Congregation Zolynia
The Zolynia Kehilla
Since the fifteenth century, the nobiity of Poland allowed Jewish subjects to govern their own communities in religious, social and some economic affairs. Each Jewish community was part of a Kehilla, a Hebrew word that means "community" or "congregation" (the plural of Kehilla is Kehillot). In Polish, the word became "Kahal," and that was the official name of the governing board of elders that made many important decisions for the congregation. In 1789, the Austrian government divided Galicia into 140 official Jewish communities, and Zolynia became the seat of one of these official Jewish districts.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Kahal of Zolynia Miasteckzo ("country town") included Jewish residents of fourteen other nearby villages: Bialobrzegi; Biedaczow; Brzoza Stadnicka; Chodaczow; Czarna; Dabrowki; Gwizdow; Kopanie; Korniaktow; Laszczyny; Rakszawa; Smolarzyny; Zalesie and Zmyslowka.
In the Austrian Empire, the Kahal was was an official agency, authorized to collect taxes from the Jewish community, representing its interests to the civil authorities, supporting its poor and homeless, settling legal disputes and generally supervising all religious activities. The council of at least three elders selected the Chief Rabbi for the congregation, who was responsible for recording births, deaths and marriages with the civil authorities. The Kahal elders also licensed some economic activities, such as the right to bid on arendas (leases) to manage businesses or resources for the Lancut nobility.
The Kahal had its own employees, which at different times might include assistant Rabbis, scribes, synagogue workers, a tax collector, a registrar of Jewish vital records and neighborhood street cleaners and watchmen, as needed. Even after the Polish government officially disbanded the Kahal system in 1927, the Zolynia Jewish Community remained a recognized legal corporation and continued to supervise religious activities (in the 1930s, the Zolynia congregation had nine employees, including the Rabbi and a kosher slaughterer).
Synagogues and Prayer Houses
Generally, any outlying village that had ten or more adult Jewish men would have a daily minyan, prayer services, often held in a room inside someone's home (a shtibel). The entire Jewish district would attend services for the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippur at the main synagogue in Zolynia Centre, just off the market square. Most of those coming from the outlying village areas would arrange to stay overnight with relatives or friends near the synagogue.
Today, most Jewish people in the United States and other Western countries use the terms "synagogue" and "shul" interchangeably. In prewar Central Europe, there was a clearer difference. A shul (bet tefila) was a "house of prayer," only used for worship. A synagogue (bet knesset) was a "house of assembly" and would usually have a sanctuary for services and additional rooms for study or meetings. In the Zolynia Kehilla, there were several shuls (Rakszawa had a permanent shul), but only one synagogue and only one Jewish cemetery. Prior to the Second World War, Zolynia also had a separate Beit Midrash or study house (sometimes referred to as a yeshiva), where young men read and learned prayers and religious commentary from a hired rabbi on afternoons after public school.
