PESIKAH AND AMERICAN REFORM RESPONSA

With the statements on autopsy and birth control the responsa committee moved into the area of medical ethics which was to occupy it often during the coming decades. The responsum on autopsy was thoroughly argued from a Liberal point of view. The issue of birth control was subjected to a more rigorous examination and Lauterbach demonstrated the restrictive nature of traditional Judaism during the last two centuries. It was a classical example of a full, thoroughly researched Reform responsum. In it he permitted the Tradition to unfold as he drew his own conclusions from the material. This was different from several other responsa in which he began with a definite Reform point of view and placed the material into that context.

We must ask why Lauterbach wrote at great length on some questions and only briefly on others. This seems to have been entirely due to personal interest. Those subjects which intrigued him led to long essays while others were disposed of with the simplest of statements. It would, for example, have been possible to write at great length on the status of non-Jews in the responsum "Work on New Synagogues on the Sabbath by non-Jews"(1927), after all, Jacob Katz was later to write a book on this subject, but Lauterbach chose not to follow that path. If he had been more interested in synagogue architecture the responsum"Position of Synagogue Entrance and Art"(1927) would have led him in that direction, but that was not his concern.

Two responsa written by others during his chairmanship followed very different paths. The responsum by Henry Berkowitz (1857-1924)"Burial from the Temple" with reference to"Suicides" (1923) was in the earlier tradition of Kaufmann Kohler . Berkowitz was a member of the first graduating class from the Hebrew Union College in 1883. He is chiefly remembered for founding the Jewish Chautauqua Society. It was written in the transition between Kohler and Lauterbach and it provided an answer with absolutely no citations from the Tradition. The answer was in keeping with the

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