Last week, the Center for Law and Religion sponsored a visit to St. John’s Law School by Rabbi Yaron Catane, who until recently served as Legal Counsel to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and now deals with religious affairs as a Legal Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office. Rabbi Catane was the guest lecturer in Professor Keith Sharfman’s seminar on Jewish Law. Among other things, Rabbi Catane spoke about the origins, powers, and duties of his office, some of the legal and political issues he encountered there, and the ways in which the Chief Rabbinate’s interpretations of traditional religious texts have been subject to increasing scrutiny by the Israeli Supreme Court. Details of the visit are here.
Rashkover & Kavka (eds.), “Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology”
This month, Indiana University Press published Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology, edited by Randi Rashkover (George Mason University) and Martin Kavka (Lehigh University). The publisher’s description follows.
Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology provides the first broad encounter between modern Jewish thought and recent developments in political theology. In opposition to impetuous associations of Judaism and liberalism and charges that Judaism cannot engender a universal political order, the essays in this volume propose a new and richly detailed engagement between Judaism and the political. The vexed status of liberalism in Jewish thought and Judaism in political theology is interrogated with recourse to thinking from across the Continental tradition.
Bleich, “The Philosophical Quest”
This December, Koren Publishers Jerusalem will publish The Philosophical Quest of Philosophy, Ethics, Law and Halakhah by J. David Bleich (Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law). The publisher’s description follows.
This volume includes discussions of the axiological principles of faith that define the essence of Judaism, analyses of particular principles such as the nature of the Deity, providence, prophecy and revelation. Other topics addressed are tikkun olam and Jewish responsibilities in a non-Jewish society and obligations derived from natural law or a moral conscience.
Call for Papers: Alternative Dispute Resolution and Jewish Law
The Aspen Center for Social Values and the Jewish Law Association have announced a call for papers for a conference, “Alternative Dispute Resolution: Is this the future of law?”:
The Conference seeks to engage scholars of Jewish studies, and Law & Religion, on the theme “Alternative Dispute Resolution: Is this the future of law?”, with a particular focus on religious courts of arbitration. Our approach is interdisciplinary, and we welcome proposals for papers from scholars of all fields, including history, law, cultural studies, and the social sciences. We envision panels on some of the following themes, and we welcome submissions that have a historical perspective as well as a contemporary one:
• Recent Developments in ADR
• Marriage, Divorce, & ADR
• Enforcing Religious Arbitration
• Islamic Law in America
• ADR: Are Jewish Courts a Good Model for Success?
Comparative perspectives are also welcome.
The deadline is November 30. Details are here.
Egorova & Perwez, “The Jews of Andhra Pradesh: Contesting Caste and Religion in South India”
This summer, Oxford published The Jews of Andhra Pradesh: Contesting Caste and Religion in South India, by Yulia 
Egorova (Durham University) and Shahid Perwez (Durham University). The publisher’s description follows.
What does it mean to be Jewish in contemporary world? This book casts a new theoretical light on this question by exploring the Bene Ephraim community of Madiga Dalits from rural Andhra Pradesh, India, who at the end of the twentieth century declared their affiliation to the Lost Tribes of Israel. Yulia Egorova and Shahid Perwez present an engaging and sophisticated ethnographic account of this community and argue that by embracing the Jewish tradition the Bene Ephraim have both expanded conventional definitions of ‘Who is a Jew’ and found a new way to celebrate their Dalit heritage and to fight caste inequality.
The Jews of Andhra Pradesh focuses on the life of the community in the village, but also explores a wider range of ethnographic sites, including Israel and the USA, where it discusses how the time old Lost Tribes tradition is embraced today by groups and organization which support the Bene Ephraim and similar communities that declared Jewish descent in the twentieth century. Egorova and Perwez demonstrate how the example of the Bene Ephraim can throw light on a wide range of issues in national and international politics, such as the caste system and social mobility in India, the conflict in the Middle East, the rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’, and debates surrounding the Law of Return in Israel. The book will be of interest to scholars of Jewish and South Asian Studies as well as to general readers.
More on That Jewish Divorce Case in New Jersey
A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the FBI’s arrest of two rabbis who allegedly orchestrated the kidnapping and torture of dozens of men in New Jersey. The rabbis allegedly did this in order to force the men to consent to their wives’ requests for divorce under Jewish law. Under Jewish law, a woman cannot unilaterally divorce her husband; the husband must give permission, or a get. If he refuses, the wife becomes a chained woman, or agunah, who cannot remarry.
