The qahal () 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 kahal, 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 Empire in 1844.
Etymology and meaning
The Hebrew word qahal, which is a close etymological relation of the name of Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes), comes from a root meaning "convoked [group]"; its Arabic cognate, qāla, means to speak.
Where the Masoretic Text uses the term qahal, the Septuagint usually uses the Koine Greek term ekklesia, , which means "assembly", "gathering", or "congregation", later ued for church. In one particular part of the Priestly Code, the Septuagint instead uses the term , also meaning "gathering" or "congregation" where the Masoretic Text uses qahal. This last term is the origin of the word for "synagogue" in Hebrew.
Thus, the usual translation of qahal is "congregation" or "assembly", although asuppot, ʻaṣarah, ʻedah, moʻed, miqra, and sod are also usually translated like this.
In particular, the Biblical text consistently distinguishes between ʻedah and qahal. One passage especially makes the distinction clear; part of the Priestly Code discusses what to do if "the whole Israelite [ʻedah] commits a sin and the [qahal] is not aware of it[.]" Scholars conclude that the qahal must be a judicial body composed of representatives of the ʿedah; in some biblical passages, ʻedah is more accurately translated as "swarm".
Biblical exclusions
The Book of Deuteronomy prohibits certain members of the ʿedah from taking part in the qahal of Yahweh. In particular, it excludes mamzers, and men who were forcibly emasculated. The descendants of mamzers, up to the tenth generation, were also prohibited by this law code from taking part in the "congregation of Yahweh".
The term employed in the Septuagint for 'eunuch' () most commonly refers to forcibly emasculated men, but it is also used there to denote certain foreign political officials (resembling the meaning of eunuch). This category does not include men who were born without visible testicles (conditions including cryptorchidism), or without a visible penis (conditions including hermaphroditism). There is a dispute, even in traditional Judaism, about whether this prohibited group of men should include those who have become, at some point since their birth, emasculated as the result of a disease.
No explanation of the word mamzer is given in the Masoretic Text, but the Septuagint translates it as "son of a prostitute" (). In the Talmud, it is suggested that the word mamzer derives from mum zar, meaning a strange blemish, and thus suggesting illicit parentage in some sense. There are differing opinions in the Talmud as to what this consists of, but the universally accepted ruling refers to the offspring of adultery (defined as relations with a married woman) or incest, as defined in the Book of Leviticus.
In the Talmud, there is a fierce dispute about whether or not the term mamzer included a child who had a Jewish mother, and a father who is either non-Jewish or a slave (or both); although the Talmud eventually concludes that this is not the case, a number of scholars now suspect that this was actually the original definition of mamzer. Abraham Geiger, a prominent Jewish scholar and rabbi of the mid 19th century, suggested that the etymological origin of mamzer might be me'am zar, which means belonging to a foreign people.
The Talmud interprets the exclusion of certain people from the qahal as a prohibition against ordinary Jews marrying such people. Additionally, the biblical reference to the "tenth generation" was interpreted, by the classical rabbis, as an idiom meaning "forever"; thus the Talmud forbids all the descendants - forever - of these people, from being married to ordinary Jews.