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Hieromos Gamos, Star of David, and ‘Jewish Gnostics’

A month ago, my daughter bought me an English version of ‘The DaVinci Code’ and insisted I read it.

I haven’t read a fiction book for around 16 years – from choice – so I left it to the side. But she insisted… and insisted… and insisted… until finally I realised, God must really want me to read ‘The DaVinci Code’.

So that’s what I’ve been doing.

There’s a few interesting things in there, for my own research ‘in the real world’ – not least that Dan Brown did a fabulous job of whitewashing the true, demonic nature of the Knights’ Templars, and making them seem all fluffy and cute – but the real pay dirt occurred yesterday.

That’s when I decided to look up the words: “Hieros Gamos.”

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In The DaVinci Code, the discussion about ‘Hieros Gamos’ – or ‘sacred prostitution’ – comes up as part of a discussion about how the ancient religious cults used the power of this most holy act for their own ends.

You can read a scholarly, and fairly tznius, description of the basic ideas behind ‘Hieros Gamos’ HERE.

The bottom line is that there were two types of ‘sacred prostitution’.

  1. Each bride was required to spend her wedding night being defiled in one of the many Temples set up to the ‘goddesses’, who all had different names but were actually just pushing the same ‘religion’.
  2. These temples also has a group of ‘cult priestesses’ – aka sex slaves – and ‘sacred orgies’ were also a big part of the pagan religions.

(And now, maybe some readers are already starting to make the link between what is described above, and what was going on in Sabbatean-Frankist homes, beneath the ‘pious’ veneer.)

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There are very deep spiritual considerations attached to all this.

Here’s a few scholarly quotes, from the above, to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. And then we’ll get down to the eye-popping tachlis – how all this connects to you and me, and the State of Israel, and the battle between good and evil.

“[W]e are talking about a high-level magico-operational ritual….

Mircea Eliade wrote about it this way: “In the most general sense, an orgy is a part of hierogamy. It correlates with the coitus of the divine couple, with the unlimited and ecstatic fertility of the earth… Excess energy is valuable and fruitful in sacred balances. The barriers between man, society, nature, and the gods are being broken; forces, life, and germs are being rotated and transferred from one level to another, from one space to all others.“”

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Plain English: All that talk that xtians, and others, have about ‘the Holy Trinity’ is really a warped reference to the union between man and woman, that transforms them into a ‘god on earth’.

This idea is very deep, and once you really internalise what I just told you here, you’ll start to understand A LOT about what is really going on, with xtianity.

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Another snippet:

The legendary stories of a woman being possessed by a” god”, or vice versa, a man converging with a goddess, are too well known to be retold…

[I]n ancient Egypt, a pharaoh who mystically reincarnated as Horus impregnated his wife to continue the dynastic line of the “divine kingdom”.

The culmination of the Hellenistic festival of Antesterium was a sacred sacrifice, and then the copulation of the wife of the archon king with Dionysus in the temple of Leneon; in Babylon, the hierogamy of the young woman chosen for this purpose was also known in a special wedding room, raised above the seventh floor of the sacred ziggurat tower (“on the other side of the number seven”) – there she was supposed to spend the night with a certain god.

The Greeks believed that the priestess of the temple of Apollo in Patara spent the night with this god on a “sacred bed”.

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This is the ‘pagan, evil mirror image’ of our own, very holy traditions, the whole idea of the keruvim, the holy of holies, and our very deep ‘bitul’ to, and dvekut with Hashem.

There is nothing new under the sun, remember this.

So, when nuns talk of ‘marrying’ Yoshki… and when xtians talk about the Holy Trinity… and when gnostic-‘xtians’ talk about how Yoshki was really married to Mary Magdelene, and they had kids, and how ‘mainstream xtianity’ is trying to surpress that information…. while demon-worshipping Knights Templars (and all the other sex-magick based secret societies) are very big ‘feminists’ and believers in breaking down sexual morality….

We understand, again, that really, there is nothing new under the sun.

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To sum up:

All pagan, idolatrous, evil ‘religions’ from the dawn of time have always tried to use and subvert the act of intimacy, and to harness the tremendous spiritual power it contains, to make themselves ‘powerful’ and a ‘god’, chas v’halilah.

This started right back in the Garden of Eden, when the evil Lilith ‘split’ from Adam, then enticed him to spill seed for 130 years, leading to creation of all the souls of the ‘demons’ that in our days became Nazis, ISIS – and Covid 19-pushing doctors and ‘rabbis’.

Amongst others.

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So, what does this have to do with you and me?

Some how, my computer decided to search for images associated with ‘Hieros Gamos’, without me knowing. In a million years, even with a very strong filter, I would not have done that, because it’s literally asking for trouble.

But that’s what happened, and when I was closing down my tabs at the end of the day yesterday, I got to those search results – and here’s what I saw, that blew me away:

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It’s the so-called ‘Star of David’, that the Erev Rav ,’Jewish Demon Scholars’ in our midst convinced us was a symbol of the Jewish people, around 300 years ago.

But really?

It’s the ancient symbol of ‘Hieros Gamos’, i.e. the ritual subversion of the act of intimacy, which sends all that ‘power’ to fuel the forces of evil.

And we have this symbol of evil literally atop every synagogue, carved on every Ark of Torah, inlaid on all our tombstones….

Can you understand, just how much they are laughing at the Jewish people right now?

There’s more.

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Sharp-eyed readers probably already know the connection between the ‘Star of David’, and the Masons’ square and compass, with the ‘G’ in the middle.

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That ‘G’ stands for gnosis, knowledge.

In our Torah, we speak of how a man knows his wife, as a reference to the act of physical intimacy.

In pagan religions, that time when a man ‘loses his mind’ at the end of the physical act, so to speak, is the time when they say he can ‘become a god on earth’.

This is deeply connected to the idea of demonic possession, amongst other things.

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Judaism teaches that spermatozoa derives from a man’s mind – his very essence.

That’s part of why ‘spilling seed’ in a wanton way can literally drive a person mad. A  man’s seed contains the ‘spiritual essence’ that could theoretically create another 4 billion human souls. And when that seed is ‘spilled’ – all that ‘soul power’ just goes to the dark side.

Those 4 billion potential human souls are held captive by the forces of evil, which suck all the ‘juice’ out of them, and use that soul power to do bad things in the world.

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That’s why Rebbe Nachman of Breslov revealed the ‘Tikkun Haklali’, or general rectification, to be recited after nocturnal emissions.

To fix the ‘sin’ of all this spilled seed, and to elevate those billions and trillions of ‘lost soul sparks’ back to the side of holiness.

That’s why true Breslov, and Rav Berland, put so much emphasis on a man guarding his eyes, and personal holiness.

That’s why, l’havdil, Eybshutz, and the Sabbatean-Frankists, encouraged adultery, wife-swapping, ‘sacred orgies’, homosexuality, and then incest and pedophilia.

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There are so many links to make with all this stuff, it’s hard to know what to really write, but let’s make two more connections, and then we’ll leave it here for now.

In Judaism, there are strict guidelines for how the act of intimacy should be performed, including mandating the position of the man and the woman.

In pagan religions, this evil, ‘Hieros Gamos’ / Star of David representation has the woman and man as androgynous ‘equals’, forming a ‘divine Trinity’.

That ‘space’ in the middle of the ‘Hieros Gamos’ represents the Pharoah-nic, pagan, evil idea of ‘man as God’.

I.e. instead of being filled with God, the person becomes filled with their own evil, arrogance and lusts.

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Again, all this has very ancient roots.

Remember that the snake told Chava that if she and Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would become “like God…”

There is nothing new under the sun.

