Jewish Religious Leadership

Image and Reality

Edited by Jack Wertheimer

Volume I

eJTSThe Jewish ~g ~ Theo.logical

Semmary

These volumes have been published with support from the Ostow Family Fund.

© Copyright 2004, by The Jewish Theological Seminary of America

ISBN: Volume One: 0-87334-097-3 Volume Two: 0-87334-098-1

Set: 0-87334-009-X

Printing and Binding by G & H Soho Inc.

Contributors Foreword

Jack Wertheimer

I. Biblical Models

Contents

Volume I ix

xvii

Who May Rule the People of God? Contradictions of Leadership in the Hebrew Bible

Stephen A. Geller 3 The Man Moses, the Leader Moses

Stephen Garfinkel 17 Women at War:

Gender and Leadership in Biblical and Post-Biblical Literature Adele Reinhartz 35

II. In the Ancient World A Leader with Vision in the Ancient Jewish Diaspora:

Philo of Alexandria Ellen Birnbaum 57

Hillel and the Soldiers of Herod: Sage and Sovereign in Ancient Jewish Society

Richard Kalmin 91 Authority and Anxiety in the Talmuds:

From Legal Fiction to Legal Fact Christine Hayes 127

Big-Men or Chiefs: Against an Institutional History

of the Palestinian Patriarchate Seth Schwartz 155

III. In the Orbit ofIslam Religious Leadership in Islamic Lands:

Forms of Leadership and Sources of Authority Menahem Ben-Sasson 177

Karaite Leadership in Times of Crisis Daniel J. Lasker 211

v

370 Stefanie B. Siegmund lColon in Mantua, or a traveling mohellike Yehiel Nissim, whether

to Dorina of Empoli for maHot, or to an older sister or aunt or neighbor for a ~uestion about the preparation of a food or the words of a song. 8 But for all that, membership in these less easily identified communities did not require the guidance, support, or even existence of local, official, appointed, or elected leaders. There were quite a few people willing and able to lead-to lead services in the chapels they set up in their homes, to take the lead in making

charitable donations. The absence of institutionally recognized leaders, therefore, does

not suggest that there were not Jewish communities. So toO, the use and appropriation of the term rash or capo should not mislead us into a facile identification of that man as a leader, or into the assumption that the Jews who lived in that city or town or region felt themselves to be a local community. And while the nature of reli­gious leadership of individuals who did make names for themselves may remain the more important topic of this volume, the leadership of more ordinary people also begs to be studied.

98. See Sered, Women as Ritual Experts.

I Rabbis Without a Function? I The Polish Rabbinate and the Council of Four Lands

in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth CenturiesI

I Adam Teller

I I

There can be little doubt that the rabbinate was one of the cen­tral institutions of Jewish society for a great deal of its history.

However, despite their importance for the religious and intellectual development of Jewish life, rabbis have not always assumed social (as opposed to spiritual) leadership roles, often leaving these to prominent Jewish lay figures.! Moreover, tension between the rab­binical and lay leadership has been significant, particularly in Ash­kenazic Jewish life, almost from the earliest days of community development in Europe. The development of a lay leadership in the medieval community was based on the halachic innovations adopted by leading Ashkenazic scholars to underpin community administra­tion-particularly granting the communal leadership the status of a court.2 On the other hand, the halachic foundations of community

The initial research for this paper was conducted during my period as an E. E. Urbach Fellow of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. The final ver­sion was completed during my period as the Nancy and Laurence Glick Fellow at the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. I should like to thank both institutions fur their support. This study forms part of a broader project dealing with the history of the Polish-Lithuanian rabbin­ate in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Many of the conclusions I adum­brate here will be presented more fully when I conclude that project. I should like to thank Dr. Rahel Manekin and Dr. Kenneth Moss for their helpful com­ments on the text of this paper.

1. Perhaps the best short overview of the history of the rabbinate as a social insti­tution is that of S. Schwarzfuchs, A Concise History of the Rabbinate (Cam­bridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993). On the rabbinate in Poland, the best study is still S. Assaf, On the History of the Rabbinate (in Ashkenaz, Poland, and Lithuania (Hebrew) Uerusalem: n.p., 1927).

2. M. Elon, "Ways of Halachic Creativityln Solving Social and Legal Problems in

371

372 373 Adam Teller Rabbis Without a Function?

life also posited the assent of an "important individual" or scholar,3 which would be necessary to validate the lay leaders' decisions. Though ideally lay leaders and the rabbi were meant co cooperate, in practice the twO were often in competition, with one or the other

4 usurping de facto control of the communal leadership. For exam­ple, after a period of rabbinic domination of communal life follow­ing the Black Death, a period of rabbinic decline has been identified by Breuer and Yuval in the fifteenth century. They argue that its roots are to be sought in the rise of a self-confident lay leadership and the general crisis which overcame German Jewry with the wave s of expulsions which marked the end of the Middle Ages.

The concentration of Ashkenazic Jewish life in Poland beginning in the sixteenth century led to a whole string of new developments and changes in communal life (among other spheres) which left their mark on rabbinic-lay relations.6 On the back of an impressive wave of demographic expansion among Polish Jewry, community sizes began to grow, and new communities were founded. Polish Jews enjoyed a much greater range of economic activities than had their ancestors in medieval Germany and soon found themselves an inte­gral part of the economic life of the cities where they lived. of par­ticular importance here were the economic roles they filled in the service of the Polish nobility, particularly the highest rank of mag­nates. The Jews' increased wealth gave them added importance as taxpayers on both the national and local levels. Organizations of

the Community" (Hebrew), Zion 44 (1979): 241-64; S. Morell, "The Consti­tutional Limits of Communal Government in Rabbinic Law," jewish Social

Studies 33 (1971): 87-119. 3. M. E10n, Jewish Law: Its History, Sources, and Principles, vol. 2 (Hebrew)

(Jerusalem: Magnes, 1973), 607-14. 4. Schwarzfuchs, Concise History, 5-26; M. Breuer, The Ashkenazic Rabbinate

(Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 1976), 9-31. 5. M. Breuer, "The Status of the Rabbinate in Communal Leadership in Fifteenth­

century Ashkenaz" (Hebrew), Zion 41 (1976): 47-67; Y. Yuval, Sages in Their

Time: The SpiritllQl Leadership of German jewry in the Late Middle Ages

(Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988),361-435. 6. Much research has been done on these issues in recent years. See E. Fram, Ide­

als Face Reality: jewish Law and Life in Poland, 1550-1655 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1997); M. Rosman, "The Jews of Poland to 1648: Political, Economic, and Social Trends" (Hebrew), in The Broken Chain: Pol­

ish Jewry through the Ages, vol. 1, cd. 1. Hartal and 1. Gubman (Jerusalem:

Merkaz Shazat, 1997),59-82.

Jewish communities were founded in order to negotiate with the var­ious Polish authorities about the size of the Jews' tax burden; in 1580, a national Jewish Council, the Council of Four Lands, came into being to help defray the new poll tax to be imposed on the Jews. It was a striking consequence of this array of socio-economic re­organization that the lay leadership gained a great deal of strength, while the rabbis' status deteriorated. By the end of the sixteenth cen­tury, the community rabbi was a salaried communal official, hired and fired at will by the lay leadership.? Even though his signature still seems to have been a formal requirement to give communal reg­ulations binding force, in practice even this rabbinic function seems to have fallen largely into abeyance. 8

On the other hand, the Polish rabbinate remained a highly pres­tigious and sought-after post. Leading families were willing to invest a great deal of time and effort to purchase posts for family mem­bers.9 Community rabbis continued to play important roles in Jew­ish public life, both on the communal level as presidents of local rabbinic courts and on the supra-communal level as participants in the regional and national councils. There they dealt not only with issues of obviolls religious significance, such as the rise of the Frank­isr and Hasidic movements, but also with more mundane matters connected with the day-to-day running of Jewish life in the social and economic spheres. 10 Obviously, therefore, any attempt to por­tray the status of the rabhinate in early modern Poland in black and white terms is doomed to failure, since the leadership roles played by rabbis in Jewish society were multifaceted and often ambiguous.

It is my intention here to examine some aspects of the interplay between rabbis and lay leaders in Polish Jewish society from the six­teenth to the eighteenth centuries. The importance of the discussion lies in two interconnected spheres. The first is political and deals with the sources of authority in Polish Jewish society. The second is cultural and relates to the importance Polish Jews attached to schol­

7. Y. Katz, Tradition and Crisis (Hebrew) (jeflIsalem: Massad Bialik, 1958): 107­11.

8. It is a striking phenomenon in all the surviving community pinqassim of this period that the rabbi's signature is almost never found after the community reg­ulations.

9. See: Assaf, History of the Ra!J/Jinate, 8-28.

10. H. Ben-Sasson, Philosophy and Leadership: The Social Thought of Polish .Jews

i/1 the Late Middle Ages (Hebrew) (Jeru"Salem: Mossad Bialik, 1959): 160-93.

374

--1

Adam Teller

arship and especially scholars. Linking the two issues is the figure of the rabbi himself. In theory, the rabbi was the embodiment of Jewish scholarship, ordained by a teacher after years of study. His authority within his community was based on his scholarship, which enabled him both to rule on questions of religious significance and to attract his own students.11 Hence the status granted to scholars in commu­nal leadership may be seen as a function of scholarship and its importance, not to say authority, in Jewish society. Thus by examin­ing the relationship between rabbis and lay leaders, it should also be possible to draw some conclusions about the religious character of Polish Jewish society in general.

Since this is an extremely broad topic, I shall try to examine it through the prism of just one institution in Polish Jewish society, the Council of Four Lands. The Council was widely regarded (both inside and outside Poland) as being of central importance in Jewish life, so that its relations with the rabbinate may be seen as an impor­tant test case for understanding rabbinic status in early modern Poland in general. 12 Though concentrating on this one institution involves the analysis of only social elites, both lay and rabbinic, the relationships which such a study reveals provide a model for under­standing the situation on the level of the local community.

