How did early modern Jews settle disputes “between Jew and Jew”? Stemming from a reflection upon the functions of the early modern kehillah/communal corporate body, Evelyne Oliel-Grausz’s current research questions the Jewish community as a legal resource/ forum for dispute resolution. If institution of the Bet Din is somewhat well known, and has the been the subject of several key publications of late, it was not the only available internal forum: in most Ashkenazi and Sephardi early modern communities, lay courts operated side by side with the rabbinical court, and in cooperation with it. How did these courts interact with the local legal court systems? According to what normative systems were causes adjudicated in the Jewish and non-Jewish courts? How specific was the situation of Jews in early modern Europe where legal pluralism was the norm rather than the exception? How useful is that notion of legal pluralism to our understanding of early modern kehillot? In order to address these questions, Oliel-Grausz will present the case of Livorno. The jurisdictional privileges granted to the Jews in Livorno were in many ways unique, whether within the Italian or early modern Jewish context. Using communal and local courts records, Oliel-Grausz will present the Livorno court of the massari, which operated as a Jewish court of first instance, and in other capacities, from the beginning of the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century.

Oliel-Grausz is an associate professor of early modern and Jewish history at Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. As part of a two year sabbatical in Israel in 2018-19, she was a senior fellow at the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies in the group working on Rethinking early modern Jewish legal culture.

Oliel-Grausz is currently completing a book on dispute resolution in early modern Jewish kehillot, entitled “Between Jew and Jew?”.