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In the meantime, this is what our Torah teaches – the man is the head of the household, the man is ‘on top’, and the man and woman should ‘become one flesh’.

Here’s how that looks:

 

A diamond.

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Remember what Rav Berland and Rebbe Nachman teaches about these ‘diamonds’?

This snippet comes from HERE:

When a person merits, however much they are putting him down, however much they are making him “mah — what” [i.e. nothing, nullified], however much they are making out of him dust and ashes, [as it’s said] “and may my soul be like dust to all” (Amidah prayer) — they are throwing diamonds onto you.

The Rebbe brings in [Likutey Moharan] Torah 277, [that they are] throwing diamonds onto you.  When they are putting you down, they’re throwing diamonds onto you — don’t throw them back.

[If] they insult you, and you insult them back, you’ve lost a diamond.  They’re building a house of diamonds for you [from all the insults and put-downs].

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This is the authentic, Torah-true, Jewish holy way of bringing God down into the world.

The man makes himself ‘nothing’ – and particularly in the home, where believe me, the diamonds get thrown at the guy every second of the day.

And this is how we really build the holy Temple, and really achieve that ‘union’ with Hashem in this lowly, gashmiut world.

By making ourselves nothing.

By hearing our own disgrace, and not answering back, and understanding that really, it’s just God who is behind everything.

This is the polar opposite of the gaava-dik ‘man as god’ approach of the pagan-xtians, represented by ‘Hieramos Gamos’ and the pagan, so-called ‘Star of David’.

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The last thing, for now, has to do with the mysterious ‘Z’ on Russia’s tanks.

As I’m hoping you are starting to understand, these people are ALL about their symbolism.

 

For example, the double chevron is a favorite symbol of the Knights Templar, and is all over their castles and churches.

This is a screenshot from a video called ‘The Pharoah Show’ by Swiss alt-historian Sean Hross.

(Again, I don’t agree with a lot of his ideas, but much of what he says strikes me as credible. This is a process of birur, remember.)

You see these chevrons all over the place in Israel, on IDF uniforms – same as other militaries all over the world.

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Once you understand that it’s a phallic representation of two men, you start to understand a lot more.

Here’s a screenshot of the Knights Templar’s seal from Wikipedia HERE:

Notice the two knights on one horse.

Also notice the ’round Templar church’ – modelled on the Dome of the Rock, and taken as the blueprint for Templar churches all over the world.

Round temples were always associated with pagan practices, particularly ‘sacred prostitution’ and ceremonies like the Hieros Gamos, which required an audience – and a large, empty ‘space in the middle’, as the focal point.

 

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What does all this have to do with the Russian ‘Z’ on all their tanks?

THIS site (Google translate from Russian) has some interesting ideas – but again, all this needs very careful birur.

But what struck me is that this ‘Z’ is the symbol for ‘man’ and ‘woman’ back-to-back – i.e., back to that state that the pagans believe was the ‘perfect state of humanity’ in the Garden of Eden, before demonic Lilith was split away from Adam HaRishon – and humankind was androgynous.

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We’ll stop there for now.

But lots and lots to think about.

 

 

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The mysterious case of Abraham Peretz – Part 2

The ‘Abraham Peretz’ / Jonathan Eybshutz connection

If you read part 1 of this series, then you’ll know that I kind of hit a dead end, trying to figure out who the Chief Rabbi of Vilna at the time of the Vilna Gaon really was. His name was (apparently…) ‘Shmuel ben Avigdor’, and even though the whole kehilla in Vilna was at war with each other for 30 years because of him, and because of his father-in-law (R’ Yehudah ben Eliezer Safra veDayana) – who bought him the Chief Rabbinate as a lifetime position with a big bribe – you just can’t track these people down in the real world. At least, that’s how it looked yesterday.

But then today, God is showing me that there is more than one way to skin a cat, and that when all the doors are locked tight, sometimes, you can still get in via a window.

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I was going back over a document of information I gathered together a few months ago, entitled ‘Loose Ends’.

It contains a whole bunch of stuff in there about Rivlins and Zeitlins and Brodas, amongst other things. As I read through, I came across this, excerpted from the Kotzk blog HERE, talking about the conversion of the Alter Rebbe’s son, Moshe Schneuri – with a weird connection to our very own Abraham Peretz. (BTW, that blog post contains a ton of footnoted facts and a discussion of Moshe Schneuri’s conversion from both perspectives, within Chabad and external to Chabad. I highly recommend you take a look at it. Here, I’m just bringing a small snippet, to move our part of the story along:)

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Here is another account [of Moshe Shneuri’s conversion] from the maskil Moshe Berlin of Shklov:

“The death of the first zaddik (Schneur Zalman)…sparked debate among the Hasidim regarding the choice of his successor…The eldest, Moshe, had a certain reputation as a scholar, but he was wedded to his desires, behaved immodestly, and did not observe Jewish law strictly. The youngest son, Avraham, although a simple, straight individual, was not a scholar…The middle son, Berke, was also no scholar, and he too was wedded to his desires.  But being…a talented, and hardworking, preacher he knew how to draw attention and to attract the love of the communal elders by various means, such as flattery, distributing honors, and the like. In order to keep his older brother Moshe from blocking his aspiration to take his father’s place, Berke persecuted and humiliated him as much as he could, driving Moshe to the brink of despair. Consequently, and in order…to embarrass his brother Berke, Moshe converted to Christianity…And Moshe himself, whose conscience was not clear, went insane and died in St. Petersburg.”[8] Chabad historian Yosef Kaminetzky counters such accounts by writing: “During the same period, an embarrassing case of conversion occurred among the opponents of Hassidism: that of Avraham Peretz, the son-in-law of Yehoshua Zeitlin, who lived in the same city as Chabad founder Shneur Zalman. The Chabad leader himself prophesied that Peretz would leave the faith. The opponents of Hassidism had spread the story about Moshe’s supposed conversion to deflect attention from their own shame.”

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Doesn’t this strike you as strange?

That apparently no less than the Alter Rebbe would ‘prophesy’ that Abraham Peretz was going to leave the faith, and that Abraham Peretz is being held up by Chabad historians as the real story of the conversion of Moshe Schneuri? There’s been so many twists and turns in this tale, we still can’t really know how all this is connected. Yet. But, we can say this:

If Abraham Peretz = Moshe Schneuri, then that makes the father of Abraham Peretz the Alter Rebbe.

And as we already covered in a few posts already:

Joshua Zeitlin is listed as the father in law of ‘Reb Alexander Sender’ – apparently one of the Alter Rebbe’s favorite talmidim. And ‘Alexander Sender’ is meant to be the father of Moshe of Shklov – who we already pinned down as being one and the same as Moshe Schneuri, the Alter Rebbe’s catholic Frankist son.

 That would make Joshua Zeitlin the Alter Rebbe’s father in law.

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I still don’t know which version – if either! – is correct, that Yehoshua Zeitlin is the Alter Rebbe’s father-in-law, or the father-in-law of the Alter Rebbe’s son, but let’s see if we can find some more information about ‘Abraham Peretz’, to try and clarify matters a little more.

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Back on the expanded description about Abraham Peretz under his geni profile HERE, we are told that his father is ‘Rabbi of Levertov, Israel Peretz’.

In the first post, we learned that Abraham’s uncle was none other than ‘Zvi Hirsch Berlin’ aka Hart Lyon, former Chief Rabbi of the UK – a grandchild of the Chacham Tzvi via his mother, Miriam. So, I start looking through all of ‘Hart Lyon’s’ listed siblings, to see if any of them are either named ‘Israel’, or are married to an ‘Israel Peretz’. Whaddya know?  I can’t find a dickie bird – except for THIS weird and misleading profile for ‘the wife of Zvi Hirsh Margoliot, the ABD of Lublin‘, uploaded by none other than Keith Lawrence Hanit.

