Continuing the translation of the awesome shiur from just before Purim.
I am still going through it, and have a lot more to translate, but you can read Part 1 HERE.
As with all of the Rav’s shiurim, there is so much to unpack in every sentence here – you can learn tons of new information, if you take the time to engage with the clues here.
So, don’t necessarily take all this literally, use it as a jumping off point, to understand a lot more about our ‘real Jewish history’ – but you need to put in the effort, to harvest the insights here.
Enjoy!
====
I was in Guatamala for three years. I was in Guatamala, and there you can see two oceans.
In Guatamala, you see two oceans. This is in Guatamala. You see the Atlantic Ocean, and also the Pacific Ocean – you see both of them. And afterwards, you see Costa Rica, and then Panama.
Who built Panama? The Rothschilds! They built the Suez Canal, and they built Panama. Everything that exists in the world, the Rothschilds built it. They were the richest people in the world.
Because when R’ Moshe Amshil (we say it’s ‘Anshel’, but the real name was ‘Amshel’, with a ‘m’). So, Moshe Amshel – Moshe Anshel, he was the gabbai of Rabbi Yaakov of Galuna. He was called ‘Yokel’, Yokel of Galuna.
==
And there is also the get (bill of divorce) of Galuna, and the get of Cleves. It was all together.
The Noda Be’Yehuda was against the get of Galuna, and was in favor of the get of Cleves, because there, there was the grandpa of the Tiferet Yisrael, Rabbi Yisrael Lifshitz, and Rabbi Yisrael Lifshitz signed on the get. He did the get.
But the father of the groom…It’s written ‘Yitzchak ben Rabbi Eliezer’ – he was called ‘Yitzchak.’ And the bride was called ‘Leah’. Leah Gunzholtz. She was a girl of 16, and he was a young man aged 18.
And he didn’t want the shidduch, but they pressured him into the shidduch, from the beginning. So on the first shabbat [after the wedding], he ran away. He didn’t want the shidduch. They pushed him to make the shidduch, and he didn’t want it. He already had someone else in mind, he didn’t want [this shidduch] under any circumstances.
So, he ran away from home. And then they decided that he was crazy, because what sort of person runs away?! But, this was the most normal thing in the world – he didn’t want the shidduch, so he ran away.
And he took all the money with him – so he was even more ‘sane’.
==
But it was decided, his father said: I have a crazy son.
He went to Rabbi Abish Abba from Frankfort, and he said: I have a crazy son, who ran away in the middle of the sheva brachot. And they did a get for him. And there was Yisrael Lifshitz – the grandfather of the ‘Tiferet Yisrael’ – he did a him a get.
So, he got married on the Wednesday; on Shabbat he ran away from the house, and then on the following Wednesday, he already gave the get. He gave the get in the city of Cleves – the ‘Get of Cleves’.
He was from Mannheim, and the wedding was in Metz. All this took place along the Rhine river, the Rhine, ‘Reines’.
==
So, he lived in Reines, and he travelled with a boat, in a ferry, until he got to Cleves.
And when he got to Cleves he said to Shimshon Copenhagen – this was a Shimshon from the city of Copenhagen, from Denmark.
He told him [what was happening], and he delivered a get to him and then disappeared. [The groom] told him: I don’t want this shidduch, they forced me into it. I, I have some problem here, because they want to frame me as a murderer, so I am now on my way to London. If you don’t perform the get for me now – I’m going to disappear. She’ll be an agunah [unable to remarry] for the rest of her life.
So, Shimshon Copenhagen went in to see Rabbi Yisrael Lifshitz, the rabbi of Cleves. He told him that there was a groom here, who got married less than a week ago, and he is saying that if they don’t write a get for him, today, then he’s going to disappear. He’s on the way to London, he’s decided to run away from his house.
So, Rabbi Yisrael Lifshitz arranged the get for him. And he gave it to Leah, Leah Guntzholtz. She was called ‘Leah’.
==
But then, the father of the groom didn’t know anything about this: how could a groom give a get without his father?!
So, the father said: My son isn’t sane, the get is passul [disqualified]. And he was a chassid of Rabbi Abish. And Rabbi Abish validated the get [i.e. agreed it was a kosher get.] But then, all the gabbaim (attendants of the Rabbi) got a lot of money from the father of the groom, and they said to Rabbi Abish that he should passul (disqualify) the get.
This was said to Rabbi Abish of Frankfort.
==
(‘Frankfort’ – there is the Yanuka of Frankfort, [Rabbi Yisrael Perlov of Karlin].
Everyone should travel to the Yanuka today, each person should go to the Yanuka. He was called R’ Yisrael, R’ Yisrael ben R’ Asher, ‘the Frankforter’.
He went to Berlin for an operation, and he died in the middle of the operation. They took him for burial to Frankfort. So, each person should travel to the ‘Frankforter’. This is the first thing, to travel to the ‘Frankforter’.)
==
[R’ Abish of Frankfort] was appointed by the King.
Because the [rabbinical] appointees, like Rabbi Yehezkel Landau, and everyone else, everything was only done with the permission of the king.
They used to need to have the permission of the king, in Prague, and in all the other places. They needed the king’s permission. If a person wants to be a rabbi – he needs the permission of the king.
Now, Rabbi Abish, he already saw that he made a mistake. He saw that. That he’d disqualified the get. Rabbi Abish. Because the father of the groom was his chassid, he gave him a lot of financial pidyonot, and like this, he ‘persuaded’ him. But, if he would have said that he’d made a mistake – they would have fired him.
If the king would have heard that he’d made a mistake, then he would have fired him from being the Rav of Frankfort. And then he wouldn’t have been a ‘Rav’.
==
R’ Yehezkel Landau wrote him four letters, but the gabbaim hid them from him, he didn’t even see them.
Rabbi Yehezkel Landau didn’t understand why he wasn’t replying to him, why he wasn’t responding?! Why isn’t he replying?!
Because they hid the letters.
====
Ad kan.
This snippet by itself is worth at least two weeks of solid research, to pick up what the Rav is really trying to tell us, about what was really going on.
Luckily, I made a start on at least some of the connections with the ‘Get of Cleves’ and the Sabbateans behind it, in this post
On Elul 8, 5526 (August 14, 1766), Isaac (Itzik), son of Eliezer Neiberg of Mannheim, married Leah, daughter of Jacob Guenzhausen of Bonn.
On the Sabbath following the wedding the bridegroom took 94 gold crowns of the dowry and disappeared. After an extensive search he was found two days later in the house of a non-Jew in the village of Farenheim and brought home. A few days later Isaac informed his wife’s family that he could no longer stay in Germany because of the grave danger which threatened him there, and that he was obliged to immigrate to England.
He declared his willingness to give his wife a divorce in order to prevent her from becoming an *agunah . His offer was accepted, and Cleves on the German-Dutch border was selected as the place for the get to be given.
Consequently, on the 22nd of Elul, Israel b. Eliezer *Lipschuetz , the av bet din of Cleves, effected the divorce.
==
Leah returned to Mannheim and Isaac proceeded to England. When his father learned of the divorce, he suspected that the whole affair had been contrived by the woman’s relatives to extort the dowry money from Isaac.
He turned to R. Tevele Hess of Mannheim who invalidated the get on the grounds that in his view the husband was not of sound mind when he delivered it. Hess, not relying upon his own judgment, applied to the bet din of Frankfurt and to Naphtali Hirsch Katzenellenbogen of Pfalz, Eliezer Katzenellenbogen of Hagenau, and Joseph Steinhardt of Fuerth, requesting their confirmation of his ruling.
The bet din of Frankfurt, headed by Abraham b. Ẓevi Hirsch of Lissau, not only agreed, but demanded that Lipschuetz himself declare the get invalid and proclaim Leah to be still a married woman.
====
That ‘Tevele Hess of Mannheim’ had some very interesting descendants including one Moses Hess.
Moses (Moritz) Hess (21 January 1812 – 6 April 1875) was a German-Jewish philosopher, early communist and Zionist thinker. His socialist theories led to disagreements with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
He studied with Rabbi Shmuel of Fjorda (the” Beit Shmuel”), and then went to Frankfurt to study with Rabbi Naftali Katz, who was the rabbi of the place at the time, with whom he also studied Kabbalah. After the great fire that broke out in the city in 1711, for which Rabbi Naftali Katz was imprisoned, Rabbi Naftali’s disciples dispersed and Rabbi Avraham returned to Poland.
There he made a living selling oils for a time, until he began serving as a rabbinate. At some point, he probably also studied with Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Biala.
Married to the daughter of Rabbi Eliyahu Hacohen Mazritsch (son-in-law of Rabbi Shmuel of Fjorda)
====
R’ Avraham Chaim Shor links us to a great number of the Sabbateans we’ve been trying to track down, over the last few years.
But you can really tell more about a person, by his teachers.
One of R Abraham Abish’s main teachers is that R’ Naftali Katz of Frankfurt, who was a known Sabbatean ‘prophet’, and was arrested after the fire in the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt, on suspicion of practising black magic, particularly in connection with amulets.
R’ Abraham Abish also supported Jonathan Eybshutz, in the ‘amulets controversy’.
Married to the daughter of Rabbi Simcha Hacohen Rappaport of Lublin, his brother-in-law was Rabbi Chaim Hacohen Rappaport. After serving as Biala’s rabbi for a period, he was imprisoned with his family by the city’s ruler, following a traumatic event in which one of the Lubomirski princes tried to kidnap his daughter-in-law and was beaten.
The rabbi was released under lobbying by the Jewish rabbi and philanthropist, the court Jew of August II, Issachar Bernd Lehmann. Three days after the wedding, his daughter-in-law died. After his release, he returned to serve as rabbi and head of yeshiva in his hometown of Lviv.
====
Again, does anything about this story of his daughter-in-law sound ‘strange’ to you?
Zvi Hirsh of Biala has other students – many of whom are now known to be Sabbatean-Frankists, and the ancestors of many leading Sabbatean-Frankists.
Tov, I’m going to stop there for today, but I encourage you to pick a name, and do some research of your own!
Because it’s ALWAYS the same people, the same families, the same playback, the same manipulation and deceit.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/christian-holzinger-nHaGqnNk2Ls-unsplash-1-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C2560&ssl=125602560Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-03-19 11:47:062023-03-19 13:34:13The Rav on Rothschilds and the Get of Cleves – (Part 2)
It’s the leaked document from May 2022, explaining how in the next plandemic, the WHO can effectively declare martial law on every country who signed up with them.
Here’s a screenshot from page 9, the arrows show you the bit talking about the WHO can – and will – trigger the next ‘lockdowns’:
====
HERE is Dr Netanyahu’s Twitter feed – go and research more about the WHO’s ‘OneHealth’ initiative, you’ll start to see how everything is connected.
Today is #OneHealthDay!#OneHealth is a unifying approach that balances the health of:
🧑🏾👩🏽🦱🧓🏼 people,
🐼🦔🐢 animals, and
🌺🌳🌱 ecosystems.
recognizing that the health of humans, animals, and their shared environment is inter-dependent. pic.twitter.com/ET6Pvhiupk
As we gear up for ‘Smart Cities’ based on the climate change hoax, and probably shortly before the ‘alien invasion’ hoax, understand that ALL OF THESE PEOPLE are connected to each other -and don’t work for us.
There is no ‘left and right’.
There are good people at the ground level, trying to do the right thing, and trying to be good people, but often with some confused ideas about what that actually means in practise.
And then, there are ‘public officials’ – none of whom work for us, and all of whom work very hard to throw labels around that disguise the fact that our real enemies are not each other.
But the ‘controllers’ who control all our politicians, governments, militaries, media and institutions, and who operate ‘above us’ via organisations like the WHO.
====
Yesterday in Tel Aviv, a bunch of Na-Nachs showed up at the demonstrations, and got a huge number of the protesters dancing with them, to music praising Hashem.
That’s how we break this ‘spell’, that is pitting brother against brother, Jew against Jew.
Not with more violence and hatred, God forbid.
But with emuna – and dancing.
Exactly how Rebbe Nachman and the Rav said.
====
PS: It also strikes me that the whole thing with Sara Netanyahu getting ‘mobbed’ at her hairdresser’s in Tel Aviv is 100% a set up.
Everyone knew the traffic in Tel Aviv was going to be crazy yesterday, the day of the demonstration. No-one would arrange a hairdresser’s appointment from out of town on a day like that, especially not the PM’s wife.
***MORE UPDATES ABOUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN HUWARA***
Usually, I update at the end of the post, but this information is important to know, so I’m updating at the beginning, so more people will notice it.
I just spoke to my ‘Shomronista’, and got more details of what really happened during the ‘riot’ in Huwara.
Here’s what she told me:
====
The army was there the whole way through, right from the beginning, and let the Jews who came to Huwara do what they want without stopping them, for a long time.
The cars that were being burnt were all the old, clapped-out bangers that litter most Arab towns in Israel – and that includes a massive mountain of old cars, that made the biggest ‘bonfire’.
The Jewish residents weren’t setting any buildings on fire – although some of the cars that got burnt were next to buildings, that got collaterally damaged. But no Arab buildings were ‘burnt down’ – my daughter went through Huwara yesterday, that’s what she is telling me. And also, the residents didn’t start ‘beating up’ or attacking any Arabs, they were just burning old cars.
The Arabs who were injured, and the one man who was killed, WERE THROWING STONES at the IDF soldiers, and were injured and killed by the IDF. (This explains how the army were also firing at Jewish journalists, even though they identified themselves up front as journalists.)
Basically, the IDF’s role in all this – both when they stood back and let this happen, and also when they then got involved and started firing at the Arabs – is being quietly ignored.
That’s where we’re at. I’ll update if there are more details to clarify, but my daughter said it’s gone back to being relatively quiet there already.
TBC
====
(Here’s where the original post begins….)
The ‘right wingers’, apparently.
The Ben Gvirs, the Smotrichs, the ‘Likudniks’.
Remember, the government controls the military.
The government controls the police.
The government controls the media.
The government controls the spy agencies, including the GSS (the unit of the Shabak set up especially to torture and persecute ‘Jewish terrorists’…_
====
Who was in power, and signed off on, the GSS torture and ‘frame up’ of Amiram ben Uliel for the Duma fire?
