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Jewish Self-Government in 18th/19th–Century Poland

The research on Jewish self-government in Poland is conducted within the framework of a source reader (François Guesnet, Artur Markowski (eds.), Critical and Annotated Source Reader on the History of Jewish Self-Government in Poland, Leiden: Brill). The chapter includes annotated sources concerning Jewish self-government in the last years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian partition territories, and in the Duchy of Warsaw from 1772 to 1815. This period of transition between the early modern and the modern period had crucial implications for Jewish life and for forms of Jewish self-government in Central and Eastern Europe. The respective political authorities, especially in the partition territories, aimed at integrating the Jewish population into the existing social and political structures. These reforms had serious repercussions for the internal administration of the Jewish communities and Jewish autonomy. In addition, I will publish two articles. One deals with the comparison of Jewish legal conditions by Prussian state officials in the new Prussian partition territories of Poland from 1772 to 1795. Another article examines the continued existence of Jewish burial societies (Hevrot Kadisha) in Poland and especially Warsaw in the nineteenth century.