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 in Central and Eastern Europe, more particularly in Poland's Second Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Kingdom of Romania, Lithuania, Ukrainian People's Republic, 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, [1] the modern Kehilla council was elected like a municipal council, with lists of candidates presented by the various Jewish parties: Agudat Yisrael, the religious and non religious Zionists, but also the marxist Bundists and Poalists, the liberal-minded secularist Folkists, et cetera. 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. [2] [3]
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. [3]
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 candidate Yitshak Schipper 10, and the Agudist Jacob Trokenheim won by a plurality of 19 votes. [4]
Party or list | number of seats 1924 | number of seats 1931 | votes 1936 | number of seats 1936 |
---|---|---|---|---|
Agudath Yisrael | 17 | 19 | 8,079 | 12 |
Aleksander Hasidim | 3 | - | - | - |
Grodzhisker Hasidim | - | 2 | - | - |
Sokolower Hasidim | - | - | 1,366 | 1 |
Nonpartisan Religious | - | 3 | - | - |
Zionists | 14 | 12 | 7,749 | 11 |
Mizrahi | 5 | 4 | 3,163 | 4 |
Revisionist Zionists | - | - | 1,149 | 1 |
"Democrats" | - | 2 | - | - |
Bund | 5 | (boycott) | 10,622 | 15 |
Folkspartei | 3 | 2 | 966 | 1 |
Poale Zion Right | - | - | 1,779 | 2 |
Poalei Zion Left | 2 | 1 | 887 | 1 |
Philanthropic Org. (Mr. Stueckgold) | 1 | - | 1,573 | 2 |
Assimilationists | - | 2 | - | - |
Other private lists | - | 3 | - | - |
Total | 50 | 50 | - | 50 |
Informally, Kehilla can be an all-encompassing term that refers to the entirety of a Jewish community's religious and secular society, [5] especially in regards to modern Ashkenazi Orthodox neighborhoods.
According to the Talmud, the ten things things a city needs for a Torah scholar to be able to study in it are "[a] court that [punishes] with lashes and punishes [with penalties]; a charity fund, collected by two and distributed by three; a synagogue; a bathhouse; a restroom; a physician; a surgeon; a notary; (a butcher); and a teacher of children." [6]
United Torah Judaism, often referred to by its electoral symbol Gimel, is a Haredi, religious conservative political alliance in Israel. The alliance, consisting of Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah, was first formed in 1992, in order to maximize Ashkenazi Haredi representation in the Knesset. Despite the alliance splitting in 2004 over rabbinical differences, the parties reconciled in 2006, in order to prevent vote-wasting. In April 2019, the party achieved its highest number of seats ever, receiving eight seats.
Agudat Yisrael is a Haredi Jewish political party in Israel. It began as a political party representing Haredi Jews in Poland, originating in the Agudath Israel movement in Upper Silesia. It later became the party of many Haredim in Israel. It was the umbrella party for many, though not all, Haredi Jews in Israel until the 1980s, as it had been during the British Mandate of Palestine.
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Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky, known as The Steipler or The Steipler Gaon, was a Haredi rabbi, Talmudic scholar, and posek ("decisor" of Jewish law), and the author of Kehilos Yaakov, "a multi-volume Talmudic commentary".
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Zorach or Zorah Wahrhaftig, also known as Zerach Warhaftig, was an Israeli rabbi, lawyer, and politician. He was a signatory of Israel's Declaration of Independence.
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Henryk Ehrlich Yiddish: הענריק ערליך), sometimes spelled Henryk Erlich; 1882 – 15 May 1942) was an activist of the General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland, a Petrograd Soviet member, and a member of the executive committee of the Second International.
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Romania was a Jewish socialist party in Romania, adhering to the political line of the General Jewish Labour Bund. Founded in 1922, shortly after the establishment of Greater Romania, it united Jewish socialists in Bukovina, Bessarabia and the Romanian Old Kingdom. Standing for the lay wing of the Jewish representative movement, the Romanian Bund had atheistic leanings and offered an alternative to the mainstream Jewish organization. Like other Bundist groups, but unlike the Marxist-inspired Poale Zion bodies of Bessarabia, it rejected Zionism.
The Arbeter-ring in Yisroel – Brith Haavoda was the Israeli branch of the International Jewish Labor Bund, launched in 1951 and disbanded in 2019.
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland was a Jewish socialist party in Poland which promoted the political, cultural and social autonomy of Jewish workers, sought to combat antisemitism and was generally opposed to Zionism.
Arkadi Kremer was a Russian socialist leader known as the 'Father of the Bund'. This organisation was instrumental in the development of Russian Marxism, the Jewish labour movement and Jewish nationalism.
The International Jewish Labor Bund (ILJB) was a New York-based international Jewish socialist organization, based on the legacy of the General Jewish Labour Bund founded in the Russian empire in 1897 and the Polish Bund that was active in the interwar years. The IJLB is composed by local Bundist groups around the world and was originally created to defend Jewish national-cultural rights in Eastern Europe. It was an "associated organization" of the Socialist International, similar in status to the World Labour Zionist Movement or the International League of Religious Socialists. Bundist ideology differed significantly from Zionist beliefs regarding the Yiddish language and the immigration of Jews. In the mid-2000s, The World Coordinating Committee of the Jewish Labor Bund was dissolved in New York, although local Bundist groups or groups inspired by the Jewish Labor Bund still exist in Mexico and Australia.
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Esther Frumkin, born Malkhe Khaye Lifshitz and also known as Mariya Yakovlevna Frumkina, was a Belarusian Bundist revolutionary and publicist and Soviet politician who served as leader of the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, and later of the Yevsektsiya in the Soviet Union. An ardent proponent of the Yiddish language, her political position on Jewish assimilation satisfied neither traditional Jews nor the Soviet leaders.
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, generally called The Bund or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a secular Jewish socialist party initially formed in the Russian Empire and active between 1897 and 1920. In 1917, the Bund organizations in Poland seceded from the Russian Bund and created a new Polish General Jewish Labour Bund which continued to operate in Poland in the years between the two world wars. The majority faction of the Russian Bund was dissolved in 1921 and incorporated into the Communist Party. Other remnants of the Bund endured in various countries. A member of the Bund was called a Bundist.