The kahal—how a community was governed קהל

The word means simply 'assembly'. Behind it stands an arrangement for which Jews in Christian Europe had no parallel: the community governed itself, and the state dealt with it as a whole.

Who. Elected elders—rashim, usually four—and the honoured, tuvim, three to five; with them the rabbi, the dayanim, the gabbaim, collectors, a scribe.

What they could do. Assess taxes: the state took a lump sum from the community, and how to raise it from individuals the community decided. Judge: its own beit din heard almost all cases, religious and secular, by Jewish law. Issue ordinances—takkanot—on trade, prices, luxury, education, the reception of newcomers, the relations of employer and worker. And compel—by the herem: excommunication, which in a close community meant more than any fine.

Above the communities. In Poland this grew into the Council of Four Lands: Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Galicia with Podolia, and Volhynia. Its first known ordinance is of 1580; it met once or twice a year, at Lublin and Jarosław, with some seventy delegates. It did the same things for a whole country: assessment, courts, legislation and representation before the crown. In 1764 the Sejm abolished it—chiefly over unremitted taxes.

The end. In the Russian Empire the kahal was abolished in 1844; it survived only in the Baltic provinces. After that the community kept matters of religion, charity and in part education, while courts, taxes and coercion passed to the state.

This is to be understood without sentimentality and without indictment. Self-government meant both protection and power—with everything power brings: quarrels over who pays less, suits over offices, abuses by collectors. Complaints about these survive, and ordinances against them.