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Abolition of Jewish autonomy, consisting in the dissolution of the Kahals and the modification of the system of special Jewish taxation.

Nor do we hear of any opposition to the Government decrees, issued probably at the request of Dillon, Notkin, Peretz, or Nebakhovich, that the elders of the kahals in and after 1808, and the rabbis of the congregations in and after 1812, be conversant with either Russian, German, or Polish.

They "possess complete self-government in their Kahals, their own system of finance in the basket tax, their separate charitable institutions," their own traditional school in the heders, of which there are in the South-west no less than six thousand.

The Kahal elders it will be remembered that they continued to exist after the abrogation of the Kahals, acting as the fiscal agents of the Government now faced a terrible alternative: to become, in the words of a contemporary, "either murderers of martyrs," i.e., either to capture and send into the army any youth or boy, without discrimination, or themselves to don the gray uniform and be impressed into military services as "penal" recruits.

This explains "the omnipotence of the Kahals," which, contrary to the law of the state, employ secret means to uphold their autonomous authority both in communal and judicial matters, using for this purpose the uncontrolled sums of the special Jewish revenue, the meat tax.

By this ukase all the administrative functions of the Kahals were turned over to the police departments, and those of an economic and fiscal character to the municipalities and town councils; the old elective Kahal administration was to pass out of existence.

These measures were sanctioned by an imperial ukase dated December 20, 1821, decreeing the abolition of the Kahals and their substitution by "Congregational Boards," whose scope of activity was strictly limited to religious matters, while all civil and fiscal affairs were placed under the jurisdiction of the local Polish administration.

The official "captors" employed by the Kahals were no longer the only ones to prowl after living prey. The chase was now taken up by every private individual who wished to find a substitute for a member of his family, or who simply wanted to turn a penny by selling his recruiting receipt.

It was, therefore, necessary to demand, as a prerequisite for Jewish emancipation, the improvement of the Jewish masses which was to be effected by removal from the injurious liquor trade and inducement to engage in agriculture, by abolishing the Kahals, i.e., their communal autonomy, and by changing the Jewish school system to meet the civic requirements.

There were cases of wholesale chastisements inflicted on more tangible grounds, when misdeeds of a few individuals were puffed up into communal crimes and visited cruelly upon entire communities. The conscription horrors of that period, when the Kahals were degraded to police agencies for "capturing" recruits, had bred the "informing" disease among the Jewish communities.