as

The Case of Feminism— Mechanisms of Change 51

synagogue liturgy, and a good deal else no longer sufficed. Changes had been made in many communities by rabbis in accordance with their personal theological position and based on what was possible in a particular community.

Some efforts at a unified position had been made through the classical pattern of responsa which provided decisions and justified innovations. Individual responsa as well as published collections brought the opinions of colleagues. They were especially useful in the defense of liturgical innovations. These responsa marked the beginning of an effort to work together. They focused on major changes in the liturgy and on a most audible innovation, the use of the organ— which became a symbol of liturgical reform.” The Reform responsa immediately led to an Orthodox response, and these exchanges continue for a few years. Then they diminished and were briefly restimulated when the radical Reform Society of Frankfurt toyed with the notion of eliminating the brit milah— something rejected by Orthodox and Reform Jews alike.?

This halakhic path, brief as it was in Reform circles, contained the innovation of responsa in the German vernacular that appeared alongside Hebrew responsa. This step sought a broader readership and no longer limited the discussion to rabbis. This innovation interestingly paralleled the move of the haskalah, then and earlier, in the opposite direction in its effort to revive literary exchanges in Hebrew , something that remained most effective in eastern Europe . We should note that all these responsa dealt with liturgical matters and none with feminist issues. Responsa in the vernacular did not reappear until the very end of the nineteenth century and then in America , not Europe .”

These responsa never dealt with feminist issues in the liturgy, ven when they should have. So the omission in some early Reform Prayer books of the statement,“You have not made me a woman” was