I first read it a couple of years ago, but each time I go through all this stuff again, I glean more useful insights. While the author, Jeremy Brown, clearly believes ‘Copernicus was right’, I give him very high marks for actually trying to write the book in as ‘neutral’ a mode as he can.
And he brings a ton of relevant Jewish sources.
Let me set out the basic things I learned, and then we’ll get down to the sources themselves.
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There are authentic Jewish sources for both a ‘flat earth’, a spherical earth ‘celestial sphere’ (more on that shortly) and also Rebbe Nachman’s ‘dreidel’ earth.
Today, I realised that the SHAPE of the earth is not where the main argument is at all, and you can believe any of the above and be in line with authentic Jewish sources (you’ll see why, in a moment.)
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2. There is ABSOLUTELY NO AUTHENTIC JEWISH SOURCE FOR BELIEVING THE EARTH REVOLVES AROUND THE SUN.
This idea was Copernicus’ big ‘chiddush’ – and there is not one credible Jewish sources from before the last 200 years that supports this idea.
(More on ‘who is supporting heliocentrism in Jewish community’ shortly).
If you believe in ‘heliocentrism’ as opposed to ‘geocentrism’ – you are have a big spiritual problem on your hands.
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3. Whether you believe the earth is spinning around in place – like a dreidel – or is totally stationary, either of these ideas have authentic rabbinic support.
But, there is ABSOLUTELY NO SUGGESTION THAT THE EARTH IS ‘SPINNING AROUND THE SUN’ OR ANYTHING ELSE.
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These are the basic ideas I learned from our authentic Torah sources.
So now, let’s take a look at some of them, including what the Rambam actually said, about ‘spherical earth’ (the really interesting bits are bolded).
The heavens are called shamayim, rakia, zevul and aravort, and they contain nine [concentric] spheres.
The sphere that is closest to us is the sphere of the Moon. The second sphere beyond that is of Mercury, the third is of Venus, and fourth sphere is that of the Sun. The fifth sphere is that of Mars, the sixth that of Jupiter, the seventh that of Saturn.
And the eighth sphere, called rakia, contains all the stars seen in the sky. The ninth sphere is that which turns each day from east to west, which encircles all the others and which moves all of them.
The explanation for the fact that all the stars appear as if they are in the same sphere – even though they actually lay one above the other, is that the spheres are absolutely clear as glass, so that a star in the eighth sphere could appear to be in the first.
All these spheres that orbit the Earth are spherical, like a ball, with the Earth suspended in the center.
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So much for all those who like to claim Rambam as somehow ‘supporting’ Copernicus and heliocentrism.
Now, take a look at the Gemara, Pesachim 94b, where there is a whole, very complicated, discussion about the thickness and properties of the rakia, as well as the properties of the zodiac.
Here’s a very small snippet from the footnotes in the Artscroll version – I highly recommend you take a look yourselves:
“The Gemara below (94b) records a dispute between the Jewish and the gentile [i.e. Greek] Sages regarding the movement of the sun.
The Jewish sages maintained that at night, after the sun sets in the west, it passes through the thickness of the rakia (i.e. the celestial sphere), emerges behind it and travels back from west to east, obscured from the earth by the opaqueness of the sphere [i.e. the rakia].
In the morning it reaches the East, passes back through the thickness of the rakia, and emerges inside it, where it becomes visible on earth as it rises over the horizon.
The gentile [i.e. Greek] Sages on the other hand, maintained the the sun rotates around the earth, passing below the earth at night.”
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There is a ton of info there, but it’s very complicated, I don’t really understand most of it, other than to tell you that it’s the furthest from Copernicus and ‘heliocentrism’ that you can get.
But try and apply what I brought above to the ‘flat earth’ map of Gleason, and see if you get anywhere:
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Here’s a few more sources in the Gemara to check out:
Tractate Yoma 54b: “R’ Eleazar opined that the world was created from the center outward, while R’ Joshua declared that the world was created from the edges inward. This dispute is only intelligible if the world is flat.
Chagigah 12a-b: A whole discussion about the creation of Heaven and Earth, and the Seven Heavens. This is just a brief snippet – please take a look yourself:
“Reish Lakish says: There are seven heavens and they are the following: 1) VILON (curtain), 2) RAKIA (sky), 3) SHEHAKIM (mills), 4) ZVUL (residence), 5) MAON (abode), 6) MACHON (arsenal), 7) ARAVOT (plains). [Reish Lakish begins to explain each] The first heaven, curtain, serves no purpose except that it enters its enclosure in the morning and emerges to cover the sky in the evening and thus renews the work of Creation every day.”
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And there’s a bunch of references in Psalms and elsewhere about the ‘fixed’ nature of the earth, like this, from Pirkei DeRabbi Eleazar, Chapter 3, which jibes nicely with the ‘flat earth’ model, and the ice wall surrounding the oceans:
“The beams that hold the sky are embedded in the ocean. The waters of the ocean stand between the end of the sky and the end of the Earth, and the ends of the sky are spread over the ocean.”
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In the discussion about the rakia from Pesachim 94b, the Sages there Jewish give various measurements for the thickness of the rakia that range from about 1,000 miles to 2,500 miles….
I was pondering that, when I remembered a strange set of experiments carried out by the USA in 1962, called: Operation Fishbowl.
They basically sent a massive amount of nukes up into the rakia, trying to blow a hole in…. what, exactly?
Snippet from Wikipedia:
Johnston Island was a remote location, more distant from populated areas than other potential test locations. In order to protect residents of the Hawaiian Islands from flash blindness or permanent retinal injury from the bright nuclear flash, the nuclear missiles of Operation Fishbowl were launched generally toward the southwest of Johnston Island so that the detonations would be farther from Hawaii.
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Hawaii just happens to be the place nearest to the ice wall, when you look at Gleason’s map, above.
Coincidence?
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In the next post, I have a ton of information to share about where this anti-Torah ‘heliocentric’ idea came from, specifically in terms of how it started to infect the Jewish world.
It’s going to be an epic post.
But in the meantime – lots more to think about, but hopefully lots more clarity, about what the real issue is.
Again, it’s not so much the shape of earth – flat plain suspended in a crystalline ‘sphere’? Spherical earth? – but a question of Torah-true ‘earth centric’ or heretical Greek ‘sun centric’.
TBC
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UPDATE:
A reader sent me this, and I really liked it, so I’m sticking it up here.
That ‘bottom point’ of the dreidel is the Tzaddik Yesod HaOlam.
And then, we have the 36 (or some say 72) Lamed Vav Tzaddikim.
And then, the Jewish people – who are so, so, so on the bottom, but this is the ‘olam hafuch’, the upside-down world, where those on the bottom are really on the top, spiritually, and vice-versa.
And the whole world revolves around our connection with Hashem – i.e. our spiritual level and Torah learning, and prayers, and mitzvot, and working on our emuna and on overcoming our bad middot is truly keeping the world spinning around. The whole world is made for us! And what we believe, and how we act, affects the whole of creation, mamash.
Think about what’s written here – it’s awesome. No wonder the heretics are trying to obscure this fundamental truth, about the true nature of the world.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/new-heavens-and-new-earth.jpg?fit=337%2C505&ssl=1505337Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-21 22:05:012023-04-14 11:03:58Flat Earth: What the Rambam really said, and the game changer
It’s interesting to me, how many of us are worried that believing in a ‘flat earth’ may somehow go against the Torah view of the world.
In this post, I’m going to try and bring as many of the sources I can find (easily!) together, so we can see ‘what is Torah thinking’ and ‘what is Greek thinking’.
Again, our job is to really engage with these sources, and to continue to ask God to show us the truth.
While that sounds easy, it’s actually way, way harder than most of us think. Because we have certain assumptions about how the world works that were inculcated in us from childhood. And it takes a very brave person, to really be willing to follow the truth wherever it might take them.
Let’s begin.
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Let’s start with the idea of the ‘spherical world’.
I found THIS article that brings together a lot of the original sources, apparently from a more ‘Torah’ perspective. (Pay attention, to how much our Torah world is being deeply colored by ‘Greek thinking’.)
But they start by bringing the ‘real science’ from the Greeks:
The first to recognize the spherical nature of Earth was Pythagoras, who lived in the 6th century BCE; see Encyclopedia Hebraica, entry “Pythagoras,” p. 805….
Eratosthenes, who lived in the 3rd century BCE…even calculated the circumference of the planet Earth; see in Encyclopedia Hebraica, entry Eratosthenes,p. 801, about how brilliantly he calculated it.
Thus it is written about him: “Eratosthenes’s calculations — despite their inexactitude, inescapable in the conditions under which his measurements were made — are one of the most amazing astronomico-geographical calculations, and it gave science an (approximate) idea of the planet Earth’s size.”…
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Let’s just pause a moment to point out the obvious:
There is NO WAY Eratosthenes could have taken any measurements, in the real world, or got any data, in the real world, that would have enabled him to ‘calculate the circumference of the planet Earth’, no matter how ‘brilliant’ his equations might have been.
This is pseudo-science.
In case you were wondering how Eratosthenes pulled all this off, here’s what Wikipedia has to say:
He is best known for being the first person known to calculate the circumference of the Earth, which he did by using the extensive survey results he could access in his role at the Library; his calculation was remarkably accurate.
He was also the first to calculate Earth’s axial tilt, which has also proved to have remarkable accuracy. He created the first global projection of the world, incorporating parallels and meridians based on the available geographic knowledge of his era.
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In plain English: all those calculations were theoretical, made-up.
And today, there is still not a single shred of evidence in the real world that prove those calculations about the circumference of the earth, and the ‘Earth’s axial tilt’ is true.
Here’s how Eratosthenes is meant to have come to his conclusions:
Eratosthenes described his arc measurement technique, in a book entitled On the measure of the Earth, which has not been preserved. However, a simplified version of the method has been preserved, as described by Cleomedes….
The simplified method works by considering two cities along the same meridian and measuring both the distance between them and the difference in angles of the shadows cast by the sun on a vertical rod (a gnomon) in each city at noon on the summer solstice.
The two cities used were Alexandria and Syene (modern Aswan), and the distance between the cities was measured by professional bematists.
A geometric calculation reveals that the circumference of the Earth is the distance between the two cities divided by the difference in shadow angles expressed as a fraction of one turn.
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There is a lot on the web debunking the empirical nature of this experiment, but this one point should suffice to demonstrate the problem:
For Eratosthenes to be able to measure the Earth’s circumference, even assuming that he knew that the Earth was a sphere, he MUST also have known the size of the Sun and the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
And he didn’t. Nobody did.
But a bunch of heretical Greek philosophers had basically decided ‘the earth is a sphere’, and they spent the next few centuries making theoretical calculations basked on pseudo-scientific ‘experiments’ to prove themselves right.
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Let’s get back to the article about What the Sages Knew About the Shape of the Earth.
It continues like this:
Earth’s spherical shape was clear and known to the Greeks, as we stated above, but to our rabbis these matters were not at all clear and unambiguous, as we will show.
Bottom line: spherical earth is a GREEK idea, not a Torah one.
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In the Gemara, Chagiga 12a, it is written:
“Rabbi Elazar said: Adam reached from the earth to the firmament, as it says, ‘From the day G-d created Man upon the earth’ (Deuteronomy 4:32). But since he became corrupted, the holy One, blessed be He, placed His hand upon him and made him smaller, as it says, ‘You shaped me before and behind, You laid Your hand upon me’ (Psalms 139:5).
Rav Judah said in the name of Rav: Adam reached from one end of the world to another [Rashi: When he was prone, his head was in the east and his feet in the west], as it says, ‘From the day G-d created Man upon the earth and from one edge of the heavens to the other edge of the heavens….’
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The Gemara explicitly states that Earth is flat, for the first man laid prone from “the end of the world” in the east to “the end of the world” in the west.
Thus is written in the Shvut Ya’akov responsa (by R’ Jacob Reischer, born c. 1670), part 3, paragraph 20: “The words [of the Greek astronomers] are based on the notion of Earth as a sphere, in contradiction to what the discussion of this topic in our Talmud (Chagiga 12a) implies.
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Here’s another source that article brings (and then basically mocks….):
R’ Zerachiah HaLevi of Gerona (12th century) wrote in his commentary HaMaor HaGadol on tractate Rosh Hashanah 20b (found in regular editions of the Talmud on the pages of the Rif’s commentary), explaining the secrets of intercalation of years:
“The first [point] is the eastern edge [of the dry land]; its inhabitants live at the ocean’s edge in the east. The second point is opposite the first, at the western edge [of the dry land]; its inhabitants also live at the ocean’s edge, but in the west. The third point is between the first two and is called the navel of the earth; its inhabitants are those who live in Jerusalem and all of the Land of Israel. And the fourth point is opposite the third, under the earth; it is also between the first two points, and is called the navel or the heart of the sea, or the point of the depths.
Between each point of these four and the one opposite it there is a distance of 12 hours…and from each point to the next one there is a distance of six hours…When it is morning for the residents of the east, it will not be morning for Jerusalem residents until six hours later.”
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Let’s pause to take a look at this:
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This is Gleason’s New Standard Map of the World, put together in 1892.
Yesterday, I spent an hour reading through THIS – it’s a detailed PDF looking at 16 ’emergency landings’ made by airplanes, that make no sense on the ‘spherical globe’ model of our earth, but perfect sense when you use Gleason’s ‘flat earth’ map, above.
Go take a look at it yourself, come to your own conclusions.
But in the meantime, you can find a high-res version of that map HERE, and I recommend you take a look, and compare this with R’ Zechariah HaLevi Gerondi’s account, above.
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Next, we have this very interesting source, from the Jerusalem Talmud:
In the Jerusalem Talmud, tractate Avodah Zarah, chapter three, fol. 42c, it is written:
“That the earth is made as a ball. R’ Jonah said: when Alexander of Macedon wanted to rise above the earth, he went up higher and higher until he saw the world as a ball and the sea as a bowl.”
So R’ Jonah considered Earth as floating in a bowl of water, though it is not completely clear whether, in his opinion, Alexander “saw” the world as an actual ball or as round (like a ball) in circumference only, but otherwise flat like a coin.
From the words of Radak (on Isaiah 42:5) it is evident that he understood the world to be round at its circumference only, as a coin is:
“So the earth was round like a ball, but when the Lord gathered all the water which was on the face of the earth into one place for plants to grow on it — which is implied in the word vtzeetzaeyah — He made the earth, which is the dry land, as though it were flat, for people to sit upon it, like a man who spreads something and flattens it, like a silversmith who flattens metal plates.”
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Now, the article What the Sages Knew About the Shape of the Earth skips around 1700 years, to bring us a ‘definitive’ answer on the shape of the earth from a Rav we’ve been discussing at length, here on the blog, for a bunch of other reasons:
And now we will bring you the words of the Chatam Sofer, who lived close to our own time (1762-1839). He is one of those who taught his students “suitable” things without checking their veracity, sitting, rather, in his study hall and discussing the Earth’s build based on the words of Chazal and their conjectures. He did this instead of opening a science book and studying it to prevent tripping his students into error.
In his Responsa (Responsa Anthology, section 26, s.v. perek sheni) he wrote: “Now, some things and data suitable for students need, with G-d’s help, be clarified; they are about the foundations of this world, its build and the processes which it undergoes.
First: on the day when the Lord created the earth, He made the world of four elements: fire, wind or air, water, and ground. They have four natures: hot, damp, cold, and dry.
The earth is made of ground, and is the coarsest and thickest of all, rounded like a true sphere, and the waters surround it on all sides — there is no part empty of them, and the earth is not seen at all from any side.
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Moving on – because we still have a lot of ground to cover, and I’m deliberately keeping my ideas out of this post, as much as possible, so you can engage with our source material, and come to your own conclusions.
Next, the article brings the translation of the Zohar (part of which we also translated in detail, HERE).
But pay attention! There are two conflicting accounts about how the world is shaped and functioning here – and the Zohar says both are true!
Now we will cite the words of the Zohar, vol. 3, on the portion of Vayikra, fol. 9b-10a (according to the translation of the Sulam, sections 134-145):
“R’ Judah started: ‘And G-d said, Let there be a firmament in the water…’ — come see: when the holy One, blessed be He, created the world, He created seven firmaments above and seven lands below…and all these firmaments are one on top of the other, like the skins of onions which are one on top of the other…So, too, are the seven lands below.