Whenever I hit dear Keith, I know I’m on the right path.

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Also, Abraham Peretz called his first (and apparently only Jewish son…) ‘Tzvi Hirsch’, and we know that these families usually called their children after their grandparents, which makes ‘Zvi Hirsch Margoliot’ a leading contender for Abraham Peretz’s father. And lastly, Levertov / Lubartow is close to Lublin, so it wouldn’t stretch things too far to replace one with the other – especially at this far remove in history.

But why go to all this trouble, to hide this information?

What’s the big deal, who Abraham Peretz’s father really is? Let’s see if we can find out.

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Zvi Hirsch Margoliot is listed as having three children:

  1. Joshua Heshel Margulis of Pietrokov
  2. Jacob Margulis
  3. Isaac Meshulam Zalman Margulis of Pietrokov-Lublin

One of these guys is a candidate for the real ‘Abraham Peretz’. I start clicking through, and here’s what I learn: The unnamed wife of Joshua Heshel Margulis is the sister of ‘Zlata Rivka Eybshutz’.  Zlata is married to Aryeh Menachem Eybshutz – who is the son of Natan Nata Eybshutz.

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(I know all this is hard to follow, sorry. I’m setting all this down as a kind of public record, and hopefully at the end of this process, may it come soon, I’ll be able to link everything up and make it much easier and clearer to understand what is really going on. It’s a very painful and drawn-out birur, I appreciate that.) Natan Nata Eybshutz is probably one and the same as the famous shtadlan and businessmen in the Russian empire who was a contemporary of Joshua Zeitlin and Abraham Peretz, Natan Nota Notkin. I wrote a lot about Natan Nota Notkin HERE, and this is a relevant snippet:

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There’s another interesting descendant of Yonatan Eybshutz as well (not including this two sons ‘Wolf’ and Mordechai-Marcus, who were both openly Sabbatian / Frankists.)

He is Natan Nata Eybshutz, named for Eybshutz’s ‘illustrious’ ancestor Natan Nata Spira, the Megulat Amukot. CO-INC-IDEN-TALLY, one of the most famous ‘Shadlanim’ of that time was a guy named Natan Nota Notkin. I can find so very little about him online, but here’s where you can read a little more about him: “A merchant from Shklov, Nota Haimovich Notkin was invited to St. Petersburg together with Abram Perets by Catherine II.”

His life story parallels that of Joshua Zeitlin almost exactly.

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CO-INC-IDEN-TAL-LY, there’s a strange story on the Chabad website which tells us this, about Natan Nata Notkin:

In the year 1798, Rabbi Shneur Zalman was falsely informed upon by his detractors and accused of treason. When he was finally exonerated and released from prison toward the evening of the 19th of Kislev, the authorities asked him where they should bring him. He replied that they should bring him to the home of Reb Mordechai Liepler, one of his followers. In the same building, there also lived one of the leading mitnagdim (opponents of the chassidim), by the name of R’ Nota Notkin, and unfortunately, Rabbi Shneur Zalman was mistakenly taken to his home instead. For three hours, until the chassidim realized what happened, he berated, complained and argued against the chassidim, to the extent that Rabbi Schneur Zalman later remarked that he suffered more during those three hours than the entire time he was imprisoned.

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This is strange for a lot of reasons, not least that elsewhere, Nota Notkin is credited for being the man who arranged the release of Shneur Zalman from prison in the first place.

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Here’s another link between ‘Natan Nata Notkin’ (Eybshutz) and the Vilna Gaon / Alter Rebbe:

According to the ‘official history’ of the Gaon’s family, screenshotted below, (which is full of fake names and falsified dates) the Gaon’s son or grandson (?), ‘Shlomo Zalman Rivlin’, marries ‘Natan Nota Notkin’ (Eybshutz’s) daughter, Frumka. This is the same Natan Nota Notkin who is the shtadlan who gets the ‘Shneur Zalman [unknown surname] aka Alter Rebbe out of Russian prison, and even has him delivered to his own home, according to Chabad’s own sources.

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The dates and details on geni have all been deliberately muddled-up and obfuscated, so it’s hard to pin things down 100%.

Typically, the ‘Keith Lawrence Hanits’ on geni do an excellent job of attributing genealogies to the wrong siblings, and adding in fake generations by replicating names and creating ‘half siblings’ where none existed. So, I take the ‘story’ being told there with a massive pinch of salt, until and unless I find other sources to corroborate what seems to be the ‘real story’. According to the geni genealogy, Natan Nata (Notkin) Eybshutz is listed as the son of ‘Yehuda Leib Eybshutz’ – brother of Jonathan Eybshutz, the (not so secret) secret Sabbataean. But I know from previous research that Jonathan Eybshutz himself had a son called ‘Natan Nata Eybshutz’ – who totally disappeared off the radar, like so very many of Jonathan Eybshutz’s children and grandchildren. And so far, most of the descendants of Jonathan Eybshutz who I could actually track down in the real world,  like August Bondi, have been married into known Frankist families and / or deeply connected to the Freemasons.

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It seems to me, that ‘Yehuda Leib Eybshutz’ and ‘Yonatan Eybshutz’ may well be the same person (at least, on geni…)

I now have at least a day and a half of checking out this theory, to see what else it might turn up, so I think I will leave this post here, in the meantime. Isn’t it amazing, though, how all roads in this troubling episode seem to lead back to Vilna, and the Vilna Gaon and the Alter Rebbe? Isn’t it amazing, how the same names, the same people, keep coming up again and again and again, in some very unexpected ways? They’ve done a fabulous job of covering things up, you have to hand it to them.

But ultimately, you can’t suppress the truth forever.

And it seems to me, we are fast approaching that time when it finally comes out.

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The mysterious case of Abraham Peretz – Part 3

Maybe, just maybe, I’m finally starting to get somewhere with all this.

My husband laughs at me – insanely – when I say this. Because I’ve been saying it for months, already, only to find all my insights disappearing in more doubts and confusion. But the last couple of posts, I’m starting to see more and more synchronicity in all this, that’s pointing a path through all the deception. You might want to go back and read Part 1 and Part 2 of this, before we continue. Otherwise, let’s dive in.

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In those 2 posts, we got to the following conclusions:

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  • Abraham Peretz‘s father is the brother, or brother-in-law of Hart Lyon / Zvi Hirsch Berliner (grandson of the Chacham Tzvi, and Chief Rabbi of Berlin and London, amongst other places.)
  • In THIS post, we set out the possibility that Zvi Hirsch Berliner could be the father or brother of the false messiah, Jacob Frank (or possibly, even Jacob Frank himself, if we’re going on the shtreimel…)
  • Chabad themselves make a weird connection between the conversion of the Alter Rebbe’s son, Moshe Shneuri, and the conversion of Abraham Peretz.
  • There is also a weird connection between Abraham Peretz and Natan Nota Notkin (Eybshutz), and the Alter Rebbe And Natan Nota Notkin (Eybshutz)
  • Both Abraham Peretz and the Alter Rebbe are also closely related to Yehoshua Zeitlin, in some way. I have a partial family tree from one of the Alter Rebbe’s descendants that show that Yehoshua Zeitlin is also meant to be their ancestor in some way; while Abraham Peretz is the ‘official’ son-in-law of Yehoshua Zeitlin.
  • The identity of Abraham Peretz’s father has been deliberately hidden.
  • 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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The question is WHY this big cover-up?

