GEN346 The release of the Jewish woman from the commandment of procreation has made possible the evolvement of a concept of woman as a personality and not as a child-bearing machine. Certainly woman is involved in the commandment to preserve the race, but it is her privilege to determine whether she becomes involved or not. The rabbinic opinion on this subject and its formulation in Jewish law may have been the first stage in the full emancipation of woman.  The freedom of woman from the obligation to propagate may be viewed also from another vantage–point. Woman has from time immemorial been regarded in all ancient religions as the fertility symbol par excellence. The orgiastic rites and the institution of sacred prostitution in the worship of the goddesses of fertility, whether Astarte, Aphrodite, or Venus, were accepted as an integral part of man’s religion. The liberation of woman from the obligation of procreation would tend to disassociate her from serving as a symbol of fertility. The props would thus be removed from under one of the oldest pagan rites known to man. That the exception of women from the commandment of procreation is not contrary to the literal meaning of the Biblical text is confirmed by [this verse]: “Therefore shall a man forsake his father and mother and cling to his wife.” It is a man who abandons his parents’ home to seek a wife and not vice versa. The comment of Philo on this passage is in harmony with our remarks above: “And most excellent and careful w it not to say that the woman should leve her parents and be joined to her husband – for the audacity of man is bolder than the nature of woman … but that for the sake of woman man is to do this. Quaestiones et Solutiones in Genesin, Bk. 1. No 29 ROSNER 69-70