Pinkas (record book) of the Jewish Community of Pinczow. Selected Pages.

Selcted pages from the pinkas (record book) of Pinczow, 1632-1740. The pinkas consists mostly of decisions of the local Jewish court and records of real estate transactions and loans.

Highlights of the pinkas' entries:  Legal documents about the management of arrendas [Polish term for leases of real estate or income from monopoly rights, such as the income rights to fish ponds, forests, mills, or the right to produce alcoholic beverages]; the sale of synagogue seats in the women’s section;  requests by women to collect monies owed to them from their ketubah (marriage contract) after their husbands’ demise.

The pinkas entries demonstrate that women are also prominent as real estate owners on their own, or jointly with their husbands. Examples: a widow transfers her property to her son-in-law, a women entering a marriage transfers her property to her husband, as her dowry.  A debt incurred jointly by a husband and wife is subsequently repaid by both. The Tsedakah Gedolah (the local public charity fund) appears as a property owner involved in transactions for the charity's activities.  A communal by-law , entered into the Pinczow pinkas, requires that all land sales and loans using land as collateral, be announced publically on three separate occasions, in case others have claims on the property.