Introduction

The texts presented here are all excerpts from the pinkas of Altona, held at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, AHW 14.  The communal pinkas, or record book, contains notes of some of the decisions issues by the parnassim, the lay leaders of the Jewish community.  Altona, subject to the Danish king, was part of the triple Jewish community together with neighboring Hamburg and Wandsbeck. 

These three texts concern the policies of the parnassim towards local ritual baths, mikvaot.  The first text, from 1681, describes the workings of two mikvaot, houses in individual homes.  Payment for usage, how that would be divvied up, and regulations were set up by the community, binding on all residents of the triple community, under penalty of excommunication. 

The second text, from 1685, is an entry in the pinkas that reports of the parnassim’s successful attempt to undo the excommunicative ban they had devised four years earlier.  Their motivation was to force community members to use the newly built communal mikveh, rather than the mikvaot in the homes of individuals whose use had been mandated by the previous takkanah.  The third text is a record of the announcement made in synagogue which informed community members of the new ban, mandating use of the communal mikveh.

These texts inform about the daily workings of communal institutions, the relationship between lay and rabbinic leaders, the financial concerns of communal leaders, and the use of social control to create communal policy.  It also highlights the tensions inherent to a growing community, specifically dealing with ritual space in private and public locations. 

Bibliography
Jutta Braden, Hamburger Judenpolitik im Zeitalter lutherischer Orthodoxie 1590-1710, Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden, Bd. 23. (Hamburg: Christians, 2001.)
Max Grunwald, Hamburgs deutsche Juden bis zur Auflösung der Dreigemeinden, 1811, (Hamburg: A. Janssen, 1904.)
Yosef, Kaplan, "The Place of Herem in the Sefardic Community of Hamburg during the Seventeenth Century," in Die Sefarden in Hamburg, ed. Michael Studemund-Halévy, (Hamburg: Buske, 1994.)
Stefan Litt, Pinkas, Kahal, and the Mediene:  The Records of Dutch Ashkenazi Communities in the Eighteenth Century as Historical Sources, Studies in Jewish history and culture 19, (Leiden:  Brill, 2008).
Stephan Rohrbacher, "Die Drei Gemeinden Altona, Hamburg, Wandsbek zur Zeit der Glikl," Ashkenas 8,1 (1998): 105-124.

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