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Praise Religious Court in England

June 24, 1928
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(J.T. A. Mail Service)

A tribute to the Chief Rabbi, Dr. J. H. Hertz, and the members of the Beth Din was paid at the annual dinner of the Independent Order B’nai Brith of England held here last night. Mr. Elton, the chairman, said the work of the Beth Din religious court avoided a great “Chillul Hashem” by keeping out of the courts many cases of family strife. The Chief Rabbi, he said, was doing lasting service to the whole of Jewry.

Dr. Hertz, said that the ecclesiastical authorities in England did not as a rule hear such compliments. The community looked upon their ecclesiastics as their poor relatives. The Chief Rabbi reminded them that although he was only recently drafted to the ranks of the London Lodge, he was the oldest member of the Order, being elected in South Africa in 1896. Dr. Hertz spoke of the attempts being made in Russia and the border states to secularize all Jewish communal matters and eliminate everything Jewish. He trusted that the B’nai Brith would not stand such an endeavor in England. They wanted a Jewish Judaism, not a jazz Judaism.

Professor Selig Brodetsky said that the Jews had always valued the law of the land. J. A. R. Cairns, magistrate of the Thames Police Court, said that he liked the East of London where he understood the character of the local population, especially the Jews and would by all costs not be transferred to another area.

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