Historical insights are like buses.

Nothing for six months, and then twenty all in a week.

When I started following some of the threads that pulled loose after the post about ‘Di Muma Leah’ (aka ‘Lady Hagevirah Breindel Horowitz’), married to ALEXSEI GREIGH, the Scottish Russian Admiral, and governor of Nikolyaev, some very interesting new information came into view.

You can go back and read that post HERE.

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Before we continue, the point I think it’s so important to make is how much of a concerted effort has been made, across 200+ years, to cover all this stuff up.

ADMIRAL GREIGH was not some Joe, he was a high-profile Russian general, and governor of Nikolayev.

And yet, I am willing to wager good money that THIS blog was the first you ever heard about him, and certainly, the first you ever heard about his Jewish wife, ‘DI MUMA LEAH’ (Horowitz…).

Is it really possible, and credible, that 200 years of ‘Jewish historians’ missed this guy, and his Jewish wife, and one of the most crucial times in Jewish history within the Russian Empire?

Or – is something else going on, do you think?

While you are mulling that over, in this post we’re going to start to bring more of the people in the immediate network of ADM GREIGH and his Jewish wife – so you can start to get a clue who may have wanted this story buried….and why.

Let us begin.

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This is a picture of JULIA STIEGLITZ (1829-1865).

She’s one of the daughters of GREIGH and DI MUMA LEAH, and she married a guy called NIKOLAI JOHANN (BORISOVICH) VON STIEGLITZ.

Don’t let the name fool you, though, as this is yet another ‘converted Jew’ from a family of ‘converted Jews’, who got ennobled and then made a packet supplying the Russian government with provisions during all the various wars going on.

(Or maybe, that’s the other way around. It’s hard to know).

Julia died from a fractured back aged 36, when someone accidentally ‘dropped her’ on the dance floor. Personally, that sounds like quite the tall tale, but this is what ‘official history’ says really happened to her.

Before she died, she had three kids:

Alexander von Stieglitz; Julia von Cube and Nikolai von Stieglitz

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But it’s her husband’s relatives, NIKOLAI VON STIEGLITZ, that I want to take a closer look at in this post.

First, HERE’s his (truncated…) family tree on Geni:

If you spend some time tracing it back, the unmistakeable Jewish nature of this family comes clearly into view. There is no question that they converted to ‘Lutheranism’ – they are mostly buried in the family vault in the Lutheran cemetery.

And there is also no question that at least some of them carried on married into Jewish families with tremendous yichus, nevertheless.

Take a look at this screenshot from Geni (HERE), for AMALIE ANGELIKA CHRISTIANE BARONIN VON STIEGLITZ (1777-1838):

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She was born into the LEVI-DUESSELDORF family, and her sister FROMMET married an OPPENHEIM.

These people are (genetically…) ‘Jewish royalty’ – all converting as fast as their little legs can carry them, and then getting ennobled and trying to get rich working for the government. (Or the other way around…)

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So, let’s come back to AMALIE’s husband, who is LUDWIG JOHANN BARON VON STIEGLITZ.

This guy:

His nephew is that NIKOLAUS STIEGLITZ, husband of JULIA GREIGH.

And NIKOLAUS STIEGLITZ also happens to be the business partner of ABRAHAM PERETZ – the SIL of JOSHUA ZEITLIN, big funder of the haskalah, and both somehow intimately connected with both the ALTER REBBE of CHABAD – and the Frankist family tree that gave us the RIVLINS.

Oh, lucky, lucky us.

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What follows is a Google translation of what I finally managed to track down, by searching on Russian language websites, about JOSHUA ZEITLIN, ABRAHAM PERETZ and NIKOLAUS STIEGLITZ.

If you read Russian, you are welcome to engage with the original text HERE:

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“During the Russo-Turkish War (1787-1791), Joshua Zeitlin was engaged in supplies to the Russian army, as he enjoyed the patronage of His Serene Highness Prince Grigory Potemkin-Tavrichesky.

The prince supervised the annexation and initial organization of Crimea, where he owned colossal land plots, the management of which he entrusted to his commercial agent Zeitlin.

Zeitlin managed the Crimean mint.

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Zeitlin’s son-in-law Abram Peretz came forward as a shipbuilding contractor in the late 1790s.

In March 1799, he signed a contract with the government for the farming of Crimean salt. It was here that Yegor Kankrin got a job with him.

Peretz’s partner in salt farming was the Kherson merchant Nikolaus Stieglitz, who had an office in Odessa.

In 1801, Paul I confirmed their monopoly right to supply the southwestern provinces with Crimean salt. Thanks to the high patronage of Joshua Zeitlin.

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Nikolaus soon loaned and transferred abroad thirteen million rubles for the personal needs of Alexander I, who had ascended to the throne, and, at the request of the Tsar, in 1809 secretly financed the guerrilla war against Napoleon in Spain and Italy.

[Ed. Note: this is a crucial bit of very important info, that we will come back to.]

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Abram Peretz owned a house in the capital and at one time rented it to Count Mikhail Speransky.

Peretz was a friend and advisor to Speransky and developed the basic plan for his financial reform of 1810.

[Ed. Note: this is also a crucial piece of information.]

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One of Stieglitz’s nephews became the husband of Julia Greig, the daughter of the commander of the Black Sea Fleet Alexei Greig,

And another became the first manager of the State Bank of Russia (1860-1866).

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These STIEGLITZs are really important dudes – and none of us have heard of them before.

That article continues:

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During the continental blockade of England, ships of the trading house “Stieglitz & Co.” delivered grain to the island [of Great Britain], a traditional Russian export product, and the tsarist government, of course, “knew nothing about it.”

Since 1806, Yegor Kankrin was responsible for food supplies for Russian troops, including the foreign campaign of 1813-1814.

The allies demanded 360 million rubles from Russia for the food received by the Russian army. Kankrin managed to reduce the payments to 60 million.

Of the 425 million rubles planned for waging the war, less than 400 million were spent in 1812-1814.

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During the war of 1812-1814, Peretz invested heavily in organizing the food supply of the Russian army.

He made no profit. Apparently, this was how he paid Kankrin, who had not turned him in ten years earlier.

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There is SO much more going on here, but let’s pause and unpack the above, a little more.

I did a five part series on Russia’s Jews, that touched on ABRAHAM PERETZ a while back, that you can read HERE.

Here’s a pertinent snippet, that revolves around ‘SARAH’, the daughter of the SHA’AGAT ARYEH:

‘Sarah, daughter of the SHA’AGAT ARYEH’ is shown in multiple places on Geni as marrying  NATAN NETA(NOTKIN) KHAIMOVITCH– one of the main government contractors in SHKLOV, and a  person who pops up in a lot of stories we cover here.

For example, NATAN NETA NOTKIN is said to be the shtadlan who arranges for the ALTER REBBE of  Chabad to be freed from prison. 

And his ‘business partner’ is said to be ABRAHAM PERETZ, the son-in-law of BARON YEHOSHUA  ZEITLIN of SHKLOV– who ends up converting to xtianity in St Petersburg, and who is meant to have  been one of the people who snitched on the ALTER REBBE in the first place…

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In other words, the converted Jew LUDWIG BARON VON STIEGLITZ – is the business partner of ABRAHAM PERETZ.

And NATAN NETA NOTKIN – who appears out of the mist, genealogically-speaking, and who the Tsar is reputed to visit on his deathbed – is also the business partner of ABRAHAM PERETZ.

Is it possible, that LUDWIG STIEGLITZ and ‘NATAN NETA NOTKIN’ – the Shtadlan who gets the Alter Rebbe freed from Russian prison – are one and the same?

(If you knew just who descends from ‘NATAN NETA NOTKIN’ – the guy with no grave and no details – you would find all this even more interesting. It includes some of the biggest rabbis of the so-called ‘old yishuv’ of Eretz Yisrael.)

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Park that idea for now, and let’s see who else LUDWIG JOHANN BARON VON STIEGLITZ is connected to.

His brother, JOHANN JOHANNES STIEGLITZ (1767-1840) married a woman called SOPHIE JEANETTE EPHRAIM (1764-1843).

The EPHRAIM family of German bankers are another family who have been routinely ‘scrubbed’ out of our history books.

