Rabbinate

The seat of the rabbi has been referred to as the rabbinate in the Holy Roman Empire since the Middle Ages .

history

In Central Europe, the rabbinate was an urban institution in the Middle Ages, the rabbinate seats were usually in imperial cities . The place of jurisdiction for the Jews was their own community. Jews from surrounding Jewish communities often took advantage of the rabbinical court . Little by little, many Jewish communities subordinated themselves to joint rabbinates and contributed to their funding.

After the expulsion of the Jews from the imperial cities in the late Middle Ages, most Jews in the Holy Roman Empire lived in rural communities belonging to the small aristocratic rule, for example in the places of the imperial knighthood . As a result, the Jewish communities were forced to abandon the principle of the autonomous local courts of justice and to set up higher-level instances. The sovereigns created Jewish corporations as a legal unit of their rural Jewry . The land rabbi was in charge of the religious leadership of these corporations.

In the course of secularization and mediatization , many independent rulers disappeared and larger states emerged. In the 19th century, they tried to reorganize their Jewish population while building a modern state administration. This resulted in the Kingdom of Bavaria , the Distriktsrabbinate , in the Kingdom of Württemberg the Bezirksrabbinate and in the Grand Duchy of Baden also the Bezirksrabbinate that part, until the Nazi era passed.

See also

• Frankfurt rabbinical conspiracy

literature

• Monika Berthold-Hilpert: The Land and District Rabbinate Schwabach - An overview. In: The Rabbinate District Schwabach (= Franconia Judaica . Volume 4). Edited by the Middle Franconia district by Andrea M. Kluxen and Julia Hecht. District Middle Franconia, Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-89913-788-0 , pp. 10-22.