More judaico

The More judaico was a special form of oath, accompanied by certain ceremonies, which Jews were required to take when they appeared before European courts of law. The question of the trustworthiness of the Jewish oath was intimately connected with the meaning that Christian authorities assigned to the Kol Nidre prayer recited by Jews on Yom Kippur. The whole of the legislation regarding the oath was characteristic of the attitude of medieval states toward their Jewish subjects. The identification of Church and State seemed to render it necessary to have a different formula for those outside the state church.

Historical development

The disability imposed on a Jew engaged in legal contention with a Christian dates back to the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, who declared that neither Jews nor heretics should be admitted as witnesses against Christians. Secular courts, however, did not recognize this disability. Thus, in the safeconducts issued by the Carolingian kings in the 9th century, Jews and Christians were treated as equals, and consequently the testimony of the former, whether given under oath or not, was equally admissible as the latter. This was distinctly stated in the charter granted by Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV to the Jews of Speyer in 1090. The law of Duke Frederick II of Austria (1244), which served as a model for much other legislation on the Jews, merely required a Jew to swear "super Rodal" (by the Torah). Similar laws existed in England, Portugal, and Hungary. Hungary waived the requirement to swear on the Torah in trivial cases.

There were, however, some older laws which prescribed certain practices intended to mock Jews in court. These examples illustrated the kinds of humiliating rituals which accompanied the taking of the oath:

• Byzantine Empire, 10th century: the Jew would wear a girdle of thorns around his loins, stand in water, and swear by "Barase Baraa" (Bereshit Bara), so that if he spoke untruth, he would be swallowed by the earth just like Dathan and Abiram in Numbers 16:1–27;
• Arles (c. 1150): a wreath of thorns would be hung on the swearer's neck, others would grovel at his knees, and a thorn-branch five ells in length would be pulled "between his loins" while he swore and called down upon himself all the curses of the Torah;
• Swabia (13th century): the Jew would stand on the hide of a sow or a bloody lamb;
• Silesia (1422): the Jew would stand on a three-legged stool and have to pay a fine each time he fell, finally losing his case if he fell four times;
• Dortmund: the Jew would be fined each time he halted in repeating the oath;
• Verbo, Hungary (1517): the Jew would stand barefooted and swear with his face turned to the east, holding the Pentateuch in his hand;
• Breslau (c. 1455): the Jew would stand bareheaded and pronounce the name of YHWH.

The Oath as a Jewish Disability

A decidedly aggressive change took place when, in 1555, the German federal-court procedure (Reichskammergerichtsordnung) prescribed a form of oath which, with some alterations, supplied as a model for subsequent legislation. Horrible were the terms in which the swearer called down upon himself all the curses of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the ten plagues of Egypt, the leprosy of Naaman and Gehazi (see 2 Kings 5), the fate of Dathan and Abiram, etc.

As recounted in his "Gesammelte Schriften", the great German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn of the Enlightenment persuaded the Prussian government to moderate the terms of the oath during the 18th century. The small German states gradually surrendered the most objectionable features of the oath: Hesse-Kassel, in 1828; Oldenburg, 1829; Württemberg, 1832; Saxony, 1839 (on which occasion Zecharias Frankel published his famous "Die Eidesleistung"); Schaumburg-Lippe and Anhalt-Bernburg, 1842; Hesse-Homburg, 1865.

Prussia retained the obnoxious formula until March 15, 1869; Holland modified the oath in 1818, Russia in 1838 and 1860. The Jewish advocate Isaac Adolphe Crémieux won great fame by effecting the abolition of the oath through a case brought before the court of Nîmes in 1827. Lazard Isidor, as rabbi of Pfalzburg, refused in 1839 to open the synagogue for such an oath; prosecuted for contempt of court, he was defended by Crémieux and acquitted. The French supreme court finally declared the oath unconstitutional on March 3, 1846. However, as late as 1902, a court in Romania upheld that country's version of the oath.

Article References

• Jewish Encyclopedia

By : Gotthard Deutsch

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia. Please feel free to update it like any other article.