which he himself authored in 1947.%' In Responsum no. 49 regarding the custody of children, he surveys the halakhah and then states:“As far as Reform Judaism is concerned, all of the above has comparatively little bearing. In general, we accept the validity of civil divorce and therefore must accept the decision of the civil courts as to custody of the children.”*
Reform Responsa also contains eight responsa that are stringent on the basis of sources.*® Thus, for example, no. 4 forbids a Sunday Bar Mitzvah since there is no Torah reading on Sunday and the blessings would be a brakhah I'vatala. No. 11 explains that sukkah built on the bimah of a synagogue is merely a decoration and cannot be regarded as a legal sukkah. In Responsum no. 18, Rabbi Freehof was asked if a convert to Judaism may retain his church membership. He concludes“on the basis of both common sense and the Jewish law...[that] such an arrangement as suggested is utterly unacceptable under Jewish law and tradition.”** And in Responsum No. 26 Rabbi Freehof was asked if a Jewish boy may sing in a church choir and wear a cross. He explains that Christians are allowed shittuf (i.e. to believe in God along with“the Son and the Holy Ghost”— cf Tosafot to San. 63b), but shittuf is forbidden to Jews and therefore the boy may not participate in any trinitarian worship.
Finally, two of the responsa are stringent on the basis of ethical considerations.” No. 20 deals with a fifteen-year-old Christian gir who wants to convert to Judaism without her parents’ consent. Rabbi Freehof admits that it is halakhically permissible. But he explains that in the past Christians snatched away Jewish children and converted them to Christianity . If we start doing the same,“we are destroying 2 moral decency which we have maintained.... All of this is based rather on the spirit of Jewish tradition than on its actual letter.”