Qahal


The qahal was a theocratic organizational structure in ancient Israelite society according to the Hebrew Bible. In later centuries, Qahal was the name of the autonomous governments of Ashkenazi Jews until being abolished in the 1840s.

Etymology and meaning

The Hebrew word qahal, which is a close etymological relation of the name of Qoheleth, comes from a root meaning "convoked "; its Arabic cognate, :wikt:قال qāla, means to speak.
Where the Masoretic Text uses the term qahal, the Septuagint usually uses the Koine Greek term ekklesia, :wikt:ἐκκλησία, which means "summoned group". However, in one particular part of the Priestly Code, the Septuagint instead uses the term :wikt:συναγωγή, literally meaning "gathering", where the Masoretic Text uses qahal. This last term is the origin of the word "synagogue" in Hebrew.
Thus, the usual translation of qahal is "congregation" or "assembly", although asuppot, ʻaṣarah, ʻedah, moʻed, miqra, and sod, are also usually translated like this.
In particular, the Biblical text consistently distinguishes between ʻedah and qahal. One passage especially makes the distinction clear; part of the Priestly Code discusses what to do if "the whole Israelite commits a sin and the is not aware of it" Scholars conclude that the qahal must be a judicial body composed of representatives of the ʿedah; in some biblical passages, ʻedah is more accurately translated as "swarm".

Biblical exclusions

The Book of Deuteronomy prohibits certain members of the ʿedah from taking part in the qahal of Yahweh. In particular, it excludes mamzers, and men who were forcibly emasculated. The descendants of mamzers, up to the tenth generation, were also prohibited by this law code from taking part in the "congregation of Yahweh".
The Greek term σπάδωνες is usually used to refer forcibly emasculated men, but it is also used in the Septuagint to denote certain foreign political officials. This category does not include men who were born without visible testicles, or without a visible penis. There is a dispute, even in traditional Judaism, about whether this prohibited group of men should include those who have become, at some point since their birth, emasculated as the result of a disease.
No explanation of the word mamzer is given in the Masoretic Text, but the Septuagint translates it as "son of a prostitute". In the Talmud, it is suggested that the word mamzer derives from mum zar, meaning a strange blemish, and thus suggesting illicit parentage in some sense. There are differing opinions in the Talmud as to what this consists of, but the universally accepted ruling refers to the offspring of adultery or incest, as defined in the Book of Leviticus.
In the Talmud, there is a fierce dispute about whether or not the term mamzer included a child who had a Jewish mother, and a father who is either non-Jewish or a slave ; although the Talmud eventually concludes that this is not the case, a number of scholars now suspect that this was actually the original definition of mamzer. Abraham Geiger, a prominent Jewish scholar and rabbi of the mid 19th century, suggested that the etymological origin of mamzer might be me'am zar, which means belonging to a foreign people.
The Talmud interprets the exclusion of certain people from the qahal as a prohibition against ordinary Jews marrying such people. Additionally, the biblical reference to the "tenth generation" was interpreted, by the classical rabbis, as an idiom meaning "forever"; thus the Talmud forbids all the descendants - forever - of these people, from being married to ordinary Jews.

In Poland-Lithuania

In the 16th century, Jewish communities in the south of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth began to set up new qahals to administer tax collection. These had a minimum of 8 members, and in average Jewish communities had a membership of 22-35 Jews. Their executives were elected by the local Jewish community, and consisted of 4 elders with a further 3-5 honorary members. There was one qahal for each Jewish community, although smaller qahals were often made subject to larger ones.
These Polish-Lithuanian qahals quickly came to be politically autonomous bodies with major regulatory control over Jewish communities in the region; they administered commerce, hygiene, sanitation, charity, Jewish education, kashrut, and relations between landlords and their tenants. They provided a number of community facilities, such as a rabbi, a mikveh, and gemachen. Qahals even had sufficient authority that they could arrange for individuals to be expelled from synagogues, excommunicating them.
However, rich and powerful individuals gradually began to dominate the qahals, abusing their position for their own benefit. As a result, by the 18th century, many ordinary Jews had begun to clamour for the abolition of those institutions. "In 1844 they were officially abolished by the tsarist regime in Ukraine and most of the rest of the empire; they continued to exist only in the Baltic region. Afterwards, Jewish communities were only given jurisdiction over religious and charitable affairs, and occasionally over education."

Conspiracy theories

The qahal exists as a theme in the antisemitic conspiracy theory literature. The theme originated with Jacob Brafman, a Russian Jew who had a falling out with Minsk qahal tax-agents and to get revenge - converted to Lutheranism and then the Russian Orthodox Church, authoring polemics against the Talmud and the qahal. Brafmann authored the books The Local and Universal Jewish Brotherhoods and The Book of the Kahal, claiming that the qahal was an international network under the control of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, its aim being to undermine Christian entrepreneurs, taking over their property and ultimately seizing power. This theory was taken up by anti-Jewish publications in Russia and by some Russian officials, such as P. A. Cherevin and Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, who in the 1880s urged governor-generals of provinces to seek out a supposed "universal Jewish qahal."
Brafmann's image of the qahal spread throughout the world, making its way to the United States by 1881, as it was translated by Zénaïde Alexeïevna Ragozin in The Century Magazine. It prepared the groundwork for The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the word qahal features in that text. It is also discussed in other conspiracy works such as Edith Starr Miller's Occult Theocrasy, which ties it to the Illuminati.