Article:2.2.1
Jewish Self-government and the Legal Status of the Jews in Galicia, 1772 - 1848
Cornelia Aust, Johannes Czakai
The partitions of Poland, beginning in 1772, considerably changed the legal status of most Jews who had been inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The partitions also altered the extent of communal self-government. However, many attempts by the new Austrian authorities to reform Jewish communal and daily life, like those of the other partitioning states of Russia and Prussia, did not succeed the way the authorities had imagined.
New Legislation after 1772
After the partitions of Poland, the Jewish and non-Jewish population in the former Polish territories faced profound transitions under the new rule, though the changes and challenges differed in the three territories, now belonging to Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The new governments and administrations faced a new population that was foreign to them and was equipped with privileges that did not conform with the ideas of the new rulers about the place of Jews in society. In Austria, Jews faced a transition from the highly decentralized Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to a centralist or centralizing state, at least according to its self-perception.
Habsburg Austria, on the one hand, had been home to many Jewish communities over the generations, particularly in Moravia and Bohemia, and most prominently in Prague. On the other hand, the monarchy limited the number of Jewish families at their imperial residence, Vienna. With the annexation of Galicia in 1772, the number of Jews in the Habsburg lands increased by about 220,000. This new Jewish population first faced the very ambivalent attitudes of Maria Theresa (1740-17802.2.1-Legal-1), which wavered between mercantilist interest in Jewish economic activities and strong religious enmity toward Jews. During and after her reign the Jewish population saw a regular succession of new laws trying to restructure the administration and Jewish self-government in Galicia.[1]
Until that point, the degree of Jewish self-government on a local, regional, and state level in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been extensive, from individual communities (kahal, plural: kehalim), and regional councils (Va̔ade Gelilot), to the Council of the Four Lands (Va̔ad Arba Aratsot) and the Lithuanian Council (Va̔ad Medinat Lita) as supra-regional organizations. During the last years of the Commonwealth, Jewish self-government had been weakened by increasing interference of Polish noblemen into the matters of individual communities on the one hand, and the abolishment of the two Councils in 1764 and 1765 by the Polish king on the other hand. Moreover, within the Jewish communities conflicts developed in the second half of the eighteenth century. The rise of Hasidism and the challenges it raised for Jewish communities likewise weakened the stability of Jewish self-government. Furthermore, the financial situation of the kehalim was catastrophic – most communities were in debt (especially to the nobility and clergy) and unable to repay the money.
In the newly acquired Austrian province of Galicia, as in other partitioned territories, the administration focused primarily on collecting taxes from the Jewish population. This objective temporarily preserved the autonomy of Jewish communities. After a number of provisional measures, the first legislation regulating the status of Jews was instituted four years after the first partition of Poland. In 1776, the Austrian administration introduced the General Order for the Jews of the Crown Lands of Galicia and Lodomeria (Allgemeine Ordnung für die gesamte Judenschaft der Königreiche Galizien und Lodomerien 2.2.1-Legal-2) . The main objectives of the edict were the reorganization of Jewish self-government and gaining control over inner-Jewish communal matters such as communal officials, rabbis and rabbinic courts, and education. It imposed a new tolerance tax and another tax on marriage registration, regulated professions and trade, and sought a liquidation of the kahal debts.[2]
In its aim to subordinate the Jewish communities under state control, the 1776 edict established a state-recognized Jewish leadership, run by a national directorate (Generaldirektion der Judenschaft/ General-Judendirektion). The Jewish Directorate consisted of a Chief Provincial Rabbi (Oberlandesrabbiner) and twelve elders. Of these elders, six provincial elders (Landesälteste) resided in Lviv, while the six subordinated district elders (Kreisälteste/Kreislandesälteste) were responsible for each of Galicia’s six administrative districts (Wieliczka, Pilzno, Sambor, Bełz, Lemberg, and HaliczImage:2.2.1-Legal-3). The number of the existing kehalim was restructured, mainly by merging smaller communities with bigger ones, resulting in 64 main kehalim and 193 smaller ones.[3]
The appointment of the elders of the General-Judendirektion was a mix of election and state appointment: local kehalim elected candidates, but the final members were chosen by the Austrian administration. Also, the Oberlandesrabbiner was chosen in a complicated election system: local kehalim chose an electorate of 48 representatives (consisting of rabbis and wealthy community members), who elected three candidates for the highest position, of which the monarch chose one. The three candidates in 1776 were Yehezkel Landau (1713-1793) of Prague, who had studied and served as rabbinic judge in Brody, Tzvi Hirsh Levin (1721-1800) of Berlin, originally from Galicia, and Aryeh Leib Bernstein (1708-1788) of Brody. Landau, one of the greatest Jewish scholars of his time, was ultimately appointed but rejected the offer and decided to stay in Prague. Subsequently, in 1778, Bernstein was appointed Oberlandesrabbiner for life.[4]
The body of the Generaldirektion was the main representative of Galicia’s Jews. It was responsible for the implementation of the Austrian laws and the collection of taxes, while the state-appointed Oberlandesrabbiner was responsible for supervising the province’s rabbis, synagogues, schools, and rabbinic courts. The 1776 edict implemented a Jewish communal system that was a combination of local tradition and state control; it reorganized and confined Jewish self-government without abolishing it.
