Tea at Trianon: Jewish Communal Organization

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Jewish Communal Organization

In sixteenth century Polish towns.

From the beginning of the twelfth century we have evidence that Central European Jewry developed patterns of self-government reaching beyond the sole requirements of religious community life. This development coincided with the emergence of town communities as a new type of politico-legal corporation within medieval society. Subsequently in East Central Europe, and especially in the royal Polish towns, Jewish communities gained legal and political autonomy to a degree unknown elsewhere. This study aims to describe those Polish communities at the height of their power and importance, which they reached in the second half of the sixteenth century. In so doing it has to take into consideration – like any investigation made in the field of Jewish history – an internal Jewish aspect and an external non-Jewish one. Moreover, the aim of such an approach should always be to come to a kind of synthesis in terms of this twofold perspective, in which the interdependence of internal and external factors is described. (Read entire post.)