All are settled, but some are above and some below, and the Land of Israel is above all of them and Jerusalem is the highest of all settlements.
The scholars who live in the south saw in the books of the early sages and of Adam that thus all those countries are divided. They are all below as the firmaments are above, that is, stacked one above the other.
Between each two countries there is a firmament which divides between the two, and so all the lands are specified by name, and amongst them are heaven and hell.
There are in these lands creatures different one from another as there are above [in the firmaments], some of which have two faces, some one, and the looks of one are not like the looks of another…Just as the worms in the earth have red skins, black, and white, and some have many colors, so too are these creatures different one from another, and they live only 10 years.
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In the book of Rav Hamnuna Sava it is explained in more detail that all the world rolls in a circle like a ball, these down and these up [that is, the creatures on the sphere are in opposition to each other, and the seven parts of the ball are the seven lands (the Sulam commentary)], and all the creatures in six lands are different in their appearances in accordance with the differences of air in each place, and they stand on their feet as other humans.
Therefore there are places in the world that when it is light for those on one side of the sphere it is dark for those on the other side of the sphere, for these it is day while for those it is night; and there is a place in the world where it is always day and there is no night, except for a few moments.
And what is said in the early sages’ books and in the book of Adam [that the seven lands are one beneath the other, with firmament between them (Sulam)] — thus it is [we do not disagree with it, although it says that the whole world is a single sphere divided into seven parts (Sulam)], for it is written: ‘I praise You, for I am wondered by awesome things; Your work is wonderful,’ and it is written, ‘How numerous are Your works, O Lord.’
So both accounts are fit [for both are the words of the living G-d, and one should not ask how both can be correct if they contradict each other (Sulam)]. This secret has been handed to the masters of wisdom and not to those who travel to distant borders [naturalists (Sulam)], for it is a great secret of the Torah.
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Last quote from that mocking ‘What the Sages Knew About the Shape of the Earth’ article, then we’ll sum up what we’ve learned.
[W]hat does the Ramchal say about this?
In his book Adir BaMarom, part one, BeSha’ata DeTzlota DeMinchah DeShabta, he brought the above section from the Zohar and wrote: “And about these things Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai said (on Leviticus, fol. 10a):
‘This secret has been handed…not to those who travel to distant borders,’ for they [Gentile researchers] perceive only the external features, but of the internal nature, which is the main one, they know nothing.”
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In a ‘materialistic’, secular, atheist world, the true spiritual dimension, the ‘internal nature’ of the words of the RASHBI in the Zohar simply can’t be grasped.
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Ok, this is a screenshot of Matan Gorodish’s chapter with more Jewish sources on the shape of the earth, from HERE (the 20 min mark):
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And then, let’s end with this, which I found on Quora, which gives perhaps more of an insight into how the ‘inner dimension’ of the authentic Torah tradition can be badly misunderstood, when dragged down soley into secular, atheist, ‘scientific’ terms:
What is the shape of the Earth according to the Torah?
This is very clearly understood as a sphere.
The entire cosmology of Judaism is bases around spheres and spaces. The cosmology and physica of Jewish tehology is best presented by The Ramak. The dimentional perspective ie the psychological perspective is given by The Ari Zal. Both are explaining the same thing without debate.
The aproach of Ramak states that there is an initial state of energetic light manifestation that manifests as a sphere and then it creates a hollow center that is less bright.
This is Keter and inside Malchut.
The internal light then shines and manifests a yet darker sphere with three lights shining therein.
This is Chochma and Bina.
In Bina one side allows the light in and one side is darkened allowing lighy to leave outwards.This causes one side to be bright and the other to absorb light. The center is a balance sphere that is less bright.
The Bright side is Hesed, The Dark-Absorvant side is Gevurah and the center sphere is Tiferet.
Inside Tiferet the process repeats. One side is bright, the other causes light to be absorved and pass to Gevurah.
The central sphere is Yesod.
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Yesod is the sphere that we exist in.
Yesod can grow in brightness or get dimmer. Yesod has two parts that work together to allow this. The upper part is connected to The First Heaven and the Temple Mount of Jerusalem as well as to Israel as well as the entire area above it at all times. The airspace above Israel unto the end of the physical universe is part of this upper Yesod
The lower part is the Malchut shel Yesod and is connected to the area outside of Israel. This area and its airspace above. This is the purely physical universe.
Together they are a sphere.
The earth is most certainly a sphere in Jewish cosmology.
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In the next couple of days, I’m going to take more of a look at who actually introduced this idea of the ‘sphere earth’ in Judaism, as an actual, physical reality.
(Spoiler alert: It’s all the same people we’ve been talking about here on the blog for years, as trying to subvert Judaism from within…)
Watch out for that.
TBC
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PS: Two more sources that came to me as I was writing this, over email:
He spreads out the North over a void; He suspends the earth upon nothingness.
The ‘void’ is actually the word ‘tohu’ – as in the tohu and vohu that existed before Hashem created our physical planet.
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This verse was sent to me as proof of the spherical nature of earth.
But what’s really interesting, is if you read on a little. Like this:
He spreads out the North over a void; He suspends the earth upon nothingness…
He drew a boundary around the water’s edge, until light and darkness come to an end.
The pillars of the heavens shudder and are astounded by His rebuke….
By His breath the heavens were spread;
His hand fashioned the [earth]-girdling serpent.
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Go back and look at Gleason’s map, with the sentences bolded above in mind:
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And as always, draw your own conclusions.
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UPDATE 1:
Shimshon in the comments brought more information about the translation of the word ‘tohu’ in the quote above, that I think rounds out more of the picture, so I’m adding it here, too:
“The ‘void’ is actually the word ‘tohu’ – as in the tohu and vohu that existed before Hashem created our physical planet.”
Chagiga 12a (if you read on from the section you quoted), notes the use of “tohu” here like follows, also confirming the literal reading of Iyov (from Sefaria):
It was taught in the Tosefta: Tohu is a green line that encompasses the entire world, and from which darkness emerges, as it is stated: “He made darkness His hiding place round about Him” (Psalms 18:12), indicating that a line of darkness surrounds the world.
Vohu; these are damp stones submerged in the depths, from which water emerges, as it is stated: “And He shall stretch over it the line of tohu and stones of vohu” (Isaiah 34:11), which demonstrates that tohu is a line and that vohu is referring to stones. (Chagiga 12a)
Tohu and vohu are tangible things, not concepts (“formless and void” is the usual translation).
Tohu is a ring of darkness surrounding our world. Vohu, rocks that exude water, also exist, in the depths, exactly where the Talmud says they can be found:
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Gleasons-map-of-the-world.jpg?fit=748%2C842&ssl=1842748Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-18 14:26:102023-04-14 11:04:12The shape of the earth: Greeks vs Chazal
Here’s a detailed English translation of some of the passages from the Zohar, talking about whether the earth is a ‘circle’ or ‘ball.’
***Reposted from 2021***
I can’t take any credit for this, it was sent to me by two of my friends, who spent half a day painstakingly doing it. Thanks, C and C! As with all things ‘Zohar’, even with a good English translation, it’s still not very easy to understand. But I thought I’d put it up here – and I’m including their photocopies of the original Aramaic text below – and let you, the reader, decide for yourselves, what to make of this.
One translation note: Some of these words can not be easily rendered into English, so they’ve been left as Hebrew transliterations. But rekiah usually means ‘firmament’, and rekiim is just the plural term, for ‘firmaments’.
Rabbi Yehuda began “And Elokim said – Let there be a rekiah (firmament) inside the water etc.” Come and see the time that Hashem created the world (עולם). He created 7 rekiim above, He created 7 lands (ארצות) below. (The Matok MiDvash says that these lands were created below in the belly of the adamah and their names are: ארץ, אדמה, גיא, נשיה, ציה, אקרא, תבל and תבל is the biggest of them)
7 seas, 7 rivers, 7 days, 7 weeks, 7 years 7 times. 7000 years that the world is to be, Kudsha Brichu is in the 7th of all.
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7 rekiim above and in each and every one of them there are stars and mazalot and servants that serve each and every rakiah.
And in all of them there are chariots, these above these to receive upon themselves the yoke of the Kingdom of their Master. And in all of these rekiim there are chariots and servants and they are different these from these and some are above the others. Some have six wings, some have 4 wings. Some have 4 faces. Some have 2 faces and some have one. Some are burning fire. Some are water. Some are wind. As it’s written (in Tehillim 104 verse 4): “He makes winds His messengers, burning fire His ministers”.
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All of these rekiim those above those are like the skin (כגלדי) of onions, some are below and some are above.
And all of these rekiim shake and tremble from fear of their Master. On His mouth it’s taken and on His mouth they are sustained (Matok MiDvash interprets this pasuk in the following way “According to His mouth they travel and according to His mouth they stand). And above all of them there is Kudsha Brichu that takes all with strength and force.
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In this way are the 7 lands below, and all of them are in the yeshuv, only that some are above and some are below.
And Eretz Israel is above all and Yerushalayim is above all yeshuv. (The Matok MiDvash is adding in this paragraph that according to the reasoning that the Zohar brings earlier these 7 lands are 7 climates and they are together with us in the yeshuv haaretz)
[RIVKA NOTE: The Matok MiDvash commentary on the Zohar was written in modern times, by Rabbi Daniel Frisch (1935-2005), of the Toldos Aharon community. It’s at least possible that some hint of the modern ideas about our solar system may have crept into his explanations.]
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And our friends, the sages who sat in the south, saw in the books of the ancients and in the book of Adam HaRishon that this is how he divided all these lands.
And all of them are found below.
(The Matok MiDvash explains here that now the Zohar refutes the explanation above and is saying that all these lands are found below mamash in the navel of the land– הארץ– and they are not 7 division of the land called climates. They are mamash complete lands in which there are different creatures and they are found in the navel of the land, this on the back of this) .
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In this manner just like the rekiim above, some above the others and others above the others.
And between each and every land there is a rekiah that separates between them. So too all the lands are divided according to their names. And between them there is Gan Eden and Gehenom. And there are between them different creatures just like above. Some of them have 2 faces, some have 4 and some have one. And the appearance of these are not like those.
[RIVKA NOTE: This appears to be a direct reference to ‘extra terrestials’ – but not from outer space.]
==
(Translator’s note: I skipped here a part where it’s talking about Adam HaRishon and if he birthed children in all of these lands. It’s a cryptical paragraph, so I decided to skip it since I didn’t find it relevant to the earth subject.)
==
In the book of Rabbi Hamnuna Sava it’s explained more, that all yeshuv roll (מתגלגל) in a circle (בעגול) like a ball (ככדור).
[RIVKA NOTE: THIS SEEMS TO BE THE KEY SENTENCE TO PONDER, IN TERMS OF WHAT THE ZOHAR IS REALLY TELLING US ABOUT HOW THE WORLD OPERATES.]
Some below, some above and all the creatures are different in their appearances according to the change of avirah (atmosphere) that there is in each and every place. And they stand in their lives like other human beings.
[RIVKA COMMENT: WE KNOW FROM CHAZAL THAT DEMONS ALSO APPEAR TO BE ‘HUMAN’ BUT HAVE ‘CHICKEN FEET’, AND A FEW OTHER CHARACTERISTICS THAT MAKE THEM UN-HUMAN. SEE HERE FOR MORE DETAIL.]
(The Matok MiDvash adds in this paragraph that Rav Hamnuna Sava was of the opinion that the 7 lands are the 7 climates and the sages of the south disputed with him and Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai was a citizen of the south and was of the opinion like the sages of the south).
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And therefore there are places in the yeshuv, whenever some are illuminated others are in darkness.
In this it’s day and in this there is night. And there are places where it’s always day and there is no night except for a few hours. And there is a place that is entirely day. And this is what is written in the book of the ancients and in the book of Adam HaRishon. As it’s written (in Tehillim 139 verse 12): ” I shall thank You for in an awesome, wondrous way I was fashioned; Your works are wondrous.”And it’s written (in Tehillim 104 verse 24) “How wonderous are Your works Hashem”.
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And about this everything fits perfectly.
And this secret has been granted to the masters of wisdom and not to those who divide the limits. Because this is a deep Torah secret.
==
According to this is the sea in which there are many creatures different from each other.
As it’s written (in Tehillim 104 verse) “This sea-great and wide; there are creeping things and innumerable beasts, both small and large. There the ships go; this leviathan.” And everything depends these on that and everything is according to what is above.
And in all of these worlds nobody rules except for man and Hashem above him.
==
Rabbi Nehorai Sava went on a voyage to the sea.
(According to Matok MiDvash this is the Mediterrean sea).
And there was a storm in the sea that sank the ship and a miracle was made for him and he went down with the known paths to the heart of the sea.
And he went out from underneath the sea to a certain yeshuv and he saw many creatures that were tiny.
And they were praying a prayer. And he didn’t know what they were saying. A miracle was made for him and he went up.
[RIVKA NOTE: I.E. BACK TO DRY LAND ABOVE THE SEA].
==
He said, fortunate are the righteous that toil in Torah and know the supreme hidden secrets.
Oy vavoy to those that disagree with their words and don’t believe in them. From this day onwards whenever he went to the beit midrash and the sages would expound the Torah he (Rav Nehorai Sava) would cry. They asked him why are you crying. And he answered because I transgressed the emunah of the words of the sages. And I am fearful of the din (judgment) of that world.
(The Ramak explains it’s the olam habah)
==
Lots and lots to think about here.
What struck me, is that the Zohar doesn’t seem to be talking about the ‘shape’ of the natural world at all, just its composition.
For example, this sentence is frequently quoted to justify the position that the Zohar says the world is shaped like a ball:
In the book of Rabbi Hamnuna Sava it’s explained more, that all yeshuv roll (מתגלגל) in a circle (בעגול) like a ball (ככדור).
But when I read it, it seems to just be describing the ‘motion’ of the yeshuvim, or the lands, that they roll around in a circle, like a ball.
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Also, pay attention to the Zohar’s description of ‘extra terrestials’.
I know I’ve mentioned this a few times, but a fake ‘alien invasion’ seems to be on the cards soon, which is why the media in all its formats has been priming us for years, to prepare for the UFOs from ‘outer space’. If you read THIS post, then you know that the UFOS are really just ‘black’ technology developed by the Nazis that came over to form the West’s ‘deep state’ post WW2 – and who have been happily experimenting upon humanity, in a million demonic ways, ever since.
But why would the ‘deep state’ want to fake an alien invasion from ‘outer space’?
Great question!
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If you go HERE, you’ll find a PDF of a short book that was put out by the Dial Press in 1967, called:
To make a very long story very short, this report detailed how ‘war’ is actually the key way that societies maintain their economic and social control over the population. If there was no ‘war’, no external ‘threat’ posed by other militaries trying to take over your country – then who the heck would pay all these taxes, or give away so many of their human rights and personal freedoms, or let all these corrupt politicians dictate to us how to live?
NOBODY.
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Ad kan.
I will bring more sources as we go along, but apart from this Zohar and the Rambam, nearly every other Torah source seems to be describing the world more as a flat plain.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/shraga-kopstein-5rIvIDY9fcg-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1798&ssl=117982560Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-16 17:13:032023-04-14 11:04:24Zohar on the shape of the world
It’s amazing how much real Jewish history I’m learning from translating some of Rav Berland’s old classes.
Before we dive in, I just want to state up front that I am trying, very much, to adopt a more ‘neutral’ approach with this information.
That means that I will share all the information I’m coming across with you, but with the caveat that we should assume wherever feasible and not ridiculous, that people are making teshuva all the time.
Also, just to restate the obvious, that just being in the same family tree as a bunch of Sabbatean-Frankists, Roman Emperors and George Soros doesn’t automatically make someone ‘bad’. It all comes down to each person’s individual actions and free will. As always.
And with that, let’s begin.
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First, there’s the stuff I was in the middle of translating for the Rav, about shalom bayit, when all of a sudden he digressed to the topic of who came up with the idea of creating a ‘Jewish State’ in modern times.
