Sovereignty and Religious Freedom: A Jewish History [Hardcover]

A comparative legal history of Jewish sovereignty and religious freedom, illuminating the surprising ways that collective and individual rights have evolved over the past two centuries

Winner, Irving Abella Award in History, presented by the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards
 
It is a common assumption that in Israel, Jews have sovereignty, and in most other places where Jews live today, they have religious freedom instead. As Simon Rabinovitch shows in this original work, the situation is much more complicated. Jews today possess different kinds of legal rights in states around the world; some stem from religious freedom protections, and others evolved from a longer history of Jewish autonomy.
 
By comparing conflicts between Jewish collective and individual rights in courts and laws across the globe, from the French Revolution to today, this book provides a nuanced legal history of Jewish sovereignty and religious freedom. Rabinovitch weaves key themes in Jewish legal history with the individual stories of litigants, exploring ideas about citizenship and belonging; who is a Jew; what makes a Jewish family; and how to define Jewish space. He uses recent court cases to explore problems of conflicting rights, and then situates each case in a wider historical context. This unique comparative history creates a global picture of modern legal development in which Jews continue to use the law to carve out surprising forms of sovereignty.

“Mr. Rabinovitch . . . ably explains and analyzes legal controversies that have arisen in Canada, France, Israel, the U.K., the U.S. and elsewhere.”—Meir Soloveichik,Wall Street Journal

A remarkable and exhaustive account of the diverse array of the ways in which Jews have been organized, addressed, empowered, and policed by the laws of the modern state.Alexander Kaye,Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies

Simon Rabinovitchs book is an ambilsH