Suburban Story: Structure of Jewish Communities in Largest Royal Cities of 18th Century Crown Poland

• Authors: Kalik J.
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The article deals with the distinction between urban and suburban Jewish communities. The basic structure of large urban Jewish communities in pre-partition Crown Poland is known primarily from two systematic sources: the census of the Jewish population of 1764/65 and annual lists of the Jewsh poll-tax. With the discovery of the entire corpus of the Jewish poll-tax lists in Crown Poland for 1717-1764 a significanly new information can be added to this subject. The Jewish communal organisation in largest royal towns, except for Poznan, was characterised by the presence of independent suburban communities. One or more suburban communities co-existed with the urban one in Lublin, Lwów (modern Lviv in Ukraine), and Przemysl; the Jews of Cracow (Kazimierz) and Gdansk (German Danzig) were organised in suburban communities without urban community of their own. There was no Jewish community, either urban or suburban, before 1775 in Warsaw, nevertheless this city is dealt with in this article, since the information found in the poll-tax lists provides a very interesting insight into the very initial steps of the Jewish settlement in the Polish capital. Lublin is exceptionally well documented. Not only surrounding villages and suburbs are indicated in the poll-tax lists, but also numerous individual tax-payers figure there under their personal names and other qualifications, such as name of their lord, occupation, place of residence, and family connections. The peculiar form of suburban Jewish communities in largest royal cities of Crown Poland was caused probably by a combination of two main factors: burghers' self-government in those cities was powerful enough to expel the Jews from their municipal areas; but, not less powerful forces in the same cities were interested to settle the Jews in a close proximity.

Keywords

EN

CROWN POLAND; JEWISH COMMUNITIES; JEWSH POLL-TAX; SUBURBS

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla PAN w Warszawie
• Journal: Kwartalnik Historyczny
• Year: 2006
• Volume: 113
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 47-74
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Kalik J.

• J. Kalik, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08PLAAAA04799119