This same ‘right wing’ government.
====
Who was in power, and signed off, on all the Covid propaganda, lockdowns, forced maskings, ‘track and trace’ and attempts to mandate ‘Covid shots’ for everyone in Israel?
This same ‘right wing’ government.
====
Who was in power, and worked very hard, to close down Meron and ensure that 45 frum Jews would be killed on L’ag B’omer?
This same ‘right wing’ government.
====
Who arranged for Lod to be trashed by Arab rioters, in the hopes of sparking another ‘intifada’ in Israel that would tighten their control on the country and make it easier to pass more draconian laws using the excuse of ‘national security’?
This same ‘right wing’ government.
====
We have an army that is being used against us.
We have spy agencies that are being used against us.
We have government-controlled media that is being used against us.
We have a police force that is being used against us.
We have a whole bunch of laws ‘to strengthen national security’ that are simply being used against us.
Wake up!
====
There was another shooting, the same day that the two brothers were killed in Huwara, and the riot was ‘arranged’ there by the government, as the precursor for the next clamp down on the ‘Jewish Terrorists of the Shomron’.
A volunteer soldier in the IDF was shot to death in the Bekaa Valley.
That place has been peaceful for years and years…. I know it well, my kid was in school there for a while and that’s the route we usually drive up from Jerusalem to the North.
Anyone who thinks this ‘death penalty for terrorists’ – who are willing to commit suicide anyway, to get to their version of Heaven! – is going to ‘deter’ any more violence is just delusional.
They are allowing their hatred and fear of the Arabs to blind them to the reality.
And the reality is that all this violence and terrorism is being orchestrated by our own government, military, spy agencies and police, to keep ‘the controllers’ plan of never-ending war in the Middle East going forever.
Because a nation at war is a nation easily controlled and manipulated and censored.
====
So, I’m not ‘happy’ that a riot took place in Huwara.
No-one even knows if the killer is even from Huwara, because he drove his car into the city, smashed into the brothers’ car – and then got out and shot them at point-blank range.
Shechem is 7 kilometres up the road from Huwara.
It’s at least possible the killer came from there.
But hey, don’t let things like this stop anyone from going on senseless, violent rampages against people who happen to live at the location of a terrorist attack!
By this logic, we should also go and burn down Neve Yaakov and Ramot, as a ‘deterrent’ for the citizens of those locations who failed to prevent the recent terrorist attacks.
====
If this idea sounds retarded – it’s because it is.
All that’s happened now is that there are hundreds more angry Arabs in Huwara, who have a real grudge against the Jews who burnt their cars and homes.
How is that meant to stop any more terror attacks happening against Jews there?
Really?
====
We have all this violence in our country, because our politicians, military and spy agencies want all this violence.
Full stop.
These people aren’t working for ‘us’, and they also aren’t working for ‘the Arabs’….
They are working for their Edomite controllers behind the scenes, that we could call ‘America’, and ‘Europe’, but who are really the same small group of elite oligarchs who orchestrated the Covid plandemic, the killer GO nanotech shots, the 5G, the ‘climate change’ hoax, the transgender social engineering project, the ‘war in Ukraine’ – and coming soon, the ‘fake alien invasion’.
Our governments and our military don’t work for us.
And that is true, regardless of who we vote for.
====
So, it boils down to how we really deal with this fact.
Personally, I can’t understand how going on violent rampages against Arabs is going to accomplish anything positive, in the long run.
I can tell you that the military and the police already have a long, and ever-growing, list of ‘Jewish terrorists’ that they are keeping under house arrest – with no hearings! – for months and months and months.
And, that the jails are filling up with idealistic Jewish young men who are literally serving months of jail time for the crime of puncturing tyres of Arab cars…
Just think, what the sentences will be for burning Arab cars and property, and apparently even violently lynching Arabs.
====
Our young people will serve the cause of the Jewish people far better by getting married, and raising very large families in the Shomron, who are on the path of Torah and mitvoth.
Instead of rotting away in jail for years, because ‘national security’ crimes carry enormous, horrible sentences (at least, for ‘Jewish terrorists’….) – and now, they’ve added the death penalty to that list.
That same ‘right wing’ government that has been busy killing religious Jews in a bunch of different ways, for a very long time.
====
Our Sages teach us that when a person lets their anger take over, it’s as though they deny God, worship idols – and are controlled by ‘demons’.
Can anything good ever really come out of this?
Really?
I understand the pain, I understand the hurt, and yes, the anger.
But really, the Moving Force behind all this is God.
Once we start to really believe in God, and stop believing in corrupt politicians and violence to ‘solve our problems’ – our problems really will start to be solved.
====
That’s what they don’t want us to figure out.
And that’s why they keep creating these circumstances, to goad idealistic Jews into behaving like people who are ‘demonically possessed’.
Please, stop falling for it! Step out of this media-created ‘virtual reality’ and take the goggles off!
We can solve this ‘problem’ the Jewish way, with prayer, teshuva and charity.
But only when we really start to overcome the bad middot that are blocking us from really believing in God, and really understanding that Ein Od Milvado.
====
UPDATES:
Some more things I’m noticing:
The ‘usual suspects’ cheering all this horrible violence on against the Arabs of Huwara in the comments section of government propaganda ‘news’ sites like A7 and YWN overlap hugely with the same people who were arguing that ‘Covid is real’ and ‘shots are great’, etc. Buyer beware! There are paid disinformation artists on all these sites, trying to ‘set the tone of the debate’ by appearing to be one of us. They aren’t. They are working for the side of evil.
There are reports of people in ‘matching black outfits’ – and faces covered, natch, running all over Huwara to set these fires. They sound like people who work for the government…. either our own, or the Americans, who COINCIDENTALLY were just here, over the way in Jordan, ‘talking peace’.
====
Now, it’s still possible that some of these ‘men in black’ are still ‘Hilltop Youth’…. but it’s starting to feel way more likely that the government (or the CIA…) used the demonstration by the legit ‘Hilltop Youth’ to send their own scumbags out to set the fires and ramp the violence up like this.
That’s why it’s SO IMPORTANT that real Jews don’t lend their hands to this violence, or facilitate it!
The government – and the non-Jewish controllers behind them – will just use it to frame the sincere, Torah-observant Jews, as we saw with Amiram ben Uliel, and undoubtedly, we are going to start seeing again and again.
They have been pulling this trick for decades!!!
Remember, who really shot Rabin?
That’s right: Shimon Peres and his Shabak operatives.
But who got blamed and demonised for it?
====
3) This is being called ‘the Huwara Pogrom’ in the Arab world.
It’s hard to argue with that statement.
Imagine if after the Nablus massacre, Palestinians marched to the nearest Israeli settlement, sat dozens of homes, cars & shops on fire
& assaulted 10s of settlers
How many world leaders would rush to declare it a “barbaric attack on the civilized world”?
Yesterday morning, me and my husband went for a tiyul in the Shomron.
One of my kids is there a lot, and I spent Rosh Hashana up a hill close to Itamar, and I actually really loved the scenery there.
So, yesterday I dragged my husband to go and look at some of the new projects that are going on all over in the Shomron.
They are building new stuff in Ofra, Shiloh, Eli, Ma’aleh Levona, Itamar, Elon Moreh – all over!
We drove through Huwara on the way into Itamar, and saw the new ‘bypass’ road they are currently building, that skirts the town, and should be ready sometime in 2024, BH.
We drove through Huwara on the way out of Itamar, too, and then decided to detour to Ariel, to get some lunch.
====
Huwara seemed pretty quiet to me both times, going through.
One side was relatively fast driving, the other side was a bit jammed up, and we were stuck in a small queue with a bunch of Palestinian cars, waiting to go around the roundabout.
I felt a bit uncomfortable. But only a bit. I’ve been through Huwara a bunch of times the last few months, and one of my kids drives that road a few times a week.
====
So, we’re sitting eating our hummus and pita, when the Arab guy who served us starts talking about a pigua – a terror attack – that just happened right next to Ariel.
What happened? I asked him.
Two people just got shot in Huwara, he told me. Don’t go back to Jerusalem that way.
====
In the car, I tried to phone a kid to give me more details, but no-one picked up.
I knew my ‘Shomronista’ was home in Jerusalem, so at least that was one thing I wasn’t worrying about.
(Of course, a bunch of people have recently been killed in Jerusalem too… but your mind kind of ‘compartmentalises’ all this stuff, because otherwise you go bonkers.)
It’s only when I got home, and then read about the two brothers shot dead at point-blank range in the middle of Huwara, 20 minutes after we’d just driven through it, that I started to feel a little shakey.
====
Let’s back up a minute, and just explain that when I’m having that ‘discussion’ about the appropriate way of dealing with terrorists and people who are out to kill Jews, it’s not theoretical for me.
I live here, right on the seam of East Jerusalem.
Two guys got shot literally a 10 minute walk away from me, three weeks ago.
One of my kids is in the Shomron all the time, together with a whole bunch of her friends.
She has friends getting engaged to ‘Hilltop Youth’ who are literally doing time in prison, for the crime of puncturing the tyre of a Palestinian car….
We’ve been having some very hard discussions about ‘price tag events’, and how they just play into the hands of the authorities, and it’s close to home for everyone, because we live here, in Israel, and this discussion is not ‘theoretical’.
Anything but.
====
For months and months, I’ve been telling my Shomronista that this ‘right wing government’ are all snakes, all doing the bidding of the US and the European ‘controllers’, to get laws in place in Israel that will enable them to really come down on ‘terrorists’ hard.
No, not the Abu Mazens and the Yasser Arafats, silly.
The real terrorists – ‘climate change terrorists’, and ‘covid-denier terrorists’, and ‘anyone who is against totalitarian government’ terrorists.
I.e., you and me.
For months and months, my Shomronista has been arguing hard against that.
But today, something changed.
====
Yesterday, there was a big protest in Huwara, with residents of the Shomron apparently burning down buildings and cars there.
Palestinian Authority media outlets, including WAFA, claim that hundreds of Jews rioted in Huwara Sunday night, torching some 50 cars and more than 15 buildings.
Roughly 380 locals were injured and one person was killed, according to the reports.
====
Believe me, I’m also totally sickened by the murder yesterday.
It was very close to home.
But this response is totally just playing into the hands of ‘the controllers’, who send these Arabs out to do what they do – with the full backing of our government, military, and secret services – just so they can turn us all against each other, start a civil war between Jews, and get more of their disgusting ‘laws’ on the books, that will ONLY be used against believing Jews, especially ‘the Hilltop Youth’.
How can I say something like this?
=====
Every square inch approaching Huwara from all directions has a ton of army and ‘magavnikim’.
Yesterday, there was no secret that there was going to be a demonstration of the Jews in and near Huwara.
These demonstrations have also happened in the past.
But this time, ALL THE SOLDIERS AND MILITARY THAT COULD HAVE HELPED KEEP ‘ORDER’ DISAPPEARED, and just let Huwara get trashed in an insane way.
We saw exactly the same thing back in Lod a couple of years’ ago when the ‘right wing government’ also decided it was time to tighten their grip on power with another Arab intifada.
So, they primed the pump, encouraged the Arabs to start rioting – and then told the police to be ANYWHERE except where the riots were going on.
I have first-hand testimony about what went on then, and I wrote about it on my blog.
And they are pulling the same stunt again now.
====
Why?
Because they want laws on the books giving them the right to ‘kill terrorists’ – like ‘covid deniers’ and ‘climate change deniers’ and ‘anyone-who-doesn’t-like-dictatorships’ deniers.
Because they want laws on the books that makes it IMPOSSIBLE for the Supreme Court to ever overturn any law made by the government.
(Think back to track and trace during Covid – that attempt only ‘disappeared’ because it was struck down by our disgustingly corrupt Supreme Court. There are no ‘good guys’ in this picture, only two sets of ‘bad guys’ who are kind of getting in each other’s way, as each tries to grab a bigger piece of the pie.)
And most of all, because they want to turn Jew against Jew, and stoking sinat chinam to the hilt.
Because that’s they only way they can really defeat us.
There is nothing new, under the sun.
====
Don’t believe me?
Look at this headline, also from Arutz 7, from this morning:
====
Everything that is happening in Israel now is directed, planned and prompted from the outside forces that are trying to destroy the Jewish people, destroy our Torah, and who are fighting against God and His morality with all their strength.
Don’t fall for it!
All our politicians are bought and paid for, just some hide it better than others.
And also, don’t despair that this is never going to be resolved.
It IT getting resolved, more and more, with each month that passes.
There are more Jews living in the Shomron than ever before, there are more houses being built there all the time, and they just can’t keep us off the holy land that Hashem promised to the Jewish people.
But for our part, we need to continue to make a massive effort to understand that God is behind all this, not ‘the Arabs’.
God.
And to have the emuna that if we continue to do our bit, to work on ourselves – and yes, to move to Eretz Yisrael, the only real home of the Jewish people – all this turns around for the good in the blink of an eye.
====
Violent Jews with guns don’t scare our enemies – they dafka are encouraging us to play the game on those terms, all the time, so they can demonise us, persecute us, and then pass more laws to either lock us up forever, or just flat out execute us.
But believing Jews who actually live on the land, keep the Torah, and build strong, flourishing families in the Holy Land?
That’s what keeps them up at night.
And that’s the real battle that is being fought, here.
====
UPDATE:
I’m updating with a few of the posts from Daniel Amram’s Telegram channel.
They round the picture out a little bit more. This one is from two journalists who explained the IDF fired on them, even though they identified upfront as journalists.
==
It’s hard not to cry when you see the convoy carrying the two murder victims being ‘accompanied’ by all the people standing by the side of Route 60, near Ofra.
But it’s also so beautiful! They aren’t going to win… sooner or later, the beauty of Am Yisrael is going to shine through, and the evil will totally fall.
May Hashem comfort the families, and may this be the last korbanot that is sacrificed by this ‘right wing government’ of ours, for political ends.
Who still thinks Ben Gvir is going to change things, in Israel?
***UPDATES BELOW***
Who’s still glad they wasted all their time and effort voting for him, and beating his drum?
