REMEDIES FOR IMPEDIMENTS TO MARRIAGE
Talmud speaks with the ideology of its own time, and for that time it was right. I speak from the higher ideology of my time, and for this age I am right.”
TWENTIETH-CENTURY REFORM RESPONSA
Great scholars have led the CCAR Responsa Committee from its founding in 1906 until today. Chairmen of the Committee include Kaufman Kohler, Jacob Lauterbach , Jacob Mann, Israel Bettan, Solomon B. Freehof , Walter Jacob , W. Gunther Plaut , and Mark Washofsky. Each brought his own specialization and authority to the work of the Committee. The influence of the Responsa Committee expanded greatly under Freehof , who published a series of Reform Responsa in addition to those of the Committee. Walter Jacob has published more reform responsa than all other Progressive respondents together.”
Rabbi Israel Bettan, chairman of the CCAR Responsa Committee, was asked whether a young man, who was a Cohen, could marry a divorcee. Professor Bettan’s approach was to bring a series of halakhic verdicts that questioned the authenticity of the priestly pedigree in modern times. He quoted Ribash, Rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet of the fourteenth century, who claimed that the Cohen of his time, lacking any documentary evidence of his rightful claim to the priestly title, owed his special privileges and obligations, not to the express mandate of the law, but rather to the force of custom or common usage: How much the more so with cohanim for our generation, who have no documented lineage but are considered to have their status only by presumption.*
He quotes Rabbi Solomon Luria , the well-known sixteenthcentury authority, who asserts that because of the frequent persecu
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