Here’s what he said:
Chareidim built the State of Israel
Yavniel was built by the chareidim.
Afterwards, there was a centre of the Palmach there, and also in Rosh Pinna and Petah Tikva. All of these places were built by the charedim. The idea of having a Jewish State didn’t belong to Herzl at all, this was all happening a long time before.
Already between the years of 5580 and 5760 (1820-1840) they were talking about this.
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The voice in the desert
There was Rabbi Eliyahu Guttmacher, and Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh Kalisher, and Rabbi Yehuda Alkali, who were great geniuses, and who said that we had to ascend to Eretz Yisrael.
It was like a kol koreh b’midbar, a proclamation from the midst of the desert, but we didn’t merit it for the chareidim to ascend to the land.
And then there was in 5630 (1870) Rabbi Akiva Yosef Shlesinger and Rabbi Hillel Kolomeyer, who ascended to the land already in 5630. Rabbi Akiva Yosef built Petah Tikva. Afterwards, it was destroyed by a flood that came up from the Yarkon.
There was malaria there, and people died from it, and only a few people remained. So they said that it looked like Hashem didn’t want it to happen. Afterwards, another person came along called Yehoshua Shtumpfer, who rebuilt Petah Tikva anew, and the main road there is called by his name.
Rothschild was also busy building up the land of Israel. Amongst other things, he built Metulla. They asked him: Why are you building in a place that that?! He replied that he knew they were going to create a Jewish State, and that the border was going to be there.
And so it was.
==
Long before Herzl
It was only after the Dreyfus affair, that happened in 1894, and when Herzl saw all of the hatred towards the Jews, that he started promoting the idea of a Jewish State, in 1896, a year after the Dreyfus affair.
The whole story with Dreyfus happened after France lost the war. So they slandered Dreyfus that he had sent a letter to an enemy country. They forged a letter and then libelled him, that he was a spy.
But the whole idea had been widespread a long time before this. They were talking about a Jewish state, and they even said that Rabbi Nachman of Tulchin would be the Finance Minister. They were talking about a state, and they were already distributing the positions. But we didn’t have the merit that this would come about via the chareidim.
After the Balfour Declaration, the Ohr Sameach said that those who were scared of the ‘three oaths’ that Hashem swore about knesset Israel (abjuring the ingathering of the Jewish people, back to the land of Israel by force) – that now there was no problem.
Because now, it was being done with the agreement of the nations. The biggest countries in the world agreed with the Balfour Declaration.
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There is always so much to unpack, in even the Rav’s most ‘throwaway’ comments.
So, I’d never really heard of most of these people, excepting R’ Tzvi Hirsh Kalisher, so I started looking them up, to see what I could learn about these chareidi ‘Hungarian Halutzim’.
In the middle of doing all that, one of the commentators, Simon, posted something up about how billionaire Hungarian financier George Soros is also related to the Chatam Sofer, indirectly, on the bottom of THIS post about Roman Emperors and Welsh Royalty.
I took a quick look – and that’s when I saw the same names I’d literally just typed up when I was doing the translation for the Rav.
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Long story short, this is Akiva Eiger’s tree, that has been repeatedly tied to known Sabbatean-Frankists.
(Now, remember the caveat above, that just appearing in this tree doesn’t mean someone is a Sabbatean-Frankist, but it does tell us that these people were growing up in families that were deeply compromised, in terms of their religious beliefs and teachings. But of course, it was still open to each person to change course, and make teshuva – as so many baal teshuvas in our days have also done.)
So, George Soros’ g-grandma was one Jittel Raizel Schlesinger, who descends from R’ Akiva Eger the Elder, amongst many others.
Her brother, or half-brother is one Tzvi Dov Schlesinger – and he is the father of the ‘Divrei Yehiel’, who in turn was the father of Akiva Yosef Schlesinger, one of the main people the Rav spoke about as being ‘chareidi halutzim’ of Eretz Yisrael.
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So, I took a closer look.
These snippets come from YIVO, here.
(1837–1922), pioneer of ultra-Orthodoxy, early Jewish nationalist, and Yiddishist.
Akiva Yosef Schlesinger’s father, Yeḥi’el (1814–1891), a close disciple of Rabbi Mosheh Sofer, was a minor rabbinical functionary in his hometown of Pressburg.
After attending the yeshiva of Avraham Shemu’el Binyamin Sofer in Pressburg, Schlesinger studied briefly with Ḥayim Sofer and Mosheh Schick.
He then went to Leipnik in Moravia to the yeshiva of Shelomoh Quetsch (1798–1856).
This was an interesting choice, as yeshivas in Moravia had a reputation for openness to general culture that was rare in Hungary. Schlesinger would later write that at this stage in his life he seriously considered the path of modern Orthodoxy, and that the experience granted him insight into the mindset of those tempted to succumb to its temptations….
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[I]n 1860 he married Liba (1842–1917), the daughter of Hillel Lichtenstein, who was then serving as rabbi of the small community of Margareten in eastern Hungary.
When Lichtenstein became a widower, he then married Schlesinger’s younger sister Fradel, at his son-in-law’s urging. Until the Schlesinger family moved to the Land of Israel in 1870, the two couples lived together.
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This ‘Hillel Lichtenstein’ is the same as the ‘Hillel of Kolomiya,’ referenced by the Rav in the piece I translated.
Already by the third par of this YIVO piece, I was getting that niggling feeling that something is a bit off here….
Let’s continue quoting from the YIVO piece:
At a time when Hungarian Orthodoxy was entering a period of deep crisis, the two men, along with Ḥayim Sofer, were close ideological collaborators, laying the foundations of ultra-Orthodoxy.
YIVO tells us that he was not a relative of Moshe Sofer, the Chatam Sofer, despite being very close to him and learning in his yeshiva. You can see his family tree HERE, and there’s quite a few strange things that seem to me something is being covered up there. (‘Nathan Ashkenazi’ happens to also be the name of ‘Nathan of Gaza’, Shabtai Tzvi’s main prophet who was raised in Eretz Yisrael.)
Over on the Jewish Encyclopaedia, we learn a bit more about where else Hayim Sofer learned:
He studied at Presburg and at Ungvar, where he attended the celebrated yeshibot of Ḥatam Sofer and Meïr Ash (Meïr Eisenstädter).
For now, let’s can that side of things, and go back to Akiva Yosef Schlesinger and Hillel Lichtenstein of Kolomiya.
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More from YIVO:
Schlesinger argued passionately for the need to safeguard the most basic markers Jewish of identity and culture such as name, language, and dress. The acronym of the three words shem, lashon, and malbush—shalem—encapsulated for him the ideal of the complete Jew, the “Hebrew” possessed of staunch integrity.
In this way, he redefined the battlefront of the culture war. In its metaphorical trenches, no longer did the Orthodox face a Neolog (Reform) foe, but rather the lines of confrontation were drawn between the authentic Orthodox and the enemy within, the counterfeit Jews, the modern Orthodox.
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In 1870, Schlesinger moved to Jerusalem, and he started fighting against a lot of the corrupt organisations here in the Holy Land:
The ḥalukah system, distributing charity from abroad, controlled by corrupt overseers, the memunim, could not provide a satisfactory economic solution to the rising tide of immigration from Eastern Europe. Many of the kolels sought to discourage immigration by denying the ḥalukah during the initial years of stay in Palestine.
To Schlesinger’s mind this state of affairs was not only criminally unjust and economically disastrous, but it also ran counter to his messianic expectations.
He had by this time fully internalized Tsevi Hirsh Kalischer’s activist messianism, which called for the restoration of Jews to the Holy Land and the creation of agricultural settlements as a means of both fulfilling religious commandments and solving pressing economic problems.
In 1873, he wrote a pamphlet setting out his vision of:
[A]n Orthodox utopia with many elements of a modern Jewish nation-state—Hebrew language, Jewish attire, a flag, a militia, an elected assembly—that would best secure traditional Jewish culture. Yet nowhere in the pamphlet was there an outright call for a Jewish state.
That came a year later, in a letter to Moses Montefiore, in which Schlesinger made explicit his goal to establish a Jewish state, albeit under Ottoman suzerainty, in Palestine.
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Just stop for a moment, and understand what we’re dealing with here.
This is one of the main guys behind the whole ‘ultra orthodox’ insistence on Yiddish, no secular education, retaining the black and white clothing of 250 years ago, ‘no changes to anything’ – agitating to create a Jewish State in the land of Israel, that speaks Hebrew, has an elected parliament of some sort – and an army.
This is mind-boggling.
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Ultimately, it didn’t happen.
Schlesinger was running an ongoing war against his arch-enemy, ‘modern orthodox Trojan horse’, Ezriel Hildesheimer, and a bunch of other secular Frankists, too, plus the existing corrupt overseers of the ‘haluka’ charity system then in place supporting the orthodox communites of Israel.
(Notice: there is nothing new under the sun. Also remember, most of those ‘established’ orthodox communities in Israel had actually been built and maintained by Sabbateans who flocked here to await ‘the second coming’ of Shabtai Tzvi, in 1700.)
Schlesinger was over-stretching. Here’s what happened next:
In 1875, disaster struck. Schlesinger published a work, Bet Yosef ḥadash, that went beyond all previous vilifications of acculturation and reform, but also contained a sensational proposal to suspend, in Palestine, Rabenu Gershom’s ban on marriage to two wives…
His book was banned and publicly consigned to the flames, his reputation destroyed overnight. Though his life was threatened, he refused to heed calls that he return to Hungary.
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Well!
The weirdness continues.
So after that, Schlesinger put all of his energies into trying to buy land for agricultural colonies in Eretz Yisrael.
He convinced his father-in-law [Hillel Lichtenstein] to help raise money, and the first Jewish agricultural settlement, Petaḥ Tikvah, was purchased in 1878 in no small part with these funds.
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Now, let’s take a closer look at Hillel Lichtenstein of Kolomiya.
Remember, he put up a lot of the money to buy the agricultural colony of Petah Tikva, in the land of Israel, in tandem with his son-in-law and brother-in-law, Akiva Yosef Schlesinger, above, who had published a widely known work calling for a Jewish state in Israel.
So, read this snippet from an Arutz 7 news story from 2015, when Hillel of Kolomiya’s grave in the Ukraine was repeatedly vandalised, and spot the inconsistencies yourself:
Rabbi Hillel Lichtenstein was the outspoken leader of the ultra-Orthodox in Hungary. He was an ardent admirer of the Hasidim and made pilgrimages to the Rebbe of Sanz, the Divrei Chaim.
Rabbi Lichtenstein was a preacher and a popular writer who denounced not only secular education, but even the playing of musical instruments and social games like chess and checkers.
He was an opponent also of all agitation for the political emancipation of the Jews, saying that it is the duty of the Jews to suffer the tribulations of the Exile until God finds them ready for Messianic redemption.
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Except…. that’s not true.
At least, his actions in real life were not at all matching these words ascribed to him, above.
So, what is really going on here?
Let’s see if we can shed some more light on this.
(In another strange thing, take a look at THIS article, describing how Hillel of Kolomiya and Akiva Yosef Schlesinger came into possession of the ‘Holy Sword of Hungarian Jewry’, dated to the 15th century. This tale is getting stranger and stranger.)
Lichtenstein gloried in his distinguished rabbinic lineage: he was a descendant of both Mordekhai Yafeh and Yesha‘yahu Horowitz (known as Shlah)….
He married Rezi Kolman, the daughter of a wealthy man in nearby Galanta. Supported by his in-laws for five years, he opened a yeshiva in Galanta that became famous for the piety of its students. He also taught householders and poor workers, anticipating his future publications geared toward the lay public….
He would travel about the countryside, his fire-and-brimstone jeremiads arousing great religious passion among the common people, especially attracting female audiences. In Margareten, he also encountered Hasidism at close quarters and came to view it with great sympathy.
As his own reputation as a holy man grew, Lichtenstein adopted some of the trappings of a Hasidic rebbe. In time, his amulets were sought from as far away as Baghdad.
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Well, the weird bell is starting to ding off pretty loudly again.
But in the meantime, here’s the real kicker:
He insisted that Jews not be tempted by emancipation, but rather retain their status as tolerated aliens.
Their fatherland was not Hungary, he claimed, but Palestine.
Smart readers will already have spotted the problem: this is diametrically opposed to what was said above, i.e. “it is the duty of the Jews to suffer the tribulations of the Exile until God finds them ready for Messianic redemption.”
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More from YIVO:
Lichtenstein was the architect of the ultra-Orthodox manifesto, the famous nine-point pesak din of Michalowitz issued by 24 rabbis from northeastern Hungarian communities in the autumn of 1865…Not only neo-Orthodox rabbis, but almost all the leading mainstream Orthodox authorities in Hungary as well were scandalized by what they viewed as the pesak din’s distortion of halakhah, and refused to join the signatories….
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…He is probably the only Hungarian rabbi to have had several passages of his work (in Jüdisch-Deutsch!) read into the [Hungarian] parliamentary minutes.
One member of parliament interpolated with sarcasm that Lichtenstein’s views denying that Hungary could be a Jew’s fatherland and his denunciation of assimilation seemed to be in full accord with the antisemite Gyözö Istóczy’s plan to have Hungary’s Jews immigrate to Palestine….
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Remember, this is a good 70 years before Hitler rose to power, and basically started saying the same thing as Gyozo Istoczy.
And clearly, Lichtenstein must have said Hungary could never be a Jew’s real homeland, because it was actually recorded in the Hungarian Parliament’s minutes.
But it seems that the plan to create a Jewish state in Israel only started to solidify a little later:
As late as 1863, Lichtenstein wrote that he preferred militant activism in the Diaspora to a life of learning in the Holy Land, but he later came to espouse the active messianism preached by Tsevi Hirsh Kalischer.
We’ll get to Tzvi Hirsh Kalischer in a minute.
Before we do, let’s just find out who helped Lichtenstein buy Petah Tikva, and then what actually happened to that Hungarian-ultra-orthodox-owned agricultural settlement:
[I]n 1876, [Lichtenstein] wrote a letter endorsing the Society for the Settlement of the Holy Land (behind which stood his son-in-law), wherein he expressed the view that such activities marked the first stage of the messianic era.
He was induced by Schlesinger to raise money (mainly from the Frankfurt Rothschilds) to buy land in Palestine.
The purchase of Petaḥ Tikvah, the first Jewish agricultural settlement in modern times, was funded substantially by Lichtenstein in 1878.
However, he soon came under enormous pressure and was threatened with blackmail by the Hungarian kolel in Jerusalem, which viewed the entire project askance as siphoning off funds that by rights belonged to them.
He was compelled to yield his shares to the kolel, which promptly sold them off.
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So.
One of the main ‘planks’ used to support the view that Jews should just stay in the diaspora and wait for God to bring them to the Holy Land…. didn’t actually hold by that.
(Take a look at THIS piece on the ‘TrueTorahJews’ anti-aliya website, to see how Hillel Lichtenstein’s words are being routinely twisted.)
But in fact, he himself bought land in Eretz Yisrael for agricultural settlement, way before ‘the secular Zionists’ even existed as a movement, and he wrote a letter in 1876 where he publically said about buying and settling land in Israel:
“[M]arked the first stage of the messianic era.”
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This is astounding!
So, how did we get from there, to where we are today?
First, let’s just do some housekeeping.
The Frankfurt Rothschild who probably put the money up for Lichtenstein to buy ‘Petah Tikva’ was almost certainly Wilhelm Carl Von Rothschild.
Snippet from Wiki:
In 1855 von Rothschild became joint head with his brother Mayer Karl of the Frankfurt house. When his brother died in 1886, he became sole head. As he and his brother left no male heirs, the Frankfurt house was discontinued at his death.
Von Rothschild, who was religious his entire life, was eulogized by Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim at the Yeshivas Knesses Beis Yitzchak-Kaminetz in Kaunas as הצדיק השר הטפסר (the righteous, the nobleman, the aristocracy)
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Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim, aka the ADERET was the father-in-law of R’ Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the first ‘chief rabbi’ appointed by the secular zionists.
Rav Kook famously had an ongoing dispute with R’ Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, co-founder of the Edah HaCharedit in Jerusalem.