And we’re still trying to answer that. In this post, we’ll see if we can add-in another dimension to this whole hot mess, by returning to Moses Dobrushka – putative nephew of Jacob Frank, and apparently also the grandson of Yonatan Eibshutz. I wrote a whole big post about “Moses Dobrushka” HERE, and this is the relevant snippet we’re going to kick off with in this post:

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[T]here were three Jews who were making money in Moravia as tobacco merchants at [the time of Jacob Frank], namely Joachim Popper, Israel Edler von Honisgberg, and Salomon Dobrushka – father of Moses, and husband of ‘Schondl’, the leading Sabbateans in Bohemia. I could find precious little about the ‘Dobrushkas’ online, but the most useful thing I found – by far – was this account of them, on YIVO….

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Prominent Moravian family that took its name from its patriarch, Jacob Moses Wimer (d. 1763), who came from Dobruschka, a small town near Königgrätz (Hradec Králové) in Bohemia. In 1730 Wimer moved to Brünn (Brno) as a widower with two children, and despite the fact that Jews were forbidden to live in that city, was given permission to settle and to deal first in precious stones and jewelry, and later in spices and tobacco. In 1750 he was granted a monopoly on the tobacco trade for the royal cities of Moravia. Dobruschka’s daughter Esther married Adam Oppenheimer of Vienna, a relative of the court purveyor Samuel Oppenheimer. Dobruschka’s son Solomon (1715–1774) married Schöndl, daughter of Löbl Hirschl of Rzeszów and Güttel Jacobi of Prossnitz.

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There’s that name again, ‘Lobl Hirschl’.

The brainwave I had today is that this ‘Lobl Hirshchl’ is also the same guy – ‘Hart Lyon / Zvi Hirsch Berliner’. He was also born in Rzezsow, and was also known by that name, and in the ‘real world’, he’s the uncle of that infamous convert Abraham Peretz, who we’ve been trying to track down the last few days. In the ‘real world’, Zvi Hirsch Berliner is married to ‘Golda’, the daughter of R’ David Tebele Katz, the ABD of Glogau. ‘Golda’ and ‘Guttel’ are also close enough matches to make me think this is an avenue worth pursuing further.

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So, to be clear, this is the ‘theory’ we are trying to stand up in this post:

  1. That ‘Lobl Hirschl’ is in fact one and the same as Zvi Hirsch Berliner / Hart Lyon.
  2. According to YIVO, ‘Lobl Hirschl’ is listed as the father of Schondl, who was meant to have married Tobacco industrialist ‘Solomon Dobrushka’ – the leading Sabbatean Frankists in Brunn.
  3. ‘Schondl Dobrushka’ was meant to be the first cousin of Jacob Frank – which means one of their parents was a sibling.
  4. Schondl Dobrushka’s son is the infamous Moses Dobrushka, who began the Order of the Asiatic Brotherhood, and was executed in France where he played a leading role in the French Revolution, under the name Junius Frey.
  5. Zvi Hirsch Berliner is also the uncle of famous Russian convert Abraham Peretz, who is the son-in-law of Yehoshua Zeitlin.

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So, if Lobl Hirschl = Zvi Hirsch Berliner / Hart Lyon, that means the following:

Jacob Frank and ‘Schondl Dobrushka’ are also the first cousins of Abraham Peretz. That puts the Frankist network slap, bank, wallop right at the heart of the Jewish community in Kherson and St Petersburg. And depending what else we can figure out about how Natan Nota Notkin (Eybshutz) and the Alter Rebbe fits in with all this – well, let’s just say things could soon get pretty interesting.

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Before we continue, I also want to just throw this tidbit into the mix, about the Rothschilds.

Remember, the Rothschilds are German Jewish bankers who relocate to London (and Paris), and then become fabulously wealthy. They were also known Frankists, and close supporters of Jacob Frank’s court in Offenbach. Back in THIS post, I set out this interesting fact:

‘Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh Halevi Horowitz’ – the rav who apparently ‘blessed’ the Rothschilds with wealth – appears to be our very own Rabbi Hirschel Ben Arye Löb Levin / Rabbi Hart Lyon / Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh Berlin / Hirshll Lobell.’

Do you see, how this guy seems to be in the middle of so very many of the intersecting lines of enquiry I’ve been following over the last few months? At this stage, I find it hard to believe this is just all ‘coincidence’.

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So, now we’ve set all that out, let’s see what else we can dig up, to try to support the thesis.

Golda Berliner also has some interesting ancestors. She apparently descends from Vogel, the daughter of the Maharal of Prague, via R’ Chaim HaCohen-Katz, the ABD of Posen and Frankfurt. And all of a sudden, I’m in the middle of so many of the names I’ve been trying to link up with Jacob Frank, and with the Rivlin / Vilners, and with the Schicks and Poppers and ‘Dobrushkas’, for a long time already, including Slava Teomim-Frankel Mirels; and David Tebele, and Shneur Zalman Katz – the first in a long line of ‘Shneur Zalmans’.

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Dear reader, we have just hit the genealogical jackpot.

In the next post, I’ll (try to…) set out exactly how ‘Golda Berliner’, wife of ‘Hart Lyon / Hirschll Lobel / Zvi Hirsh Berliner’ links up with Shneur Zalman, the Alter Rebbe of Chabad. Because once we know that bit of the puzzle, I can tell you the new thesis of how the Alter Rebbe is really connected to Jacob Frank, Schondl Dobrushka and Abraham Peretz. But before we do that, here’s some more info about Golda Berliner / Shneur Zalman of Liadi’s ancestors, that you probably didn’t know.

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The Alter Rebbe’s great-grandfather was a man named Moshe Loew of Posen.

He was apparently a rich merchant who dealt in antiquities (when he wasn’t being the Rabbi of Posen). And also – according to his entry in the ‘Chabadpedia’ HERE – he spent a lot of time at the Vatican arguing with priests. I’m going to put both the Hebrew original here, plus the English ‘Google Translate’, as these things are delicate, and I don’t want to be accused of mis-translating anything:

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HEBREW ORIGINAL:

ניהל ויכוחים בותיקן עם גדולי הכמרים (בתחילה מול 30 קרדינלים אך לאחר שהתעקש שיהיה כוחות שווים שמו מולו שלושה קרדינלים)ונחל נצחנות גדולים שהביכו את גדולי הנצרות. הוא עשה את זה מכיון שבאותה התקופה רבו הויכוחים והנוצרים התעללו רבות בעם היהודי ומהסיבה הזאת (ההתנכוליות של הנוצרים) ר’ משה התפטר ממשרתו כראש קהילת פוזנא,

במשך נאומיו הרבים על היהדות בותיקן הרבה יהודים שהיו שם בשלבי שמד ל”ע או כבר אחרי התחילו להתחזק ביהדות ולחזור בתשובה. הבולט שבהם היה צעיר יהודי בשם משה גדליה גורדון שהגיע מפולין על מנת להשתלם בכמה מקצועות, במשך שהותו בין הכמרים התחלש קצת ביהדותו ובזכות ר’ משה מפוזנא התחזק והתחיל לפעול עם היהודים ששהו.[4]

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GOOGLE TRANSLATE TO ENGLISH:

“He held debates in the Vatican with the great priests (initially in front of 30 cardinals but after insisting that there be equal forces he put three cardinals in front of him) and had great victories that embarrassed the great men of Christianity. He did this because at that time there were many arguments and the Christians abused the Jewish people a lot and for this reason (the harassment of the Christians) R. Moshe resigned from his position as head of the Pozna congregation, During his many speeches on Judaism in the Vatican, many Jews who were there during the stages of the annihilation of Israel or after began to strengthen Judaism and repent. Prominent among them was a young Jew named Moshe Gedaliah Gordon who came from Poland to study in several professions, during his time among the priests he weakened his Judaism a bit and thanks to Rabbi Moshe of Poznań he became stronger and began to work with the Jews who stayed. [4]”

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Moshe Loew lived between 1663-1736.

