PESIKAH AND AMERICAN REFORM RESPONSA

Conference utilize the committee. In 1917 Kaufmann Kohler suggested that the entire function of the Committee be transferred to the faculty of Hebrew Union College which may indicate that they had been answering the questions anyhow. The suggestion was never seriously considered. The Committee from the beginning seemed to function with relatively few or perhaps no meetings, nor were the responsa which were to be published circulated to the committee as a complaint from David Phillipson in 1915 indicated. However, the involvement of various Hebrew Union College Professors would suggest that there may have been some informal discussion on the campus with David Phillipson who was also in Cincinnati , perhaps excluded for political reasons. However, despite Kohler ’s handling of responsa alone or letting one of his faculty members write them, he did not curb dissent and on a number of occasions other opinions were published, as for example, in 1914 and 1918. By 1914 James Heller already hoped for a collection of responsa for"ready use;" this was somewhat premature to say the least.

During Kohler ’s chairmanship thirty-one responsa which dealt with fourteen different subjects were written. Most of the responsa treated with the ritual questions: burial and mourning(8), kaddish and yahrzeit(4), marriage(3), circumcision(3), mixed marriage(2), and bar and bat mitzvah. Surprisingly enough there were also two responsa which dealt with kashrut; the subject was not treated by the committee again until the 1980's. We should note that five of the responsa dealt with Jewish Christian relations, either mixed marriage or funeral and cemetery arrangements. During this period Kohler wrote ten responsa alone, six with Neumark, five with Jacob Lauterbach , and one with Rappaport. He permitted Gotthard Deutsch to write six responsa, Julius Rappaport one, and Samuel Mendelsohn one. Kohler as chairman presided only loosely as the nature of the responsa suggest. He was content with short answers with minimal citations, but did not object to a

93