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If you had a problem, the first one you should turn to was the rabbi. Everybody did this. The rabbi settled the litigations, but as far as I remember, there were no such cases in our family. For example, if someone owed me 500,000 lei, we agreed whether to go to court or to the rabbi. If one agreed to go to the rabbi, there was no further discussion. If the rabbi said it's white, it was white, there was no room for appeal, one had to obey the decision. Usually people turned to the rabbi with serious issues, and the rabbi normally had a very loyal attitude towards these problems. The son-in-law of the rabbi from Lapos was called Gross. He was the dayyan. After my mother got the hen slaughtered with the shochet, took it home and cut it up and found some deformation, she had to go to the dayyan. The dayyan examined it and decided whether it can be eaten or not. If he decided it was not good, it had to be thrown away. They were very decent, though: if a poor man went to him and there was something wrong with his hen, the dayyan knew how many children the family had, he told him: 'Cut this out, throw it away and eat the rest.
Period
Location
Magyarlapos
Romania
Interview
Bernat Sauber