Is The Jewish "Kahal" the Modern "Soviet"?

By Henry Ford

(Reprinted from the 28 August 1920 Issue of the Dearborn Independent, the house organ of the Ford Motor Co. and edited slightly by Raymond Bray to eliminate Mr. Ford's numerous uses of "which" for "that.")

The Soviet is not a Russian but a Jewish institution. Nor is it the invention of Russian Jews of the present time, a new political device that has been set up as a vehicle of the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky; it is of ancient Jewish origin, a device that the Jews themselves invented to maintain their distinctive racial and national life after the conquest of Palestine by the Romans.

Modern Bolshevism, which is now known to be merely the outer cloak of a long-planned coup to establish the domination of a race, immediately set up the Soviet form of government because the Jews of all countries who contributed to Russian Bolshevism had long been schooled in the nature and structure of the Soviet.

The Soviet appears in the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" under the ancient name of KAHAL. In the Seventeenth Protocol this passage occurs:

"Even now our brothers are under obligation to denounce apostates of their own family or any person known to be opposed to the Kahal. When our kingdom comes, it will be necessary for all subjects to serve the state in a similar manner."

Anyone who is acquainted with contemporary Jewish life knows what this denunciation of apostates means. The bitterness of the persecution that falls upon a convert to Christianity or upon the Jewish son or daughter of an orthodox family who chooses to marry a Gentile, is without parallel among men. Very recently in a western state a fine Jewish girl chose to marry a Gentile who was a newspaperman. From the time of her announcement of intention the girl was treated as an apostate. Had she died a most wretched death, had she descended to a status of most ignominious shame, the feelings that her fate would have aroused could not have been more terrible. A darkly solemn funeral service was held for her, and on her bridal day she was declared to be dead to her people.

The case is very far from being unusual. Perhaps one of the most moving descriptions of it is to be found in the life of Spinoza, the great philosopher whom modern Jews are fond of holding up for exhibition as a great ornament of their people. Spinoza's studies led him to question many of the dogmas the rabbis taught, those "commandments of men" of which the New Testament speaks, and as Spinoza was already a person of influence the very common Jewish tactic of bribery was tried upon him.

There would be some hesitation in using the words just set down - "the very common Jewish tactic of bribery" - if they were not known to be true. There is no desire to cast aspersions that grow out of malice. But Jewish history as written by Jews provides mountains of proof that bribery was, while present knowledge amply testifies that it still is, the favorite and most dependable weapon of the Jews. A Jewish writer, Jacob Israel De Haan, a Dutch lawyer resident in Jerusalem, has recently stated that one hope of a settlement of the Arab agitation in Palestine is the case with which the Arab press can be bribed. His words are: "There is a strong agitation here among the Arabs against what they call the Zionist peril. But the Arabs, especially the Arabian papers, are open to bribe. This weakness will cause them, in the long run, to lose out against us."

So, young Spinoza was offered an annual stipend of 1,000 florins if he would be silent upon his convictions and from time to time show himself at the synagogue. This he refused with high-minded scorn. He made ready to earn his bread by polishing lenses for optical instruments. Upon this, he was excommunicated, a proceeding that is thus described:

"The day of excommunication at length arrived, and a vast concourse assembled to witness the awful ceremony. It began by the silent and solemn lighting of a quantity of black wax candles and by opening the tabernacle wherein is deposited the books of the Law of Moses. Thus were the imaginations of the faithful prepared for all the horror of the scene. The chief rabbi, the ancient friend and master, now the fiercest enemy, of the condemned, was to order the execution. He stood there pained, but implacable; the people fixed their eager eyes upon him. High above, the chanter rose and chanted forth in loud lugubrious tones the words of execration; while from the opposite side another mingled with these curses the thrilling sounds of the trumpet. And now the black candles were reversed and were made to melt drop by drop into a huge tub filled with blood." (Lewes: Biographical History of Philosophy.)

