every decision so that the younger rabbis may see the development of the ideas involved. The answer should show on what basis the responsa were given".(23) Apparently like early Gaonic responsa, the committee simply issued a resolution without accompanying argumentation explaining why it ruled as it did. This alone shows us that the Committee understood itself to be dealing with a rather different order of responsa than the classical rabbinic model. Not only were the answers thin, however, but so was business. The following year, 1916, the chair of the Responsa Committee complained,"As chairman of the Committee on Responsa, I have all these years written a report of the Responsa Committee without receiving regular sheelot, except perhaps one or two that came in at the last moment".(24) The beginnings of responsa-writing in American Reform do not appear auspicious.
It is rather interesting to review the products of the CCAR’s Responsa Committee during its early years. The first chair, Kaufman Kohler, would, of course, have a major influence on the future development of the American Reform responsa tradition since he in essence invented it. For this task, he was well suited. Kohler grew up in Fuerth , Bavaria , which had earned a reputation for being a center of rabbinic learning, and began his rabbinic studies there. Later, he moved to Frankfort where he came under the influence of the chief thinker of German neo-Orthodoxy , Samson Raphael Hirsch . Subsequently, Kohler became engaged in secular, university study, earning a degree from Erlangen in 1867.(25) The result was that the creator of the American Reform responsa tradition had both a good