Rabbis may soon have to answer to a higher authority -- state court judges.
A New York State Supreme Court judge recently overturned a rabbinical-arbitration ruling, angering rabbis who are worried that Jewish justice could be headed for extinction.
"If the judgment is affirmed, it would be useless to go to a rabbinic court," said Marc Stern, acting co-executive director and general counsel of the American Jewish Congress.
Rabbinical judges who sit on what are called "beth din" courts often handle cases that New York City Jews don't want in the regular judicial system, such as matters involving tax evasion or other illegalities.
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Also, under Jewish law, religious litigants are actually obligated to initially bring disputes to a beth din rather than secular courts.
The similarities between jews and muslims are as numerous as they are unique to those peoples mindsets. Such as the fact that jewish reaction to Holocaust denial and muslim reaction to Islam denial are similar in their (from a Western perspective) extremes.
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