I hang out on some news sites that cater to Orthodox Jews in the New York City area. It is very interesting and I am always learning new things. Their community is much like any other with little heroes of petty crooks.
Some news stories about Jewish criminals provoke comments saying a Jew may not go to the police to report another Jew. Other, more serious, cases provoke cries for the Proper Authorities to lock the guy up and melt the key.
Is there some religious proscription against a Jew cooperating with the secular authorities against another Jew? I tried to Google it, but you can imagine the rabbit hole that led down.
It is not just them. “Birds of a feather, fock together.” The do not mind if one gets picked off at the fringe/edge of the flock, but will protect the center by their numbers.
You just had to go and ask a question about Orthodox Judaism on a Friday night, didn’t you?
IANAJ, but in the case of the most fervent Orthodox, my guess is that they wouldn’t trust a non-Jewish authority to treat a Jewish criminal in the rabbinically-prescribed manner.
Chinese criminals in America usually victimize other Chinese, who don’t snitch to the cops. Ditto Salvadoreans, Albanians, Russians and LGBT’s. Insular groups don’t share their private business with outsiders, especially the police. If I had a beef with a fellow expat here in Korea, unless vast sums of money were involved, I can’t imagine how I’d want to involve the Korean police. And that went double when I lived in China.
Part of the Ultra-Orthodox mentality is that they’re still living in 17th Century Poland, outside evidence be damned. So of course they don’t trust the Cossacks - I mean, the police.
One of the gajillion TV shows speculating the identity of Jack The Ripper said that the police strongly suspected Aaron Kosminski Aaron Kosminski - Wikipedia and had another person in the neighborhood tentatively corroborate, but said person refused to give formal evidence or testify in court, because of the possible backlash, and again, testifying against another Jewish person, at the time, would essentially be a death sentence, in prisons of that time. Ok, so that’s an anecdote, really.
Now, for centuries prior, the whole point was, that Christian clergy couldn’t be held or tried in Secular courts – there existed Ecclesiastical courts, and those courts had the authority over clergy – sort of an early rule against double jeopardy. Anyway, notice, in this case, its not just a prohibition, there was actually a separate court. And I’d never heard of a separate Orthodox Jewish court that fought for the authority to try Jews outside of local systems. But they would need to establish such a thing before climin the official exemption.
Reminds me of an old Hogan’s Heros episode, where Hogan wants Col. Klink’s permission to punish Newkirk to cover some random scheme:
Hogan: Here you go Col. Klink, sign here…
Klink: Wait a minute, this says you’re going to shoot him.
H: So?
K: No, no, no. You can’t shoot another prisoner, I mean we could, but you can’t.
H: Aw c’mon, we wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to shoot each other.
K: HOGAN
Here’s a wiki link to the Jewish laws in question,including ancient and modern cases.
As Alessan said so cynically in the post above–it all depends on the mentality of the sect.
This is true, I think,not just for Jewish sects…
As in the examples in in post #5 about the Chinese and Koreans…insular minorities often don’t trust the “establishment”, from which they choose to separate themselves. The Amish in America also prefer to keep their criminal matters internal within the community and not involve the police.
Yes, this can happen within any insular group. And the opposite occurs as well when the police are all members of an insular group and non-members do not trust them.
“Affinity Fraud” Affinity fraud - Wikipedia is a related issue - insular groups will tend to trust other members of that group, leading to victimization.
The talking heads on that Jack The Ripper special said that the Jewish person wouldn’t formally accuse another Jewish person in British courts, because incarceration, for a Jew, in British prison, at that time, was akin to a death sentence. You know, as a minority, in prison, “accidents” happen. Although probably, the Jewish person giving evidence against another would have faced repercussion from the Jewish community, along the lines of, “snitches get stitches.”
As far as actual religious rules on the subject, isn’t one of the most fundamental commandments to live in a society with laws and courts? One could interpret to mean that a Jew (or, in fact, anyone) who refused to cooperate with the agents of the law was in violation of the religious rules.
There is a broad mistrust of the American criminal justice system at the moment. Anyone would have to do something awfully dang bad for me to turn them over to the police. I can think of only two people I would do that to if I had the proof.
Only when the society is aligned with the religion. Hence, sharia.
Actually, it’s fairly standard that tribal groups (including religiously defined tribal groups) recognize the “laws and courts” of the tribal group, not of some larger society. (The USA is basically Presbyterian in structure, so Presbyterians are generally comfortable with American laws and courts as defined by congress and the constitution. Anglicans are comfortable with a ‘National’ definition, and RC agree with law and the courts because the Pope and the Priest tell them to )
The USA recognizes international law only when it wants to, or really has to. Religious rules aren’t that different.
You would be amazed at the disdain that some religious people have for “man-made law.”
This is a bit on the New Age side of things, instead of traditional religion, but it’s a reasonably good example.
And that doesn’t even begin to get into the religious/philosophical issue of how a person should react when society’s laws directly contradict religious dictates.
You mean laws like “wear a yellow star” and “live in a ghetto?”
I agree that laws should be followed in a modern liberal democracy, but in different times and different places, laws and courts were just another means of oppression and discrimination.
Its true that Aaron Kosminski was the police’s main suspect as to the Ripper. Later notes, diaries and memoirs of multiple senior police officials indicate that they were pretty confident that it was him. At least one or two said that he had been identified by an eyewitness but said eyewitness refused to testify againts him since he was a fellow Jew.
You are right there is no suggestion that such reluctance was was due to a higher risk of being a convicted Jew murdered in prison (Kominski would have either hung or been sent to a secure mental hospital so he won’t have gone there anyway) as opposed to a simple reluctance to implicate a fellow Jewish person. Although the authorties could have visited significant pressure to compel testimony if the wished.
In any event, the East End of the time was a hotbed of ethnic and sectarian tensions and a Jew being confirmed as the killer would exacerbate the. The British police of that era at home and in the Empire would not think twice to not prosecute such a series of murders if they thought that by doing so they would stoke unrest.
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