ted Reform Responsa

each others documents. This process would best be initiated in specific communities. That would provide working models and might lead to a greater understanding of the actual needs rather than satisfying the theoretical claims of each movement.

As we return to summarize the history of divorce within the Reform movement, we see that various rabbinical conferences and synods of the last century in Germany and in the United States tried to deal with the question of divorce alongside other prob­lems. In the Paris Sanhedrin of 1806, the decision of those assem­bled was that no religious divorce would be granted unless a valid civil divorce had preceded it(N. D. Tama(ed.) Kirwan(tr.) Trans­actions of the Parisian Sanhedrin 1807, pp. 152 ff.). This decision has been adopted by all groups within Judaism in every modern coun­try. The Liberal synod, which gathered in Leipzig (1869), passed a number of other resolutions on this issue. They were favored by most of those present including Abraham Geiger . It was agreed that the religious divorce needed to be simplified and that(a) it should be given as soon as a civil divorce had been settled;(b) rab­bis should make an effort at reconciliation before a civil divorce is filed: the document of the divorce should be brief, in the vernacu­lar, and presented to both parties;(d) the religious divorce should be granted even if one of the parties objected;(e) the woman may remarry even if she has no divorce;(f) a divorcee may marry a kohen as may a proselyte.(Yearbook Central Conference of American Rabbis vol. 1, pp. 106 ff.) The question of the equality of the sexes in matters of divorce was to be discussed at a later synod(Ibid. 108).

The synod held in Augsburg in 1871 established a committee to deal with divorce. It was to report at a future meeting, and one of the concerns expressed was the equal treatment of both sexes. No later meeting was held.

In the United States , divorce was discussed at the Philadel­phia Conference of 1869 which declared that divorce was a purely civil matter and needed no religious steps whatsoever. Therefore, a get was not necessary. A rabbinic body should, however, inves­tigate the conditions under which a divorce had been given to

ensure that they also meet the criteria for a Jewish divorce. At that

meeting in Philadelphia two rabbis, Sonnenschein and Mielziner, felt that the get should be modified rather than completely abol­ished, a point of view expressed somewhat earlier by Geiger .