others don only a tallit, and others use neither in their worship. Some women wear head covering during worship and study(or always), and some do not. Some congregations insert the matriarchs in the opening blessing of the amidah, some do not, and some make it a prerogative of the one leading services to decide.
Women Witnesses
This variation, I think, is even true for what is emerging as the most difficult issue in this area, namely, women witnesses. The Sifre, both Talmuds , and Maimonides all maintain that only men may serve as witnesses as a matter of biblical law.” That, however, is founded on reading the masculine plural word for wit nesses(edim) in either Deuteronomy 19:15 or Deuteronomy 17:6 as exclusively male in reference, even though the text of the Torah itself can just as easily be read to include women as to exclude them, and even though the Sifrei itself interprets the masculine plural words for the litigants in these verses to include women If historical records are to be believed, however, in the large major ity of cases it was indeed only men who have, over the ages served as witnesses.” The power of the practice of restricting wit nesses to men, then, is not really the Torah or even the rabbis interpretation of it, but rather the ongoing custom of Jewish con munities over the centuries. This is Solomon Schechter ’s doctrin¢ of Catholic Israel at its clearest and most compelling.
The customary roots of restricting witnessing to men do not automatically justify permitting women in our own time to serve as witnesses, for custom, as we have seen, has a continuity and an authority of its own, sometimes even surpassing that of law Custom, though, is not changed as much by argumentation ast is by the emergence of new customs. Sometimes new custom’ can be motivated by a conscious need to address new situation® for example, the new level of Jewish education open to wome! in our society, but most often, it should be remembered, custom’ either endure or change as a result of the practice of the cor cerned Jewish community.
In the case of witnesses, if we look at the matter on its me" its, although I myself would want some distinction of the rol?