The ''qahal'' (), sometimes spelled ''kahal'', was a theocratic

organizational structure An organizational structure defines how activities such as task allocation, coordination, and supervision are directed toward the achievement of organizational aims. Organizational structure affects organizational action and provides the found ...

in ancient Israelite society according to the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' 345-6
and an Ashkenazi Jewish system of a self-governing community or kehila from medieval Christian Europe (France, Germany, Italy). This was adopted in the

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, also referred to as Poland–Lithuania or the First Polish Republic (), was a federation, federative real union between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

(16th–18th centuries) and its successor states, with an elected council of laymen, the 'qahal', at the helm of each kehila. This institution was exported also further to the east as Jewish settlement advanced. In

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

it was abolished in 1822, and in most of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

in 1844.

Etymology and meaning

The

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

word qahal, which is a close etymological relation of the name of ''Qoheleth'' (

Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes ( ) is one of the Ketuvim ('Writings') of the Hebrew Bible and part of the Wisdom literature of the Christian Old Testament. The title commonly used in English is a Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word ...

), comes from a

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

meaning "convoked roup; its

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

cognate, ''qāla'', means ''to speak''. Where the Masoretic Text uses the term qahal, the

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

usually uses the

Koine Greek Koine Greek (, ), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek, Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek, was the koiné language, common supra-regional form of Greek language, Greek spoken and ...

term ''ekklesia'', , which means "assembly", "gathering", or "congregation", later used for church. In one particular part of the Priestly Code, the Septuagint instead uses the term , also meaning "gathering" or "congregation" where the Masoretic Text uses qahal. This last term is the origin of the word for "

synagogue A synagogue, also called a shul or a temple, is a place of worship for Jews and Samaritans. It is a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels) where Jews attend religious services or special ceremonies such as wed ...

" in Hebrew. Thus, the usual translation of qahal is "congregation" or "assembly", although ''asuppoṯ'', ''ʻaṣārā'', ''ʻēḏā'', ''moʻēḏ'', ''miqrā'', and ''soḏ'' are also usually translated like this. In particular, the Biblical text consistently distinguishes between ''ʻēḏā'' and qahal. One passage especially makes the distinction clear; part of the Priestly Code discusses what to do if "the whole Israelite �ēḏācommits a sin and the ahalis not aware of it Scholars conclude that the qahal must be a judicial body composed of representatives of the ''ʻēḏā''; in some biblical passages, ''ʻēḏā'' is more accurately translated as "swarm".

Biblical exclusions

The

Book of Deuteronomy Deuteronomy (; ) is the fifth book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called () which makes it the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament. Chapters 1–30 of the book consist of three sermons or speeches delivered to ...

prohibits certain members of the ''ʻēḏā'' from taking part in the "qahal of

Yahweh Yahweh was an Ancient Semitic religion, ancient Semitic deity of Weather god, weather and List of war deities, war in the History of the ancient Levant, ancient Levant, the national god of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Judah, Judah and Kingdom ...

". In particular, it excludes '' mamzers'', and men who were forcibly emasculated. (verses 1-3 in some English translations) The descendants of ''mamzers,'' up to the tenth generation, were also prohibited by this law code from taking part in the "qahal of Yahweh". The term employed in the

for 'eunuch' () most commonly refers to forcibly emasculated men, but it is also used there to denote certain foreign political officials (resembling the meaning of eunuch). This category does not include men who were born without visible testicles (conditions including cryptorchidism), or without a visible penis (conditions including hermaphroditism). There is a dispute, even in traditional Judaism, about whether this prohibited group of men should include those who have become, at some point since their birth, emasculated as the result of a disease. No explanation of the word ''mamzer'' is given in the Masoretic Text, but the

translates it as "son of a prostitute" (). In the

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

, it is suggested that the word ''mamzer'' derives from ''mum zar'' "a strange blemish", and thus suggesting illicit parentage in some sense. There are differing opinions in the Talmud as to what this consists of, but the universally accepted ruling refers to the offspring of adultery (defined as relations with a married woman) or incest, as defined in the

Book of Leviticus The Book of Leviticus (, from , ; , , 'And He called'; ) is the third book of the Torah (the Pentateuch) and of the Old Testament, also known as the Third Book of Moses. Many hypotheses presented by scholars as to its origins agree that it de ...

. In the Talmud, there is a fierce dispute about whether or not the term ''mamzer'' included a child with a Jewish mother but a non-Jewish or enslaved father (or both); although the Talmud eventually concludes that this is not the case, a number of scholars now suspect that this was actually the original definition of ''mamzer''. Abraham Geiger, a prominent Jewish scholar and rabbi of the mid 19th century, suggested that the etymological origin of ''mamzer'' might be ''me'am zar'', "belonging to a foreign people". The Talmud interprets the exclusion of certain people from the qahal as a prohibition against ordinary Jews marrying such people. Additionally, the biblical reference to the "tenth generation" was interpreted, by the classical rabbis, as an

idiom An idiom is a phrase or expression that largely or exclusively carries a Literal and figurative language, figurative or non-literal meaning (linguistic), meaning, rather than making any literal sense. Categorized as formulaic speech, formulaic ...

meaning "forever"; thus the Talmud forbids all the descendants - forever - of these people, from being married to ordinary Jews.

