Poznań פוזנא
The capital of Great Poland, first of the Council's four lands; here taught the Maharsha, the Levush and the Taz.
Poznań is the oldest of the great communities of Great Poland: a Jewish presence from the fourteenth century, and communal self-government from the beginning of the sixteenth — earlier than the Council itself took shape.
In 1585 the mother-in-law of Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, Eidel, founded a yeshiva for him in Poznań and supported it for twenty years — whence the name Maharsha. Here Rabbi Mordechai Yaffe, the Levush, was chief rabbi and here he died. For some twenty years Rabbi David HaLevi, the Taz, held the rabbinate, before moving to Ostroh.
In the Council of Four Lands, Poznań represented Great Poland; its ordinances on taxation and trade bound the whole province.
The community survived 1648 — the Chmielnicki rising did not reach so far west — but suffered in the Swedish wars, and perished finally in the Shoah.
On the timeline
Sources
Documents of the period
- Pinkas Vaad Arba Aratzot — Poznań as the capital of Great Poland in the Council
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Poznan" — communal self-government from the early sixteenth century
Basis: documents and evidence.