Reform Responsa- 61 ­

found only buried in the Responsa Committee reports of the CCAR, and then only every second or third year. So we have the first two characteristics of Reform responsa today, the emergence of the Reform equivalent of a poseq and the corresponding creating of a publically accessible Reform responsal literature covering literally hundreds of questions.

Two more formal characteristics of contemporary Reform responsal writing should be mentioned, both pointing to a reconception within the movement of the nature of responsa-literature for the Reform movement. The one, the third of the four we promised, has to do with how the responsa argue their case. In general, the first generation of Reform responsa tended to base their argument- when they had one- around what were assumed to be universally accepted philosophical and religious truths. This is, of course, perfectly predictable on the‘basis of ithe! Reform movement’s European roots in German idealism. For both Kant and Hegel , the two great philosophers on whom the Reform movement drew for its intellectual self-understanding, the concrete aspects of a religious life were but reflections of the more abstract reality of the cosmos. When remaking a religious tradition, as the German reformers were doing, one turned not to the tradition itself, but to the truths of the cosmos that philosophical inquiry revealed. That is why, it seems to me, that early rabbinic teshuvot. This influence also carried over in the early responsa of the CCAR. As writers on Reform Jewish practice, they saw themselves more as Jewish interpreters of philosophical and religious truths than as continuators of rabbinic culture. This is why they rarely cited earlier rabbinic sources, and when they did it was likely to be Maimonides , a fellow philosopher .