Jacob Brafman’s The Book of the Kahal: the Jew Who Was Afraid of Jewishness

Abstract

The article discusses the narrative structure and rhetorical devices of The Book of the Kahal (1869)– an influential pamphlet by the baptized Jew Jacob Brafman. The book breathes conspiracy theories and portrays the Jews as a state within a state governed by the Kahal and regulated by the Talmud, even when they try to pass themselves as a confession to fool gullible Christians. In line with the traditions of collaboration literature, the author, obsessed with the glorious Imperial might and full of disdain for all things Jewish, demands that the Jews abandon their treacherous “multifaceted” identity in favor of Russia.