Jacob Brafman

In one particularly gruesome incident, after his young daughter had died, representatives of the Society demanded a sum beyond his ability to pay, before taking a pillow from the bed of his deceased child as collateral.

To avoid military service as a cantonist, Brafman took to the road and failed at a number of professions, eventually fleeing to Minsk, where he tried to establish himself as a photographer.

Brafman's writing was sent to Saint Petersburg and subsequently earned him the chair of Hebrew Studies at the Minsk Theological Academy in 1860.

He also strongly rejected the view of many Russian and Jewish progressives, that Jews would modernize and undergo a significant internal reform if emancipated.

Prior to Brafman's article, Jewish intransigence had simply been viewed as the byproduct of religious fanaticism and a slavish devotion to the Talmud.

This kingdom, using the Talmud as its basis, allowed Rabbis to act as sovereigns over their fellow Jews and systematically exploit their non-Jewish neighbors.

Kosher slaughter, for example, was no longer a mere religious observance, but a method of reasserting the authority of the rabbi and collecting funds for the illicit deeds of the qahal.

Brafman worked on studying Jewish community books of the qahal from Minsk from the years 1794 and 1833, with his own commentary added to try and prove his thesis; at the same time the Rabbinical Seminary of Vilna was providing their own Russian translation.

Copies of the book were then sent to many governmental offices throughout the Pale, in order to educate imperial officials about the realities of Jewish life.

Brafman's works chimed well with the Slavophiles then active in Russia and the political theory of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality, which sought to distance Russian civilisation from French and British liberalism.

[2][1] Brafman's works, which included the idea of a secret Jewish shadow government and the aspects of an internationally orchestrated "conspiracy" against all Christian nations, crossing over with masonic involvement, provided an essential framework for what would become The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, authored by agents of the Okhrana at the turn of the 20th century.

Vsevolod Krestovsky, one of the most widely read Russian writers of the day, was inspired by Brafman to write a trilogy of novels; The Darkness of Egypt, Tamara Bendavid and The Triumph of Baal.

More than simply review and reprint Brafman's work, however, the response to the book served to institutionalize it, by making it the basis of the language one must use when discussing the Jewish question.

Hal Draper, an American Trotskyist, in his book Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution claimed that Mikhail Bakunin, one of the Russian founding figures of anarchism, was likely inspired by Brafman's writings on Jews.