DANIEL SCHIFF

healthy room for doubt as to the outcome of their use. However, as has been elucidated, some of today's methods- and those mooted for the future - leave no such room for doubt. This truly represents a new power to control elements of human destiny which the rulings of our ancestors never sought to anticipate.

This novel ability to order the sex of our children with absolute confidence as to the result, challenges the progressive Jew to answer vital questions: What, if any, limits ought to be placed on our autonomy when it comes to the matter of gratifying our- legally authorized- desires? Does the emphasis on autonomy admit the possibility of restricting one's individual yearnings in the name of a greater"spiritual" good? Are children commodities to be conceptually fashioned by us and requisitioned to specifications, even if just in the matter of their sex? At what point do we say"no" to our technological selves? Does the"technological imperative" apply, intimating that every technology that is developed must ipso facto be used?

There exists a special mandate for progressive Jews to respond to these inquiries that touch upon the spiritual values which lie at the core of the halakhic system. That is not to say that traditional Jews might not wrestle with these same problems with equal competence, but the character of progressive Jewish thinking about salakhic matters demands that these topics be faced by the progressive Jew in a manner which the oral law does not expect of the traditional Jew.

Perhaps, then, progressive Jews might frame the fundamental spiritual concern over efficient sex preselection in this way: Jews are well aware that there is a profound difference between the Shabbat and the other six days of the week. One of the most significant features of the Shabbat is that it is the one day on which Jews do not seek to demonstrate human technological mastery over the world. There are technologies at hand which - in the name of a higher spiritual ideal- Jews elect not to use during that twenty five hour period. Maybe it ought to be pondered as to whether the

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