The Limits of Flexibility in Jewish Law

The Orthodox feminist writer Blu Greenberg has famously averred that “where there is a rabbinic will, there is a halakhic way.” This is a radical articulation of a position known as “legal pragmatism,” the idea that, as Edward Fram puts it, “halakhic decision-making is driven primarily by practical necessity, while legal reasoning serves largely as retrospective justification.” At the opposite end of the spectrum is the approach of the “legal formalists,” who see any system of laws as yielding predictable results that should not depend on the preferences of interpreters.