As ‘politics as usual’ continues in Israel, you should know that all this puppet theatre is being 100% designed to take your eye off the real ball.
Look what law DID get passed in the Knesset yesterday, while everyone was jumping up and down about olive groves in Shiloh and old lefties demonstrating in Jerusalem.
It was passed 1am, February 14, with a vote of 51-37.
I’d love to know who voted ‘against’ – I can guarantee very few of those ‘right wingers’ in the current government, who so many people believe are fighting for their rights to live as Jews in a Jewish land.
It’s all a puppet show, to distract us all from the real agenda going on here.
====
UPDATE (in response to Chava’s comment, below):
If you go HERE, you’ll get to attorney Oren Pasternak’s Telegram channel, where he has a lot more details, including who voted to extend these ’emergency powers’ that they can use – again!!! – to lock us all down and mask us all up, when they get the ‘nod’ from the WHO, and the controllers behind all this.
Here’s his tweet – all those ‘right wingers’ – including Otzma Yehudit – voted TO CONTINUE THIS COVID ‘EMERGENCY POWERS’ LAW.
And the ‘left wingers’ voted against.
1.תוצאות ההצבעה על הארכת חוק הסמכויות בשנה!
שנערכה ב-14.2.23 ב-1 לפנות בוקר! בניגוד להצבעות אחרות אחה”צ
הצביעו בעד 51- ליכוד, ש”ס, אגודה, ציונות דתית, עוצמה יהודית, נועם
הצביעו נגד 37- יש עתיד, מחנה ממלכתי, עבודה, ישראל ביתנו, חד”ש-תע”ל
תאהבו! תגיבו:”ממשלת נוכלים!” ותשתפו!
להמשך> pic.twitter.com/nRmLgW2aWn
Here’s a google translated screenshot, from his Telegram channel:
====
Here he is from February 6th 2023, at a Knesset meeting challenging the MoH’s request to expand these powers for another year:
====
Wow, SO pleased we managed to get ‘all the evil people’ out of power, by voting in this new ‘right wing’ government….
Whatever.
====
While we’re on the subject, here’s an interesting new scientific study that just come out, comparing how people fared after getting Covid shots in both Israel and Australia, from the ‘Correlation Canada‘ research team.
Here’s the abstract:
ABSTRACT: It is now well established from autopsy studies and adverse effect monitoring that the COVID-19 vaccines can cause death.
The vaccine-dose fatality rate (vDFR), which is the ratio of vaccine induced deaths to vaccine doses delivered in a population, has recently been measured by us to be as large as 1 % in India and when “vaccine equity” campaigns were applied in high-poverty states of the USA, and to be 0.05 % in Australia, with data that is not discriminated by age group.
Here, we provide the first empirical evaluations of age-stratified vDFRs, using national all-cause mortality and vaccine rollout data, for Israel and Australia. We find that the vDFR increases dramatically with age for older adults, being exponential with a doubling time of approximately 5.2 ± 0.4 years.
As a result the vDFR is an order of magnitude greater in the most elderly population than the all-population value, reaching 0.6 % for the 80+ years age group in Israel and 1 % for the 85+ years age group in Australia, compared to < 0.01 % for young adults (< 45 year olds).
Our results imply that it was reckless to prioritise vaccinating those deemed to be in greatest need of protection.
====
The current people sitting in the Knesset pushed these killer shots onto millions of people in Israel.
And they just passed another law, with a massive margin, to continue having the ‘special powers’ they awarded themselves back in July 2020, to force-mask us, lock us all down, terrorise us with police and ‘health officials’ – and ‘persuade’ millions upon millions to take dangerous, killer Covid shots.
THAT is the real news.
====
While we’re on the subject, I saw this on Chananya Weissman’s rumble channel:
====
It’s Rabbanit Kolodetsky, the late Rav Kanievsky’s daughter, doubling-down on all the advice she and her family gave out to encourage frum Jews to go and get the Covid shots.
Snippet from the English translation:
Visitor: [I have a question] regarding the vaccine…
Kolodetsky: [Emphatic] Definitely get vaccinated!
Visitor: He was in favor of it?
Kolodetsky: For sure! For sure!
Visitor: Even though some people suffered from it?
Kolodetsky: Nothing happened. Everyone who took it is alive and fine. For sure.
Visitor: Are you sure that no one suffered from the vaccine?
Kolodetsky: Nothing happened. Get vaccinated.
Visitor: But it’s for sure that no one suffered from the vaccine?
Kolodetsky: Not even one person suffered from the vaccine. Those who didn’t take the vaccine died. Those who took the vaccine – everything was studied, everything is fine.
Visitor: Yes?
Kolodetsky: They all have children, they are all healthy, everything. Whoever died, it wasn’t from the vaccine. The Rav said get vaccinated, get vaccinated. This is the hishtadlus [required effort] of our generation. Everyone did it. I told everyone to do it, the Rav told me to tell everyone. I came to him. I told him I take a pill for my heart, he said get vaccinated, tell everyone to get vaccinated.
====
To be clear, when Rav Berland told a couple of individuals – who I know personally – that no harm would come to them from getting the shots, he was talking about a specific situation where those people were trying to make aliyah.
They were in a position of not being allowed to move here, unless they got the Covid shots, which they really didn’t want to do.
Both of these individuals have a lot of emunat tzaddikim, and are in the habit of paying a lot of pidyon nefesh.
For those people, the Rav said that if they had to get the shot, it wouldn’t harm them.
But everyone knows that Breslov, from its inception, is totally against going to doctors, or relying on the medical profession. Rabbenu spoke out against the medical profession repeatedly, and made very strong warnings to avoid doctors at all coss.
That is the ‘ground zero’ of Breslov, the starting place.
It’s a million, billion miles away, from the type of ‘advice’ being handed out in Bnei Brak, above.
====
So, this is a snapshot of the ‘reality’ we currently live in.
And now, we have to sweeten this ‘reality’, and turn it around, with our prayers, teshuva, charity – and clapping and dancing.
And if we do that, we WILL see some tremendous miracles, because this whole thing is just a puppet show, to test our emuna and middot and emunat tzaddikim.
And our prayers and teshuva can, and hopefully will, continue to turn all this around for the best.
I am hearing from a lot of people that they can see how things are mamash being sweetened for them, in their own dalet amot, the closer they stay to the Rav, the more Tikkun HaKlalis they say, the more pidyonot they do, the more time they spend on trying to figure things out, in hitbodedut.
And I can see that so, so clearly from my own life too.
====
Everyone is suffering right now, in obvious and hidden ways.
We are all going through so much turmoil – and there was also another small earthquake in Israel yesterday, which again woke my husband up, around 4.30AM.
The ground is literally shaking under our feet.
But not pointlessly.
And if we hang on to God and the True Tzaddikim, while God is picking up the world and shaking it like a rug – somehow, all this will turn around for the best.
But stop wasting time and energy on puppet politicians and all the political fakery, wherever you happen to live, and up the prayers and teshuva.
====
UPDATE:
So, I went to look up more about Adv. Pasternak – who has been tirelessly fighting coronafascism for three years, despite apparently being a ‘leftie’.
This is a google translated snippet from his Telegram channel, explaining why he is against Netanyahu’s judiciary reform proposals. It makes very interesting reading.
And it proves, yet again, that all these politicians are corrupt, flimsy reeds. The sooner this ‘right wing government’ crumbles into dust, the better it will be for all of us.
When all the politicians are bought and paid for, it’s way better to have no government and endless, pointless elections, then people who use their position to pass laws that will just continue to hurt you and me, on behalf of their Big Pharma paymasters and oligarch backers.
Left or right – they are all awful.
But ‘right’ are way worse, because we expect better, and so they continue to fool us.
Never forget who was in power when 45 Jews were deliberately murdered in Meron. And who was in power when ‘Covid 19’ was sprung upon us.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/daniel-schludi-mAGZNECMcUg-unsplash-1-scaled.jpg?fit=2048%2C2560&ssl=125602048Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-02-16 10:30:382023-02-16 17:54:53While we were all looking the other way…
This morning, around 10am, I heard a bunch of sirens near my house, near the Old City.
Then the helicopters started up, and both my kids woke up and started asking me what had happened.
It was shabbos – so I didn’t know.
On the way to our lunch invite, one of the kids walked over to a police car and asked them what was going on.
Pigua in the Old City. Two people got wounded.
Ah.
Baruch Hashem, no-one was killed….
====
Then motzash, the kids are checking for more details, and that’s when we found out about the shooting attack in Neve Yaakov, the other end of Jerusalem, Friday night.
At least seven people were killed, and many more injured.
Baruch Dayan HaEmet – and may Hashem avenge their blood.
====
All these terror attacks…. nearly always, exclusively, against chareidi Jews….
Nearly always, exclusively, in ‘frum’ neighborhoods….
All I’m saying, is that the evil people who really run the world from behind the scenes use all this violence, all this hatred, to their own ends, just to scare people into giving up more of their freedoms, and to divide and conquer us ‘small guys’.
The answer is not more violence and more hatred.
The answer is to look at who really benefits from all these ‘terror attacks’, always so conveniently timed.
It’s not the Jews in Israel.
And it’s also not the Palestinians.
Think about that carefully.
And pray that more of us understand what is actually happening here, so the people who really benefit from turning ‘the small people’ against each other can no longer get away with this.
====
BTW – I just saw this posted up on the Habayitah website HERE.
====
Snippet of the interview with Itamar ben Gvir, from 10 days ago:
“Are (Our) plan has two parts:
“The first part is strengthening the blue police. We will raise salaries for all police officers, from new recruits to the rank of inspector. We’re talking about an increase of between 20% and 40% in the salaries of police officers, in a way that will allow police officers to live with dignity, and allow us to bring back the police officers.
“I call on all the police officers who have left the force in recent years: return home!!!
“In addition, we will recruit 4,000 police officers in the next two years, and fill in the gaps in the equipment and procurement of the Israel Police.
“The second part is the establishment of the National Guard force. We will double the Border Guard, and turn it from a local into a national task force; expand the activity of the special forces against organized crime; turn the intelligence center into an expanded complex of technology and cyber; and establish a nationwide volunteer arm of ten thousand veterans of combat units.
“At the head of these two parts will be Commissioner Kobi Shabtai.
“Citizens of Israel, the National Guard is calling you!! Come and volunteer for the National Guard!!!
“This day is a day of good news for the citizens of Israel. Good news about police reform. Good news for the police. Good news for all of us.
====
Question 1:
How do you rehabilitate the police in the eyes of citizens who now distrust and dislike the police tremendously, after Covid 19 and what happened at Meron (under that same Kobi Shabtai….)
Question 2:
How do you ensure that there are enough police and security forces to ensure compliance with your next ‘lock downs’ and ‘compulsory vaccinations’ – but without drawing too much attention to that part of the plan?
Question 3:
How stupid do you have to be, to think that this is a) ‘good news’, and b) has anything to do with reforming the police to benefit us, the public?
Question 4:
Why the sudden, massive uptick in ‘terrorist attacks’ again?
“There are two police stations nearby,” relates another resident. “One of them is just a minute away, literally, from where the shooting started. We heard the sounds of shooting in the middle of our Shabbat meal and we called the police right away. But it took the police almost ten minutes to arrive. Here, right behind me, a father was killed, right in front of two of his children,” he cries.
====
Orthodox Jews are apparently very expendable, for the police and politicians in Israel….
Remember what happened in Elad, where another terrorist killed a bunch of people literally a minute away from the police station there, too, before any police showed up.
Real police reform would mean cleaning the whole rotten thing out, from top to bottom, including the politicians, not just adding more police to an existing rotten structure.
When we hear that the GSS has been disbanded, Amiram ben Uliel has been freed, the people responsible for the murders in Meron have been brought to justice, the police who killed Ahuvya Sandek have been finally charged for their crimes….
That’s when we can start talking about ‘police reform’.
Until then, it’s just more ‘divide and conquer’ tactics, from the political puppets pretending to work for us.
So, basically what is going on here is that by comparing a whole bunch of sources, based on our Gemara, and then ‘branching out’ into all the xtian historical details that orthodox Jews never engage with (for obvious reasons….) and then comparing that with ‘real, secular history’ – I’m figuring a whole bunch of astounding things out about ‘Yoshki’ and his royal family.
It’s a little hard to know where to start with all this, so I’m just going to kind of ‘tell you the story’ of my researches, and I will try to sum up as we go along. I have the profound feeling that once this biggest of big lies about real Jewish history is finally ‘out there’ – a lot of very good things are going to start happening.
Ready?
Let us begin.
====
My mum and dad came to visit last week, and while they were here, I asked my mum to have a look at the book ‘Moses in the Hieroglyphics’, by alternative historians Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett.
Long story short, they claim and demonstrate in the book that you can accurately read the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics using…. old Welsh.
My mum’s native tongue is Welsh, so I asked her to have a look – and she basically confirmed that Wilson and Blackett’s premise holds up.
Wilson and Blackett also claim that at least part of the lost ’10 Tribes’ made it out to the British Isles.
I haven’t got around to investigating that part of Jewish history yet, to try and bottom it out, but be aware that is their premise.
====
Wilson and Blackett also claim, rightfully, that from the time the Hannoverian ‘George I’ ascended the British throne, the English establishment stepped up their ‘war’ against the Welsh, and tried to obliterate the Welsh language, and also more of the ancient Welsh records that clearly show the links between the Roman Emperors, and ‘aulde British’ Royalty.
That much is definitely true, and we covered some of why that matters to us Jews in this post:
So then, I ordered more of Wilson and Blackett’s books, including one called:
Where Jesus is Buried: How the holy family came to Wales AFTER THE CRUCIFIXION and Britain became the world’ first Christian country.
I finished reading that book yesterday morning, just as I was putting this post together, about the tomb of ‘Jason-Jesus’ in Rehavia, and how ‘Yochanan Kohen Gadol’ mentioned in the Gemara is exactly the same person as both ‘John Hyrcanus I’ AND ‘Alexander Yannai’.
The two-faced, ‘dual personality’ hypocrisy that I thought was just the hallmark of the Sabbateans and the Frankists has actually been going on for a very long time…
====
So, let’s first try to sum up what they say in that book, and then this post will take off into ‘fake history busting incredibleness’.