This was the time when Sabbateanism was at its height, and many, many Jews ended up converting out to both Islam and Xtianity, in the wake of Shabtai Tzvi. But as I set out in THIS POST, well before Shabtai Tzvi there were a ton of leading ‘Jews’, many of whom descended from Spanish and Portuguese conversos, who were washing in and out of Judaism with scandalous regularity. They’d pop up, mamash, as priests and xtian theologists in one place, one country, then change their names and ‘rejoin’ the Jewish community again, often in leading positions as the communal rabbi and / or shtadlan and / or leading rich-guy international trader. So it’s interesting to find Moshe Loew of Posnan – deep in the heartland of Jewish Poland – popping up in the Vatican, of all places, where he is apparently so at home, he’s able to command the Pope to only let him debate religion with 3 cardinals at a time, instead of 30. And not only that, the Pope is happy to let him hang out in the Vatican so he can ‘re-convert’ all the apostate Jews that have shown up there, in the wake of Shabtai Tzvi.

Do you buy that, after everything we’ve been learning here together over the last few months?

Or does is sound like another Chabad story?

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Another curiosity is the name of the person who Moshe Loew apparently ‘re-converted’ from xtianity at the Vatican, namely Moshe Gedaliah Gordon.

In THIS POST, I set out how the real name of the Eybshutz family was ‘Gordon’.

Here’s the relevant snippet:

“Rabbi Aaron Gordon, who was also the doctor to the king of Poland; Rabbi Yehuda Leib, who was the head of the Beth Din of Rabbi Yehoshua Heshel; Rabbi Yekutial Ben Rabbi Leib Gordon, who studied medicine in Padua, was influenced by Rabbi Moshe Haim Lucato (the RAMCHAL) and was among the signatories to the rules of the RAMCHAL group. Upon his return to Vilna he studied, in addition to medicine, Talmud and Kabalah.” 

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(As a side note, there is a strong possibility that this ‘Rabbi Aaron Gordon‘ who was the Polish king’s physician was actually the brother of none other than Yonatan Eybshutz – they were both sons of Rabbi Nathan Nata Gordon, the ABD of Eibenschutz.) ====

 

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You can tell me that all this is just another big CO-INC-ID-ENCE – that another Gordon-Eybshutz named ‘Moshe Gedaliah’ just happened to be hanging out at the Vatican with the Alter Rebbe’s great-grandfather Moshe Loew, at exactly the same time that Yonatan Eybshutz (Gordon…) was secretly following Shabtai Tzvi, hanging out with the Jesuits in Prague and subverting a whole generation of Jews with his yeshiva and teachings…. ….and at exactly the same time that another Gordon (Eybshutz…), Dr Aharon, was apparently the physician of the King of Poland.

But at this point, I don’t really believe in coincidences any more.

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Here’s another point of synchronicity, with stuff we’ve already covered in other posts. The son of the above Moshe Loew is none other than the Yesod Yosef – who we mentioned back in the first post of this series,HERE, when we were trying to figure out who Rabbi Yehuda ben Eliezer Safra deVayana (YESOD) of Vilna actually was. Here is the relevant snippet (where I’m talking about the family tree of the poor woman who is related to the Alter Rebbe of Chabad):

Rabbi Yosef Yoske Sabatka of Dubno was a scholar, moralist and cabbalist. He became rabbi of Dubno in 1698. Known for his piety, he wrote a morality book Yesod Yosef, which was first printed in Shklov in 1785. I also learn that this ‘Yosef Yoske Sabatka’ – the YESOD YOSEF – is the “Brother of Mrs. Aleksander Sender“… …. If your tradition is that you are definitely descended from the Alter Rebbe, then the premise that the Alter Rebbe = Alexander Sander / Sendor seems to hold up. The information above certainly tallies with what you sent me on your family tree, so far.

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The Alter Rebbe was supposed to be the 7th generation from the Maharal of Prague.

And Tilla Sander (Sobotka) – the wife of Alexander Sender – was the 7th generation from the Maharal of Prague.

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Back in the ‘real world’ – whatever that actually is, at this point – the ‘Yesod Yosef’ is meant to be the brother of Shneur Zalman, the grandfather of the Shneur Zalman who is the Alter Rebbe of Chabad.

But we know that there were a lot of false generations ‘added in’, to try to disguise just how all these people were actually connected to each other – and to other infamous people they didn’t want to be obviously connected to. So before we can say for sure, I’ll need to take another careful look at the dates everyone was alive, to see if they ‘fit’ properly.

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But so far, here is where we’ve got to:

  • The Alter Rebbe’s great-grandfather was Moshe Loew (who liked to debate with priests in the Vatican and hang out with apostate relatives of Jonathan Eybshutz…).
  • The Alter Rebbe’s grandfather was Shneur Zalman, son of Moshe Loew.
  • This Shneur Zalman’s brother was none other than the ‘Yesod Yosef’, who in turn is a leading candidate for the ‘YESOD’ of Vilna whose son-in-law, Shmuel ben Avigdor, was at the heart of the horrible Vilna machloket that continued on for 3 generations around the time of the Vilna Gaon.
  • Shneur Zalman senior and the ‘Yesod Yosef’ have an unnamed sister, who is the wife of ‘Alexander Sender‘ (maybe the same ‘Alexander Sender’ as I’ve fingered as being the real name of the Vilna Gaon. Interestingly, they have a sibling listed on geni HERE who is marked as ‘Private’. Given that all these people lived more than 250 years ago, it’s hard to understand why that’s the case.)
  • Golda Berliner, wife of Hart Lyon / Hirshl Lobell / Zvi Hirsh Berliner, is directly connected to the Alter Rebbe and his family, in ways I hope to set out clearly in the next post.
  • Golda Berliner and Zvi Hirsh Berliner are meant to be the parents of the notorious Sabbatean / Frankist Schondl Dobrushka, wife of ‘Solomon Dobrushka’, mother of Moses Dobrushka / Junius Frey, and cousin of Jacob Frank.
  • Golda Berliner and Zvi Hirsh Berliner are also meant to be the aunt and uncle of Abraham Peretz, notorious convert to xtianity and son-in-law of rich maskil-cum-pretend-orthodox-rabbi, Yehoshua Zeitlin, who in turn is also connected, somehow, to the Alter Rebbe and his descendants.
  • Golda Berliner and Zvi Hirsh Berliner are also closely related to Jacob Frank – but we haven’t managed to pin down the connection yet. But with God’s help, we will.

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That’s enough for today!

It’s a lot of information to digest.

But the net is drawing tighter.

And I really hope that in the next few posts, we’ll finally be able to definitively answer how the Alter Rebbe and the Vilna Gaon are connected; how it all links up to Jacob Frank and the Sabbateans, and how the elusive ‘Alexander Sender’ really fits into this picture.

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The mysterious case of Abraham Peretz

Somehow, God keeps dragging me back to the subject of ‘real Jewish history’.

Even though I am so tired of all this, at a soul level, and so yearning for Moshiach to just show up and explain exactly what happened and why, so I don’t need to be involved with breaking my head over this anymore – that doesn’t seem to be happening. I have deleted so many files, archived so much paper – even burnt some of it, as part of the pre-Pesach bonfire effort -and yet, here I am again, about to launch into another slice of ‘real Jewish history.

