Pitched between Scylla and Charybdis: Metz Jews’ Litigation Hurdles in the Metz Beit Din and Ancien Regime French Courts

Abstract

During the eighteenth century, French courts expanded their competence over Jewish disputes in order to consolidate the kingdom’s hegemony over Alsatian Jewry. In Metz, the expansion was sanctioned by a royal order for the composition of the Recueil des Loix, Coutumes, et Usages Observes par les Juifs de Metz (1742). A blend of Jewish law and French customary law tailored for ancien regime Alsatian courts, the Recueil enabled a Jewish claimant to sue in either the beit din or a French tribunal. These judicial alternatives posed strategic dilemmas. French rulings were frequently vehicles for persecuting Jewish claimants and debasing their law, while rabbinical enforcement mechanisms typically lacked the aggressive bite of their French judicial counterparts. This article examines how the law, and these options, worked in practice.