Emancipation and Reforms under Joseph II
When Joseph II (1741-17902.2.1-Legal-4) became sole emperor after his mother’s death in 1780, he introduced a series of reforms. As he saw it, his mother’s measures had not been successful, and a rethinking of the policy in Galicia was necessary. The position of the Oberlandesrabbiner, for instance, was controversial, since many Jews in Galicia criticized Bernstein’s state-sponsored plenitude of power, describing him as a corrupt businessman who mostly sought to enrich himself. In addition, the liquidation of the kahal debts had not been settled. At the same time, debates about Jewish enlightenment, reform, and emancipation began to flourish within and outside the Jewish communities across Europe. Though the earliest debates around Jewish emancipation and ‘civic improvement’ took place in England, France, and Prussia, the earliest outcomes in continental Europe of emancipation debates were seen in the Habsburg Empire. The first emancipatory measures were taken in the 1770s in the Jewish community of Trieste, which was considered economically ‘useful’ by the Austrian administration. The general toleration edicts for Jews in the Habsburg provinces were issued by Joseph II in 1781 and 1782 2.2.1-Legal-6). In Galicia, the implementation of such an edict took almost an entire decade. The period between 1781 and 1789 is, therefore, characterized by a myriad of laws and regulations directed at Jews, some of which were discarded, replaced, or supplemented by other ordinances.[5]
As a first stage towards a toleration edict, the authorities implemented the preliminary patent (Präliminarpatent) in 1785. The patent reformed the tax system, divided the Jewish population into three tax classes and subjugated them under a modernized control system. The patent permitted and encouraged agriculture and handicrafts but prohibited peddling; manuals and account books were to be kept in German or the local language. Most importantly, the patent reversed the Jewish communal system that had been created in 1776. It abolished the position of the Chief Provincial Rabbi, the Jewish Directorate with its district elders and provincial elders, as well as community elders. The kehalim as self-governing entities were abolished and the Jews were placed under the jurisdiction of the local authorities and courts. The independent rabbinical courts were reduced to courts of arbitration and lost their judicial authority in all other matters. Instead, the Jewish communities and their inhabitants were subject to state law, local authority, and local courts. From here on, Jewish communities were supposed to only deal with internal Jewish matters: control over communal order, care for the poor and the sick, matters directly related to religious custom and synagogue service, as well as the collection of communal funds.[6]
As part of the patent, the kehalim in the province were restructured and merged again, resulting in a total of 141 Jewish communities. These were administratively assigned to the 18 districts of Galicia: Myślenice, Bochnia, Neu Sandez (Nowy Sącz), Dukla, Tarnów, Rzeszów, Lisko (later Sanok), Przemyśl, Sambor, Bełz, Tomaszów (both later Żółkiew), Zamość, Brody, Brzeżany, Lemberg, Maryampol, Stanisławów, Zaleszczyki. In November 1787, Bukovina was added as 19th district, named Czernowitz, consisting of two communities: Chernivtsi and Suceava 2.2.1-Legal-7.
