The Kehilot system, frequently known interchangeably as the Kahal System, was the established communal self-governing structure within Jewish communities. This system exercised considerable authority and influence, particularly in Russia around the turn of the 19th century.
The Kehilot vigorously defended its existing power and sources of income. Russian government legislation directly impacted the Kahal system. A key example is the Khasaki rule, which allowed or forbade members of the community from engaging in specific types of farming or occupations. This rule effectively put an end to excessive competition between Jews and upheld the principle of "Thou shalt not move the bounds of thy neighbour."
The inner workings and negative aspects of the Kahal system were brought into sharp public focus through the writings of Yakov Brafman, a baptised Jew dedicated to exposing and explaining its intricate system.
He translated and compiled the resolutions of the Minsk Qahal from the late 18th and early 19th centuries into The Book of Qahal, published in 1869 and 1875. This seminal work quickly garnered extraordinary success across Russian society, leading to its translation into French, German, and Polish.
Brafman’s account portrayed the Kahal as a system that enforced all-encompassing absoluteness of the personal and material powerlessness of the community member. He contended that governmental laws cannot destroy the malicious force lurking in the Jewish self-administration, which, in his view, extended beyond Qahals to encompass the entire Jewish people globally. Brafman asserted that Christian nations would remain subject to Jewish exploitation until everything enabling Jewish self-segregation was eliminated.
The Talmud is not merely as a national and religious code, but a civil and political code that opposes the political and moral development of Christian nations, creating a Talmudic republic.
Brafman firmly believed that Jews form a nation within a nation and do not consider themselves subject to national laws. A primary objective of the Jewish community, in Brafman’s view, was to confuse the Christians to turn the latter into no more than fictitious owners of their property.
He even accused prominent Jewish organisations, such as the Society for the Advancement of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia and the Alliance Israélite Universelle, of involvement in a Jewish world conspiracy. The overarching demand stemming from Brafman’s revelations was the radical extermination of Jewish self-governance, regardless of the civil powerlessness experienced by individual Jews.
The profound impact of The Book of Qahal was that it managed to instill in a great number of individuals a fanatical hatred toward Jews as the worldwide enemy of Christians.