In Poland-Lithuania

The legal basis for the existence of kahals in the Polish lands was the

Statute of Kalisz The General Charter of Jewish rights known as the Statute of Kalisz, and the Kalisz Privilege, granted Jews in the Middle Ages some protection against discrimination in Poland compared to other places in Europe. These rights included exclusive ...

of 1264 issued by Duke Bolesław the Pious, which was extended by King Casimir III the Great in 1364 to Jews in towns throughout the whole Polish Kingdom. The kahals were the organising body of the Jewish community in a given locality, and were primarily concerned with the collection of head tax and the exercise of jurisdiction within the community. In the 16th century, the kahals spread to the territory of Ukraine. Strictly speaking, the qahal was the elected lay leadership of the ''kehila'' (community). A qahal had a minimum of 8 members, and in average Jewish communities had a membership of 22–35 individuals. Their executives were elected by the local Jewish community, and consisted of 4 ''elders'' (Hebrew: ''zeqenim'') with a further 3–5 ''honorary members'' (Hebrew: ''tovim''). There was one qahal for each Jewish community, although smaller ''kahals'' were often made subject to larger ones. These Polish-Lithuanian qahals quickly came to be politically autonomous bodies with major regulatory control over Jewish communities in the region. The qahals acted as autonomous administration within each town, having jurisdiction over the local Jewish population and the legal right to regulate the contact between Poles and Jews in all their social, economical and political aspects. Within the community, they administered commerce, hygiene, sanitation, charity (cf. '' tzedakah'', '' mitzvot'', '' halukka''), Jewish education, application of dietary laws (''

kashrut (also or , ) is a set of Food and drink prohibitions, dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to halakha, Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed ko ...

''), and relations between landlords and their tenants. They provided a number of community facilities, such as a

rabbi A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...

, Joseph ben Ephraim Karo, ''

Shulchan Aruch The ''Shulhan Arukh'' ( ),, often called "the Code of Jewish Law", is the most widely consulted of the various legal codes in Rabbinic Judaism. It was authored in the city of Safed in what is now Israel by Joseph Karo in 1563 and published in ...

'', " Choshen Mishpat", chapter 2 a ritual bath (''

mikveh A mikveh or mikvah (, ''mikva'ot'', ''mikvot'', or (Ashkenazi Hebrew, Ashkenazic) ''mikves'', lit., "a collection") is a bath used for ritual washing in Judaism#Full-body immersion, ritual immersion in Judaism to achieve Tumah and taharah, ...

''), and interest-free loans ('' gemachen''). ''Kahal''s even had sufficient authority that they could arrange for individuals to be expelled from

s, excommunicating them ('' herem''). However, rich and powerful individuals gradually began to dominate the qahals, abusing their position for their own benefit. As a result, by the 18th century, many ordinary Jews had begun to clamour for the abolition of those institutions. Researchers are still debating to what degree the official abolition of the qahal system (1822 in Congress Poland, and 1844 throughout the Russian Empire) was circumvented by Jewish communities, who had internalised very deeply the spirit of local communal rule and gathered around legal associations such as the '' Ḥevrā qaddishā'' (burial society). Some see the qahal-style self-administration reach far into the second half of the nineteenth century; others however, claim that the

magnates of Poland and Lithuania The magnates of Poland and Lithuania (, ) were an aristocracy of Polish-Lithuanian identity, Polish-Lithuanian nobility (''szlachta'') that existed in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and, from the 1569 Union o ...

had usurped much of the qahals autonomy well before 1800, and others still see deep inner changes predating even the Polish partitions (1770s-90s). After the 1844 official abolition in the Russian Empire, qahals "continued to exist only in the Baltic region f Russia Afterwards, Jewish communities were only given jurisdiction over religious and charitable affairs, and occasionally over education."

Conspiracy theories

The qahal exists as a theme in the antisemitic conspiracy theory literature. The theme originated with Jacob Brafman, a Lithuanian Jew who had a falling out with

Minsk Minsk (, ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the administra ...

qahal tax-agents, and to get revenge converted first to

Lutheranism Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

and then to Russian Orthodoxy, authoring polemics against the

and the qahal.''Brafman, Iakov Aleksandrovich''
entry of the

YIVO YIVO (, , short for ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. Estab ...

Encyclopedia Brafmann authored the books ''The Local and Universal Jewish Brotherhoods'' (1868) and ''The Book of the Kahal'' (1869), claiming that the qahal was an international network under the control of the '' Alliance Israélite Universelle'', its aim being to undermine Christian entrepreneurs, taking over their property and ultimately seizing power. This theory was taken up by anti-Jewish publications in Russia and by some Russian officials, such as P. A. Cherevin and Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, who in the 1880s urged governor-generals of provinces to seek out a supposed "universal Jewish kahal." Brafmann's image of the qahal spread throughout the world, making its way to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

by 1881, as it was translated by Zénaïde Alexeïevna Ragozin in '' The Century Magazine''. It prepared the groundwork for ''

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multip ...

'', and the word qahal features in that text. It is also discussed in other conspiracy works such as Edith Starr Miller's ''Occult Theocrasy'' (1933), which ties it to the Illuminati.

Etymology and meaning

Biblical exclusions

In Poland-Lithuania

Conspiracy theories

See also

References

Further reading