Reform Responsa- 47 ­

statement in Berakhot just cited is in essence rejected in the Shulkhan Arukh, O.H. 66: 10. On a superficial level Aub is correct. The Shulkhan Arukh says that one who omits this payer has not fulfilled his obligation, that is, properly. Isserles , who glosses the text and reports on the European conventions, goes on to explain that this applied only to one who was forced to omit this prayer, not one who skips it out of convenience. Shulkhan Arukh, then hardly supplies a warrant for omitting the prayer from the prayer book entirely, as Aub would have us believe. One final example occurs in the piece by Abraham Kohn .(16) Here he addresses Bernays’ complaint that the new prayerbook is not kosher because it deletes all reference to an individual Messiah . Kohn now argues that in fact there is good solid precedence for this in the Talmud . He cites no less a figure than Hillel , who in B. Sanhedrin 99a says,"There is no Messiah for Israel " The quote is accurate. Kohn goes on to suggest, however, that this view of Hillel prevails. This is simply not the case. Hillel 's denial occurs: in the middle of a conversation which continues to discuss the coming of the Messiah as if Hillel had never spoken; the other authorities of Talmud simply ignore the view given to Hillel . They, as well as later rabbinic tradition, apparently think the hope of an individual Messiah is not vain. Hillel 's view here hardly reflects the rabbinic view, as Kohn would have us believe. Once again the attempt to use rabbinic literature to bolster the Reform arguments proves to be off-center. Yet 1 think this hardly matters in the long run. The citations are not substantive, but rhetorical; they are meant to give the text an aura of Jewishness.

Let me. now quickly turn to the second responsa collection from this period, entitled Rabbinische Gutachten ueber die Vertraeglichkeit