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The records of the rabbinic court in late eighteenth-century Metz offer substantial evidence of acculturation and integration in the decades prior to the attainment of Jewish civic equality. In the modern state, the wide application of judicial procedures imposed on minority populations such as the Jews an unprecedented attachment to the larger society. This is reflected in the internalization of norms of legal culture, particularly in matters relating to business partnerships, purchase and sale, torts, inheritance, registration, and familial obligations. The administration of talmudic law in eighteenth century Metz therefore entailed familiarity with royal legislation and local ordinances, as is apparent in two discrete areas: the routinizing of civil procedures in the beit din and the navigation of plural jurisdictions exercised by the Jewish and French justice systems. The Jews of Metz met the challenges of legal pluralism by adapting to the prevailing system of law within French society and by acknowledging the interdependence of cases brought before the beit din and in the French civil court system. Decades before the Jewish population of France was admitted to citizenship, Metz Jews had little choice but to accommodate to general civil law and its structures. Within the realm of law, there emerged new rules of engagement between the Jewish minority and the surrounding society and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview of the cultural relations between Jews and African Americans in the 20th-century, focusing on the ideological cooperation between the groups during the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Discussion is given outlining how the two ethnicities have shared common experiences of social marginalization and engaged issues of cultural assimilation. Further mention is given concerning the contrasts in their separate social developments through the century and their resultant divergence because of them.