Walter Jacob din, but will have a major and influential role in the development of traditional halahkah in the future.
Reform Halakhah and Women’s Issues
In all of this a halakhic approach to issues became significant again only in the middle of the twentieth century. There was a hiatus between the European proceedings in the nineteenth century and the renewed American interest. The spirit of America and the revolutionary fervor of the rapidly growing Reform movement led away from halakhic considerations. At the end of World War II matters changed. In the volumes Reform Jewish Practice and Its Rabbinic Background by Solomon B. Freehof (1891-1990), we find discussions of women and their rights, particularly when connected with Jewish rituals and liturgy. So the status of women, conducting services, reading from the Torah , and other matters were discussed with citations from both the traditional literature and Reform Jewish writings that indicated equality. The same kind of treatment was provided in the vast area of marriage and divorce that covers fifty pages of a slim volume of less than two hundred pages. In other words, the issues formally avoided or discussed only in a vague fashion now came to the fore and were provided with a halakhic basis. For the first time we find women in services as well as women officiating discussed in a thorough fashion in the second volume printed some years later. Although congregational practice may have gone in these directions earlier, these matters were neither officially debated nor provided with any rationale.
As responsa reflect questions asked and not an agenda set by individuals or a group, they accurately reflect the rising interest in women and women’s rights within the Reform movement, and also at an earlier time show that neither men nor women raised these issues. Responsa need not be limited to internal Jewish questions but could very well have dealt with some of the issues of the day that involved women: the right of women to vote, the employment of women in various professions, the relationships of men and women within the family, and various
other matters. None of these issues, however, were ever raised before the Responsa Committee.