Description
Book SynopsisThis book describes the establishment, growth and partial decline of one of the most important Jewish communities in the world. In the late 15th century the Polish-Lithunaian commonwealth became the centre of Jewish intellectual and legal activity. The culture created by the Polish Jews survived the decline and partition of the Polish state in the 19th century, and the area that was formerly the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth became a seedbed for further Jewish intellectual developments. The essays in this book provide a picture of the Jewish community in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth during the periods of its finest flowering and initial decline.
Table of ContentsJews in medieval Poland, Jerzy Wyrozumski; Judaizers in Poland in the second half of the 16th century, Zdzislaw Pietrzyk; the Jewish population in the light of the resolutions of dietines in the 16th-18th centuries, Andrzej Link-Lenczowski; the private life of Polish Jews in the Vasa period, Daniel Tollet; Jews and Armenians in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th & 17th centuries, Krystyn Matwijowski; the four years' sejm and the Jews, Artur Eisenbach; the council of the four lands, Shmul Ettinger; the pinkas of the council of the four lands, Israel Bartal; the language of documents relating to Jewish autonomy in Poland, Moshe Altbauer; the terminology of the bodies of Jewish self-government, Anatol Leszczynski; the Jewish sejm - its origins and functions, Jacob Goldberg; regional aspects of the autonomy of Polish Jews - the history of the Tykocin Kehilla, 1670-1782, Mordekhai Nadav; the kehilla and the municipality in private towns at the end of the early modern period, Gershon David Hundert; Hasidism and the Kehilla, Chone Shmeruk; the Krakow Voivode's jurisdiction over Jews, Stanislaw Grodziski; the individual versus the Community in Jewish Law in pre-eighteenth century Poland, Shmuel Shilo; the condition of the Jewish population of Wschowa at the start of the second half of the 18th century, Jacek Sobczak; the chronology & distribution of Jewish craft guilds in old Poland 1613-1795, Maurycy Horn; Jewish trade at the end of the 16th century & in the first half of the 17th century, Jan M. Malecki; Jewish trade in the century of Krakow's decline, Janina Bieniarzowna; Jews & the village in the Polish Commonwealth, Antoni Podraza; the Jewish population in the towns on the West Bank of the vistula in Sandomierz Province from the 16th to the 18th centuries, Zenon Guldon & Karol Krzystanek.
