Our Daily News Letter

(By Our Jerusalem Correspondent)

The decision handed down today by the Palestine Supreme Court, ruling that rabbinical supervision of the sale of kosher meat is not required, has a special significance, aside from its particular interest to religious Jews, in the fact that well informed Jewish leaders here regard it as the beginning of disruption in the hitherto unbroken unity of religious-communal life in the Jewish communities of Palestine, since the country has been placed under the British mandate. And further interest attaches to the incident when it is remembered that the decision of the Supreme Court is, paradoxically, the outcome of the attitude of the Agudath Israel, the organization which proclaims Jewish religious unity as its chief principle and aspiration.

Hitherto Palestine Jewry, though divided into Ashkenazim and Sephardim as well as differing on many major and minor issues, had nevertheless succeeded in working out an exemplary system of accord and unity in regard to certain questions of vital importance in Jewish religious life. Under the Turkish rule prior to the world war the two Jewish communities, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, had conducted their communal affairs separanaly and frequently there was friction between them but with the entrance of England as the mandatory power of Palestine the two Jewish groups with the approval of the British administration, created a uniform representative Chief Palestine for the supervision of all re? ma### riage, Kashruth, etc. This Palestine is headed by Rabbi I. Kook, chief rabbi of the American Jews and Rabbi Jacob Mean of the S### Jews. The Chief Rabbinate in Jenns###saiz sidiary rabbinates in all the Jewish ###Palestine and these ###with ### mony in all religious ### interating ### supervising the sale of ### in ### with Jewish religious requirements.What was particularly intersting was the fa### that while the Chief Palestine was not ###with any direct legal pe### as an admi###body, no one questional ### in which it operated. It was ### fig everyone that the Chief ### chosen by the Ashk### ### Jews and having the sanction of the british Administration was the indisputable religious an###the ###time Jewry.A few years ago, howevery ### the ### mentality of the Agudach Israeli a small group of some 1,600 Jews in Jerusalem and Jews organized themselves into a separate ### and set up their own shacherim ### and other religious functionaries. They ### submit to the authority of the Chie### R### and, it would seem for purposes of # strategy against that body? they ef### a test on the question of K### in acknowledge the certificates of the rabbis appointed by the Chief Rabbi### in report to ### meat. The situation ### especially in Tel Aviv where a member of stores sponsored by the new group ### meat without the sanction of the Chief Rabbinate art ### quence the Iatier brauthr the case to the ate### of the Governor of Jerusalem General Storrs. The governor issueri an ### that all store### setting kosher meat without ### duly authorized by the Chief Rabb### were to be dosed. It was thought the manner ended there. But the Agudath Israel appealed the matter to the Supreme Court.

The Court being composed of non-Jews who know little if anything about interual Jewish affairs evidently could see no reason why burchers who comply with the requirements of the Mosaric and could not sell meat without the sanction of the Chief Rabbinate. But today’s ruling of the Court on the appeal of the Agudath strikes a blow at one of the foundations of unity ill the communal life of the Jews in Palestine.