History of responsa in Judaism
The history of responsa in Judaism (Hebrew: שאלות ותשובות, Sephardic: She'elot Utshuvot, Ashkenazic: Sheilos Utshuvos, usually shortened to שו"ת Shu"t), spans a period of 1,700 years.
[2] The mode, style and subject matter have changed as a function of the travels of the Jewish people and of the development of other halakhic literature, particularly the codes.
Formulation of responsa, or she'elot ve-t'shuvot, which literally translates to questions and answers, generally involve an individual or group asking either teachers, rabbis, or heads of yeshivot about halakhah (Jewish law) and the party responding via an exchange of letters.
[2] In the Tannaitic period (100 BCE to 200 CE) statements, publications, contributions concerning the calendar, and notifications were the only documents regularly committed to writing.
[2] Immediately after the completion of the Mishnah, when the prohibition or reluctance against writing halakhot had in great part disappeared, the responsa literature began to appear, traces being preserved in the Talmud.
Despite difficulties that hampered the irregular communications of the period, Jews who lived even in most distant countries sent their inquiries concerning religion and law to these officials in Babylonia.
Another type of responsa were those that were more time-sensitive, so the gaon usually responded to them right away and with many different sections in order to answer multiple questions that were posed.
[3] Later in the geonic period (from the mid-tenth to mid-eleventh centuries), their supremacy suffered, as the study of the Talmud received care in other lands.
Given the political climate and various persecutions the Jews were experiencing throughout this time period, the majority of these responsa were written in response to questions concerning legal matters.
[2] The chief Polish representatives of the sixteenth century were Moses Isserles, Solomon Luria, and Meir Lublin; the responsa of these scholars throw a flood of light on the condition of the Jews of the period, who evidently took high rank in Poland and were not unfamiliar with military arts, since they offered their services to the duke or to the prince on the outbreak of a war (comp.
[31][2] The only important Italian respondent of the sixteenth century was Menahem Azariah da Fano, whose responsa were edited at Dyhernfurth in 1788.
[2] The movements for the reform of Judaism evoked many responsa in reply to questions concerning the location of the bimah, organ accompaniments, the covering of the head in the synagogue, the seating of men and women together, and prayers in the vernacular.
[2] Jewish settlement in Palestine had occasioned many responsa on questions connected with agriculture and horticulture in the Holy Land, including the problems of the cessation of all labor in the fields during the Sabbatical year and the use of etrogs from Israel.
[3] In contemporary Orthodox Judaism, responsa remain a primary channel whereby halakhic decisions and policies are formulated and communicated.
Notable collections of Responsa published in the 20th Century include those by Moshe Feinstein, Ovadia Yosef, Eliezer Waldenberg, Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg and Meir Arik.
Contemporary responsa deal with both traditional questions and phenomena associated with modern social, religious, medical and technological developments.
For example, Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon noted that, while orbiting the Earth, the Space Shuttle experienced a day/night cycle approximately every ninety minutes.
