Council of Four Lands - Number of Delegates and Frequency of Meetings

Number of Delegates and Frequency of Meetings

During the second half of the seventeenth century the sessions of the Council occurred once or twice a year, more frequently at Yaroslav than at Lublin. The number of delegates cannot be exactly ascertained. One source notes that one representative to the Council was elected from each Kahal, and that to these Kahal delegates were added the six leading rabbis of Poland. It appears from the Kahal pinkeses that only the most important Kahals of each region sent their delegates to the Council.

The capitals (Poznań, Kraków, Lwów, and Ostrog) of the "four lands" each sent two or even more. The signatures of fifteen to twenty-five delegates—-though often the signatures of the six rabbis only-—are usually found attached to the extant decisions of the wa'ads. The total number of delegates, together with the rabbis, evidently reached thirty.

In the eighteenth century the operations of the Council became more and more limited; its sessions took place less regularly, mostly at Jaroslaw. One of the last important congresses was that held at Jaroslaw in the fall of 1753. Among other matters considered was the famous dispute between the rabbis Jacob Emden and Jonathan Eybeschutz over the Shabbethaian movement, resulting in the latter's acquittal on the charge of heresy.

In 1764 the Polish Diet ordered Jewish general congresses to be discontinued (Vol. Legum, vii. 50); and in this way the activity of the Council of Four Lands came to an end. The reason for the Polish Diet decision was that the Council had failed to deliver collected taxes. The subsequent partition of Poland among Russia, Austria, and Prussia, changing, as it did, the whole Kahal system, was unfavorable to the existence of such central autonomous bodies as the Council.