They were tremendously wealthy financiers – SOPHIE’s grand-dad was called NATHAN VEITEL HEINE CHAIM EPHRAIM (1703-1775) – and here’s a picture of the house he built for himself, called the ‘PALAIS EPHRAIM’, in Berlin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_Palace#/media/File:Museum_Ephraim-Palais_im_Sommer.jpg

Snippet from HERE:

Royal prussian court agent (Hoffaktor) and leading entrepreneur in the mint business under the reign of King Frederic “the Great” of Prussia

Becoming thus one of the richest Jews of his time with an estimated fortune of over 1.000.000 Reichstaler, he built in 1762 Palais Ephraim in Berlin (foto), a superb mansion in rococo style.

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NATHAN VEITEL EPHRAIM’s wife was called ELKE – and if you click on her family tree HERE, you are right back into the Sabbatean-Frankist heartland, populated by the Goldsmidts, Rothschilds, Mirels – and of course, a bunch of our very ‘biggest’ rabbinical families.

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In the meantime, let’s finish this post off with a closer look at the family tree of AMALIE ANGELIKA CHRISTIANE LEVI-DUESSELDORF – wife of LUDWIG, ABRAHAM PERETZ’s business partner, in Russia.

She descends from the same people I keep coming back to her – including the HAMELN-GOLDSMIDT family (that gave us the diarist GLUCKL of HAMELN, and her converted grandson MOSES MARCUS, who we wrote about in the GET of LONDON.)

And the GANS family of ‘heliocentric’ astronomers who are the first people to stick a pagan star of David on their tombs, 400 years ago.

And the CERF BERR family of France, who were Napoleon’s right-hand men during and after the French Revolution.

And the D’EICHTAL family of French bankers, whose sons become Jesuit converts who started buying up land all over Eretz Yisrael, and building monasteries  and converts etc on it.

And the Court Factor LEFFMAN BEHRENS (1630-1714) – who apparently printed the Talmud in Frankfort-on-the-Oder, in gratitude for not drowning when he crossed the English Channel, when he and his brother went there to discuss setting up the Bank of England.

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We also covered that last bit of interesting news in the GET of LONDON, but here is what gives all this another dimension:

(Snippet from HERE:)

Leffmann Behrens, Jewish name: Elieser (Ezechiel) Lippmann Cohen (* 1634 in Bockum; † January 1, 1714 in Hanover), was a German court Jew, court and chamber agent (banker) of the Hanoverian Welf dukes in the late 17th and early 18th centuries….

Leffmann Behrens died on January 30th, the Electress Sophie [of Hanover – from his main employers, the Dukes of Hanover] in June, and in August her son Georg Ludwig ascended to the British throne as King George I.

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The Bank of England, in the meantime, was begun in 1694.

Here’s a snippet from its Wiki page:

Established in 1694 to act as the English Government’s banker and debt manager, and still one of the bankers for the government of the United Kingdom, it is the world’s second oldest central bank.

The bank was privately owned by stockholders from its foundation in 1694 until it was nationalised in 1946.

I’m sure it’s just a fantastic COINCIDENCE that the son of the woman LEFFMAN BEHRENS was working for ended up being given the British throne in 1714, against all the odds….

And I’m also sure it has nothing to do with the founding of the privately-owned Bank of England.

Ahem.

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I’m going to pause here, as there is always more to write.

In the next post, I want to take a look at LUDWIG VON STIEGLITZ’s interesting descendants, back in Russia – because you can be sure that this family were moving and shaking all over the Tsar’s government.

Which is so interesting, when we recall just how anti-semitic Imperial Russia was said to be, and how ‘anti’ Jews….

As usual, something in the picture is just not adding up so clearly.

Until then.

OK, let’s get into the third installment of ‘real Jewish history’, based on Rav Berland’s recent shiur on the Get of Cleves, etc.

(Read the first parts HERE and HERE.)

In this post, we’re going to take a closer look at this couple of paragraphs of the Rav:

There was R’ Abish of Frankfurt, there was the get of Cleves, there was the get of Galuna.

The get of Cleves involved the whole planet, all the tzaddikim in Europe [wrote their opinion on it].

So, the Nodah be’Yehuda said that the get of Cleves[1] wasn’t a get. He was against it, because she [the bride] was his cousin, so he possulled (disqualified) the get. This was the get of Galuna, there was a difference of almost ten years [between the get of Cleves and the get of Galuna.]

After this, there was the get of Cleves.

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As you are hopefully starting to realise, you can’t just ‘read’ the Rav and immediately get what is being said.

There is so much going on here, even with the most simple sentence. I’ve been working on this for three days straight already, full-time, and while we’re getting quite a few ‘break throughs’, it is not straightforward at all.

So, let’s see where this takes us, and what ‘hints’ we can decode from this next bit of the Rav’s words.

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In the post called the Get of London, I started taking a look at YITZHAK HALEVI HOROWITZ HAMBURGER’s family tree – and truth be told, I got overwhelmed from the huge mess over there.

We figured out that his dad was the YAAKOV YOKEL of GALUNA who the Rav said gave the grandpa of the Rothschilds his blessing to get rich, and that was about it.

This time around, I decided to start with the Hebrew sources, which are ALWAYS more accurate and more complete, to see what would shake out that way.

I started HERE, on the Hebrew Wiki page for YITZHAK HALEVI HOROWITZ, and I started scanning for anything to do with a get, or divorce. Whaddya know? I found it.

Read on.

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In the beginning, the NODAH BE YEHUDAH, YEHEZKEL LANDAU, and YITZHAK HAMBURGER were apparently good friends.

According to the Hebrew Wiki, they became good friends from their time learning together in the Brody Kloiz, and they were also mishpocha.

R MENACHEM MANES HOROWITZ, the brother of YITZHAK HAMBURGER married the NODA BE YEHUDA’s sister. Of course, there is no peep of that on Geni, or anywhere else.

Then later on, the NODA BE YEHUDA’s son, ‘JACOBKE’, married R YITZHAK’s daughter REICHE(L). (They also got divorced….)

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Then, around the year 5512, R YITZHAK HOROWITZ and the other rabbis of the Brody Kloiz gave permission to R YEHOSHUA HESHIL HOROWITZ, the son of MENACHEM MANES HOROWITZ, to divorce his wife.

Her name was WITTUSH, the daughter of R TZVI HIRSCH of Opotchno and Hildesheim, and she didn’t want to get to divorced. But YITZHAK HAMBURGER HOROWITZ gave his nephew permission to ditch her anyway.

(The more I am looking into what was going on 200 years ago with all these very learned ‘rabbis’, the more I’m getting the impression that they were using their Torah learning and position to basically act like mafia bosses, doing whatever the heck they wanted, with a kosher stamp.)

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So, WITTUSH didn’t want the divorce, which meant the get was ‘thrown in her lap’ by an intermediary while Wittush was walking publically in the street, against her will.

And her ex-husband, JOSHUA HESHEL HOROWITZ remarried.

This get was arranged by the son of the PNEI YEHOSHUA (and brother of the Bad Baal Shem of London….), who was called ARYEH LEIB of SKOLA.

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Now, it turns out that in this little incestuous world of our leading rabbis, the NODA BE YEHUDAH also happened to be the cousin of WITTUSH’s father, R TZVI HIRSCH of Optochno and Hildesheim.

Let’s remember what the Rav said:

So, the Nodah be’Yehuda said that the get of Cleves[2] wasn’t a get. He was against it, because she [the bride] was his cousin, so he possulled (disqualified) the get. This was the get of Galuna, there was a difference of almost ten years [between the get of Cleves and the get of Galuna.]

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Fourteen years later, the NODA BE YEHUDA decides to invalidate the get, because he says it was done by an intermediary – the guy who threw the get at Wittush in the street, against her will – which invalidated it.

The NODA BE YEHUDA puts JOSHUA HESHEL HOROWITZ in cherem for breaking the rule of Rabbenu Gershom not to have more than one wife at a time, and says he’s still halachically married to WITTUSH, wife number one.

YITZHAK HAMBURGER doubled-down on his opinion that the get was valid, and no transgression of Rabbenu Gershom had taken place. And long story short, things got pretty nasty between these two ‘Torah giants’.

A little later, PINCHAS HOROWITZ, and the KETZOT HAHOSHEN come out in support of YITZHAK HAMBURGER’s halachic position on the get, and even YAAKOV EMDEN mentions the NODA BE YEHUDA’s stance unfavorably in his writings.[3]

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Someone else most of us have never heard about, but who also popped up in the Get of Cleves story, by the name of R YOSEF STEINHARDT eventually makes peace between the warring ABD of Prague, and the ABD of Hamburg.

