The Kehilla (pl. ''Kehillot'') is the local Jewish communal structure that was reinstated in the early twentieth century as a modern, secular, and religious sequel of the
Qahal
The ''qahal'' ( he, קהל) was a theocratic organizational structure in ancient Israelite society according to the Hebrew Bible. See column345-6 The Ashkenazi Jewish system of a self-governing community or kehila from medieval Christian Europ ...
in Central and Eastern Europe, more particularly in
Poland's Second Republic,
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...
,
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
,
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania ( ro, Regatul României) was a constitutional monarchy that existed in Romania from 13 March ( O.S.) / 25 March 1881 with the crowning of prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as King Carol I (thus beginning the Romanian ...
,
Lithuania
Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
,
Ukrainian People's Republic
The Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR), or Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), was a country in Eastern Europe that existed between 1917 and 1920. It was declared following the February Revolution in Russia by the First Universal. In March 1 ...
, during the interwar period (1918–1940), in application of the
national personal autonomy.
Unlike the ancient Qahal/Kehilla, abolished in the Russian Empire by Tsar Nicholas I in 1844,
[ Henry Abramson]
The end of intimate insularity: new narratives of Jewish history in the post-Soviet era
in Acts of Symposium “Construction and Deconstruction of National Histories in Slavic Eurasia,” at Sapporo, Japan, on July 10–13, 2002 the modern Kehilla council was elected like a municipal council, with lists of candidates presented by the various Jewish parties:
Agudat Yisrael
Agudat Yisrael ( he, אֲגוּדָּת יִשְׂרָאֵל, lit., ''Union of Israel'', also transliterated ''Agudath Israel'', or, in Yiddish, ''Agudas Yisroel'') is a Haredi Jewish political party in Israel. It began as a political party re ...
, the
religious
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...
and non religious
Zionists
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Jew ...
, but also the marxist
Bundists
Bundism was a secular Jewish socialist movement whose organizational manifestation was the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia ( yi, אַלגעמײַנער ײדישער אַרבעטער בּונד אין ליטע פויל ...
and
Poalists, the liberal-minded secularist
Folkists, etc.
The initial project, as submitted by the Jewish delegations to the
Paris Peace Conference in 1919, was to constitute a National Jewish Council for each state, out of representatives from the various kehilla councils, like the former
Council of Four Lands.
The Kehilla during the interwar Lithuanian Republic
On March 4, 1920, a Law on kehillot was published in Lithuania, in which the kehilla was defined as a body recognized by public law with the right to impose taxes and to issue ordinances dealing with religious matters, education and philanthropy.
The Warsaw Kehilla during the Second Polish Republic
In 1924, the
Agudist candidate,
Eliahu Kirszbraun, was elected as president and
Jakób Trokenheim, another Agudist, as vice-president. The only other candidate for presidency was the
Bundist Henryk Ehrlich. Finally, the kehilla executive reflected the composition of the council: 7 Orthodox, 6 Zionists, 1 Folkist, 1 Bundist. The Bund boycotted the 1931 elections in protest over the introduction by the Polish government, in order to favour its Agudist allies, of a “paragraph 20” in the Kehillot regulations which provided the Kehilla electoral commission with the possibility to reject a number of Agudat's opponents who were in their opinion not religious enough. In 1936, the Bund had now 15 seats out of 50 and Ehrlich was again candidate to the presidency, he got 16 votes, the
Zionist
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
candidate Yitshak Schipper 10, and the Agudist Jacob Trokenheim won by a plurality of 19 votes.
[, pp.200, 220-222]
See also
*
Jewish Autonomism
*
National personal autonomy
References
{{Reflist
Jewish communities
Jewish society
Jewish political organizations
Jews and Judaism in Europe