Writing Responsa: A Personal Journey
met and held no discussions,’ it provided no additional exposure to scholarly debate, but I studied on my own and got to know the literature.
In the early 1960s a fire in a rabbinic library in Pittsburgh brought an insurance adjuster to Solomon B. Freehof for his estimate of the value of the books. It was a fine collection, mainly classical Hebrew books; Dr. Freehof inquired what would be done with the damaged volumes as they, like all Hebrew religious texts, deserved proper disposal. The company intended to destroy or bury them, but they were willing to sell them to Dr. Freehof , who had them delivered to a basement room in the Temple. We soon proceeded with the dirty work of going through this: mountain of ash—covered books and sometimes were ankle deep in half-burned pages. After an hour we looked and smelled more like fire-fighters than rabbis; it was a dirty labor of love for two bibliophiles. Dr. Freehof selected some books for his library; we sorted dozens of cartons of hidushin for the Hebrew Union College ; we sent copies of title pages of hundreds of other volumes to the Hebrew Union College , the Library of Congress, the Jewish Theological Seminary , and various universities to see whether they were interested in them. Finally we sent half a dozen cartons of fragments and loose pages to the Hebrew Union College . As several hundred volumes of responsa were duplicates of Dr. Freehof ’s library, they became the basis of my collection. All were in poor condition and constantly losing portions of their burnt binding edge. They needed to be wrapped before being shelved in my study. Through the next decade Solomon B. Freehof , whose hobby was bookbinding, bound all of them.® Many were rare early volumes. These books and those that I have purchased through the years make up my extensive responsa collection.
When Solomon B. Freehof retired as chair of the Responsa Committee, he suggested that I replace him. Before the ratification of that appointment, I wrote an initial responsum, simply to demonstrate Some knowledge of the field and without an effort to provide a