The vigorous leadership given by Meir of Rothenburg shows that rabbinic leadership was unchallenged in this period, in that area.” Sometimes the government appointed a Jewish merchant to look after its relations with the Jewish community. This position, however, never became particularly powerful and the community did its best to see to it that no one lobbied to obtain such an appointment. This period in northern France saw the rabbinate as supreme and unchallenged. When the Black Death eliminated many Jewish communities in Germany , the smaller communities relied more and more on the few remaining rabbinic scholars. Thus, in the fifteenth century we see rabbinic authority dominant.
From the thirteenth century onward, rabbis in Germany exercised greater authority. This was confirmed by Joel Sirkes ™ who felt that the rabbi should also be compensated appropriately.
Early Sephardic Communities
Matters were quite different in the contemporary Spanish Jewish communities. There, as shown by the responsa of Simon Zemah Duran and Solomon ben Adret , an oligarchical aristocracy took local communal power into its own hands.
A rather thorough picture of communal life emerges from the thousands of responsa of Solomon ben Adret . We see a community in the latter part of the thirteenth century and in the early fourteenth century which was tightly organized and largely under the guidance of a group of berurim(lit. clear minded). These individuals, although elected by the community, were essentially an aristocracy and were charged with all communal responsibilities; they appointed other communal officials as well as the judiciary and dealt with the communal property and charity. The election procedure was recorded as closely supervised and democratic. The upper echelons of the community voted. The
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