Abstract
This paper focuses on the methodological and interpretative problems that a historian encounters while reading and examining rabbinical sources. The first part of the presentation deals with a specific genre of rabbinic works, namely the Responsa literature (Sifrut HaShut), and outlines possible ways of using this type of primary source in a historical research.
In the second part of the paper, the problem of the so called „deserted wife“ (aguna; sometimes translated as „deserted wife“) has been chosen in order to exemplify my own approach to the Responsa.