This book features the mechanisms underlying the life of Jewish communities and the policies pursued by their authorities in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th-18th centuries on the example of two communities: Poznań and Swarzędz. It covers such issues as election of community officials and their responsibilities, the rabbi's office, community courts, craftsmen's guilds and brotherhoods, control exercised by the community authorities over residents, the community's fiscal policy, the relations between the principal community (in that case Poznań) and its branch (here Swarzędz), and the relations between Jewish communities and non-Jewish authorities.
Anna Michałowska-Mycielska is a historian working at the Institute of History, Warsaw University. The subject of her studies is the history and culture of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th-18th centuries.
She published: