Jewish Communities and Box and Candle Tax Lists

Since we only had a few revision lists in our holdings we started to look for other possible sources of information. We came across the so-called Box and Candle tax payers lists. You may be tired of explanations of what these taxes are. I'll give you just one more explanation of them. My knowledge is based strictly on the records. The problem is that the records do not always coincide with real life. According to the records we have, the Candle tax was a tax paid by all the Jewish population, including the merchants, to support Jewish education, for the needs of the Jewish schools only. It was a tax on Sabbath candles. Perhaps it was collected by the rabbi's wife, I'm not sure.

The Box tax was a different thing. It was a specific Jewish tax paid by the whole Jewish population, except for some higher professionals and perhaps merchants. It was a tax on every pound of Kosher meat sold by a butcher and purchased by a Jew, and on every animal slaughtered. I still can't figure out how it was done. It should have been collected by the butcher, I see no other way, but I don't know how it was done. And where was the box? In the butcher's house or where? I don't know. But the government for the administration of the Box tax used to announce a public auction, and the person who suggested collecting the largest sum was granted the right to collect the Box tax for a few years, four years in a certain area.3 With these tax measures the Box tax was collected. To estimate the sum expected they had to make an estimate of the Jewish population. Who would buy and eat meat and who should pay the tax? Thus we have these lists of tax payers of Candle taxes for 1845 and 1846, and various later lists for Box taxes: for 1877, 1888, 1892, and for some Jewish communities for 1904, 1908, and 1912, but it's different for different Jewish communities.

When they started organizing the process of collecting Box and Candle taxes they had to introduce certain administrative reforms. In 1843, when Kaunas Guberniya was formed, taxes were collected and Jews were administrated by their Kahal. In 1844 the Kahal was abolished and to collect the taxes the government, or rather the Kaunas guberniya administration, created certain Jewish communities, but these Jewish communities were organized only for the collection of Box and Candle taxes.

From the 119 former Kahals, seventy-four such communities were formed in 1844. Some of the Kahals were combined into communities according to the population of the area. Here is the list showing the former Kahals and the new Jewish communities.

You see that for Kaunas District, the new Jewish communities were just about the same, except that Vandziogala and Babtai became one Jewish community - Vandziogala, and Seredzius, Veliuona and Cekiske were combined into Seredzius, and so on.

So, for example, If you are looking for your family from Babtai, their Candle and Box tax payers records would have been in Babtai before 1845, but in the Vandziogala Jewish Community records after 1845. I did not come across any Babtai Jewish community records after this date. You will have to be very aware of these changes when you are looking at the Catalog to determine what records are available for a given community.

These divisions did not remain forever. Some Jewish communities grew larger and the divisions were changed. New Jewish communities appeared and Jews began settling in some other towns and even villages. For the purposes of paying Box and Candle taxes they were assumed to belong to a certain Jewish Community. There were villages and Jews lived in those villages but to pay taxes they were considered to be a member of another Jewish community of a little larger town. This is what happened.

SETA BOX TAX LIST 1892
(Click on photo for high resolution image)

It shows the surname, the first name, the father's name, the number of family members, the occupation and financial state. But we have only separate files and for separate Jewish communities. It may be for only one year for any Jewish community; it's just by chance if you happen to find such information. For the Kaunas district Jewish community we have these records for 1874 and 1875.