make use of new medical and scientific knowledge without viti­ating the smooth functioning of the halakhic system.”

Roth further writes: If new medical/scientific evidence indi­cates that a norm no longer applies to a majority of cases, and the norm itself was ground in earlier medical and scientific evidence that it did apply to a majority of cases, the extralegal sources allow the reopening of the question of the factual basis upon which the norm was predicated. In such a case, the extralegal sources allow the norm to be overturned by the claim of shinnui ha-ittim if the evidence is strong enough.

New information can also alter the meaning of a text. Archae­ological, historical, and philological research is used to analyze a text. Such an analysis can potentially reveal that the text has been misunderstood. The goal of the critical study of rabbinic texts is to discover the peshat of each statement, comment, and question in a passage, and then to establish the peshat of the entire passage. If the end product of such an analysis results in an interpretation different from the interpretation of the passage offered by the classical commentators or from that codified by the codifiers, its legal status is the same as that of another interpretation or a vari­ant reading, and carries with all the options that we have seen new interpretations and variant readings to provide a posek. And, obviously, the greater the degree of certainty the new interpreta­tion is in fact the peshat, the less will bet he hesitancy of the posek

to employ his systemic rights.”

In claiming that he understands the peshat of a statement bet­ter than any of his predecessors, a modern scholar would be doing no more than those sages who have claimed that, had some earlier sage had access to knowledge to which the later sage has access, the earlier sage would have retracted his view.

The prohibition of same sex intercourse is mentioned twice. “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhor­rence.”? If a man lies with a male as one lies with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing; they shall be put to death;? their blood guilt is upon them.”

The CCAR responsum analyzes these passages as follows: In both cases the prohibition appears as part of a list of forbidden sexual acts,(incest, adultery, relations with a menstruating woman, and sex with animals) associated with the customs of