First, there’s a whole big discussion about who the Essenes of Qumran really were, and how they connect to all this. We will park that part of the story for now, and revisit it in more detail in a different post.
Long story short: The Essenes seem to overlap with James the Just’s ‘Jewish-xtians’. And they were also communists, who believed strongly in the idea of ‘you will own nothing, and be happy.’
====
So.
I am summing a lot of things up here, but Wilson and Blackett have been going through a lot of ancient Welsh texts, including documents like the ‘Song of the Graves’, and they’ve discovered that many things were hidden in these lists.
For example, including specific instructions for where the graves of Jesus the Nazarene and Joseph of Arimathea can be found, even today, in Wales.
Basically:
Yoshki is taken off the cross after just four hours after being ‘drugged’ to appear like he’s dead, with the tacit agreement of the High Priesthood (who are actually his close family), and a big bribe paid to the Romans to look the other way.
He’s then taken to Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb – who is also a close relative. (It’s at least possible that this is the tomb in Rehavia… more on than in a mo.)
There, he’s revived by the Essene medicine men, and their huge sack of aloes – known to heal internal bleeding (as stated in xtian gospels).
After a few days, he meets some of his followers on the way out of Jerusalem, heading into exile in….Wales.
He is married (of course….), and has children.
Many of his descendants marry Roman Emperors, Welsh royalty – and from there, become the ‘holy bloodline’ that all the royals of Europe want to have a bit of.
====
This sounds incredible.
Until you actually start to stand up the genealogy, follow the ‘clues’ in the ancient Welsh manuscripts, and compare and contrast to ‘real Jewish history’.
So, why did Yoshki and his family escape to Wales?
It was not part of the Roman Empire.
Apparently, some of the Ten Tribes had been living there for 500 years, already:
Snippet from p103:
We know that the Khumry of the Ten Tribes moved from areas in northern Assyria and Armenia to Britain in an epic journey from circa 687 BCE to 504 BCE.
====
OK, let me now set out some of the genealogy from Wilson and Blackett’s book, then we’ll start trying to pin more of it down from our end of ‘real Jewish history’.
They say that Roman Emperor Mark Antony married Cleopatra VII, and had a daughter called Cleopatra. (This is true.)
Then, they say that Cleopatra and King Juba II (who was a Berber Prince taken to Rome as a child, where he became very ‘Romanised’ and close to Julius Caesar and Augustus) had a daughter. (This is true.)
They say that daughter was ‘MARY MAGDALENE’, who then married Jesus the Nazarene (or really, the ‘Nazirite’. More on that when we get to the Essenes another time.)
And that they had a son, ‘Lazarus’, who is probably the same Lazarus described as being ‘raised from the dead’ in the gospels, who apparently came from a very choshuva Jewish family.
Could this possibly be true?!
Let’s find out.
====
Over on Wikipedia, this is what we’re told about ‘King Juba II’s’ wives and descendants:
====
Notice that they definitely had a daughter – and that the name of this daughter is conveniently missing.
But even more importantly, notice WHO ELSE King Juba II was marrying, and connected to:
Glaphyra, who was the widow of Alexander Hashmonaim, son of Herod the Great by his Hashmonaim princess Mariamne I.
We are exactly back in Yoshki’s Hashmonaim family tree, as we are about to set out in more detail.
So, I can already see that it’s at least possible that the daughter of King Juba II could have married a choshuva Hashmonaim in Judea.
Let’s unpick this some more.
====
Wilson and Blackett then state that Yoshki’s grand-daughter via his son Lazarus, called ‘Anna’, then marries the Welsh King Gweirydd, aka, King George.
Remember, when George Bush became president, and then George W. after him, and we all started talking excitedly about ‘George and from George’, aka ‘Gog and MaGog’?
I think we may have stumbled upon that ancient root, here.
====
So, back to Jesus the Nazarene’s real family tree.
While I was reading Wilson and Blackett’s book, I saw this footnote, from the Gospel of Luke (which otherwise, I would never read…):
Luke 3:23:
And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being the son of Joseph, who was the son of Heli.
That word ‘Heli’ really jumped out at me, because of all those ‘Bnei Zadok / Bnei Chonyo’ zadukim Hashmonaim priests, serving in a pagan Temple down in Heliopolis (aka ‘sun city’).
And that is where this story really takes off.
====
Let’s go back to the ‘Jewish side’ of the story, to set out what we are told was going down in Egypt, with the ‘Sons of Chonyo’ and their fake Temple.
The Land of Onias is the name given in Hellenistic Egyptian, Jewish, and Roman sources to an area in Ancient Egypt’s Nile delta where a large number of Jews settled.
The Land of Onias, which included the city of Leontopolis was located in the nome of Heliopolis.
While accounts differ on the details, it is known that the Jews of Leontopolis had a functioning temple, distinct from and contemporary to the one in Jerusalem, presided over by kohanim (priests) of the family of Onias IV, for whom the “Land of Onias” is named.
This is the temple of the sons of ‘Chonyo’ (aka Onias, aka Yochanan), discussed in Tractate Menachot, 109b , as we brought in detail HERE.
====
EXHIBIT 2: The very close links between these ‘Kohanim of Heliopolis’, the Egyptian royalty, and ‘Alexander Yannai’ of Judea:
Ananias the son of Onias (in Hebrew, Hananiya ben Honiyyahu) was the son of the Jewish high priest, Onias IV, who founded a Jewish Temple at Leontopolis in Egypt during the persecutions of Antiochus IV. [The Chanuka tyrant].
Onias won the favor of Ptolemy VI [King of Egypt, married to Cleopatra III], who gave permission for the building of this temple.
Ananias and his brother Helkias were held in high esteem by Cleopatra III.
Owing to her regard for them, the Judeans of the province Oneion, between Pelusium and Memphis, remained true to her when she was abandoned on the island of Cyprus by all her soldiers.
When she went to Judea to help the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus against her son, Ptolemy Lathyrus, and succeeded in dislodging him (about 100 BCE), Ananias and Helkias were her generals; and Ananias dissuaded her from incorporating Judea as an Egyptian province, at the same time inducing her to form an alliance with Alexander Jannaeus.
====
Let’s sum up:
In ‘the real world’, we see a ton of very close links between this Oniad family of ‘Bnei Zadok / Beit Chonyo’, the Egyptian monarchs Ptolemy Philopator and Cleopatra III, and the Hashonaim kings and high priests, especially our old friend Alexander Yannai / Yochanan Kohen Gadol / John Hyrcanus I.
In Wilson and Blackett, they suggest that Jesus the Nazarene (who we know to be a Kohen, and somehow linked to the choshuva Hashmonaim rulers of Judea by blood) marries the grand-daughter of Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony, via the union of Cleopatra Selene, and King Juba II of Numidia.
Back in ‘the real world’, we see that King Juba’s daughter is strangely unnamed; and that King Juba II himself marries the widow of the Crown Prince of Judea, Alexander Hashmonaim, after his own father, Herod the Great, has him killed.
Meanwhile, we have another clue from the Gospel of Luke that the real dad of ‘Jesus of Nazarene’ is one ‘Joseph, son of Heli(o)’.
So far so good?
Let’s continue.
====
Because I spend so much of my time looking on Geni, my browser now automatically lists those results very high, when I start searching for people.
That’s how I got to THIS family tree for one ‘Heli ben Matat’.
I start looking around, and I see so many of the familiar names we’ve been looking at, including ‘Simon the Just’ (aka Shimon HaTzaddik). Then I go and read more of the bumpf stuck up under his profile (obviously by xtians…) and this is a bit of what I read:
The days surrounding the birth of Jesus, it was not safe to be recognized or be known as a descendant of the House of David.
The Davidian princes were hunted by the Romans, and were despised by the jealous Jewish temple leadership, who were Zadokian cousins presiding as high priests.
The ruler of Judea was Herod the Great who at his best, sought to manipulate, or at the least destroy every Zadokian priest that allied himself to Davidian princes. King Herod also targeted every Prince of Israel, who was of the royal House of David, and heirs to the throne of David.
==
The seduction of power and authority was equally at home with the Sadducee based family of the House of Boethus, who were rightful inheritors of the office of the high priest, were equally zealous to rule like the “kings” of the Jews, and oppose any Davidian who depicted any aspirations of royal leadership.
It was to the one family, the Patriarch and High Priest Ananus of the House of Boethus had a special hatred, the Princes of David, Joseph and Yehoshua, who was the legal heir to the royal House of David, yet preached a anti-globalist message of emuna (faith) in the Sovereignty of His Father in heaven.
Before the reign of Herod was over, his progressive paranoia in his advancing years, history testifies that more and more of the Princes of David were executed by Herod the Great. They were hunted down by the Roman armies as royal rivals to the Caesar of Rome.
As this reality begins to sink in, we have to ask, were the Davidian princes of the family of Jesus truly a non-historical family or were they a part of the messianic, Davidian, Hasmonean, Zionist, or Zealot parties seeking to regain the sovereignty of Judea away from the arena of Roman global power?
====
Let’s pause, and understand what this is really saying.
We know from our own tradition that ‘Herod the Great’ was paranoid, married Mariamne, the great-granddaughter of ‘Alexander Yannai’, and had his wife and both his sons (Alexander and Aristobulus) killed off, fearing they were going to usurp his throne. (This is totally true.)
King Juba II marries the widow of this Alexander, who was killed by his father Herod (totally true).
King Juba’s first wife is the daughter of Cleopatra VII and Emperor Mark Antony of Rome, who is then engaged in a civil war with Emperor Augustus, to see who will control the Roman Empire (totally true).
Apparently, Yoshki’s wife (aka ‘Mary Magdalene’), is King Juba II’s daughter. King Juba’s daughter is one of the few remaining living descendants of the now deceased Emperor Mark Antony.
What this stuff about ‘Heli ben Matat’ is telling us, that on the one hand, Herod the Great was going on a rampage to kill off any potential Hashmonaim claimants to his Judean throne.
And that is totally true.
And on the other hand, the Roman Emperor Tiberias – the son of Augustus Octavian – was also going on a rampage trying to kill off any potential descendants of his father’s rival Mark Anthony, who could claim leadership of the Roman Empire.
And that is also true.
So now, where does ‘Jesus the Nazarene’ actually fit into all this?
====
Cleopatra Selene has a twin brother, called ‘Alexander Helios’.
Records show that while Octavian Augustus killed both his brothers (including Caesarion, the son Cleopatra had with Julius Caesar) – no-one knows what happened to ‘Alexander Helios’.
The only further mention of Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus comes from Cassius Dio, who states that when their sister Cleopatra Selene II married King Juba II, Octavian (then named Augustus) spared the lives of Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus as a favor to the couple.
After Helios arrived in Rome, he disappears from historical records.
====
(Let me just state at this stage, that we are feeling all this information out, here. I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t, but I’m sharing the information as I find it, and you pray on it, and come to your own conclusions.)
Back on that Geni entry for ‘Heli ben Matat’, the father of Joseph, the father of ‘Jesus the Nazarene’, it continues like this:
Prince Alexander III Helios… was the son of the future Maccabee Queen Alexandra II, who at this time was known by her Jewish name, Esther of Jerusalem.
Heli, the shortened nickname for Helios (“The Sun”), was a descendant of both the Maccabee Kings of Judea and a prince of the House of David, for his father was Matthan ben Levi, a Davidian Prince who was first married in his youth to the vivacious royal princess, Elizabeth of Jerusalem.
====
OK, so here is where we press ‘pause’ on all this, to go and see if any of it stands up ‘in the real world’.
First, I took a look at the family tree being proposed for ‘Joseph of Arimathea’, the wealth relative of ‘Jesus the Nazarene’ who apparently arranged for him to have a ‘fake’ crucifiction, put him in his own tomb to be revived and healed, and then spirited him away to Wales, out of the clutches of the Roman Emperor.
Who is very probably buried in Cardiff – Wilson and Blackett identify his tomb precisely, and it’s still there today.
It shows that ‘Joseph of Arimathea’ is actually the brother of ‘Heli ben Matat’. Which would actuallly make him the great uncle of ‘Jesus the Nazarene’.
Even more weird, is that this Joseph of Arimathea is shown descending from ‘Shimon HaTzaddik’ – and again, we see that phenomena we noted in so many of the Sabbatean family trees, of aunts marrying their nephews, which is contrary to halacha:
====
If you keep going back on the male line for ‘Joseph of Arimathea’, you hit Zerubavel, the Exilarch of Babylon and descendant of King David.
(Again, I’m not saying this is true. The truth is what we’re all trying figure out, here.)
Long story short, it now seems I will be spending more time trying to figure out more family trees, to see where the truth really lies.
Let’s move on, there is still more to share today.
====
If we go back to the family tree of the ‘Beit Chonyo-Onias’ Kohanim who went down to Egypt, built a temple in Heliopolis, and got all cosy with Ptolemy Philopator and Cleopatra III, we see this:
====
Is ‘Shimon HaTzaddik’, the one mentioned in the Gemara as being the father of ‘Chonyo and Shimi’, aka Onias III and his brother Jason-Jesus.
Is Onias III, aka ‘Yochanan Kohen Gadol’ who sealed the cruse of oil used in the Chanukah Story (and is probably the father of Matityah ben Yochanan Kohen Gadol, father of the Maccabees.)
Is ‘Onias IV‘, who went down to Egypt to escape the persecution occurring in Jerusalem and built a temple in Heliopolis. His sons are the ones who became the leaders of Cleopatra III’s army, and arranged a treaty with King Alexander Yannai – the son of their first cousin, Shimon Thassi / Hashmonaim. (You see there is also an ‘Onias V’ listed as his brother…. That’s a standard tactic in these family trees, to try to ‘split up’ descendants, so you don’t see just how closely all the different ‘actors’ are related.)
After assuming the government of Palestine, Herod surrounded himself with creatures of his own; from among these he chose one Hanameel to fill the office of high priest made vacant by the ignominious death of Antigonus (37 B.C.). Hanameel (Ananelus) was an Egyptian according to the Mishnah (Parah iii. 5), a Babylonian according to Josephus (“Ant.” xv. 2, § 4); though of priestly descent, he was not of the family of the high priests.
