and surprising. It is the existence of this genre in Reform that draws me to the phrase "Reform halakhah" at all. To understand what that phrase might mean, then, we must begin, it seems to me, with the literature that reflects the very heart of halakhah- the responsa that have been routinely produced by the Reform movement.
Two characteristics of the Reform responsa tradition should be noted at the outset. The first is that responsa have been part of the Reform movement from the very beginning. Jacob Petuchowski , for example, has shown that the very earliest manifestations of the reforming movement in German Judaism at the turn of the last century revolved around changes in the prayerbook, and that many of these changes were explained, challenged and defended through responsa.(1) The second is that the character of these responsa within the Reform movement has not remained stable, but has changed considerably over the last 150 to 200 years(as it has in Orthodoxy, too, by the way). In studying Reform responsa, then, we must not look at all texts as the same. Rather, we much recognize that considerable changes have occurred in the style and character of Reform responsa-writing over time, each style representing a particular nuance in the writer’s understanding of the halakhic process as this relates to Reform Judaism. We thus have before us not a tradition of Reform responsa-writing, but a number of eras of Reform responsa-writing, each with its own conception of what I am calling"Reform halakhah." It is to these various conceptions that I now want to draw your attention.