Following the injunction of Deuteronomy 16, “Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates,” Jews in Israel and the Diaspora have for millennia established courts of law to settle disputes, and such institutions—known as batey din (singular, beit din)—can still be found the world over. Prior to the 19th century, most Christian and Muslim countries gave these courts exclusive jurisdiction over civil matters between Jewish litigants. Yoel Finkelman describes what made the beit din of the northwest Moroccan city of Kenitra unusual:

[T]he archival materials from the beit din of Kenitra in the mid-20th century . . . were not in rabbinic Hebrew, but in French. Jews in Morocco spoke French during the colonial era, but it is not common at all to find rabbinic courts or halakhic documentation conducted in the vernacular. Why, then, would the beit din use French?

The answer stems from significant reforms that the French colonial government in Morocco made in regulating batey din. . . . The colonial government wanted to reform the relationship between the beit din and the colonial authorities. Beginning in 1918, the French protectorate began systematically to reform Jewish communities and their institutions, modernizing them by limiting their authority and linking them to new, modern bureaucracy. They created Jewish rabbinic courts that would operate based on Jewish laws, but would be subject to the oversight of the colonial authorities, who would authorize the batey din to make decisions about internal Jewish affairs, particularly regarding marriage, divorce, and family law.

Once the Jewish court had acted, the French Protectorate required systematic information about decisions, personal statuses, litigants’ obligations, or divorce settlements and their financial consequences. . . . This created new record-keeping responsibilities for the court. It could not simply run its own business, by Jews for Jews, in Jewish languages. Instead, the French and local authorities required systematic paperwork from the Jewish community.

The former Israeli chief justice Aharon Barak recently warned that the country could be headed toward civil war due to Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire the head of the Shin Bet, and the opposition thereto. To Amichai Attali, such comments are both “out of touch with reality” and irresponsible—as are those of Barak’s political opponents:

Yes, there is tension and stress, but there is also the unique Israeli sense of solidarity. Who exactly would fight in this so-called civil war? Try finding a single battalion or military unit willing to go out and kill their own brothers and sisters—you won’t. They don’t exist. About 7 percent of the population represents the extremes of the political spectrum, making the most noise. But if we don’t come to our senses, that number might grow.

And what about you, leader of [the leftwing party] The Democrats and former deputy IDF chief, Yair Golan? You wrote that the soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza are pawns in Netanyahu’s political survival game. Really? Is that what the tens of thousands of soldiers on the front lines need to hear? Or their mothers back home? Do you honestly believe Netanyahu would sacrifice hostages just to stay in power? Is that what the families of those hostages need right now?

Israeli democracy will not collapse if Netanyahu fires the head of the Shin Bet—so long as it’s done legally. Nor will it fall because demonstrators fill the streets to protest. They are not destroying democracy, nor are they terrorists working for Hamas.