This Hanameel was shipped in by Herod from the ‘Beit Chonyo’ temple in Egypt, to replace Aristobulus the Kohen Gadol – who was Herod’s brother-in-law, Mariamne I’s brother, and drowned on Herod’s orders in 35 CE.
IT’S THE SAME FLIPPING FAMILY!!!!
====
Now, who is ‘Hanameel the Egyptian’s’ son?
His name is ‘Boethus’. He is the 57th ‘Kohen Gadol’ of the Kingdom of Judea.
He’s also a Sadducian heretic – both in terms of being a ‘Sadducee’, and also in terms of being from the ‘Bnei Zadok’, the sons of Zadok priestly family, which is the same as the ‘Beit Chonyo’ priestly family that EVERYONE, including the Hashmonaim royalty, descend from.
This Boethus has a son, Simon, who also becomes the 60th Kohen Gadol.
Five of his brothers are also ‘Kohen Gadols’, one after another, because they just don’t last very long. Either they are dropping dead in the Holy of Holies during the Yom Kippur service, or Herod is busy killing them off, or something else is going on here.
====
So, this ‘Simon ben Boethus’, the 6oth Kohne Gadol, is recorded as having a beautiful daughter named Mariamne (II).
And this Mariamne II becomes Herod the Great’s third wife. Here’s how Josephus describes it:
There was one Simon, a citizen of Jerusalem, the son of one Boethus, a citizen of Alexandria, and a priest of great note there; this man had a daughter, who was esteemed the most beautiful woman of that time; and when the people of Jerusalem began to speak much in her commendation, it happened that Herod was much affected with what was said of her; and when he saw the damsel, he was smitten with her beauty… he thought it best to take the damsel to wife.
And while Simon was of a dignity too inferior to be allied to him, but still too considerable to be despised, he governed his inclinations after the most prudent manner, by augmenting the dignity of the family, and making them more honourable; so he immediately deprived Jesus, the son of Phabet, of the high priesthood, and conferred that dignity on Simon, and so joined in affinity with him [by marrying his daughter].
====
It’s obvious Josephus is lying here, about the real reason Simon ben Boethus replaces ‘Jesus ben Phabet’ as high priest.
Now, what’s really interesting is what you read on the Geni profile for ‘Jesus ben Phabet’ – who was actually Simon ben Boethus’ nephew, the grandson of the original ‘Boethus son of Hanameel the Egyptian High Priest’:
Snippet:
Jesus, son of Fabus (also known as Jesus, son of Phabet, Jesus son of Phiabi or Joshua ben Fabus) was a Jewish High priest (ca. 30 – 23 BCE) in the 1st century BCE.
Some modern genealogists erroneously identify Jesus ben Fabus as a Hasmonean, a descendant of John Hyrcanus.
According to one modern fiction, Jesus ben Fabus was the father of three daughters: Joanna, St. Elizabeth, and St. Hannah (Anna). He became the grandfather of Jesus of Nazareth, John the Baptist, and Zebedee. See, e.g., Biblesearchers.com, visited May 30, 2013.
====
I am at the stage that whenever I see Geni strenuously stressing ‘fictional connections’, that is now the first place I go and look.
That daughter of ‘Jesus ben Phabi’, Hanna / Anna happens to marry none other than… Heli ben Matat, the grandad of Yoshki.
Is this ‘Heli ben Matat’ actually descended from Zerubavel, as claimed by the xtian geneaologists?
Or, was he one and the same as ‘Alexander Helios’, son of Mark Antony, and sister of Cleopatra Selene, who married King Juba II and had an unidentified daughter who Wilson and Blackett say was Mary Magdalene, the wife of Yoshki?
And THAT would explain why the Roman Emperor was also so keen on tracking down these potential claimants to the Imperial throne, and destroying them?
====
As you can see, there is a lot more unpicking still required, until this gets properly firmed up (if that is ever going to be possible….)
That xtian genealogy site referenced above can be found HERE.
While there are inevitably some red herrings and xtian nonsense mixed in to their research, most of the details appear to be broadly sound to me, after spending an hour looking through it.
There is some ‘truth’ in those early Jewish-xtian sources, about who people really were, and who they were really related to, before the Catholic church came and started covering everything up with massive lies about ‘immaculate conceptions’.
Here’s a screenshot, to whet your whistle:
====
We’ll leave this here for today.
The next thing we need to take a look at is the links between the mysterious group called the ‘Hasideans’, and the Essenes of Qumran, and their links to all these Jewish-xtians.
But I will probably have a few days off, in the meantime, as all the ‘truth’ coming out this week has been epic!
Who knew that challenging ‘helio-centrism’ would lead us to a fake Temple served by Kohanim in Egypt, and now also the grandpa of Yoshki, all in the family tree of the Hashmonaims.
Geula is in the air!
TBC
====
PS: Whilst looking for something to illustrate this post, I came across this weird article, in Russian, pointing out that ‘Alexander the Great’ also called himself ‘Alexander Helios’. Whilst in Egypt, he claimed he was the son of the Egyptian god Amun-Ra – whose son was ‘Helios’, the sun god….and the rest is history.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Oh wow….
I just found another massive part of the puzzle, about who Yoshki really was.
It’s making me so happy, how more and more of us here on the blog are starting to piece together things.
As I probably should state more often, I don’t know everything, anything but.
I am a journalist, and my strength is in tracking down new sources of information, and sharing them more widely. I get a lot of help from Upstairs when it comes to making connections, but I am not pretending to have all the answers here, not at all. So, I’m very grateful for all the tremendous input I’m getting from readers, to try to ascertain the truth, and continue the birur.
In this post, we’re going to continue trying to track down what happened to those descendants of Shimon HaTzaddik, ‘Chonyo-Onias-Yochanan’ and ‘Jason-Jesus-Shimi’.
And I’m also going to share more information about the strange connections between Jews in biblical Judea…. and Wales.
Ready? Let’s begin.
====
Commentator Yosef mentioned there is a strange, fancy tomb of someone named ‘Jason’, slap-bang in the middle of Rehavia.
I took a look on Google maps, HERE, and this is what I learned from the comments there:
Amazing feeling to find a small pyramid in Jerusalem!!!
And this, written by an official tour guide called Richard Johnson:
Tucked away in the neighborhood of Rehavia, Jason’s tomb is unique find.
A tomb of a Hasmonean king of Judea. This tomb displays hellenized influence, with an inscription written above the door in perfect Greek verse. The pyramid at the top is called a nefesh, due to the belief that this is where the soul would wait until the end of days.
====
Do you remember any Hasmonean ‘kings’ called Jason?
Nope, me neither.
Here’s some more specific details of ‘Kever Yason’, from the madainproject.com website:
The tomb is considered to date from the time of Alexander Jannaeus (reigned circa 103-76 BCE)…. Coins found at the site date to the first third of the first century CE. The tomb was finally blocked in 30/31 CE.
The architecture of the tomb not only holds uncanny parallels with the contemporary Alexandrian tombs, it also shares clear prototype-architectural-elements for the structure in older tombs from Deir el-Medina at Thebes, on the western bank of the Nile in Egypt.
====
We have yet more links between this person and Egypt, where the renegade ‘Bnei Tzadok / Beit Chonyo’, descendants of Shimon HaTzaddik ended up.
But the standard dating of this tomb sets it in the time period of ‘Jesus Number 2’ (around 31 CE), not Jesus Number 1 around 171 CE).
So let’s see if we can figure out a few more things, before moving on to the Wales side to this crazy tale.
Here’s a few more descriptions from inside ‘Kever Yason’:
Another inscription states that Jason sailed to the coast of Egypt….On the walls of the tomb were charcoal drawings of ships, one Greek and several Aramaic inscriptions – some of which are still (barely) visible.
====
Yet again, I am coming across this weird ‘time warp’ for these people, and this period of time, when I try to track down who this ‘Jason’ actually was.
Coins at the site, from Alexander Janneus and his son, John Horcanus date the tomb to the Hasmonean period, 37-167 BC.
If you to to this story from 2019, in Hebrew, you get a few more details:
Above the northern wall of the vestibule is painted a ram with antlers, and on the eastern wall is an engraving in the shape of the seven-branched menorah…. On the western wall of the inner courtyard is the Palm of Tamar.
This article floats the idea that this ‘Jason’ was perhaps the head of Alexander Yannai’s navy, or some sort of pirate:
Some claim Jason was the most feared pirate in the Mediterranean. Legend has it that Jason had a very large treasure and in order for it to never be found he decided to bury it in the most distant place from the sea – in Jerusalem.
What I can tell you, is that these murals are being left to rot into oblivion. Always a sign, there’s something there they authorities don’t want people to know about.
====
So, is this the tomb of ‘Joshua-Jason-Jesus’, the hellenising High Priest and son of ‘Shimon HaTzaddik’?
It’s at least possible.
Again, let’s sum up as we go along what we know about ‘Jason-Jesus’ and his brother, Chonyo-Yochanan-Onias III’ because I know this is a lot to take in.
‘Beit Chonyo’ and ‘Beit Zadok’ were used interchangeably, to refer to this family of priests.
‘Onias III’ is one and the same as ‘Yochanan Kohen Gadol‘, who apparently hid the pure flask of oil we hear about in the Chanuka story.
He has a brother, ‘Joshua-Jason-Jesus’ who is a helleniser, and takes over from him as High Priest, and starts ‘hellenising’ the Holy City of Jerusalem in a big way for the three years he ‘Kohen HaGadol’. Jason is later pushed out of the High Priesthood (in 171 BCE) by someone named ‘Menelaus’, who is even more hellenising, immoral and greedy. (See below). This fits with the earliest dating of ‘Kever Yason’ in Rehavia.
Yochanan Kohen Gadol (Onias III / Chonyo) had three sons, one of whom had a lot of secular authority in Jerusalem and got into a power-struggle with another official called ‘Shimon’.
This ‘Shimon’ tells the Syrian-Greek King Seleucus to go and grab all the money in the Temple treasuries. Yochanan / Onias III apparently prevents this from happening, setting the scene for what happens next.
This Shimon then informs on the ‘sons of Chonyo’ to the Greeks, that they are engaging in ‘anti Seleucid’ activities. This led to Yochanan Kohen Gadol (Onias III) being ‘demoted’ and shipped out to Daphne, where he was later killed by someone called Andronicus, apparently prompted by that same Menelaus the High Priest, above.
Meanwhile, Yochanan / Chonyo / Onias III’s son, Onias IV – the one who argued with ‘Shimon’, above – is next in line to become the ‘Kohen Gadol’, but apparently gets pushed out of Jerusalem, to Egypt.
====
Here’s how Wiki sets out the list of High Priests from this time:
But there’s a lot of funny business going on here, possibly involving the ‘Essenes’.
Snippet:
It is unknown who held the position of High Priest of Jerusalem between Alcimus’ death and the accession of Jonathan Apphus.
Josephus, in Jewish Antiquities XX.10, relates that the office was vacant for seven years, but this is highly unlikely, if not impossible…
In another passage (XII.10 §6, XII.11 §2) Josephus suggests that Judas Maccabeus, the brother of Jonathan, held the office for three years, succeeding Alcimus. However, Judas actually predeceased Alcimus by one year… The Jewish Encyclopedia tries to harmonise the contradictions found in Josephus by supposing that Judas held the office “immediately after the consecration of the Temple (165-162), that is, before the election of Alcimus”
It has been argued that the founder of the Qumran community, the Teacher of Righteousness (?159-153 BC). was High Priest (but not necessarily the sole occupant) during the inter-sacerdotium and was driven off by Jonathan.
====
I have at least one ‘Kahana’ family tree that shows that Jesus II, his brother ‘James the Just’, first Jewish-xtian ‘Bishop of Jerusalem’, Josephus and Caiphus, the Kohen HaGadol at the time of Yoshki’s apparent crucifiction (note the spelling…) all descend from this same guy, Alcimus.
====
One more thing here, and then let’s move on to ‘Jesus and Wales’.
In Brachot 29a, it says this:
“[W]e learned in a Mishnah: Do not believe in yourself (i.e. trust that you are safe from the evil inclination), until the day you die, for Yochanan the Kohen Gadol served as Kohen Gadol for 80 years, and in the end became a Sadduccee.
And Abaye said: He is Yannai, he is Yochanan, i.e. Yannai and Yochanan were one and the same person.
Rava, however, said: Yannai is separate and Yochanan is separate, i.e. they were two different people.
====
The Artscroll notes are very interesting. Let’s quote them, then I’ll try to ‘sum up’ why this is so astounding – and what it might mean, for our Hashmonaim family tree:
(Note 7):
“Yannai and Yochanan are names of Hashmonean kings cited in various places in the Talmud.
About Yannai, it is related in Kiddushin 66a that he massacred the Sages for questioning his fitness to serve as Kohen Gadol.
Abaye asserts that Yannai and Yochanan were in face one and the same person.
(Note 8):
[The story of Yannai killing the Sages occurred early in his reign.]
He later repented only to return to his evil ways in his later years (Rashi; see Menachem Meishiv Nefesh).
(Note 9):
He was righteous until close to the end of his life, when he became a renegade.
(Note 10):
Since Yannai and Yochanan were one and the same person, and Yannai is known to have been bad from the start, we must say that his eighty years as the righteous Yochanan Kohen Gadol reflected a repentance from his former ways.
When he became a Sadduccee towards the end of his life, he was merely reverting to his original character.”
====
You see?
This problem of ‘good people’ and ‘tzaddikim’ being one and the same as ‘bad people’ and ‘immoral, murderous heretics’ has been going on for a very long time….
Let’s try to stand this up, in real time.
====
Here’s a list of the High Priests from this time, from HERE:
The Hasmonean Dynasty was founded by a resolution, adopted in 141 BCE, at a large assembly “of the priests and the people and of the elders of the land, to the effect that Simon should be their leader and high priest forever, until there should arise a faithful prophet”.
In February 135 BCE,] Simon and his two sons Mattathias and Judah were assassinated at a banquet at Dok by his son-in-law Ptolemy, the Seleucid governor at Jericho. Simon’s third son John Hyrcanus succeeded him to the high priesthood and rule over Israel but proved unable to capture Ptolemy, first because he held John’s mother hostage and then because of his army disbanded due to the custom at the time of resting every seventh year.
