- 38- Peter J. Haas

here of a collection of diverse Reform responsa gathered together and published under the name Noga Hatzedeq in Dessau in 1818. The writers represented in this volume, which includes Derekh Haqodesh by Joseph Hayyim ben Sasson, Ya’ir Nativ by Jacob Recanati, Kin’at Haemet by Aaron Chorin and a long essay entitled Or Noga by Eliezer Lieberman, were all sympathetic to the reforming experiments going on that time in Berlin and Hamburg. The writings collected here deal with many of the reforms being instituted: reading the Torah rather than chanting it, the use of organ music, the inclusion of prayers in the vernacular and the like. I categorize this responsa collection as part of Reform responsa-writing because its content is clearly and self-consciously devoted to adducing halakhic precedent for the liturgical reforms of the Berlin and Hamburg congregations. That is, all of the arguments set forth in these documents reflect basic Reform sensibilities. I nonetheless want to argue that this curious volume is part of the"pre-history" of Reform responsa and not an example of Reform responsa-writing proper. I say this because the mode of argument and rhetoric here remains well within the traditional style of responsa-writing. That® is,: there. is nothing"reform" about the way the arguments are framed in these essays, although the arguments themselves are clearly reform-minded. The authors represented in Noga Hatzedeq have, we might say, poured Reform content into older literary wineskins. Unfortunately, by doing so they sealed their own fate. The content of these responsa was, of course, rejected by traditionalists and the form, as we shall see, was rejected by the Reform movement. Before I develop this thought, however, let me finish my summation of what I conceive to be the history of Reform responsa-writing.

The second and third epochs of Reform