From Ottoman, to British, to Israeli Courts
Haviv Retting Gur has a number of good posts about some of the biased and ignorance based fawning over Shlomo Sand’s new book. Gur’s posts address the bureaucratic and legal side of marriage in Israel, and while not denying that there are many problems, argues that there are a number of factors which are responsible for the current way that one can, or in many cases, cannot get married in Israel. See here and here for recent developments regarding marriage in Israel.
One of Gur’s points is that to a large extent Israel inherited the Ottoman legal bureaucracy when it comes to marriage. A number of important studies have been written about the pre-state court systems in Israel, the Ottoman and British court systems, which eventually gave birth to the Israeli court system. Amnon Cohen has written extensively on Jews and their extensive use of the Ottoman court system, most notably in his book A World Within: Jewish Life as Reflected in Muslim Court Documents from the Sijill of Jerusalem (16th Century). Also see this chapter by him. A more contemporary period has been treated by Assaf Likhovski in his book Law and Identity in Mandate Palestine