The Pharisaic elders who moved to Jamnia from Jerusalem before its destruction in 70 AD intended, like the Levites in Babylon earlier, to set up a centre of power and remote-control, from which they might keep in subjection a tribal organization, by that time distributed over the earth. They took with them to Jamnia the accumulated experience of Jerusalem and Babylon and the stored secrets of ages and they succeeded in establishing a mobile government which has continued to exercise authority over the Jews until the present day.
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 Rome) the secret edict went out from "the centre" at Jamnia, authorizing Jews to pretend denial of their creed and profess conversion to "pagan religions", if circumstances made this expedient.
The period of government from Jamnia lasted for about a century, and then it was transferred to Usha in Galilee, where the Sanhedrin was re-established. "Judaism set limitations about itself and grew ever more exclusive"; at this time the special curse on Jewish Christians was pronounced.
In 320 AD the Roman Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity, and enacted laws which forbade marriages between Christians and Jews and forbade Jews to keep Christian slaves.
These were the natural response to the Law of exclusion and "stranger"-slavery administered by the Talmudic government at Usha, but they were held to be "persecution" and to escape their reach "the centre" was moved back to Babylonia, where the Judean colony, which eight centuries earlier had preferred to stay there rather than "return" to Jerusalem, "was still intact".
The Talmudic government was set up at Sura, and academies were established there at Pumbedita.
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 Babylonia.
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 Europe and established itself among peoples to whom the nature of its dogma and its methods were strange and even incomprehensible. This led, in the course of many centuries, to the recurrent clash of the alien ambition and creed against native interest, which our century is again experiencing.
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 Europe came about through the Islamic conquests. The Arabs, under the Prophet's banner, drove the Romans from Palestine. By this means the native inhabitants of Palestine, who had inhabited it some two thousand years before the first Hebrew tribes entered, became the rulers of their own country, and remained so for nine hundred years (until 1517, when the Turks conquered it). An instructive comparison may be made between the Islamic and the Judaic treatment of captives:
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 Palestine, Islam then spread its frontiers right across North Africa, so that the great mass of Jews came within the boundaries of the same external authority. Next, Islam turned towards Europe and invaded Spain. Therewith the shadow of Talmudic Zionism fell across the West.
The Moorish conquest was "supported with both men and money" by the Jews, who as camp-followers were treated with remarkable favour by the conquerors, city after city being handed to their control! The Koran itself said,
"Their aim will be to abet disorder on the earth";
the Islamic armies certainly facilitated this aim.
Christianity thus became submerged in Spain. In these propitious circumstances the Talmudic government was transferred from Babylonia to Spain, and the process began, the results of which have become apparent in our generation. Dr. Kastein says:
"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 Palestine, so now Spain opportunely replaced Babylonia, which, as a centre of Judaism, had ceased to be capable of functioning.
"All that could be done there had already been accomplished; it had forged the chains with which the individual could bind himself, to avoid being swallowed up by his environment: the Talmud".
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 Europe. The directing centre and the destructive idea had both entered the West.
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 Babylon and Persia before, showed remarkable benevolence towards this force in their midst. To the Spaniards the invader came to bear more and more a Jewish countenance and less and less a Moorish one; the Moors had conquered, but the conqueror's power passed into Jewish hands. The story which the world had earlier seen enacted in Babylon, repeated itself in Spain, and in later centuries was to be re-enacted in every great country of the West.
The Moors remained in Spain for nearly eight hundred years. When the Spanish reconquest, after this long ordeal, was completed in 1492 the Jews, as well as the Moors, were expelled. They had become identified with the invaders' rule and were cast out when it ended, as they had followed it in.
The "centre" of Talmudic government was then transferred to Poland.
At that point, less than four centuries before our own generation, a significant mystery enters the story of Zion: why was the government set up in Poland? Up to that stage the annals reveal no trace of any large migration of Jews to Poland. The Jews who entered Spain with the Moors came from North Africa and when they left most of them returned thither or went to Egypt, Palestine, Italy, the Greek islands and Turkey. Other colonies had appeared in France, Germany, Holland and England and these were enlarged by the arrival among them of Jews from the Spanish Peninsula.
There is no record that any substantial number of Spanish Jews went to Poland, or that any Jewish mass-migration to Poland had occurred at any earlier time.
Yet in the 1500's, when the "centre" was set up in Poland, "a Jewish population of millions came into being there ", according to Dr. Kastein. But populations of millions do not suddenly "come into being".
Dr. Kastein shows himself to be aware that something needs explanation here, and to be reluctant to go into it, for he dismisses the strange thing with the casual remark that the size of this community, of which nothing has previously been heard, "was more due to immigration, apparently from France, Germany and Bohemia, than to any other cause". He does not explain what other cause he might have in mind and, for a diligent scholar, is on this one occasion strangely content with a random surmise.
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 Zion is concealed.
The "centre" of Jewish government was at this time planted among a large community of people who were unknown to the world as Jews and in fact were not Jews in any literal sense. They had no Judahite blood at all (for that matter; Judahite blood must by this time have been almost extinct even among the Jews of Western Europe) and their forefathers had never known Judea, or any soil but that of Tartary.
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 Asia.
From the moment when "the centre" was transferred to Poland these Asiatics began to move towards, and later to enter the West in the guise of "Jews" and they brought Europe to its greatest crisis.
Though their conversion had occurred so long before, they were so remote that the world might never have known of them, had not the Talmudic centre been set up among them, so that they came to group themselves around it.
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 Palestine was preached in the name of people who had no Semitic blood or ancestral link with Palestine whatever!
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 Poland lived under "an autonomous government". This administered "an iron system of autonomy and an iron religious discipline, which inevitably resulted in the formation of an oligarchic body of administrators and the development of an extreme form of mysticism"
(this gives the picture of the training, under rigid discipline in close confinement, which produced the Communist and Zionist revolutionaries of our century).
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 Poland.
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, Poland was partitioned and this great community of "Eastern Jews", organized as a state-within-the-state, was divided by national boundaries, most of it coming under Russian rule. At that point, for the first time in more than 2500 years and less than two hundred years before our own day, the "centre" of Jewish government disappears from sight. Up to 1772 there had always been one: in Poland, Spain, Babylonia, Galilee, Judea, Babylon and Judah.
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 agelong 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 Zion, the Talmudic period which lasted from AD 70 to about 1800. These methods have so much of the Orient and of Asia in them that they are puzzling to Western minds and are best comprehended by those whose own experience took them much among the communities of "Eastern Jews" before the Second World War, and into secret-police states, where rule is also by fear and terror.
http://iamthewitness.com/books/Douglas.Reed/The.Controversy.of.Zion/