Summary
The organized Jewish community of the Diaspora — the primary institution of Jewish political expression as Dowty presents it, whose self-governing practice over centuries he treats as the seedbed of Israeli democracy (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 460-520).
Details
- The kehilla (or kahal) originated, together with the synagogue, in the last days of the Second Temple period; its classic period was from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries, especially in Europe. Generally all adult Jewish males were regarded as members, and forms of government varied from autocratic to fairly egalitarian, with variants of oligarchy or aristocratic republicanism as dominant modes (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 460-480).
- Its medieval functions included an established court system rooted in talmudic precedent, enforcement through herem (excommunication), taxation and tithes for the needy, and, under herem hayishuv, a requirement of community consent before a newcomer could settle; over time it also legislated man-made laws (takanot) covering commerce, family life, criminal acts, civil disputes and even clothing (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 465-490).
- In sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Poland, increasingly the demographic center of the Jewish world, royal charters of 1551, 1576 and 1592 enlarged the prerogatives of community institutions and concentrated authority; super-kehilla organizations, the best known the Council of the Four Lands, tied the communities together (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 480-500).
- The classic kahal of Poland and Lithuania elected secular leaders and rabbis, levied taxes, maintained courts, ran extensive welfare systems, passed laws regulating all aspects of community life, and appointed agents (shtadlanim) as “diplomats” to external authority (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 485-500).
- After the population passed under tsarist Russia, the kahal was formally abolished in 1844, but self-government continued unofficially, and Dowty presents its voluntaristic, inclusive, pluralistic practice — elections through electors (mevorerim) for fixed terms, proportionality in power and benefits, enforcement resting on reputation, public opinion and shared values rather than on any obligatory final authority — as government by consent of the governed (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 495-600).
- Dowty’s balance sheet: the tradition inclined toward consociational rather than majoritarian democracy and toward a communitarian conception of the political body, but its law and politics applied only to Jews and offered no guidance for encompassing groups outside the community (The Jewish State: A Century Later, lines 560-640).
Related pages
The Jewish State: A Century Later, Council of the Four Lands, Consociationalism, Haskala