Jewish tradition has a great deal to say about morals and ethics in various modern fields of public concern, including police ethics. In Police Ethics and the Jewish Tradition, author Stephen Passamaneck explores three areas of interest: loyalty, bribery and gratuities, and deception. Loyalty will always be a part of police culture and administrators are faced with the task of minimizing its abuses. Jewish tradition encourages the support of the whistleblower who exposes wrongdoing for the sake of the public good. This can sometimes lead to a clash between tradition and the 'blue wall of silence.' In the area of bribery and gratuities, Jewish law prohibits bribery but modest gratuities may be accepted. Tradition allows a given class of persons to enjoy preferential treatment. In police culture, limits must be imposed on any gratuities. Any expression of respect and appreciation must have no relation to the manner in which a police officer performs his or her duties. In the area of deception, Jewish tradition is very clear that misleading the innocent is morally wrong. Police ethics accepts deception in an interrogation to obtain information, to protect a life, or to recover stolen property. Deceptive tactics, however, have no place in a court of law. Jewish legal tradition does not differ from modern western law in this respect. This book takes a first look at the idea that Jewish tradition may offer benefit to the evolving world of police ethics.
The history of medieval Jewry presents one inescapable fact: the Jews were a people apart. No matter where or when we find a Jewish community in the Middle Ages, it was an alien enclave within a host society which was sometimes cordial to it and sometimes not. Jews were a foreign element that managed their own communal affairs, creating religions, educational, and charitable institutions, mechanisms for collection and disbursement of taxes to the host government, and various systems for internal governance and the administration of justice. The Jews governed themselves and dispensed justice in so far as possible according to halakhah, their ancient internal legal system. This legal system was the subject of devoted and loving study and careful enhancement over the centuries by skillful interpretation, by mixture of local customs, and by local ordinances, which helped the system keep pace with changing circumstances. Modalities in Medieval Jewish Law includes chapters on punitive modalities, preventive and coercive modalities, and protective modalities, as well as appendixes on "A Plea for Calm," "The Arresting Officer," and "Human Rights and Kavod Habriut" and a comprehensive bibliography. Passamaneck's discussion exposes some of the less exalted or inspiring episodes of medieval Jewish history. Some of what was done, or was proposed to be done, was cruel and inhuman by modern standards. Some of it does not rise to a modern standard of legality, but the medieval world did not run according to our rules, and necessity overrode moral idealism from time to time even among the most sensitive, learned, and pious of our ancestors. The rabbis well understood that they were to pursue justice, but justice was justice for the greater good of the people as a whole, not necessarily for the individual. Doubtless we would not often do as they did. Yet they are by no means to be faulted or derogated for their defense of their standards of public order, safety, and, indeed, decency.
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