Respon­sa are rab­binic writ­ings that answer ques­tions of halachah. Although many con­sid­er Reform Judaism to be a non-halachic or post-halachic move­ment, this is not the case. Reform Jews may not con­sid­er them­selves to be bound by the codes in the ancient texts, but they fol­low the basic frame­work found there and inter­pret it through the lens of the present. These two vol­umes con­tain t’shuvot writ­ten between 1996 and 2007 by the Respon­sa Com­mit­tee of the Cen­tral Con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can Rab­bis. They deal with a wide range of issues, some relat­ing to tra­di­tion­al issues such as whether a non-Jew may wear a tal­lit or whether a check for tzedakah may be pre­sent­ed dur­ing Shab­bat ser­vices. Oth­ers deal with issues unfa­mil­iar to the ancient rab­bis: In-Vit­ro Fer­til­iza­tion and the Sta­tus of the Embryo; Baby Nam­ing for a Reli­gious­ly-Mixed Les­bian Cou­ple. These legal issues are thought-pro­vok­ing and the con­clu­sions will not sat­is­fy Ortho­dox Jews, but they rep­re­sent the diver­si­ty of thought with­in the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty.

Sec­ond Volume 

Reform Respon­sa for the Twen­ty-First Cen­tu­ry, v.2