Q&A: Immersion in a Mikveh—Testimony?
Immersion in a Mikveh—Testimony?
Question
Hello,
I understood that the immersion of a female convert has to be done only in the presence of male judges, because a woman is disqualified from testimony. So why, when a woman immerses after menstruation in order to be pure for her husband, does this not require a man? After all, that too is a kind of testimony, isn’t it?
And another general question about the fact that a woman is disqualified from testimony: is there really anything substantive to this? That is, in the broader world, where women testify fully in court, people do not seem to see any problem from any particular standpoint. Is this rule valid only on the formal level, or is there really something to it?
Answer
The judges who are present at a conversion immersion are there not because of the laws of immersion, but because of the laws of conversion. The acts of conversion have to be done before and by a religious court.
You are assuming that a person’s disqualification from testimony is necessarily a problem of reliability. But there are also issues of admissibility. A woman is disqualified from testimony according to Jewish law. There have been, and I have, doubts and thoughts about this matter, but that is what emerges from the sources.
Discussion on Answer
Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach of blessed memory
claimed in a lecture at the yeshiva that the first thing the Messiah will do is change the Jewish law so that women’s testimony will be accepted, since they are reliable.
I asked a zealous student who was there at the lecture
whether he had indeed heard that.
He answered me that he heard that today their testimony cannot be accepted 🧐
All of these are possible explanations, but certainly not necessary ones. To deal with this question, one would need to address the question of changes in Jewish law in general, and this is not the place for that. If it interests you, I devoted an entire section to it in my book Moves Among the Stationary.
Not only reliability—I understood that it is also because of a woman’s dignity, that she would have to be put in an unpleasant situation of pressure and threats and difficult questions, and that the Torah spared women this; or because in the biblical period a woman was not involved in social and legal reality but dealt with matters of home and family. The thing is that this is not the case today. Women today are much tougher; there are female lawyers, female judges, some work in prisons, etc. etc. Reality is very different, so it seems appropriate to ask whether there is real substance to this Jewish law and whether it also fits modern life today. That is, it is hard to imagine a world in which women are not involved in the legal system…
More generally, Jewish law limits women in other areas too that stem from modesty, such as “a woman’s singing voice is considered nakedness.” You can identify lots of things that are somewhat oppressive to women to a certain extent, and it is a bit of a bummer. In other words, Jewish law somewhat prevents self-realization in various areas, and as I illustrated, sometimes in areas that are not all that relevant to today’s reality… isn’t that so?