Acculturation and integration in eighteenth-century Metz

The records of the rabbinic court in late eighteenth-century Metz offer substantial evidence of acculturation and integration in the decades prior to the attainment of Jewish civic equality. In the modern state, the wide application of judicial procedures imposed on minority populations such as the Jews an unprecedented attachment to the larger society. This is reflected in the internalization of norms of legal culture, particularly in matters relating to business partnerships, purchase and sale, torts, inheritance, registration, and familial obligations. The administration of talmudic law in eighteenth century Metz therefore entailed familiarity with royal legislation and local ordinances, as is apparent in two discrete areas: the routinizing of civil procedures in the beit din and the navigation of plural jurisdictions exercised by the Jewish and French justice systems. The Jews of Metz met the challenges of legal pluralism by adapting to the prevailing system of law within French society and by acknowledging the interdependence of cases brought before the beit din and in the French civil court system. Decades before the Jewish population of France was admitted to citizenship, Metz Jews had little choice but to accommodate to general civil law and its structures. Within the realm of law, there emerged new rules of engagement between the Jewish minority and the surrounding society and culture.