A lengyel zsidó önkormányzati rendszer átalakulása Lengyelország első megcsonkítása után
The Transformation of Jewish Self-Government after the First Mutilation of Poland

Summary/Abstract: The system of Jewish self-government (kehilla/kahal) in Poland is indisputably the most significant political legacy of European Jewish history. According to the historian Simon Dubnow (1860–1941), who developed the theory of Jewish autonomism, throughout history, Judaism always had a centre that spiritually and culturally influenced the lives of Jews living in other parts of the world. Each centre was characterized by the fact that the Jewish communities had an organization with wide autonomy, the so-called kehilla, which combined religious and political power. In the Middle Ages and Early Modern Ages this centre was the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth where the kehilla had the widest range of autonomy. This article presents the functioning of the system of Jewish self-government created in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and examines how this system was transformed under the partitioning powers by the governments of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The new rulers sought to drastically limit the operation of Jewish self-government, and in the course of the 19th century they were slowly abolished. At the end of century the kehilla system was reborn as a new political idea of Jewish autonomy, to create a modernized form of Jewish self-government.

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