Instead of elders, each of the 143 Galician and Bukovinian Jewish communities was headed by a council of three community leaders, who were elected every three years. Only the populous communities of Lviv and Brody had seven community leaders. The election was not simply an independent matter of the respective community; rather, it was dominated by the state authorities. The communities elected candidates, but the Austrian district offices (Kreisämter) chose the final members. Accordingly, Jews found themselves under the jurisdiction of the districts.[7]
The Edict of Toleration, 1789
The Edict of Toleration (Toleranzpatent) for the Jews of Galicia followed in 1789. This edict is considered the most progressive of its time, compared to similar measures in other Austrian crownlands. It claimed to set the Jews of Galicia on equal footing with the non-Jewish population of Galicia regarding rights and duties. The new regulations addressed nearly all areas of public life, including religious matters, schools, and the constitution of the Jewish communities. It further dealt with immigration and emigration of Jews, their relationship to local, regional, and central courts, taxes, as well as the duties of the Jewish inhabitants of Galicia toward the state, such as military service. All communities were required to establish German schools and attendance was compulsory for Jewish children. A lack of knowledge of German could result in a prohibition to get married according to state law.
On the one hand, the 1789 edict abolished former restrictions regarding Jewish occupations, and Jews – at least in theory – could become members of guilds or even be elected as mayors of the local (non-Jewish) municipal administrations. On the other hand, the Jewish communities were forced to finance agrarian colonization for some its members, and Jews were excluded from lease holding and running distilleries and taverns. At the same time, the measures against the poor, primarily beggars and ‘vagabonds’, were tightened. The patent confirmed a special tax only for Jews on kosher meat, which in 1797 was supplemented by another special tax on Shabbat candles. Though the edict granted more rights to Jewish subjects in Galicia, it did not make them equal with other inhabitants and primarily aimed at increased control over the Jewish population of the newly acquired territories.[8]
Regarding the community structure, the edict confirmed the 1785 preliminary patent. Despite the declaration of religious freedom and the right to live according to the commandments of Judaism as long as they did not contradict state law, the new regulations comprehensively intervened in Jewish communal life. The edict’s measures aimed particularly at the traditional communal institution, the kahal. Even after it was officially abolished, Austrian administration wanted to make sure that the power of the traditional communal leaders, the rabbis, and rabbinical courts was diminished. The Edict of Toleration confirmed the aforementioned 143 religious communities in Galicia. The regulations included detailed descriptions of the communal elections and the tasks of the communal officials. The official district rabbis were assigned responsibilities solely for religious instruction, ritual slaughter, and the registration of birth, marriages, and deaths, but not for all other areas of Jewish life that traditionally were their purview. In this sense, the rabbi’s function was redefined as that of a state official and included in the state control system2.2.1-Legal-8.[9]
Continuities of Jewish Self-Government
As in the other partition territories, the formal abolishment of large areas of Jewish self-government did not mean that these measures were always fully implemented. Though Jews in Galicia received more rights than those in Vienna, for example, most Jewish inhabitants of the former Polish territories loathed the regulations that considerably curtailed Jewish self-government. Nonetheless, Jews continued to preserve their internal systems of communal organization in different ways. New institutions were established and flourished, often without oversight of the authorities.
Despite the dismantling of Jewish autonomy, the community board (Gemeindevorstand), which replaced the kahal, did not lose all of its power. The state district offices could not immediately establish direct control of the Jewish population and therefore still relied on the cooperation of the Jewish communal institutions, especially with the implementation of new regulations. Often, the Austrian authorities had little insight into the inner workings of the community board. Despite the implementation of the German language in communal and financial communication, Yiddish remained the language of intra-Jewish communication. The community leaders, on the other hand, conducted themselves similarly to the way the kahal elders had before 1776; they either worked selflessly for the benefit of the community or they sought to increase their own power or wealth. Frequently, the district offices were compelled to urge the community leadership to follow their orders. The communities and their leaders became intermediaries between the state and the Jewish population.[10]
From the end of the 19th century and into the first decades of the 19th century, Galicia became a stronghold of Hasidism. The emergence of the rebbe as a spiritual figure and leader of a Hasidic court provided new pathways/possibilities for the structuring and organization of Jewish communal life. As followers traveled to the courts of their Hasidic masters, they developed transregional connections. Thus, the Hasidim formed new socio-religious communities alongside existing communal institutions and often within them. Hasidic structures differed considerably from those of traditional Jewish communities and were beyond the influence of the state.[11]
