Custom Drives Jewish Law on Women 105

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B. B. M. 74a. I would like to thank Rabbi Ben Zion Bergman for pointing out this parallel to me.

Indeed, the few mentions of this in the archives of The Rabbinical Assembly specifically describe mixed seating as a custom and therefore leave it to the rabbi of each congregation to determine; see Summary Index: The Committee on Jewish Law and Standard, New York , 1994, 9.14.

Pamela S. Nadell , Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Source Book, New York , 1988.

The Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly , 1955, New York ,, 168-190; Sum­mary Index, 10.1. The majority decision permitted it at any time The practice in many congregations in the 1980s and 1990s followed the minority deci­sion at that time.

Summary Index, pp. 10.3(minyan), 10.2(witness).

See Gordon Tucker,“Final Report of the Commission for the Study of the Ordination of Women as Rabbis, ” in Simon Greenberg , ed., The Ordination of Women as Rabbis: Studies and Responsa, New York , 1988, 5-30.

Sifrei Deuteronomy , Piska 104, Section 190(Ed. Finkelstein, 230), bases the restriction of testimony to men on a linking(gezera sheva) of the word shenei (two) in Deuteronomy 19:17 to Deuteronomy 19:15, claiming that the former clearly refers only to men and so the latter is too. The truth is that neither is necessarily referring to men, for anashim(men) in v.17 can just as easily be people, as the Sifrei itself interprets it! Cf. also the Jewish Publication Soci­ ety translation, the two parties to the dispute. In M. Shevuot 4:1 women are excluded from testifying, and the Talmud (B. Shevuot 30a), in trying to jus­tify that ruling, offers a variety of arguments to make shenei ha-anashim (“two men”) in Deuteronomy 19:17 refer to witnesses rather than litigants, but all those efforts are disputed, and so it ultimately relies on the Sifrei ’s linking of shenei(“two”—two witnesses and two men) in the two verses. Apparently dissatisfied with that proof, or possibly basing himself on J. Shevuot 4:1(35b), Mai monides in Yad Hil. Edut 9:2 instead bases the restric­tion on“the mouth of two wit nesses”(Deuteronomy 17:6), where“wit­nesses” is the masculine form of the noun. Karo, however, in Kesef Mishneh, objects to this justification on the grounds that the masculine form of the noun there also does not necessarily mean men alone, and so, in Shulhan Arukh Hoshen Mishpat 35:1, 14, he just asserts the rule that women are barred from serving as witnesses without attributing the rule to the Bible .

An important exception was the ability granted to a woman to testify to her divorce or to the death of her husband so that she could remarry; Yad Hil. Gittin 12:1, 1-16.

Ben Zion Bergman,“A Conservative Approach to Halakhah,” Procedings of the Rabbinical Assembly , New York , 1987, 52. In support of his thesis, he points out that Maimonides explains why we do accept the testimony of ir husbands divorced them or died because ultimately we can determine whether she lied or not(Yad Hil. Gittin 13:29; his suggests that the reason why women were they were suspected of

women when they claim that the

13:24 in some editions). Tl

ineligible to testify in all other cases 1s not because

ro sy CITC 3~ 3 being incorrigible liars, but rather because, given the circumstances under

that thev lived, they could not be trusted to give accurate testimony.