this arrangement--shared authority among those of substantially differing points of view--conflict between liberal rabbis and their congregations over ritual issues can scarcely be avoided.
If the sharing of authority over matters of ritual is more characteristic of liberal than of orthodox communities, it is hardly a new phenomenon in Jewish religious history. Broadly speaking, the roots of Jewish observance are to be found in one of two major sources: halakhah ,"lawyer's law," the rules and principles, both Toraitic and rabbinic, developed in the Babylonian Talmud and interpreted and applied by an elite class of scholars, the talmidei hakhamim; and minhag,"people’s law," practices which originate in community custom and usage.> The validity of halakhah, the more formal of the two, depends upon its location in a discrete judicial or legislative act: it is derived from existing texts through the process of midrash or legislated by means of rabbinic taganah or gezerah. As such, halakhah has been the province of the scholars entrusted with the interpretation of the Torah , with"building a fence" around the Torah , and with the preservation of oral traditions which claim Toraitic force. Minhag, by contract, has no such precise beginnings. It is simply the long-standing custom of the people,’ a practice that originated outside the walls of the yeshivah and developed independently of the formal, logical rules of rabbinic law. This difference in origin has not resulted in an irreparable conflict within Jewish law. On the contrary, the rabbis over the centuries have developed means by which to integrate minhag in the halakhic system. They have, first of all, extended their supervision over the minhagim, to determine that they are of valid pedigree(minhag vatigin) and that they do not violate the boundaries of logic, reasonability and halakhah.® Once they have determined that a custom is not forbidden on these grounds, rabbinic authorities have permitted it to operate freely in"neutral spaces" in the law, where minhag either does not or need not conflict with formal halakhah. This is especially true of dinei mamonot, monetary law, where it is presumed that the rules are set
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