The Adjudication of Fines in Ashkenaz during the Medieval and Early Modern Periods and the Preservation of Communal Decorum.

Abstract

The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Qamma 84a–b) rules that fines and other assigned payments in situations where no direct monetary loss was incurred--or where the damages involved are not given to precise evaluation or compensation--can be adjudicated only in the Land of Israel, at a time when rabbinic judges were certified competent to do so by the unbroken authority of ordination (semikhah). In addition to the implications for the internal workings of the rabbinic courts during the medieval period and beyond, this ruling seriously impacted the maintaining of civility and discipline within the communities. Most if not all of the payments that a person who struck another is required to make according to Torah law fall into the category of fines or forms of compensation that are difficult to assess and thus could not be collected in the post-exilic Diaspora (ein danin dinei qenasot be-Bavel)