R’ Sonnenfeld was apparently one of the people who put the pressure on Hillel Liechtenstein to ‘donate’ his shares in the Petah Tikva agricultural colony to his kollel – which were then sold.
It bears all the hallmarks of having being deliberately truncated. If you look closely, you’ll see that his mother was one ‘Zelda Rosalia Deutch’, whose father was a ‘Rabbi Aharon Deutch’ who appears to be floating in space. But when you look for possible fits for this ‘Rabbi Aharon Deutch’, you get to THIS tree, and this person:
Chief Rabbi Aaron David Deutsch or Aharon David Deutsch (also known as Rabbi David Prag) z’tl was born in 1812, in Raudnitz, Bohemia (today Roudnice nad Labem, Czech Republic) – died at Balassagyarmat, on 26, April 1878….
He received his early education under his grandfather, Joseph Emanuel ben Menachem Deutsch, who was district rabbi (Bezirksrabbiner) in Raudnitz, and then frequented the yeshivot of Prague and Pozsony (Pressburg, today Bratislava, Slovakia) being one of the favored disciples of the famous Moses Schreiber (the “Chatam Sofer”).
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He fits the time, he fits the place, he fits the circumstances, to be R’ Sonnenfeld’s actual maternal grandfather.
It’s highly unlikely that anyone could have risen to be the head of the Ashkenazi Jewish community in Jerusalem, without being a full-blooded member of ‘the cabal’.
Again, remember the caveat that it’s not the yichus that makes the difference, it’s the person’s own actions, for good and bad.
But also understand, so much of the story we’ve been told about what happened before the founding of the secular State of Israel is a lie.
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Meanwhile, Carl Wilhelm von Rothschild’s daughter Adelheid married her cousin, one Edmund James de Rothschild.
And he is the guy who went around buying up loads of bits of Eretz Yisrael, and whose money and land holdings basically launched ‘secular’ Zionism and the secular State of Israel:
He became a leading proponent of the Zionist movement, financing the first site at Rishon LeZion.
In his goal for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, he promoted industrialization and economic development. In 1924, he established the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA), which acquired more than 125,000 acres (50,586 ha) of land and set up business ventures.
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Are you starting to see that the ‘problem’ with the idea of settling Eretz Yisrael was not so much a religious one, as has been portrayed by so many ‘ultra-orthodox’ leaders in the diaspora, but more a political issue over who got to control the country and the money and the land?
This has massive implications for the whole subject of making aliya today.
I’m not going to go into that here, but let’s see if we can just pin down a little bit more of this.
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HERE is what YIVO has to say about Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, the person whose ‘messianic’ vision for a Jewish State in Israel apparently inspired all these ultra-orthodox Hungarian halutzim:
(1795–1874), rabbi and the most prominent “harbinger of Zionism.” Tsevi Hirsh Kalischer was born in Leszno (Lissa) in western Poland. He was a disciple of Ya‘akov Lorbeerbaum of Lissa and of Akiva Eger.
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There is a TON of weirdness around the family tree of Ya’akov Lorbeerbaum, a great-grandchild of the Chacham Tzvi.
And Akiva Eger’s tree we’ve already ascertained contains hordes of known Sabbatean-Frankists.
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Kalischer was a leader of the Jewish Company for the Settlement of the Holy Land, founded by Ḥayim Lorje of Frankfurt am Oder (1860), which was the first group to propagate the idea of renewing settlement in the Land of Israel….
Kalischer remained in close contact with contemporary Jewish leaders, both rabbinic and lay.
He corresponded with Moses Montefiore, Anschel Rothschild, and Albert Cohen; with rabbis in Germany (Esriel Hildesheimer, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Seligmann Baer Bamberger); with rabbis and public figures in Russia (Yitsḥak Elḥanan Spektor, David Friedmann, Yehoshu‘a Heshel Levin, and Eliyahu Krotinger), and with Rabbi Me’ir Auerbach in Jerusalem.
He had a hand in every initiative connected to the Land of Israel, whether sponsored by the Alliance Israélite Universelle (in Paris), the Jewish Company for the Settlement of the Holy Land (in Germany), or the Dorshe Tsiyon vi-Yerushalayim society (in Grodno).
In particular, he gave his support to the mission to various Jewish communities of Hungarian Rabbi Yosef Natonek on behalf of the Company for the Settlement of the Holy Land.
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When I was looking at the YIVO entry for Yosef Natonek, the man entrusted by Tzvi Hirsh Kalischer to raise and distribute most of the funds via the ‘Company for the Settlement of the Holy Land’, a very strange paragraph caught my eye:
Natonek’s most important work…’Messiah, or Discourse on Jewish Emancipation: A Study Equally Pleasing to Jew and Christian; 1861′, was published in Hungarian under the pseudonym Ábir Amiéli, “an Orthodox Jew” (igazhitü izraelita). The pseudonym, as he explains (p. 30), hints at the restoration of national independence (‘ami) that the spirit of Talmudic Judaism (el) is meant to direct to…
In Mesiás, he presents himself as a liberal Orthodox Jew who nevertheless would not permit his religious zeal to overshadow his humanity, nor his liberalism “to swallow up my Israelite nationality.”
His wide-ranging critique of Jewish society and religious indifference includes a harsh condemnation of both the Orthodox and their opponents, focusing upon their purposeful abandonment of hope for “the restoration of Israel’s national independence in Palestine.”
He concludes his essay with puzzling Christological references to a separate work wherein he claims to have demonstrated that the Talmud considered Jesus the genuine Messiah and that according to Talmudic reckoning the Messianic era was imminent in the second half of the nineteenth century.
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In other words…. Natonek was a Jew-for-Jesus.
As always, each post on this subject takes our knowledge a huge jump forward…. but also leaves us with a lot more questions to ask, and a lot more research to do.
But I have the feeling this was a very important post, especially in light of what we’ve discovered about what was actually going on in the land of Israel, and with the idea of ‘aliya’, even before the modern secular Zionist movement began.
Lots and lots to think about…
And lots and lots still more to research and uncover.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/cole-keister-pOCQuo4b-3E-unsplash-1-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=117072560Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-10 12:08:342023-01-10 12:11:39Hungarian Halutzim and the question of aliyah
I spent most of Shabbat trying to track down the specific source for Breslovers not eating Turkey.
So far I didn’t find it. We will come back to the topic of franken-chickens and turkeys in a separate post, as there is yet more to share on the subject.
But in the meantime, speed-reading through ‘His Wisdom’ and ‘Tzaddik’ in English threw up a lot of other things to think about.
This post is going to pull out some of those things, and try to fit them into a wider context.
I am at the point where I basically distrust pretty much anything ‘official history’ has to say.
But Rabbenu’s books were never about ‘official history’, and while there is for sure still some censorship going on – not least because of the huge persecution endured by Rav Natan and Breslov, and Rabbenu himself – I at least trust that most of what I’m reading actually happened as described.
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So, let’s see what more we can learn about ‘real Jewish history’, from a trustworthy contemporary source, Rebbe Nachman and his student, Rav Natan Sternhertz.
Let’s start with some of the stuff I gleaned from ‘Rebbe Nachman’s Wisdom’ (Shivchey HaRan and Sichot HaRan).
First, here’s some basic background. At the age of 26, Rebbe Nachman went to Eretz Yisrael together with an unidentified attendant. On the way to the Holy Land, Rabbenu spent a lot of time in Istanbul, where he dressed in rags, and played ‘war games’ in the streets with young children.
He did this to draw ‘abuse’ down on himself (amongst many other reasons…) because he knew he needed all those insults in order to sweeten the obstacles that would otherwise prevent him from making it to Israel, and the mekatragim that could otherwise even result in his death.
While in Istanbul, he met two followers of R Avraham Katz of Kalisk, who was the head of the chassidic community in Tiberius / Israel, following the death of R’ Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk. They didn’t know he was ‘Rebbe Nachman’, and Rabbenu, for his part, was careful not to tell them his true identity.
Now, I’m just going to start quoting some stuff from ‘His Wisdom’:
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Footnote 16 on page 53:
R’ Abraham ben Alexander Katz of Kalisk (d.1810) settled in Israel together with Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk in 1777,
When the latter passed away, R Abraham succeeded him as leader of the Chassidic community in Israel. He was a close friend of R Shneur Zalman of Liadi, but after the latter published his major work, Tanya, in 1796, R Abraham joined the Chassidic leaders opposing this work.
R Shneur Zalman, in turn, accused him of misusing charity funds sent to the Holy Land. The two emissaries who met Rebbe Nachman were followers of Rabbi Abraham.
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So, by this point Shneur Zalman and R Abraham of Kalisk were kind of ‘enemies’.
And the two followers of R Abraham suspected Rabbenu of working for their ‘enemies’…
Page 55:
[The two followers of R Abraham] went to the agent [in Istanbul] and told him, “For God’s sake, don’t let this stranger [i.e. Rebbe Nachman] leave for Israel. He is one of our enemies, trying to have Jews expelled, Heaven forbid….”
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We’ll sum up as we go along.
The ‘enemies’ of R’ Abraham of Kalisk and the Jewish community in Tiberius were apparently trying to have him and his followers expelled from Israel at this time, by the Turkish authorities.
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The two followers are trying to guess Rabbenu’s identity, and keep trying out different people to get a reaction.
Page 56:
They were sure they had identified him [Rebbe Nachman] as the Kamarner’s son, but then [Rebbe Nachman] began to curse the Kamarner again.
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It’s totally unthinkable to me that someone of Rabbenu’s stature would ever curse anyone else stam, let alone a ‘rebbe’.
So I tried to look up who this ‘Kamarner” actually was. On page 55 of ‘His Wisdom’, it says this:
“[T]hey thought he was the son of the Maggid of Kamarna, who had great opposition.”
Why was he having ‘great opposition’? As usual, the pertinent details are missing. Over on geni, I got to this ‘Komarner Rebbe’, who was living at the time of Rebbe Nachman, HERE. His name is R’ Yitzhak Isaac Eichenstein of Safrin (1740-1800).
His son, R’ Sender Safrin of Komarno marries Chava – who descends many times over from that same ‘Yaakov Kopel Kamiel’ we wrote about HERE, as being a strongly suspected Sabbatean, and possibly also the BESHT’s baal koreh, and maybe also an alter-ego for Yaakov Yosef Kahana of Polnoyye, the ‘Toldot Yaakov’.
Oh, and Chava also descends from the Sabbatean family of the TAZ and is close mishpocha with the Vizhnitzer rebbes….
In any case, Rabbenu apparently has no qualms about cursing this ‘Maggid of Kamarna’, on multiple occasions.
Moving on.
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On page 59, footnote 59, we discover that the authors have inexplicably censored the fact that the author of Arvey HaNachal is someone called ‘David Shlomo EIBSHITZ’.
Who is buried in the same cave in the old cemetery of Tsfat as Rabbenu’s daughter, Miriam.
Here’s what it says there:
Rabbi Zev Wolf (d. 1823) was a disciple of R Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch, and the mentor of R’ Shlomo of Soroka, author of Arvey HaNachal.
I’d love to tell you how the Arvey HaNachal is related to the infamous Jonathan Eibshutz…. but that information has been very carefully controlled and covered up.
Moving on.
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While he’s in Istanbul, Rebbe Nachman goes to the grave of Rabbi Naftali ben Isaac Katz of Posen – another well-known Sabbatean who we wrote about HERE.
Page 60:
“When the Rebbe returned from Rabbi Naftali’s grave, he suddenly fainted and lay still for several hours. They placed him in bed, where he lay all night until noon the next day. He was on the verge of death, until God helped him and restored his health.”
That’s very interesting all by itself, and the extra context starts to suggest a possible reason why Rabbenu fainted and almost died after visiting his grave…
But here’s some more to chew over, from footnote 28:
R’ Naftali ben Isaac Katz of Posen…embarked on a journey to the Holy Land but passed away en route to Istanbul on 26 Tevet 5479 / 1719.
R’ Naftali was an ancestor of Rebbe Nachman; he lived in Breslov for a while, and his journey paralleled that of Rebbe Nachman in many ways. His grave was considered a shrine for pilgrims to the Holy Land; there is a record that it was also visited by R’ Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk on his journey there.”
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There were clearly some massive ‘family tikkunim’ being attempted by Rabbenu here – and the process almost killed him, God forbid.
Read more about Naftali Katz, the Semichat Hachamim who is suspected of burning down Frankfurt’s Jewish quarter when engaging in black magic HERE.
I’d love to give you details of how he’s related to Rebbe Nachman – but all that info has apparently been deliberately hidden.
Maybe, you’re starting to understand why that might be.
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Back to the ‘enemies’ of R Avraham Kalisker and his community in Tiberius. This from page 70:
“[Rebbe Nachman’s] illness caused him to be directly involved in an episode with an informer.
This individual had recently arrived in the Holy Land and had become an informer for the Pasha, causing much hardship for the Tiberias community.”
Before we continue, you should know that this ‘Pasha’ being referred to is the notorious Al Jazzar of Acre.
He’s the guy who stopped Napoleon’s advance into the Holy Land at Acre. He was renowned for tremendous cruelty, and had a Jewish advisor (and ‘minister of finance’ and taxes – of course!) – called Chaim Farhi. Farhi had his nose slit and one eye put out by his temperamental boss, and also played an instrumental part in stopping Napoleon in his tracks.
His house is still standing in Acre, to this day:
I can’t help but wonder if this ‘informer’ was closely connected to Chaim Farhi, in someway. It would certainly explain a lot about this story.
Let’s continue.
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“[The informer] had had the community leaders arrested and held in prison for nine weeks.
Some Sephardic Jews went to the Pasha and paid a large ransom to free these prisoners. They captured the informer and attempted to strangle him. He was able to escape only by feigning death.
He complained to the Pasha (Al Jazzer) and was appointed as overseer of the city, to do as he pleased. Accompanied by a regiment of Turkish troops, he returned to Tiberias with great fanfare….
This informer had told the Pasha that the Jews were bringing a large sum of money from Europe.
The Turks had posted special watchmen at all the city gates, waiting for these emissaries….The Rebbe’s attendant was later sent to Haifa, where he collected the funds from the emissaries and brought the money to Tiberias. The money was then delivered to the Rebbe, who gave it to the community leaders [i.e. R’ Avraham Kalisker] for distribution.”
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This informer had to have inside information about who was bringing those funds into Israel.
And we see he had very close links with the Pasha, Al Jazzer, and his finance and tax minister Chaim Farhi.
And, apparently, he also had some sort of ‘grudge’ against the Tiberius Jewish community headed by R’ Avraham Kalisker, who was in the middle of a dispute with Shneur Zalman of Liadi, who had publically accused him of ‘mishandling’ the charity funds, after R’ Avraham came out against the publication of the Tanya.
Makes you think what was really going on, and who that ‘informer’ guy really was.
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A few pages later, we find out who had been dispatched to bring that money into Eretz Yisrael:
Rabbi Yaakov Shimshon of Shepetovka.
From page 75:
[T]he Rebbe made peace between the Rabbi of Shepetovka and Rabbi Abraham Kalisker.
Footnote 44 and 45 fill in a few more details:
R’ Yaakov Shimshon of Shepetovka was a leading disciple of…the Maggid of Mezeritch and a follower of R Pinchas of Koretz and R’ Baruch of Medzhibozh… The Rabbi of Shepetovka had been sent by R’ Baruch to look after the charity monies dispatched to the Holy Land. Some aspersions had been case on Rabbi Abraham’s handling of these funds, so he understandably resented the newcomer.
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Again, so much seems to be ‘missing’ here.
For example, R’ Yaakov Shimshon of Shepetovka seems to have actually been the in-law of R’ Pinchas of Koretz.
His daughter Sarah Miriam Shapiro marries R’Pinchas son, R’ Yehuda Meir Shapira like this:
SARAH ROCHEL SHEINDEL WEISBLUM m AVRAHAM ABA SHAPIRA (1709-1763)>R PINCHAS OF KORETZ (1726-1790)>R YEHUDA MEIR SHAPIRA OF SHEPETIVKA (1760-1829)
(This is the same family tree for the Noam Elimelech, Rav Zusya, and…. Jacob Frank. Amongst many others. It’s totally messed up.)
