- 40- Peter J. Haas

writing. We shall return to the question of what this is in a few minutes, Before I can evaluate the American Reform responsa style, however, I need to place it into its historical context.

Let me turn back, then to the material I mentioned earlier, namely the first two epochs of Reform responsa. 1 said just a few minutes ago that the earliest Reform responsa, represented by the collection Noga Hatzedeq, were really no different than normal Orthodox responsa of their time in rhetoric or discursive style. While their content was quite different, their mode of presenting that content was hardly new. 1 also suggested that that was why they ultimately failed. To clarify what I mean, I will need to review what exactly the traditional responsa genre was and how Noga Hatzedeq fit in.

In some sense it is an oversimplification to talk about a single responsa genre at all. Responsa emerge in rabbinic literature some time after the completion of the Babylonian Talmud in the seventh century. When precisely they began is a matter of some debate: in fact some scholars claim they date back to King David.(7) The fact is that actual responsa only survive from about the eighth century, and they are so rudimentary, often only a question followed by a one or two word decision, that it is hard to imagine that they represent a long previous literary tradition. It seems much more likely to assume what the evidence in fact suggest, that responsa began in the post-Talmudic era.(8) Their purpose, it seems clear, was to provide outlying Jewish communities with a way of receiving authoritative interpretations or application decisions on Talmudic law from the very centers of Talmudic studies, the Gaonic academies in Babylonia . In essence, local leaders of farflung Jewish communities around the