of the multiple and inconsistent, but apparently well-established, customs of their community.
Medieval Texts vs. Practices Regarding Women
If custom ruled the day in governing the roles that women might have in society in biblical and rabbinic times, we should expect it to do so in medieval times as well, and it did. The clearest cases of this are in the laws governing the relationships between men and Women. So, for example, although biblical, talmudic, and Muslim law all allow a man to marry more than one woman, Christian law does not, and so Ashkenazic Jewish men and women, who lived predominantly among Christians , were enjoined by
continued to live among Muslims , were not restricted in that way.” Similarly, Sephardic rabbis, living among Muslims who permitted and even encouraged husbands to beat their wives, generally allowed Jewish husbands to do so as well, whereas Ashkenazic rabbis, especially those in Germany who were influ¢nced by both Christian and Jewish pietism, resoundingly condemned wife-beating.!?
We do not, however, hear of women taking public roles in the Synagogue , either among Ashkenazim or among Sephardim . That is important when we read medieval texts that say, for ample, that“ten” are necessary for a prayer quorum, minyan, Without specifying whether women may be counted toward that Number. 12 It jg certainly true that the authors of texts like that ould have specified“ten men” if they meant to restrict those Who count to males, but it is equally true that they could have *Pecified“ten men or women” if they had meant that. It is a mistake, then, to read such texts as a justification for including Women in the count, for that is reading the text totally divorced from the historical context from that it came and to that it “ndoubtedly referred. As a member of a Conservative syna