In Russian-Poland, as in Germany or Austria, members of the Jewish community pay a direct tax for the support of the rabbinate and the communal institutions, and while the Jewish taxpayers elect the officers who assess them, the tax or “etat” is collectible by force, i. e., with the aid of the police authorities, if it is not paid voluntarily. Only those members of the community who pay comparatively larger sums are entitled to vote for communal officers, so that the poorer classes are taxed without being represented in the governing body of the community, and the very poor are not taxed at all. In Russia proper, including Lithuania and the balance of the “pale of settlement,” where the masses of the Jews dwell, the “Korobka” or tax on Kosher meat (more correctly a tax on the slaughtering of animals for Kosher food) takes the place of the “etat” of Poland and the “Kultussteuer” of some western countries. This indirect tax, which rests more heavily on the poor, is less felt and therefore considered less burdensome, though it is and always has been hated by the Jewish masses in Russia. The absolute separation of Church and State in this country made any form of enforced taxation out of the question. And when the want of a recognized religious authority for the large mass of Orthodox Jews of New York began to be seriously felt, and the question of providing for his salary and for other communal needs of a general nature, for which the individual synagogues did not feel themselves bound to provide, became a subject for discussion among the public spirited Jews in the community, the plan of a control over the business of Kosher meat, over which the new rabbi should have complete religious supervision, suggested itself as the only practicable solution of the problem. Illustration: Chief Rabbi Jacob Joseph.