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As seems to happen nearly all the time, the story starts back in Vilna.

I have a bunch of notes next to my computer, with random ‘interesting’ names written upon them, and today, one seemed to have come free and placed itself right on my mouse mat. The name that caught my attention was this: R’ Jacob Peretz Klatzi, head of the Vilna Community. Hmm. In case you didn’t know, there was a massive machloket that engulfed the Vilna community long before any mention of the suspect ‘chassidism vs mitnagdim’ argument.

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I wrote about that a while ago HERE, and here’s a relevant snippet:

In the years leading up to the first ‘excommunication’ of the chassidim, in 1772, The Vilna ‘kahal’, or community leaders had been locked in a vicious struggle with the town’s chief rabbi and rabbinical judge, a fellow by the name of Shmuel ben Avigdor. Shmuel ben Avigdor had been ‘bought’ his position – as was the custom of the time then, and in many ways still is today – by his wealthy father-in-law. The kahal leaders felt that Shmuel ben Avigdor was throwing his weight around, was out of his depth when it came to making halachically-binding decisions, and – most crucially of all – was impinging on their income by trying to butt into communal affairs that they felt he should play no part in. So, the kahal went to war against their very wealthy, very connected chief rabbi, to try to get him ousted. His father-in-law had bought him the rabbinate ‘for life’, so the kahal leaders could only get him out of the way if they could prove his was guilty of gross, ‘anti-Torah’ misconduct. So that’s what they set about trying to show. According to Arie Morgenstern[5]: “The methods used were illegitimate:…false testimonies, silencing of witnesses, preventing the presentation of exculpatory evidence about the defendants under threat of excommunication, forbidding the lodging of complaints with the rabbinical court by the same means, and even forbidding the rabbinical judges to listen to cries of protest against the abuse being committed.”

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Of course, you can’t find any trace of a ‘Shmuel ben Avigdor’ in the real world.

Believe me, I’ve tried and tried. Which is kind of strange, no? Given that this massive machloket was going on in Vilna for around 30 years, at the same time as the Vilna Gaon lived there, and shortly before the whole, seminal ‘excommunicating the chassidim’ thing apparently happened – and yet we can’t find any trace of Vilna’s chief rabbi in the real world? No descendants, no siblings, no trace of who this guy really was? That just trips off my ‘BS-o-meter’, and then I have the strange urge to start digging deeper.

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If you go to the JewishGen site HERE, you’ll learn more about the official story of the Jewish history and dispute in Vilna.

Here’s some relevant snippets – see how many names you recognise from stuff I’ve already written about on the site:

The first rabbi [of Vilna] was apparently Rabbi Abraham Segal. After him came Rabbi Menachem Munish, the son of Rabbi Itshak Hayut, author of the pamphlet ‘Zmirot Leshabat’ (Prague 1621)….  Rabbi Uri Shraga Feivish, who immigrated to Jerusalem and served as the rabbi of the Ashkenazi community in 1650-1653 (thereby earning the sobriquet ‘the Ashkenazi’). The ruling Rabbi (posek) Moshe the son of Rabbi Itshak Yehuda Lima (1605-1658) author of Chelkat Mechokek… His colleagues at the Beth Din were equally famous: the Dayan Rabbi Efraim Ben Rabbi Aaron Hacohen author of Sha’ar Efraim (from 1635 until his death in 1678).  Rabbi Shabtai Ben Rabbi Meir Katz (‘the SHAKh’ 1628-1663), who wrote at the age of 24 the treatise Siftei Kohen about the Shulchan Aruch, and among whose other important works are Nekudot Hakesef, Tkafo Kohen, and Gvurat Anashim. Rabbi Shabtai became famous and corresponded also with Christian scholars. In 1655 he fled to Moravia and was a rabbi in Helishoi. Rabbi Aaron Shmuel Ben Rabbi Israel Kaidanover (MHRSHAK, 1614-1676)…Rabbi Yehoshua Heshel Ben Yosef “Kharif” (“the sharp”) author of Pnei Yehoshua, a native of the city: Rabbi Heshel Tsoref (born 1633), one of the most important rabbis of his generation (his work Sefer Hatzsoref is a treatise of five volumes on the Kabalah full of Sabbatean allusions….)

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There is so much ‘weird’ stuff going on in Vilna, it’s hard to know where to start with it all.

Here’s a few more snippets from the JewishGen site, and then we’ll focus in on the Vilna dispute, in particular, to see where that leads us.

(This is going to be a long post…. better go and get the popcorn and cup of tea and make yourself comfy.)

I’ll bold the bits that really stand out, to make it easier for you to try to follow what’s going on. Also, remember that ‘Kremers’ are meant to be ancestors of the Vilna Gaon.

From 1709 onwards, Rabbi Moshe Ben Rabbi Naftali Hirtz (died 1726) served as head of the Beth Din and preacher in Vilna. Among the great Torah scholars in Vilna were the Dayan Rabbi Arieh Leib Ben Rabbi Yitshak Shapira (born 1701) author of Nakhalat Ariel and Ma’on Arayot and a friend of the Karaite Khakham… Rabbi Shlomo Ben Aaron of Trokai; Rabbi Josef of Pinchuv, author of Rosh Josef and Rabbi Moshe Kremer’s in-law; the grammarians Rabbi Azriel and his sons Nisan and Eliyahu; Rabbi Zvi Hirsh from Koidanov; the Dayan Rabbi Eliyahu Kremer; Rabbi Hirsh Ben Rabbi Ezriel, author of the work Beth Lekhem Yehuda; Rabbi Ya’akov Vilna-Ashkenazi, who emigrated to Eretz Yisrael with the group around [leading Sabbatean] Rabbi Yehuda Hasid and was one of the pillars of the community. Rabbi Aaron Gordon, who was also the doctor to the king of Poland; Rabbi Yehuda Leib, who was the head of the Beth Din of Rabbi Yehoshua Heshel; Rabbi Yekutial Ben Rabbi Leib Gordon, who studied medicine in Padua, was influenced by Rabbi Moshe Haim Lucato (the RAMCHAL) and was among the signatories to the rules of the RAMCHAL group. Upon his return to Vilna he studied, in addition to medicine, Talmud and Kabalah. 

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(As a side note, there is a strong possibility that this ‘Rabbi Aaron Gordon‘ who was the Polish king’s physician was actually the brother of none other than Yonatan Eybshutz – they were both sons ofRabbi Nathan Nata Gordon, the ABD of Eibenschutz.)

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Let’s park that side of things for now, but pay attention to all the interactions going on with Karaites, and xtians, and Sabbatians that have been going on in Vilna for generations.

There’s also a really weird story of how a son of Count Potocki – Abraham ben Abraham – converted to Judaism, then got denounced and burnt at the stake in Vilna. This also comes from the JewishGen site:

Abraham Ben Abraham was condemned to death and on the second day of Shavuot was burnt at the stake. Rabbi Eliezer Sitskes of Vilna, who was without a beard, disguised himself as a Christian and using a bribe managed to retrieve some of the ashes and a finger which had survived the fire, and buried them in holy ground in Vilna (without a gravestone or mention of name) where to this day the grave serves as a place of pilgrimage.

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Abraham ben Abraham’s teacher was meant to be none other than the Vilna Gaon.

