[Continued -- I accidentally hit the Enter button before I was finished....]

In any case, it’s funny (that’s ironic funny) that whenever I asked my Rabbi teachers (in elementary and high school) about women’s input into the halakhic river (so to speak) they would always say that they spoke a lot to their wives. But did they? How could they say that the wives had input into their opinions if they didn’t talk to their wives??????

Debbie

Ok, I didn’t read all the comments (and the last one was about 3 months ago) but here goes. (disclaimer: some people might find these comments in the realm of apikorsut, though I’m hardly knowledgeable enough to be a apikores)

1) Not everything in the Talmud is Tora-she-ba’al-peh — Oral Tora. Some of it, like Pirkei Avot, is just the musings (ok, so it’s more than musings) of Rabbis.

2) Not everything in the Talmud is designed to be followed to the letter forever and ever.

3) Avot (aka Pirkei Avot) is very different from most of the rest of the Talmud (not to say you can’t find little “ditties” like these in other parts of the Talmud…) — it’s not halakha based, it’s more like advice. I’ve gotten the impression that most of it is suggestion (there’s a whole bit on how what Antignos ish Soho says leads two of his students, Tzadok and Bay’sot, off the derekh — seriously off the derekh — one was the founder of the Tzadokim, the Tora literalists, so I can’t imagine that all is intended to be taken literally forever).

She as well as Beruriah, used considerable wit. When, for example, she reportedly responded to an emperor who had “challenged the Jews concerning their God”.

“Your God is a thief,” he said. “because he stole a rib from Adam”
Ima Shalom is said to have answered: “Last night a robber broke into my house and carried away some silver vessels leaving gold ones in their place.”
“I wish such a robber visited my house every night!” the emperor responded
“This is what happened to Adam’” she informed him. “God took a rib from him and gave him a wife in its place.”

In theory, Bava Kamma sounds interesting, but in reality my brain turns off when I hear too many rules. That might not be the best one for me.

I do not think that it is too far-fetched to claim that just as the sages accepted that the contemporary inhabitants of Ammon and Moab were not the Ammonites and Moabites referred to by the Biblical record, so we might claim that the modern adult woman, not being held to be under the sway of her father or husband, is not “a woman” as understood by the rabbis.

What my suggestion means is that the social status of the modern woman is so changed that we can no longer assume that when the Torah legislates for a women who is secluded in the privacy of her home and would not wish to socialize in mixed society, that it is also legislating for a different kind of woman. We might claim that just as “Sennacherib King of Assyria mixed up all the nations” was sufficient justification for assuming that Ammon and Moab were no longer the Biblical Ammon and Moab, so might we claim that “Napoleon Emperor of the French reversed all the social mores” – or some similar claim.