====
So, ‘John Hyrcanus’ mother IS held hostage, and also tortured and killed by her captors, albeit apparently after he was already born…
Now, let’s go over to Geni, to see if we can work out a bit more.
2. Is his son, ‘Matityahu ben Yochanan Kohen Gadol’, of the Chanuka story.
3. Is his son, ‘Simon Thassi Maccabeus’ (Hasmonean), who finally gained independence for Judea from the Seleucids, and become High Priest and ‘ethnarch’.
1. The Rambam (Introduction to Commentary to the Mishnah) and Roke’ah (Hilkhos Hanukah) are of the view that [the famous Yochanan Kohen Gadol’ was the son of Matisyahu, of Hanukah fame, evidently named after his own grandfather.
2. Sefer Yuhasin (1:16) and Seder Ha-Doros (2:Yohanan Kohen Gadol) state that Yohanan the High Priest was Matisyahu’s father and is the one mentioned in the “Al Ha-Nissim.”
3. Later scholars, including Doros Ha-Rishonim (part 2 p. 442) and Toledos Tanna’im Ve-Amora’im (vol. 2 p. 688), are of the view that Yohanan the High Priest was the grandson of Matisyahu and the son of Shimon.
====
That last source seems to make more sense, especially in light of the discussion in the Gemara from Brachot 29a.
And then, that tells us this:
John Hyrcanus I = ‘Yochanan Kohen Gadol’ (who reigned for 80 years before becoming a Sadducee) = King Alexander Yannai.
====
Let’s see if we can stand this up a little more.
According to this from the Jewish Virtual Library:
Although the king is named “Alexander Yannai” by Josephus and “Yannai the king” by rabbinic literature, his full name was “Alexander Jonathan” (or “Yehonathan“) as attested to by his coins.
Maybe this is also a good time to point out that ‘Yannai’ is the Hebrew version of the name ‘Janus’ – referring to the two-faced pagan god.
Coincidence?
====
So, John Hyrcanus I / Yochanan Kohen Gadol is born in 164 BCE (3596).
He is said to rule between 134 BCE until his death in 104 BCE.
Meanwhile, ‘Alexander Yannai’ is said to rule between 103 to 76 BCE.
I can’t seem to find anything with an official birthdate for him, which of course makes sense, if he’s the same person as John Hyrcanus I / Yochanan Kohen Gadol.
So, we’re told in the Gemara that Yochanan Kohen Gadol ruled for 80 years.
Let’s do the maths: If he was born in 164 BCE (3596) and died in 76 BCE (3684) – that makes him 88 years old.
It’s definitely within the range being discussed by the Gemara – and more to the point, there is no other ‘Yochanan Kohen Gadol’ who even comes close to this length of time.
====
So now, here’s more interesting stuff.
We have no idea who the wives of ‘John Hyrcanus I’ are.
No woman of the Hasmonean family is mentioned in the two books devoted to the Hasmonean rebellion—Maccabees I and II, the authors of which showed no interest in the families of the Hasmonean brothers. Yet Hasmonean women seem to have played a decisive role in the history of the dynasty, particularly as regards the succession process.
Most of the information was coming from Josephus, and Josephus descends from Alcimus the High Priest, and is very close family with ‘Jesus the Nazarene’.
Perhaps we’ll get to him another time.
====
For now, you should know that the only named wife for all of these Hasmonean rulers is ‘ShlomTziyon-Salome’, the sister of the head of the Sanhedrin, Shimon ben Shetach, who we are told marries ‘Alexander Yannai’ when he is 13 – and she is 30!
This footnote sums up the problem:
Josephus’ statement (Jewish Antiquities xv. 6, § 3), that Hyrcanus II, Jannaeus’ eldest son, was eighty years old when he was put to death by Herod, in 31 BCE, is probably erroneous, for that would set the year of his birth as 111 BCE, and Jannaeus himself was born in 125 BCE, so that he could have been but fourteen when Hyrcanus was born to him. It is difficult to understand how a thirteen-year-old boy married a widow of thirty.
But we know he didn’t.
Queen Shlomtzion-Salome-Alexandra was probably at least his second wife.
And if John Hyrcanus I / Alexander Yannai was born in 164 BCE, and ShlomTzion-Salome was born in 142 BCE, that makes HIM 22 years older than HER.
And that makes way more sense.
====
ShlomTzion eventually outlives him, and become a righteous Regent Queen in her own right, before the nation plunges into civil war upon her death, as her two sons fight it out to be King.
Here’s a couple more things to note, and then we will have to leave it here today, and return to ‘Jesus in Wales’ in a different post.
In the course of figuring this bit out, I’ve actually tripped over even more information that fills out the picture of who Jesus really was, and what really went down here, with all these two-faced ‘Tzaddik-heretic’ Hashmonaims.
Snippet 1:
According to some versions of the Toledoth Yeshu, a medieval alternative-Christian life of Jesus, Salome is connected with Jesus of Nazareth, placing the death of Jesus 150 years earlier.
====
Apart from Josephus, ShlomTzion is also mentioned in the Gemara, as the sister of Shimon ben Shetach.
Queen Shelamziyyon is mentioned by name twice in the Dead Sea scrolls, in an astrological fragment (4Q322–4Q324).
Reference to her reign is probably also found in Pesher Nahum. These allow a glimpse into the Dead Sea Sect’s attitudes to the queen. Pesher Nahum first describes the reign of her husband, during which the Pharisees were crucified, referring to a well-known event in the days of King Alexander Yannai (88 BCE) described in the writings of Josephus (Ant. 13:380).
It then goes on to describe the rule of the Pharisees, obviously during the queen’s reign.
Jerusalem under the rule of the new queen is described as “the bloody city” and the queen herself is described in the words of the prophet Nahum: “Because of the countless harlotries of the harlot, the winsome mistress of sorcery, who ensnared nations with her harlotries and peoples with her sorcery.” (Nahum 3:4).
For the sectarians of Qumran, the queen’s change of policy in Jerusalem did not seem to make much difference. They hated the Sadducee rule of Alexander Yannai, and they detested his heiress’s Pharisee rule no less.
====
I am more and more coming to the conclusion that ‘Yoshki’ and his brother James the Just, as well as being Kohanim, were closely aligned to the Essene community in Qumran, after all.
And that they were the sworn enemies of the Hashmonaim rulers, in both of their guises as righteous ‘Pharisees’ and wicked ‘Sadducees’.
Another group of texts, mainly Pesher Habakkuk, recalls the way the “Wicked Priest” persecuted the “Teacher of Righteousness,” the head of the Dead Sea sect, and his group.
The phrase “Wicked Priest” seems to aim at the High Priest living in Jerusalem, contemporary of the Teacher of Righteousness. Thus some scholars identify this figure with Alexander Yannai, while other scholars seek to identify him with one of his predecessors or successors.
====
I will start to piece that bit of the story together soon, BH.
But we’ll stop here for now.
Another epic post!
But at least now we’ve figured out the true identity of that ‘Yochanan Kohen Gadol’, we’ve figured out that he is one-and-the-same as ‘Alexander Yannai’ and ‘John Hyrcanus I’ – and that is the exact same period of time that this ‘Kever Yason’ was built in the Jerusalem necropolis that was located in Rehavia, with all its ‘Egyptian’ hellenistic stuff going on.
====
In the next post, we’ll try to get to ‘Jesus in Wales’.
And then, you’ll hopefully start to see why so much of what was going on with the Hashmonaim rulers has been deliberately distorted and covered up.
https://i0.wp.com/rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/John-Hyrcanus-is-Alexander-Yannai.jpg?fit=1012%2C462&ssl=14621012Rivka Levyhttps://rivkalevy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Rivka-Levy-2-300x162.pngRivka Levy2023-01-25 15:09:002023-01-25 15:09:00Jason-Jesus and the two faces of ‘Alexander Yannai’
This is the follow on from the post about Heliocentrism, Sadducees and Sabbateans.
To recap, briefly, (for people who can’t read more than two sentences before the brain fuzz descends – i.e. everyone….), in the last post we learnt that:
Zadok was the first Kohen Gadol, appointed to Solomon’s Temple.
His descendants, the ‘Bnei Zadok‘, figure large in Yehezkel’s prophecy about the rebuilt Third Temple.
They also figure large in xtian prophecies about the end of days, and have the job of ‘serving Yoshki’ when he comes back after his second coming… in the Third Temple.
According to my historian correspondent, the ‘Bnei Zadok’ were heliocentrists, and very knowledgeable about the sun and planetary movements. The last of them, Onias III, actually went down fighting the hellenizers.
At the same time, we know there are a bunch of heretics who deny the validity of the oral Torah and who were against Chazal, and rabbinic Judaism, from the start.
These people are also called ‘Zadukim‘, or the anglicised version, ‘Sadducees’. The Sages used ‘Zadukim’ interchangeably with ‘Boethesian’ in the Gemara when talking about these heretics.
They got their names from the two students of Antigonus, Zadok and Boethus, who went OTD. Both of them appear to have been Kohanim, and heretical thinking appears to have been extremely pronounced amongst the Kohanim of that time. (See Pirkei Avot 1:3).
Antigonus got the tradition from Shimon HaTzaddik.
These ‘Sadducees-Boethesians’ are somehow connected to the problem of Jewish-xtians, Karaites, Sabbateans, Frankists and Jews-for-Jesus who have been plaguing our community, and trying to dismantle Judaism from within, for the last two millenia.
And the last place we got to, was the account in the Gemara where we learned about the strange case of ‘Chonyo’ and his brother ‘Shimi’ – two sons of Shimon HaTzaddik – who were battling it out to see who would become the Kohen Gadol.
====
As we learnt in the last post, ‘Chonyo’ and ‘Shimi’ are battling it out to be the Kohen Gadol, after the death of Shimon HaTzaddik.
Depending on if you follow R’ Meir’s view (that Chonyo was the victim) or R’ Yehuda’s view (the Chonyo was the aggressor) – either way, Chonyo the son of Shimon HaTzaddik ends up in Egypt, where he builds some sort of temple – totally against halacha – and starts offering sacrifices there.
Again, the Gemara is split as to whether Chonyo was really ‘serving Hashem’, or really serving idols in his temple.
In the note at the bottom of Menuchot 109b, we learnt this:
Josephus Flavius reports that it was a smaller and poorer version. Josephus writes further that Chonyo [whom he calls ‘Onias’ and describes as a descendant of Shimon HaTzaddik] appealed to Ptolemy Philometer and his queen Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt from Alexandria, to allow him to develop a certain stretch of land for a Jewish Temple.
Josephus states that this land was in an area known as ‘the Nomus of Heliopolis’
We also learnt that:
Rambam adds that the Copts and their associates were attracted to Chonyo.
Chonyo encouraged them to serve Hashem and they listened to him. His statements were much esteemed by them and they made him their priest and honored his temple.
They served Hashem there and brought offerings according to what Chonyo had instructed them. The temple stood for hundreds of years.
====
According to the ‘standard’ Jewish history we’re all told, Shimon HaTzaddik stopped Alexander the Great from conquering Jerusalem in the year 3448 (313 BCE).
In 3448, the Jewish people entered a time of great turbulence, both in the spiritual and material realms. Prophecy had come to a close, and Alexander the Great was conquering the known world.
Fortunately, a great leader, Shimon HaTzadik, deftly steered the people through uncharted waters. As Kohen Gadol and head of the Sanhedrin, he embodied both religious and political power. (In the absence of the monarchy, the KohenGadol represented the nation to the outside world. Previously, it was a purely religious office.)…
In 3448, Alexander marched through the land of Israel, bringing Persian rule to an end.
Filled with trepidation, the Jews sent a delegation of Kohanimled by Shimon HaTzadik, all dressed in their priestly raiments. Upon approaching Alexander, they were astounded when the great conqueror prostrated himself before Shimon! When asked the reason for such inexplicable behavior, Alexander replied that before his battles a vision of Shimon appeared to him promising victory.
====
(See the full account in the Gemara, Tractate Yoma 69a.)
There’s just one problem with this: the dates don’t add up, historically.
When you ask the simple question ‘when did Shimon HaTzaddik actually live?’ you get the same sort of tremendous confusion that bears all the hallmarks of a massive cover-up. So, let’s start unpicking things by laying out a clear timeline, below.
I’m going to stick with the Hebrew dating, because ‘secular dating’ is by no means as solid and reliable.
====
3338 – The First Temple is destroyed, and the Jewish people go into exile in Babylonia. (442 BCE, according to the Seder Olam).
3408 – Darius II succeeds Ahashverosh (of the Purim story) and gives the Jews permission to return to Israel and start rebuilding the Second Temple.
3412 – The rebuilt Second Temple in Jerusalem is completed.
3426 – Nehemiah is given permission to become the official governor of the Jews, in Israel. He rebuilds the wall surrounding Jerusalem.
3448 – Alexander the Great sweeps over the Middle East, and conquers Israel, bringing it under Greek rule.
So far so good?
====
Now, let’s try to fit in the dates for the Chanukah Story.
3538-3574 – Antiochus III reigns in Judea, after wresting control of the country from King Ptolemy V Epiphanes of Egypt. (222-186 B.C.E)
3575 – Antiochus III dies, and his son Seleucus IV Philopator takes over as Greek ruler of Judea.
Around this time (the secular date given is 187 BCE, which equates to 3573) Seleucus decides to ransack the Temple treasury in Jerusalem, at the time that ‘Yochanan Kohen Gadol’ is the High Priest – the Yochanan from Chanuka, whose son Matityahu launches the rebellion against the hellenists:
[A] man named Simon (…) reported to him [Apollonius] the treasury in Jerusalem was full of untold sums of money, so that the amount of the funds could not be reckoned, and that they did not belong to the account of the sacrifices, but that it was possible for them to fall under the control of the king. When Apollonius met the king, he told him of the money about which he had been informed. The king chose Heliodorus, who was in charge of his affairs, and sent him with commands to effect the removal of the reported wealth.
— 2 Maccabees 3:2-4, 6-7 (NRSV)
====
NOTE: We have a firm time here for when ‘Yochanan Kohen Gadol’ was the High Priest, at least between 3575 and 3585.
