REMEDIES FOR IMPEDIMENTS TO MARRIAGE

khic matter:“In the interest of liberty of conscience, however, no rabbi, if requested by the parties, will refuse to conduct the act of Chaliza in an appropriate form.”"®

We are not told if there was a case in which a widow and her brother-in-law actually requested a Reform rabbi to conduct such a ceremony. Did a non-Orthodox rabbi actually officiate at this archaic ritual? What was its“appropriate form”? The sources are silent.

The second synod in Augsburg also used a nonhalakhic method to resolve the halakhic marriage impediment of a convert who could not marry a cohen. She was prohibited by traditional halakhah because she was born a Gentile and was therefore under the presumption of having had illicit sexual intercourse, even as an

infant."” The Augsburg conference declared that

The ordinances of the Christian Church and the modern States, are in regard to the prohibited degrees of affinity, almost still more rigorous than the Jewish Marital Law;... Therefore, the Jewish Synod declares:“that the Talmudical Marriage Law in reference to proselytes of heathen origin does apply to such persons as are converted to Judaism from Christianity .”"®

TWENTIETH-CENTURY REFORM RESPONSA

It was only in the twentieth century, with the establishment of the Responsa Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis(CCAR), that responsa based on halakhic principles were propounded to find solutions to marital impediments. Why were no Reform responsa published from the German shealot u'teshuvot of 1818-1820 in defense of the Hamburg Temple until the first re­

124