[Avodah] Minhag Yisroel

[Jonathan Baker]

A poster (never mind bringing moshiach, privacy is paramount) writes
about women's zimmun (on the unaussprechlich list):

> Actually it /is/ uncommon.  I've been around the block a few times and 
> have yet to see a women's zimun, though I have been at tables where the
> possibility of doing it came up in conversation.
 
> It is never done naturally, organically, unself-consciously because, quite
> simply, no woman alive today can say her great-grandmother used to make a
> mezuman.

Here's exactly a counterpart to our argument with RnCL over women's Torah
learning.

The halacha is clearly a spectrum from "chayavot" to "muttarot"; there is
no opinion that says "assur".  But the minhag has been, until the present 
feminist age, not to do it.

In hachi nami, the halacha in the SA does not rule out women learning 
Torah outside the home, but since nobody actually did it, it's regarded
as this big break with the past.

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com