States of Legality: Law in Modern Jewish Life

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

Panel sponsored by CJH.

The panel, "States of Legality: Law in Modern Jewish Life," explores the relationship of Jews to modern state law. Our aim is to reflect on the experiential aspects of Jewish legal emancipation by providing an intimate account of everyday encounters with increasingly pervasive modern state law. Scholars have long examined emancipation and the shifting legal status of Jews since the French Revolution. Building on recent literature, this panel focuses on the anthropology of law by examining both how Jews encountered and were shaped by legal regimes and the transformations that resulted from such confrontations. Each paper probes specific junctures critical to both Jewish subjectivity and the formation of legal practice, focusing on the Habsburg Empire, Ottoman Egypt, and the United States. The first paper reflects on the dissemination of legal knowledge through narrative prose in the early 19th-century Habsburg Empire. It shows how maskilic writings normalized concepts of legality and popularized strategic knowledge concerning the interaction with state authorities. The second paper focuses on one Karaite lawyer of late 19th- and early 20th--century Egypt and his defense of a Rabbinate accused of ritual murder. It explores new forms of Jewish subjectivity in a context of colonial legal transformation. The third paper examines a 1909 case in which Jewish lawyers tried and failed to compel the U.S. federal courts to intervene in immigration regulation. It underscores how Jewish lawyers’ successful navigation of traditional legal avenues sometimes undermined their efforts to occasion comprehensive change to the American legal system.

The panel will have wide appeal among the Association of Jewish Studies membership. It brings together three scholars with interdisciplinary interests that incorporate anthropology, history, law, and political theory. In line with recent attempts to destabilize dichotomies between the experiences of Jews in north and south, and east and west, the panel provides a global perspective on modern Jewish participation in states of legality. It will be of interest to scholars working on each of these regions and to those with interest in legal history, sociology of law, political theory, narratology, immigration studies, and comparative history.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish History in Europe, Asia, Israel, and Other Communities

Chair

• Elissa Bemporad, Queens College, CUNY

Individual Presentations

• ״Legal Drama: Galician Jews, Imperial Law, and the First Modern Yiddish Play״ - Ofer Dynes, Harvard University

• “The Blood Libel on Trial: Jews and the Emergence of Colonial Law in Egypt” - Jeffrey Culang, Graduate Center, CUNY

• “‘The Hebrews Are Going to Court in Great Numbers’: Max J. Kohler and the Advent of Immigration Lawyering in the United States” - Britt P. Tevis, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Respondent

• David J. Sorkin, Yale University