By Christopher Hitchens
In December 1931, George Orwell got himself arrested in the slums of East London in order to find out about conditions "inside," and then he wrote an essay about the people he met while in detention. One of them was a buyer for a kosher butcher who had embezzled some of his boss's money. To Orwell's surprise, the man told him that "his employer would probably get into trouble at the synagogue for prosecuting him. It appears that the Jews have arbitration courts of their own, and a Jew is not supposed to prosecute another Jew, at least in a breach-of-trust case like this, without first submitting it to the arbitration court."
You might think that such relics of the medieval ghetto, and of the rabbinical control that was part of ghetto life, had more or less disappeared in England in the 21st century. And you would largely be right. There exists a "Beth Din," or religious court, in the prosperous North London suburb of Finchley to which the ultra-Orthodox submit some of their more arcane disputes. (This little world is very amusingly described by Naomi Alderman in her lovely novel Disobedience.) But to speak in general, Jews in Britain consider themselves, and are considered, to be answerable to the same laws as everybody else. Should I mention any of the numerous reasons why it would be extremely nerve-racking if this were not true? Read more ...
In December 1931, George Orwell got himself arrested in the slums of East London in order to find out about conditions "inside," and then he wrote an essay about the people he met while in detention. One of them was a buyer for a kosher butcher who had embezzled some of his boss's money. To Orwell's surprise, the man told him that "his employer would probably get into trouble at the synagogue for prosecuting him. It appears that the Jews have arbitration courts of their own, and a Jew is not supposed to prosecute another Jew, at least in a breach-of-trust case like this, without first submitting it to the arbitration court."
You might think that such relics of the medieval ghetto, and of the rabbinical control that was part of ghetto life, had more or less disappeared in England in the 21st century. And you would largely be right. There exists a "Beth Din," or religious court, in the prosperous North London suburb of Finchley to which the ultra-Orthodox submit some of their more arcane disputes. (This little world is very amusingly described by Naomi Alderman in her lovely novel Disobedience.) But to speak in general, Jews in Britain consider themselves, and are considered, to be answerable to the same laws as everybody else. Should I mention any of the numerous reasons why it would be extremely nerve-racking if this were not true? Read more ...
Source: Slate.com
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