Despite the disempowerment of the kahal and the rabbis, traditional Jewish authorities still possessed power beyond the state’s scope. For instance, traditional authorities could still enact communal regulations (taḳanot). Rather traditional taḳanot were stipulated for example by Rabbi Menahem Mendel Torem of Rymanów (1745-1815), one of the founders of Hasidism in Galicia, for the Jewish community of Ropczyce. His 1815 taḳanot turned against any modernizing efforts of the Austrian government or reformers within the Jewish community. Together with the leaders of the community of Ropczyce, he protested the influence of modern fashion and sought to regulate other areas of communal life. As the communities had been seriously curtailed by the official Austrian regulations, the enforcement of such regulations was mainly driven by social coherence and pressure within the communities. It is unclear to to what extent the regulations were indeed observed and enforced.[12]
Other institutions that often continued to function despite a lack of legal legitimacy were voluntary and occupational societies (ḥevrot) within the Jewish communities that had existed and continued to exist beyond the scope of the kahal. One of the central institutions of Jewish communities was the Ḥevrah Kadishah (burial society), which often continued to exist and to fulfill central functions within the Jewish community, taking care of the dead and maintaining the cemetery. Voluntary and occupational societies that were devoted to the care of their members, like the Society of water carriers in Brody were monitored even less and continued to exist. This society and others that comprised occupational groups, such as wagoners (balegules), mainly organized mutual support and care for their fellow workers. In many cases, smaller societies (ḥevrot) continued to exist and within the community, official and traditional leadership continued to cooperate/work side by side, at least until conflicts surfaced.[13]
Certain traditional structures of Jewish self-government, thus, continued to exist either without the knowledge of the Austrian authorities or even with their knowledge if it guaranteed the communities’ orderly existence. With the increasing ideological split within Jewish society – as in Lviv where a progressive synagogue was established in 1840 and in the same decade a Hasidic synagogue which later became a stronghold of the Belz Hasidim – unified self-government not only disappeared due to external pressure but also due to internal conflict.
Legal Status until 1848
The 1789 edict with its basic laws regarding the legal status of Galicia’s Jews and the structure of its Jewish communities largely remained in force until 1848, though some stipulations were withdrawn and earlier restrictions, especially in the areas of residence and employment, were reintroduced. Under Joseph’s successors Leopold II (1747-1792, reigned 1790-92), Franz II (1768-1835, reigned 1792-1835), and Ferdinand I (1793-1875, reigned 1835-1848), the policy towards Jews emphasized the restrictive and punitive aspects of the edict, while downplaying integrative elements. Participation in general local self-government was curtailed and the German-language school system was abolished in 1806, while military conscription was reinforced in 1804.
Unlike in other territories of the Habsburg Empire, there were no restrictions on the number of Jews in the cities (apart from Lviv), and Jewish men received civic and voting rights. In the decades before the revolution of 1848, petitions from representatives of Jewish communities, such as those from Brody in 1830, sought to attain representation in the municipal council and to benefit from the town’s revenues. More petitions of this kind were submitted in the following years. All petitions aimed at the abolishment of special taxes. The granting of full civil rights was not realized, which also led towidespread support for the 1848 revolution among segments of the Jewish population in Galicia. Full legal emancipation was not attained prior to the revolution and most Galician Jews remained unable to receive municipal citizenship or to settle outside the Jewish quarter in some towns even after 1848. The communal administration transitioned from internal Jewish self-government to mostly external rule and control by the state, administered by appointed rabbis and other Jewish officials. Both forms of communal administration were organized plutocratically, thus excluding most Jews from participating in Jewish self-government 2.2.1-Legal-5.
Conclusion
The first decades of Habsburg rule in Galicia brought significant changes to the legal situation and self-government of the Jewish population. In several steps, which were often characterized by trial and error on the part of the Austrian authorities, Jewish self-administration in the former Rzeczpospolita was undermined at both the supra-regional and local level and almost completely subordinated to state structures. This can be seen, among other things, in the alignment of Jewish community boundaries with the political-administrative boundaries of the province. The legal status of the Jewish population also changed several times, bringing with it certain improvements but also significant restrictions. After the codification of the legal situation by and large in the Edict of Toleration of 1789, the Austrian authorities subsequent to Joseph II’s death in 1790 were less interested in social engineering and hence did not implement further fundamental legal changes for the Jewish population. Not least because of this, some aspects of Jewish community structures were preserved and elites continued to exert great influence on communal life.