But even so, no-one is really clear about how this matter ended, tachlis. There’s a suggestion that YEHOSHUA HESHEL HOROWITZ gave his ex WITTUSH another get, this time, that she was happy to accept. And that then, she remarried.

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As usual, all this is totally covered up on Geni – by KLH, working for who, exactly? – and also in the works of others including Neil Rosenstein.

This choice snippet comes from the geni page for Witush Horowitz, the unwillling divorcee:

According to “The Unbroken Chain”, by Neil Rosenstein (Volume 6, Chapter 16, page 29), Witush was the daughter of R. Joseph HaLevi Landau, ABD Klimintow. The book also explains that some sources have mistakenly stated that she was the daughter of R. Zvi Hirsch, ABD Hildesham. The following reference is provided for further information: “See the journal Kovetz Beit Aharon VeYisrael, #57, 7, published the Stoliner Chassidim (Jerusalem, 1995)”.

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This isn’t the first time I’ve spotted deliberate misinformation in ‘The Unbroken Chain’.

Let’s try to figure out what are they trying to hide, here?

The fact that this yucky divorce happened in the first place?

The big machloket between the NODA BE YEHUDA and YITZHAK HAMBURGER? Something else?

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OK, so at this post, I spent a day at this stage putting together the NODA B’ YEHUDA’s family tree. It was a day well spent – and we’ll keep the wider part of that particular story for a separate post.

But here’s the genealogical stuff that is specifically relevant to the ‘GET of GALUNA’.

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First, here is how R ZVI HIRSCH MARGALIYOT, ABD OPOCZNO AND HILDESHEIM, the father of the unwilling divorcee, WITTUSH HOROWITZ, is the cousin of the NODA BE YEHUDA – exactly as the Rav said.

The father of the NODAH BE YEHUDA is R YEHUDA HALEVI (SEGAL) LANDAU, Parnas of the Council of the 4 Lands.

His sister is RECHEL, who marries R’ AVIGDOR MARGALIYOT ABD CHENCHIN. Their son is R ZVI HIRSCH MARGALIYOT, ABD OPOCZNO AND HILDESHEIM, which makes him the cousin of the NODA BE YEHUDAH.

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It turns out that ZVI HIRSCH MARGALIYOT, ABD OPOCZNO and HILDESHEIM is also the maternal g-grandson of someone called:

R’ Joel Heilprin, Baal Shem Tov of Zamosc, the elder

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Remember, ‘Baal Shem’ denotes people who were using Ineffable names and kabbalah ‘magic’ to cure people, make gold coins appear under trees, tame demons, etc…

Only the Baal Shem TOV – the BESHT – was able to pull this off in holiness and kedusha. The rest of the ‘Baal Shems’ – like Falk, Eybshitz, and many others – were literally doing kabbalah ‘black magic’, and there seems to be a huge overlap between the ‘Baal Shems’, and the Sabbateans, with all their fallen, twisted ‘kabbalah’.

Read a little more about him at the Jewish Encyclopaedia site, HERE.

(BTW, this family tree of JOEL HEILPRIN links us straight into the heart of the Frankist network, including JACOB (ESKELES) FRANK, and descendants of the SHACH / SHABTA TZVI).

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You can see more about the family tree of ZVI HIRSCH MARGALIYOT on the Hebrew Books site HERE:[4]

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Next, I want to show you how the Geni gatekeepers are routinely distorting the family trees around all these ‘scandals’ and Sabbateans (and also, xtian converts with big yichus….)

You’ll recall above, that we’re told that ‘WITTUSH’ is the daughter of R. Joseph HaLevi Landau, ABD Klimintow.

He’s meant to be the brother of the NODA BE YEHUDAH, which would make ‘WITTUSH’ his niece, and not the daughter of his cousin. I highly doubt ‘Joseph Landau’ existed, at least, with that particular name, in the way we are being told. Here’s his family tree on Geni:

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It looks to me like Joseph Landau was one and the same as R JOSEPH YITZHAK LANDAU, another brother of the NODA BE YEHUDA.

Here is his family tree on Geni, under the sole name ‘YITZHAK LANDAU’:

Notice, how all the mothers are routinely and bizarrely scrubbed off – because this information is extent, they were big rabbis, with big yichus, from famous families – and everything was written down in the synagogue and community records.

That’s how they ‘split identities’ on Geni, to try and keep people from making all these connections between the different groups fighting each other – who were basically all close mishpocha.

And often, Sabbateans / Frankists / Xtian converts – or some other flavor of ‘scandalous’.

Now that I’ve done a deep-dive on this family tree, I am starting to have a better idea of why this was done to this particular branch of the family tree.

This is the nexus that connects a whole bunch of the interesting people I’ve been writing about here, including all those Russian Jews marrying Scottish xtians working for the Tzar, the ‘VILNA GAON’, the funding mechanism out of Vilna for the Holy Land, the maskilim in Uman… There’s a lot going on here, b’kitzur.

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Back to the GET of GALUNA, and WITTUSH MARGALIYOT.

In her first marriage to JOSHUA HESHEL HOROWITZ, before the ‘GET of GALUNA’, she has two children.

One of them is called DAVID HALEVI ISH HOROWITZ (d. 1830) – and he marries ETHEL (1780-1868), the daughter of the MACHANE EPHRAIM, the brother of BARUCH of MEDHZIBOZH and also a maternal uncle of REBBE NACHMAN.

They have five kids, and one of their daughters, RIVKA REIZEL HOROWITZ marries ‘ARYE LEIB WERTHEIM, the ADMOR of BENDERY’ (1772-1885) – and the brother of MOSHE TZVI of SAVRAN[5] (aka: ISRAEL of RUZHIN), the leading persecutor of R’ NATAN STERNHARTZ.

It’s a small world.

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Meanwhile, WITTUSH apparently does remarry, to R ZVI HIRSH MIRELS of LONDON (1745-1814), author of the Mispar Zvoom, and son of R ARON MIRELS of LONDON, BIL of the CHACHAM TZVI.

There are for sure a whole bunch more connections to be made with all this and the dodgy things going on both in London, and in ‘chassidut’ at this same time, but suffice to say there were good reasons in both the chassidic and non-chassidic camps to try and muddy the waters of what ever happened to Wittush, the unwilling divorcee of Joshua Heschel Horowitz?

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Apparently, when WITTUSH’s tomb was ‘redone’, as they so like to do, they got the name of her father wrong.

This snippet is Google translated from the original Hebrew, HERE:

It should be noted that her father’s name is Zvi Hirsch of Margaliot Av Beit Din Opatashni and Hildesheim, and not Yitzhak Zvi as mistakenly written by the one who renewed the tombstone in Warsaw.

Yah, it was just a mistake. Honest.

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Now, was R YITZHAK HOROWITZ in the ‘secret Sabbatean’ camp?

It’s hard to know. When he took over Altona (Hamburg), the town was full of JONATHAN EYBSHITZ’s supporters (= Sabbateans).

YAAKOV EMDEN wanted to place a ban on all these Sabbateans, and to have them kicked out of Altona / Hamburg. YITZHAK HOROWITZ overturned EMDEN’s ban, and also announced that henceforth, ISRAEL EYBSHITZ, the grandson of JONATHAN, was to be addressed with the honorific title of ‘Moreinu’.

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At the same time…. The Sabbateans were powerful and wealthy, and they were either buying off, or threatening, anyone who stood up to them, or stood in their way.

While we’re on the subject, you can read the NODA BE YEHUDAH’s letter ‘exonerating’ EYBSHITZ in English translation HERE.

If you read it properly, you’ll see for yourself that the NODA BE YEHUDAH’s phrasing and references show he clearly believed EYBSHITZ was a Sabbatean, as charged.

A few years ago, Sid Leiman wrote about a letter the NODA BE YEHUDAH sent to the monarchy where he clearly expresses his opinion, in no uncertain terms, that EYBSHITZ is a Sabbatean. Read more about that HERE.

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UPDATE: I put the link to the wrong article above, here is the correct link:

https://leimanlibrary.com/texts_of_publications/48.%20When%20a%20Rabbi%20is%20Accused%20of%20Heresy%20-%20R.%20Ezekiel%20Landau.pdf

You can also read the Hebrew version of the NODA BE’YEHUDAH’s ‘reconciliation’ letter HERE, where the nuances are perhaps more obvious.

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So, to try to sum all this up, it’s very possible that YITZHAK HAMBURGER either was a ‘secret Sabbatean’ himself, or at the very least, had been bought off or threatened by them, to stay in line, overturn Emden’s attempts to ban them from participating in the Hamburg Jewish community, and to start ‘honoring’ Eybshitz’s Sabbatean grandchildren.

