Council of Four Lands

The Council of Four Lands (Va'ad Arba Aratzot) was the central body of Jewish self-government in the Kingdom of Poland from about 1580 until 1764. Its four "lands" were Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Red Ruthenia and Volhynia; Lithuania had a council of its own from 1623. Some thirty leaders, both rabbis and elected heads of the main communities, met usually twice a year at the great fairs of Lublin and Jarosław. The council divided among the communities the poll tax that the Jews owed the Crown, served as a high court for disputes between communities, regulated trade and credit, ransomed captives, and approved new books before printing, keeping its records in a minute book, the Pinkas.

For nearly two centuries, Polish Jewry, by then the largest Jewish community in the world, governed its own affairs on a scale not seen since the exilarchs of Babylonia. Its authority helped the communities recover after the massacres of 1648–1649 led by Chmielnicki. The Polish Sejm abolished it in 1764 in a reform of taxation, shortly before the partitions of Poland.