The Eastern European Pinkas Kahal: Form and Function

This paper examines the community pinkassim as artifacts in their own right rather than transparent containers of communal records. It examines their physical form, structure, and organization to understand the history not of the communities, but of the pinkassim themselves. The discussion is limited to the community pinkassim in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was in the early modern period the largest Jewish center in Europe.

The pinkas was a notebook with blank pages on which its owner (whether an individual or an organization) would write texts to be recorded. Most bodies of Jewish self-government in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth kept their own pinkassim. These were first and foremost technical documents dealing with the administration of these bodies. The pinkas of the community council – the kahal – was different, not in its technical nature, but in the way it was managed. First, it was not kept as a kind of running record of administrative decisions; only materials of particular importance were inscribed in it. It was an elite document: most entries were made only at the discretion of the community leaders, while others who wanted their document copied in had to pay. Second, the copying itself and the management of the pinkas was done by the community scribe – a member of the secondary elite. As a result, the post of safra demata seems to have bestowed on its holder a degree of influence and improved social standing within the community.