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As usual, this is still only the tip of the iceberg.

I have a few more really important posts to write now, that have spun-off from all this, that will start to tie things together more, for all of us.

Until then.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Hebrew transcriber puts the words (Galuna] in brackets here.

[2] The Hebrew transcriber puts the words (Galuna] in brackets here.

[3] Yaakov Emden was a strange advocate for being able to have two wives again. Perhaps, this unpleasant affair is part of what encouraged his line of thinking.

[4] This is a machine translation of what this ‘yichus brief’ says:

1. Branch of the renowned community leader and patron Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Segal Abigdor, who served as the Rabbi of Sint (Szentes), (who was) the son-in-law of the famous Rabbi (known as Rabbi) of Apta [who was the grandfather of the Nodah B’Yehudah]. His mother was Mrs. Vitsha (named after Mrs. Vitsha) Landau of Apta.

1. Son of the wealthy and famous Rabbi Yechezkel Segal Landau of Apta.

1. Son of Rabbi Benjamin (Wolf) Segal Landau.

1. From the family lineage of the author of the Agur (and some say he was a direct descendant of the author of the Agur). And his wife was the modest Rebbetzin Mrs. Rachel.

See also the family lineage confirmation for the Landau family as mentioned above in the “Pathshegen” letter of attestation that was copied at the end of the book “She’erit Natan” by Rabbi Abigdor, the Chief Rabbi of Lentshna (Łęczna), son of Rabbi Joseph of Ostrówiec, for the book “Tavnit Ot Yosef.”

1. Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch (according to the ledger of the Apta community) page 104.

In the biographical section about Rabbi Yehoshua Horowitz of blessed memory in the appendix to the book “Da’at Kedoshim” page 17 note 1, and so it is written in the family records at the beginning of “Kerem Yehoshua” by a descendant of Rabbi Y. Hamburger of blessed memory (Lvov 1899).

1. (In the family records and in “Kerem Yehoshua,” there appears to be an error).

1. As written in the ancient family records that was printed at the beginning of “Oirah Shachar” and in the sources mentioned above (and in the family records at the beginning of “Kerem Yehoshua”), and at the beginning of “Net’a L’Banon” (Przemyśl 1882), and this is the accepted version. Rabbi Natan Nota Segal Landau, Rabbi of Oshpitzin (Oświęcim), and so it appears in the title page of the book “Kur Habechina” (Breslau 1837) by Rabbi Yosef Shmuel Segal Landau of Kampna.

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[5] See this post, where we start to set out that MOSHE TZVI of SAVRAN = ISRAEL of RUZHIN, who was forced to flee Russia to Moldova, where he adopted a totally new identity, after being arrested by the Tzar’s police for having informers killed.

 

We are continuing trying to track down more of the Rav’s ‘clues’ about real Jewish history, from his comments on the Get of Cleves.

I know that some of this is hard going, even tedious, with all of the new info and facts.

I am trying to dumb it down as much as I can, but at the end of the day, the important thing seems to just be to get this information up, and circulating around more freely. That by itself is getting more things to ‘move’, even if it’s not obvious how.

So, if this isn’t your thing, skip it, or skim. And if it is your thing – print it out, and help me figure out more what is really going on  here!

Thankenchou for you consideration, patience – and active participation, if you would also like to get this to start moving faster, and to help the process of ‘clarification’ along.

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You can read the first part on the Get of Cleves itself HERE.

That’s where we started to figure out that the Sabbateans of Frankfurt, including the Rothschilds, were close family members of the dayan on the Frankfurt Beit Din who caused most of the trouble, a guy called NATHAN MAAS, d. 1794.

Now, we’re going to focus on this paragraph of the Rav’s shiur:

So he [her ex] built [in London] the synagogue of R’ Yitzhak Hamburger, he became a very wealthy man. A milionaire. A billionaire.

He built a synagogue, it’s still standing until this day, of R Yitzhak Hamburger, R’ Yitzhak Horowitz Hamburger.

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I am prepared to stand corrected, but I can’t find any synagogue in London that was built by, or for, R Yitzhak Horowitz Hamburger.

I considered if it’s possible that ‘Yitzhak Horowitz Hamburger’ could be one and the same as ‘Itzik Neuborg ben Eliezer of Mannheim’. In theory, anything is possible with Sabbateans, as they shift identities and change names all the time.

However, without more to go on, that would just be tilting at windmills, so instead, I decided to research 2 things, namely, YITZHAK HOROWITZ HAMBURGER himself, as portrayed in ‘offical history’; and secondly, what was going on with synagogue’s in London, built by Jews from Hamburg.

And that’s when I started learning some very interesting things….

Let us begin.

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Let’s start with the basic family tree for YITZHAK HOROWITZ HAMBURGER (1715-1767).

(I’m noticing now he dies the year the controversy of the Get of Cleves really blew up…. That’s interesting, as ‘dying’ in one country was one of the ways Sabbateans used to reinvent themselves in another place.)

Here is his descent, just going back two generations to keep this easy to follow:

MEIR HALEVI HOROWITZ, MAHARAM OF TIKTIN > JACOB JOKEL HALEVI HOROWITZ OF GALUNA AND BRODY (1679-1749) > YITZHAK HALEVI HAMBURGER HOROWITZ (1715-1767).

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The sharp-eyed reader has probably already noticed that the father of YITZHAK HAMBURGER is none other than JACOB JOKEL HOROWITZ of GALUNA.

In his comments from Conversations I (pp. 145-7), the Rav had this to say about him:

The French were already ready to cross the English Channel, and everyone ran away from London. London was already deserted, they knew that they were coming to slaughter everyone. They’d already passed, they’d already got to Waterloo, this isn’t far from the sea, this is next to Belgium.

And so, the English were left without any weapons, without ammunition, without any swords. And they were already ready to surrender, and London was ready to be conquered, when suddenly everything turned around. Because there was a bracha (blessing).

==

Why did this happen? There was a blessing from Rabbi Yokel of Galuna, Yokel is Yaakov[1]. Rabbi Yokel of Galuna, every blessing of his was realized. Rabbi Yokel of Galuna suspected his shamash (attendant). He had a shamash¸ and he suspected him, because 20,000 zlotys had disappeared, zlotot….

He didn’t remember where he’d put them, which cupboard they were in, which compartment, in which clothes he’d hidden them away. So, he suspected the shamash. The shamash was called Anshel – Amshel. We changed that into Anshel, he was called Moshe Amshel, that was his name. After this, it was turned into Moshe Anshel, but his true name is Moshe Amshel, with an ‘m’….

==

…Now, [Rav Yokel] goes traveling across Europe for a whole year, across the whole of Poland, across the whole of Galicia, the whole of Rossieny[2]. He’s going, he’s going on foot from city to city, looking for the shamash….

Until he gets there, to that remote village, and he sees a few Jews, and a synagogue that’s half in the earth, it’s a sunken village, everything’s flyblown, the wood, the walls are decaying. He just lights candles, spills a bit of water on the ashes before Shabbat, so on Shabbat they can pray there.

He lights the candles, and straight away he recognizes him, Reb Yokel recognizes him, and he recognizes Reb Yokel, he had a white beard, his clothes are already all torn, with ripped shoes. He journeyed on, and he didn’t give up. For a whole year, he went by foot. He said: Until I will find him! I falsely suspected a Jew! What is this?!

He didn’t have a share in the world to come!! This is the biggest transgression, to suspect a Jew. So he found him, and he says to him: Come. Come with me, I found the money, I apologize.

But he says: I’m not returning!  You’re not returning?! So now, you’ll be the richest person in the whole word. You’re already old, so the children will be the richest, and the grandchildren.

The sons still weren’t, but the grandchildren were already the richest people, they had all the banks in Europe. What made them so wealthy? From this story, that everyone ran away from London, and a bank that was worth a billion dollars was now worth 100,000 shekels, maybe a million.

==

This is, of course, a reference to the Rothschild banking family, that we made some big connections with back in Frankfurt, with the Get of Cleves and the London Chief Rabbi, David Tebele Schiff, who is bosom buddies with the known Sabbatean sorcerer, SAMUEL CHAIM FALK, the Bad Baal Shem of London.

You will be shocked to know the Horowitz family tree is a total, deliberate mess…. Of course.

But here’s a few take-aways, more for myself, so when I come back to this again in the future, I’ll know where to pick things up again.