The women in these cases were apparently desperate for Jewish divorces and took extreme measures to obtain them. They allegedly paid the rabbis tens of thousands of dollars to convene Jewish law tribunals and issue decrees allowing violence against the recalcitrant husbands. The rabbis then allegedly arranged for thugs to torture the husbands until the husbands granted the gets. This conduct would obviously be criminal under US law and the rabbis will not be able to escape punishment by arguing that their religion authorized what they did.
I expressed doubt in my post that ordering violence against a recalcitrant husband would be consistent with Jewish law. It turns out that I may have spoken too soon. My friend Michael Helfand at Pepperdine University, an expert in Jewish law and occasional guest here at CLR Forum, explains in the The Forward that “the use of violent sanction in these circumstances has been a feature of Jewish family law for millennia.” Under traditional Jewish law, he writes, if a husband refused to comply with a tribunal’s judgment and give his wife a get,
the rabbinical court could authorize the use of violent force against the husband. While divorces [could not] be executed under duress, it was simply unimaginable that a husband would so cruelly leave his wife trapped in a nonfunctional marriage. Thus, force simply served as a vehicle to free the husband’s inner desire to do the right thing and grant his wife a divorce.
Michael doesn’t advocate this practice, I hasten to add, and he notes that the strong implication of bribery would likely invalidate the religious decrees in the New Jersey cases. In fact, Michael advocates a very American fix for the problem of agunot–a prenuptial agreement. (Michael wrote about the topic here at CLR Forum back in March). The Beth Din of America, a major Jewish law tribunal in the US, has adopted a model prenup “that requires a husband to provide his wife with a daily support payment, typically $150, for each day the two no longer live together and the husband still refuses to grant his wife a religious divorce.”
The prenup is not a panacea. A wealthy husband could make the payments and refuse to give a get, and a wife without such a prenup wouldn’t benefit at all. But the prenup might help some agunot, and wouldn’t require kidnapping one’s husband and torturing him. It’s like they used to tell us in law school: In America, when the going gets tough, the tough contract out.
Federal Authorities Accuse Rabbis of Kidnapping Scheme in Connection with Religious Divorces
Often, in my class on law and religion at St. John’s, we address difficult questions about where to draw the line on religious autonomy. How far should the state go in accommodating religious practices that conflict with state rules? Or, put in reverse, how much freedom from state control can religious organizations legitimately expect? The recent contraceptives mandate is an example of this sort of conflict.
But one of my students yesterday emailed me an article from the New York Times that discusses an an easy case–at least as the facts have been reported. Federal authorities in New Jersey this week accused two rabbis of orchestrating the kidnapping and torture of dozens of men. The rabbis did this in order to force the men to consent to their wives’ requests for divorce under Jewish law.
According to traditional Jewish law, as I understand it, women have no right unilaterally to divorce their husbands. For a divorce to be final, the husband must give his permission, or get. If the husband declines to give a get, the marriage is not dissolved, and the woman becomes an agunah, or chained woman. This means the woman cannot marry again under Jewish law. Of course, the woman could divorce and remarry civilly, but many observant Jewish women decline to take this route, as it would render them, and their future children, outcasts in their own communities.
In theory, a husband must give a get of his own free will. There are ways for Jewish law tribunals to encourage obstinate husbands to give gets, however. A tribunal might ban a husband from his synagogue until he does so, for example. And some civil jurisdictions, like New York, have passed “get laws,” which try, in various ways, to create incentives for husbands to give their wives gets.
But the two New Jersey rabbis allegedly took things much further. They allegedly kidnapped men and tortured them with tasers and electric shocks until the men agreed to give their wives gets. Apparently the rabbis charged $10,000 for a tribunal ruling allowing the use of violence against the men, and $50,000 for hiring people to do the work. The rabbis were caught in a federal sting operation:
The undercover female F.B.I. agent told Rabbi Epstein that she wanted to divorce her husband, described as a businessman in South America, who refused to grant her request. Rabbi Epstein urged her to lure the man to New Jersey, which she pledged to do.
Next Rabbi Epstein and Rabbi Wolmark convened their own rabbinical court, complete with legalisms and formalities, to issue a religious edict “authorizing the use of violence to obtain a forced get,” according to court records. The undercover agent offered testimony before the two rabbis, who were joined by other religious figures.
