In An Unfortunate Coincidence Professor Herman is engaged in ‘mapping the terrain of English judicial representations of Jews and Jewishness’ over the past century (p 2). Her book, in short, does two things. First, it provides a comprehensive account of the treatment of these two obviously related concepts in various aspects of English law during this period, an original endeavour that has therefore an inherent archival value. Second, it suggests that anti-Jewish bias is written into modern English case law, a necessarily challenging and provocative supposition. The book is clearly the product of considerable original research. It is written with an enviable fluency, such that a reader (such as I) who knows next to nothing about Jewish law can still learn much. And it is written to provoke – which is a good thing. The ‘narrative’ of Jews and Jewishness in English law, Herman contends, is one of ‘Christian supersession’ and ‘Christian triumphalism’ (pp 19, 165). It is a contention that will be of obvious interest to readers of this Journal.

Herman pulls no punches. English judges have repeatedly engaged in ‘orientalizing and racializing processes’ in which the supposed ‘race’ and ‘blood’ of Jewish litigants, rather than their faith, has become a matter of peculiar interest (pp 54–55, 89). This is particularly marked in trust cases, and child custody cases (pp 68, 82–85); but it is evident in many areas of English law, and it is only too noticeable that there is little interest in comparable cases in the ‘blood’ of litigants who are more obviously ‘white’ or ‘Christian’ (p 16). English judges write the Jew as ‘other’, while a ‘dominant’ Christianity presumes ‘normative’ authority (p 81). Even in moments of apparent judicial empathy, as in cases involving Holocaust ‘survivors’, a distinct objectification of the ‘paradigmatic outsider’ is clearly discernible (pp 20, 101, 125). And with the objectification comes not merely dehumanisation but also diminution.

And distaste; for, as Herman argues, the discourse of Jewishness in English law is one characterised more by ‘distaste’ and ‘confusion’ than by ‘hatred’ (pp 25, 158). While such distaste might be more common in judicial rhetoric drawn from the early part of the last century, in cases such as Seide as late as 1980, and Levi v Bates in 2009, judges could still be found constructing images of oversensitive, and by insinuation unreasonable and untrustworthy, Jewish complainants (pp 41–42, 47). The title of the book is drawn from a 1998 case, in which Crown counsel drew a series of racial stereotypes in its prosecution of a Jewish defendant, including a tasteless analogy with Dickens’ Fagin. When the defendant's counsel complained to the presiding judge, the analogy was dismissed as nothing more than ‘an unfortunate coincidence’. When the issue was then referred to the Court of Appeal, the response was much the same (pp 46–47).

The constituent chapters of An Unfortunate Coincidence combine particular studies of discrete areas of law with more general commentaries on rhetorical strategies adopted by judges in regard to Jews and Jewishness. Thus chapters 3, 4 and 6 focus in turn on trust, child custody and discrimination law, while chapters 2 and 5 investigate respectively judicial attitudes towards Jewish litigants in the early decades of the twentieth century and the introduction of the ‘Holocaust’ into certain post-war legal judgments. The concluding chapter is slightly different again, providing a detailed commentary on the recent JFS case, which involved a challenge against the admissions policy of a Jewish faith school. Each chapter is written to reinforce the central contention – that English judges have ‘orientalised’ Jews and Jewishness, and in so doing have marginalised and diminished both. The claim is entirely credible, reinforced as it is by exhaustive research.

Sadly, of course, it is not particularly surprising. Prejudice is the stuff of judgment, however much we might like to presume otherwise. Commonly in liberal societies, the prospective hazard of prejudice, particularly in regard to ethnic or religious minorities, is supposed to be offset by statutes of civil or human rights. In reality it rarely is, and in the ‘harder’ cases, where rights conflict, judges are as often as not guided by gut feeling as judicial nuance. The excuse is rather less persuasive, of course, when the cases are not particularly hard; and a number of those uncovered by Professor Herman fall into this latter category. There can be no doubt that judicial gut feeling has run against Jewish litigants during the last century. The immediate question is whether the present century will be much different. Sadly there is nothing in An Unfortunate Coincidence that suggests that this might be so. The consistent failure to engage the ‘history of Jewish people and Jewishness in English law’, Herman concludes, suggests that, for the foreseeable future, ‘Jewish and other people in England will continue to live in the shadow of Christianity's enduring force’. It is ‘yet another “unfortunate coincidence”’ (p 175).