Beit Din

A Beit Din is a Jewish court of law. The Beit Din’s members come together to help solve matters of Jewish law, or halakhah, as well as adjudicate debates. Strictly speaking, any three or more observant and knowledgeable Jews can serve as members of the Beit Din, and in local situations where a Beit Din is required this does happen. In practice however, the IANJ will usually call several volunteer rabbis to sit as members of the beit din. This is particularly true in cases of conversion or where a get (divorce certificate) needs to be issued and the husband has refused. Unlike Rabbinical Jewish Beit Dins, a Netzarim Beit Din will issue a divorced woman a Get should the conditions for it be met, we do not tolerate men holding their wives ‘hostage’ through the loopholes of Jewish halakhah. But the primary purpose of our Beit Din is to meet for conversions.

These meetings should ideally happen in real life, but with the blessing of modern technology they just as often occur online, in real time. Beit Din meetings are always private and only the invited parties are welcome to attend. In matters of conversion, it is rare for a Beit Din to not approve a student for conversion. On occasion they might recommend some remedial or specific learning, or approve a conversion with conditions of additional learning. On the very rare occasion that a Beit Din learns during the session that a candidate is simply not acceptable to the Jewish people, a situation that might involve lying about why they want to convert, or professing beliefs contrary to Judaism, they may deny the students request to convert. At that point the Beit Din decides if the candidate can return in the future or if they are permanently barred from conversion; again, something that is so rare we can almost call it unfathomable.

We also call a Beit Din together for the purpose of issuing semikha, rabbinical ordination. In this case, no judgement is being made by the Beit Din, rather they are gathering together to sign the semikha itself, in support of the rabbi who is issuing it. These are teachers acknowledging a new teacher of Torah in Israel.