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Kahal

subject · http://data.judaicalink.org/data/ep/2064629

An executive board that was chosen to run an autonomous Jewish community. A kahal served as a Jewish community council, or as a decision-making committee of a kehilah. Throughout the history of the Jewish Diaspora, even before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish community was organized as a self-governing community, running its internal affairs according to its own laws, later codified as halakhah and continuously amended and supplemented by time-bound statutes and legislation known as takanot. This autonomy was not idiosyncratic or specific to Jews, but conformed to the basic organization of the premodern state, whether in ancient Rome, medieval Christendom, or Islam. This structure was also present in early modern Europe, in which society as a whole was divided into corporations and estates, including the nobility, the clergy, the peasantry, the townspeople, and the Jews. Each estate had its own specific code of laws, its own courts, and its own tax obligation and collection systems (or relief from such obligations).

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