Description

Disputes between married couples in 18th century were sometimes brought before the Jewish court ( the Beit-Din). Analysis of protocols of session which dealt with such disputes reveals facts about tensions caused by contemporary family structure and marriage customs as well as about the means which the court applied to enforce policy. The texts presented here are excerpts from one of the protocol books of the Jewish court of Altona. Altona, at the time subject to the Danish King, shared institutions with the neighboring Jewish communities in Hamburg and Wandsbeck, a union which produced several kinds of documents covering a period of almost three centuries (16th-19th), some of which have survived and are held at the Central Archives of the Jewish People in Jerusalem. This volume of the court’s protocol book contains 1458 listings from the period 1768-1771. The following excerpts record court decisions in cases of disputes between married couples. The first, which according to the date on the page (but not on this specific entry) is from 1768, records the court’s intervention in a conjugal dispute, sentencing both parties to refrain from visiting their own parents, revealing how gender mattered in such cases. The second, dated 1769, informs about the court’s involvement in family relations and reveals ways in which neighbors were engaged to enforce community policy and social control.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

  • Protocol of Altona Jewish Court

Event Website

http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/emw/emw2010/

Start Date

17-8-2010 11:00 AM

Location

Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

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Aug 17th, 11:00 AM

Conjugal Disputes at the Jewish Court of 18th Century Altona

Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

Disputes between married couples in 18th century were sometimes brought before the Jewish court ( the Beit-Din). Analysis of protocols of session which dealt with such disputes reveals facts about tensions caused by contemporary family structure and marriage customs as well as about the means which the court applied to enforce policy. The texts presented here are excerpts from one of the protocol books of the Jewish court of Altona. Altona, at the time subject to the Danish King, shared institutions with the neighboring Jewish communities in Hamburg and Wandsbeck, a union which produced several kinds of documents covering a period of almost three centuries (16th-19th), some of which have survived and are held at the Central Archives of the Jewish People in Jerusalem. This volume of the court’s protocol book contains 1458 listings from the period 1768-1771. The following excerpts record court decisions in cases of disputes between married couples. The first, which according to the date on the page (but not on this specific entry) is from 1768, records the court’s intervention in a conjugal dispute, sentencing both parties to refrain from visiting their own parents, revealing how gender mattered in such cases. The second, dated 1769, informs about the court’s involvement in family relations and reveals ways in which neighbors were engaged to enforce community policy and social control.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

  • Protocol of Altona Jewish Court

https://research.library.fordham.edu/emw/emw2010/emw2010/12