Herem (censure) - Since The Enlightenment

Since The Enlightenment

Except in rare cases in the Haredi and Chassidic communities, herem stopped existing after The Enlightenment, when local Jewish communities lost their political autonomy, and Jews were integrated into the gentile nations in which they lived. In 1918, the Rabbinical Council of Odessa, Russia (now in Ukraine), declared herem on Leon Trotsky and several other Jewish members of the Bolshevik movement.

In 2004, however, the High Court of South Africa upheld a herem against a Johannesburg businessman because he refused to pay his former wife alimony as ordered by a beth din.