As noted above, the Council of Four Lands was founded in 1580, when the representatives of the four major regions of Jewish settlement in Poland at that time (Great Poland, Little Poland, Red Ruthenia, and Volhyn) banded together to farm the new Jewish poll

11. See Katz, Tradition and Crisis, 195-200. 12. Surprisingly little has been written on the history of the Council. See M. Schorr,

Organizacja Zydow w dawnej Polsce od najdawniejszych czasow at do r. 1772 (Lw6w: Naktadem Wtasnym, 1899), 59-80; J. Goldberg, "The Jewish Sejm: Its Origins and Functions", in The Jews in Old Poland, 1000-1795, ed. A. Polonsky et aJ. (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), 147--65; S. Ettinger, "The Council of the Four Lands", in ibid., 93-109; A. Leszczynski, Sejm Zydow Korony, 1623-1764 (Warsaw: Zydowski Instytut Historyczny, 1994), 101-84; I. Halp­erin, Jews and Judaism in Eastern Europe (Hebrew) Uerusalem: Magnes, 1969),39-107; H. Ben-Sasson, "The Councils of the Lands in Eastern Europe" (Hebrew), in Broken Chain, ed. Bartal and Gutman, 1: 145-60; M. Rosman, "The Authority of the Council of Four Lands outside Poland" (Hebrew), Bar­Ilan, The Annual of Bar-Ilan University, Jewish Studies and the Humanities 24-25 (1989): 11-30; S. Cygielman, "The Jews' Involvement in Leasing and Its Connection with the Foundation of the Council of Four Lands" (Hebrew),

Zion 47 (1982): 112-44.

I Rabbis Without a Function? 375

I tax instituted in that year. Though the Council never received official recognition in the form of a founding privilege or document of anyI kind, it was recognized de facto by the Polish treasury as the body responsible for the division of the Jewish poll tax burden among the various communities, even after the elders themselves had ceased farming it. On the basis of this recognition, the Council began to meet regularly and even to legislate on social and economic issues which affected Polish Jewry as a whole. 13

Though this was undoubtedly a lay body, rabbis seem to have been involved in its running, directly and indirectly, throughout its long history (it was abolished in 1764). While the nature of this involvement has not yet been fully clarified, the following may per­haps represent the best expression of the present state of research:

Serving both as an appellate court and as a legislative body, the Council of Four Lands was, as it were, a bicameral insti­tution with a (lay) parliament and a (rabbinic) tribunal. The two houses worked closely together, with the parliament sug­gesting issues which were framed into legislation in accor­dance with rabbinic law by the tribunal and then executed by the parliament. 14

Like the sources on which it is based (see below), this short and rather idyllic description seems a somewhat idealized picture of the historical reality. However, reexamination of these and other sources should make it possible to reach a rather more nuanced understand­ing of the fluctuating and sometimes ambiguous relations between rabbis and lay leaders within the Council over the 184 years of its existence.

13. Cygielman, "Jews' Involvement," clearly appreciated this fact, though he attempted to read into the sources a formal agreement between Jews and nobil ­ity over the question of farming the tax. He claimed that it was this agreement which led to the foundation of the Council and its ability to farm the poll tax. Unfortunately, the sources do not support his reading.

14. G. Hundert, "On the Jewish Community in Poland during the Seventeenth Century: Some Comparative Perspectives," Revue des Etudes Juives 142 (1983): 349-72, esp. 353-54. Cf. "The Love of Learning among Polish Jews," in Judaism in Practice from the Middle Ages through the Early Modem Period, ed. L. Fine (princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 219-20. Here Hun­dert adds, "Both 'chambers' performed judicial functions, acting as appellate courts for Polish Jewry."

377

I Adam Teller376

Only two contemporary sources describing the rabbis' role in the Council are extant, and their authors were neither rabbis nor Coun­cil members. The first was written by Nathan Neta Hannover in 1652 as part of his elegy for Jewish life in the wake of the Chmielnicki massacres. 15 He includes it in his description of Jewish life before the massacres, perhaps surprisingly, in the section entitled "The Pillar of Justice," thus indicating that in his view the primary function of the Council was to administer justice. After describing the wide availability of Jewish courts throughout Poland, he goes on: "If two important communities had a dispute between them, they would let themselves be judged by the heads of the Council of Four Lands .,. who would be in session twice a year. One leader would be chosen from each important community; added to these were six great scholars from the Land of Poland, and these were known as the Council of Four Lands." He describes the Council as akin to the Sanhedrin, with "the authority to judge all Israel in the Kingdom of Poland, to establish safeguards, to institute ordinances, and to punish each man as they saw fit.,,16

This description is problematic in a number of ways. First of all, it privileges the Council's role as court above its undoubtedly more important fiscal role in this period as lessee of the Jews' poll tax. Beyond that, though the description of the Court is borne out by other sources, the account of the Council's jurisdiction is not accu­rate. While the Council did have a legislative role in Polish Jewish life, its regulations had no authority of their own and had to be accepted by each local community before they were binding on indi­vidual Jews. Finally, the description of the Council's composition is at variance with the other sources. Far from being composed solely of leaders from the great communities, together with six rabbis, the Council was made up of representatives sent from the various regions of Poland. Each region was called in Hebrew, medinah "state," galil "region," or ere~ "land," and it was from the meetings of representatives from these four regions that the Council received its name. The question of separate representation for the great com­

15. Abyss of Despair, trans. A. Mesch (New York: Bloch, 1950, originally pub­lished as Natan Neta Hannover, Sefer Yavein Me~ulah (Jerusalem: Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Meuchad, 1966).

16. "OllU ... M1lriNOl Y::IiN' C'lm!) ']!); 11'; 1'::l7101 OTT CY OTT c']',n~ M1;'OlJ' "IVNi ']lU OK'

o'mu OllUlU 0;'; ,lJiY' ,nN OlilJ ;";'1';' "lVNi '::I~ 1n' yr::li'::1 mlU::I O'1'YlJ '::I O'JlU"

m::l'~::IlU 7Nilll' 7::1 U'l!J1Il7 nJ 0;'; ;,'m ... n1YiNOl YJiN O'Nip] 001 om 1'7'lJ YiN~ COl']'Y mNi '07 OiN lIl']Y7' mll'n lpn;, i11 i'117' 1'7'lJ, 90-91; Abyss, 119-20.

! Rabbis Without a Function?

I munities in each region (Poznan in Great Poland, Krakow in Little Poland, and Lwow in Ruthenia) was a source of contention within I the regions, with each one adopting a different policy.17 In addition,

I as may be seen from the signatories of the various Council docu­ments which have survived, there was no stable rabbinical represen­I tation on the Council before 1648. 18

The problematics of Hannover's description raise the question as to how it was that he presented such an inaccurate picture. While there can be no conclusive answer to this question, there do seem to be a number of possibilities which might explain his approach. The first is concerned with the genre and literary structure of the text itself. The author may have been less concerned with the accuracy of his description than with portraying the institution in the way he felt would bring most honor to the suffering Jews of Poland. Beyond this, the problems with the description may also have been caused by ignorance: Hannover was from a mercantile family in Zaslaw in the Ukraine, and though we know that he had traveled for a time, making money as a preacher, there is no evidence that he ever took part in one of the Council meetings. 19 His description may simply have been the result of hearsay and invention. Be that as it may, Hannover's text is clearly not a good source for understanding the structure and functioning of the Council, not to mention the rabbis' role within it.20

The second description of the Council's activity was written by the memoirist Dov Ber Birkenthal of Bolechow more than a genera­tion after the Council was abolished and seems a little less problem­atic than Hannover's.21 In the section where he describes the

17. See Ben-Sasson, "Councils of the Lands," 145-48. 18. Fram, Ideals Face Reality, 43-44.

19. On Hannover, sec Y. Izraelson, "Natan-Neta Hannover: His Life and Literary Activity" (Yiddish), YIVO Historical Papers I (1929): 1-26.

20. For a critique of another aspect of Hannover's book, see E. Fram, "Creating a Tale of Martyrdom in TuJczyn, 1648," in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerusahalmi, cd. E. Carlebach, J. Efron, and D. Myers (Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 1998),89-112.

21. Zikharonot R. Dov of Bolechov (Hebrew), ed. M. Vishnitzer (Berlin: Klal, 1922); The Memoirs of Ber of Rolechow (1723-1805), trans. M. Vishnil7.er (London: Oxford University Press, 1922). 1have here generally followed Vish­nitzer's translation bllt allowed myself a little freedom in the choice of expres­sion. On the source see 1. Harta I, "Dov of Bolechow: A Diarist of the Council of Four Lands in the Eighteenth Centmy," Polin 9 (1996): 187-91.

379

~

378 Adam Teller Rabbis Without a Function?

changes which the 1764 accession of King Stanislaw August brought the Jewish community (most importantly, the reorganization of the Jewish poll tax), he mentions the fact that the Council of Four Lands was abolished in that year. He writes:

The Elders of Four Lands used to convoke deputies elected in all the communities of the four Polish provinces and ,.. appoint wise men ... to estimate the capacity of each com­munity to pay taxes. Great Rabbis also conferred with them in order to draw up regulations in accordance with Jewish law ... [which] were accepted by the communities like the Torah, and were called "The Books of Regulations of the Four Lands." I saw these books printed when I was still a child. The Rabbis-Judges always sat [in judgment] in their court beside the Elders and Leaders of Four Lands. Every important legal affair in the communities of Poland was brought before this rabbinical High Court. This wise institu­tion [i.e. the Council] ... lasted for 800 years or more.