Then came the final anathema. " 'With the judgment of the angels and of the saints, we excommunicate, cut off, curse and anathematize Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of the elders and all this holy congregation, in the presence of the holy books: by the 613 precepts that are written therein, with the anathema wherewith Joshua cursed Jericho, with the curse of Elisha laid upon the children, and with all the curses that are written in the law. Cursed by he by day, and cursed be he by night. Cursed be he in sleeping, and cursed be he in waking, cursed in going out, and cursed in coming in. The Lord shall not pardon him, the wrath and the fury of the Lord shall henceforth be kindled against this man, and shall lay upon him all the curses written in the Book of the Law. The Lord shall destroy his name under the sun, and cut him off for his undoing from all the tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament that are written in the Law. . . And we warn you than none may speak with him by word of mouth nor by writing, nor show any favor for him, nor be under one roof with him, nor come within four cubits of him, nor read any paper composed by him.' " (Pollock: Life of Spinoza.)

"As the blasting words were uttered, the lights were all suddenly immersed in the blood, a cry of religious horror and execration burst forth from all; and in that solemn darkness, and to those solemn curses, they shouted Amen, Amen!" (Professor J. K. Hosmer: The Jews.)

That is a commentary on the decree of denunciation. It also throws a very strong light on the pressure that is brought against many Jews who would cry out against the anti-social ideas of their people, but who dare not because of the penalties it would bring.

This denunciation, as Protocol Seventeen orders, is to be made against anyone who is "known to be opposed to the Kahal" or ancient Soviet system of the Jews.

After the destruction of the Jewish state by the Romans, the Jews maintained a center in the Patriarch; and after the dispersion of the Jews out of Palestine this center of nationality was preserved in the Prince of the Exile, or Exilarch, an office that is believed to persist to the present time, and that some believe to be held now by an American Jew. In spite of all assertions to the contrary, the Jews have never ceased to be "a people"; that is, a consciously united racial group, different from all others, and with purposes and ideals that are strictly of the Jews, by the Jews, and for the Jews in distinction from the rest of the world.1 That they constitute a nation within the nations, the most responsible Jewish thinkers not only declare but insist upon. And this is wholly in accord with the facts as observed. The Jew not only desires to live apart from other people, but he works with his own people as against others, and he desires as much as possible to live under his own laws. In the city of New York today, the Jews have succeeded in establishing their own court for the settlement of their own questions according to their own laws. And that is precisely the principle of the Soviet-Kahal.

1. Here again is evidence of Henry Ford's acceptance of the commonly believed falsehood that the Jews are a race, the Israelites. The Jews are of a number of races, but largely of Khazar stock, with probably not a single Israelite among them at this present time and in 1920 when Ford wrote.

From the first century forward, as any reader can see by consulting the Jewish Encyclopedia, the "community," "assembly" or "Kahal" has been the center of Jewish life. It was so earlier, in the time of the Babylonian captivity. And the last official appearance of it was at the Peace Conference, where the Jews, in accordance with their World Program, the only program that passed successfully and unchanged through the Peace Conference, secured for themselves the right to the Kahal for administrative and cultural purposes in addition to many other privileges in countries where their activities had been a matter of protest. The Polish question is purely a Jewish question, and Paderewski's failure as a statesmen was entirely due to his domination by Jewish influences. The Rumanian question is likewise a Jewish question, and all Rumanians speak of the United States as "The Jews' Country" because they know through their statesmen the terrific pressure that was exerted by American Jews against their country, a pressure extending to the very necessities of life, and that compelled Rumanian to sign agreements that are as humiliating as those that Austria asked of Serbia, out of which the World War grew. The Jewish Question is written all over the forces that provoked the war and over all the hindrances to peace that the world has since seen.