3585 – Seleucus IV Philopator is assassinated by that same Heliodorus, above, who becomes regent of Judea for a short while, Seleucus’ brother claims the throne. This is the Greek King of the Chanukah account, Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
====
Now, things get interesting.
When does the revolt of ‘Matityahu ben Yochanan Kohen Gadol‘ start?
3592 – 168 BCE.
(Note: is really hard to find a Jewish date for this, from authentic Jewish sources….If that seems surprising, I think you’ll start to see why this information is so hard to come by, shortly.) This snippet comes from Wikipedia, HERE:
Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes launched a massive campaign of repression against the Jewish religion in 168 BCE.
The reason he did so is not entirely clear, but it seems to have been related to the King mistaking an internal conflict among the Jewish priesthood as a full-scale rebellion. Jewish practices were banned, Jerusalem was placed under direct Seleucid control, and the Second Temple in Jerusalem was made the site of a syncretic Pagan-Jewish cult
====
So…. who was the ‘Kohen Gadol’ at this time?
Let’s head over to Chabad, who excel like no other Jewish site, when it comes to finding priceless nuggets of information that give more clues about what was really going on, in real Jewish history – however much they try to cover it up.
Seleucus was killed and his brother Antiochus IV began to reign over Syria (in 3586 – 174 B.C.E.).
Desiring to unify his kingdom through the medium of a common religion and culture, Antiochus tried to root out the individualism of the Jews by suppressing all the Jewish Laws.
He removed the righteous High Priest, Yochanan, from the Temple in Jerusalem, and in his place installed Yochanan’s brother Joshua, who loved to call himself by the Greek name of Jason.
For he was a member of the Hellenist party, and he used his high office to spread more and more of the Greek customs among the priesthood.
====
I know a lot of people get lost in all the info, so let’s sum this up as we go along:
The Kohen Gadol at the time Antiochus IV Epiphanes (the Chanuka tyrant) takes over as ruler of Judea is one ‘Yochanan Kohen Gadol’. We know this, because he is the Kohen Gadol who attempts to stop Antiochus IV’s brother, Seleucus, from stealing the Temple treasures, a few years’ earlier, (and because Chabad tells us….)
Antiochus begins his extremely harsh repression of the Jewish people – when circumcusion, Shabbat and the New Moon is outlawed – at this time, apparently mistaking an ‘internal conflict among the Jewish priesthood as a full-scale rebellion’.
The Gemara in Tractate Menuchot 109b tells us of a dispute between two sons of ‘Shimon HaTzaddik’, the Kohen Gadol, over who was to become the next Kohen Gadol. These two sons are named as ‘Chonyo’ and ‘Shimi’. There is a conflicting account over who is the good guy, and who is the bad guy. But both accounts agree that ‘Chonyo’ ends up fleeing Jerusalem, and goes to Egypt where he starts his own temple
Josephus tells us ‘Chonyo’ is also known as ‘Onias’.
The rebellion is begun by one ‘Matityahu ben Yochanan Kohen Gadol‘ – i.e., the son of the High Priest at the time of Antiochus’ usurping the Judean throne.
====
OK, now let’s unpick some more.
Here’s some more clues from the Chabad website, HERE:
At this time the Kohen Gadol was a righteous man named Chonyo, a nickname for Jochanan.
His Hellenized brother Jason, the Greek version of Joshua, bribed Antiochus with vast sums of money to be appointed in Chonyo’s place.
Once installed as Kohen Gadol, Jason built a gymnasium close to the Temple Mount. Sadly, many of the Kohanim and Jewish youth flocked to the hedonistic entertainments provided by Jason, complete with offering sacrifices to the Greek gods….
Jason’s associate Menelaus, who may not even have been a Kohen, bribed Antiochus with even greater amounts of money to depose Jason and appoint Menelaus himself as Kohen Gadol.
Once in power, Menelaus stole the holy vessels of the Bais Hamikdash to raise the vast sums he needed to pay his bribe.
When Chonyo protested this brazen behavior, Menelaus had him murdered.
The Sanhedrin then sent a delegation to Antiochus accusing Menelaus of great excesses, but Menelaus bribed the king’s advisors and had the sages executed.
====
So, now more of the story is coming into focus.
Yochanan = ‘Chonyo’ = Onias.
This would appear to be the same ‘Chonyo’ described in Menuchot 109b, who is fighting with his brother ‘Shimi’ over who will be the next High Priest.
Jason = Joshua / Jesus = ‘Shimi’
He’s the Hellenised brother, who builds a Greek gymnasium right next to Har HaBayit…. and apparently, he’s also the son of Shimon HaTzaddik.
And now, we also have two versions of that same story of Yochanan / Chonyo / Onias trying to stop some evil Hellenist from ransacking the Temple treasury. Except in one version, the villain is meant to be Seleucus’ agent Heliodorus, who apparently fails, and in the second version, it’s the arch-hellenist ‘Menelaus’ – who apparently succeeds, and has Yochanan / Chonyo / Onias killed when he’s deposed from being High Priest, and sent into exile in Daphne.
====
Now, let’s see if we can track down ‘Yochanan / Chonyo / Onias’ and ‘Jason’ more in the real world.
Jason was the High Priest of Israel from around 175 BCE to 171 BCE during the Second Temple period of Judaism.
He was of the Oniad family and was brother to Onias III, his predecessor as High Priest. Josephus records that his name was originally Jesus or Joshua before he changed it…
Onias III ruled as High Priest for an unknown length of time prior to Jason’s accession. Both Onias III and Jason were sons of Simon II, an earlier High Priest.
Simon II (219–199 BCE) was a Jewish High Priest during the Second Temple period. He was the son of Onias II.
Some identify him with Simeon the Just.
I.E., he is ‘Shimon HaTzaddik’.
Notice that ‘Simon II’ apparently only lived for 20 years… that’s baloney.
We know that Shimon HaTzaddik served as Kohen Gadol for 40 years, so if it’s the same person, he must have lived at least a few years more than that.
As usual, the dates here are deliberately all over the place, but it’s at least possible that all these repeated ‘Shimons’ and ‘Onias” are actually just the same person, split into multiples to deliberately confuse us all, that the main ‘enemy’ leading the Hellenisers in Judaea was none other than ‘Jason -Jesus’, the son of Shimon HaTzaddik.
====
OK, so let’s just finish up this particular post trying to trace what happened to ‘Jesus the Kohen Gadol’, son of Shimon HaTzaddik.
Remember, he descended from the same ‘Bnei Zadok’ as his apparently more righteous brother Yochanan / Chonyo / Onias III, and we know that the ‘Zadukim’ were the hellenizing Sadducees, who were against the Sages, (aka ‘Pharisees’).
We also know from the Gemara that there are conflicting accounts of what happened to ‘Onias’, and his brother, but that someone from this family went down to Egypt, and started a temple there.
And just to make things even more confused, Josephus says that the really, really bad High Priest, Menelaus, was actually also a brother of Jason-Jesus, and Yochanan / Chonyo /Onias.
====
As always, let’s go back to the ‘facts’ we do have, to see if we can stand more of them up with secondary sources.
There is more biographical details about Jason-Jesus from the Jewish Virtual Library site HERE, citing Maccabees 4:7–29:
Antiochus also granted him authority to establish in Jerusalem a Hellenist polis whose citizens were selected and registered by Jason himself.
Armed with this authority, he established within Jerusalem a city-state called Antiochia, whose citizens he chose from the Hellenized aristocracy of Jerusalem, and erected a gymnasium in the capital. His actions led to a strengthening of Hellenistic culture in the city and to a weakening of the traditional way of life and of religious worship (II Macc. 4:7–15).
This policy of Jason and his supporters was the chief cause of the Hasmonean revolt which broke out afterward, and which finally freed Judea from the rule of the Seleucids and gave birth to the Hasmonean dynasty.
Jason sent envoys and gifts to Tyre in honor of the festivities to the Tyrean god Heracles. He also welcomed Antiochus when he visited Jerusalem in 174 B.C.E.
However, three years later he was dismissed from the high priesthood by the king, and Menelaus, who offered Antiochus a larger sum of money for the office, was appointed in his stead.
==
A few years later, in 168 B.C.E., when a false rumor spread that Antiochus was dead, [Jason-Jesus] attempted to return and seize power in Jerusalem.
He was unsuccessful, however, and was compelled to leave the city after instituting a slaughter of the inhabitants.
For a while he was imprisoned by the Arabian king, Aretas.
His last years were spent wandering from place to place, and he was not buried in the family sepulcher.
====
So, it seems it was Jason-Jesus’ attempt to seize power in Jerusalem in 168 BCE that actually caused Antiochus Epiphanes to ratchet up his campaign of persecuting the Jews, and outlawing Jewish practice and circumcision.
Our biggest enemies always come from within.
On the Wikipedia page, (quoting more of the Book of Maccabees II) we learn that he also spent at least some time in Ptolemic Egypt – where that temple was built, mentioned in Menuchot 109b.
====
Getting back to that temple, it definitely did exist.
But there’s a question of whether it was actually built by Yochanan / Chonyo / Onias III, Jason-Jesus’ brother, or by his son, Onias IV.
The temple was probably built by Junio IV, son of Junio III between 170 and 154 BC, in Egypt. The dynasty of Honio’s sons served as high priests in the temple for its 243-year existence and in fact continued the dynasty of the priests of Zadok.
After being removed from the ministry of the high priesthood, he went down with his family and supporters to Egypt, sometime between 166 and 162 BC… Upon his arrival, Honio [IV] sent a letter to Ptolemy VI Philomator and his wife Cleopatra, as noted by Josephus Flavius in Antiquity of the Jews, Book 13: 64-68.
More:
By a unique coincidence, an interesting alliance was formed between the son of a Jewish high priest who fled to Egypt from political persecution and the desecration of the Temple, in order to fulfill an ancient prophecy about a new temple in Egypt, and the supreme ruler of Egypt.
Ptolemy [Philopater] enlists [Chonyo / Onias IV] sons and supporters as allies and as a military force in exchange for land and permission to establish their temple there.
====
Chonyo / Onias IV gets VERY cosy with the Egyptian rulers.
When Ptolemy Philopater dies, it’s Onias IV, head of his army, and his Jewish mercenaries, who save the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra when a civil war erupts.
I’m starting to think that ‘Onias IV’ may be one and the same as ‘Jason-Jesus-Joshua’, the hellenizing High Priest from Jerusalem, who sparks them massive Greek oppression of the Jews, then basically scarpers. He has a lot of military experience and is basically an immoral git.
It kinda makes sense that ‘Jesus the power hungry Kohen Gadol’ would build his own temple down in Heliopolis, and start his own religion.
I am going to stop here, for now, because I have some more mind-blowing information linking the ‘Bnei Zadok’ with Yoshki, xtianity – and also the Ptolemy family.
But that deserves it’s own post.
TBC
====
PS: Once all this information is finally shaken out, some more, I will do a post setting it all out very clearly.
I know it’s not always easy to follow the progression of these posts, but each one is a stepping stone clearing more of the confusion out of the way.
This is probably going to be one of those wild posts.
So buckle in, grab a cup of tea, and let’s begin.
==
The story begins when one of my readers sent me an email exchange he’d had with a friend who is both a historian and a mathematician (amongst many other things.)
This is the part that particularly caught my eye:
Not only did Bnei Zadokim (the priestly line known as the sons of Zadok) know that [the earth] was a sphere, but they actually knew very specific things about its orbit around the sun, and they also knew details about its axial rotation.
====
What?!
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that the working theory that is developing about real Jewish history is that the ‘Zadokim’, aka the heretical ‘Sadducees’ never really went away.
They most probably gave us Yoshki, and ‘Jewish-xtianity’, in whatever way that occurred; they for sure gave us Greek assimilation and heretical ideas, and they almost certainly continued to ‘subvert the Jewish community’ from within, not least as Karaites, and more modern ‘Jews for Jesus’.
The working theory is that these families of ‘Sadducees’ (who were mostly corrupt Kohanim) also gave us Shabtai Tzvi (aka Shabtai HaKohen, the SHACH), and that of course devolved, at least partly, into the Freemason-Frankist-Reformers, while the ‘old school Sabbateans’ remained outwardly ‘ultra-orthodox’.
This is the working theory for the mess our Jewish community is currently in.
====
So, it hit me like a thunderbolt that these same Zadukim / Sadducees were also big into heliocentric heresy, and ‘sun worship’.
When you think about it, that makes perfect sense. They were hellenising heretics, who wanted a more ‘moderate and modern’ Judaism that would enable them to stay ethnically Jewish, while tossing most of the mitzvot and Torah away.
Does this sound familiar?
====
So the first thing I did was to try to pin down a bit more about who these ‘Bnei Tzadukim’ actually were.
And this is where the story gets really interesting – and also really confusing.
Let’s have the basic intro, from Wikipedia, because it’s only going to get more wild from here:
The Sons of Zadok are a family of priests, kohens, descended from Zadok, the first high priest in Solomon’s Temple.
The sons of Zadok are mentioned three times in the Hebrew Bible, as part of the Third Temple prophecy in the final chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, and are a theme in Jewish and Christian interpretation of these chapters.
====
These Zadokite priests descend from Pinchas the Zealot, who killed Cozbi and Zimri in flagrante delicto, and was then ‘rewarded’ with the High Priesthood.
Pinchas was the grandson of both Aaron HaKohen, via his son Eleazar, and also of Yitro, via his mother, ‘the daughter of Putiel’. (Putiel was another name for Yitro – see Rashi’s commentary to Parshat Vayeira, 6:25).
After the whole thing with Jephta’s vow to sacrifice the first thing he saw when he came home after doing battle at Gibeah – which happened to be his daughter – Pinchas-who-is-Eliyahu drops out of view, and the High Priesthood is now given to the sons of Itamar, Aaron HaKohen’s other surviving son.
Eli HaKohen who we know from the story of Hannah, descends from Itamar HaKohen.
And of course, his sons Hophni and Pinchas are the corrupt Kohanim who have put the whole of Am Yisrael off from ascending to Shilo, to the Tabernacle, for the three festivals.
