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BRODY, city in Lvov district, Ukraine (in Russia until 1772; in Austria, 1772–1919). An organized Jewish community existed in Brody by the end of the 16th century. In 1648 approximately 400 Jewish families are recorded. The Jewish quarter was destroyed by fire in 1696. Subsequently the overlords of Brody, the Sobieskis, granted the Jews a charter (1699) permitting them to reside in all parts of the town, to engage in all branches of commerce and crafts, and to distill beer, brandy, and mead in return for an annual payment; the communal buildings, including the hospital and the homes of the rabbi and cantor, were exempted from the house tax. By the middle of the 18th century trade was concentrated in Jewish hands. The Jewish artisans in Brody—cord makers, weavers, and metalsmiths—achieved a wide reputation and exported their products. The Potockis, who subsequently controlled Brody, continued to support the Jews; in 1742 they compelled merchants living on their other estates to attend the Brody fairs.
In 1664 the Jewish community of Brody joined with the communities in Zholkva and Buchach to attain independence from the communal jurisdiction of Lvov, which had extended its authority over the outlying communities. At the session of the provincial council of Russia held at the time, Brody obtained two seats out of seven, and in 1740 the Brody delegate, Dov Babad, was elected parnas of the provincial council. For generations a few powerful families controlled the Brody community, among them the Babad, Shatzkes, Perles, Rapaport, Brociner, Bick, Chajes, Rabinowicz, and Bernstein families.
In 1742 the bishop of Lutsk challenged the Brody Jews to a public religious disputation in the synagogue. As he refused to recognize the rights of the representatives of the congregation—the physician Abraham Uziel and the dayyan Joshua Laszczower—to participate in the debate, the community leaders invited the surrounding settlements to choose alternative disputants. When the group assembled in Brody, however, it was disbanded by Count Potocki, who arrested several of the Brody communal leaders.
The community in Brody vigorously opposed the Frankist movement which found supporters in the area in the middle of the 18th century. Brody was the meeting place of the assembly which excommunicated the Frankists in 1756. A rabbinical assembly convening in Brody in 1772 excommunicated the followers of Hasidism, and hasidic works were burned there. In these struggles the circle formed by the Brody Klaus joined talmudic scholars and mystics as protagonists of Orthodoxy.
During the 1768–72 wars in Poland, the Jews of Brody were ordered to provision the armies passing through the town. The Jewish economic position deteriorated considerably as a result, and to save the community from ruin the overlords of the town granted it a loan. After the annexation of Galicia—including Brody—by Austria in 1772, the lot of the Jewish merchants improved. They were exempted from payment of customs dues on all merchandise in transit through the empire. The guilds of Jewish innkeepers, bakers, and flour dealers were supported by the central authorities in Vienna, in compelling the lord of the town to reduce the taxes. Brody had the status of a free city between 1779 and 1880. After 1880 many Jewish wholesale merchants living in Brody moved to other towns with which they had business connections. A group of Brody Jews had already settled in Odessa and founded a synagogue there.
In 1756 there were 7,191 Jews living in Brody; in 1779, 8,867 (over half the total population); in 1826, 16,315 (89%); in 1910, 12,188; and in 1921, 7,202.
Throughout the period of Austrian sovereignty, Brody returned Jewish deputies to the parliament in Vienna. In 1907 the president of the Galician Zionists, Adolf Stand, was elected as deputy; however, he was maneuvered out of office in 1911 as a result of government pressure and political manipulation by the assimilationist Heinrich Kolischer. After Brody reverted to Poland in 1919, Jewish communal life was revived under the leadership of Leon Kalir.
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