booknetsaWebster-secretSocietiesAndSubversiveMovements

CHAPTER IIX
THE JEWISH CABALISTS
IT has been shown in the preceding chapters that the Jewish Cabala played an important part in the occult
and anti-Christian sects from the very beginning of the Christian era. The time has now come to enquire
what part Jewish influence played meanwhile in revolutions. Merely to ask the question is to bring on
oneself the accusation of " anti-Semitism," yet the Jewish writer Bernard Lazare has shown the falseness of
this charge: This [he writes] is what must separate the impartial historian from anti-Semitism. The anti-
Semite says: "The Jew is the preparer, the machinator, the chief engineer of revolutions"; the impartial historian
confines himself to studying the part which the Jew, considering his spirit, his character, the nature of
his philosophy, and his religion, may have taken in revolutionary processes and movements.[1]
Lazare himself expresses the opinion, however, that- The complaint of the anti-Semites seems to be
founded: the Jew has the revolutionary spirit; consciously or not he is an agent of revolution. Yet the complaint
complicates itself, for anti-Semitism accuses the Jews of being the cause of revolutions. Let us examine
what this accusation is worth....[2]
In the light of our present knowledge it would certainly be absurd to ascribe to the Jews the authorship
of the conspiracy of Catiline or of the Gracchi, the rising of Jack Straw and Wat Tyler, Jack Cade's rebellion,
the jacqueries of France, or the Peasants' Wars in Germany, although historical research may lead in
time to the discovery of certain occult influences-not necessarily Jewish-behind the European insurrections
here referred to. Moreover, apart from grievances or other causes of rebellion, the revolutionary spirit has
always existed independently of the Jews. In all times and in all countries there have been men born to
make trouble as the sparks fly upward.
Nevertheless, in modern revolutions the part played by the Jews cannot be ignored, and the influence
they have exercised will be seen on examination to have been twofold-financial and occult. Throughout the
Middle Ages it is as sorcerers and usurers that they incur the reproaches of the Christian world, and it is still
in the same rôle, under the more modern terms of magicians and loan-mongers, that we detect their presence
behind the scenes of revolution from the seventeenth century onward. Wherever money was to be made out
of social or political upheavals, wealthy Jews have been found to back the winning side; and wherever the
Christian races have turned against their own institutions, Jewish Rabbis, philosophers, professors, and occultists
have lent them their support. It was not then necessarily that Jews created these movements, but
they knew how to make use of them for their own ends.
It is thus that in the Great Rebellion we find them not amongst the Ironsides of Cromwell or the members
of his State Council, but furnishing money and information to the insurgents, acting as army contractors,
loan-mongers, and super-spies-or to use the more euphonious term of Mr. Lucien Wolf, as " political intelligencers
" of extraordinary efficiency. Thus Mr. Lucien Wolf, in referring to Carvajal, " the great Jew of
the Commonwealth," explains that " the wide ramifications of his commercial transactions and his relations
with other Crypto-Jews all over the world placed him in an unrivalled position to obtain news of the enemies
of the Commonwealth."[3]
It is obvious that a " secret service " of this kind rendered the Jews a formidable hidden power, the more
so since their very existence was frequently unknown to the rest of the population around them. This precaution
was necessary because Jews were not supposed to exist at that date in England. In 1290 Edward I
had expelled them all, and for three and a half centuries they had remained in exile; the Crypto-Jews or
Marranos who had come over from Spain contrived, however, to remain in the country by skilfully taking
the colour of their surroundings. Mr. Wolf goes on to observe that Jewish services were regularly held in
the secret Synagogue, but " in public Carvajal and his friends followed the practice of the secret Jews in
Spain and Portugal, passing as Roman Catholics and regularly attending mass in the Spanish Ambassador's
chapel."[4] But when war between England and Spain rendered this expedient inadvisable, the Marranos
threw off the disguise of Christianity and proclaimed themselves followers of the Jewish faith.
Now, just at this period the Messianic era was generally believed by the Jews to be approaching, and it
appears to have occurred to them that Cromwell might be fitted to the part. Consequently emissaries were
despatched to search the archives of Cambridge in order to discover whether the Protector could possibly be
of Jewish descent.[5] This quest proving fruitless, the Cabalist Rabbi of Amsterdam, Manasseh ben Israel,
[6] addressed a petition to Cromwell for the readmission of the Jews to England, in which he adroitly insisted
on the retribution that overtakes those who afflict the people of Israel and the rewards that await those
who " cherish " them. These arguments were not without effect on Cromwell, who entertained the same su-
Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I
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