Select Bibliography
Aust, Cornelia. “The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania, 1772-1815.” In Sources on Jewish Self-Government in the Polish Lands from Its Inception to the Present, edited by François Guesnet and Jerzy Tomaszewski. Leiden: Brill, 2022.
Bartal, Israel, and Antony Polonsky, eds., Focusing on Galicia: Jews, Poles and Ukrainians 1772-1918 (Polin 12). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999).
Czakai, Johannes. Nochems neue Namen: Die Juden Galiziens und der Bukowina und die Einführung deutscher Vor- und Familiennamen 1772-1820. Göttingen: Wallstein 2021.
Gelber, Nathan Michael. Aus zwei Jahrhunderten: Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte der Juden. Wien/Leipzig: Löwit, 1924.
Glassl, Horst. Das österreichische Einrichtungswerk in Galizien (1772-1790). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1975.
Karniel, Josef. “Das Toleranzpatent Kaiser Josephs II für die Juden Galiziens und Lodomeriens.” Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte 11 (1982), 55-89.
Pacholkiv, Svjatoslav. “Galizische Judengemeinden unter Maria Theresia und Joseph II.” Biuletyn Polskiej Misji Historycznej, 9 (2014), 93-124.
Sinkoff, Nancy. Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands. Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2020.
Stöger, Michael. Darstellung der gesetzlichen Verfassung der galizischen Judenschaft, 2 vols. Lemberg [et al.]: Kuhn and Millikowski, 1833.
- ↑ Cornelia Aust, “The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania, 1772-1815,” in Sources on Jewish Self-Government in the Polish Lands from Its Inception to the Present, ed. François Guesnet and Jerzy Tomaszewski (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 142-212; Abraham Jakob Brawer, Galizien, wie es an Österreich kam: Eine historisch-statistische Studie über die inneren Verhältnisse des Landes im Jahre 1772 (Leipzig: Freytag, 1910).
- ↑ Horst Glassl, Das österreichische Einrichtungswerk in Galizien (1772-1790) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1975), 197-213; Svjatoslav Pacholkiv, "Galizische Judengemeinden unter Maria Theresia und Joseph II," Biuletyn Polskiej Misji Historycznej, 9 (2014), 93-124.
- ↑ Michael Stöger, Darstellung der gesetzlichen Verfassung der galizischen Judenschaft (Lemberg [et al.]: Kuhn and Millikowski, 1833), vol. 2, 144-146, 149; Glassl, Das österreichische Einrichtungswerk, 82, 197-199. Josef Karniel mentions 241 communities: Josef Karniel, "Das Toleranzpatent Kaiser Josephs II für die Juden Galiziens und Lodomeriens," Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte 11 (1982), 55-89, here 60.
- ↑ Nathan Michael Gelber, Aus zwei Jahrhunderten: Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte der Juden (Wien/Leipzig: Löwit, 1924), 14-38; Glassl, Das österreichische Einrichtungswerk, 197-202.
- ↑ Karniel, Das Toleranzpatent; Gelber, Aus zwei Jahrhunderten, 14-38; Aust, The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania, 146.
- ↑ Karniel, Das Toleranzpatent, 59-65; Pacholkiv, Galizische Judengemeinden, 111-112; Stöger, Darstellung der gesetzlichen Verfassung, vol. 1, 3-4, vol. 2, 146-147.
- ↑ Stöger, Darstellung der gesetzlichen Verfassung, vol. 2, 146-150; Glassl, Das österreichische Einrichtungswerk, 82-83.
- ↑ Karniel, Das Toleranzpatent, 65-71; Glassl, Das österreichische Einrichtungswerk, 216-219.
- ↑ Stöger, Darstellung der gesetzlichen Verfassung, vol. 2, 148-176.
- ↑ Johannes Czakai, Nochems neue Namen: Die Juden Galiziens und der Bukowina und die Einführung deutscher Vor- und Familiennamen 1772-1820 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2021), 356-359, 391-399.
- ↑ David Biale, et al., Hasidism: A New History (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018), 141-148, 359-362.
- ↑ Aust, The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania, 151-154.
- ↑ Ibid.