Birkenthal concludes that the Council had been for Polish Jewry" ... a measure of redemption and a little honor," given by God's grace.22

Birkenthal's description chimes much better with the reconstruc­tion that can be made from the other available sources. He empha­sizes the fiscal role of the Council, accurately noting that it no longer farmed the poll tax but simply divided it among the various commu­nities. He mentions the rabbinical high court which sat alongside the Council to try matters of "great legal importance," though he does not define what they might have been. Beyond that, he states that the "Great Rabbis" (again undefined) conferred with the Council to make regulations, which would have force of law for all the Jews of Poland. Here there seems to be a basis of truth in what he says, though he may have exaggerated the Council's jurisdiction. There is

22. ilY:::J'X:I1U I;>x,lU" ml;>ilp I;>:m O,"I;>,IU~ O'WlX O'oolUJ 1'i1 ml"~ "lUX'il O'!)1I;>Xi11 O'l:::J' Ol' ,I;>X'IU' ml;>ilp 1;>:> ':>"Y'lU O'Y"" o~:>n O'lUJX OilO o."n:::JJ ,..." .Try,!) miC'X ,1;>:::Jpm, ... I;>x,lU' 'tJ!)lU~ 1'0Y:::J Ol O."IU' o'l"n 1lUY'W ,o"~Y O'!XlX~ "., O,l;>,'l O'J'Xl 0.,,00 'm,I;>':l 'n'x" .mlC'X m~,n .,,00 omx 0'/('" ,..." ,il,m:> I;>x,IU' 'J:::J my I;>:>~

'lC:::J OD!)IU~ o,,~ 'Y:::Jp' nplC'x :l7:::J'X' O'J"1il O'D'il ,~n 'DIU" .O'D!),J ,I;>x 1'l;>,!) ml;>.,p 1;>:l:::J lUmn'W I;>m D!)IU~ ,:::J, 1;>:> il'i1' .n1lC'X ." O'lUX, ,0,!),l;>xil nxt il'i1' "m" ilJlU mx~ ill1~lU llU~ I;>x,lU' myI;> O':::J'Dil .,I;>x O')ilm ,'i11 .0il,l;>y 'X:::J' .',:::J:> DY~' ml1' ill;>,xll;>x,IU' 'J:::JI;> Zikkaronot R. Dov, 88; Memoirs of Bel' of Bolechow, 143-44.

no evidence of the Council's rulings having been printed, and they were certainly never viewed in the same light as the halachic litera­ture studied in the yeshivot. Finally, Birkenthal's genealogy of the Council is clearly mistaken. All the evidence points to its having been founded in 1580, making it a "mere" 184 years old at its disso­lution. This seems a clear example of Birkenthal allowing his con­cept of "Jewish honor" to color the way he described this central Jewish institution.

Thus in order to understand the way the Council functioned in the historical reality of its day, and particularly to understand the relations between the lay and rabbinic leaders within it, it would seem to be more valuable to examine sources drawn from among the working papers of the Council itself. This is not as easy as it sounds, since the original pinqas which contained all the Council's rulings has been lost. In 1945, Israel Halperin published what he called Pin­qas va'ad arba' ara$ot, but the title is misleading.23 The work con­tains every fragment of information concerning the Council and its functioning which he could find in any possible source; he saw their publication in a single volume as an attempt to reconstruct the origi­nal Pinqas. There are three main sources of documents in the book: regulations in local pinqassim copied from the Council's pinqas, materials published in rabbinical texts, and documents drawn from non-Jewish archives.

24 It should be noted that though Halperin's

knowledge of the pinqassim and Polish rabbinic literature was pro­digious, he had pnly limited access to non-Jewish archives-particu­larly bearing in mind that he was working on the volume in Jerusalem in the late 1930s and early 1940s! In addition, as a part of his attempt to reconstruct the Council's activities from such frag­mentary evidence, Halperin adopted quite a liberal editorial policy, including many documents which shed light on the nationwide activities of Polish Jewry even when, strictly speaking, they were not issued by the Council itself.

This problem is particularly evident where Halperin includes in

23. Pinqos vo'od 'orbo' oro~ot: Likkutei tokkonot, ketovim ve-reshumot (PVDA), ed. I. Halperin (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1945). In 1991, I. Banal issued a slightly revised edition of the body of this work, intended as the first part of a multi-volume publication of an exp:mded collection of sources. Unfortunately, the other volumes have yet to appear.

24. On Halperin's publication of the Pinqos, see I. Barral, "The Pinkas of the Council of the Four Lands," in The .Jews in Old Poland, 110-18.

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380 Adam Teller Rabbis Without a Function?

his version of the pinqas documents dealing with the activities of what Hannover and Birkenthal describe as the rabbinical High Court. In fact, there is evidence that a rabbinical court of Jewish luminaries from all over Poland had met sporadically at the great fair of Lublin for decades before the Council's foundation. More­over, it would seem that this court continued to function quite sepa­rately from the Council in the early years of the latter's existence.25

Halperin argues that the court was in some way a forerunner of the Council, usin~ its existence to date the founding of the Council to before 1580. 6 However, this argument is based on an unstated premise: namely, that the Council's primary function was within Pol­ish Jewish society and that its financial function vis-a-vis the Polish treasury was secondary to that. This supposition, however, ignores the fact that it was only the Council's financial function, which began with the Jews' leasing the new poll tax in 1580, and the de facto recognition which this function brought from the Polish authorities, that gave the Council its authority over Polish Jewry­an authority lacked by the previous rabbinical courts.

In fact, examination of the extant documentation from the period 1580-1648 reveals that the long-established rabbinical court was not very active in intercommunal affairs in that period either. Rabbis from all over Poland still traveled to the great fairs, some to do business and others to attract students to their yeshivot (and also perhaps to purchase books imported from abroad);27 while there, they continued to sit as a rabbinical court to deal with issues either arising from the fair itself or brought before them by visitors. These leading rabbinical judges were referred to in documents as the "Geniuses" or "Wise Men" and "Heads of Yeshivot of the Polish state,,;28 as far as the Polish communities were concerned, they dealt with just a few cases arising from boundary disputes between rival

25. Fram, Ideals Face Reality, 43-44. 26. Halperin, Jews and Judaism, 39-45. 27. Hannover, Sefer Yavein Me~uIah, 86-87; PVDA, 24-25 no. 78. On the prob­

lems involved with the import of books see ibid., 7 no. 17, 17 no. 55; perhaps

also 458 no. 466. No. 40 on p. 14 describes "many packages of decrees and writings" concerning a divorce case received at the Lublin fair by Rabbi Meir of Lublin.

28. PVDA, 30 no. 90, 61 no. 174, 62-65 no. 178, 453-54 no. 457, 454-55 no. 459.

29 communities. Nonetheless, there is no evidence that, in the period following the Council's foundation, they formed an elected Or cho­sen group, representative in any way of the Four Lands. Moreover, the Council itself had its own judicial body, "The Judges of the Lands," who were chosen by the various provinces bUt do not seem to have been community rabbis.30

The only hint that remains of an elected rabbinic body is from the approbation given to the prayer book of Shabtai Sofer in 1618. It reads, "During the spring fair of 1610, chosen individuals from among the Wise Men [i.e. rabbis] sat with the Leaders of the Lands and ruled that each community should check one prayer book from which the Cantor will pray and then should order that each house­holder check his prayer hook against that one. ,,31 The issue was the important one of ensuring that prayers were said accurately and according to accepted custom. Though this was an issue which occu­pied the rabbis, it is noteworthy that they did not legislate on their Own authority, preferring to rely on the lay leadership. The language used to express the "choice" of the rabbinic figures is not clear: "chosen individuals from among the Wise Men" might indeed refer to some kind of elections or appointments made by the individual

29. PVDA, 30 no. 90,36-37 no. 101. No. 109 on pp. 41--42 is a ruling concerning the division of expenses between Poland and Lithuania made by a court con­sisting of two Polish rabbis and one Lithuanian. Cf. also 60 no. 169.

30. "m:ll'Xil 'J"""; see PVDA, 9-10 110. 29. This did not mean that they could not

be important rabbinic figures. At least two of those elected to be judges in this year headed their own yeshivot, while others were authors of rabbinic works. l'VDA, 33-34 no. 95, brings a ruling by the Judges of the Lands concerning brokerage fees. The docuIllenr contains no mention of the rabbinic authority or status of the judges. Their names, too, do not appear, which seems another sign that they were not prominent figures. It should also be noted that the vast majority of the judges serving in the community courts were educated laymen.

It was the rabbi's job, as President of the Rabbinical Court, to head the first such court. However, he sat in judgment with judges elected by the community; the lower community courts were staffed entirely by elected laymen. In Krakow, the community courts were composed entirely of lay judges. See M. Balaban, "Die Krakauer Judengemeindeordnung von 1595 und ihre Nach­trage," Jahrbuch der Judisch-Literarischen Gesellschaft in Frankfurt a.M. 10 (1913): 315-17,323-24,331_33.

3 J. l'VDA, 34-35 no. 96: ~1"lr::l '''il 'IJ:mIJ tl"'1::lIJ 1!lOXnJW P"!l7 Y"W ,'X ""::l

n'::lil 7Y::l 7::>W 1"'::>'1 1::l 77!ln' llnilW ,nx ''''0 1,")' m7'ilp 7::>::lW 1Jpm '1J"IJil ~lVX' .''''Oil 1mX 1mIJ 17W ''''0 ,")' _

382 383 Adam Teller

regions; however, it might equally refer to the rabbis' having being chosen on an ad hoc basis by the lay leaders of the Council.

In other cases when rabbinical rulings were adopted by the Council, it indeed seems that the rabbis who made them either worked independently of it or were specially invited to deliberate on its behalf. There is no evidence of a stable, elected body. For exam­ple, the Council issued rabbinic regulations outlawing the purchase of rabbinical posts in 1587, 1590, 1597, and 1640.32 The 1590 rul­ing was signed by 30 of Poland's most important rabbis, who were designated in the Yiddish document simply as "thirty rabbis. ,,33 Twelve rabbis signed the 1597 decree without any official title, and the 1640 text states that the Volhynian rabbis who came with the proposal to renew the regulations sat with "many yeshiva deans who had met at the fair" and reached an agreement to do so.34 This is hardly the language of an officially recognized body, and it is diffi­cult to imagine that the rabbis (like other leaders) would have omit­ted an official title had they been able to use one.

