ETHICAL IMPERATIVE AND HALAKHIC INNOVATION

unidentified bodies of innumerable Jewish men forewarned the danger that almost as many widows would be left agunot(chained). Valid testimony of a husband's death was required for the widow to remarry. The Torah established:“Only on the evidence of two witnesses, or of three witnesses, shall a matter be sustained,” which was codified as halakhah.®

Nevertheless, Rabban Gamliel permitted these women to remarry on the basis of the hitherto invalid testimony of one witness(instead of the required two), hearsay evidence(eid mipi eid) or the testimony of a woman of a maidservant.”

Once again a Biblical injunction was circumvented; this time edut p'sulah(invalid testimony) was accepted to free unfortunate women from the chains of widowhood. We may ask the same question of Rabban Gamliel that was asked of his grandfather: How could the President of the Sanhedrin make such a drastic departure from the accepted laws of testimony? Hillel and Rabban Gamliel were confronted with problematic ethical situations for which there was no apparent solution in the accepted halakhah pesukah(authoritative law) of their time. They were unable to turn their backs on unfortunates who were punished for no fault of their own. They could not consider a non-halakhic or extra-halakhic solution. Therefore by means of interpretation, at times quite forced, or through the use of a taganah(rabbinic decree), they resolved an intolerable injustice. Could this laudable action justify taking the halakhah into their own hands? Whence did they derive the authority to make these far reaching changes, which were so controversial?

When the rabbis met victims of oppression, they did not theorize about the unethical character of the latter's predicament. Armed with prophetic insight and rabbinic pesaq(legal decision) they felt a moral responsibility to take halakhic action to relieve

their suffering.

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