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Jewish autonomy denotes the self-government of Jewish communities existing in non-Jewish contexts in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and early modern period. Autonomy implies the authorities' recognition of the special religious, legal, organizational, social, and cultural status of the Jews. During the Middle Ages and early modern period, it was granted to Jewish communities by territorial rulers and protectorates in order to secure payment of duties demanded in return. The "holy" Jewish communities ( kehillah kedoshah) felt autonomy to be desirable because it made possi…

The three-volume Hebrew study  Zikhron Ya’akov (Memory of Jacob) published between 1924 and 1930 is a polemic-apologetic work on the history of the Jews in the Czarist Empire. Its author, the ultra-Orthodox Ya’akov Lipschitz (1838–1921) from Kaunas, saw it as offering a religious alternative to modern secular historiography. In this respect, his work is part of the consolidation process experienced by Orthodox Jewry in Eastern Europe.1. Zikhron Ya’akovIn premodern Judaism, history was considered a pursuit useful at best when studying the Halakhah, or acceptab…

From 1788 to 1792 the parliament of nobles of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth met continuously in Warsaw, in order to enact fundamental political and economic reform. Known as the Four-Year Sejm (Pol.; Sejm Czteroletni) or the Great Sejm (Pol.; Sejm Wielki), the congress adopted the first modern constitution in Europe on May 3, 1791. Although the legal status of Jews played a rather minor role in the sessions, and was not affected by the constitution, nevertheless the Four-Year Sejm constitutes a cesura in the history of Jews in…

Already in the Bible, the Hebrew word kahal refers to a gathering in general or to an assembly of Israelites specifically. In the Middle Ages and early modern period, in the Diaspora communities in Ashkenaz it served to denote the administration and council of the community, as well as the Jewish community itself. Generally speaking, the kahal was the leading institution of the kehillah, the community. As such a body of Jewish self-government, the kahal was integrated into the political, legal, and social systems of the European system of estates. With the …