Custom Drives Jewish Law on Women 101

latter may include, as I advocate, some role differentiation together with other roles open to both genders. This will require tolerance and good will on all sides as we feel our way into appropriate expressions of our new(and old) understandings of who we are as men and women, as Jews , and as people of the modern world.

Although all the ferment in our time about the changing def­initions of male and female roles has clearly generated much anxiety and even social upheaval, one distinctly positive result has been that both men and women are thinking much more carefully about Jewish liturgy and law. Rabbis working with families in preparing for a life-cycle ceremony should take advantage of that new consciousness. In addition to explaining the traditional rituals and their meanings, rabbis should point out that some families in our time are adding to those rituals or doing them in new ways. As Conservative Jews , we will insist that those elements of the ceremonies that are legally required be done, but we should at least inform families of the possibility of using some of the new rituals that have been developed to accompany the traditional ones—and of creating new rituals of their own. Some families will not want to take an active role in shaping the rituals of their life-cycle event, but some will, and all will minimally learn that these rituals are intended to express both what the Jewish tradition and what they themselves feel and hope for on this day. Some of the new rituals will, of course, Succeed wonderfully, and some will fall flat; that is the nature of Creativity , Ultimately, though, we will all be the richer as new customs emerge for any or all of us to use.

4) Finally, cognizant as I am of the continual interaction between

law and custom, I would urge that we continue to probe our legal sources for legitimation of our new practices, but only Where that is honest to the historical context of the sources as well as their language. I am, after all, deeply interested in the continuity, the authority, and the rootedness that grounding in legal sources can supply. Where history must be ignored, though, or even where the practice in question was only prac­ticed by a small minority of Jews in the past, I would prefer that We be honest in asserting that we are creating new practices in