Infanticide, Orientalism, and British Law in Mandate Palestine

Was Jewish society in Mandate Palestine a national community or a society divided into different communities, each with its own cultural characteristics? Were the Yemenites a separate tribe or an organic part of the Yishuv? How did the British authorities view these divisions within the Jewish population? What role did European Jews, and particularly academics or government officials, play in this web of relationships? And did personal connections between Jewish and British officials influence legal decisions? The current murder case, and the ways it was perceived and analyzed by different Jewish writers and activists, illustrates the complexities that characterized the Jewish Yishuv in the late 1930s and early 1940s: A society led by veteran eastern European and central European immigrants who promoted a secularist-modernist agenda that was challenged by other cultural outlooks and political parties. Meanwhile, marginal groups such as Mizrahi communities or ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi communities (the "Old Yishuv") represented different social models and posed further challenges for the semiofficial Zionist leadership. Despite its structural diversity and internal tensions, a strong sense of solidarity appeared in cases of external pressure, such as in the case of Aharon Levi's trial. This complicated social structure enabled European Jewish Orientalists to act as mediators between local Jewish communities and the British authorities. In Levi's case, the anthropological argument also challenged common legal divisions between women and men, as well as between Britain and Mandate Palestine, regarding how to enforce the Act of Infanticide. In his appeal, Goitein both reaffirmed and undermined the British imperial order. The Levi Affair also illustrates the practical impact of changes within the Mandate legal system on the fate of its subjects, both due to changes in personnel and changes in the nature of the British colonial project. This microhistorical study sheds light on the British colonial legal system and challenges the sharp division between center and periphery in the late British Empire. © 2024 University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.