In the early modern period, east-central Europe became home to the majority of the world's Jewry. Forbidden from working in agriculture, Jews resided predominantly in towns, often holding the position of the urban majority. The study shows that despite a defined economic role and shared cultural background Jews developed diverse family forms in the region. Evidence for this comes from census microdata on Jewish populations in 34 areas across the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Bohemia and Bukovina from the years 1764 to 1809. By applying clustering methods to basic family parameters, three, spatially coherent regional forms are defined. In the Western region, Bohemia and Gdańsk, Jews tended to marry late and reside in predominantly single-family households. In the Northeastern region, covering the Great Duchy of Lithuania and central Ukraine, Jews married early and lived in complex families. The Central region, covering most of the Polish Crown, was transitional in nature, featuring selected characteristics of the earlier two regions. The regional boundaries largely coincide with the Prussian and Habsburgs' residential policies towards the Jews, leaseholding patterns, as well as with the reach of Yiddish dialects. The study proposes a new concept of in-law equality — the balance between married sons and married daughters co-residing with parents — as a unique feature of Jewish families in Poland–Lithuania, which was maintained regardless of the extent of family nuclearization. The findings align with recent research on peasant families undermining the spatial simplicity of the Hajnalian dualistic division of Europe into two major regions.
Tomasz M. Jankowski (Mon,) studied this question.