SEPARATING THE ADULT FROM ADULTERY

It is curious, then, that through more than a century of concentration on the ethical in Judaism and of upholding th Decalogue as the singularly most inspired contribution of Jewish history, so little Reform attention has focused on the significant and the application of the Seventh Commandment. It is all the more mystifying when we recall that at one of the earliest conferences of Reform rabbis, in Philadelphia in 1869, an unwavering rejection of adultery was explicitly stated within the context of decisions that otherwise brought about profound revisions to the laws of marriagt. Indeed, the rabbis suggested that, in the wedding ceremony itself a direct reference ought to be made to the importance of mariti fidelity:

For the traditional benedictions, Birkat Erusin, there shall be substituted such a benediction as sets forth the full moral grandeur of marriage, emphasizes the Biblical idea of the union of husband and wife into one personality... and designates purity in wedlock as a divine command.”

Given the strength of this initial Reform outlook and the continue ethical orientation of the movement, the almost complete silence on the subject of adultery through the following decades is truly striking.

Part of the explanation for this near-total muteness may I in another nineteenth-century action of the developing Refo™ movement: the“abolition” of mamzerut. The early Reformers sa Mamzerut’s affixing of an undeserved, restricting, tainted status 0

the children of forbidden relationships as deeply at odds with ti

fundamental ethical outlook of Judaism . They felt strongly the “whilst the intention behind the concept of mamzerut was to comté immorality, its effect was to create another immoral situatio

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