And just to make this weird story even weirder, the remains of ‘Abraham ben Abraham’ somehow ended up being buried in the Vilna Gaon’s relocated tomb in the new Jewish cemetery. Go HERE, to read more about all this, but I’ll give you one more snippet, to underline just how strange so many of the stories coming out of Vilna, and about the Vilna Gaon, really are:

According to Jewish tradition, following Avraham ben Avraham’s death, the Vilna Gaon believed that the spiritual constitution of the world had become altered in such a way that a Jew was no longer bound to wash his hands in the morning (netilat yadayim) within four amot (cubits) of his bed, as explicitly taught in the codes of Jewish law such as the Shulchan Aruch and other halachic works. Rather, a Jew’s entire house would be considered as four amot for this mitzvah. This custom, begun at Avraham ben Avraham’s death, commenced with the Vilna Gaon and later became the practice of the Slabodka yeshiva in Europe, becoming today the routine of many leading Israeli rabbis who follow the Slabodka tradition.[10]

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The last bit of info related to this is that Chabad states that the person who brought Count Potocki to Judaism is one “Rabbi Menachem Mann” (not the Vilna Gaon). He is probably one and the same asR’ Menachem Manish Horowitz, aka “Mordechai Yollis”, aka the grandfather of Alexander Sender Margoliot (Shor) – my candidate for the real world name of the Vilna Gaon, as I set out HERE. The Chabad site states that Potocki converted in Amsterdam under the aegis of the Chief Rabbi there. Depending on when all this is meant to have actually happened, the Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam would be one of these guys (from the Jewish Virtual Library):

The son-in-law of the Chakham Zevi, Aryeh Leib ben Saul *Loewenstamm from Rzeszów, thereupon became Amsterdam’s chief rabbi (until 1755). He became the founder of the Dutch rabbinical Loewenstamm dynasty: his son Saul ben Aryeh Leib Polonus succeeded him and served until 1793, when his grandson Moses Saul Loewenstamm took over (until 1815).

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In common with ‘Shmuel ben Avigdor’ of Vilna, Aryeh Leib ben Saul Loewenstamm was also bought his pulpits by his wealthy family, and also had a number of ‘wars’ with his unhappy community:

Through the influence of his relatives he then obtained the rabbinical position in Tarnopol in 1720 (or 1718?), the former incumbent having been ousted by the officials of the government to make room for him. This interference on the part of the civic authorities naturally aroused great opposition to him in the congregation, and Aryeh Loeb was deposed in 1724.

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OK, let’s (try to…) get back to Jacob Peretz Klatzi, and the dispute with the Vilna rabbi, Shmuel ben Avigdor.

Back on the JewishGen website, we find this, about who Shmuel ben Avigdor was related to. I’m going to quote the whole thing, as it’s useful to have this information in one place, going forward:

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Pride of place among the public leaders and rabbis of Vilna is reserved for Rabbi Yehuda Ben Eliezer Safra Vedayana (YSUD). He made his fortune in trade, donated much money to the community and built a synagogue which bore his name (the Old Kloyz). In addition to being a rabbi he was also active in public matters affecting the Kahal and the ‘Council of the Lithuanian Land’…  In the argument between Rabbi Yonatan Eivshitz and Rabbi Ya’akov Amdan, Rabbi Yehuda Safra Vedayana supported Rabbi Yonatan and convinced the Vilna scholars and the Council to take his part… After the death of Rabbi Yehoshua Heshel in 1749, Rabbi Yehuda forced the Kahal to appoint his son in law, Rabbi Shmuel Ben Rabbi Avigdor, to the position for life, in return for a large donation. After the death of Rabbi Yehuda (1762) a sharp dispute developed between the Kahal and Rabbi Shmuel who wanted to appoint members of his family to public positions and intended his son Rabbi Israel to succeed him in office. For some 30 years, the conflict raged on, drawing into it powerful factions from Vilna and elsewhere and threatened the community’s autonomous standing. The Kahal – the official leadership – opposed Rabbi Shmuel and accused him of corruption and taking bribes but he was supported by the ‘mob’… and later by the Hassids [read: members of Chabad chassidut], who operated underground. Both parties involved rabbis of other large communities and the [secular] authorities… The two sides also appealed to the crown court and the Gaon (Rabbi Eliyahu) of Vilna, who was imprisoned for a time because of his support for the Vilna Kahal. The representative of the ‘mob’, Rabbi Shimon Ben Josef, was also imprisoned, and while sitting in the Nieszwiesz prison wrote a pamphlet in Polish about the need for reform in the authority given to the communities. The pamphlet reached the king of Poland, who published a royal order, on July 30, 1786, which forbade the Vilna Kahal to oppress and extort by the use of taxes. It was only after the death of Rabbi Shmuel Ben Avigdor at the beginning of 1791 that the conflict came to an end.

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Did you know that the Vilna Gaon apparently sat in a secular prison for a while?

No, neither did I. You have to wonder how so many generations of Jewish historians, both secular and religious, apparently missed such an important bit of information (and also note, that every time we see ‘the Gaon’ being mentioned, they have to fill in the name ‘Eliyahu’ in square brackets…). I also didn’t know that ‘Shmuel Ben Avigdor’ only died in 1791 – just six years before the Vilna Gaon passed away, and the same year that Jacob Frank died. And the last thing I didn’t know was that there was such a ‘luminary’ in Vilna called Rabbi Yehuda Ben Eliezer Safra Vedayana (YSUD) – who has also apparently been scrubbed out of official Jewish history.

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Before we go on, let’s remind ourselves that when I tried to track down who the Vilna Gaon might be ‘in the real world’, in THIS mind-blowing post, I came to this conclusion:

Alexander Sender Margoliot is the ‘real world’ name of the Vilna Gaon.

Alexander Sender is the son of Rabbi Mordechai “Chassid”, and the grandson of that same Rabbi Menachem Manish Margaliot (mentioned above, in the Chabad story about the ger tzedek). Menachem Manish is married to Hinda Margulis – sister of the infamous Frankist and convert to Catholicism, Elisha Shor. Long story short, ‘Alexander Sender Haim Shor / Margoliot’ (my candidate for the real name of the Vilna Gaon) changes the family name to ‘Brodsky’, and his family become leading entrepreneurs and philanthropists in Russia.

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So, I start tootling around, trying to find any people nicknamed ‘YESOD’ that might fit the bill for this guy, Rabbi Yehuda Safra Vedayana – one of the most fabulously wealthy and powerful Jews in Vilna, and the whole of Russia, and interestingly, I get tothis:

Rabbi Yosef Yoske Sabatka of Dubno was a scholar, moralist and cabbalist. He became rabbi of Dubno in 1698. Known for his piety, he wrote a morality book Yesod Yosef, which was first printed in Shklov in 1785.

I also learn that this ‘Yosef Yoske Sabatka’ – the YESOD YOSEF – is the “Brother of Mrs. Aleksander Sender“.

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And that’s when I remember the conversation I had with a descendant of the Alter Rebbe of Chabad 5 months ago, when I was just starting to figure all this stuff out.

(Poor woman. She was very nice, and has probably been totally scandalised by the turn all this has taken.) This is part of what I emailed her then, after she’d sent me some of the details of her family tree:

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B’kitzur, I think the Alter Rebbe had an ‘alter ego’ called R’Alexander Sander / Sander (i.e. this is the same person).

If you look on the main ‘Loebtree’ site here: http://www.loebtree.com/maharal.html

You will see most of the Maharal of Prague’s descendants listed.

If you click on Tilla Lowe – his daughter – you will see this family tree: (I put the part where it overlaps with your family tree in BOLD).