==

YITZHAK HALEVI HAMBURGER’S SIBLINGS INCLUDE:

MENACHEM MANES HOROWITZ (b. around 1708)

SARAH RIVKAH RACHEL LEAH HOROWITZ (b. around 1710) – who I think marries R CHAIM RAPPOPORT of LVOV, one of the main disputants against the Frankists in WHERE in 1756. And apparently, also financially corrupt and very unpopular with his congregants.

And:

The wife of BENJAMIN ZEEV WOLF LANDAU, who appears to be the first cousin of the NODAH Be’YEHUDAH, YEHEZKEL LANDAU,

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This last one is interesting, because the Rav also said this, in connection with the ‘Get of Galuna’: 

So, the Nodah be’Yehuda said that the get of Cleves[3] wasn’t a get.

He was against it, because she [the bride] was his cousin, so he possulled (disqualified) the get. This was the get of Galuna, there was a difference of almost ten years [between the get of Cleves and the get of Galuna.]

And also this:

In the end, [Itzhik the runaway groom of Cleves] opened up a synagogue there, in the name of R’ Itzhik Hamburger.

R Itzik Hamburger.

There were three tzaddikim, R’ Itzik Hamburger, and there was R’ Yechezkel Landau [the Nodah be’Yehudah], and there was R’ Gershon from Kitov, the brother-in-law of the Baal Shem Tov.

Like you, I don’t know how all this is connected. But let’s continue doing the birur, and we’ll see what shakes out.

==

In the meantime, YITZHAK HALEVI HAMBURGER HOROWITZ (1715-1767) also has some interesting descendants.

On geni, there are 18 kids listed for him via three wives (!) – at least one of whom has no name.

(The Geni tree is so corrupted, I’m referring to this more basic tree, with real dates, on the FAMILIO website.)

The two wives who ARE named are BEILA BABAD and REITZE BABAD. WHO IS THEIR DAD

Here are some of the kids I have managed to track down already:

MORDECHAI TZVI HALEVI HOROWITZ b. 1732

ELEAZAR YITZHAK HOROWITZ b. 1740

BEILA (1749-1802) m MENACHEM MENDEL RUBIN OF LINSK > NAFTALI ZVI ROPCZYCE

GITEL (1742-1840) M ISSACHAR BERISH BERENSTEIN, ABD HANOVER > R NATAN LEWINSZTEIN, ABD LUBARTOV (1773 -1834) m GOLDA RYWKA PERETZ (1778-1832) – close relative of ABRAHAM PERETZ, SIL of JOSHUA ZEITLIN.

RIVKA ESTER IGRA (1750-1821) m (and possibly divorces) MESHULLAM IGRA, ABD TYSMENITSA and PRESSBURG.

PESEL m MOSES HALBERSTAM

D m MOSHE HERTZFELD

BREINDEL m ? LANDAU

ELKE m ? LANDAU

? M NAFTALI HERTZ LANDAU

==

I spent a couple of hours trying to birur this more, as the tree is a huge mess, in that way that we’ve come to know and identify as ‘scandals being covered up’.

After getting swamped in 200 open tabs, I made the decision to park the question of ‘R YITZHAK HOROWITZ of HAMBURG’ for now – although I plan on coming back to ABRAHAM PERETZ, above, in a separate post that follows the ADMIRAL GREIG and ‘MUMA LEAH’ marriage in Nikolayev.

Because in the meantime, when i was trying to figure out what this synagogue was that ‘YITZHAK the CLEVES GROOM’ is meant to have built in London, I found the story of the LONDON GET = which is also very interesting, and feels like a big part of this puzzle, at least to me.

So, let’s bring that now.

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It’s based on a paper called THE EARLY YEARS OF LONDON’S ASHKENAZI COMMUNITY, which was written by R’ Yosef Prager of Modiin Illit.

You can read it for yourself HERE – and if this stuff interests you, I recommend you read the paper, it’s very well-researched, and has a ton of sources to follow back. The more the merrier, with this stuff, I would love more readers to start doing some active digging for themselves. It makes the brain so happy, when it starts to ‘think for itself’, instead of just getting everything delivered on a silver platter.

==

So, R Prager does a great job of ‘setting the scene’ in the Jewish community of London, late 17th – early 18th century.

There was the Sephardi-Portuguese community, who were really intertwined with the United Kingdom’s royalty and ruling classes, already. (Including, by marriage – even though all that is of course covered up, mostly, and is a tale for another time.)

And then, starting with a guy called BENJAMIN LEVY, the Ashkenazi community started to also try and establish itself ‘formally’ in London, too.

==

Before that happened, there were ad hoc Ashkenazi rabbis operating out of London, but without a formal ‘kehilla’ behind them, accredited with the government, owning premises, and also operating its own cemetery.

R Prager lists these very first ‘Ashkenazi rabbis’ known to be in London as:

R REFAEL of NOVARDOK, and his son REB ZALMAN LONDON[4]

R REFAEL ben SOLMAN  ZALMAN ASQUENAZY appears in the burial register of the old Portuguese-Jewish cemetery in London, as buried on Shevat 26th, 5452, (February 3rd, 1692.)

Two weeks before his death, R REFAEL’s ‘definitive’ version of Perek Shira is printed in Amsterdam. Then, his son then becomes the famous ‘R ZALMAN LONDON’, publisher of Hebrew books. LOOK UP DETAILS FOR HIM

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Then, the next Ashkenazy Jews in London (identified by R Prager) are:

HENRY (HIRTZ HALEVI) LEHMANN OF VIENNA, and his brother, the Polish Court Jew, BEHREND (YISSACHAR HALEVI BERMANN) LEHMANN.

Prager says:

“They are said to have journeyed to London in 1694, in connection with the establishment of the Bank of England.”[5]

They have a very dangerous boat crossing from the continent, are grateful to have reached British shores alive, and are then advised by ‘the London Rabbi, Yehudah Lob b. Efraim Asher Anshel’ to republish the Talmud and found a new yeshiva, as a korban todah.”

The Lehmann brothers (does that sound familiar?!) do that, and as a result, the 15 volumes of the Talmud – Frankfurt-on-the-Oder edition – are published, 5,000 copies are printed, and most of them are distributed to scholars.

The Lehmanns also establish the Klaus in Halberstadt.

==

Point is – that stuff actually happened, and something definitely prompted it.

Yet the famous British Jewish historian Cecil Roth pours cold water all over the idea that the Lehmann Bros were in England in 1694, to discuss setting up the Bank of England – even though this account is brought in at least two other manuscripts from the 19th century.[6]

As proof, he says that this story isn’t mentioned at all in the introductory pages of the Frankfurt-on-the-Oder Talmud, and that Benjamin Levy – the first Ashkenazi to rent premises for a shul, and who bought a plot of land for a Jewish cemetery – was the only ‘original Subscriber to the Bank of England’.

==

What do you think, dear reader?

Does it seem like there is some connection to the Bank of England and that same group of infamous ‘court Jews’ that we keep coming across, that is probably being scrubbed out of history here, or is there some other explanation for how the Frankfurt Talmud got printed, and the Halberstadt Klaus got started?

Let’s see if we can figure this out, a little more, by returning to the question of who is this ‘R YEHUDAH LOB b. EFRAIM ASHER ANSHEL’ who advises the Lehmann Bros to print a new Talmud?

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Prager notes that Cecil Roth is ‘purposefully vague’ about the identity of who this Rabbi might be.[7] 

But he suggests its R YEHUDA LOB b. EFRAIM ASHER ANSHEL HAMBURGER, who was ‘pushed out’ of London in 1700, and then hopped over the channel to become the rabbi of Rotterdam.

This was exactly the same time period when the known Sabbatean Chacham, SHLOMO AYALLON, was in position as the head of the Portuguese-Sephardi community of Bevis Marks.

There was a lot of Sabbatean-tinged ‘controversies’ occurring all over London – and Europe more widely – at this point.

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So, after two more hours of tootling around, I finally tracked down R YEHUDA LOB b. EFRAIM ASHER ANSHEL HAMBURGER on the DutchJewry genealogy site, HERE.

In those records he’s called R LEIB ABRAHAM HAMBURG(ER), he dies in 1720, he’s the ABD of Rotterdam – and he’s married to one SARA-GITTELEN, the daughter of R ABRAHAM ABERLES of WIRMES (d. 1712)

Perhaps more interesting, is who else he’s related to, via his children.