Under the Kahal of ancient Soviet, the Jews lived by themselves and governed themselves, doing business with the government solely through their representatives. It was communism in a more drastic form than has been seen anywhere in the world outside Russia. Education, health, taxes, domestic affairs, all were under the absolute control of a few men who constituted the ruling board. This board, as the present-day Jewish hierarchy is supposed to be, was self- perpetuating, the office often passing in an unbroken line of hereditary succession through many generations. All property was in common, which however did not prevent the leaders becoming rich. These Kahals or Soviets existed in Rome, France, Holland, Germany, Austria, Russia, Denmark, Italy, Rumania, Turkey and England. In the United States the idea has developed around the synagogue and around national and international secret societies of Jews, of which more will be said in succeeding articles.

The Kahal is the traditional Jewish political institution during the dispersal of the race among the nations. Its international aspect is to be seen in the higher councils. These councils enlarged as the Jews spread over the world. The Jewish Encyclopedia cites the Council of Three Lands, the Council of Four Lands, and the Council of Five Lands, showing an international relationship in earlier years. But like all such records, public view of them is not easily accessible so far as they relate to modern times. The recent Zionist Congress in London, where doubtless much business was done that pertained to the Jewish people throughout the world, though not in public halls by any means, may be called the Council of Thirty-Seven Lands, for the delegates to that congress came from all parts of the world, from points remote as Lapland and South Africa, Persia and New Zealand. The purpose of these World Councils was the unification of the Jews, and the records of their assemblages run back through the centuries.

It is therefore no new thing that has arisen in Russia. It is the imposition by the Jewish revolutionists upon Gentile Russia of a form of control in which Judaism has been schooled from the earliest times of its contact with the world. Soviet Russia could not have been possible had not 90 per cent of the commissars been Jewish. Soviet Hungary could not have been possible had not Bela Kun, the chief Red, been a Jew, and had not 18 of his 24 commisars been Jews. The Jews are the only group schooled in the erection and administration of the Kahal.

An Associated Press dispatch under date of August 12 [1920] throws a light on the congeniality of the Soviet system and the Jewish mind. Speaking of the Polish towns and villages occupied by Bolshevik forces in their recent drive, the dispatch says:

"The local Jewish parish populations already are said to be setting up Soviet and Communist governments."

Of course. Yet this is in strange contrast with what we are constantly told through the press of the sufferings of the Jews under the Soviet form and of their abhorrence of the Reds. However, most of what we read concerning this in the public press is Jewish propaganda, pure and simple, and the reports of men on the spot contradict it all. One relief worker testifies that relief work in Poland is frequently "hung up because some Jew landlord asks an exorbitant rent for his premises," while another testifies that though railroad fares in the supposedly famine-stricken districts have gone up 1,000 per cent, the best and highest-fare trains are "exclusively occupied by Jews." He adds, of his trip through Hungary, "The Hungarians have no money any more, but the Jews have."

"But American Jews abhor Trotsky and Sovietism" is the pleas sometimes made.

Do they?

On page 9 of the American Jewish World, of July 30, a letter signed "Mrs. Samuel Rush" appears. It is headed: "Are We Really Ashamed of Trotsky?"

"I have read of late several laments from editors of Jewish publications that the Jew is now libeled as a radical.

"It is true that many Jews are radicals. It is also true that some of the radical leaders are Jews.

"But before weeping over the downfall of the race, let's think a bit.

"Trotsky himself has never been represented as anything but a cultured man, a student of world economics, a powerful and efficient leader and thinker who will surely go down in history as one of the great men our race has given the world.

". . . Very few of us doubt any longer that behind the absurdities written about Russia is the great truth that Russia is in that unsettled state which attends reconstruction. There is a plan behind this seeming disorder, and out of the upheaval will come order. It will not be utopia, but as good a government as the undoubtedly high-minded practical idealists who are building for Russia can build with the necessarily imperfect materials - human beings - with which they must work.

"And one of the leaders is Leon Trotsky!

"Are we really ashamed of Trotsky?"

The lady is evidently not ashamed of Trotsky, or Mr. Braunstein, as his real name is.

