Although some details of this growing problem is available for earlier centuries, the problem become clearer from the beginning of the eighteenth century onward. The Jewish population tripled as did the general population for a variety of reasons. The Jewish poor increased as emancipation was a distant dream and the old restrictions on residency and work remained. So, for example, Hamburg had to deal with 800 Jewish beggars in a four-month period of 1721. Many wandered from place to place throughout their short lives. The overwhelmed communities now refused to treat them as part of the community, registered their births and deaths separately and often established special unmarked burial plots or cemeteries for them. Frequently new-born children were abandoned along the way. The communities, normally, provided only a one-night stay, except for shabbat, and sent them on their way. Some communities still tried to place the poor in individual homes. The local governments passed restrictions and regulations, but usually to no avail, as they could not effectively control their borders."
The growing poverty meant that the biblical efforts to alleviate poverty and those developed by the Mishnah and Talmud well suited to the agricultural or small town setting were no longer effective. The burden on the gabbaim in minor and major urban setting must have been overwhelming; the problem could only be solved through a larger organization. No accurate population counts exist before the eighteenth century; anecdotal evidence, for example, from the responsa, indicates that most Jewish communities were small. Even in larger centers they were divided into manageable groups as for example in Italian towns into ashkenazic, sephardic, and Italian communities with their own synagogues, cemeteries, etc.'* The only organization for which there is some evidence, sometimes disputed, that it existed in talmudic times is the Hevrei Kaddishah.'® Nothing indicates, however, that this group looked after the sick or poor until later. Societies that buried the dead and helped sick