- 66- Peter J. Haas

standbys of Scripture, Talmud and Shulkhan Arukh. Third, again with Dr. Freehof, the person who issues the responsa begins to have an authority based on his own scholarship, not merely as the holder of an official position. And we also have the collection and republication of older responsa. We seem, in short, to‘be witnessing a recapitulation of the development of the responsa literature within our own movement. Needless to say, this has tremendously interesting implications for what Reform is, how it relates to traditional rabbinism, and for what its future trajectory might be. These speculations, however, move us into the future and so into another paper.

We may, however, ask what all this means for our understanding of Reform halakhah. Although our historical perspective is short- Reform is only about a century and a half old, and Reform responsa barely eighty years- nonetheless I think some tentative conclusions can be ventured. First of all, the success of responsa in America tells us, I think, that such a thing as Reform halakhah is emerging. The word halakhah clearly has a different meaning in Reform than it does in Orthodoxy, but when a responsa-type literature can be sustained for eighty years, some concept of halakhah must be at work. I think further that if the analogy which I have drawn between the trajectory of Reform responsa and that of the Gaonic/early medieval responsa is correct, then we will see Reform halakhah becoming both more pervasive and more decentralized as time passes. More and more issues will come up for Reform halakhic scrutiny and more and more Reform rabbis will become involved in writing responsa to deal with them. Further, if the analogy holds, Reform practice will become not less diverse, but more so. What will hold matters together is not so much a common minhag, but a common sense that whatever