Constitutio in actu? Eliezer Dileon’s Letter to the Minsk Kahal, 1817

A letter by the army contractor Eliezer Dileon to the community board of Minsk relating his audience with Tsar Alexander I of Russia in January 1817 sheds light on the significance of the performative dimension of Jewish intercession. In the perception of the intercessor, due to the personal encounter between the sovereign ruler and himself, the Jews in Russia constitute part of the political and societal fabric of the Empire, it sees them as ‘a people.’ The letter is one of the very few documents describing and confirming the symbolic meaning of an encounter between a monarch and a Jewish intercessor. It reflects on the reciprocal nature of negotiations between the state and the Jewish minority, the limitations in concrete outcomes notwithstanding.