Again, inexplicably, all the ‘official Jewish historians’ writing about this missed the fact that R LEIB ABRAHAM HAMBURGER of Rotterdam has a daughter called:

Telts Levie Hamburger

And she marries a man called:

Salomon Shlomo-Zalman Juda Norden

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He was the main ‘saviour’ of the CHACHAM TZVI in Amsterdam, when the Sabbateans there who supported NECHAMIA CHIYYUN had arranged for him to be stripped of his position as rabbi in Amsterdam, placed under house arrest – and it seems, were scheming to ‘inform’ on him in some way to the Dutch authorities, so they’d either throw him into prison or execute him.

Nice guys, all these Sabbateans.

==

Here’s a small snippet from the Jewish Encyclopaedia:

“ASHKENAZI, [ ZEBI HIRSCH (ḤAKAM ẒEBI) B. JACOB ] (1658-1718) forestalled the magisterial action by resigning his office and fleeing, in the beginning of 1714, from Amsterdam, perhaps secretly, with the aid of his friend Solomon Levi Norden de Lima. After leaving his wife and children at Emden, he proceeded to London at the invitation of the Sephardic congregation of that city.”

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SOLOMON LEVI NORDEN DE LIMA is the son in law of YEHUDA LOB b. EFRAIM ASHER ANSHEL HAMBURGER of Rotterdam – who also gets forced out of London by Sabbateans.

In 1702, SHLOMO AYALLON, the leading Sabbatean, leaves Bevis Marks and goes back to Amsterdam, where he is instrumental in persecuting the CHACHAM TZVI as well.

Let’s now quote more from R Prager’s paper:[8]

“The first Rabbi of the Ashkenazim was R Yehuda Lob b. Avraham Efraim Asher Anshel Hamburger Spatz….He was married to Sarah Gittelen, daughter of R Avraham Aberle of Worms, Rabbi of Amsterdam.

His unpopularity is ascribed to his refusal to accept bribes. In 1700, the lay leaders of the community [in London] by trickery, forced the elderly sage to resign.”

==

Someone cut one of the tassel’s of his tzitzith, and it seems R Yehuda Lob took that as a death threat.

Meanwhile, his son ‘Zalman London’, the Hebrew book printer stays in London.

While his three siblings grow up in Amsterdam, Holland. (Strangely, ‘Zalman London’ is totally missing off his family tree… Maybe as we continue, we’ll figure out why that is.)

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The next Ashkenazi ‘rabbi’ of London seems to be a temporary fill-in called R AHARON b. MOSHE, the scribe of Dublin.

And then, we get up to the people who have been puzzling me for years, namely:

R URI PHOEBUS HAMBURGER (‘AARON HART’) and his brother, MOSES HART.

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Here’s a picture of URI PHOEBUS:

In another portrait painted in 1751, when he was apparently 80 years old, he’s got a bill of divorce, of a get, in his hand, and that is where we get into the next part of this story.

==

URI PHOEBUS and MOSES HART are the first cousins of the BENJAMIN LEVY mentioned above, the first ‘Subscriber’ to the Bank of England, and founder of the first Ashkenazi shul in London.

As cousin Benjamin is doing so well, financially, MOSES HART comes over to see what economic opportunities he can shake out of London. Shortly afterwards, URI PHOEBUS, who had apparently been heading up a yeshiva in Poland, also jumps the Channel to become ‘Chief Rabbi’ in London in 1704, a position he keeps for the next 50 years, until he dies in 1754.

==

Let’s dig into their family tree, a little, before we continue.

URI PHOEBUS (‘AARON HART’) is married to the daughter of the BETH SHMUEL, R SHMUEL b. URI PHOEBUS, who is the rav of FURTH and SZYDLOW.

According to a footnote in Prager’s paper[9], R SHMUEL had to leave Furth in a hurry, because he’d sanctioned a ‘controversial marriage’ involving MORDECHAI (MARX) MODEL ELLINGEN.

This seems to be a modus operandi that keeps being rinsed and re-used, to cause schism, machloket and problems within the Jewish community.

Meanwhile, THIS suggests that MORDECHAI MARX MODEL was also involved in embezzlement, and a bunch of other ‘mafioso’ stuff.

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Meanwhile, the dad of URI PHOEBUS (‘AARON HART’) and MOSES HART is called:

R’ NAFTALI HIRTZ b. MOSHE (HARTIG MOSES) HAMBURGER – now living in Breslau.

The non-Jewish council of Breslau imposed more restrictions on their Jewish community in 1697, which is when MOSES HART moves to London, in the footsteps of his cousin BENJAMIN LEVY.

As well as being cousins, MOSES HART and BENJAMIN LEVY also marry sisters.

When URI PHOEBUS finally goes the way of all flesh, he’s replaced by R HART LION – the son of another of the brothers’ cousins, R ARYEH LOB LOWENSTAMM.

As usual, the top jobs are retained in the same little incestuous family circle.

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I am going to keep the wider discussion about the HART family, and their relatives, for a future post. This one is getting plenty long enough already – but suffice to say, it’s VERY interesting stuff.

Let’s try to finish this post off by finally telling you what happened with the GET of LONDON.

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The main macher of Ashkenazi London at this time, apart from MOSES HART, is a man called REB ABERLE LONDON.

His full name is:

MOSHE AVRAHAM ABERLE LONDON, the son of NATHAN NORDEN HAMBURG, the Parnas of HAMBURG.

He’s also known by a slew of other names, including: ABRAHAM LONDON, ABRAHAM HAMBURG, ABERLE NORDEN and REB ABERLEIN.

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REB ABERLE LONDON is a wealthy merchant, and his main business partner is called SAMSPON MEARS.

If you know anything about American Jewish history, the MEARS name will probably be familiar to you. These guys owned a lot of ships, and were trading all over the world, including the West Indies and the United States.

Although the most lucrative cargo, at this point, is human beings, no-one talks about that, and instead, we’re told ABERLE LONDON made most of his money trading diamonds. Maybe, that’s even true.

He’s married to a woman called ESTHER POLACK, and he’s good friends with the CHACHAM TZVI – and in fact, YAAKOV EMDEN talks about him in his works, as helping him out in his own attempts to trade gems.

Oh, and his descendants include lots of future ‘Chief Rabbis of England’ who have tight links with the Frankfurt Sabbateans, including his grandson DAVID TEBELE SCHIFF (close friend of FALK, the bad Baal Shem), and both NATHAN MARCUS and HERMAN ADLER.

In 1745, REB ABERLE dies in Hamburg (formerly known as ‘Altona’), and he’s buried in the Jewish cemetery there.

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Another of REB ABERLE’s business partners is someone called MARCUS MOSES, aka MORDECHAI b. MOSES LIBUSH of Hamburg – he’s the son-in-law of the famous diarist, GLUCKL (GOLDSMIDT) of HAMELN, having married her daughter FREUDCHE(N).

These three try to start up an alternative Beit Midrash in London in 1704 – which MOSES HART stops in its tracks, by complaining to the secular authorities about it.

OK, with all that background out the way, let’s get to the GET of LONDON story.

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In August 1706, a man called ASHER ANSHEL COHEN ‘secretly’ and ‘conditionally’ divorced his wife in London, with the connivance of that same R URI PHOEBUS (‘AARON HART’).

Cohen was in debt,  (THIS suggests he was also a gambler) and was planning to sail out to the West Indies before the authorities could throw him into debtor’s prison.

The ‘conditional’ aspect of the divorce was the main problem, as ASHER ANSHEL was a Cohen – who are forbidden to marry divorcees. Instead of using ‘AHARON the SCRIBE’ of Dublin to draw up the get, URI PHOEBUS got the sephardi scribe JACOB DA SILVA to work on the document instead – all in the strictest of secrecy.

==

ASHER ANSHEL sails off the West Indies – and immediately, word of the get leaks out in London.

MOSES MARCUS (HAMBURGER), the SIL of Gluckl of Hameln stands up in shul, and publically denounces the validity of the Get.

URI PHOEBUS responds by hitting MOSES MARCUS with the strongest form of excommunication possible.

MOSES MARCUS then asks his brother HENLE, who is still living in Altona (aka Hamburg) to plead his case before the CHACHAM TZVI, who is apparently the rabbi of the Klaus in Altona at this time, September 1706.

(Remember, this is also the city where YITZHAK HALEVI HOROWITZ HAMBURGER later becomes the rabbi.

