- 58- Peter J. Haas
Haggadah, on determining responsibility for social action, on considering services held during the summer months, and on composing a"minister's handbook" which would establish a Reform standard in baby-namings, conversions, marriages, funerals and the like. The Responsa Committee worked in the interstices.
All in all then, we can say that Responsa writing as a function of the CCAR started late, had a rough beginning and continued to be a sort of step-child. Under Kohler ’s midwifery, Reform responsa came to be reminiscent of the Gaonic responsa. They were the decisions, sometimes oracular, of the collective body of rabbinic leaders, represented in this case not by the dean of the academy but by the chair of the Responsa Committee. It was also the case that the main focus would be on matters of principle, not on actual halakhic development. In short, Reform responsa in America addressed practical needs in a form that was in essence an academic essay. The rabbinic learning evident in them was rarely to the level we would expect of the men whose signature they bore.
Despite, or maybe because of, these characteristics, the enterprise of writing responsa for the American Reform Jewish community continued. The effort had clear institutional support from the CCAR itself. The committee continued to function and had as its chair some of the most distinguished scholars that the Reform movement had to offer:Kaufmann Kohler (who was also president of Hebrew Union College , thus making the connection between his responsa and the Gaonic responsa even more striking). Jacob Lauterbach (1923 to 1933), Jacob Mann (19341939), and then Israel Bettan(1940 to 1954).(33) Support on the part of the broad membership of