Құдайлық басқару құрылымы: Ежелгі Израиль қоғамындағы қахал

Theocratic organizational structure in ancient Israelite society

The qahal , sometimes spelled kahal, was a theocratic organizational structure in ancient Israelite society according to the Hebrew Bible, and an Ashkenazi Jewish system of a self governing community or kehila from medieval Christian Europe (France, Germany, Italy). This was adopted in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (16th–18th centuries) and its successor states, with an elected council of laymen, the kahal, at the helm of each kehila. This institution was exported also further to the east as Jewish settlement advanced.

The Hebrew word qahal, which is a close etymological relation of the name of Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes), comes from a root meaning "convoked [group]"; its Arabic cognate, [[:wikt:قال qāla, means to speak. later used for church. In one particular part of the Priestly Code, the Septuagint instead uses the term [[:wikt:συναγωγή, also meaning "gathering" or "congregation" where the Masoretic Text uses qahal. This last term is the origin of the word for "synagogue" in Hebrew. Thus, the usual translation of qahal is "congregation" or "assembly", although אֲסֻפּ֑וֹת asuppot, עֲצָרָה ʻaṣarah, עֵדָה ʻedah, מוֹעֵד moʻed, מִקְרָא miqra, and סוֹד sod are also usually translated like this. Scholars conclude that the qahal must be a judicial body composed of representatives of the ʿedah;

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".) most commonly refers to forcibly emasculated men, but it is also used there to denote certain foreign political officials (resembling the meaning of eunuch). This category does not include men who were born without visible testicles (conditions including cryptorchidism), or without a visible penis (conditions including hermaphroditism). 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" (:wikt:ἐκ πόρνης). 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 (defined as relations with a married woman) 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 (or both); 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. Strictly speaking, the kahal was the elected lay leadership of the kehila (community). a ritual bath (mikveh), and interest free loans (gemachen). Kahals even had sufficient authority that they could arrange for individuals to be expelled from synagogues, excommunicating them (herem). Brafmann authored the books The Local and Universal Jewish Brotherhoods (1868) and The Book of the Kahal (1869), claiming that the kahal 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 kahal." 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 (1933), which ties it to the Illuminati.