In the late 18th century, Metz was home to some 3,000 mostly Yiddish-speaking Jews—making it the largest Jewish community in all of France. Like many European Jewish communities of its day, it enjoyed a degree of legal autonomy. The local rabbinical court or beit din, whose judges included two of the era’s most prominent talmudists, left behind a record book, known as a pinkas, for the years 1771 to 1789. Eliezer Brodt and Dan Rabinowitz explain:

These records, typically in the form of a notebook or book, transcribe the materials of a particular group, society, or entity. They can be marriage or divorce records, synagogue protocols, or numerous hevrah books [pertaining to specific voluntary organizations]. Even though many have been lost or destroyed, numerous volumes have survived in libraries worldwide. In recent years, some have even ended up in private collections. . . . A subset of pinkasim are those of [rabbinic courts], taking the form of registers of various disputes and decisions. These, too, are of critical importance. . . . Yet, today, many of these pinkasim no longer survive.

Brodt and Rabinowitz review the historian Jay Berkovitz’s published edition of the Metz pinkas and his subsequent book about it:

Berkovitz’s transcription (albeit with notes) is over 1,000 pages. This is truly what one would call a labor of love. Not only did he publish a huge manuscript with valuable indices, but he also mined the work extensively, . . . demonstrating his command of everything possibly related to this work.

The reviewers go on to cite some of the fascinating cases found in the book, which involve illegitimate pregnancies, complex relations with the French authorities, disputes over charitable trusts, the sartorial fashions of well-to-do Jews, and much else.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.