In 1607, leading Polish rabbis met to discuss how to enable Jew­ish merchants in need of credit to borrow money, despite the Biblical prohibition against charging interest. These regulations, too, were adopted by the Council, and in his introduction to them, Rabbi Yehoshua Falk Hacohen described the events leading up to their for­mulation.35 The leaders of the Council, he wrote, concerned at the Jews' poor situation in Poland, felt that it was the result of religious infractions in the field of credit, among other things. "They decided to regulate [these matters] and chose Rabbis from the Great Com­munities to make the regulations ... with each Council leader com­mitting himself to ensure that in his province all the regulations

32. PVDA, 62-65 no. 118. The original documents from 1587, 1590, and 1597 have not survived. Like many Polish documents of this sort, the later version

mentions and quotes all its predecessors. 33. Ibid., 62. After the text of the /:1erem, the text reads n~nm p"'l 'I"'" I\l

.0':01 O'lVW 34. Ibid., 64. The text reads: i1::J1i1 P"~' 'n nllll ::J'01Y' ,,,, i1~ nny,mi1::J m'i1::J'

1''1' 1"101 'J"~ W r'lf' '''Ji1 n1::J'lV' 'lVN1~ Ol O~Y onN r'lf' Oi1'~,n r'lf' m::J'lV' 'lVN1

0':lC~ ,nN i1~ l'::JNi1 'J'N T'N !''O '1'0 'Y'l lUN'~ '''Ji1 PP'n 1'N T' l"J'~,) 1't l'::JNi1

.1'lY"'l 1pM l'::JNi1 ''J'~'P N" TN" ?:Ip;' O",?" 1lUN' l'lYWl 35. The regulations themselves are published in PVDA, 16-23 nos. 43-75. The

introduction was published by Ben-Sasson, Philosophy and Leadership, 259­

61.

Rabbis Without a Function?

would be kept.,,36 Once again, Falk was not describing an official body functioning within or alongside the Council, but an ad hoc committee, summoned by the lay leaders, who even had to make special provisions to give its regulations force on the ground.

Of course, these sources do not rule out the possibility that rab­bis did sit as part of the Council in a purely honorary capacity with­out any jurisdictional power. This seems unlikely, however, in light of a letter written to the Council elders by aBrominent rabbi of the early seventeenth century, Rabbi Yoel Sirkes. This letter complains very sharply that the Council's lay leaders had dared to impose a berem which could affect members of all the communities in Poland. Sirkes writes: "Who gave you permission to issue a general /:;erem without the agreement of the great wise men [i.e. the leading rab­bis]? Even though you are elected delegates from all the communities in the Kingdom, your berem may be quite worthless. ,,38 He adds that since the Council had met in Lublin, the leaders should at least have consulted the local rabbi before making the ban. Had rabbis from the four lands been sitting on the council, even in an honorary capacity, it is unlikely that Sirkes would have complained about the validity of the berem-and he certainly would not have suggested consulting the rabbi of Lublin.

This letter is also evidence of conflict between the lay and the rabbinical leadership over jurisdictional powers, indicating that the elders had usurped from the rabbis the use of the berem.39 This was anathema to the rabbinic leadership, who viewed the right to impose the berem as their monopoly. There were a number of reasons for this: first, since the berem was a clearly religious punishment whose effects would continue to be felt in the next world, they felt that they were clearly the only authority competent to impose it. In addition, the berem (or at least the threat of its imposition) was the rabbis' major source of authority within Jewish society; once it was ceded to

36. 'il',Y,,::Ji"'" P"'l "'l'1 '~1ll~'lU ""'li1 m'i1i'~ 0'J::J1 '1n:J' 1'l 1'l' '1ON p::J

·lpW'lUN ':J ~"'lll ,"'::Jl::J 'N ':J ,'~':J'lll r'lf' mJ"~i1 'lllN1 ibid., 259-60. 37. The letter was originally published in the second volume of Sirkes's responsa (J.

Sirkes, Shut ha-bah ha-/Jadashot [Korzec, 1785), no. 43) and was reprinted by Halperin in PVDA, 42-45 no. 110. I here follow Halperin's edition.

38. O",::JJ onNlU ~'YN" ~:Jrm ',m 7.J:l0i1 ,,::J ",:l 77:li1 'Y 0'"lni1' O:l' ,'ni1 '7:)

.on~1tr.'T1V i1~ ':l::J !'Y~:llU~ )'Nlll 'lU~N 7Y'~ ,m:l'~::JlU m'i1pi1 ':l~ O-n'lllJ' ibid., 43.

39. The /:1erem was particularly important as it was the major sanction which the Jewish community could impose on t~nsgressors.

385 384 Adam Teller

the lay authorities, the rabbinate as a social institution would be severely weakened. This was the reason for Sirkes's anger at the lay leaders' temerity in imposing a I;erem on their own authority.

However, despite this letter, penned by one of Poland's leading rabbinic figures, later sources indicate that Sirkes's demand was not always heeded. Council elders continued to issue bans on their own authority alone. The notable ban on the Sabbatean heretics in 1672 is a case in point. It opens: "The Generals, Officers, Barons, Leaders of the Four Lands make announcement in this declaration that the great and terrible I;erem ... which was imposed during the Lublin fair of 1670 should include the criminals and ne'er-do-wells who form part of the Sabbatean sect.,,40 The text makes no mention of rabbis taking any part in the proceedings; even the four signatories to the I;erem are all lay leaders. Rabbis clearly had no place on the Council of Four Lands.

It would probably be wrong to argue simplistically that since the rabbis were unrepresented on the Council, their status must have been at a low ebb. This was not the case, at least as far as the prom­inent rabbis were concerned. The period from the 1580s to 1670 saw the flowering of Polish Jewish scholarship in the form of such rabbis as Mordechai Yaffe, Yehoshua Falk, Yael Sirkes, Yom Tov Lipman Heller, and David ben Shmuel, author of the Turei Zahav, all of whose works made a significant and lasting impact on Torah study.41 In fact, the immense personal prestige of these men may have led to no need being felt for an organized group of rabbis to

work with the Council on a regular basis, since they did not lack ways and means of influencing the social development of Polish Jewry in these years.

The major thrust of rabbinic creativity in Poland during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was in the composition and publication of codifications of the halacha. As many scholars, particularly Elhanan Reiner, have argued, this was a form of accom­

40. PVDA, 495-96 no. 539: 1""l Y'1W1'T1l7 n1ll'llil ')'ilJl) o'm'il O'J'llpil 0'.117Ilil

71lT 7"n f'J/)1l1)' T'7:n7:J 1"1l"') T'll 1Y:JY») WIl" ... 1l1'Jil' 7")il 01nn Til ,T11:Jil ilT:J

.W'/)' r'w m:J O'j1'Tn7jil o'p" '],Il O'YW,., " '1"1l 1'''1 7n 41. For a somewhat old-fashioned summary of the major figures involved, see M.

Shulvass, Jewish Culture in Eastern Europe: The Classical Period (New York: Ktav, 1975). More recently, see D. Assaf, "The World of Torah in Sixteenth­and Seventeenth-century Poland" (Hebrew), in The Broken Chain: Polish Jewr), thro<tgh the Ages, vol. 2, ed. 1. Bartal and I. Gutman (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 2001), 69-111.

Rabbis Without a Function?

modation with the printing revolution, then affecting European Jew­ish society.42 The wave of literature engulfing the Jewish world thanks to the printing press made it an urgent necessity to establish an authoritative halachic text which would act as a baseline for fol­lowing halacha in daily life. Though the Shull;an Arukh, written by the Sephardic Yosef Karo with the glosses on Ashkenazic Custom written by Moshe Isserles of Krakow, was eventually accepted as authoritative, this was not a foregone conclusion in the period under discussion here. Other leading rabbis, such as 5hlomo Luria and Mordechai Yaffe, produced their own codifications in quite different

43form from that of Isserles. Yaffe explains his motivation thus: "Afraid that I should be buried naked [Le. without good deeds], I decided ... to dress myself in a new garment and to cover my naked­ness, and that of each rabbi and religious functionary of my genera­tion who does not want to go naked.... I made this book for myself and my leneration, calling it in general, Levush malkhut [A royal robe).,,4 Yaffe's book, then, is a halachic compendium written by a leading rabbi with the goal of strengthening the control of ordi­nary rabbis over the daily life of the simple Jews living in the commull ities.

Another expression of rabbinic influence in these years was the traditional form of the rabbinic responsum, which saw a great flow­ering in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The responsum was usually a letter sent by one rabbi to another in which advice was sought in a case where a halachic ruling was not obvious.45 This meant that the situations described in the letter were ones with which the local rabbi, who sent the responsum, were unfamiliar. In the period of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which saw a whole series of radical changes in the Jews' social and eco­nomic lives, the range of unfamiliar situations which had to be dealt with was huge. It would seem that the leading rabbinic authorities were sought out by the local rabbis, who needed advice on issues

42. Elhanan Reiner, "The Ashkenazi Elite at the Beginning of the Modern Era: Manuscript versus Printed !look," Polin 10 (1997): 85-98,

43. See Shulvass, Jewish C..ltme, 46-70, 105-26.

44. R. Mordechai Yaffe, Serer lev/lsh tekhelet (Jerusalem, 1965), 3a: '1'111"' 1'(,'Il,

n7j'1ym ':J)Il, '/)'1Y7j mO:J7 'w,n '77jlV:J 'r-lllY nil W':l7il7 ... '7 :J'U 'mOll' 1:Jpll 0'1Y

'",Ol"l '7'):J 'WIl7' '? 'n'lVY' .. , lV1:J7 '7:J 0'111 17' Il;W pw,n;, '7')~ 1WIl :J1W, :J, 7:J ,m:J1m tll':J7 '77:J~ ,'nIl1p' mil

45. Ben-Sasson, Philosophy and teadership., 174-78,

386 Adam Teller Rabbis Without a Function? 387

ansmg out of the Jews' new social organizations and economic activity. Relations between the individual and the community as well as between established communities and newly founded satellite communities, trading partnerships between Jews and non-Jews, the granting of credit between Jews, and acceptable forms of competi­tion in business were all dealt with in this extensive literature. Though each responsum dealt with only a single case, once written it served as a legal precedent, influencing the course of Jewish life in that field for generations to come. In addition, with the advent of printing, once the responsa were published, they became available to rabbis and communities far distant from those for whom they were originally intended, giving their authors an enormous influence on Polish jewry's social and economic development.46

There may also have been another way in which prominent rab­bis could spread their influence far beyond their local community without the help of the Council. Though not a clearly documented phenomenon, there is some evidence to suggest that leading rabbis would compose sets of regulations dealing with important issues in order for them to be adopted by various communities and regional Jewish bodies. This seems to have been the case in 1607, when Rabbi Falk's formulation of regulations concerning the granting of mercantile interest between Jews was adopted by the Council. There may also have been another, earlier case where a leading rabbi for­mulated such regulations for adoption by various communities. The case in question is the set of regulations concerning the ways in which Jewish leaseholders (arendarze) should ensure that they observe the Sabbath while not harming their income to too great an extent.

