PESIKAH AND AMERICAN REFORM RESPONSA
briefly in a personal way. To the best of my knowledge copies of those letters have not been preserved or collected.
When Jacob Mann (1888-1940) became Chairman of the Responsa Committee in 1934, it was without any prior experience on the committee or for that matter much direct contact with the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Mann joined the faculty of the Hebrew Union College after receiving a doctorate in England as well as Orthodox semikha. During five of his six years as chairman, no reports were given to the Central Conference and in that single year(1936) only four responsa were written, always signed with the committee. When Jacob Mann again dealt with the question of the burial of a non Jewish wife with her husband in a Jewish cemetery, he rejected Kaufmann Kohler ’s earlier permissive stance. He did not discuss Kohler ’s responsum and seems to have felt no obligation to do so and always signed"Jacob Mann and the majority of the committee."
Jacob Mann ’s interest lay elsewhere and so he neglected his chairmanship. The committee hardly functioned during these years when major changes in the Reform Movement were taking place. Nothing of the debate surrounding the acceptance of the Columbus Platform is reflected in the work of the Responsa Committee.
The work of the first three chairmen of the Responsa Committee allows us to draw some preliminary conclusions about responsa in North America until 1940. The author has prepared another essay which discusses the later history of the committee. The Committee seems to have functioned primarily as a resource for Reform decisions. The need for this seems to have been felt more keenly by some leaders of the Conference than by its members, and so the number of actual questions remained small. There may have been an intent to use the Committee as a way of
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