3 The Judaisation of Freemasonry
This, however, is not the end of the matter. Yet other historical testimonies are alleged—the Temple cultus in Freemasonry, the “Jewish Ritual” of the Order, and the direct activities of Jews in its anti-monarchical and anti-Christian machinations.
(a) The first of these arguments may best be judged by the Morning Post’s own witnesses. Whether Freemasonry was or was not derived from the Templars and whether or not the Templars became infected with Jewish ideas transmitted through the Assassins, nothing is more certain than that the founders of Templarism established their Order on the Temple cultus long before they could have known anything of the Assassins, and while they were still impeccable Knights of the Cross. Hence, if the Freemasons took the Temple from them, it was innocent of Jewishness. But Robison—one of the main authorities of the Morning Post—will not even have it that the Freemasons were indebted to the Templars, much less to the Jews. He states that the theory, and even the Temple cultus, were unknown to Freemasonry before 1743, when they were introduced to them for the first time by the Jacobite, Andrew Ramsay.12
(b) The so-called “Jewish Ritual” of Masonry is equally a delusion, as the Morning Post could have found out for itself, had it taken the trouble to consult somebody who knows Hebrew and Hebrew literature. The grammatical forms and the transliteration of the limited number of Hebrew words found in the Masonic rituals prove conclusively their non-Jewish origin. The legendary matter, too, has but few traces of Jewish provenance, and is clearly not due to Jewish redaction. If the rituals were Jewish, one might expect to find parallel passages in the Hebrew Prayer-Book and similar literature, but nothing of the kind is discoverable. It is really remarkable that Jews had nothing to do—and indeed, I believe, never have had anything to do—with the composition of the Masonic rituals, seeing that the lodges, in this country, at least, have always been open to them, and at an early date learned Jews were interested in them and possibly joined them; but so it is. The true explanation of the Hebrew elements in Freemasonry, as in Templarism, is that both borrowed from the Old Testament, as a Christian document.
(c) As for the activities of Jews in the anti-monarchical and anti-Christian machinations of Masonry, the answer is that orthodox Masonry has never been anti-monarchical or anti-Christian, and if there have been spurious lodges open to this reproach, and if orthodox lodges have been improperly used for this purpose, they were, at any rate, free of the added reproach of Jewish control or inspiration. The only evidence on this head cited by the Morning Post—or, rather, by Mrs. Webster on its behalf—is that a Jew known by the nickname of Piccolo Tigre issued a scandalously anti-social manifesto to the Piedmontese Alta Vendita in 1822, and that he was abetted by “others of his race.”13 We are not told who these “others” were, nor even what Piccolo Tigre’s real name was. If Mrs. Webster does not know his name, how can she know that he was a Jew? The answer is that she got the story from Gougenot des Mousseaux, but even he naïvely admits that he never knew who Piccolo Tigre was.14 And yet he is positive he was a Jew. This is typical of all the Morning Post’s evidence.