​From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, most European Jewish communities and regional councils wrote their records in specially designated registers, referred to using the Hebrew term pinkas (plural, pinkasim). These handwritten volumes include​ detailed descriptions of the administrative functioning of the Jewish bodies that created them, documenting the ways in which Jewish society organized its social, economic, religious, cultural, and family life, as well as aspects of its relations with non-Jewish governments and bodies. Pinkasim, therefore, form an extraordinary repository of information about the Jewish past. ​