These regulations were composed by Rabbi Meshullam Feivish of Krakow at the turn of the seventeenth century, though the exact date and circumstances of their composition remain a mystery, solu­tions to which have been proposed by a number of scholars.47 A

46. For a study of the way this literature dealt with the social and economic issues of the age, see Fram, Ideals Face Reality.

47. The regulations were first published by Isaiah Sonne, who found them in manuscript in the Rome Talmud Torah. They were reprinted by Halperin in PVDA, 483-88, no. 522, with a shorr discussion in which he casts doubt on their ascription to the Council. Ben-Sasson discusses them in an article on regu­lations for keeping the Sabbath. Finally, Feldman returns to them in order to solve the mystery of their composition. See I. Sonne, "The Regulation Forbid­ding Work on the Sabbath and Festivals Made by Rabbi Meshullam Feivish in

close reexamination of this text should not only solve the mystery of the text but help understand the spread of rabbinic influence in this period. The uncertainty about the text is aroused by the title and col­ophon given to it. The title states in clear Hebrew that these regula­tions were composed by Meshullam Feivish, Rabbi of Krakow; while the colophon, whose script and wording are not entirely clear, suggests that the regulations might have been composed by a meet­ing of rabbis during the fair of Lublin in 1590. A further complicat­ing factor may be found in the introduction to the text, which reads in part: "I composed regulations about it [i.e. the means of keeping Shabbat] with the necessary fines and punishments in the Excellent Holy Community of May Our Rock and Creator preserve it.,,48 Obviously the name of the community, which should appear between the words "of" and "May," is missing. Scholars have assumed that this was due to a copyist's error and proposed different means of deciding which community it should have been, with Krakow or Brzesc (both communities where Feivish served) obvious 49choices. The questions arise, then, of who composed the work, in what framework it was composed, and for whom it was meant.

The answers seem to be supplied by a parallel text of regulations dealing with the ways in which leaseholders should keep the Sab­bath. According to its introduction, this second text was drawn up by the leaders of the Wlodzimierz community in Volhyn, together with their rabbi, and representatives from smaller communities in

50the immediate region. It is dated 17 February 1602. However, a close examination reveals that the regulations themselves are extremely closely based on Feivish's text. The same issues are dealt with, in the same order, and with almost the same language. Clearly, the Wlodzimierz leaders had before them a copy of the earlier regu­lations, which they copied down with a number of slight alterations in order to suit local conditions. The fact that they changed the introductory paragraph, omitting Feivish's name and giving the

Krakow" (Hebrew), Horev 2 (1935): 237-46; H. Ben-Sasson, "Regulations Forbidding Sabbath Work in Poland and Their Social and Economic Signifi­cance" (Hebrew), Zion 21 (1956): 183-206; E. Feldman, "Where and for Whom Were the Rabbi Meshullam Feivish's Regulations Forbidding Sabbath Work Composed?" (Hebrew), Zion 34 (1969): 90-97.

48. .Y'Y' P'i':J i1'N'!J~ i1lmp:J T'lllJ'JI'1 mO~':J i1::l::l '31 m~,n 'n~,n

49. Sonne and Halperin Jean toward Krakow as the missing community, Feldman toward BrzeSC.

50. This text was published by Ben-Sassol\, "Regulations."

389 388 Adam Teller

impression that they had composed the regulations themselves, should not, however, deceive us as to their original authorship. These are clearly Feivish's regulations copied by the Wlodzimierz community for its own use.

This fact suggests that the name of the community previously thought to have been omitted from the Feivish regulations by a scribal oversight might never have been meant to be there at all. This would have been because Feivish composed the regulations in generic form to be copied by whichever community wanted them and left a blank in his introduction to add the relevant community name.51 The Wlodzimierz leaders preferred not to "fill in the blank" but to compose their own introduction to make the whole document more suitable to their own needs.52 This hypothesis as to the generic nature of the original text is supported by a set of Sabbath regula­tions composed over half a century later by Rabbi Leib Pohovitzer, who claims that he based his text on Feivish's, adding: "And I found a copy of those regulations, quite long-according to the needs of that time [i.e. of Rabbi Feivish]-in the possession of various promi­nent individuals and great men of Israel. I copied them in a short­ened version. ,,53 It would seem, therefore, that the regulations were

51. It would have been interesting to check the manuscript copied by Sonne to see whether there was a literally a blank here. His papers are now kept by "¥ad Ben Tzvi" in Jerusalem. I checked them, bur unfortunately there was no trace of the manuscript in question.

52. The parallels between paragraph 17 in Feivish's text and paragraph 20 in the Wlodzimierz text are also instructive. The former (PVDA, 487) reads: "Y

ilnm:::l ]"::Jl1':::l7 N'p"lll o"p 'N ilY1Il VJlrY 0'1pil7 1Il"Y 7::J:::l :::l"''II11' p"p' 1Il1'1Ilil1ll '3pn '1IlN 7n::JN71'1' 'pO!l" n:::l1ll7 01'lrY nN '3'::J"llI 1'1::Jil7' OYil '''ilTil7' m'lr7 n':::l7 n':::l1' 17" .7"1 n,'n il11 ,0"lll'Y il1'il The latter (Ben-Sasson, "Regulations," 206) is almost identical: nnN ilW7 0"Pil7 1Il"Y 7::J:::l :::l''II1' P"P' 1/l1'1Ilil1ll m7'ilpil 7::J:::l '3~,n ,w 01'lrY nN '3'::J"llI 1'1::Jil7' '''ilTil7' m'lr7 n':::l7 n':::lO 17'7 iln31'7 n03::Jil n':::l7 X'p"lll o"P .7"1 71P'n 'il11 ,7"ll1'Y il1'il '1IlN 7n::JX71'1' 'p'O!l" n:::l1ll7 The second version is dearly a copy of the first with only minor changes. However, the opening words demonstrate significant differences. Fei vish wrote: "They also ruled that the Beadle of the Holy Community of should go ... ," while the Wlodzimierz leaders wrote: "We also ruled that in all the communities the Beadle of the Holy Community should go .... " The Wlodzimierz leaders clearly changed the opening words to suit the regulation to their needs but left the next phrase, where Feivish had left a space for inserting the community's name, because in their formulation it read nicely without a specific name.

53. Ben-Sasson, "Regulations," 195: -il::J"N:::l nlrp m~,nil omN pnYil 'nNlrO'

."lr"j?:::l O'npnYil' .7N'1Il' '7"1 il7'10 '1'n' 7lrN-ilY1Il 1"lr' 71'1il1 nYil '!l7

Rabbis Without a Function?

indeed copied quite Widely by various rabbinic and other leaders, just as Feivish had intended.54

Thus it would seem that the very prestige of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century rabbis meant that they had no need to partici­pate in the Council of Four Lands. It was primarily a lay body, whose leadership felt itself empowered to act without rabbinic sup­port and may even have discouraged rabbinic participation in its work. Though the rabbis protested sharply when they felt that the lay leadership was encroaching on their role (as in the case of the berem), they had a number of other means of influencing wider Jew­ish society, through halachic codifications, responsa, and regulations which were copied from community to community. Their role as judges for all of Polish Jewry was not affected by the lay body, since the great rabbinical Court continued to meet at the annual fairs just as it had done before the Council was formed. The separate func­tioning of lay and rabbinic leadership may indeed have been a mat­ter of mutual consent.

This changed, however, in the next generation. From about 1670, a permanent rabbinical body, which worked alongside the lay leadership of the Council of Four Lands, seems to have been active. There is no extant documentation on the establishment of this body, referred to in almost every case as the "The Great Luminaries, Rab­bis, and Teachers of Justice of the Four Lands. ,,55 The reasons for its formation are unclear. It may have been an expression of Polish Jewry's reorganization in the wake of Poland's mid-seventeenth-cen­tury wars, or it may have been a reaction to the Sabbatean heresy. A more likely motivation seems to have been the desire of Polish rabbis to strengthen the source of their authority within Jewish society. By the late seventeenth century, with the passing of the previous genera­tion of great scholars, the process of codifying the halacha was com­plete and the Shu/ban Arukh with}sserles' glosses generally accepted in Polish Jewish society. In addition, the major project of social and economic reorganization undertaken through the responsa litera ture

54. Cf. S. Dubnow, Pinqas ha-medinah (Berlin: Ayanot, 1925), no. 137. It is also worth remembering that Sonne himself published a copy of the text which he found in the Talmud Torah of Rome and which he dated to the turn of the sev­

enteenth century. ("Regulation Forbidding Work," 237-40). This is perhaps more evidence of just how Widely these regulations were copied.

55..mlr1N Y:::l1N' P'lr ""1" 0'3:::l1 0'7"101 nmN1'l1 See, e.g., l'VDA, 114-16 no. 277, 141-42 no. 334,159 no. 361, 168-69-no. 384,247-51 no. 527.

390 391

T

Adam Teller

was also very well advanced, with the major precedents already set. The rabbis in this period may well have felt the need to buttress their personal influence with an official post. The stability of its title, as well as the fact that it often appeared in parallel with that of the lay leadership, "The Generals, Officers, Barons, Leaders of the Four Lands,,,56 would seem to indicate that the rabbinical body was now a permanent and recognized part of the Council.

One of the new body's main functions seems to have been as the Council's permanent rabbinical court. It continued to fulfill some of the functions of the previous rabbinic court, ruling on a number of intercommunal boundary disputes,57 In addition, it became involved in various other cases, such as the rabbinic scandals in Przemysl and in Lw6w, where communities tried to remove rabbis who had pur­chased their posts for large sums.58 Membership in the court gave the community whose rabbi was involved much power and influ­ence, so communities were anxious to be represented on it wherever possible. Those already sitting on the court were interested in pre­serving their privileged position. Thus, in 1672, when the Tykocin community was put on probation for four years before receiving full representation on the Council, a strict condition was made that dur­ing that period "they should not consider in any way requesting chairmanship of the [lay] Councilor the inclusion of their Rabbi amongst the Rabbis and Teachers of Justice of the Four Lands.,,59 Seats on the Council's rabbinic court were obviously reserved for the rabbis of the established large communities alone.

