Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages

Louis Finkelstein's Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages, published by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1924, is an early scholarly study of the institutions, such as the kehillah, through which medieval Jewish communities governed their own internal religious and civil affairs under host societies' broader authority. Finkelstein went on to become a major figure in twentieth century American Jewish scholarship, and the book's authority rests on his direct use of medieval communal and rabbinic records. As an early twentieth century study, some of its specific conclusions have been refined by later archival scholarship, so a fine-grained claim benefits from checking against more recent specialist work.