Special taxation imposed on the Jews by the state or ruler of the territory in which they were living has played an important part in Jewish history.
[1] The abolition of special taxes on the Jews followed their admission to civil rights in France and elsewhere in Europe at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries.
The tax was initially imposed by Roman Emperor Vespasian as one of the measures against Jews as a result of the First Jewish-Roman War of 66–73 CE.
The amount levied was two denarii, equivalent to the half of a shekel that observant Jews had previously paid for the upkeep of the Temple of Jerusalem.
The Jewish populations of Europe were politically insecure and could be easily exploited for the levying of heavy taxes in exchange for official protection.
King Wenceslas removed the taxable minimum but an exemption for Jews dependent on alms was made later by Sigsmund, who himself levied heavy taxation.
[6] Emperor Charles IV later ordered the income of the Opferfennig tax to be delivered to the archbishop of Triers.
[7] The Leibzoll or Judengeleit was a special toll which Jews had to pay in most of the European states in the Middle Ages and up to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The tax came to be called that because Jews paying had to deposit a coin in a box at the kosher slaughterer.
[12][15][16] The burden of taxes, and the korobka in particular, was one of the factors which drove many Jews to abandon the towns and settle in villages or on noblemen estates.
[18] In 1741, Moldavian prince Grigore Ghica confirmed the obligation of each Jew to pay the crupca, an indirect tax on kosher meat similar to the Russian korobka.
In 1640 the Danish King Christian IV acquired part of the County of Pinneberg including Altona.
Thanks to the linguistic skills of the Sephardim and their contacts among their co-religionaries they controlled a large sector of the German market in provisions.
[22] On 1 August 1641 the Danish king had formally granted the Ashkenazi Jews the privilege of having in Altona, as hitherto already granted by the counts of Holstein-Pinneberg (whose county had been integrated into then Denmark), a cemetery and a synagogue, thus providing the basis for the existence of a Jewish community.
[23] Subsequently, the Danish kings promised the Jews personal security, the freedom to practice trade and religious liberties.
Some of the Jews living in neighbouring independent Hamburg therefore tried to secure the legal protection of the Danish crown in case of any attempt to expel them.
[24] Thanks to immigration from the east, Altona became a center of research and scholarship in Jewish teaching, attracting hundreds of students.
The extension – against our wishes - of the taxes on the Jews would be incompatible with the granting of civil rights.’’[31] This marks the beginning of the struggle of the Jewish community for emancipation.