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For the record, R’ Nachman praised R’ Avraham Kalisker very highly.
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Now, let’s take a look at more of the background about what was really going on in the chassidic world from ‘Tzaddik’ (Chayey Moharan).
Rebbe Nachman was greeted with great affection by nearly all the chassidic masters when he returned from Israel – but he was still arguing with a lot of them, openly, that their ‘visions’ and kabbalistic understanding was totally wrong.
The people he argued with included Shneur Zalman of Chabad – the first person Rabbenu went to visit, when he got back from the Holy Land. And also people like R’ Mordechai of Neskhiz, R’ Tzvi Aryeh of Alik, and also the person who ended up being the Rebbe’s biggest opponent in his lifetime, the Shpola Zeida.
Here’s a little of what Rabbenu is recorded as saying (page 24):
[The Rav of Alik] came in. He said [to Rabbenu] ‘You still don’t believe me when I say I have had visions. I will give you decisive proof that I do.’ The Rav once again embarked on a Torah discourse in an attempt to prove to the Rebbe that he had visions.
Only then did the Rebbe reply to him, “Many have tried to explain the merkaveh (Chariot), yet they never saw it in their life.”
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You’ll recall that the mystical kabbalah associated with the ‘merkavah’ was the hallmark of R Abulafia, who was another in the a very long line of ‘failed’ or false messiahs, many of whose ideas got recycled a couple of centuries later by the Sabbateans….
Even today, the ‘Abulafia’ synagogue of the Tiberius of Rebbe Nachman’s time stands right next to the ruin of the house of R’ Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, the leader of the chassidic community in Tiberius before R’ Avraham Kalisker.
There are so many things that have been covered up in plain sight, here.
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Ok, one more specific thing, then a question, then we’ll end for now.
On page 47, we find this:
“There were a number of followers of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi in the town. They brought some of his teachings for the Rebbe to see.
The Rebbe took issue with R. Zalman’s teachings and showed his followers that what he said was not correct.”
Learn from this what you will.
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One thing that continually has struck me about the Breslov writings is that THE VILNA GAON IS NOT MENTIONED.
Not referred to.
Not even once.
Which I kind of find remarkable, given the huge number of other people that are mentioned, chassidic and otherwise.
It’s like he, and his followers, just doesn’t exist in the world inhabited by Rabbenu and Rav Natan.
Despite all the ‘official history’ that explains that Shneur Zalman and R’ Avraham of Kalisk were meant to be part of his group of students, before they found chassidut….
So, this week I also want to take a deep dive into the life of Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz, because the more I learn about this ‘hidden Tzaddik’, the more he reminds me of the Vilna Gaon.
I know, that sounds crazy.
Could ‘Eliyahu’ really be ‘Pinchas’?
But while you’re thinking about that, take a look at THIS article by Sid Leiman about the mystery of who is really buried in the ‘Vilna Gaon’s’ tomb….
Things are not so cut-and-dried as we like to think, not in about a million different ways.
But we’ll put more of the cards on the table in a separate post, and see if we can tease out a bit more real Jewish history.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Chaim-Farhi-house-in-acre.jpg?fit=1021%2C876&ssl=18761021Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-08 23:40:132023-01-08 23:40:13Following in Rabbenu’s footsteps: Acre and Tiberius
Either you love these, or you hate these, but either way, that’s what I’m serving up today.
The story starts with a Welsh historian called Alan Wilson.
This is good introduction to Alan Wilson’s work, which basically turns the history we’ve all been taught, especially about the British Isles and the Roman Empire, totally on its head:
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Amongst the many things that Alan Wilson has been researching, you’ll find:
The real identity of ‘King Arthur’ – and the fact that there were actually two of them.
That the hieroglyphs – the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs – can actually be read accurately using….Welsh.
He’s also pinned down the real date of the Trojan War.
And he’s got a number of theories about how at least some of the Egyptian-Welsh speaking ’10 Tribes’ ended up in….Wales.
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Now, let me state up-front that I am still wading through Alan Wilson’s information, and as there is a lot of information to wade through, I am still not sure how much of what he’s saying stands up.
But, I read his book on using Welsh to ‘read’ hieroglyphs a few months ago, and shortly my Welsh-speaking mother will be spending a few days with me, and I plan on really starting to pin that side of things down.
(Champollion had some close connections to Freemasonry... of course. And he’s the guy who came up with the ‘way to read hieroglyphs’ that basically totally ignored the fact that Old Welsh fit the bill perfectly.)
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As a child, my Welsh grandmother used to tell me lots of gripping tales about ancient ‘Cymru’ – Wales, with a particular focus on how the English, for the last 300 years, tried to totally uproot every trace of Welsh history and language.
I know this is true, because my grandparents, and their grandparents, experienced this persecution in their own lives.
And I could never really understand why the English were so hell-bent on obliterating Wales and its culture and history and language.
But now, I’m starting to get an inkling that bizarrely, Wales could actually hold the key to so much of the mystery of what is actually going on here.
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At the 15 minute mark, he starts talking about the Ten Tribes, and some of the links between the family that apparently gave us Yoshki (i.e. a family of heretical Tzadokim / Sadducee priests….) and the Welsh royal family.
Because of all the research I’ve done on the families that seem to have given us no end of ‘leaders’ – and no end of trouble and suffering – I am paying a lot more attention to Alan Wilson’s research than previously.
Again, let me flag I am still working through all this, and there is a long way to go.
But in the meantime, here is what I’ve got to.
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Wilson mentions that there were a number of WELSH Roman Emperors, including a guy called Flavius Magnus Maximus Augustus Wledig.
Magnus Maximus (Latin: Flavius Magnus Maximus Augustus) (ca. 335 – August 28, 388), also known as Maximianus and Macsen Wledig in Welsh, was Western Roman Emperor from 383 to 388.
As commander of Britain, he usurped the throne against Emperor Gratian in 383. However, through negotiation with Theodosius I the following year he was made emperor in Britannia and Gaul – while Gratian’s brother Valentinian II retained Italy, Pannonia, Hispania, and Africa. Nevertheless Maximus’ ambitions led him to invade Italy in 387, leading to his defeat by Theodosius at the Battle of the Save in 388. His death marked the end of real imperial activity in northern Gaul and Britain.
After Maximus, no significant Roman emperor (ignoring shadowy and short-lived usurpers) ever went north of Lyons again.
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Wilson claims that this Emperor was the g-g granddad of the first, real, ‘King Arthur’.
You can read more about that HERE, on the ‘ancientwales’ website this is a screenshot:
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‘Constantine the Great’ is the first Roman Emperor who officially converted to xtianity, and his mother is Queen Helena, the woman who traipsed around the Old City of Jerusalem magically finding where Yoshki was crucified and buried (400 years afterwards…) and similar claptrap.
(In case you’re wondering, it’s the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We’ve written about that place for other reasons, here on this blog, but you can be sure there are no CO-INC-ID-ENCES…)
Most people don’t know this, but Constantine the Great spent a great deal of time in Britain, and was actually first accalaimed Caesar there. This from Wiki:
Constantine’s share of the empire consisted of Britain, Gaul, and Spain, and he commanded one of the largest Roman armies which was stationed along the important Rhine frontier.He remained in Britain after his promotion to emperor, driving back the tribes of the Picts and securing his control in the northwestern dioceses.
In the meantime, his grandson is the Welsh-named Maxen Wledig – aka the Roman Emperor Flavius Magnus Maximus Augustus Wledig.
And his descendant is the first King Arthur.
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Why cover all this up?
I (and many others…) are still trying to figure that out.
But it seems the cover up of Welsh history began in earnest when the German Hanoverian Royal Family were plonked on the British throne, after Oliver Cromwell was paid a bunch of money by ‘Christian Zionists’, working with crypto-Jews based out of Amsterdam, including Menasseh Ben Israel, to get rid of King Charles I, and officially allow all the Spanish-Portuguese crypto Jews then living in the UK to openly ‘revert’ to Judaism.
Or rather, I should say that these people openly reverted to defining themselves as Jews, whilst continuing to skip things like having circumcisions and eating kosher for at least another 100 years…
Old habits die hard.
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Now, let’s tie this up a little more closely, to see how ‘ancient Welsh history’, Roman Emperors, and the chareidi world’s shapers are actually much more closely linked than anyone might think.
That part of the puzzle begins with the post I wrote a little while back, entitled:
The Chatam Sofer’s paternal grandfather was apparently called ‘Moses Schreiber Sofer’ (1690-1722.)
He had four kids.
One of them – R’SHMUEL SAMUEL SCHREIBER SOFER (1715-1779) has a son, apparently at the late age of 47 years, who is R MOSHE SOFER-SCHREIBER (1762-1839)- the ‘Chatam Sofer’.
Another of his kids, HADASSA SOFER-SCHREIBER, marries a Spanish ‘new catholic’ crypto Jew by the name of Abraham D’Costa Hart.
They have a child called Maria Narcisa D’Costa Sofer – WHO IS THE CHATAM SOFER’S FIRST COUSIN, via his father’s sister.
And this Maria marries one ‘Francisco Ramrez de Figeuroa‘ (1758-1801) who is the son of ABRAHAM SHAW (FIGUEROA PARDO) MEISELS, and REBECCA SHAW.
Because ‘SHOR’ can also be spelled ‘SHAW’.
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And if you trace the family tree back for this ‘REBECCA SHAW / SHOR’, you find she is directly descended from Welsh Royalty, Roman Emperors, and a bunch of interesting people that you really wouldn’t expect to find in the direct family tree of the Chatam Sofer.
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HERE is where we begin tracing that family tree back on geni, and here is the portrait of ‘Francisco Ramrez de Figeuroa’, the husband of the Chatam Sofer’s first cousin, Maria Narcisa D’Costa Sofer:
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So, this is his mum, Rebecca Shaw / SHOR:
And she marries ‘Abraham Meisels’, whose mum Deborah is the sister of ‘R Chaim Meisels of Brody’.
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If you trace that ‘Meisels’ family tree back, you immediately get to the heart of ‘Ashkenazi Rabbinic Royalty’.
This is the family tree of the Sabbateans, the SHACH, the people who became leading Frankists, leading reformers – and also, leading Rebbes and ‘ultra orthodox’ rabbis like the Chatam Sofer.
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But let’s focus on Rebecca Shaw’s side of things.
THIS is the geni tree for her going back just 10 generations.
It is totally crawling with British and French royals and nobles.
On one side of her family, the apparently xtian ‘Shaws’ are intermarrying with the ‘Jewson’ family… (it’s at least possible they were crypto Jews who retained the name when they went ‘undercover’ when Jews were officially expelled from the UK in 1290.)
And on the other side….there are so many royals and nobles it’s hard to keep track.
So let’s focus on the bit of the tree that leads back from John Weaver Shaw, Rebecca Shaw’s gg-granddad.
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10 generations back from him, we get to one William Neville.
And 10 generations back from him, we get to a bunch of people you may have heard of, including William the Conqueror, Malcolm the King of Scots, and also Fulk, the first Crusader King of Jerusalem.
If you keep going back, you find people like Robert II Capet ‘The Pious’ King of the Franks (972-1031).
And ‘Igor the Old’ ruler of Kievan Rus (878 -945) – that you know better by the name ‘KIEV’…. (Ukraine).
And Aethelred the Unready, King of the English (966-1016).
And Adalbert II, King of Italy….
And a bunch more dukes, kings, nobles, queens…
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And if you keep going back, eventually you hit Welsh royalty and Roman Emperors.
In the family tree of the Chatam Sofer, the infamous ‘Meisels’ Rabbinic dynasty, and of course, the SHOR family, that links us to a bunch more people including the Chabad Rebbes and the famous Frankists like Elisza Shor….
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And then we have Alan Wilson, saying that the renegade ‘holy family’ of heretical Tzadukim that gave us Yoshki made their home in Wales….
And that at least some of the Ten Tribes got exiled to Wales….
And that you can read hieroglyphics exactly with Old Welsh….
And ten on top of all this, we now know that many of the Roman Emperors were actually Britons, and their descendants were for sure Welsh kings, and English kings, and also Crusader Knights Templars who just happened to conquer the holy land, get crowned ‘King of Jerusalem’ and die in Acre….
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I am still trying to piece this together.
But how many CO-INC-IDEN-CES are we really talking about, here?
Here’s the pertinent part, for our discussion today:
One of the claims that Goldenthal made, repeatedly, about his ancestors is that they embodied some prophecy, about the ‘rod and the sceptre’ being brought together.
The ‘rod’ refers to the priesthood, the rod of Aharon HaKohen, the first Kohen HaGadol.
The ‘sceptre’ refers to the monarchy, specifically, descent from King David.
I can’t find this prophecy in Jewish sources, I don’t know if it’s a Christian thing.
But according to Goldenthal, his family of ‘Kahanas’ bring together the ‘rod’ of the priesthood (i.e. descent from Kohanim) together with the ‘sceptre’ of being descended from King David, and as a result, they have been in the middle of so many disturbing episodes of Jewish history, particularly in relation to the ‘false messiahs’ that have plagued us since the time of Yoshki.
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One of the Kahana ancestors is a guy called Bustainai, Exilarch who marries non-Jewish royalty, either a Persian princess, or Dara the daughter of King Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor.
The REMA descends from this suspected Sadducee-Karaite-Kahana guy.
And so does the MAHARAL.
And so does the Lubavitch Rebbes.
And so does the ESKELES clan of bankers, freemasons and Jewish reformers (more about them soon.)
And so does Jacob Frank.
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Go back, read ‘The Rod and the Sceptre’, because it’s too much info to put in this post, but it’s very pertinent.
It basically sets out how a SHOR / SHAW descendant of Frankist Elisza Shor made it onto the British throne.
But what we’re learning here, is that this interaction between British royalty and our rabbinic royalty has been going on for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
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So, this is my current hypothesis:
The Erev Rav heretics amongst us have been trying to wrest control of the Jewish community away from truly God fearing rabbis for millenia.
Yoshki was just one in a long, long line -and he was by no means the last.
These heretics descend from a group of renegade Kohanim, who were known as ‘Tzadukim’ or Sadduccees 2,000 years ago, and who were the corrupt priests in the Temple at the time it was destroyed, as well as throughout the Hashmonaim period.
Yoshki I and Yoshki 2 were family members, Kohanim, and belonged to this group of Erev Rav, hellenistic, (satanic…) heretics.
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It’s at least possible that some of Yoshki’s family, the original so-called ‘Jewish Xtians’, made it over to the British Isles, during the time of the destruction of the Second Temple.
If there were remnants of the Ten Tribes already in what is now Wales, that would be kind of a logical place to go, to try to escape the long arm of the Romans.
In the meantime, ‘Jewish-xtianity’ as preached by Yoshki’s family extended family members takes hold in Wales (this is Alan Wilson’s theory, and he has a lot of supporting evidence for Wales being the first ‘xtian’ country in the world.
Then, Welsh royalty starts intermarrying with this ‘holy family’.
In the meantime, the war with Rome continues over the British Isles, until Emperor Flavius Magnus Maximus Augustus Wledig comes along and marries a Welsh princess and makes ‘peace’.
Wledig’s grand-dad is Constantine the Great, the guy who decides to make the Roman Empire xtian mostly for political reasons.
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But Constantine’s version of xtianity is still ‘anti’ the Jewish-xtian original version of the Tzadukim-Sadduccee-Karaites.
So in the meantime, the Jewish-xtians continue to be persecuted, and continue to ‘shift between’ the Jewish and non-Jewish world – except with another huge twist now, that large numbers of the Jewish-xtians are actually mamash marrying into European royal families.
Some of these ‘Jewish-xtians’ are pretty much totally assimilated (but still retain links with the Jewish world clandestinely, and believe they are the ‘real Jews’ and the ‘real descendants of King David and Aharon HaKohen’.)
While others stay in the Jewish world, and continue to subvert it from the top.
That second group is the financers and the court Jews, and the ‘chief rabbis’ who control the Jewish community for the monarchs they serve.
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Along the way, there are more false messianic movements – including the Crusaders!
Because if you look at who these ‘Crusader Kings’ of Jerusalem descend from, you get right back to the same family trees of people like ‘Rebecca Shaw’ and the Meisels rabbinic family.
