I lalakhah, Minhag and Gender 115

We can see the development more directly if we look at Sefer Yiraim. Rabbi Eliezer of Metz was one of the disciples of Rabenu Tam, and he speaks out of the tradition that French and German Jewry will follow. He describes the talmudic sources and list all their prohibitions. But he has an additional note that we should pay attention to because we will hear more about it later. He says:“Dressing[that is, cross dressing] either accidentally or playfully is forbidden. Scripture does not distinguish between normal and accidental[wearing of clothing]. I have seen men dressed in women’s clothing playfully and it was distasteful in my eyes.”” He saw it himself. It must have been customary for Jews at wedding celebrations to have people cross dressing for the amusement of the guests. Who these people were, we can only guess at. It seems too early for the kinds of wedding cele­brations that we will discuss later, but obviously Rabbi Eliezer was disturbed at people’s behavior at weddings.

Smag® follows Rabbi Eliezer as does Smak,” but neither men­tions his concern with his contemporaries who cross dress in fun. Apparently this did not a concern them. If it had been important, they would have mentioned it. Rabbi Moses wrote his code for Spanish Jews , whom he had found very lax in their keeping of

mitzvot in his journeys as a traveling preacher. Rabbi Isaac , feel­

ing that he was living in an age when Torah was forgotten, wrote his code to call the Jews of France and the Rhineland back to the mitzvot. At any rate we can see that the talmudic meaning of the mitzvot was transferred through the generations. Smag spends a great deal of time on the question of which part of the mitzvah is from the Torah and which is rabbinic.

When we turn to the Tur and Bet Yosef we can see the longev­ity of the talmudic argument. The same discussion is continued especially by Joseph Caro . Both continue Maimonides stricture that all is governed by the customary usage of the place. The Tur adds an additional extension of the things forbidden to men: they may not look into a mirror unless it is necessary. The Tal­ mud had forbidden holding a mirror on Shabbat but permits using a mirror fixed to a wall®' and it also tells us that we should look in a mirror when we go to a non-Jewish barber.?? So the prohibition against looking in a mirror is another way of distin­guishing between men and women, emphasizing the non-seri­