efficient or even self-contradictory. I mean to examine the date and see what has in fact been going on. This will allow us at. least to
characterize what the Reform halakhic process has been up to now. Only with this data before us can we venture to pass evaluative judgments on it.
Before proceeding, let me define what I mean by Reform halakhic processes. What I‘am referring to is the activity on the part of Reform rabbis of writing responsa from the perspective of Reform Judaism and with the purpose of guiding Reform Jews. Responsa are, of course, the quintessential literature of halakhah. In® a responsum, the rabbinic authority attempts to fashion a definitive answer to some question of Judaic behavior by collating and analyzing past normative writings. The published result of this exercise is meant to tell the recipient what he or she ought to do. That is, the implicit assumption of a responsum is that the answer it adduces will be taken by the addressee as an authoritative statement of what Judaism requires in this particular case. Or, to put matters differently, the addresses is expected to act according to the proclamation of the responsum because a) the responsum represents the opinion of an authority the addressee has recognized and b) this authority has demonstrated that the rendered opinion is in fact continuous with Judaic tradition. Since Reform , by definition, rejects the notion of a single monolithic system of halakhah extending from Sinai and since it rejects the normativity of basic halakhic sources such as the Shulhan Arukh, and since Reform does not recognize the authority of the rabbinate to include the right to issue normative rulings that bind the individual congregant, the continuation of the responsawriting tradition in Reform Judaism is unexpected