Jewish self-rule

The qahal (), sometimes spelled kahal, was a theocratic organizational structure in ancient Israelite society according to the Hebrew Bible, and an Ashkenazi Jewish system of a self-governing community or kehila from medieval Christian Europe (France, Germany, Italy). This was adopted in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (16th–18th centuries) and its successor states, with an elected council of laymen, the 'qahal', at the helm of each kehila. This institution was exported also further to the east as Jewish settlement advanced. In Poland it was abolished in 1822, and in most of the Russian Emp

Jewish political movement to find an alternative territory, outside of the Middle East, for the creation of a Jewish homeland

central body of Jewish authority in Poland from 1580 to 1764

right|thumb|upright|The book "Auto-Emancipation" by Pinsker, 1882

Aljama (, , ) is a term of Arabic origin used in old official documents in Spain and Portugal to designate the self-governing communities of Moors and Jews living under Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula. In some present-day Spanish cities, the name is still applied to the quarters where such communities lived, though they are many centuries gone.

seeking an ethnic-cultural autonomy for the Jews of Eastern Europe