(There is nothing new under the sun).
====
So, under King David, Zadok is appointed High Priest, and he comes from the lineage of Aaron’s son, Eleazar.
This Zadok is very holy, he arranges the Kohanim into 24 ‘watches’, and according to Sotah 48b, David appoints him as Kohen HaGadol because the Urim v’Tumim actually work for him:
Rav Nachman said: When the Urim v’Tumim were consulted in the days of King David, sometimes it worked out for them and sometimes it did not work for them. For we find that Tzadok consulted the Urim v’Tumim at David’s behest and it worked out for him, while Aviatar consulted the Urim v’Tumim and it did not work out for him.
The Artscoll notes that this is based on the account in Samuel II, 15:24.
Having read it through, quickly, I can’t see anything about the Urim v’Temum specifically, but it does say that Zadok and Aviatar are David’s Kohanim, and describes how they bring the Ark of the Covenant out to travel with him, when he’s fleeing from his son Absalom, but David tells them to return to Jerusalem and act as his spies and informers.
Which they do. Zadok’s son Ahimaaz is the one who informs David that the rebellion has been crushed.
And later on, Solomon appoints Zadok as the first High Priest in the Temple.
====
So, the Zadok family are holy, important and strongly connected to royalty.
The next time the ‘sons of Zadok’ show up is in the prophesy of Yehezkel – also a Kohen, but from the line of Ithamar – in his vision about the Third Temple.
Here’s a little of what it says (Yehezkel 40:46):
“[T]he chamber that faces North is for the Kohanim, the guardians of the charge of the Altar. They, who are the descendants of Zadok, are the ones from among the sons of Levi who approach Hashem, to serve Him.”
====
The next notable mention of the ‘Sons of Zadok’ comes from fragments found amongst the Dead Sea scrolls.
Snippet from Wikipedia:
Various documents of the texts found at Qumran mention the teachers of the community as “kohanim Sons of Zadok“, leading some scholars to assume that the community at Qumran included kohanim (Jewish priests) who refused to participate in the Hellenization of the priesthood then taking place in Jerusalem.
Already by this point, I started to get the feeling that a big piece of the ‘real Jewish history’ puzzle was starting to swim into view.
Let’s continue.
====
So now, there are a lot of later commentaries on the status and function of these ‘Sons of Zadok’ in the Third Temple.
These include:,
Jonathan Eybeschutz,
Isaac Abrabanel, and
Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michal (the Malbim)
In fact, Eybshutz wrote a whole big pamphlet on the role of these ‘Bnei Zadukim’, called ‘Ahavath Yonatan’.
I haven’t read these commentaries myself, but according to Wikipedia, they state that the:
Status of the sons of Zadok after the coming of the Messiah will be that of “semi” high priests….there is Rabbinic documentary that describe the future high priest from the sons of Zadok as having certain priorities, or at least being equal to the future Jewish Messiah King.
As always, I’m getting sidetracked from what I actually wanted to write about, but take a look at this, from HERE:
Rabbi Chaim Vital… introduces an idea that in the Age to Come (Hebrew LeAtid Lavoh “the Messianic era”) the souls belonging to the spiritual rootsource of Kayin, which are essentially the souls of the firstborn and Levites, will become clear and purified and will thus merit to serve in the Third Temple.
This idea is exegesized from the verse “אם תטיב שאת” (if you will better yourself you will be uplifted) explained as when you will better yourself you will merit to the priesthood which is titled “שאת” (uplifted).
Surprise, surprise, the Chabad Rebbes are right in the middle of all this.
While we are on this subject, let me just note that from what I can tell, at least the last five rebbes of Chabad actually descend paternally from Kohanim.
What that means is that none of them could ever have been ‘Moshiach ben David’ – unless there was some strange idea that “the sons of Zadok = at least being equal to the future Jewish Messiah King. “
Let that sink in, while we move on with the main story.
====
So now, we have a conundrum to try to resolve.
Here, we have a description of ‘Zadokim’ that seems to suggest they are holy and pure, and will be back serving Hashem in the Third Temple.
Meanwhile, we also have all these Sadducee-Jewish-Xtian-Karaite-Sabbatean-Frankists, who are also named for ‘Zadok’.
So, what’s going on here?
====
Notorious Frankist-Reformer Abraham Geiger is the one who first says that ‘Sadducees’ descend, specifically, from Zadok the first Kohen HaGadol.
That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, necessarily, because as we’ve seen all along, the most evil people keep coming out of the families of true Tzaddikim – and vice-versa.
Our authentic Jewish tradition (via the ‘Avot de Rabbi Natan) teaches that ‘Zadok and Boethus’ were two students of Antigonos of Sokho, who went off the derech when they misunderstood his statement in Pirkei Avot Ch.1, Mishnah 3 that there is no reward or punishment.
Here’s that mishnah:
Antigonos of Sokho recieved the tradition from Shimon HaTzaddik. He used to say: “Do not be like servants who serve their master for the sake of recieving a reward; rather, be like the servants who serve their master without a reward in mind, and let the fear of Heaven be upon you.”
====
And here’s a translation of the Avot de Rabbi Natan:
[H]is two pupils, Zadok and Boethus, repeated this maxim to their pupils. In the course of time, either the two teachers or their pupils understood this to express the belief that there was neither an afterlife nor a resurrection of the dead and founded the sects of the Sadducees and the Boethusians.
They lived in luxurious splendor; using silver and golden vessels all their lives, not because they were haughty, but because (as they claimed) the Pharisees led a hard life on earth and yet would have nothing to show for it in the world to come.
====
Priestly families usually only used stone vessels, because of issues with tumah (spiritual impurity).
So we see that these ‘Sadducees and Boethesians’ were clearly storming off the derech.
Here’s a few more examples of their heretical ideas in action, from HERE:
The Mishnah, as well as the Baraita, mentions the Boethusians as opposing the Pharisees in saying that the sheaf due at the Passover (compare Omer) must be offered not on the second feast-day, but on the day after the actual Shabbat of the festival week, and, accordingly, that Shavuot, which comes seven weeks and one day later, should always be celebrated on Sunday.
In another passage it is narrated that the Boethusians hired false witnesses in order to lead the Pharisees astray in their calculations of the new moon.
Another point of dispute between the Boethusians and the Pharisees was whether the high priest should prepare the incense inside or outside the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur.
====
This was the real start of all the nitpicking and ‘disagreements’ between the Sages, that has put so very many people off yiddishkeit down the ages, including in our days.
And remember, there is nothing new under the sun.
====
Boethus and Zadok were both from priestly families.
Apparently, the Talmud was using the words ‘Boethusians’ and ‘Tzaddukim’ interchangeably, to denote a bunch of wicked, hellenising heretics who were trying to subvert Judaism from within.
For example, there is an argument in Shabbat 108a between ‘a Boethusian’ and R’ Yehoshua HaGarsi, where the Boethusian heretic is asking him:
From where is it derived that one may not write tefillin on the hide of an animal that is not kosher?
All these Boethusian, Sadducees and proto-xtians heretics sound the same in the Gemara.
That’s probably not a coincidence.
But according to my historian, above, there were two groups of ‘Zadukim’, one holy, and one really not, that Chazal could no longer distinguish between.
Let’s explore a little further.
====
This snippet comes from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, HERE:
Because of evident similarities, some scholars tend to view the Boethusians as merely a branch of the Sadducees.
Both parties, they point out, associated with the aristocracy and denied the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, because neither of these doctrines was contained in the written Torah, or first five books of the Bible.
The Boethusians testified to their disbelief in the “world to come” by living lives of luxury and by ridiculing the piety and asceticism of the Pharisees….
Still other scholars have argued that the Boethusians should be identified with the Essenes and Dead Sea Sect and that the word Boethusian may not derive from the name Boethus but from Beth Essaya, or Essenes.
====
There’s a link to Qumran again.
Let’s continue.
====
While I was pondering all this, the Rav, Rav Eliezer Berland, started making a bunch of references to ‘Shimon HaTzaddik’, and the strange account of what happened with the High Priesthood, when two of his sons started fighting with each other.
You can find that account in Tractate Menachot, 109b (this is the Artscroll translation):
“At the moment of his passing, [Shimon HaTzaddik] said to them, ‘My son Chonyo should serve as Kohen HaGadol in my place.’
Shimi, his brother, became jealous of him, because [Shimi] was two and a half years older than [Chonyo]. Shimi then schemed to have Chonyo killed, so he could assume the post of Kohen Gadol.
[Shimi] said to [Chonyo], ‘Come, and I will teach you the order of the Temple Service.’ He dressed him in a leather blouse and belted him with an attractive sash. Both of these were feminine articles of clothing. [Shimi] stood him next to the Altar. Shimi then left him there and went to speak to a group of Kohanim who were in the Temple at that time.
[Shimi] said to his brothers the Kohanim, ‘Look at what this [brother of mine] vowed and carried out for his beloved wife! He swore to her, ‘On the day I first serve as Kohen Gadol, I will wear your blouse and belt myself with your sash, to demonstrate my love for you.’
His brothers the Kohanim believed this story and wished to kill [Chonyo]. [Chonyo] ran away from them but they ran after him. He went to Alexandria in Egypt, built an altar there and brought sacrifices upon it for the sake of idolatry.”
====
Remember, both these Kohanim are meant to be the sons of Shimon HaTzaddik.
But wait, there’s more. The Gemara account continues like this:
“This version of the story reflects the words of R’ Meir. R’ Yehudah said to him: ‘That’s not how the story went’.
Rather, after Shimon HaTzaddik named Chonyo as his successor, Chonyo did not accept this upon himself because his brother Shimi was two and a half years older than him. Nevertheless, Chonyo regretted his decision and plotted to have Shimi killed, so he could become the Kohen Gadol.
[Chonyo] said to [Shimi], ‘Come, and I will teach you the Temple Service.’ He dressed him in a woman’s leather blouse and belted him with a woman’s attractive sash. [Chonyo] stood [Shimi] next to the altar and left him there.
[Chonyo] said to his brothers the Kohanim, ‘Look at what this [brother of mine] vowed and carried out for his beloved wife! He swore to her, ‘On the day that I first serve as Kohen Gadol, I will wear your blouse and belt myself with your sash, to show you the depth of my love.’
==
His brothers the Kohanim believed this story and wished to kill him.
He asked them to wait until he spoke and then they could do whatever they wished. [Shimi] told them the entire incident. The Kohanim investigated the matter with the greatest scrutiny until they clarified Shimi was innocent and it was Chonyo who had dared to make the Kohen Gadol, the avodah and the Altar into a joke.
[The masses] then wished to kill Chonyo. [Chonyo] ran away from them, but they ran after him. He ran towards the King’s palace, but they ran after him. Whoever saw him as he ran would point at him and tell his pursuers, ‘That is him! That is him!’
When he reached the palace, the king could not protect him because he was sought by the entire Jewish people.
[Chonyo] went to Alexandria in Egypt, built an altar there and brought offerings upon it for the sake of Heaven.
He therefore fulfilled a prophetic promise to Isaiah from years earlier, for it says: ‘On that day, there will be an altar to Hashem in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to Hashem near it’s border.'”
====
If you are feeling confused by all this, don’t worry!
I also am.
But certain threads are starting to tie together here, in a big way, between real Jewish history, the Hashmonaims, the Sadducees, and the first ‘Jewish-xtian’ heretics.
Let’s set out a few more details, and then we’ll pick this up in part 2, because it’s too much info to stuff into one post.
The note on the Artscroll translation says this:
Rambam states that Chonyo built a temple that was structurally similar to the Beit HaMikdash.
Josephus Flavius reports that it was a smaller and poorer version. Josephus writes further that Chonyo [whom he calls ‘Onias’ and describes as a descendant of Shimon HaTzaddik] appealed to Ptolemy Philometer and his queen Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt from Alexandria, to allow him to develop a certain stretch of land for a Jewish Temple.
Josephus states that this land was in an area known as ‘the Nomus of Heliopolis’.
====
“Helio” = sun.
“Polis” = city.
Back to that footnote:
====
Rambam writes (following the view of R’ Yehudah) that the Temple of Chonyo was not a pagan temple, but Chonyo did transgress the negative commandment against offering sacrifices outside the Beit HaMikdash.
Rambam adds that the Copts and their associates were attracted to Chonyo.
Chonyo encouraged them to serve Hashem and they listened to him. His statements were much esteemed by them and they made him their priest and honored his temple.
They served Hashem there and brought offerings according to what Chonyo had instructed them. The temple stood for hundreds of years.
====
I have that strange feeling I sometimes get that we may have just tripped over the historical account of the original ‘Yoshki’.
You know, that guy who went ‘bad’ and mislead a whole bunch of people to start worshipping idols, even though he himself was apparently still a devout Jew… who went down to Egypt and learnt black magic there…. who was very connected to ‘royalty’ back in Jerusalem, and who descends from a family of priests…
Remember, the Coptic Church is probably the oldest ‘official’ xtian church in the world. This comes from Wikipedia:
The Egyptian Church is traditionally believed to be founded by Mark the Evangelist around AD 42, and regards itself as the subject of many prophecies in the Old Testament.
Isaiah the prophet, in Chapter 19, Verse 19 says “In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the LORD at its border”.
The first Christians in Egypt were common people who spoke Egyptian Coptic.
There were also Alexandrian Jewish people such as Theophilus, whom Luke the Evangelist addresses in the introductory chapter of his gospel. When the church was founded by Mark during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, a great multitude of native Egyptians (as opposed to Greeks or Jews) embraced the Christian faith.
====
This is the exact same verse quoted in our Gemara, Tractate Menachot 109b, in connection with Chonyo’s temple!
If the original ‘Yoshki’ was actually the son of Shimon HaTzaddik… we can already start to understand why all this has been so covered up.
So now, we have to ask the question:
Who was ‘Shimon HaTzaddik’, really, and how did he connect to the Hashmonaim rulers?
For sure, he’s a massive Tzaddik, there’s no question of that.
But, what is the context surrounding him, and his family, and how does all this mesh together with what we know of ‘official Jewish history’?
We’ll try to explore that more, in the next post, BH.
====
In preparation for the next post, I highly recommend you go back and read this one:
