- 42- Peter J. Haas
Scripture, Talmud , midrash, other responsa, etc, detailed and even hairsplitting analyses(pilpul) and general overviews of an entire area of legal and moral speculation, all conducted in the complex artificial academic language of Talmudo -rabbinic Hebrew. (11) The practical answer was often buried in the author’s overwhelming display of erudition and on occasion even appeared as a sort of afterthought. This was the nature of the responsa genre as it had developed at the time the Reform movement began to take shape.
The responsa collected in Noga Hatzedeq fall within this general late pattern. They are prolix and flowery, they cite numerous rabbinic sources even when these are redundant or not quite to the point, and they wander off into rhetorical gymnastics. Aaron Choriner in his comprehensive responsum on liturgical reforms, Kin’ at Haemet ¢ven resorts to erudite wordplays to sustain his argument.(12) Each, of course, addresses itself to certain halakhic questions. Kin’ at Haemet, for example, proposes to deal with three questions in particular: whether or not later additions to the prayerbook may be removed, whether or not an organ can be used to accompany worship and whether or not prayers may. be said.in.:the vernacular. A fourth question proposes to explore the possibility of change at all. So, as I said, what Aaron Choriner and others were doing is what we might precisely expect; using the standard rabbinic literary vehicle, the responsa, to argue in rabbinic style their own views on how Judaism ought to be done.