PESIKAH AND AMERICAN REFORM RESPONSA

rabbinic as well as modern. The argument in the responsum on "Divorce of an Insane Husband" was thorough and clearly summarized at the end of the responsum. More than sixty citations were listed in these few pages. Here we see a difference in methodology of Deutsch and Neumark-Kohler. Even when Kohler dealt with the subject of a"Rabbi Officiating at Mixed Marriages" (1919), a matter on which he felt quite strongly, he cited only Mielziner ’s Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce and his own Jewish Theology.

The six responsa of Deutsch provided plentiful citations. He was obviously far more interested in tradition and its sources as was also evident from the two responsa which he wrote on kashrut. One of them dealt with a new material, pyrex.® This trend of Deutsch was already evident in his responsum on the"Sale of a Synagogue"(1919). These responsa of Deutsch provided citations from the traditional rabbinic literature, commentaries, earlier responsa alongside Reform Jewish material from the nineteenth century.

Interestingly enough the next chairman of the Responsa Committee, Lauterbach, who signed a number of pieces along with Kaufmann Kohler did not cite traditional sources while working with Kohler , and seemed simply to have signed the responsa alongside Kohler . In fact Lauterbach complained once in 1915 that Kaufmann Kohler did not cite tradition sufficiently.

The responsum"How Should a Loan in Foreign Currency Exchanged in another Country be Repaid?"(1920) was written by Samuel Mendelsohn. It was the only responsum of this period which dealt with economic matters. The arguments were based on the talmud, the codes and responsa. The pattern of the argumentation, the style and the conclusion were traditional; they followed closely the form employed in nineteenth and early

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