by Douglas Reed
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Before the last battles with Rome (says Dr. Kastein) “a group of teachers, scholars and educators repaired to Jamnia, taking the fate of their people on their shoulders so as to be responsible for it through the ages … At Jamnia the central body for the administration of the Jewish people was established … As a rule, when a nation has been utterly routed as the Jews were on this occasion, they perish altogether. But the Jewish people did not perish … They had already learnt how to change their attitude during the Babylonian captivity … And they followed a similar course now.”
At Jamnia the Old Sanhedrin, the source of all legislative, administrative and judicial authority, was established under a new name. In addition, an academy was created for the further development of The Law. In it, the scribes continued the revelation of Jehovah's mind and the interpretation of The Law, so often said to have been put in its final form. In fact, as the dogma is that the Law governs every act of human life in circumstances which continually change, it never could or can be finally codified and must ever be expanded.
Apart from that permanent reason for revision, the new factor, Christianity, had arisen and the Law's application to it had to be defined. Thus the Torah (the Law) began to receive its huge supplement, the Talmud, which was of equal or greater authority.
From Jamnia the Law was administered which “raised an insuperable barrier against the outside world,” enforced a discipline “rigid to the point of deadliness,” and “kept proselytes at arm's length.” The aim was to “make the life of the Jew utterly different from that of the Gentiles.” Any law that received a majority of votes of the Sanhedrin became enforcible throughout the dispersed Judaist communities everywhere; “opponents were threatened with the ban, which meant being excluded from the community.”
In this way, “the centre of the circle was finally fixed, and the circle itself fully described in the form of the law and the hedge that was set about the people.” During this period (before Christianity became the religion of
The period of government from Jamnia lasted for about a century, and then it
was transferred to Usha in
The Talmud, begun at Jamnia and Usha, was completed at Sura and Pumbedita. “A ring of vast proportions and colossal elasticity” was built around the Jews everywhere; the mystic circle of fear and superstition was drawn tighter. From Sura an Exilarch (prince of the captivity of the house of David), ruled, but in time he became a figurehead. Thereafter “the president of the academy” (in effect, the high priest and prime minister) “laid down the rules and regulations not only for the Babylonian Jews but for the whole of Judaism … The Jews throughout the world recognized the academies in Babylonia as the authoritative centre of Judaism, and regarded any laws they passed as binding.”
Thus the nation-within-nations, the state-within-states, was enfettered and ruled by the Talmudic government in
The core of dogma remained as Ezekiel, Ezra and Nehemiah had shaped and enforced it; but the Talmud, in effect, had taken the place of the Torah, as the Torah earlier had supplanted the “oral traditions.” The heads of the academies of Sura and Pumbedita were called Gaonim and began to exercise autocratic power over the scattered Jews. The shadowy Exilarchs (later Nasim, or princes) were dependent on their approval and the Sanhedrin surrendered its functions to them, or was deprived of these. When doubt arose among Jews, anywhere in the world, about the interpretation or application of the Law in any matter of the day, the question was referred to the Gaonate. The verdicts and judgments returned (in the name of Jehovah) from the distant government were the Gaonic Reponses, or laws enacted from Babylonia, to which Jews everywhere submitted, or incurred danger of excommunication.
In this manner the Talmudic thrall spread round the dispersed Jews, wherever they dwelt, “like a closely woven net … over ordinary days and holidays, over their actions and over their prayers, over their whole lives and every step they took … Nothing in their external lives was any longer allowed to be the sport of arbitrary settlement or of chance.” This is the picture of an absolute despotism, different from other despotisms only in the element of distance between the despots and their subjects. Given a benevolent mission, a community of people so
closely controlled might immensely fructify the life of peoples; given a destructive one, their presence among others is like that of a blasting charge in rock, operated by a distant hand on a plunger.
For six hundred years the Talmudic government, at Jamnia, Usha, and Sura, remained in or near to its native, oriental climate, where its nature was comprehended by other peoples; they knew how to cope with and counter the savage tribal creed and, as long as they were not hampered or constrained by foreign powers in their dealings with it, they were always able to find a workaday compromise, which enabled all to live in practical amity side by side.
Then came the event which has produced such violent results in our time: the Talmudic government moved into Christianized
The nature of Westerners (more especially in the northern latitudes) is to be candid, to declare purposes, and to use words to express intention, and Christianity developed these native traits. The force which appeared among them was of the opposite character, oriental, infinitely subtle, secretive, conspiratorial, and practised in the use of language to disguise real purposes. Therein lay its greatest strength in the encounter with the West.
The removal to
The Caliph's order to the Arab conquerors in 637 AD was, “You shall not act treacherously, dishonestly, commit any excess or mutilation, kill any child or old man; cut or burn down palms or fruit trees, kill any sheep, cow or camel, and shall leave alone those whom you find devoting themselves to worship in their cells.” Jehovah's order, according to Deuteronomy 20.16, is, “Of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shall save alive nothing that breatheth.”
From
earth”; the Islamic armies certainly facilitated this aim.
Christianity thus became submerged in
“Judaism, dispersed as it was over the face of the globe, was always inclined to set up a fictitious state in the place of the one that had been lost, and always aimed, therefore, at looking to a common centre for guidance … This centre was now held to be situated in Spain, whither the national hegemony was transferred from the East. Just as Babylonia had providentially taken the place of
The reader will observe the description of events: “individuals” do not commonly bind themselves, of choice, with chains forged for them. Anyway, the Jewish captivity was as close as ever, or perhaps had been made closer. That was for the Jews to ponder.
