The Zikaron Leyom Aharon society of Prague (1564) provides the first record of a burial society that also helped the poor. Various authors presume that this trend existed earlier.’ Yet this did not become a major part of the work of the Hevrei Kadishah till the eighteenth century, when on occasion expenses for this purpose exceeded those spent on burials.** This and later organizations in Central and Eastern Europe assumed the organizational form of Christian societies.” Such societies seem to have existed in every large Jewish community; they have been described in detail in Frankfurt , Prague , Amsterdam , Worms, and Breslau. ”® Names of prominent donors, such as Mordecai Meisels of Prague (d. 1600) or Samuel Oppenheimer (1635-1703) of Austria were held up as examples. In many smaller communities with their restrictions on the settlements of Jews , the community provided for the poor in the older fashion as well as through the Hevrei Kaddishah, but also sought to restrict the number of poor permitted to reside there.” The Hekdesh is another institution that looked primarily after the sick, including the poor, that can be traced to 1255.%
The Lithuanian Council(1623) provided special authority to the local court to protect the assets of minor orphan..It went further and established three permanent“fathers of orphans,” for individuals who may not have been poor, but were likely to be impoverished through the neglect or fraud of their guardians. The accounts of those guardians were subject to regular audit. In 1639, during the Thirty Years’ War and the emergence of wandering orphans, the Council arranged for their placement in various communities.>’ Eventually orphanages like those in the surrounding gentile communities were established; the first in 1648 in Amsterdam .
In the matter of ransoming captives when communities were faced with large numbers, especially after a war, they turned to distant communities for help. As these were often emergency situations, the