Initiatives to Regulate the Legal Situation of Jewish Communities in Galicia in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: Greater Autonomy for Communities, or Increased Dependence on the Secular/State Administration?
Initiatives to Regulate the Legal Situation of Jewish Communities in Galicia in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: Greater Autonomy for Communities, or Increased Dependence on the Secular/State Administration?

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the process of the introduction in Galicia of a new law regulating the relations between Jewish communities and the authorities of the territorial administration. Unlike in the Galician provinces, where the Josephine patent of 1789 continued to be applied, certain Jewish communities in the cities here had developed new statutes previously, leading to partial changes in the elections for community councils. The first was the Krakow community (1870), whose Orthodox rabbi Szymon Schreiber (Sofer) attempted to withdraw the implemented changes, designing his own version of the new statutes (1882). The struggle over the form of the new law ultimately culminated with the Viennese government’s issue of relevant regulations in 1890.

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