Long story short, the CHACHAM TZVI rules against URI PHOEBUS, releases MARCUS MOSES from his excommunication issue, and is supported in this ruling by R MOSHE YEHUDAH b. KALONYMUS COHEN, the rav of Amsterdam, plus our very own LEIB AVRAHAM HAMBURGER of Rotterdam, who is seems got forced out of London just before the Hart brothers took over the rabbinate.

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In another strange twist, the argument is brought before the known Sabbatean, AVRAHAM ROVIGO, who is visiting London as an ‘emissary from the Holy Land’.[10] But he fails to make peace – and the Ashkenazi community in London irrevocably fractures.

MARCUS MOSES opens up a new synagogue in his own home, and let me quote this next bit directly from R Prager’s paper:[11]

[MARCUS MOSES] appointed his house-Rabbi, the Moravian R. Yochanan b. Yitzhak of Holleschau[12], as rabbi of the new community….The congregation became known as the Hambro Synagogue.

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Holleschau, as the final resting place of the SHACH / SHABTAI TZVI, was crawling with Sabbateans, and even had its own ‘false Shabbatean prophet’, called JUDAH LEIB of HOLLESCHAU.

What’s more, GLUCKEL of HAMELN (GOLDSMIDT) recorded in her diary how her father in law got ‘swept up’ in all the excitement around Shabtai Tzvi, and even sold most of his merchandise in readiness for the call to move to Eretz Yisrael.

This is a family with ‘Sabbatean’ links.

And it’s this same family that used the divorce of ASHER ANSHEL COHEN to kick off a massive machloket within the Ashkenazi community of London, which further weakened the already very weak religious framework there.

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I’m not saying the HART brothers weren’t also corrupt, and very possibly, weren’t also Sabbateans – perhaps, just linked to a different branch.

We keep making the point here that the ‘Sabbateans’ weren’t homogenous, and that they were also fractured into furiously-warring groups, all claiming to be the continuation of ‘Shabtai Tzvi’.

==

The last thing to tell you is that MARCUS MOSES, the SIL of Gluckl of Hameln, had a son called MOSES MARCUS – who became a xtian in 1723.

He then went on to write a bunch of books pro xtianity and against Judaism, including THIS screed about circumcision.

Lovely guy! Lovely Goldsmid family-of-Sabbateans, in action once again, trying to destroy Torah Judaism.

==

As usual, this post could continue for another three years.

But we’ll stop here for now.

With the timely reminder that there is nothing new under the sun, and the destroyers in our midst have been pulling the same shtick for centuries already.

BH, hopefully, the more we start to put the pieces of real Jewish history back into their rightful place, the harder it will get for them to keep their shtick on rinse and repeat, and the easier it will get for the rest of us to spot their patterns, and stop falling for their tactics of ‘divide and conquer’.

Bezrat Hashem.

==

FOOTNOTES:

[1] His real name was Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh Halevi Horowitz.

[2] An area currently located in modern-day Lithuania, where many Jews lived.

[3] The Hebrew transcriber puts the words (Galuna] in brackets here.

[4] Prager Y., ‘The Early Years of London’s Ashkenazi Community’, Yeruseini 5 (5771), p.9.

[5] Ibid., p. 11.

[6] Prager cites: Geshichte der Iraelitischen Gemeinde Halberstadt, (1866), p. 57, Der Polnische Resident Berend Lehmann (1885), p.39, and Die Hoffinanz und der moderne Staat, (1953) Vol. 2, p. 199.

[7] Footnote 89, p. 11.

[8] Ibid., p. 14.

[9] Ibid., Footnote 128, p. 18.

[10] Ibid., p 26. This is the first I heard that AVRAHAM ROVIGO, the leading Sabbatean, was also meant to be an ‘emissary for the Holy Land’, shortly after the known Sabbatean YEHUDA HACHASSID headed up his move to Israel with a couple thousand Sabbateans in 1700, to await the ‘second coming’ of Shabtai Tzvi. The mind boggles.

[11] Ibid., p. 26.

[12] The author of Ma’aseh Rav.

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And special thanks to H., my reader in Holland, who helped me out with some of the research for this post.

==

UPDATE:

In the process of trying to close down the million tabs I have up about the ‘Get of Cleves’ at the moment, I ended up HERE again, on the Hebrew wiki page for R ABISH FRANKFURTER, the main Rav of Frankfurt who was either fooled by his Beit Din, or he himself refused to back down on making a ruling in error.

I noticed some more interesting things.

First, he’s the g.great grandson of AVRAHAM HAIM SHOR – the Shor family were leading lieutenants of false messiah ‘JACOB (ESKELES) FRANK’, and many of those who remained in the Jewish community were given ‘false identities’ when half their tribe publically converted to Catholicim in 1756, with Frank.

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There is also connections with more known Sabbateans – and also, the BETH SHMUEL mentioned above, who was FIL of URI PHOEBUS (‘AARON HART’) of the Get of London story.

Here’s a snippet:

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 of Betvat H. I. E. (1711), for which Rabbi Naftali Katz was imprisoned, Rabbi Naftali’s disciples dispersed and Rabbi Avraham returned to Poland.

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Naftali Katz was a secret Sabbatean, who burned down half of Frankfurt’s Jewish quarter while practising some sort of kabbalistic sorcery.

(He was also a distant ancestor of Rabbenu, Rebbe Nachman, who nearly ‘died’ when he visited his tomb in Istanbul, on the way to trying to get to Eretz Yisrael…. There were a lot of things being rectified by Rabbenu’s trip to the Holy Land.)

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In the meantime, the family relationship between R AVRAHAM ABISH of Frankfurt (Get of Cleves) and URI PHOEBUS of London (Get of London) is surprisingly strong.

Here’s another snippet:

[AVRAHAM ABISH] married the daughter of Rabbi Eliyahu Hacohen Mazritsch (son-in-law of Rabbi Shmuel of Fjorda).

In other words, AVRAHAM ABISH of Frankfurt married the niece of URI PHOEBUS of London.

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UPDATE 2:

So, I was trying to find a family tree – any kind of family tree! – for ‘R AVRAHAM ABISH of Frankfurt’, the famous rav of Frankfurt at the heart of the Get of Cleves dispute.

I literally cannot find one, not even a ‘Kevin Lawrence Hanit’-curated sad joke of one.

So then, I tried to get to him a different way, by looking for the grandpa of his wife, the BETH SHMUEL, Shmuel of Fjorda (who also links us to URI PHOEBUS of London, as his FIL.)

I got to THIS sad joke of one on geni – but strangely, I am still picking up some useful clues.

Here’s a screenshot:

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Why this is so useful, is that it seems to be listing the ‘alter egos’ of the personas we’ve been taught about, or vice-versa – it’s listing the real names.

Here is what it says about ‘SHMUEL of FJORDA’s’ kids:

Father of

HaGaon Rav Yosef ., of Amdur and Krakow;

wife, Rabbi Peretz .;

Wife R’ Eliyahu HaCohen Cohen and

Yisroel Teomim-Frankel

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That link to the ‘Wife of Eliyahu HaCohen’ does indeed lead us to ‘R ABISH FRANKFURTER’ (1690-1768), HERE.

He marries Rivka Golde, the BETH SHMUEL’s granddaughter, and apparently, remarries a second time.

His father is ‘TZVI HIRSH of MEZERITCH’ – SHOR, who marries the daughter of MORDECHAI GUNZBURG.

(That name might ring a bell, to long-term readers….)

Meanwhile, his great-grandfather is ‘R AVRAHAM OYZER‘ – aka, AVRAHAM CHAIM SHOR.

The Oyzer-SHOR family connects us straight back to the mother of the Alter Rebbe of Chabad. (More on that another time.)

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Meanwhile – URI PHOEBUS, the famous chief rabbi of London, has been totally and utterly scrubbed out of this tree, as happens so much when you suddenly start to realise how all these people are linked to each other, and directly related.

There is one other daughter listed, who is the ‘wife of Rabbi Peretz of Lubartow‘.

If you click on that, you get straight into the truncated family tree of ABRAHAM PERETZ, the guy who is meant to have dobbed in the Alter Rebbe to Tzar Paul I, and is also the SIL of Joshua Zeitlin, and the business partner of Nicolai Steiglitz out in Nikolayev, who marries a daughter of Di Muma Leah and Admiral Greigh – oh, and who converts to xtianity in St Petersburg…

(And he’s also the direct ancestor of PERL DEBAREMDIKER, wife of R’ LEVI YITZHAK of BERDICHOV).

