Agunot and Obsolescence

Response paper for 19 Sept. 2006

JWST 237

Binkovitz

I didn’t find that many things in the discussion [in class] of Halakah and marriage significantly surprising (the system is glitchy and – gasp! – male-centric.) but it hadn’t occurred to me before the references to modern-day agunot in Israel that the bugs of a sexist system which in the Middle Ages gained its power from the fact that it was the only governing body under whose jurisdiction the Jews fell in everyday life, could, in fact, continue to be problematic despite the added presence of secular governmental authority and civil marriage.

One thing I did find troubling, although it was not specifically related to marriage or even to women’s specific dealings with Halakah, was the near-total inability of Orthodox Judaism to overturn any entrenched rulings, even if they were post-Talmudic and even if there were opposition arguments registered by respected contemporaries of the subsequently accepted authorities. It seems to me that such a fear of contradicting one’s elders severely hobbles Judaism, whose main merits are the tradition of questioning the judgements and values of others and its ability to adapt to changing times and various host culture conditions, especially in light of the fact that many of the post-Talmudic rulings were based soley on what was socially acceptable or even economically viable at the time.