Weber in Jerusalem: The Rabbinical Debate over the Establishment of the Rabbinical Court of Appeals, 1918–1921

Abstract The twentieth-century processes of legal modernization rendered transformations to the concept of authority and its public perception. This article builds on the complex Weberian articulations of these transformations to analyze a contemporary contentious debate concerning the establishment of a Rabbinical Court of Appeals, in Mandatory Palestine, between 1918 and 1921. This initiative, imposed by the British government and supported by non-religious Jewish leaders, raised a heated controversy between two rabbinical figures—Haim Hirschnson of Hoboken, New Jersey, and Ben-Zion Uziel of Jaffa. Based on a close reading of their texts, juxtaposing them to Weberian conceptualizations of modern authority, and contextualizing them in particular historical circumstances, I argue that both rabbis comprehended the appellate mechanism as transforming the concept of rabbinical authority. By instituting appellate courts, authority shifts from its “charismatic” or “traditional” form to a “legal” institutional-based form. They harshly disagreed, however, if this transformation is a positive development in the modernization of Jewish law, or, on the contrary, will have a detrimental impact on the public's trust in the judiciary. The rabbinical articulations of these Weberian themes, as I suggest to interpret their texts, shed light on the application of the Weberian theory of bureaucracy to the judicial system and legal profession and also provide illuminating insights into the analysis of current church-law relationships, in Israeli law and elsewhere.