Honor on a Ski Lift

One summer afternoon in 1963, a teen-age couple boarded a ski lift to sur vey the view from a peak in New York's Catskill Mountains. After lingering on the mountaintop at the Belleayre Ski Center, 16-year-old Ruth Fried man and her 19-year-old companion, Jack Katz, decided to return. Partway down, the lift suddenly rumbled to a halt. The attendant had presumably closed the lift for the day, and no one heard the couple's shouts.

Since it was 25 feet to the ground, it looked as if Ruth and Jack would be stranded until morning. But Ruth, a Brooklyn girl who had been taught in Orthodox Jewish schools, was sure that a deeply religious issue was at stake. As she later explained in an unusual lawsuit, Ruth felt that her religion forbade her to spend the night alone with a man in a place that was inaccessible to a third person. After some thought, she slid from the chair and plummeted to the mountainside, suffering a fractured nose as well as neck and back injuries.

Claiming that the ski center's negligence was responsible for her injuries.

Ruth brought suit against the state, which owns the resort. Rabbi Herschel Small testified that the Talmudic law of Yichud did indeed prohibit Ruth from sitting up overnight in the chair alone with young Jack. Last year a jury awarded Ruth $35,000 in damages and her father $2,231 for actual medical costs. Ruth married a rabbi after the ski-lift incident, but the marriage has been annulled.

The state is disputing her award in an appeal that will be heard next month.

Speaking for Ruth, her attorney noted that though she was "raised in a cloistered religious atmosphere," her "concept of morality was not unique to her.

Hopefully, millions of young women in this country have similar views of morality at age 16." Said the state in its brief: "Death above dishonor is ad mirable. But should that subject a property owner to liability simply because it occurs on his premises?"

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