THE BOOK OF THE KAHAL

[yankeedoodle]

THE BOOK OF THE KAHAL
https://nwobroadcastcorp.wordpress.com/2022/12/12/the-book-of-the-kahal/

It was at the end of 1850s and during the 1860s when the baptized Jew Yakov
Brafman, appeared before the government and later came out publicly in an
energetic attempt at radical reformation of the Jewish way of life. He had
petitioned the Czar with a memorandum and was summoned to St. Petersburg for
consultations in the Synod. He set about exposing and explaining the Kahal
system (though a little bit late, since the Kahal had already been abolished.)


For that purpose he had translated into Russian the resolutions of the Minsk
Kahal issued in the period between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the
19th centuries. Initially he published the documents in parts and later in 1869 and
1875 as a compilation, The Book of Kahal, which revealed the all-encompassing
absoluteness of the personal and material powerlessness of the community
member. The book had acquired exceptional weight in the eyes of the authorities
and was accepted as an official guidebook; it won recognition (often by hearsay) in
wide circles of Russian society; it was referred to as the "Brafman's triumph" and
lauded as an "extraordinary success." Later the book was translated into French,
German, and Polish. The Book of Kahal managed to instill in a great number of
individuals a fanatical hatred toward Jews as the worldwide enemy of Christians;
it had succeeded in spreading misconceptions about Jewish way of life.


The mission of Brafman, the collection and translation of the acts issued by the
Kahal had alarmed the Jewish community. At their demand, a government
commission which included the participation of Jewish community
representatives was created to verify Brafman's work. Some Jewish writers were
quick to come forward with evidence that Brafman distorted some of the Kahal
documents and wrongly interpreted others; one detractor had even had doubts
about their authenticity. A century later in 1976, the Short Jewish Encyclopedia
confirmed the authenticity of Brafman's documents and the good quality of his
translation but blamed him for false interpretation. The Russian Jewish
Encyclopedia (1994) pointed out that "the documents published by Brafman are a
valuable source for studying the history of Jews in Russia at the end of the 18th
and the beginning of the 19th centuries." (Apropos, the poet Khodasevich was the
grand-nephew of Brafman).

Brafman claimed that governmental laws cannot destroy the malicious force
lurking in the Jewish self-administration. According to him, Jewish self-rule is not
limited to Kahals but allegedly involves the entire Jewish people all over the world
and because of that the Christian peoples cannot get rid of Jewish exploitation
until everything that enables Jewish self- segregation is eliminated. Further,
Brafman viewed the Talmud not as a national and religious code but as a civil and
political code going against the political and moral development of Christian
nations and creating a "Talmudic republic." He insisted that Jews form a nation
within a nation; that they do not consider themselves subject to national laws that
one of the main goals of the Jewish community is to confuse the Christians to turn
the latter into no more than fictitious owners of their property. On a larger scale,
he accused the Society for the Advancement of Enlightenment among the Jews of
Russia and the Alliance Israélite Universelle for their role in the Jewish world
conspiracy. According to Yu. Gessen's opinion, "the only demand of the The Book
of Kahal was the radical extermination of Jewish self-governance," regardless of
all their civil powerlessness.


The State Council, having mitigated the uncompromised style of The Book of
Kahal, declared that even if administrative measures would succeed in erasing the
outward differences between Jews and the rest of population, "it will not in the
least eliminate the attitudes of seclusion and nearly the outright hostility toward
Christians which thrive in Jewish communities. This Jewish separation, harmful
for the country, can be destroyed, on one hand, through the weakening of social
connections between the Jews and reduction of the abusive power of Jewish
elders to the extent possible, and, on the other hand, through spreading of
education among Jews, which is actually more important."

[rmstock]

[pdf]http://crashrecovery.org/fischer/Russian.Jews.and.Gentiles-Extended.ed.pdf[/pdf]
http://crashrecovery.org/fischer/Russian.Jews.and.Gentiles-Extended.ed.pdf

What happened to Brafmann happened in a modern day fashion also to Bobby Fischer :

Bobby Fischer, America's intellectual hero
http://crashrecovery.org/fischer/#bobby