Link to the Show / Show NotesJoan S. Friedman, assistant professor of history and religious studies, presented “American Reform Judaism - Too American or Too Jewish: Solomon Freehof, the ‘Decider’” at the second lecture in The College of Wooster’s Spring Faculty at Large series on Tuesday, Feb. 10. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 11 a.m. in Lean Lecture Room of Wishart Hall (303 E. University Street).For more than a thousand years, when Jews have not known how to apply the teachings of the Torah to a new situation (e.g. embryonic stem-cell research), they have sent questions to distinguished rabbis, who researched the traditional texts and sent back answers. The collected questions and answers are known as responsa. From the 1940s until his death in 1990, Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof wrote hundreds of responsa for adherents of the Reform movement in Judaism. Reform had arisen in the 19th century as a rebellion against the authority of Jewish law. Nevertheless, it could not sustain itself without reference to the rabbinic texts whose authority it rejected. Freehof’s responsa reveal the tensions inherent in the struggle to create an intellectually and socially sustainable form of Judaism in the face of the homogenizing pressures of modern American life.
Friedman joined the Wooster faculty in 2004, where she teaches courses in Jewish studies and the Holocaust. She also advises Hillel, the Jewish student group on campus, through the Office of Interfaith Campus Ministries. She earned her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.A. and rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. She also earned her Ph.D. in Jewish history from Columbia University. Friedman is currently writing a book on Freehof’s responsa for the Hebrew Union College Press.
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