The London Bet Din, 1805-1855 and the Jewish convicts transported to Australia

Sussex Academic Press. 2008. 355pp.

Reviewed by Gloria Deutsch

Everyone knows that in the nineteenth century convicts in Britain were frequently deported to penal colonies in Australia to serve their sentences there. Families were broken up and with husbands half a world away and unlikely ever to return divorce was common.

With the Jewish convicts (sadly, of whom, there were plenty) an added complication arose. Once bound for the Antipodes, their wives were left behind as 'agunot', unable to remarry.

Fortunately the London Bet Din (Jewish ecclesiastical court) did not abandon these women but tried to arrange the giving of a Get (Bill of Divorcement), even sending their dayanim on perilous sea journeys to obtain the precious document.

Jeremy Pfeffer, author and high school principal who made aliya from England in 1969 and whose last job before retiring was to teach physics at the Rehovot campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has written a fascinating book on the subject. Scholarly and brilliantly-researched, he investigates the subject through the extensive records kept by the Bet Din from 1805 to 1855 which record hundreds of cases relating to marriage, divorce and conversion.

In the process we learn fascinating facts about the history of the Jews in England, the villainy prevalent among some of our co-religionists (the ones who were transported at least) and the status of the Jewish population and how it slowly became more accepted.

The extent of the research is mind-boggling and took the author to archives as far apart as London, Jerusalem and Hobart. Besides its fascinating content the book is written in clear good English. It's not exactly light holiday reading but if you are interested in Jewish social history this book has much to offer.