THE ROLE OF NON-JEWISH AUTHORITIES IN RESOLVING CONFLICTS WITHIN JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

This article presents examples of four categories of Jewish communal conflict in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries where non-Jewish authorities were called upon to resolve the strife. The categories are: supracommunal disputes; intracommunal struggles between the community establishment and rival factions over institutional legitimacy; conflicts between communal institutions and powerful individuals; and disputes between individual Jews. The author concludes that while non-Jewish intervention usually was at the behest of at least one of the Jewish parties, such intervention was always according to the authorities interests and both resulted from and contributed to the weakening of Jewish autonomous institutions.