22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

. Avodah Zarah 36b; Yad, Isurei Bi'ah 12:1-2.

MARK WASHOVSKY H. Ben-Menahem, Judicial Deviation in Talmudic Law , Chur , Switzerland , 1991.

On legal pragmatism and its relationship to the realist school, see Richard Posner 's introduction to his The Problems of Jurisprudence, Cambridge , MA , 1990.

Take our case as an illustration. Hillel and R. Hiyya(note 9, above) accepted proselytes who came to us for motives other than leshem shamayim. The stories in which those cases are reported do not offer any legal justification for their decisions, which allows us to speculate that these authorities may hold that no justification is necessary, Le., the rabbi enjoys unfettered discretion in the law of conversion. The Tosafists and the later commentators, however, explain these actions on the ground that the rabbis were certain that the converts would eventually practice Judaism out of sincere religious motivations. In thus justifying the cases, later halakhah suggests a limit upon rabbinic discretion which is not enunciated explicitly in the original sources.

Mark Washofsky,"The Search for Liberal Halakhah", in Walter Jacob and Moshe Zemer , eds., Dynamic Jewish Law, Tel Aviv and Pittsburgh , 1991, pp. 25-51, and Walter S. Wurzburger ,"The Conservative View of Halakhah is Non-Traditional", Judaism , v. 58, Summer, 1989, p. 378.

See, for example, Shlomo Riskin , Women and Jewish Divorce, Hoboken , 1989. Riskin

contends that a husband may be coerced into divorcing his wife if she refuses to live with him on the grounds that"he is repulsive to me". He thus exhumes a legal argument that the halakhic authorities have overwhelmingly rejected for the last eight hundred years.

See David Ellenson , Tradition in Transition, Lanham , MD , 1989, pp. 61-100; the articles by J. David Bleich , Marc D. Angel and Shlomo Riskin in Emanuel Feldman and Joel B. Wolowelsky, The Conversion Crisis, New York , 1990; S.T. Rubenstein, Giyur leshem ishut­bahalakhah, Torah shebe‘al peh, v. 13, 1971, pp. 74-81.

Resp. Pe'er Hador, n. 132. On the authoritative brevity with which Maimonides answers halakhic queries see Elon, p. 1233 and n. 78.

M. Yebamot 2:8(24b); Yad, Gerushin 10:14.

The Talmudic discussion at Yebamot 24b presumes that the maidservant or Gentile woman referred to in the Mishnah had no motive other than marriage in converting(or being converted) to Judaism .