hiddush. For me responsa as well as my later halakhic efforts were a way of connecting the Reform movement more closely to the halakhah, which has always been the central expression of Judaism Reform never abandoned the halakhah,as the discussions at the Central European and American conferences of the nineteenth and twentieth century among other things demonstrate. Even the radical meeting in Pittsburgh dealt with halakhic matters in some surprising ways.” Individualism and antinomianism had to be largely surrendered, despite theoretical debates, if one wished to be part of a community; I have treated this elsewhere.
Thus began a sixteen—year period in which I was heavily involved in the writing of responsa. Since then I have continued, but at a diminished pace and with more emphasis on halakhic essays, the founding and leadership of the Abraham Geiger College , and other interests.
My first task, as I saw it, was the reorganization of the committee into a functioning body for which there was no precedent. My colleagues were willing to participate but did not have the library resources in this period before computer references, or the inclination to devote a major amount of their time to this effort. I therefore suggested that I would prepare each responsum and they would comment via mail. This process worked reasonably well, although it was slow. In order to speed matters along we had some meetings, which we used in an attempt to create some general guidelines. As the funds of the Central Conference were extremely limited during these years, meetings were rare. In reality, it proved more useful to to use those few occasions to deal with the most difficult individual questions rather than to develop a general philosophy.
As the number of questions increased and as I sent an ever larger number of responsa to my colleagues for their comments, the return mail became slower; they were a bit overwhelmed and wanted to limit their work. We soon agreed that I should decide which responsa deserved committee attention and which should be answered