Another prominent function of the rabbinic leadership of the Council was the issuinff of approbations (haskamot) for books about to be published,6 This was not a new function-groups of rabbis at fairs in the earlier period had also issued approbations­

56..rmnx Y::J'X, o")';,m O')T,,;, O')~p;, O't",X;' See, e.g., PVDA, 193-94 no. 415, 207 no. 437,242-43 no. 520, 273-75 no. 566.

57. PVDA, 171-78 no. 392, 219-20 no. 465, 245 no. 523,247-51 no. 527, 300 no. 596.

58. See PVDA, 278-80 nos. 568-69, 282-85 nos. 572-75, 286-89 nos. 577-78, 296-97 no. 594, 307 no. 610. On the struggle over the rabbinate of Lwow see Adam Teller, "Radziwill, Rabinowicz, and the Rabbi of Swierz: The Magnates'

Attitude towards Jewish Regional Autonomy in 18th Century Poland-Lithua­

nia," Scripta Hierosolomitana 38 (1998): 248-78. 59. PVDA, 138 no. 328: ::J' X" ,Ylm on!l 0;" '';'I'W Wp::J' on::JwnlJ' ony, 'Y "Y' X,

.X"" i"lJ 'n, lln::J on,;,plJ ,"::JX 60. On the Council's approbations, see Halperin, Jews and Judaism, 78-107.

Rabbis Without a Function?

but it would seem that the rabbis were now interested in achieving control over what was printed and how it was read. Thus in 1683 they issued an approbation to the book Meginei zahav, which the grandson of Rabbi David ben Shmuel had written to defend his grandfather's work Turei zahav from the criticism of Rabbi Shabtai

61Hakohen. In their approbation, the rabbis not only praised the new book, but went on to order that "the rulings of the author of Turei zahav are to be accepted as they stand, despite the critique of [Shabtai Hakohen]. ,,62 More drastically, a few years later, the rabbis prohibited the publication of books of sermons and other rabbinic

63texts. They gave no reason for this order, largely observed in the breach, though it may have been connected with the rapid ~read of Kabbalistic (and even Sabbatean) texts in these years. 4 Here, Poland's rabbinical leadership would seem to have been trying to use administrative powers to stamp its authority on the religious and cultural development of Polish Jewry by controlling what was read and acting as a form of censor. It was, perhaps, a sign of their weak­ness that their endeavors in this regard seem to have failed signally.65

It is little surprise, then, that relations within the Council between the lay and rabbinical leaderships in this period seem to have been quite one-sided in favor of the lay leaders. The rabbis were called upon on many occasions simply to confirm regulations already issued by the lay leadership, whether these dealt with admin­istrative matters, such as boundary disputes, or whether they were of broader importance, such as the 1679 order to intensify efforts to

61. R. Yoel ben R. Gad Mishebershin, Sefer megines zahav (Prague, 1720). The approbation is reprinted in PVDA, 182-83 no. 403.

62. Ibid.: .']0;);' n",p) ,Y::J nuw;, nlJt1IJ TnptnlJ T"13;, ,Y::J '1::J, X~,;" T'X1V

63. The actual regulation banning this kind of publication has not survived. It is

first mentioned in a document from 1687: PVDA, 205-6 no. 432. A reference from 1688 specifies a ban on lU'l" mi!lo: PVDA, 211 no. 442.

64. It is interesting that the rabbis on the Council tried to revive their ban in 1727, shortly after one of the major outbursts of Sabbateanism in Brody (though the texts make no connection with this event). On the spread of Kabbalistic and

Sabbatean literature in Poland in the late seventeenth century, see Z. Gries,

The Conduct Literature: Its History and Place in the Lives of the Followers of R. Yisrael Baal Shem Tov (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1990), 80-93. On the attempted revival of the ban in 1727, see Halperin, Jews and Judaism, 87.

65. Cf. PVDA, 219 no. 464.

393

392 Adam Teller

redeem Jewish captives.66 The rabbis did sometimes issue adminis­trative rulings of their own even on marrers concerning the payment of taxes, but it was the lay leaders who remained the dominant force. 67 They continued to make their own regulations-and even to

issue the ~erem-withour consulting their rabbinical colleagues.68

This way of acting was not always understood or appreciated by Jewish communities outside Poland. In 1682, the Council intervened in the dispute over the rabbi of the Ashkenazic community in Amsterdam, David Lida.69 An immigrant to Amsterdam from Poland, Lida was a controversial figure who roused a great deal of opposition among the Jews of Amsterdam. A faction arose which tried to depose him from his post. Among other responses to this threat, Lida wrote to the Polish Council requesting its support. It complied by sending a letter to the Jews of Amsterdam, issuing a ~erem on those who wanted to remove him. The local Sephardic community, upset at this interference in its jurisdiction, ignored the ban, arguing, "We did not strictly follow the lerter which first came from the Leaders [of the Council of Four Lands] ... for even though your speech and your letter express a decree deeply considered by the whole Table [i.e. Council] in its session, the Wise and Faithful of Israel who have the authority to make such decrees .. , were not seated there ... as is proved by the lack of the rabbis' names and mention of their authority [in the document]." It was only when the Polish rabbinical leaders belatedly confirmed the ~erem in a second letter that the Sephardim felt that they had to take notice, and responded with an angry letter to the Council.7°

66. PVDA, 156 no. 358. 67. PVDA, 247-51 no. 527, 300 no. 596. 68. PVDA, 222 no. 468. Cf. 165-66 no. 372, 178-79 no. 393,207-8 no. 477. 69. For a brief summary of the case and the Council's role in it, see Rosman,

"Authority of the Council of Four Lands," 20-23, and the literature cited

there. Many of the documents (including those from the Council) may be found in A. Freimanen, "Rabbi David Lida and His Self-justificarion in 'Ee'er Eshek'" (Hebrew), in Festschrift for Nahum Sokolov (Warsaw: Schuldberg, 1904),455-80.

70. PVDA, 186-93 no. 410 at 187: ... l:> 7::1 In'~7 i1n"r,l X7 ... 1"1l' O':>111il ::m::1 7311

1'il X7 il::l'OO::l1 X70 Tn7111::1 ::IO'il P'il pn3l::l '1ll1l1 ilO O::ln::1 '!l/J1 Oil'!lll X::I' OX '1X '::1

0731il m 731 n'::l1'1 ... n1,Tl '1117 p!lC O''::l 1I1'IU ,7X'1U' ':>1IJX '017111 'IJ::1n ,,::I 0'::l1CO

. [0n1111' ,'7'1I] on3l1l1' P'::1T X71 0')::I'il7111 Oil'n101l1 There seems to have been more than a little hypocrisy in the stance adopted by the Sephardim, since in their community, too, the /;erem was wielded almost exclusively by the Jay leader-

Rabbis Without a Function)

The active participation of rabbis in regional and national COun­cils was not a new phenomenon in Eastern Europe. Rabbis had played an important role on the Lithuanian Council since the six­teenth century. A fragmentary document from before 1569 describ­ing the activity of this Council reads in part: "We appointed nine leaders of the land and three rabbis, and at every Lublin fair three leaders and one rabbi will sit to protect the common good and to ensure that no disaster or woe reach the Jewish street either from Our [deeds] or from the [non-Jewish] a uthorities, God Forbid." 71 In this form of organization, the rabbis sat together with the lay leader­ship on a single Council, of which they formed an integral part. Later regulations show that this form of rabbinic representation on the Lithuanian Council was a stable phenomenon, which continued during the following centuries. 72 Interestingly, it is very close to the organizational form ascribed by Hannover to the Polish Council in the SOurce quoted above. 73

However, the rabbis' role in the Lithuanian Council was quite different from that in the Polish Council of Four Lands. The Lithua­nian Council ruled that it could not meet without the rabbis' pres­ence, and that its regulations had to be approved by the rabbis before they would be binding on the individual communities,?4 While this ruling was in line with the halachic principles that under­lay the Jewish communities and councils, it was strikingly absent from the regulations of the Polish Council of Four Lands. There, even when there was a recognized rabbinic body which functioned in tandem with the lay leadership, the larrer did not relinquish its

ship. Their goal in this case seems to have been to ensure that the Council of

Four Lands did not interfere in their internal matters. On the use of the lJerem in the Sephardic community of Amsterdam, see Y. Kaplan, "The Social Func­tions of the Herem," in: his An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Sephardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 108-42, esp. 118-20.

71. 'X ::111 0'J::I1 illl17111 1::1111' 1'7::117' "1" ,,,, 7::1::11 0'D1 illl171111 ":>'10 'lUX1 il3lll1n 1J'1'::1

':l0 Til 1J'1l0 Til ,1J'n1::J1TI1::1 ilnm1 f'!l 1"n x::In X7111 77::1il n::l10::l n1X17 Oil031

.n1::170" The document is published in Halperin, Jews and Judaism, 48-54. 72. Dubnow, Pinqas ha-medinah, nos. 192,283.

73. It may be possible to hypothesize that the regional council of Volhyn, which

had been part of Lithuania in the sixteenth century, still preserved this form of rabbinical integration. Since Hannover lived in Volhynia, he may have ascribed the structure of the Volhynian council to the national Council of Four Lands. Further research is required to check this theory.

