128 Joan S. Friedman
Reform Judaism, his private responsa correspondence frequently revealed criticism of popular practice and a resistance to change. For example, in reply to an inquiry concerning the wearing of a tallit but not a head covering, he wrote:
A case could be made for wearing the tallis and not the hat, the tallis being originally with fringes and the fringes commanded by the Bible , for everybody, whereas the wearing of the hat is of dubious origin, as you know. However, this would be artificial. In actual Jewish life for the last ten centuries, a hat was as sacred as a tallis. I cannot understand why we have the tallis altogether and not the hat, and why any of them, but there we are in the realm of sentiment. Why do our people shudder at pork chops and eat ham and bacon? What is the principle?... Someone ought to make a study of the psychological basis for the strange choice of the people, and this applies to Orthodox Jews too in America, as to what they will observe and what they will not observe. I suppose that to our people the putting on of the hat would sound like a reversion to Orthodoxy, while the wearing of the talllis does not seem quite that Orthodox. However, all I can say to you is that this is a choice based upon popular feeling, and I can see no more logic in it than you can.®®[Emphasis added] Freehof’s evident distaste for the“illogi” of popular practice belies his earlier enthusiasm for“popular creativity.” Clearly, another limit to popular creativity is when it concerns ritual
practices already declared meaningless and discarded by the classical Reform rabbinate.
Or consider the irony in his response to an inquiry concerning changing from Ashkenazic to Sefardic pronunciation of Hebrew :
It is almost a consensus that it is wrong to change an inherited minhag.... There is a strong feeling in the legal literature that a minhag, especially an old one, is a very precious thing, a source of devotion which binds the generations together. Our Ashkenazic pronunciation is, first of all, ours, and also has an honored history.... To discard it means to discard an unbroken mode of Hebrew pronunciation (with some small variation) in which our Ashkenazic ancestors have prayed for a millenium and a half. Practically speaking, it means destroying the sense of familiarity of whatever Hebrew sentences our worshipers have, and making the entire service strange to them, especially nowadays, when our Reform Movement in America is growing and for many of our new members the English part of the service and the singing of the choir are already strange.... It is, of course, praiseworthy to express our solidarity with Israel . Let us do it with our contributions, with[our] visits, and with our contact with