In honor of Rabbi Michael Broyde’s stay in our community, let us take up the topic of beit din. Rabbi Broyde is a member of the Beth Din of America, the rabbinical court affiliated with the Rabbinical Council of America, and was instrumental in rejuvenating that beit din during a one-year stint as its menahel. The Beth Din of America is available for all sorts of disputes (including, but not limited to, the ends of marriages) . The Beth Din, like many communal institutions, welcomes private contributions to help it continue its work. Rabbi Broyde will speak three times over Shabbat, as detailed in flyers around the shul.

Based on the pasuq "asher tasim lifneihem," the gemara requires Jews to bring their court cases to a beit din and not to a non-Jewish court. This means, ideally, that when two Jews (regardless, incidentally, of their religious background or commitment) have a dispute they cannot resolve among themselves, they should be turning to a beit din to assist them. That assistance can come in one of two ways. Disputants can approach a beit din looking for din, judgement, where the court decides according to the dictates of Jewish law. In this system (again ideally; today many to`anei and to`anot beit din help litigants phrase their claims in ways the judges can most accurately understand), there are not supposed to be lawyers— the disputants lay out their claims and the dayanim are supposed to ask enough questions to elicit all pertinent facts of the case. In contrast to American law, the truth is not based on an adversarial process, but upon the judges effectively investigating the issue in all its pertinent detail. The other option is to approach the beit din for peshara, compromise. Here, the disputants do not submit their case for a decision as to right and wrong, they ask the dayanim to help them work out an arrangement acceptable to both, regardless of where pure justice lies. Incidentally, it is this solution, which foregoes truth in the name of peace, that halakhah prefers.

Jews must respond to a summons from a beit din. Most simply, the Jew can simply appear before the beit din. Alternatively, he can identify a different beit din to hear the case, or ask for zabla, where each litigant chooses a dayyan, and those two choose a third to hear the case with them. In this way, while Jews are required to go before a beit din, and to respond to the summons of a beit din, they can avoid the all too common situations where they are suspicious of the integrity of a particular beit din.