Description

One intriguing register for considering continuities and changes in Jewish life in the early eighteenth century is the constitution of the autonomous Jewish community, or kehillah. This institution of Jewish self-government was formed at the nexus of the imposition of governments, on the one hand, and Jewish collective investment in the legitimacy and utility of this form of association, on the other..

Although Jewish communal leadership appears to have been determined by elections in the earlier centuries of this period, by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an increasing trend towards permanent ruling oligarchies can be discerned. A standing patriciate is in evidence in Frankfurt by the 1620s, and Prague, while it maintained a contentious partisan structure throughout the seventeenth century, succumbed to a permanent oligarchy in 1703.

The following document represents the decisive moment (on November 10, 1703), when Emperor Leopold decreed an end to Jewish democracy in Prague, and replaced it with a standing governing body. Of particular note are a number of salient themes, including the relationship between royal/imperial fiat and Jewish self-government, the function of the kehilla as a tax-farming entity as the critical basis for its legitimacy in the eyes of the state, royal awareness of factionalism and strife among Jews, and, subtly but importantly, efforts by the Habsburg monarchy to bring Jewish administration into line with other denizens of the realm.

Start Date

17-8-2015 12:00 AM

Location

Ohio State University, Columbus

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Aug 17th, 12:00 AM

The End of Jewish Democracy in 18th Century Prague

Ohio State University, Columbus

One intriguing register for considering continuities and changes in Jewish life in the early eighteenth century is the constitution of the autonomous Jewish community, or kehillah. This institution of Jewish self-government was formed at the nexus of the imposition of governments, on the one hand, and Jewish collective investment in the legitimacy and utility of this form of association, on the other..

Although Jewish communal leadership appears to have been determined by elections in the earlier centuries of this period, by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an increasing trend towards permanent ruling oligarchies can be discerned. A standing patriciate is in evidence in Frankfurt by the 1620s, and Prague, while it maintained a contentious partisan structure throughout the seventeenth century, succumbed to a permanent oligarchy in 1703.

The following document represents the decisive moment (on November 10, 1703), when Emperor Leopold decreed an end to Jewish democracy in Prague, and replaced it with a standing governing body. Of particular note are a number of salient themes, including the relationship between royal/imperial fiat and Jewish self-government, the function of the kehilla as a tax-farming entity as the critical basis for its legitimacy in the eyes of the state, royal awareness of factionalism and strife among Jews, and, subtly but importantly, efforts by the Habsburg monarchy to bring Jewish administration into line with other denizens of the realm.