Told that the husband was arriving in New Jersey, eight of Rabbi Epstein’s associates met at a New Jersey warehouse to finalize the kidnapping plan, according to court documents. At that point F.B.I. agents moved in to arrest the group. The agents seized masks, ropes, scalpels and feather quills and ink bottles used for recording the get they anticipated.
I’m no expert, but I can’t imagine this sort of thing is legal under Jewish law; the whole thing seems a parody of legal process. From the point of view of civil law, however, I’m sure this is an easy case. However much discretion the state allows religious tribunals–and, in my opinion, we should allow them a great deal of discretion, as a matter of religious freedom–it doesn’t go this far. Banning someone from your synagogue is one thing. Tying someone up in a van and torturing him is quite another, even if you have a tribunal decree that allows you to do it.
You can read the Times article here.
Ephrat & Hatina (eds.), “Religious Knowledge, Authority, and Charisma: Islamic and Jewish Perspectives”
This November, University of Utah Press will publish Religious Knowledge, Authority, and Charisma: Islamic and Jewish Perspectives, edited by Daphna Ephrat (Open University of Israel) and Meir Hatin (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). The publisher’s description follows.
The issue of religious authority has long fascinated and ignited scholars across a range of disciplines: history, anthropology, the sociology of religion, and political science. Religious Knowledge, Authority, and Charisma juxtaposes religious leadership in premodern and modern Islam with examples from the Judaic tradition. By illustrating various iterations of authority in numerous historical and cultural contexts, this volume offers fresh insights into the nature of institutions of learning and other systems of establishing and disseminating authority, the mechanisms for cultivating committed adherents, and the processes by which religious leadership is polarized and fragmented.
Contributors tease out the sources and types of authority that emerged out of the Sunni and Shiʾi milieu and the evolution of Muslim elites who served as formulators and disseminators of knowledge and practice. Comparative insights are provided by the examination of ideological and historical developments among Jewish sages who inculcated similar modes of authority from within their traditions. The rigorous exploration of the dynamic interface of knowledge and power in Islam and Judaism serves to highlight a number of present tensions common to both religions. By intertwining a historical span that traces trajectories of continuity and change, integrative discussion of cross-sectional themes, and comparative perspectives, this volume makes a distinct contribution.
Barilan, “Jewish Bioethics: Rabbinic Law and Theology in their Social and Historical Contexts”
Next month, Cambridge University Press will publish Jewish Bioethics: Rabbinic Law and Theology in their Social and Historical Contexts by Dr. Yechiel Michael Barilan (Tel Aviv University). The publisher’s description follows. 
This book presents the discourse in Jewish law and rabbinic literature on bioethical issues, highlighting practical problems in their socio-historical contexts. Yechiel Michael Barilan discusses end-of-life care, abortion, infertility treatments, the brain death debate, and the organ market. Barilan also presents the theology and spirituality of Jewish medical law, the communal responsibility for healthcare, and the charitable sick-care societies that flourished in the Jewish communities until the beginning of the twentieth century.
Penslar, “Jews and the Military: A History”
This month, Princeton University Press published Jews and the Military: A History by Derek J. Penslar (University of Toronto and University of Oxford). 
The publisher’s description follows.
Jews and the Military is the first comprehensive and comparative look at Jews’ involvement in the military and their attitudes toward war from the 1600s until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Derek Penslar shows that although Jews have often been described as people who shun the army, in fact they have frequently been willing, even eager, to do military service, and only a minuscule minority have been pacifists. Penslar demonstrates that Israel’s military ethos did not emerge from a vacuum and that long before the state’s establishment, Jews had a vested interest in military affairs.
Spanning Europe, North America, and the Middle East, Penslar discusses the myths and realities of Jewish draft dodging, how Jews reacted to facing their coreligionists in battle, the careers of Jewish officers and their reception in the Jewish community, the effects of World War I on Jewish veterans, and Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Penslar culminates with a study of Israel’s War of Independence as a Jewish world war, which drew on the military expertise and financial support of a mobilized, global Jewish community. He considers how military service was a central issue in debates about Jewish emancipation and a primary indicator of the position of Jews in any given society.
Deconstructing old stereotypes, Jews and the Military radically transforms our understanding of Jews’ historic relationship to war and military power.