And of course, we see the REMA descends from them… and the Meisels family intermarries repeatedly with REMA descendents, as do the SHOR / SHAWS, and of course false messiah Shabtai Tzvi / SHACH is also in that same family tree, and later on, so is Jacob Frank and the Chabad dynasty….
It’s all one happy family.
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Later on, there is another big ‘push’ to regain Jerusalem, this time from the xtian zionists, again centred in the UK, via the Balfour Declaration and the zionist movement of Jewish puppets.
And as has been the case throughout our history, most of the people at the top of the tree in Israel are either strongly linked to xtianity – and even practising Jews-for-Jesus – and / or they are linked to the Freemason secret societies that grew out of the Crusaders’ Knights Templars and Knights Hospitallers – all of which are very closely linked to European royalty.
(Who think they are the real ‘owners’ of the land of Israel, and the real ‘chosen people’, because of their Tzadukim-Sadducee-Karaite-Jewish-xtian ancestry).
This is the actual basis if xtian ‘replacement’ theology.
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And of course, Jewish-xtianity was satanic from its inception, and based on black magic and ‘suffering little children’.
And all forms of the church have continued that tradition.
And then the Crusaders also mixed in slavery, banking and drug and weapons trafficking in to that mix, for good measure.
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This is what I think we’re currently looking at, but of course, as more details emerge, this can and will change.
And we didn’t even talk about Moses Mendelssohn and Gabriel Eskeles yet.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Rebecca-Shaw-Shor-geni.jpg?fit=498%2C302&ssl=1302498Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-05 19:22:192023-04-14 11:04:42Welsh Royalty, Roman Emperors – and us
Questions regarding the kashrut of previously unknown species of birds proved to be much more challenging, and some have remained unresolved to this day.5
The kosher status of birds is a much more complex issue than that of animals and fish.
The Torah (Lev. 11:1-27 and Deut. 14:3-20) specifies identifying features to indicate whether a particular animal species is kosher. Within the mammalian quadruped category, an animal is defined as kosher if it both chews its cud and has fully split hooves. A sea creature is deemed kosher if it is a fish (Aruch Hashulchan 83:5-11) and has at least one fin and one scale (Lev. 11:9-10; Deut. 14:9-10) that are visible to the naked eye.
The Torah offers no identifying features to distinguish kosher from non-kosher species. It simply provides a listing (Lev. 11:13-19 and Deut. 14:11-18) of the 24 species7 of birds that are not kosher (Chullin 63b). By inference, the vast number of other bird species are kosher.8 Today, when the 24 non-kosher species can no longer be accurately identified, things are quite a bit more complicated.
==
Although the Torah did not provide physical indicators by which to identify kosher fowl, the rabbis provided four identifying features to help categorize birds.
The Mishnah (Chullin 3:6 [59a]) states: ”
every bird that is 1) dores (“a predator”) is not kosher.9 Every bird that has 2) an extra toe,10 3) a zefek (crop, the biblical more’eh , e.g. Lev. 1:16), and 4) a korkuvan (gizzard, “pupik” in Yiddish) whose inner lining can be peeled, is kosher.”
These seemingly simple rules were the source of ongoing and acrimonious debate throughout the ages,11 to the point that a 19th century authority wrote: “In order to fully explain the identification of kosher birds would take a small booklet of its own” (Minchat Chinuch , mitzvah 157). And some poskim (decisors) did precisely that.
Following responsum YD:74, Chatam Sofer (Rabbi Moses Sofer; 1762-1839) wrote several pages of explanation of the subject, followed by a note that the rest of his thoughts on this topic are in a separate monograph. The Beit Yitzchak at the beginning of YD 1:106 refers to three monographs that others had written on the subject. Similarly, Rabbi Yonatan Eibschitz wrote a monograph, P’nei Nesher , on the kashrut of birds.
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Notice just who was writing on this subject, and deciding the kashrut of birds 250 years ago.
R’ Anthony Manning also has an interesting piece where he sets out the basic sources for the halachah very clearly, HERE.
Screenshot:
Here’s a snippet of his conclusion:
B3] SUMMARY OF THE MAIN HALACHIC POSITIONS FOR KASHRUT OF BIRDS
1. ONLY THREE SIGNS ARE NEEDED
• Rambi, Razah, Ramban, Rashban, Ran, Ittur and others: This is the most lenient position21
• As long as the bird displays the 3 main signs, this means that it is NOT a dores and we can assume it is kosher. According to some22
EVEN if it displays the behavior of a dores, this is considered anomalous and can be ignored.
• According to others, if we see that it actual displays signs of being a dores, then it will not be kosher.
The Shach quotes the lenient position of the Maharshal, that as long as it has 3 signs, it will be kosher, even if displays
evidence of being a dores. The Shach does not allow that level of leniency.
==
2. FOUR SIGNS ARE NEEDED
• Rashi, Rosh, Rasba, Chinuch, Rambam(?). This is the middle position.
• It requires the bird has ALL 3 positive signs and we ALSO know the bird is NOT a dores. Proving a negative is however very difficult.
Clearly, if we see any indication of drisa this will disqualify the bird.
• Some (Ba’al HaMaor and others) accept the ‘Goose Comparison’ – which is that if the bird has a wide beak and webbed feet, like a
goose, we know that it is not a dores. Then, if we find the other 3 signs, we can permit the bird.
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3. A MASORET IS NEEDED AND SIGNS ARE NO LONGER RELEVANT
• Rashi, Tosafot: This is the strictest position. Given the confusion in proving or disproving the signs, we no longer refer to them at all,
but eat ONLY those birds for which we have a tradition from our ancestors that they are kosher.
• Even if there is a mesoret, if the bird is seen to be a dores the mesora is assumed to be mistaken, and the bird is not kosher.23
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R’ Manning does a very good job of setting out all the information, go HERE to read the whole thing.
The problem with turkey is that a) there is NO tradition that it was kosher, people just kind of starting eating it 300 years ago, and then the rabbis of the time just kind of shrugged their shoulders and said ‘ok then’.
And b) – it’s got a lot of cruel, ‘dores’ tendencies.
(These are two different stories, on two different occasions….)
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So… no wonder Rabbenu said Turkey shouldn’t be eaten.
As to what we do about the chickens of our times….
I don’t know.
I’m debating asking a shaila to the Rav, but part of me is also a little scared to do that, because if he says ‘no chicken’ that’s going to be hard to avoid, especially with my kids, who already think I have religious fanatic tendencies…
I do know I’m not buying ‘Franken-chicken’ anymore, and it does seem to me most of the ‘chicken’ we’re buying today isn’t really chicken.
But then, I’m starting to understand that this whole discussion is SO complicated, because no-one seems to know, anymore, what is really a ‘kosher chicken’ according to our masoret.
So for now… I’m buying more red meat and pondering what to do next.
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What I can tell you, is that there is nothing new under the sun.
All these arguments just seem to be coming back around again and again and again, on a monstrous loop.
300 years ago it was turkey, today it’s ‘cornish crosses’
And each time, the battle to do the right thing is so very hard.
Personally, I’m still not sure what the right thing is to do, with all this chicken stuff.
IF I could find a not cornish cross, presumed kosher chicken I for sure would go for that.
In the meantime, I am starting to look into more organic options too, but I’m also wary of digging up to much information that I won’t know what to do with…
So.
That’s where I’m currently holding with all this.
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On a separate but related note, I also started thinking about how the whole heter to use ‘chalav nochri’ is based on the idea that the official organisations are trustworthy, and wouldn’t lie to anyone about mixing in a bit of pig milk with their cows’ milk.
At this point…. that assumption seems naive in the extreme.
If they are mixing in HEK293 from aborted foetuses into ‘veggie burgers’…. then what the heck are they NOT putting in the stuff labelled chalav nochri?
Enquiring minds need to know.
I personally don’t eat chalav nochri, but even in Israel, it’s getting into everything these days.
And it’s probably long past time to revisit some of these assumptions about the trustworthiness of ‘official labels’ and FDA approvals, and even ‘vegan certifications’…
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/meelika-marzzarella-1dkPi4dmiw0-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=1707%2C2560&ssl=125601707Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-04 16:56:142023-01-04 16:56:32Franken-chicken Part 2: the trouble with turkey
We’ve all been brainwashed into believing that ‘Western Medicine’ is somehow whiter than white, spiritually.
OK…. it’s based on a totally atheist, God-denying worldview….
OK…. it promotes abortions on demand, kills people with ‘experimental therapies’ and dangerous drugs and unnecessary surgical procedures left, right and centre….
OK…. it’s based mostly on greed (private and corporate), ego, and arrogance that ‘man can play God’, when it comes to human health….
But apart from all that, it’s whiter than white, spiritually.
Right?
Not at all like all that ‘voodoo’ black magic stuff involving tuning forks and chiropractors, no siree.
Or is it?
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This post is motivated, at least in part, by JR’s comment that:
Vibration medicine wasn’t just used by these occultists, it was invented by them based on occult ideology.
The ideas themselves are occult.
How are you going to kasher a treif idea?
After I read that, I decided to do more of a ‘deep dive’ to understand exactly where most of the practises and ‘ideology’ behind Western Medicine actually came from.
What I learned is very interesting, very enlightening – and shows that ‘Western Medicine’ is just as steeped in ‘occult idealogy’ than anything else you care to mention.
(Without even mentioning the obvious, that anything that denies God and the human soul clearly can’t be coming from a good, holy place.)
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First, let’s try to define what we’re really talking about, when we say ‘Western medicine’.
I would define Western medicine as a system that teaches the physical body is totally separate from the soul, and that effectively teaches that the body is all there is, when it comes to treating disease and illnesses.
There is no God in the picture.
There is no soul in the picture.
Western medicine treats the human body as an animated piece of meat.
Does this sound accurate?
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To put this another way, Western medicine is based on atheist idealogy that denies the existence of God.
And no-one can really dispute that.
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Now, let’s try to define the word ‘occult’.
The devil is always in the definitions, that why I try to pin the terms down very tightly, before continuing on with the birur.
According to the Cambridge dictionary, ‘occult’ is both a noun and a verb:
relating to magical powers and activities, such as those of witchcraft and astrology:
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the occult
noun
the study of magic or mysterious powers
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Here’s a little more of its etymology, from Wikipedia HERE:
The occult (from the Latin word occultus “clandestine, hidden, secret”) is “knowledge of the hidden”. In common usage, occult refers to “knowledge of the paranormal”, as opposed to “knowledge of the measurable”, usually referred to as science.
Interestingly, it’s only when the satanic Freemasons started exploding all over the place 200 years ago that the term ‘occult’ came to be inextricably linked with sorcery and black magic, in modern parlance.
Here’s another snippet from that same Wikipedia page:
In case you don’t know what ‘natural magic’ refers too, here’s a snippet from that term’s Wiki page:
Natural magic in the context of Renaissance magic is that part of the occult which deals with natural forces directly, as opposed to ceremonial magic which deals with the summoning of spirits.
Natural magic sometimes makes use of physical substances from the natural world such as stones or herbs.
Natural magic so defined includes astrology, alchemy, and disciplines that we would today consider fields of natural science, such as astronomy and chemistry (which developed and diverged from astrology and alchemy, respectively, into the modern sciences they are today) or botany (from herbology)….
The Italian Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who founded the tradition of Christian Kabbalah, argued that natural magic was “the practical part of natural science” and was lawful rather than heretical.
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Hey, wait a minute!!!
What are all these ‘occult’ references and links, and descriptions of ‘natural magic’ doing in a discussion of chemistry, natural science and the philosophical foundations of Western medicine?!?!
Surely, there must be some mistake…
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The illustration below is one of the figures you’ll find in Agrippa’s work ‘Three Books of Occult Philosophy’, snippet from HERE:
The three books deal with elemental, celestial and intellectual magic.
His training was probably conducted at an asklepeion, which was a type of temple in ancient Greece dedicated to the mythological demi-god Asklepius , who was also a physician. These temples were staffed by skilled healers who functioned as rudimentary doctors and surgeons.
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What was Hippocrates’ biggest ‘contribution’ to healing?
He basically disconnected physical illnesses and diseases from the ‘spiritual realm’ – i.e. Divine intervention – and said that it all just had a natural basis, instead.
I.e., he was the first to come up with the idea that God (or for him, being a pagan idol worshiper, ‘the gods’) were NOT behind illness and sickness, and that everything had a physical, gashmius cause and cure, instead.
Of course, you get run over by a bus, there’s a very ‘natural’ reason why you are sick. But God is still the one who sent the bus…
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So, we see that Western Medicine has its twin facets of rooted in the pagan-worshipping ‘occult’, AND ALSO, rooted in heretical atheism.
Great!
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You can trace the use of surgery and drugs all the way back to Ancient Egypt, and again, these procedures were practised in religious settings, in temples, and the priests were the ones with the ‘knowledge’ of how to heal.
It’s as occult as you could possibly hope to get.
Watch this cute four minute video – a TED talk from 2018 – to get more of a flavor of what we’re talking about, here:
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If you go HERE, you’ll read about the Ebers Papyrus, which sets out a great deal of how medicine was practised in Ancient Egypt.
Here’s a relevant snippet:
[T]he Egyptian medical world was divided into two categories:
the “Rational methods” which were treatments that would be parallel to the scientific principles of today, and the “Irrational methods” which involved magico-religious beliefs using amulets, incantations, and written spells calling to the Egyptian gods of old.
After all, during this time there was a strong association with magic, religion, and medical health being one holistic experience.
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So, to sum this up clearly, surgery and drugs were invented and used by exactly the same people who were reciting magical incantations to pagan gods, while teaching their methods to novices in pagan temples.
Let’s just update JR’s original comment to reflect this new information:
Western medicine wasn’t just used by these occultists, it was invented by them based on occult ideology.
The ideas themselves are occult.
How are you going to kasher a treif idea?
How indeed?
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In case you think that was only happening in ancient Egypt, let’s just return to Hippocrates’ Greece for a second, before swooping on to India.
This image comes from another interesting article HERE:
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This image is a drawing of an etching taken from the wall of the Asclepion in Athens.
This is what an ‘Asclepion’ actually was, from Wiki:
Asclepieia were healing temples located in ancient Greece (and in the wider Hellenistic and Roman world), dedicated to Asclepius, the first doctor-demigod in Greek mythology.
Asclepius was said to have been such a skilled doctor that he could even raise people from the dead. So stemming from the myth of his great healing powers, pilgrims would flock to temples built in his honor in order to seek spiritual and physical healing.
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This is where Hippocrates learnt his medicine, and taught it, and these temples were literally decorated with pictures of surgical instruments that wouldn’t be out of place in ‘Western Medicine’.
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Western medicine wasn’t just used by these occultists, it was invented by them based on occult ideology.
The ideas themselves are occult.
How are you going to kasher a treif idea?
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OK, last stop is India.
You probably never heard of a guy (or ‘demi god’) called Sushruta.
But he is credited with inventing much of what we find today in Western surgical techniques.
Sushruta’s writings report autopsies of a corpse; he described 500 muscles, 300 bones, 107 joints, 70 blood vessels, and other organs of the body.
It also describes the rules of personal hygiene, more than 700 medicinal plants and medicinal products of animal and mineral origin, methods of their preparation and use.
In his writings, he described many acute and chronic diseases, gave symptoms of diseases that later became known as smallpox, cholera, erysipelas, diabetes, and epilepsy.
Sushruta gained special fame as an outstanding surgeon of antiquity. In his writings, more than 100 surgical instruments, various probes, silk and linen threads are mentioned.
He performed surgical procedures, used straight and curved needles, and used henbane and hashish as anesthetics. He described 14 forms of dressings.
He performed amputations, plastic surgeries, there are descriptions of medical techniques in cases of difficult labor, Cesarean section. Sushruta reports 72 types of eye diseases, describes the removal operation for cataracts; he is credited with using a magnet to remove foreign bodies from the eye.
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Impressive, isn’t it?
Very ‘Western Medically-sounding’, isn’t it?
Now, here’s the kicker:
According to legend, Sushruta was a disciple of the very god of medical art Dhanvantari, who incarnated as Divodasa, the king of Kashi.
Hey…. wait a minute!
