A Court Whose Authority Is Knowledge, Not Office

The beit din is the standing court of Jewish law, and its authority rests on the learning of its judges rather than on any grant from a state.

Three who know the law

In its ordinary form a beit din is three judges, a number sufficient for most matters, expanded for the most serious. It rules on questions of religious law and administers the acts that require a court: overseeing conversion, issuing the writ of divorce, the get, adjudicating disputes between parties who accept its jurisdiction, and freeing an agunah where it can. The judges must be learned in the relevant law, and it is that competence, recognised by the community, that gives the ruling its force rather than any civil power behind it.

Where it operates now

In the absence of a Jewish state court for most of history the beit din handled the internal affairs of the community, and in the modern diaspora it continues to function within voluntary jurisdiction, its rulings binding on those who submit to them and increasingly recognised in civil law as a form of religious arbitration. In the State of Israel rabbinical courts hold statutory authority over Jewish marriage and divorce, which places a version of the institution inside the machinery of a modern state and makes its composition and reach a live public question.