Custom Drives Jewish Law on Women
That has led, frankly, to forced readings of texts and to conclusions that either ignore or distort what historically happened in Jewish communities and what motivates us today to act differently. Some that have acknowledged this have argued that if we were really honest, we would institute a takanah, once and for all making women equal to men in all matters of Jewish law. There is even some precedent for that in the takanah enacted by the Chief Rabbinate of the Jewish community in Israel in 1943, which made daughters inherit equally with sons. Even without that specific ruling, Jewish legal history offers us the vehicle of takanah to make significant changes that cannot be made through less disruptive techniques.’ Until recently, I myself thought we should enact a takanah to equalize the status of women and men in Jewish law. I have had o face the fact, though, that more than a few women object to Wearing fefillin because it seems to them to be a man’s garment. lore broadly, I have come to recognize that we all must take
more seriously the clear unwillingness of some of our most observant women to take on the responsibilities of Jewish law from that they are traditionally exempt. More broadly still, we dare not just brush aside as antiquarian or reactionary the feelings of those men and women within our movement who object to the changes egalitarianism has brought. I myself will advance an argument below for maintaining at least some distinctions between males and females in our liturgy and law while yet affirming their equal status. Even that, though, may be much too 'Ntellectual a statement of the issue. For, in my view, many of the Problems we are having in defining new liturgical and legal roles for men and women emerge from the differing levels of tolerance We individually have for trying out new customs as we also gain Meaning and rootedness from the ones that shaped our past. Objections to new egalitarian practices on the part of religiously Committed Jews of both genders make even more sense when we member that Jewish laws differentiating women from men are footed in the customs of the times in that they were formulated IM the first place; they therefore are not open to change through fationa] analysis alone but must rather he replaced, if at all, by "®W customs that often seem strange at first but that gradually fCome acceptable and eventually even cherished.