Both of these societies began at about the same time. The records of the Kehillah state that the im¬ mediate occasion of its organization was to make a protest against the statement by General Bingham, then police commissioner of the City of New York, that 50 per cent of the crime of the metropolis was committed by Jews. There had been a government investigation into the “White Slave Traffic,” the result of which was a direct set of public opinion into channels uncomplimentary to the Jewish name, and a defensive movement was begun. There is no intention to rake up past scandals, unless it shall become necessary; it is enough to say here that, very soon afterward,General Bingham disappeared from public life, and a national magazine of power and influence which had embarked on a series of articles setting forth the gov¬ ernment’s findings in the White Slave investigation was forced to discontinue after the printing of the first article. This was in the year 1908. The Amer¬ ican Jewish Committee, to whose influence the Kehil¬ lah really owes its existence, came into being in 1906.
The word “Kehillah” has the same meaning as “Kahal,” wffiich signifies “community,” “assembly” or government. It represents the Jewish form of gov¬ ernment in the dispersion. That is to say, since destiny has made the Jews wanderers of the earth, they have organized their own government so that it might func¬ tion regardless of the governments which the so-called “Gentiles” have set up. In the Babylonian captivity, in Eastern Europe today, the Kahal is the power and RULE OF JEWISH KE HILL AH GRIPS NEW YORK )39 protectorate to which the faithful Jew looks for gov¬ ernment and justice; The Peace Conference estab¬ lished the Kahal in Poland and Rumania. The Kahal itself is establishing its courts in the city of New York. The Kahal issues laws, judges legal cases, issues divorces—the Jews who appeal thereto preferring Jew¬ ish justice to the justice of the courts of the land. It is, of course, an agreement among themselves to be so governed; just as citizenship in the United States assumes an agreement to be governed by institutions provided for that purpose.