What is all this ‘occult’ stuff doing mixed up with cesarean sections, cataract removal, anesthesia and 700 medicinal preparations for curing illness?!
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I’m going to stop here, for now.
I have a ton more to say, and I’m starting to trip over how all this pagan medical heresy got introduced into the Jewish community, and presented as ‘whiter-than-white’.
It seems the ancestors of so many of the people I’ve been writing about here, who are known Sabbateans and Frankists, practised the medical profession…
And learnt their trade in church-controlled medieval universities, because medicine and religion has ALWAYS gone together.
We will come back to that part of the story another time, but it connects us directly back to the ‘Christian kabbalists’ mentioned above, who were hanging out with so many of the Jews who became leading Sabbateans.
And who knows, what they really were, before that happened?
But we’ll pin all this down eventually, with God’s help.
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And for now, we’re back at the thorny question of how it’s somehow not ‘OK’ to go to a chiropractor, or use a tuning fork, because of its putative association with avoda zara, yet it’s perfectly fine to submit to surgical procedures taught by people who openly deny God, that were developed and practised, literally, in temples of pagan tumah in the most avoda zara settings possible.
Maybe, someone can enlighten me?
And we didn’t even start discussing the real, atrocious, historical story behind ‘vaccines’ yet.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Medical-instruments-used-in-Greece.jpg?fit=742%2C610&ssl=1610742Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2022-11-28 17:16:342023-04-14 11:05:14The pagan roots of Western Medicine
I have a deal with my husband that I can’t be ‘the first’ to put sensitive information out there.
Mostly for spiritual reasons, he’s totally right. Which is why I’ve been in a big bind the last few months, figuring things out that apparently no-one else knows. That’s how it seemed, at least in English, at least browsing with Google and DuckDuckGo.
Then last week, I smashed my computer.
It wasn’t an accident. I picked it up, and smashed it really hard, twice, on the floor, so I wouldn’t have to keep getting into arguments with my husband about the dangers – mostly spiritual – associated with all this ‘research’ I keep finding myself doing.
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That same day, he went to get me a new one, and told me to continue researching – but not to be the first that publishes sensitive information.
I left the PC in a box for 5 days, as I really, really didn’t want to get back into all this. But then… after a lot of praying, and a lot of soul-searching, I came to the conclusion that God really does want all this to come out, somehow, because otherwise, how do we rectify ‘the world of lies’ and turn it around into the world of truth? So, the last few days I’ve been writing up one family tree after another again. It’s truly exhausting work, on a number of levels, not least because there are so many ‘alter egos’ and multiple personalities going on, where one person has two, or even three, or even four names – and a different family tree associated with each – that sometimes I literally can’t speak by the end of the day. But I have the feeling that all this needs to come out as fast as possible, and so I’m continuing.
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Today, I finally got a massive breakthrough.
When I fired up the new computer, I decided to switch my browser to the Russian language Yandex, which seems to be censoring things less, or at least, censoring the things that I’m interested in less.
Long story short, I was trying to fill in some ‘gaps’ in a particular family tree – that I will tell you more about another time – when I literally stumbled across the real family tree for the Alter Rebbe’s ancestors.
All of the details for that family tree, all the information I’m pasting up below, come from the memoirs of one Rabbi J.J. Schneerson.
I am not the first one putting it out there, and before someone started wildly censoring and fabricating Jewish history, this was apparently public information. So with that intro, let’s get on with.
Note: I’m playing a very straight bat in this post, just putting the info out there.
We can discuss it’s implications another time.
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If you go to the JewAge website HERE, you’ll find this:
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This is a screenshot for the Alter Rebbe’s family tree.
It shows clearly that his father was: Israel Boruch Loewy Pauzner (1721-1790), and that his mother’s name is Rivka Shor. In the official Chabad write-ups for the Alter Rebbe’s family, the surname of his mother’s family is never given. If you go HERE, you’ll find the entry for ‘Rivka, mother of the Alter Rebbe’ on the Chabadpedia website.
Here’s a snippet – in the original Hebrew first, with my translation:
The Rabbanit and Tzadeket Rivka. Mother of the Alter Rebbe. Born in Vitebsk to her father, the Gaon R’ Avraham.
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Now, you might ask what’s the big deal with the surname? Why leave it off?
For the answer to that question, we have to return to what happened with the infamous ‘Shor’ family.
This comes from HERE – the very first post I wrote, trying to track down ‘Real Jewish History’:
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The Shor family was one of the most well-known in Galicia, and intermarried with many of the biggest rabbinical dynasties.
Sadly, they were also hardcore secret Shabbatians, and when Jacob Frank came along, the family ‘came out’ publically. You can read more about them HERE. Here’s a taster:
“ELISHA SCHOR, the first known of the ramified Wolowski family, was a descendant of Zalman Naphtali Schor, rabbi of *Lublin. For many years Elisha Schor held the position of Maggid in the community of *Rogatin….
The children of Elisha Schor, Solomon, Nathan, Lipman, Hayyah, and their families adhered to the Frankist sect, until their conversion to Christianity in 1759, when they changed their name to Wolowski (Pol. wol = Heb. shor). They held various positions in the court of Jacob Frank in Poland and in Offenbach.”
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The Shor family got ‘airbrushed’ out of Jewish history now, so it’s hard tracking them all down. Suffice to say, that while some Schors openly became Frankists and then converted to Catholicism, other members of the family continued to stay within the Jewish community – and many of them continued to be ‘secret Shabbateans’.
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So, if the Alter Rebbe’s mother was ‘Rivka Shor’, daughter of Chaim Avraham Shor, son of Naftali Hirsch Shor, son of Oyzer Shor, son of Avraham Chaim Shor….
Well.
You can see the problem.
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(As a side note, the ‘Schor’ family are a renamed branch of the ancient ‘Treves’ family. But more about that another time.)
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So now, that ‘Margela Mirele Schorr’ that I highlighted above can be found ‘in real life’.
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Her father is listed as one R’ Jacob Shor, ABD Lutzk, Brest-Litvosk (Brisk) and Brody. And she married Rabbi Eliezer Lippman Heilprin, the ABD of Tarnogrod (1630-1695), and had a LOT of kids. Now, we have the right time frame for ‘Avraham Chaim Shor’ and his sister Margola, and the rest of their siblings including Ephraim Zalman “Tevias Shor” – roughly between 1630-1695.
That’s important, because so many of the dates are being deliberately fudged and distorted, to make it easier to see how everyone is really related.
Let’s get back to that ‘Elisha Schor’, from above, who was one of Jacob Frank’s closest lieutenants, and who converted out to Catholicism, together with most of his family. Here’s a bit more about him, from the Jewish Encyclopaedia website, HERE:
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WOLOWSKI (Schor), Christian family in Poland of Jewish origin. In 1755–56, its members joined the *Frankists, after which they converted to Catholicism. Until the 1830s the Wolowski family exclusively married apostate Frankists, but subsequently they also contracted mixed marriages.
ELISHA SCHOR, the first known of the ramified Wolowski family, was a descendant of Zalman Naphtali Schor, rabbi of *Lublin. For many years Elisha Schor held the position of Maggid in the community of *Rogatin, and was among the leaders of Shabbateanism in the southeastern sector of the Polish kingdom.
In 1755, with his sons and his son-in-law Hirsch Shabbetais, the husband of his daughter Hayyah, he joined the sect of Jacob Frank, whom he regarded as the loyal successor of Shabbateanism.
It was at Elisha’s initiative and with his participation that the disputation with the rabbis was held at *Kamenets Podolski in June 1757; he also signed the Patshegen ha-Ta’anot ve-ha-Teshuvot (“Summary of the Arguments and the Replies”). After the death of Bishop M. Dembowski, the patron of the Frankists, Elisha was compelled in the autumn of 1757 to flee across the Turkish border with his followers. He died there during a popular outbreak against the members of the sect.
The children of Elisha Schor, Solomon, Nathan, Lipman, Hayyah, and their families adhered to the Frankist sect, until their conversion to Christianity in 1759, when they changed their name to Wolowski (Pol. wol = Heb. shor). They held various positions in the court of Jacob Frank in Poland and in Offenbach.
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HERE‘s the family tree that shows that Elisha Shor was the great-grandson of Ephraim Zalman, the ‘Tevuot Shor’:
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(Another side note: there is confusion about whether the author of the ‘Tevuot Shor‘ is called ‘Ephraim Zalman Shor’ or ‘Alexander Sender Shor‘. My best guess at this point is that ‘Alexander Sender Shor’ was originally developed as an alter ego, to spare the family’s blushes over Elisha Wolowski. And that this ‘alter ego’ name has been deployed many times now, in many different generations. More on that another time.)
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Rivka Shor – the Alter Rebbe’s mother – was the same generation as Elisha Shor (Wolowksy), notorious Sabbatean and lieutenant of Jacob Frank who scandalously converted out to Catholicism with his whole family.
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Obviously, just belonging to these families doesn’t automatically make someone ‘bad’.
But it has to be stressed that most of the extended Shor family were known to be Sabbateans, and that they continued to adhere to the tenets of Shabtai Tzi long after he died. That’s why they were so fast to embrace Jacob Frank, and Frankism, who presented himself as the ‘reincarnated soul’ of Shabtai Tzvi in his generation, which was part and parcel of the Sabbatean belief system.It also has to be stressed that these ‘secret Sabbatians’ had a practise of marrying each other – something that was continue by the Frankists, later on. Let’s continue, because mind-blowing as all this is, there’s something every MORE interesting to tell you about.
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So, after I saw that the Alter Rebbe’s maternal family tree ties him straight into the Sabbatean-Frankist network, via his mother Rivka Shor, I went back to check out his father’s family.
And here’s where I found something that for me, is even more extraordinary.
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The following comes from the description on that JewAge site, above, for ‘Baruch Batlan Portugali’, from the memoirs of one Rabbi J.J. Schneerson:
(AKA, the 6th Rebbe of Chabad).
A disciple and follower of R. Joel Baal-Shem of Zamosch. Lived in Poznań. R. Baruch-Batlan then lived with his family on the Portuguese Street in Poznań. This street got its name from the fact that it was inhabited mainly by refugees from Portugal-Jews who fled from the inquisition. The street was beautiful, and there were imposing buildings on it. The house in which R. Baruch-Batlan lived belonged to the famous rich man, goldsmith Avigdor-Tuvya and his wife Sarah-Gitl. In addition to the owners of the house, seven other families lived there, all well-to-do, pious and Talmudic Jews. R. Baruch-Batlan lived in this house for thirty years... R. Baruch-Batlan was the first to start looking for another apartment. A few months later, he built his own house on Synagogue Street and moved there with his family. Besides his great learning and righteousness, he was also a large and wealthy merchant.
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I never heard of this ‘Baal Shem of Zamosc’ before, so I went to look him up.
HERE‘s who is ‘in real life, Rabbi Joel Heilprin, ABD of Ostrog and Lvov.’:
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His brother, Eliezer Lippman Heilprin is the one married to Margola Shor, above.
Like I said, it’s a very small world. I never heard of this particular ‘Baal Shem’ before, and something tells me I’m going to be researching this guy for a while to come.
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But this is some of what I learned about him from Wikipedia:
Yoel Baal Shem was an Orthodox Jewish scholar of Halacha and Kabbalah who lived in Zamość during the 17th century. He became renowned as a Baal Shem (lit. '”Master of [Divine] Names”‘) for performing miracles, commanding demons and authoring Kabalistic amulets.[3][4]Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880–1950) writes in his memoirs that Yoel’s father was Yisrael Yosef, a disciple of Rabbi Mordecai Yoffe. Sometime after the latter’s passing in 1612 he moved to Zamosc. A year after his arrival to Zamosc he had a son and named him Yoel. Yoel learned for 5 years in the Yeshiva of Rabbi Joel Sirkis who was a Halachist and adherent of Kabbalah.Yoel married before the age of 20 and started learning Kabbalah. Upon a dream, Yisrael Yosef sent his son Yoel to Prague to learn kabbalah from Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem. Yoel became one of the closest students of Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem who confided all his special teaching to him. Yoel returned to Zamosc and opened a Yeshiva there which became renowned for teaching both niglah and nistar.Reb Yoel had a son Uri who learned in the Yeshiva of Rabbi David HaLevi Segal (author of the Turei Zahav) in Ostroh. After the latters passing, he went to learn for another six years under Rabbi Avraham Gombiner (author of Magen Avraham) in Kalisz…Rabbi Yoel Baal Shem was the teacher of Rabbi Adam Baal Shem of Ropczyce, who instructed Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov in Kabbalah.
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Oo-ah! Interesting. Not least, because there are strong grounds to believe that ‘Adam Baal Shem of Ropczyce‘ was one and the same as ‘Hershel Zoref’ of Vilna, another ‘Sabbatean’ prophet. And something tells me that the Chacham Tzvi is also in the middle of all this, one way or another. (BTW, if you want to read the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe’s memoirs discussing all this stuff – in English! – you can. HERE‘s where you’ll find the PDF to download. BH, I can honestly say he’s helped me more than anyone else, to piece all this stuff together.) Let’s continue with more members of the ‘Batlan’ family.
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Baruch (Alter Rebbe’s G-Grand-dad) has a brother called ‘David Portugali’.
Here’s what the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe writes about him:
David lived in a village about fifteen miles from Poznań. He worked the land there with other Jews. All these farmers were Kabbalists and behaved like their ancestors, who were followers of Kabbalah, like most people from Spain and Portugal. The behavior of the Kabbalists of those times was that they had a tendency to asceticism, distance from society, and seclusion. However, these Kabbalistic farmers from near Poznań were not ascetics and did not seek solitude. But in real life, they behaved as if they were really moving away from society. They were estranged from each other and came into contact with each other only at the time when Jews should have been together – in minyan, in collective prayer. Although R. David was an admirer of R. Joel Baal Shema, he visited him very rarely, not like his brother R. Baruch, who regularly visited his rebbe at certain times. R. David and other Jewish farmers were known throughout the area. They did not need to take their bread, fruits and vegetables from their fields, orchards and vegetable gardens, or wool from their sheep to the nearest cities for sale. Customers themselves came to them in the village for goods.
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The settlement founded by the Kabbalists, in which each of them had his own allotment, was called Eretz Achaim (“Land of Life”).
It was said throughout the district, as a very definite thing, that everything that grows in the fields, vegetable gardens, orchards or barns of these Kabbalists brings happiness. David was considered the eldest among the other Kabbalists of the settlement. He was considered a great scholar in both Neagle and Nistar. R. David was a man of spirit, but cold and calculating. Nothing ever bothered him. He was a participant in a happy or sad event that happened to someone only because the Torah prescribes it, and not because he sympathizes with it. The other person’s joy or grief didn’t affect him. He couldn’t laugh, any more than he could cry. Nothing moved him. He was as dry as a skull. R. David followed good rules in his behavior, as set forth in the holy books, rules that he taught common sense and did not require the manifestation of feelings. He lived according to the Torah’s instructions, but without any warmth. He was sad on the day of Tish’a beAv and happy on the day of Simchat Torah, but only because it was required and indicated.
Moreover, he put all the lofty thoughts of Kabbalah into all this, but inwardly and outwardly he remained cold.
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I’ve been researching all this stuff for months, and it’s the first time I’ve heard of an agricultural settlement founded by Sephardi and Portuguese ‘Kabbalist-farmers’ in the middle of Posen, Poland.
There is so very much to unpick here.
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The last thing to share with you – for now! – from the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe’s memoirs concerns another member of the Batlan – Portugali family, named Binyamin.
He is another son of ‘Baruch Batlan’ (Alter Rebbe G-Grandfather). Here’s the snippet from the memoirs:
“He was accepted as a rabbi in Grodno, a city famous then for its great scientists. From there, Binyamin’s name became known throughout Poland and Lithuania, as well as in Jewish communities outside these countries.”
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Here he is, on geni:
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Binyamin Broda (Portugali’s) second wife is the grand-daughter of Jacob Frank.
Via Frank’s daughter Annie Rosa (Rivka Shoshana) Mayer. And in turn, she is the mother of Chabad’s Rebbetzin ‘Leah Golda Alecsandrov‘, mother of the Chabad Rebbe number 4.
