STRANGEST COURT IN ENGLAND

Taranaki Daily News, 13 October 1934, Page 15 (Supplement)

STRANGEST COURT IN ENGLAND

Many Cases Settled By / Wise Rabbis In The Jews’ Own House Of Judgment

f)NE NIGHT recently I attended the strangest court I have yet visited —the Beth-Din, or Jewish House of Judgment, in Mulberry Street, London (writes J. L. Hodson in the “News-Chronicle”). It combines the functions of a police court, a' county court and an ecclesiastical court. But it is more than that. It is a go-between for people in London and others at the end of the earth—tracing relatives, sometimes helping to arrange marriage portions. Even people who are troubled by matters of conscience and forebodings come to the Dayanim (judges) for advice and comfort. For the judges are rabbis. Litigants have been known to enter the court ready to exchange blows and to depart smiling and on friendly terms. There are no spectators, no police, no reporters and, usually, no lawyers. Nor are any fees payable. Except for the three judges in their ordinary rabbi’s'dress, the parties in the case and myself, the court-room was empty. The judges wear small, round velvet caps. I was asked to keep my own hat on. The court-room is small. Behind the judges’ bench hang pictures of three bearded, patriarchal rabbis, past Dayanim; before the bench, is a slightly raised platform on which the parties stand or sit. If one sits the other must be invited to sit also. The courts sits in the morning or the evening; sometime throughout the day. Summonses are issued, but the court has no legal power to bring people before it; moral power is enough. People come readily; but of 2894 summonses issued last year, only 282 were actually heard. All the others arranged their own solution —often enough in the anteroom. That happened twice last night. . During the hours of sitting the court is always open. A hearing ends and the judges wait for the next problem, occupying themselves with their own work. The usher enters and hands them a slip of paper telling who is about to come before them. A husband and wife might be walking down Mulberry Street and, on an impulse, decide to seek advice or a decision. They could enter at once and in 10 minutes the whole affair might be over. Procedure can be as quick and as simple as that. ,

The court had been open some minutes before a middle-aged man of the shopkeeper type entered, carrying a brown paper parcel.' He had been asked to attend in response to a letter through the Rabbinate from his mother in Warsaw, who had not been receiving her customary allowance. In another instance that I saw, an old Polish woman who spoke Yiddish wanted the court to write to a relative abroad asking him to bequeath something to her daughter. She

brought into this East End room the atmosphere .of a peasant village in Northern Europe. (Between them, the Dayanim understand most European languages). Another case arose out of a dissolution of partnership. The court arranged to call in its own accountants to examine the books. (The court has experts who work for nominal fees)* It was, however, the next dispute, between husband and wife, which showed the court in lively action. The parties came in together and stood before the judges. Only a.foot or two separated them, and they leaned from time to time on the judges’ bench as they talked. They talked in turn volubly, excitedly, and at terrific speed. Within reasonable limits they may say as rriuch as they wish; the judges find the truth, with its various sidelights and nuances, emerges better that way. The principal judge would occasionally stop them, argue, question—an animated altercation. The husband asserted the root of the matter was his failure to earn

enough money; his wife said it was more profound—his demands, his habits f at one time, she said, they hadn’t spoken for 16 weeks, she wouldn’t stay under the same roof if he were the only man in the world. It appeared she had already left him. “Have I,” the husband asked, “to live this life for ever? I want a divorce if she won’t come back.’’ It was pointed out to him that there were no grounds for divorce. (In Jewish law. true incompatibility and a wish on both sides to live apart are enough for divorce). The husband was asked to leave the court while the judges and the wife talked it over. Was returning to him out of the ■ question? She said it was; she was bitter. .. . The judges accepted the situation for the moment, but their constant aim of reconciliation was not surrendered. The husband was persuaded to make a regular allowance for his child and advised to behave with dignity and . not to speak ill of the mother before his daughter lest he should turn her against him. The case will be reviewed in three months.

When, before the hearing, the wife was asked if she would accept the court’s decision, she had asked: “What if I don’t agree with it?” But she went away content. z

The entrants who followed were a young man and his auburn-haired Christian wife. She wished ’to assume the Jewish faith. In Jewry children take the faith' of then: mother: It was explained to me: “We do not seek conversion, but we never shut the door.”.

Neither parties nor witnesses. are sworn at the Beth-Din. The duty of speaking the truth is held to be well enough recognised without the oath.

I learnt also that the suit of a scholar takes precedence over that of an ordinary person, study being venerated; in like manner the suit of an orphan must come first, and a woman’s cause must be heard before that of a man.

Gamblers, usurers, thieves and robbers may not give evidence. Of the cases heard last year, 52 were between husband and wife, 13 were breaches of promise and 10 were of slander or libel, and the remainder dealt with commercial disputes, master and workman, landlord and tenant, deceaseds’ estates, and so forth: '■ - 1 ' 7 ' .

A number usually concern claims for Shadchonuth—marriage brokerage. The arranging of suitable marriages is looked on as highly important and honourable. I left the. Commercial Road reflecting that not all the wisdom in the world reposes in our British courts of justice. ...