74. Dubnow, Pinqas ha-medinah, nos. 1727222.

395

il Adam Teller394

'1

1 right to legislate without rabbinic participation. This would be con­sonant with the theory that the rabbinic body itself was founded byj a generation of late-seventeenth-century rabbis who felt their influ­

~' ence in society was waning after the death of the great rabbinic fig­!I ures from the early part of the century. On the whole, then, it would !I seem that the establishment of the rabbinic leadership as an officialII,

body within the formal structure of the Council of Four Lands did ~ little to improve the rabbis' leadership role in Jewish society. II i The 1720s seem to have witnessed a further development in the

role played by the rabbis in the Council. From this time, the rabbini­cal body, though continuing to act as a court when necessary, seems I:

I: drastically to have reduced its activity. It is noteworthy that not aI

II! single document signed by the rabbis of the Four Lands as a body II remains from the period between 1731 and 1751. This does not

mean that the rabbis themselves were less active-quite the reverse. ~i What seems to have happened is that the two leaderships, lay and

rabbinic, merged into one body. Among those signing documents in iii

the name of the "The Generals, Officers, Barons, Leaders of the 1\ Four Lands," an increasing number (often three or four out of thir­1 teen) were serving rabbis. This was not unprecedented. From the end~, Hi,Ii' of the seventeenth century, Rabbi Naftali Katz, first of VolIvn and I,I then of Poznan, had been a member of the lay leadership.? How­

ever, as the eighteenth century progressed, it became more II 76common.~

Moreover, rabbis also began to take on the role of financial sec­~ II retaries or trustees (ne'eman in Hebrew, pisarz in Polish), which i~1 meant that they were now deeply involved in the Council's financial

administration. The reasons for this change in the rabbis' role within the Council are probably to be found in the heavily commercialized nature of the post in the eighteenth century. This development,

75. PVDA, 206-7 no. 433, 207-8 no. 437, 211-12 no. 447. Fram points out one Council document from before 1648 signed by Abraham Rapoport, author of, among other things, the important collection of responsa Eitan ha-ezrahi (PVDA, 66--67 no. 181). Fram calls him "Rabbi of Lvov," but it remains unclear whether he was the contractual rabbi of one of city's two communities. Neither Halperin (PVDA, ad loc.) nor Balaban (M. Balaban, Zydzi Iwowscy na przelomie XVIgo i XVIIgo w. [Lvov: J. H. Altenberg, 1906],267-81,568­70) lists him as Rabbi of Lw6w. For his responsa, see: R. Abraham ben R. Yehiel Rapoport, Shut Eitan Ha-'Ezrahi (Ostrog, 1797).

76. PVDA, XLVI-XLVIII (non-Hebrew sources) no. 49, 276-77 no. 567, 303-4 no. 607,333-35 no. 657.

Rabbis Without a Function?

which had its roots in previous centuries, seems to have reached its apogee in this period. Rabbis who had had to pay large sums not only to the Jewish community to be appointed, but also to the estate-owner or starosta to receive their rabbinical license, began to milk the rabbinate to recoup their expenditure and make a good liv­ing,77 In addition, important families invested a great deal of effort in the political activity necessary to win the desired post for their son or son-in-law.78 Once the rabbi became a significant force in com­munity politics, it was reasonable that he would sometimes be cho­sen as a representative on the Council. It was also logical that rabbis would want the highly influential and prestigious role of tax trustee, with all its concomitant incomes.

This development was firmly opposed by what had previously been the lay leadership of the Council. In a set of regulations drawn up in 1739 at the request of the treasury commissioner, Dzialyfiski (a sign of the importance of the non-Jewish authorities in Council affairs in the eighteenth century), the leaders wrote: "Great harm befalls the Council, because the .. , community rabbis interfere in economic matters, [as well as in] the deliberations and regulations of the Lands. Though they are chosen to be the watchmen of our reli­gion and pay no taxes '" yet they seek honors, which are due to us as the lay leadership who bear all the burdens.... We therefore ... order that no rabbi now, or in the future, hold office as delegate, tax administrator, or trustee, upon penalty of losing rabbinic office and being banned from the Council.,,79 As Goldberg points out, these regulations requested by the treasury commissioner went unheeded. During the next commission in 1753, rabbis were appointed to all three of the posts forbidden them in 1739.80 The outweighing of

77. Adam Teller, "The Legal Status of the Jews on the Magnate Estates of Poland­Lithuania in the 18th Century," Gal-Ed 15-16 (1997): 58-61.

78. Y. KJoizner, "Yehudah the Scribe and the Judge (ha-yesod)" (Hebrew), Zion 2 (l937): 137-52.

79. PVDA LV-LVI no. 57: "Wielka y zt~d dzieie sie generalnosci Krzywda, ie Rabini '" wdzierai~ sit: w Gospodarskie interesa, rady y porz~dki Ziemskie, y Jubo sami bt:d~c wybrani do pilnowania obrz~dk6w religij naszej iadnego podatku niedaj~ ... starai~ sie 0 Honory nam Swiedzkiem Gospodarzom wszystek Cit:iar ponosz~cym nalei~ce, iaka to Deputactwa, Symplarstwa, wiernikostwa alias Pisarstwa ... Wiec '" postanowiamy i waruiemy aby zaden z Rabin6w teraz i napotym niewazyl sie starac 0 iadn~ Deputacy~, Sym­plarstwo, Wiernikostwo, pod utrat~ Roabifistwa i niedopuszczeniem do Stolu."

80. Goldberg, "Jewish Sejrn," 162-63.

397

.........

396 Adam Teller

constitutional considerations by the needs and desires of those with money and political clout was, of course, a problem faced not only by the Jewish Council in this period, but also by the Polish Sejm. There it was not the clerics but the magnates, each concerned with fulfilling his own needs, and some in the pay of foreirgn powers, that effectively paralyzed Poland's central governing body. 1

The Jewish council continued to function because it remained responsible to the Polish treasury for dividing the poll tax between the Jewish communities, but it too became terribly bogged down in procedural matters. The 1739 regulations describe the problem as follows: "Among the rabbis who come to our Council to sit in judg­ment and deal with other matters, arguments often break out over who is to take the chair, and until ... agreement is reached, much time is lost. The delegates, tax administrators, and other elders of the Council also actively promote their own interests in these argu­ments, which is sometimes detrimental to the Council.,,82 There fol­lows a detailed description of the order of seating, whose aim was to ensure that the senior rabbis had the seats of honor and presumably

81. The vast literature on the functioning of the Sejm in this period is conveniently summarized in J. Michalski, "Sejm w czasach saskich, n in Historia sejmu po/­skiego, ed. J. Michalski, vol. 1 (Warsaw: P.W.N., 1984), 300-50.

82. rVDA, LV no. 57: "Mic;dzy Rabinami na nasze Kongressa zieidiai"cemi do S"d6w y Spraw roznych zasiadaiicemi, czc;sta wzrusza sic; kontrowersya, ktory rna z nich pietwsze mieysce zasiadac y prym trzymac, naczym nim siC; uspokoi" y ugodzi wiele czasu proino ginie, y przy tey kontrowersyi, Deputaci, Sym­plarze y inni do kongressu nalei"cy Starsi, swoie promowui" y wyrabai~ Inter­esa, czasem GeneralnosCi przeciwne y mniej pozyteczne ... "

The situation seems to have been little different in the Polish Sejm. The fol­lowing is a translation of parts of a seventeenth-century Latin description of Sejm procedure: "The King and Senate go to a secret meeting, and the Nobility to their own conclave. There the Nobility elect a Marshal for themselves from among their Estate. The marshal presides over the assembly and moderates public debate, like a steersman at the helm of a large ship upon a rolling sea of extremely turbulent deliberations....No set agenda is observed here; no order of votes is fixed; but what someone wishes, he seizes the opportunity and pro­poses it for the purposes of debate ... it often happens that whoever has already begun to speak is shouted down by the rest. ... The proceedings are extremely delayed because the business of the Commonwealth is neglected by the major­ity, as discussion hastens headlong towards private concerns." See A. Pernal and R. Gasse, "Procedure in the Diets of the Polish-Lithuanian Common­wealth: A Description by Vincent Fabricius in 1647," Parliaments. Estates and Representation 12 (1992): 109-19.

Rabbis Without a Function?

the first voices in the discussion. The impression given by this text is that the leading rabbis were now full members of the Council's ple­num simply as a function of the posts they held. That was the Source of their social authority, and there was little or no need for a sepa­rate rabbinic body.

There is, however, little sign that the merging of the rabbinic and lay bodies led to significant specifically rabbinic input to the Council's deliberations. This was particularly evident in the 1750s, when the question whether Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz should be banned as a Sabbatean heretic was debated in the Polish council. However, instead of receiving a clear rabbinic decision and ruling on its basis, the Council found itself embroiled in a political debate, where personal issues (including family connections with Eibes­chuetz or his accuser, Emden) often decided the way the delegates

83 swayed. This prevented it from taking a clear stand on what was clearly a religious issue--even despite the fact that rabbis were now acting as full Council members. These difficulties in the Council's functioning were finally put to an end hy the reorganization of the Polish tax system and abolition of the Council in 1764, a develop­ment that opened a new chapter in the political history of Polish Jewry in general and of its rabbis in particular.

In conclusion, relations between the Polish rabbinate and the Council of Four Lands seem to have developed in three stages. First, from the Council's foundation until about 1670, the rabhis had no defined function within the Council, continuing instead to function largely within frameworks which had coalesced previously. Second, from about 1670 to the 1720s (the documentation does not permit a closer dating), the rabbis formed a clearly defined leadership hody, parallel to the lay leadership. Third, from the 1720s to the Council's dissolution in 1764, individual rabbis became active in what had previously been lay leadership positions, including those of tax trustees.

Though on the face of it the rabbinate might seem to have grown stronger over the years, with rabbis assuming central leadership

83. M. Balaban, On the History of the Frankist Movement (Hebrew), vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1934),72-81; Y. Trunk, "A Clarification of the Stance of Abraham hen Yosske, Elder of the Council of Four Lands, in the Dispute hetween Jonathan Eibeschuetz and Jacob Emden" (Hebrew), Zion 38 (1973); 174-78. Trunk tries to identify a clear ideological stance for Abraham Joskowicz, but his argument does not convince.

