The activity of these central agencies of self-government was particularly intensified in the latter part of the seventeenth century, when the state of communal affairs, sorely shaken during the preceding period of unrest, had to be restored. The Government upheld the authority of the Waads in the eyes of the Jewish population, finding it more convenient to maintain relations with one or two central organizations than to deal with a large number of local agencies. In 1687 the "Jewish Elders of the Crown" (of Poland proper), acting on behalf of the Council at Yaroslav, lodged a complaint with King Sobieski, declaring themselves unable to assume the responsibility for the collection of the Jewish head-tax to the amount fixed by the preceding Polish Diet, owing to the fact that many Jews in the cities and villages, benefiting by the protection of the pans and even the royal officials, refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the "Elders of the Crown" and shirked their duty as tax-payers. In view of this, the King issued a decree condemning in strong terms "such interference and disorder," and enjoining the individual Kahals to submit to the apportionment of taxes by the Elders of the Crown, and altogether to acknowledge their jurisdiction in general Jewish affairs, under the pain of severe fines for the disobedient.
The gradual deterioration of social and economic conditions in Poland rendered the activities of the Waads more complicated. The Waads were now called upon to regulate also the inner affairs of the communities as well as their relations to the Government and the urban estates, the magistracies and guilds. It cannot be said that the Waads exhibited on all occasions an adequate understanding of the political situation, or that they did full justice to the far-reaching demands of a truly popular representation. They were too little democratic in their composition to accomplish so large a task. The delegates to the Waads were not elected by the communities with this end in view, but were recruited from among the rabbis and elders of the principal communities, the notables and "influential men." However, in spite of their inadequate, oligarchic organization, the Waads were largely instrumental in unifying communal Jewish life and in enhancing discipline in Polish-Lithuanian Jewry.
One of the most important duties of the Waads was the maintenance of Jewish public schools, the Talmud Torahs and yeshibahs, which at communal expense imparted religious instruction primarily to poor children and youths. From the minutes of the Lithuanian Waad which have come down to us we learn of the fact that every one of its conferences placed at the head of its enactments a number of clauses providing for the obligatory instruction of the young in yeshibahs throughout the country, for the maintenance of the students by the various communities in cash and in kind, and for the formulation of the curricula and the statutes of all these institutions of learning. No wonder that the endeavors of the Waad were crowned with success, and that the intellectual level of the Jews of Lithuania was very high. It must be owned, however, that their mental horizon was not large, inasmuch as the whole course of study, even in the highest schools, was limited to the Talmud and rabbinic literature.
Furthermore, the Council of the Four Lands established a control over the books issued by the printing-presses of Cracow and Lublin, or imported from abroad. Only such books were allowed to circulate as were supplied with a printed approbation, or haskama, of the Waad or some authoritative rabbis. Very frequently the Waad also intervened in the struggle of parties and sects which, as will be seen later,176 followed the rise of the Sabbatian movement.
Many public functions which lay outside the sphere of activity of the central Waads were discharged by the local District conventions, or "Dietines" (waade medinah, or waade galil), the latter acting as the agencies of the Kahal federations of the given region. In official language these District federations were often designated as "synagogues." Especially prominent during this period were the "Volhynian Synagogue," i.e. the federation of the Kahals of Volhynia, and the "White Russian Synagogue," composed of the federated communities of the present Government of Moghilev. The former sent its representatives to the Council of the Four Lands, while the latter was affiliated with the Waad of Lithuania. The periodic conventions of these two "synagogues" not only decided the allotment of taxes within the Kahal districts, but also took up questions of a general character, such as the sending of advocates to the general Polish Diet, the instructions to be given to the deputies of the central Waads, the problem of Jewish education, the rabbinate, etc. Less noticeable was the activity of the Kahal federations of the three "Crown provinces": Little Poland with the central community of Cracow, Great Poland with Posen, and Red Russia with Lemberg. We know, however, that they too assembled periodically, either at the initiative of the Kahals themselves or by order of the voyevoda of a given province. These conventions or "Dietines" had their "floor leaders" or "marshals," after the pattern of the provincial Polish Diets. At least such was the insistent demand of the voyevodas, who preferred to transact their official business with the responsible leaders of the conferences. The interference of the administration in the affairs of the Jewish autonomous organization became particularly frequent in the first part of the eighteenth century, when political anarchy in Poland reached its climax.
The whole Kahal organization received a severe blow at the hands of the Polish Government in 1764. The General Confederacy which preceded the election of King Stanislav Augustus, having framed a new "constitution," decided to change fundamentally the system of Jewish taxation. Instead of the former procedure of fixing the amount of the head-tax in toto, and leaving its allotment to the Districts and individual communities to the conferences of the elders and Kahals, the Diet passed a resolution imposing a uniform tax of two gulden on every registered Jewish soul of either sex, beginning with the first year after birth. This change was justified on the ground that, in the opinion of the Government, the previous wholesale system of taxation enabled the Kahals to collect from the tax-payers a much larger sum than originally determined upon. Moreover, simultaneously with the head-tax other imposts were levied by the Kahals. This resulted in burdening the Jewish population and in hiding its true tax-paying capacity from the Government, while according to the new system the exchequer was likely to receive a much larger revenue.
To secure the accurate collection of the head-tax, a general registration of the Jewish population in the whole country was ordered. The taxes of each community were to be remitted by its Kahal elders to the nearest state treasury. In consequence, the functions of the Kahals, as far as the apportionment of the taxes was concerned, were officially discontinued, and the Kahal elders became mere go-betweens, who handed over the tax revenues to the exchequer. The Government ceased to recognize the rôle of the Kahal as a fiscal agent, which it had formerly valued so greatly, and no more considered it necessary to uphold the authority of this autonomous organization. The whole machinery of Jewish self-government, all these Diets and Dietines, the Waads and District conferences, suddenly became superfluous, if not injurious, in the eyes of the Government. No wonder then that the same Diet of 1764 passed a resolution forbidding henceforth the holding of conventions of District elders for the fixation or distribution of any tax collections or for any other purpose.
This limitation of the activities of the Kahals and the entire abolition of the central agencies of Jewish autonomy took place on the eve of the abolition of political independence in Poland itself, eight years before its first partition. We shall see later that the subsequent period of unrest, marked by the transfer of the greater part of Polish territory to the dominion of Russia, introduced even greater disorder into the once so firmly consolidated autonomous organization of the Jews, and robbed the Jewish people of one of the mainstays of its national existence.
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