was also not qualified for use in connection with the performance of that duty(Gitin, 45b; Mas. Soferim 1.14). Women were also con­sidered exempt from the obligation to study the Torah (Eruvin 27a; Kiddushin 29b-30a). Some Rabbis even went so far as to object to women studying the Torah (M. Sota 111.4). This opinion, of course, did not prevail. Women were taught the Bible and given a reli­gious education, and there were some women learned in the law even in talmudic times. But to use the phrase of the Talmud (M.K. 18a),“isha bei midrasha lashehiha,” women were not to be found in the bet hamidrash, in the academies and colleges where the rabbis assembled and where the students prepared themselves to be rab­bis. Evidently, the reason that they could not aspire to be rabbis, was that the law excluded them from this religious office.

This law, that women cannot be rabbis, was always taken for granted in the Talmud . It was considered to be so generally known and unanimously agreed upon that it was not even deemed necessary to make it a special subject of discussion. The very idea of a woman becoming a rabbi never even entered the mind of the Rabbis of old. It is for this reason that we find only few direct and definite statements to the effect that women cannot be rabbis. Only occasionally, when the discussion of other ques­tions involved the mentioning of it, reference—direct or indi­rect—is made to the established law that women cannot act as judges or be rabbis. Thus, in a baraita(Pal. Talmud Shevu-ot 4.1, 35b, and Sanhedrin 4.10, 21c) it is stated“harei lamedan sheha-isha einah dana,”“We have learned that a woman cannot act as judge,” i.e., cannot render decisions of law. The same principle is also indirectly expressed in the Mishnah (comp . Nidah 6.4 and Shevu-ot 4.1). The Talmud (Gittin 5b) also indirectly states that a woman cannot be a member of a bet din, i.e., a rabbi or judge. For there it is taken for granted that she could not be one of three who form a tribunal or bet din to pass upon the correctness of a bill of divorce or of any other document(see Rashi , ad loc.).

The Midrash (Numbers Rabbah 10.5) also quotes as a well­known and established principle that women may not have the

authority to render decisions in religious or ritual matters:“She­

hanashim einam benot hora-a.” These Talmudic principles have been accepted by all medieval Jewish authorities. Maimonides (Yad, Hil. Sanhedrin 11.7) declares