Hello Everyone,
Welcome to our final session in this series of meetings on the Jewish system of justice.
By a “Jewish” system of justice I mean a system operating according to Jewish law- the Halacha. And just as in secular systems of law judges must have certain credentials, the Halacha requires credentials of its judges. The credential that a judge must possess is “semicha” (translated as ordination). This requirement has posed a problem for the past 1500 years or so. Ordination was an unbroken chain from the time Moses ordained his disciple Joshua. But in the fifth century the Roman emperor Theodosius the Second put an end to the Patriarchate in Israel. And with no Patriarch in Israel there was no longer any proper ordination.
Since then Jewish courts have been operating on an ad hoc system of sorts which we will discuss today.