Or take Judge Harry Fisher, of Chicago. While drawing a salary for work in the court, Judge Fisher went abroad on Jewish relief work. His plans were changed somewhat after his departure and he landed in Russia. He asserts in several interviews that he was permitted to arrive in Russia on condition that he leave political matters alone. There has been no such restriction placed upon him since his return to the United States, for he appears as an open advocate of full trade relations with the Soviet Government of Russia.

The Chicago Tribune thus quotes him:

" 'We must leave Russia alone' he said in summarizing his views. 'We should resume trade with the Soviet. The Bolshevist Government is permanent. . . . While there are only 700,000 members of the Communist party, the peasants, who represent almost 100,000,000 people, are solidly back of the Lenin regime.' "

Among the Soviet devices that the 100,000,000 peasants of Russia are said to be "solidly back of," is the following (it is particularly interesting in view of the fact that Judge Fisher is judge of the Morals Court of Chicago):

" 'Some time ago, it was published that the women of Russia had become national property,' he said. 'That is untrue, but the ease with which marriage and divorce may be effected makes for rapid changes. Everyone wanting to marry goes to what we would call the city hall and registers.

" 'Inducements to marry are great. When people are hard pressed for clothes and food they sometimes make a pact to wed for a day.

" 'The next day they go down to the city hall and register again. This time their names are put side by side in the divorce book. That is all that is necessary to be divorced, and they have had a good feed in the bargain.' "

Judge Harry Fisher, of Chicago, who has returned from Jewish relief work abroad, evidently is one with the others in not being ashamed of Trotsky.

Also Max Pine, for many years secretary of the United Hebrew Trades of New York, had been abroad in Soviet Russia as "a labor delegate." He too had many good things to say of the Soviets, among other things the strange contradiction that the Jews are doing very well in Russia but are not pro-Bolshevik!

Here are three persons from widely different spheres of life, yet each one of them indicates a natural liking for the Kahal or Soviet, an admiration of its methods, and a distinct good feeling towards its rulers. For Sovietism is the rankest form of autocracy, and the marriage laws of Soviet Russia are in full harmony with the program stated in the Protocols--

"We will break down the influence of family life among the Gentiles."

Whether he Soviet-Kahals of Russia will succeed in completely undermining Russian family life is extremely doubtful. The weakness of Soviet rule is the same as that of the Protocols - a moral weakness that must eat like a cancer until it destroy the institutions that it infests.

Russia today, viewed in the light of the Protocols, does not represent the Judaic state, but it represents the Gentile state seized by Jewish forces. There are three degrees of action set forth in the Protocols. There is first the secret process of breaking up the integrity of society by the admixture of alluring but disruptive ideas. This is a work in which Gentile agitators are used. When the ideas have worked sufficiently to break up society and explode in a crisis, then as in Germany, the forces that have worked in secret swiftly come to the front to take the reins and guide the riot. In Germany this immediately occurred upon the collapse that followed the armistice, but the Germans were wise enough to know the meaning of the influx of Jews into all the official positions of the former empire, and it was not long before they were politically ousted. In Russia, however, the Jews sprang immediately into official positions and have succeeded in remaining there. It began with Kerensky compelling the Czar to lay aside his crown; it continues with Trotsky and his armies at the throat of Europe.

But this seizure of a country, as was attempted in Germany, and as was not only attempted but succeeded in Russia, is not the end of the Program. It is only the beginning of its open or public phase. The Soviet-Kahal makes for the complete breaking up of society, the entire cutting off of co-operation and communication, the ruling of each little section in the way desired, until the whole country lies helpless in isolated bits. The process includes, of course, the disintegration of industry also, the massing of Gentiles into an army, and a general destruction of morality and order. It is the Protocol program in its last stage before the reconstruction begins that shall make the conquered country a Jewish state.

The world has not seen that last stage yet. It has not come, even in Russia. If the Russian people waken from the daze into which they have been thrust, it will not come. Jewish voices loudly proclaim that Soviet Russia has come to stay. The only authoritative voice on that subject is the voice of Russia, and Russia has not yet spoken. Today the world is trembling on the very verge of Real Russia's awakening, and with it a retribution most terrible upon the Sovietists.

