A SPACE FOR JEWISH JUSTICE
: THE MAHAMAD’S COURT OF THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE JEWS’ CONGREGATION OF LONDON, 1721-1868

Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy

Abstract

This thesis examines how the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation of London (‘the London community’) carved out, to the extent English law and courts would permit them, a Jewish judicial space to which congregants submitted civil and religious disputes to Jewish judges, as required by Jewish law. The denial of judicial autonomy to the Jews on resettlement, coupled with open access to the English courts, posed unique challenges for this voluntaristic community. This thesis argues that the London community drew on halakhic principles and the transnational legal culture of the Western-Iberian Jews to articulate a vision for a Jewish judicial space, based on the principle of the compromise of disputes (through mediation, arbitration, or adjudication) before a tribunal of laymen drawn from the serving Mahamad (‘the Tribunal’). The translation of that vision into practical justice emerges from the primary source of this thesis, the community’s Livros dos Pleitos (Books of Lawsuits), maintained from 1721 to 1868. Following Jewish law’s distinction between monetary and religious matters, this thesis analyses the Tribunal’s different approaches to dispute resolution in relation to debt collection and marriage disputes.
The challenges to the Tribunal’s vision of themselves as the gateway to non-Jewish courts are evidenced within these sources, as well as in several reported cases of Sephardim litigating in England’s ecclesiastical courts. This thesis questions whether the interpretative tool of ‘acculturation’ adequately explains the nature of individual jurisdictional choice and builds on the ‘judicial turn’ in the study of Jewish legal history by arguing that legal pluralism and other theories offer productive avenues for analysing how Jewish communal justice systems developed and adapted to the specific challenges of the legal environment in which they found themselves.
Date of Award1 May 2022
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • King's College London
SupervisorAndrea Schatz (Supervisor) & Laliv Clenman (Supervisor)

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