ABSTRACT
THE original identity between the organization~; of Synagogue and Church was obliterated by the earlier growth within the latter of i1lstitutions. The Jewish communal organization provided for everything that the Church supplied, but it did so without specialization, without delegating its duties to semi-independent bodies. Thus, while the deacons soon ceased to be the general relieving officers of the Church in cases of sickness and poverty \ their Jewish prototypes, the Parllassim, or lay directors of the Synagogue, reta ined very wide functions throughout the middle ages. Until the thirteenth century, there were no Jewish poor-houses or hospitals, no orphanages for the young or almshouses for the aged; but the Synagogue organization fully supplied the place of all these, and, through lack of differentiation of its functions, strengthened its hold on the course of medieval Judaism.
