"... On the surface, Jesus seems to be saying that Jews should pay their taxes to Rome, but on closer examination, the statement is actually quite equivocal and could be understood to be saying the opposite: yes, pay Caesar his due, but since God is the only true king (or so many Jews in Jesus’s day believed) nothing is really due Caesar, while Jews’ true loyalty remains with God, to whom they owe everything. A Roman could thus hear one thing, while an anti-Roman Jew might hear something more subversive ... The Jews, like everyone else, were ultimately subject to the royal authorities, of course, and they even found justification for this in the Talmudic legal principle of dina de-malkhuta dina , or “the law of the land is the law.” As a tight-knit group legally and religiously set apart from the surrounding Christian society, however, the Jewish communities also had ample room to run their own affairs according to the dictates of Jewish law. In Ashkenaz as elsewhere in the Jewish Diaspora, communities were guided by rabbinic and lay leaders, though the two were more closely intertwined than in other parts of the Jewish world. Generally, each community was independent and local custom was particularly cherished in Ashkenaz, and nowhere did a supreme, supralocal religious authority or clear hierarchical structure of religious leadership emerge ..."