What was to become of vital importance to the West was that the Jewish government was now in
The Talmudic government of the nation-within-nations was continued from Spanish soil. The Gaonate issued its directives; the Talmudic academy was established at Cordova; and sometimes, at least, a shadowy Exilarch reigned over Jewry.
This was done under the protection of Islam; the Moors, like
The Moors remained in
The “centre” of Talmudic government was then transferred to
At that point, less than four centuries before our own generation, a significant mystery enters the story of
Greek islands and
Yet in the 1500's, when the “centre” was set up in
But when a Zionist historian thus slurs over something the seeker after knowledge may be fairly sure that the root of the matter may by perseverance be found.
So it is in this case; behind Dr. Kastein's artless conjecture the most important fact in the later story of
These people were the Khazars, a Turco-Mongolian race which had been converted to Judaism in about the 7th century of our era. This is the only case of the conversion of a large body of people of quite distinct blood to Judaism (the Idumeans were “brothers”). The reason why the Talmudic elders permitted or encouraged it can only be guessed; without it, however, the “Jewish question” would by now have joined the problems that time has solved.
This development (which will be further discussed in a later chapter) was of vital, and perhaps even mortal importance to the West. The natural instinct of Europe was always to expect the greatest danger to its survival from
When they became known, as “Eastern Jews,” they profited by the confusing effect of the contraction of the word Judahite, or Judean, to “Jew”; none would ever have believed that they were Judahites or Judeans. From the time when they
took over the leadership of Jewry the dogma of “the return” to
From this period the Talmudic government operated with a masse de manoeuvre of a different Asiatic order.
Once again, a virtually independent state was formed within the Polish state, which like so many states before and after showed the greatest benevolence to the nation-within-nations that took shape within its gates. As in the earlier and later cases this in no wise mitigated the hostility of the Talmudic Jews towards it, which was proverbial.
Dr. Kastein gives the picture of this independent Jewish government during the Polish phase. The Talmudists were allowed to draw up “a constitution,” and through the 1500's and 1600's the Jews in
This autonomous Talmudic government was called the Kahal. In its own territory the Kahal was a fully-empowered government, under Polish suzerainty. It had independent authority of taxation in the ghettoes and communities, being responsible for payment of a global sum to the Polish government. It passed laws regulating every action and transaction between man and man and had power to try, judge, convict or acquit.
This power only nominally stopped short of capital punishment: Professor Salo Baron says, “In Poland, where the Jewish court had no right to inflict capital punishment, lynching, as an extra-legal preventive, was encouraged by rabbinical authorities such as Solomon Luria.” (This quotation reveals the inner meaning of Dr. Kastein's frequent, but cautious, allusions to “iron discipline,” “inexorable discipline,” “discipline rigid to the point of deadliness,” and the like).
In effect, a Jewish state, Talmud-ruled, was recreated on the soil of
As Dr. Kastein says, “Such was the constitution of the Jewish state, planted on foreign soil, hemmed in by a wall of foreign laws, with a structure partly self-chosen and partly forced upon it … It had its own Jewish law, its own priesthood, its own schools, and its own social institutions, and its own representatives in the Polish government … in fact, it possessed all the elements which go to form a state.” The achievement of this status was due “in no small measure to the co-operation of the Polish Government.”
Then, in 1772,
“centre” of Jewish government disappears from sight. Up to 1772 there had always been one: in
Dr. Kastein says that “the centre ceased to exist.” The suggestion is that the centralized control of Jewry at that moment ended, but the length and strength of its earlier survival, and the significant events of the ensuing century, confute that. In a later passage Dr. Kastein himself reveals the truth, when he jubilantly records that in the Nineteenth Century “a Jewish international took shape.”
Clearly “the centre” continued, but from 1772 in secret. The reason for the withdrawal into concealment may be deduced from the shape of later events.
The century which followed was that of the revolutionary conspiracy, Communist and Zionist, culminating in the open appearance of these two movements, which have dominated the present century. The Talmudic “centre” was also the centre of this conspiracy. Had it remained in the open the source of conspiracy would have been visible, and the identification of the Talmudic, Eastern Jews with it obvious.
In the event this only became clear when the revolution of 1917 produced an almost all-Jewish government in Russia; and by that time power over governments in the West was so great that the nature of this new regime was little discussed, a virtual law of heresy having come into force there. Had the visible institution continued, the masses of the West would in time have become aware that the Talmudic government of Jewry, though it led the clamour for “emancipation,” was also organizing a revolution to destroy all that the peoples might gain from this emancipation.
The Russians, among whom this largest single community of Jews at that time dwelt, knew what had happened. Dr. Kastein says, “The Russians wondered what could possibly be the reason why the Jews did not amalgamate with the rest of the population, and came to the conclusion that in their secret Kahals they possessed a strong reserve, and that a ‘World Kahal' existed.” Dr. Kastein later confirms what the Russians believed, by his own allusion to the “Jewish international” of the Nineteenth Century.
In other words, the “government” continued, but in concealment, and probably in the different form suggested by Dr. Kastein's word “international.” The strong presumption is that the “centre” today is not located in any one country and that, although its main seat of power is evidently in the United States, it now takes the form of a directorate distributed among the nations and working in unison, over the heads of governments and peoples.
The Russians, who at the time of the disappearance of “the centre” from public view were better informed than any others about this matter, have been proved right.
The manner in which this international directorate gains and wields its power over Gentile governments is no longer quite mysterious; enough authentic,
published information has come out of these last fifty years to explain that, as this book will later show.
The mystery of its age-long hold over “Jews” is more difficult to penetrate. How has a sect been able to keep people, distributed around the globe, in the clutch of a primitive tribalism during twenty-five centuries?
The next chapter seeks to give some insight into the methods used during the third and longest phase of the story of |