The program of the Protocols once came near succeeding in the French Revolution, but its essential immorality overreached itself. It has come a step nearer success in Russia, but there too its defiance of the moral law will be its undoing. The Jewish Question of today being fought out in Russia and Poland, and the strength of the Jewish forces is largely and mostly supplied from the United States of America. No wonder those small East European independencies that are fighting for their lives refer to our country as "The Land of the Jews."

"We will show our power to one," say the Protocols. "In order to demonstrate our enslavement of the Gentile governments of Europe, we shall show our power to one of them by crimes of violence, that is, by a reign of terror." (Protocol Seven.)

One by one the Gentile nations of Europe have been compelled to withdraw their troops from Russia. One by one the premiers of Europe have submitted to the heavy shackling of their official hands with regard to the Russian question. And today the world looks on while little Poland, apparently the second country on the list of Soviet victims, is made to feel heavy vengeance for her daring to be independent of Jewish power. Russia has been made to pay for her attempted independence of the Jew; Poland is now being made to pay. It is a flame, the Jews of Eastern Europe hope, and many Jews of America also, that will sweep round the world.

If the ruling Jews of the world wished the Russian people freed, if they wished the flames of Bolshevism to be quenched, if they wished Jewish participation in revolutionary movements to be withdrawn, they could accomplish it in a week. What is going on today is going on by permission of the Jewish world powers.

There is apparently no desire to curtail a movement that largely originated in American Jewry. This is the program of "showing our power to one," and the program will be followed out. The "showing," however, is twofold; it is a showing of power, but it is also a showing of the people who wield the power, and in the end it might have been just as well had the power never been coveted, attained, or used.

Anyone who desires to test the exactitude of the Protocols estimate of human nature may do so by observing his own reactions to the Russian Bolshevist situation. It is undeniable that there exists among all classes of Gentiles in America a kind of admiration for the coup that Lenin and Trotsky have managed on such a massive scale. The audacity of it, the ability to stay afloat thus ling in defiance of so many laws, have conspired to draw out unwilling applause.

Consider then this passage from the Tenth Protocol"

"The people feel an especial love and respect toward the genius who wields political power, and they say of all his high-handed actions: 'It is base, but clever! It is a trick, but how he played it! So majestic! So impudent!

"We count on attracting all nations to the constructive work of laying the foundations for the structure planned by us. It is necessary for us first of all to acquire the services of bold and fearless agents, who will overcome all obstacles in our pathway.

"When we accomplish our governmental coup d'etat, we will say to the people: 'Everything has gone badly, all have suffered. We will eliminate the cause of your sufferings - nationality, frontiers and diversity of coinage. Of course you are free to pronounce sentence upon us, but that can scarcely be just if you do so before giving a trial to that which we offer you.' "

This is very well conceived, and this is the way in which, up to this time, it has worked out. But there will be a strong reaction set in. False promises like chickens come home to roost. The real originators, the real purpose of the movement hidden behind Bolshevism will become evident. And then the world will crush out again the World Program that times has seemed so near success.

There will be more light upon this World Program as a result of the Russian Kahal-Soviet system than from any other attempt to realize it. For five generations the world has lived in false light supposed to be shed by the French Revolution. It is now known that that revolution was not the Revolution of the French People, but the disorders of a minority who sought to impose upon the French People the very Plan that is now being considered. It was the French People who ultimately put down the so-called French Revolution. And France, as a result of that upheaval of a well-organized minority, has been bound by Jewish control ever since.

The Russian Revolution will go down in history with no such false halo of romance around it. The world now knows it for what it is. The world will soon know whose was the money and whose were the brains that fostered it, and from what part of the world the principal impetus came. The Russian upheaval is racial, not political nor economic. It conceals beneath all its false socialism and its empty mouthings of "human brotherhood" a clear-cut plan of racial imperialism, that is not Russian, and that the common sense and interest of the world will speedily stamp out.