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Tilla LOEW daughter of the Maharal

Tilla LOEW married Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch SABA or SABATKA of Lublin (b. Prague), Dayan of Prague 1630, son of Joseph Yaski and/or else  she married Rabbi Zechariah Mendel I WAHL.  Her children:

  • Rabbi Meir SABATKA (d. 1668 Prague) m. Buna the daughter of Mendel from Kolin (d. 1649 Prague).

Rabbi Meir SABATKA remarried Surel ZOREF (d. 1664 Prague)

  • Izhak SABATKA (d. 1703 Prague) m. Haja TILS (d. 1668 Prague)
  • Leib SABATKA (d. 1673 Prague) 
  • Matatya SABATKA (d. 1680 Prague)
  • Tilla SABATKA (d. 1694 Prague) m. Josel LIBERLESH
  • Reisel SABATKA (d. 1742 Prague) m. Izhak LEVITIZ (d. 1740 Prague)
  • Rabbi Moshe SABATKA from Pozen, Rabbi in Prague.
  • Rabbi Yehuda Yudl SABATKA from Kawali.
  • daughter married Alexander SENDER son of Rabbi Jacob from Stutzek.
  • Rabbi Alexander SENDER Slutzek
  • Rabbi Yehuda Yudel
  • Rabbi Aryeh LEIB (Shpolar Zeide) of Krakow married Jute FISCHEL (b. about 1620)
  • Rabbi Zecharia Mendel LOEB
  • Debora LEIB (b. 1660)
  • Efraim III FISCHEL
  • daughter married Fishl LODMER
  • Perl LEIB (b. 1666, d. 30 May 1722) married Rabbi Feivel Premsler Joshua Ezekial TEOMIM (THEOMIM?) (b. 1654, d. 1726)
  • daughter married Rabbi Samuel BethShmuel WAHL
  • Elia COHEN.
  • Rivka GOLDE ?? married Rabbi Abraham LISSA

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If your tradition is that you are definitely descended from the Alter Rebbe, then the premise that the Alter Rebbe = Alexander Sander / Sendor seems to hold up. The information above certainly tallies with what you sent me on your family tree, so far.

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The Alter Rebbe was supposed to be the 7th generation from the Maharal of Prague.

And Tilla Sander (Sobotka) – the wife of Alexander Sender – was the 7th generation from the Maharal of Prague.

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Then, I remember the ‘new portrait’ of the Alter Rebbe that was discovered a few years back, which you can see on the Collive website (screenshotted below):

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Here’s one of the comments from readers of the Collive website:

“I agree with the comment it looks like the GRA. I am not convinced this is the Alter Rebbe. It has some resemblance, but also very much like the Vilna Gaon.”

Quite.

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Let’s leave that rabbit hole alone for now, and come back to the machloket in Vilna.

So, I’m looking at that post-it note with the name of Yaakov Peretz Klatzi, head of the Vilna community on it, I suddenly remember the story of one Abraham Peretz of Shklov, who was a leading tax farmer, banker, shtadlan, maskil.

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He also happened to be the son-in-law of Joshua Zeitlin.

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And the last thing to tell you is that Abraham Peretz ended up marrying a non-Jewish woman, and also being baptized into the Lutheran church.

It’s so, so hard to find any real information about Abraham Peretz in the English-speaking world, where it’s all been carefully scrubbed and sanitized, but thank God for Google translate. Because I get to THIS SITE in Russian, and here’s a little more of what I learn about Abraham Peretz:

“The son of a Lubart rabbi, Peretz at the age of 16 married the daughter of a famous Talmudist and philanthropist, Rabbi Yehoshua Zeitlin (1742–1822) from Shklov, who was patronized by Prince G. Potemkin. Peretz received a good Jewish education at his father’s house and in the yeshiva, but he strove to supplement it with knowledge of foreign languages ​​and general education subjects. His father-in-law [i.e. Joshua Zeitlin] introduced him to Potemkin, as a result of which Peretz was able to move to St. Petersburg (early 1790s), where he began to represent the commercial and financial interests of Zeitlin. Soon he was promoted here as a banker, ship contractor and tax farmer, and in 1801 Emperor Paul I bestowed upon him the title of Commerce Counselor.”

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Notice how coy the internet is being about who Abraham Peretz’s dad is.

That set off the BS-o-meter again, so I went to see what I could learn about who the ‘rabbi of Lubartow’ was as that time (in Russian…). That’s when I tripped over this piece of information:

Abram Peretz was born in 1770 (or 1771) in Lubartow, Lublin province. His father was the rabbi of this small town and first taught his son at home, and then sent him to the yeshiva (where he himself taught).    However, Abram studied not only the sacred texts assigned to the rabbi’s son, but also other books, as well as languages ​​- he spoke German and Russian perfectly. The main teacher and spiritual mentor of the young man was not his father, but his uncle – the chief rabbi of Berlin, Hirsch Lebel (1721-1800). In his house, the young man learned a lot about the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskal), which his uncle was fascinated with. Источник: https://historylib.org/historybooks/Alina–Rebel_Evrei-v-Rossii-samye-vliyatelnye-i-bogatye/19

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Now I start to sit up!

Because we’ve mentioned ‘Hirsch Lebel’ a few times on this blog, not least, in this post:

https://www.rivkalevy.com/tracking-down-the-real-jacob-frank/

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As well as being the Chief Rabbi of Berlin, he was also the Chief Rabbi of London, too, where he was called ‘Hart Lyon’.

And ‘Hirshel Lobel’s’ father is Aryeh Leib Lowenstaam – the same guy I was talking about above, as being the ABD of Amsterdam who apparently converted the ger tzedek Abraham ben Abraham. And Hirshel Lobel of Berlin is the uncle of the wealthy maskil, Lutheran convert and son-in-law of Joshua Zeitlin, Abraham Peretz. Amazing, how all this is coming together. But there’s more.

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Now that we know this, it should be a cinch to figure out who Abraham Peretz really was, in the real world.

He’s the nephew of Tzvi Hirsh Lowenstaam (Hirshel Lobel) of Berlin and London. That means that either one of his parents is the sibling of Tzvi Hirsh Lowenstaam, or that one of their siblings married Tzvi Hirsh Lowenstaam.

But of course, here’s where we trip headlong into more Kevin Lawrence Hanit obfuscation and distortions.

Which always tells me I’m on the right track with all this stuff.

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Why is this stuff being so hidden?

Because if you recall from THIS post, I set out a theory that Tzvi Hirsch Lowenstaam is a strong contender for the real father of none other than Jacob Frank. Which would make false messiah Jacob Frank and converted Lutheran maskil Abraham Peretz cousins. And which would bring that whole Frankist connection way closer to Yehoshua Zeitlin, Peretz’s father-in-law, and in turn to the rest of the leading Jewish figures in Shklov and Vilna – on both sides of the mitnaged / chassid divide. Remember that in previous posts, we figured out that:

Joshua Zeitlin is listed as the father in law of ‘Reb Alexander Sender’ – apparently one of the Alter Rebbe’s favorite talmidim. And ‘Alexander Sender’ is meant to be the father of Moshe of Shklov – who we already pinned down as being one and the same as Moshe Schneuri, the Alter Rebbe’s catholic Frankist son.

 That would make Joshua Zeitlin the Alter Rebbe’s father in law.

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So far, we still didn’t manage to track down Rabbi Yehuda Ben Eliezer Safra Vedayana of Vilna down, in the real world.

But we learned a lot of other interesting things. And I can see that I’m finally, bezrat Hashem, closing the gap between the known and unknown enough to make that elusive breakthrough I’ve been waiting on for 6 months at least possible.

So, we’ll wait to see what the next piece of the puzzle is, that God decides to toss me.

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