39B

role~ within tht' (,OUIKd of Four Land~, the truth IS more ..:omplex. The prllCess was also one 01 dedine: in the til',! period, dw prestige (II the r;lbbi~ suft1ccd to give them signitlcJIH intlut'nte Ilv(..'r Polish-Jewish SOLlery a~ a whole, wirhiJur their lUVIng ;} P(..TIl1.11lellt rolt' in the CIllllKil; in thc sC(iJl1d, they began 10 denve their l1.1tion­wide authority Irom rheir role ;l\ nth<-'lal C:OUlKil r;lbbis, perh.1ps hecwse rhcv la..:ked rhe personal intlut:nu.' of the previous genera­tion of rabbis; in the third, they JemeL! their Jllthuriry frum holding by' posltiu!1S in the Council, wlm:h fmllld lIself. like other Polish poliric.!l institurions, in a st.H(' of near paral} .,is. 'This rar,ldoxic;11 ~trengdk'ning of the r;lbbis' political power as individu.lIs ..:oupled with their loss 01 inf1uenu.' as rabbi~ would seem to rdled J shih in rhe ~ource of authoriry in Polish Jewish Iile away frorn rhat b,lseJ un ['Hah study 10 tlut h:lsed on pnlitical SLUUS iwhi..:h \\,;IS, in l'lgh­teenth-,:enturv Poland, drawn to ;1 crear cxtel11 trorn sonrces of

I , '1 'I I 't " . S,lpower :HI( ml uelKt' OUISl\, t' _ t;'WI'>I1 sOdety),' I should like to .lfgue funlwr that this pru,,'ess Tn;IY have rdkcted

a decline in Ihc stams not just of the r,lbhirlll elite, but of tLlditional Turah slUdy itself. This is not 10 S,ly th,l1 swdy lc,lSe,1 (0 he o! importJ.nle for Pulish Jew" just tklt irs pta,~e in their hlcrakhy of values dt'dined Mllnewhar. It is c(..'nainly rrue th.l1 rhe degrees of learnins granlcd hy the Pulish yesIJJ!'ul, b.wer and l/IUrCillll, \\'I.'IT

alsu largely emptieJ of rne;Hllng by the eighteenth ..:emury, Intli,11ly, thcs(' titles h,ld been granted hy rhe rabbi in his clpa..:iry as Ih.'J.d of Yeshiva to Ihose who had studied under him for ceruin periods of time,S'> However, during the seventeenth ,lilt! eighteenth cell1llries, the litks could sornetil!1t's be granted lor urirHls orher rt\lSOns, in.:ludlng as \\'edding presents or ,lS honors 10 special gue,>ts in 10\\'11.86 It wuuld ;1!sO seem rlut in these yell'S, the titles had to he .""m». ,... ·»·w. ". ­

g4. 5irnibr l",btTIOlllt;l1.l !o.",l)) hl" \.L">ttngui~h(:d in nrhcr ,Ji..'\vi~h (l::nrcrs, in rlliop\,' Jur~ ing this "('c. (',g., Kapl,ll1_ .. ..,..el.d FUl1dHAh", (', Abr,Hmk}, - ltK (r"i,

of AurhofilY WIThin Lurope',lIl J'-\\f\ III the Light~ulth CUmlr}," ill SliI,h", Iii lClefsh Rcli;:tous .ViJ hUl:!lt'(Alit..7f lJ;s!ury Fr('::t'n!c~l tu Ah>xandcf /Hll1U1tlN Or!

tJ.h:' (kCJSJCln l~{ FTis SeveniieIh HutJ.\LIY. cd. ". ~h.:in ~llh.i R. 1OC\VC (l1{H\l;r~ity~ li!llv<:r,H) of ALlb,UlU PI'''''. ! Y"'ii. ! ~-2S; .l1\<1 I'Mficllbrlv. J. Ikrknwiu, "..,.>cul ;ll1d Rdi,;lOlh C"mr,,!, in I'rvRc\,,'!urunan Fr.llh<:: RdlunkH1f; Ihe

lkf;lIining' oi Modemil), "kat,'!.' Iblurv 15 (2lkl I;' 1-.4<1,

S ~< HIClltT. :hJ:kt'II;/~lk R.ii,lw!<lt." DI-21. cL Y\lval, SJ\;l" /11 11:..'11 111111:, 2S[)­

j21 ~lL Dubnl)v.\ l'ol~l'J::" ht,,~n~·dul;.J', lhi, ltHH; flnqd;:, uL·ul:. \,:.J. \1. ~~,lJ.1\-,

n,L I (kru,.lkm: hrad :\,:.hkm\ "i "',:i,'n"" .uhl I !lm1.lllirl",. 1'1'1'-1, nfl, 'hIS.

~._.' d

F'dbrJf) \l'j;t i"=" :' it ,:) 399

pa1l1 for, so rhe number the rabbi was alkl\ved 10 gLUlt eadl year was hid down in his comraet ;IS part of the income he could expect to i.o!lect from his rost: in mid-eighteenr!J-..:entury Lw6w. rhe rahhi was Iimired to fnur gLJ1Jrs of ltdl'Cf ,llld t\VO 01 moremlt annually,8 7

'rhe by le;ldership h~'g.ln t. I u'ke ..:omrol of ..:ullening these incol;les, c\ emllany usurping ffilm rhe rahbis the role of graming the rides themselves,8B Thus it was that the titles of b'll'cr and moreinu, origi­fully granted by J rabbi to honor an in,l!vidual\ learning, incr('as­ingh' het.';lfrlt' simply "f.JtLlS syrnhols given hy the laity to the laity, \Vlllle this u",lge did Illdicate dlat Tnr,lh srudy W;l,S Slil! honored in the ,1 bstr;Kt (i,e, in rhe na mes 01 the ti ties), j n pCICtic11 terms it meant that the v.llu,' placed on learning itself by Jewish s'Kie!v had undergone ;1 dedin<:. S'I

\Vithin society's elite-hnth I:ly ;lnd Llhhinic-rhere were, of , ~.

..:oune, t1wsc who .:ominued rn pLJ.:e TilLJh sllldy at the he;ld 01 their v;lluc system, Reiner has described the est.lhlish men! of a net­work 01 pri\;llely funded yes!Jil:ul, Lliled kIn!::, in the btl' seven­reemh ;lnd eighteenth cenwries, with the aim of enshrining th,' import;lI1tT (If swd) in Jewish life."o Yet, \... hen the thre(' nu]OI' movenwnts for religious and ..:ultural ch;lnge which developed in Poland during the eighteemh cemury are exarnined-Franki,m, Hasldism, and the nas('ent Ilaskahh-,IH three seem tn h;lve Iud III ('ommol1 a disdain for traditional 'I'll',lh learning ;lnd proposed orh,'!' v;llues 10 r,lke its pLr..:e:iJ lr was perhaps only in the conservative _w.·.·..~",,' __ ,,,. ,"'__

S7, /., Pal-dro l (}tgJtrl~ ...h-i.l I pr..Jkt}k~J fl'doll'S!uch )~hl!lu' POdl-l'Ornrodzirhki<.1; Tl'

nkrt>$IC 174o.",) -72 1': thI !JOdstdf-rie hC(HC.;ki,-I· 1t1Jt{.'ryat6u' ..lr,,:b::i\;!n)'(h

i 1\0\: Nakudt III FUlhlu'illl KunKllt:,oW"',u_ l'ii) 1i. I XJ -'ilq , "'I', 1X-I 'fl-, xl'. Jlmq'l> q,;/o,;! ttL'II". nL N'l-l,\\'. no, ~IH>:,

S9. In Ius -audy ,)r H.lllTI 01 Vu!<,,,hin\ r\lirn.lj~dic' r"I"Hh,' to fb,;d"lll, Ftkt,> om,

dllde' Ihat '\'ell b<:fure The ilS" o! the ltbidi,: mOHcnwm in the ,,-oHld fuJf of

thc t'Jghkt'J1th <UHUr}, thne had bc'ell;] tko,:linc' In thc'latlh of tht' y,,',hi,;] and f(}r<Ih ~ludr Jfnong rht.' Jf\\'~ \)t' F~l.,tt;:~rn Fun)pe. \t't: L Ftkl'''J. The (;'h)>[ or \':lt1<l: 'The ALuI and Ins "nagt rHcrkcky and Lo..; AJlgt',tlAi: Univer,;"ity of (,..ali, torni;] Pre". 2d1l2" J ~ 1-~72, CL Fum, Ideals hin' Re,;/il1. 162,·";1.

-<II, L R,il1<'r, "'\'-""lith, SO(,I.rI Sum" and 'h'rJh "mdy: Ttl<: K!"i; m 1',a'1<'r11 Furo" pon l",vI,h 'i,\.ICt} in tht: Srvul!r:"nfh and hghrfuHh ('t'nwri<,,~ iHebr<'w), 7:"" S8 i 1')9'1: 2k7-J2il.

':II. On th" IJwlogy of FranKrsm, fh~ best ,un,,} " 'Iill (;rr,hon Schokm,

Rcdnnl'!loll through Sm, ~ in hi~ The M,'s"i.1It!( /,1".1 fit ./",!aiS'H (New York' 'ch,xhn, 1'1::'2:, '~-1'1 J, ()n the cJllt''ilon "t ,rudy in lh,idhm, "',: y, \\'''1'',

"'Ji'r,lh S(u<h in Farl} IL"idj'm." in Jai, \11<.11<'> in hlSt b,NI!le:)ll lewis/- Mys.

400 Adam Te!!pr

rdigiolb atlllosphere of e,lfly-ninetcemh--:enrur'r' E'lSt('fl1 Eumre that Torah study found its way b,JCk ro the \'t't"}' heart 1)( Jewish rdi ­gious values.

n Thus the flu('('uating rel.Hions hetwet'll the rahbis and

lhe by leadership on the Coullcil uf Four LlrHh described here may ha'r'c rdleeted something 111on' t!l;ln,irnpk institutional power poli. ttCS, They l1uy also have heen ull[wart! signs of a deerer shift in cul­tural and religiolls values which !>('ems to have oc\.-urred ;1111Ong Polish Jewry during the sixtecnrh, scn~llteenth, MId eighteenrh

. l){.:entunes.

-.-~--~--'..--~.-'-------_ ..~ - -"---- ._,,---_.... !i.-ism (OxforJ: I.imnan 1.i1lraf), I 'I1l5), 5.5-61L 1 il,' "",r swJy of [he nax:enr

Haskalah U(KlJsing largd)' nn (ierrnanll is 'i. hilla, The Lnlighll'nmelft R,'!'n­

lilt ion, The .fewi,/J Fnligbtl!'mlll'tlt ill 11,1' hgtne"'l/' Cellf.. ,-y d'ld'ITw) (Jewsa­l~rn: Merkaz Shaz.lf, ::002j.

91. Etkt·\, Gao" o( \/ma, 209-11. '"", al,o ~ ..'It;Jmpf,,r, Th" DI.'"c/"p",,,nl of Ih,' J,ilhuJrtian Y~sIJll'iJ (Hdm'\V) \.I,·f\ls;lltln: Mrrbl Sh'll:lr, \945).

9.~, I ,h:lll dnll with ,hi, rUlIU!;\1 dn'l'!"l'lllrni in wearer deprh in the lllll-knl\th

snJdy of Ihe rabbinart' in early modern PoI.mJ·!lthu'HliJ which I <I1ll1'llnt'nd\, prep.lring.