Lublin לובלין
The capital of Polish Jewry: seat of the Council of Four Lands and of Chachmei Lublin, destroyed in the Shoah.
Lublin sat at the crossroads of the Polish fairs, which is why communal delegates gathered there twice a year: from the mid-sixteenth century the Council of Four Lands met here — a Jewish self-government that apportioned taxes, issued ordinances, funded yeshivot and represented Jews before the crown. The diaspora never knew anything comparable in scale.
Lublin had a famous yeshiva and a Hebrew press; the Maharam of Lublin taught here, and in the hasidic era the city is bound to the Seer of Lublin.
In 5690 Rabbi Meir Shapiro opened Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, a vast building with dormitory and library, conceived as a new kind of yeshiva. He also proposed Daf Yomi, the daily page of Talmud studied worldwide today.
In 5702 the community was destroyed; the Majdanek camp lay nearby. The yeshiva building survived.