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Last thing, for now. That same ‘Binyamin Broda’ was fingered by Athol Bloomer, a real life descendent of Catholic Frankists who likes to mix up a lot of ‘Real Jewish History’ with figments of his fertile imagination, as the ‘Secret Frankist Tzaddik’ who remained within the Jewish community, to subvert it from within. I’m not saying that definitely is true.
What I AM saying, is that there is such a big cover-up going on here, that certainly there has to be some cause for all this deliberate obfuscation of what should be simple history, simple facts.
And with God’s help, we’re getting closer and closer to figuring that out. TBC
A few months’ ago, I happened across an interesting person in Jewish history named Shimshon ben Mordechai of Slonim.
It was back in that period of time when I was writing pieces about the Yichus of Shimon Peres, and the Yichus of Sarah Paritsky, wife of Ben Nitay – the infamous descendent of the Vilna Gaon who was recently booted out as PM in Israel. What was coming through loud and clear from all that research, at that time, is how all these secular politicians were literally related to each other, and notably to the Vilna Gaon and his small band of, disciples and ‘perushim’.
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Back then, we were discovering that any way you sliced a ‘division’ in the Jewish community, you would find members of the exact same three families heading it up.
Mitnaged vs chassid…
Zionist vs ‘anti’-Zionist…
Religious vs secular…
Reform vs ultra-orthodox…
And probably even
Sephardi vs ashkenazi – although standing that one up in real time is something that’s going to take me a huge amount of time to prove, if I ever get around to it.
It comes back to this idea of ‘controlled opposition’, where basically the controllers have to have their people on both sides of the equation, the war, the division, in order to ensure an outcome that can be, well, controlled.
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At that point, so many months ago, I tripped over some interesting connections with the Karelitz family of gaonim.
But I decided to shelve them, as I had enough controversy going on at that point. Well, today I was going to write you a whole long piece explaining how all these PCR tests we are doing in Israel are sending our DNA directly to databases in China – in Wuhan, actually – with the blessing of the corrupt State of Israel. But somehow, I managed to delete all my tabs again, which I took as a sign that I should write about something else instead. And then, bizarrely, out of nowhere, I ‘tripped over’ all the information about Shimshon ben Mordechai of Slonim, that I decided to shelve, six months ago.
Shimshon (Samson) ben Mordechai of Slonim (c. 1734/1736 – 1794), was an 18th-century rabbi, philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.He was one of the leaders of Haskalah and the Misnagdim, and was greatly influenced by the Vilna Gaon. He was the Av Beit Din of Slonim and Königsberg and is thought to have been descended from Shimshon Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague’s brother through his grandson, Samson ben Pesah Ostropoli.
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Straight off the bat, please notice we are back in ‘Maharal of Prague’ territory.
Honestly, we nearly always are. Let’s get the easy stuff out the way first. First, let’s define what the Haskalah actually was (from Wikipedia):
The Haskalah, often termed Jewish Enlightenment (Hebrew: השכלה; literally, “wisdom”, “erudition” or “education”), was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, with certain influence on those in Western Europe and the Muslim world. It arose as a defined ideological worldview during the 1770s, and its last stage ended around 1881, with the rise of Jewish nationalism.
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In other words, Reform Judaism, zionism and mass conversion, atheism and Jewish apostasy all flowed from this same well of ‘Haskalah’, culminating in the creation of the State of Israel.
And this guy, Shimshon ben Mordechai of Slonim, was somehow bang in the middle of enthusiastically pushing all that along.
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Perhaps, then, you’ll find it a little strange to learn that Shimshon ben Mordechai of Slonim’s descendants include the Chazon Ish and R’ Chaim Kanievsky.
Here’s how that goes, in descending order: Shimshon ben Mordechai of Slonim > Gershon Zelig Karelitz > Zundel Karelitz > Yeshaya Shmeril Karelitz > Samuel Shamke Karelitz > Eliyahu Shmaryahu Yosef Karelitz > > Avraham Yehoshua Karelitz (Chazon Ish) > Miriam Karelitz married the Steipler Gaon, and had R’ Chaim Kanievsky.
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Now, all sorts of strange things happen in families, it’s true. But I find it very surprising that an early ‘leader of the haskalah’ should have had descendants who not only stayed within the orthodox fold, but who also rose to become the defacto ‘leaders’ of the orthodox Jewish world in Eretz Yisrael. Because mostly, the kids of these early leaders of the haskalah converted out, or apostosized faster than you can say “the haskalah was created by Frankist families who stayed within the Jewish community.” But looky, here, the chasdai Hashem!Not only did this branch of haskalah reformers stay frum, they were also able to give Am Yisrael such tremendous guidance in these dark times, especially in relation to the very complex question of whether it’s safe to take the Covid 19 experimental gene therapy, that includes biotoxic graphene oxide. Truly, it’s outstanding. But let’s continue, as I told you, getting this stuff out the way is the easy bit of unpicking what’s going on here.
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Let’s just take a quick detour to see who the Chazon Ish is connected to on his mother’s side. Here we discover that Rasha’s father is oneR’ Shaul Katzenelenbogen (1828 – 1891) who happened to change his family name to Katzenelenbogen, from Epstein. It’s weird that he changed the family name to that for a lot of reasons, not least that his great-grandfather was a very highly esteemed Rav named R’ Aryeh Leib HaLevi Epstein.Why would people who are SO into their yichus want to somehow ‘hide’ their connection to R’ Aryeh Leib HaLevi Epstein? Let’s see if we can find out.
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(BTW, I’m doing this ‘live’ as it were, so I have no idea where all this is going to end up. But I have the feeling, it’s going to be an interesting ride.) If we go to the Hebrew Wikipedia page for R’ Aryeh Leib HaLevi Epstein (1708-1775) (which always seems to be more factually correct and less doctored, at least for Torah sages), we learn the following nuggets:
He served as the Rabbi of Koenigsburg for 30 years.
He was born in Grodno, to R Mordechai Epstein (aka ‘Mordechai Wilner’) – that’s interesting, because the Vilner Gaon’s descendants went by the name ‘Wilner’, including this one: R’ Mordcha Motel Marcus Mordechai Wilner.)
The Karelitz family have been intermarrying with this particular branch of the Epstein / Katzenelenbogen family for generations.
He wrote 23 books on the kabbalah, including one called ‘Ha Pardes‘.
The Vilna Gaon only gave 3 haskamas in his life to books – and two of these are to books written by R’ Aryeh Leib HaLevi Epstein.
He was a very close friend of Yonatan Eibshutz…
There is a very strong ‘Vilna’ dimension to all this.
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Let’s see if we can try to unpick this some more. If we head back to Geni, we discover that Mordechai Epstein had a few other children, including one called Zeev Wolf HaLevy Epstein. What I immediately notice as I’m clicking around is that so many of these relatives have been hidden behind the ‘private’ label – which is kinda weird. I mean, it’s almost 300 years ago, so what are they trying to hide, here? I know from past experience that these interesting families always try to marry each other, so when I see that the daughter of Zeev Wolf, one Rivka, marries an unidentified ‘Aryeh Leib’…. well. I get the feeling that it’s her uncle, OUR Aryeh Leib HaLevy Epstein, author of HaPardes. But why would they try to cover that up?
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One possible clue is that ‘Aryeh Leib’ is meant to be the son of Rabbi Shmuel, the last ABD of Vilna.
If you go back to THIS post, you’ll get more of the background about the huge ruckus that was going on in Vilna during the tenure of the Vilna Gaon, which saw the kahal and the chief Rabbi – this Shmuel ben Avigdor – fighting a pitched battle for control for more than 30 years. That whole episode has been totally distorted and misreported, historically, because I think it’s at the heart of so much of the ‘Frankist takeover’ of our modern Jewish world. But here’s the bit I want you to focus on, for now:
The real identity of ‘Rabbi Shmuel ben Avigdor‘ – the Chief Rabbi of Vilna, at the time of the Vilna Gaon, and the son-in-law of wealthy shtadlan ‘Rabbi Yehuda ben Eliezer Safra deVayana’ – has also been deliberately hidden.
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If Aryeh Leib Epstein’s dad is ‘Rabbi Shmuel’, that makes ‘Rabbi Shmuel’ = Mordechai Epstein, aka Mordechai Wilner.
And that makes Aryeh Leib’s mother the daughter of ‘R’ Yehuda ben Eliezer Safra deVayana. And if that’s the only mystery we clear up today, then dayenu. But I don’t think it will be. ‘Eliakim Getzel’, the one child not marked as ‘private’ is an unusual name, and it leads us straight back into the midst of the interesting families I’ve fingered previously as being made-up pseudonyms for Sabbatean-Frankists, who were trying to cover their genealogical tracks. But let’s leave that there, for now, because I want to get back to the connections between Aryeh Leib Epstein, Shimshon ben Mordechai of Slonim, and the mysterious Vilna Gaon.
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First, here’s a snippet from the Yizkor book for the community of Ciechanowiec, in Poland. (Bear with me – all this will come together by the end of the post. I hope.)
The close ties between the Vilna Gaon and Ciechanowiec found their source in Rabbi David Saul Katzenelbogen, Head of the Court in Ciechanowiec. Rabbi David had four sons named after four animals. They were Zvi Hersch, Ze’ev Wolf, Aryeh Leib, and Dov Ber.
Of these, Aryeh Leib was the comrade of the Vilna Gaon.
There is a standard edition of the Hebrew Bible with many commentaries known as the Mikraot Gedolot, which includes a commentary of the Vilna Gaon entitled Aderet Eliyahu (Mantle of Elijah). In the section dealing with Leviticus we find, “When the Vilna Gaon was ten years old he had a companion closer than a brother, that famed Gaon, our Master and Rabbi Aryeh Leib of Ciechanowiec.”…So close was the friendship between these two scholars that the Vilna Gaon subsequently named his firstborn son Yehuda Leib after Aryeh Leib of Ciechanowiec.
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Is ‘Aryeh Leib Epstein’, author of HaPardes, whose books got two of only three haskamot the Vilna Gaon ever wrote, the same as this ‘Aryeh Leib Katzenelenbogen of Ciechanowiec’?
Who was apparently such a close bosom buddy of the Vilna Gaon, he even named his firstborn son in his honor? It’s at least possible. If you take a look at the geni screenshot below, you’ll see that, just like R’ David Saul Katzenelenbogen, R’ Mordechai Epstein (Wilner) also has: four sons named after four animals. They were Zvi Hersch, Ze’ev Wolf, Aryeh Leib, and Dov Ber.
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So now, we can add another pseudonym into the mix:
R’ David Saul Katzenelenbogen of Ciechanowiec = R’ Mordechai Epstein (Wilner) = R’ Shmuel ben Avidgor, the last ABD of Vilna.
But let’s get back to Shimshon ben Mordechai of Slonim, because there is still more secrets hiding out over there.
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Here’s another snippet from his Wikipedia entry:
Marriage and life in Slonim (1765-1788)
In around 1765, Ichile Ginshpriker, son of Aryeh Leib Epstein, arranged for his first cousin, Basha bat Ze’ev Wolf and Shimshon to be married. They married on 26 October 1765. In 1769, Shimshon got a seat in Slonim as an Av Beit Din (Chief Rabbinical Judge). He kept this position until around 1791. Shimshon became part of the movement of Haskalah. When he became Av Beit Din in Slonim, he began to spread the concept of Haskalah throughout the city. He is regarded as the first Chief Rabbi to do so in Slonim.
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Hey, small world or what!
And if we’re right that Basha’s sister Rivka married her uncle, Aryeh Leib, that would make Aryeh Leib Epstein and Shimshon ben Mordechai brothers-in-law.
Next snippet:
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Shimshon had a library of around 250 to 300 books that he had collected on his journeys to Hamburg and other cities. People such as the Vilna Gaon and Solomon Maimon came to Slonim to borrow books from his library. Among Shimshon’s prized possessions was the unpublished work, Bosmat Bat Shelomoh by the rabbi, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo.
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More strange links with the Vilna Gaon.
And also, pay attention to that guy Joseph Solomon Delmedigo.
He is one of the main people who introduced Copernicus’s ideas of scientific ‘sun worship’ into the orthodox Jewish community. Delmedigo’s daughter Sarah married straight into the Oppenheimer clan – and yes, we get straight back to all these fabulously wealthy ‘chief rabbi / tax collectors’ who used to be xtians but are now, conveniently, Jewish again.
Are you starting to see how all this is connected – and has been for centuries?
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Another snippet:
Meeting with Baruch Schick of Shklov
In 1778, upon the recommendation of the Vilna Gaon, Baruch Schick of Shklov (1744-1808) journeyed to Slonim to ask Shimshon to write an approbation to the first ever Hebrew translation of Euclid’s Elements, Sefer Oklidus. Shimshon agreed and wrote part of the introduction to the book.
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Baruch Shick was one of the early ‘reformers’ who was hanging out in Joshua Zeitlin’s mansion.
Joshua Zeitlin (1742 in Shklov, Belarus – August 18, 1822, in Kherson, Novorossiya) was a Russian rabbinical scholar and philanthropist. He was a pupil of the Talmudist Rabbi Aryeh Leib ben Asher Gunzberg who was the author of Sha’agat Aryeh;
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The Sha’agat Aryeh is a fabricated persona.
That doesn’t mean that he didn’t exist, but it DOES mean that I haven’t been able to track down any real details for him, in real life. Now I’m reading this, and I’m starting to ponder:
Could Aryeh Leib Epstein (HaPardes), aka Aryeh Leib Katzenelenbogen (the Vilna Gaon’s bestest buddy), also be one and the same as Aryeh Leib, the Sha’agat Aryeh?
I started writing a very long post about all the lies being told about the Sha’agat Aryeh a few months ago, which I abandoned. Maybe, it’s time to revisit it, in light of all this new info.
Let’s continue, because we still didn’t get to the most weird bit of the story.
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Snippet:
Jeremy Bentham’s visit
In 1787, the English philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, was going to visit his brother, Samuel in Krichev, when he spent the night in Slonim. As he writes in his journal, all of the inns were full, so he was forced to spend the night with a rabbi who also kept a hardware store. He goes on to describe the rabbi’s home and that he had two bookcases with “not fewer than 250 or 300 Vols.”. Bentham also talked about how the rabbi possessed a copy of Euclid’s Elements as well as a manuscript on astronomy which contained a diagram, that was the rabbi’s own work.
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Say what?!?!
Since when did orthodox Rabbis in Eastern Europe just let random English philosophers stay in their house?!?
Say what?!?! And not just any old non-Jewish philosopher, but Jeremy Bentham, the guy who endowed his body to the University of London to be dissected in the interests of science – on condition they’d hang his embalmed body in a glass case over the university entrance. Apparently, it’s still there today. And even weirder, another condition Bentham made with the university is that his:
“body had to be present at all board meetings and deference paid to it by a salute of some sort at the beginning of each meeting.”
THIS is the guy, that Rav Kanievsky’s ancestor was hanging out with?!? Say what?!?!?
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One more thing that strikes me, is that it’s very possible that this ‘Shimshon ben Mordechai of Slonim’ is also made up, and could just be another coverstory for Aryeh Leib Epstein, aka the Sha’agat Aryeh.
Although here in the ‘real world’, it seems to be Shimshon that has the illustrious descendants, that really means nothing. The rest of the story is just so 2-D – when it’s not outrageously fake – it’s pretty hard to imagine it could be a true biographical account.
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Let’s stop there for now, although I could literally go on unpicking all the lies and distortions for months and years….
In case you haven’t realised it yet, they have been lying to us and deceiving about real Jewish history, and about who our leaders really were in the past, and who they really still might be today. Probably, we’re not going to know who the Vilna Gaon really was, or why they are lying about people like ‘Shimshon ben Mordechai of Slonim’, nor why they are changing the names of so many of our Jewish leaders from the past wholesale, and expunging their genealogies – until Moshiach shows up. But what I can tell you is this:
Don’t let a person’s yichus, or even their reputation for Torah learning fool you into brainlessly following a psak that is mamash endangering your life, and the life of your children and relatives.
Nothing is what it seems right now. Nothing.
And the only clarity available right now, is that which comes from within your own soul.
