basically consists of the man giving the woman a perutah(the smallest copper coin) in the presence of two qualified witnesses, while he recites the appropriate formula. In this way the woman is acquired.”
From this analysis Professor Mihaly draws the following conclusions: traditional halakhah, however, sees marriage primarily as an act of acquisition by the man, as a kinyan, a commercial transaction, with the woman as a passive object in the process.” A This view of kiddushin as primarily a business deal has been repeated in recent years with the claim that this betrothal no longer exists in our day. There was indeed an aspect of acquisition in kiddushin at an early stage of Jewish law. Bet Hillel determined that a woman may be betrothed with a perutah, the smallest coin of the realm, whereas Bet Shammai insisted on a silver denar worth 200 times as much.
Nonetheless, it is my claim that Bet Hillel, by allowing kiddushin to be effected with the smallest possible coin, in reality eliminated any financial or acquisitional aspect of the ceremony and converted into a symbolic act. There has not been a commercial feature in kiddushin for millennia, nor is there in our day. kiddushin remains the holy bonding of a Jewish man and woman.
Mark Washofsky, the chair of the Responsa Committee summed up the majority decision, which defines“Jewish marriage” as kiddushin: That concept, whether understood according to its traditional terms or its Reform interpretation, is a legal institution whose parameters are defined by the sexual boundaries that Jewish Law calls the arayot. Homosexual relationships, however exclusive and committed they may be, do not fit within this legal category; they cannot be called kiddushin. We do not understand Jewish marriage apart from the concept of kiddushin, and our interpretation of rabbinic authority does not embrace the power to“sanctify” any relationship that cannot be kiddushin as its functional equivalent. For this reason, although a minority disagree, our majority believe that Reform rabbis should not officiate at ceremonies of marriage or“commitment’ for same-sex couples.™
That is the position of this paper, which follows the criteria and principles of Progressive Halakhah, as well as the major thrust
of our tradition, which does not sanction homosexual marriage.