believes the new reading is not legitimate. This has become part of the internal dialogue in Reform Judaism.
Before turning to the cases at hand in the responsum the committee provides a telling perspective about how responsa are to be understood.
If this conviction leaves us in doubt as to the right answer for particular patients then it is well to remember that moral, religious, and halakhic truth can never be a matter of absolute certainty. There will always be more than one plausibly correct answer more than one possible application of our texts and our values to the case at hand Our task is to determine the best answer, one that most closely corresponds to our understanding of the tradition as a whole. That search must be conducted by means of analysis, interpretation, and argument. Its outcome will never enjoy the finality of the solution to a mathematical equation; its conclusions will be subject to challenge and critique. Yet this is no reason to shrink from moral arguments; it means rather that we have no choice but to enter the fray, to confront difficult cases, and to do the best we can. We may never be absolutely sure that we are right, but if we are thorough in our thinking, if we read the texts, consider the case, conduct our argument carefully and prayerfully, and that we can be sure that we have done our job.
In contemporary Progressive Judaism we have four concepts authority, autonomy, mitzvah and halakhah, which