Community-based guarantorship systems replaced direct hierarchical supervision at Bezalel

Evidence

Bezalel’s method of preventing theft in the silver department was simple: the first two workers who were admitted swore on an ancient Torah of the Bezalel museum to be loyal to the school. Subsequent employees were not recruited directly; whenever more people were required the Yemenite workers would have chosen them from their own community “and all are guarantors for each other.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 586

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to law-merchant literature on reputation-based enforcement within closed communities (Milgrom, Richman). — connects to: Community-run micro-interventions may outperform government CVE programs — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 218
• QUESTION: Worth checking whether this Yemenite mutual-guarantee system predates or parallels the diamond trade’s group-screening mechanisms.