Many Jews Turning to Old System for Justice : Arbitration: <i> Bet din </i> proceedings are inexpensive, quick and relatively private. A drawback, however, is that such panels lack power to enforce their decisions.

Jews needing to arbitrate business and personal disputes are increasingly turning to an ancient legal system, whose proceedings are substantially cheaper, quicker and more private than civil court.

There has been a “tremendous explosion of interest” recently in arbitrations according to Jewish law, says Rabbi Avrohom Teichman, who directs a Los Angeles bet din (house of law).

Teichman said his bet din is handling cases such as a property settlement in a divorce, a claim against a Jewish religious school by a teacher whose contract was not renewed, a dispute between a contractor and a homeowner complaining of substandard repair work, a disagreement between two organizations over a debt and accusations of slander resulting in the alleged loss of business by a high-tech company.

A recent case involved an Orthodox Jew from West Los Angeles who lent his van to an acquaintance. Though they talked beforehand about what would happen in case of an accident, they misunderstood each other. And when the borrower crashed the vehicle, they argued over who should pay for what.

To avoid a lengthy and expensive civil lawsuit and the breakup of their friendship, they agreed to have the dispute adjudicated by a bet din . At the Los Angeles Kollel, an institute for advanced Jewish learning in the Fairfax district, a rabbi appointed a panel of three judges. As is typical in bet din cases, the two men signed a contract, enforceable in civil court, obligating them to abide by the decision.

After hearing evidence, the bet din assigned two-thirds of the repair costs to the man who borrowed the van. The progress was free and took only a few hours, and the two men have remained friends.

Teichman plans to publish a pamphlet explaining the process. “People are afraid to come to a bet din because they don’t know the procedure,” he said.

Although most Jewish courts exist within the Orthodox community, where adherence to traditional law is strictest, even many non-Orthodox Jews are using the system to arrange matters of personal status, such as conversions and divorces.

They may do so out of respect for Jewish tradition or to avoid future problems for themselves or their children. They may also want to protect their immigration and marriage rights in Israel, where all matters of personal status are regulated by the Orthodox rabbinate, which does not accept conversions or divorces implemented by non-Orthodox authorities.

Conservative Judaism, which is less strict in it adherence to traditional Jewish law, has a single bet din in Los Angeles, located at the University of Judaism. It primarily handles conversions and divorces, according to Rabbi Ben Zion Bergman, its director. Reform Judaism has eliminated the institution of the bet din altogether. “We do not function as if bound by Halacha (Jewish law), so it would be inappropriate for us to set up a bet din ,” explained Rabbi Leonard Thal, director of the local region of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Reform umbrella group.

Members of other religions, including Roman Catholics, Mormons and Presbyterians, also have court systems but they generally only adjudicate ecclesiastical matters and issues of personal status. Among Muslims, traditional Islamic law, called the sharia, is also used to adjudicate business and personal matters. In Los Angeles, according to spokesman Maher Hathout, the Islamic Center of Southern California has only “unofficial” arbitration services, in which a single arbitrator will attempt to resolve issues.

Many cities with large Orthodox Jewish populations have a sitting bet din .

But there is no such arrangement in Southern California. In the extremely decentralized Orthodox community, the closest thing to an official bet din is operated by the Rabbinical Council of California, directed by Rabbi Shmuel Katz, a world-acknowledged Jewish legal expert. Katz’s bet din handles virtually all the Orthodox conversions in Los Angeles and probably more than half of the 50 or so Jewish divorces settled here each month.

Jewish law does not always work, however, as smoothly as it did in the case of the wrecked van. One inherent weakness of the bet din is that it lacks the power to enforce its decisions.

Last March, for example, a conflict erupted between Chabad, the Hasidic group, and the Westwood Bayit, a cooperative Jewish student house near the UCLA campus. Both organizations claimed ownership of the Bayit building on fraternity row and other properties worth a total of $1.5 million.

When Chabad, holding an apparently valid deed, took over the Westwood building and converted it into a shelter for temporarily homeless men, Bayit supporters claimed that the deed had been obtained fraudulently.

The Bayit lodged a formal complaint with Teichman, whose bet din issued a “summons” to Chabad. Instead of having Teichman appoint the judges on the bet din , the two organizations agreed on a procedure in which each appointed one judge. The two judges then were to pick a third, neutral judge.

The process stalled, however, when Chabad challenged the Bayit’s choice for a judge. The Bayit has reopened its case in civil court, which it had dropped in order to speed the bet din procedure. The civil process could take five years and cost thousands of dollars, said Bayit board President Leonard Friedman.

Cost can be one clear advantage of the bet din.

While the free services provided by Los Angeles Kollel are rare, the process is usually inexpensive. Teichman, for example, says he charges a $50 filing fee and $300 for each hour spent by the judges in hearing a dispute, plus $200 an hour for time the judges confer. Additional fees of about $40 an hour are levied for writing the decision, if that is required. “An average case--not an especially complex one--will cost a total of $500,” Teichman estimated.

Another advantage of the bet din is its privacy. Since its hearings and records are not public, it is a venue particularly suited to litigants anxious to avoid publicity.

The process is also quick. Cases can often be completed in days or weeks. Teichman said that the Chabad-Bayit dispute could have been settled in less than a year.

The bet din’s difficulty in enforcing its decisions, however, may be complicated by the politics, relationships and communal intimacy of those involved. One Orthodox rabbi cited an example in which a divorced husband would not comply with the bet din’s order to pay his children’s day-school tuition.

The bet din could have put pressure on the man to comply by publicizing his recalcitrance in the Jewish community, or at least to school authorities, but it avoided doing so in deference to his wealth and community position.

Communal pressure applied privately is often the bet din’s best weapon for obtaining compliance, especially in cases in which one partner in a marriage refuses to allow a divorce to be completed. “In Europe, the bet din could actually ostracize a member of the community,” said Rabbi David Rue, who has served as a bet din judge. “Here, they apply pressure through a person’s rabbi or friends.”

This system of Jewish courts dates back to the time of Moses, who, according to the book of Exodus, delegated to wise elders part of his authority as judge in order to speed the administration of justice.

Although Jewish law specifically requires Jews to submit their disputes to a bet din , even many religious Jews prefer to go to civil court. Some may simply have the expectation of getting a better settlement under civil law. Others may be loath to apply Jewish law to contracts they entered into under civil law, especially given the bet din’s lack of enforcement powers.

There have been cases in which the civil courts have refused to enforce a bet din ‘ s decision even though the parties had signed a binding-arbitration agreement. The courts cited the Jewish court’s failure to render its decision clearly or the inability to fully understand the actual legal basis of the dispute.

Los Angeles lawyer Stephen Webb, who has worked with Jews using the bet din system, explained that there are “difficulties of interface” between the two legal systems. “There is a need to train rabbis in writing decisions that can be used in civil court,” he said.