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Meanwhile, if you click on the listing for what is meant to be one of the BETH SHMUEL’s sons, YISROEL TEOMIM-FRANKEL, you find that guy apparently marries some ‘anonymized’ grand-daughter of the Chacham Tzvi….

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And last but not least, we have:

HaGaon Rav Yosef ., of Amdur and Krakow

He’s the father of R SHMUEL AMDORER of MINSK – who apparently went to prison with the Alter Rebbe of Chabad….

This guy links us straight into the heartland of ‘forgotten chassidut’, including R Aharon of Karlin.

But that’s not all…. his son R YEHEZKEL also married a daughter of none other than the Vilna Gaon:

One of the sons of R. Shmuel was R. Yehezkel, who was called “Exalted and Pious”, and who was the son-in-law of the Vilna Gaon. We also want to note that before the appointment of R. Shmuel as the rabbi of the Minsk District and of Rakov, he had served in the Amdor community in the district of Hordona in the years T”KTh – T”KChH [1749 -1765].

Here is his book, on Hebrew Books, so you understand this is a real person:

Teshuvas Shmuel”: http://www.hebrewbooks.org/473

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And HERE is the geni page for his daughter-in-law, NECHAMA, daughter of the VILNA GAON.

To give the son of SHMUEL (SEGAL) AMDURER, ABD of MINSK, his full name, he is called here:

Yechezkel Menachem Mendel Ziskind Halevi, ABD Bobruisk (b. – 1812)

Here’s a snippet from his geni page:

Thanks to Moshe Nechemia Segal’s book “Pisgat haRav Yecheskel Menachem” on his great-grandfather, Yecheskel Menachem Mendel Ziskind Segal, we have the following information:

As it is known, he was married for the first time with the daughter of the Gaon Rabbi Eliahu from Vilna. But his wife, who was known for her piety, passed away in the prime of life. There is a version that it happened when he wondered around with her, as was the costume of some of the elite’s tzadikim of that generation, among them his father in law, the Gaon Rabbi Eliahu from Vilna himself. They wandered around the villages by foot , in summer and winter, living from bread and water and sleeping on the earth.

He married for the second time the daughter of the great Gaon Rabbi Simha Fried of Horodno, who was himself “mechutan” (in law) of the Grach or Rabbi Chaim from Volozhin.

He died on כ”ג שבט תקע”ב = February 6h, 1812.

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You can read more on the Toldot website HERE.

This family connects us back to the family of the NODA BE’ YEHUDA, and no doubt, many more secrets besides.

But nowhere, are we told that it also connects directly to the ‘chief rabbi’ of England, URI PHOEBUS ‘AARON HART’, SIL of the Beth Shmuel, nor his fabulously wealthy brother MOSES HART who was working for the British government.

Both cousins of ‘BENJAMIN LEVY’ of London.

We will take a look at them next.

Because I think that will probably do for today.

This is going to be a really interesting walk down the Sabbatean memory-hole… Buckle in.

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Let’s start with what prompted this post, namely the Rav’s shiur on the Get of Cleves, which you can read HERE and HERE.

Let’s start with the main story of what happened, with dates and names, and then with God’s help, we’ll start to unpick how the Sabbateans associated with Jonathan Eybshitz pulled this off, in detail. And also, we’ll see if there are more clues to pick up from the Rav, about ‘real Jewish history’.

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The story begins back in 1766, when two young German Jews apparently decide to get married.

Some of these details come from the Hebrew Wiki page on the Cleve Get, HERE, but as we go along, we’ll start to figure out that not all these details, including names, seem to be accurate.

According to Wiki, ISAAC (ITZIK) BEN ELIEZER NYBORG of Mannheim is the groom, and the bride is LEAH BAT YAAKOV GUNZHUISEN of Bonn.

The bride and her family come to Mannheim to meet the groom, he doesn’t seem very happy throughout, but goes ahead with the wedding – and then disappears in the middle of the joint Shabbat meal after the wedding, together with the money from the wedding.

A search party is sent out on Sunday, and exactly as the Rav mentioned, the groom has all the money in his hands minus the amount he spent on his night’s lodging. He comes back with the search party – and then faints when he reaches Mannheim.

He just tells his relatives that he’s scared to death, but he doesn’t say why.

The Rav gives us a crucial bit of info here, namely:

The groom said [he had to run away].

Because he was facing a death sentence, because he’d been with the housemaid, and at that time, whoever was with [a woman] without being married, they would kill him. They would hang him, mamash.

If someone would make a complaint, that someone had come to her, then they used to hang him [i.e. the accused man]. They simply hung him, they gave him a death sentence.

So, he needed to leave the country, [and that’s why he ran away on Shabbat]. He wanted to travel to London.

In the end, he opened up a synagogue there, in the name of R’ Itzhik Hamburger.

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This suggests the groom’s morals are not all that.

Back to the ‘official story’, where a financial dispute has apparently now broken out between the parents of both the bride and groom. R AARON SHIMON COPENHAGEN is the person who brokers a compromise – he’s referred to as a relative from the bride’s side, but we’ll learn a little more about him shortly.

Both parties agree the bridge and groom need a change of place, and that they should go and spend some time in Bonn, the bride’s hometown. They get there, and exactly as the week of Sheva Brachot comes to an end, ITZHIK the groom apparently tells R AARON SHIMON of COPENHAGEN that things aren’t going well with the bride, and he’s also in great danger in Bonn, and that he has to leave the country and go to England.

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He says he wants to give the bride a divorce, which the bride and her family agree to and that they get to keep all the wedding money.

Pay attention to this next bit, which seems to be deliberately confusing what’s going on:

Since Bonn had no recognized court, and in nearby Düsseldorf the groom did not agree to divorce because many of his acquaintances were there, it was decided that the divorce would take place in the town of Cleve, en route to the Netherlands.

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Just tuck that bit of info away for now, we’ll come back to Bonn in a moment, because yes indeed, it did have a ‘recognised Beit Din’, but if they tell you that, you’ll start wondering who was on it, and why they didn’t just sort it out there.

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So, who is the rabbi in Cleve?

That would be R ISRAEL LIFSHITZ Snr, the grandpa of the TIFERET YISRAEL who was just so enthusiastic about vaccines and Darwin, as we started to discuss HERE.

According to Wikipedia, R ISRAEL LIFSHITZ Snr is the:

[S[on of R. Eliezer AVD of Apta, and the author of the book “Damasek Eliezer”.

The Geni tree is HERE – and it’s the usual mess, and deliberately distorted dates. There is clearly something to hide here, the question, as always, is what. What’s the big deal with the ‘Damasek Eliezer’?

Let’s park that for now and stay focussed on the Get of Cleve.

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The story continues, that:

After financial matters were settled and the groom agreed to return all dowry money, the bride and her family returned to their home, and the groom went to England and began trading.

Except, now apparently the groom’s dad is very upset about all this, especially the money part, and goes to the rabbi of Mannheim, one R Tebele Hess, to invalidate the get by claiming his son was insane when he gave it.

(I’m going to skip all the ins and outs of the different arguments, go read the whole thing HERE if you’re interested in that side of things.)

Point is, this R’ Hess of Mannheim rules the get is not valid, and then sends a letter off to R Abish Frankfurter of Lissa, the ‘Birkat Avraham’, and the Frankfurt Beit Din to publically announce that they agreed the Cleve of Get was invalid, and the woman, Leah is still married to ‘Itzik’.

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Whoosh!

Just like that, instant, horrible machloket all over the orthodox Jewish world.

The cherry on the cake is that seven months later, ‘Itzik the groom’ returns from London, and apparently remarries Leah – but in a bastardised wedding service in Frankfurt that doesn’t include the traditional words at mekudeshet li – because the claim was, they were still married anyway.

Let’s quote one more thing from the Wiki page, then let’s try to unpack a bit more of what was going on here:

[S]ome historians believe that undermining the Rabbinate’s honor in the Get of Cleve case helped the rise of the maskilim and strengthened their criticism of the rabbinical world.

It sure did!

And probably, that was the point right from the start.

OK, let’s fill in some gaps from the Rav’s retelling of the story now.

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Quote 1, from the Rav’s shiur HERE:

And then he [the groom] said to R’ Shimshon of Copenhagen – he was from Copenhagen, he was from Denmark.

He was called Shimshon Copenhagen, this was the uncle of his bride. He told him that he needed to give a get, and if not, he was going to disappear, no-one would be able to find him, and then she would be an agunah for the rest of her life.

And then the grandfather of the Tiferet Yisrael, he was also called Yisrael, Yisrael Lipshitz, so he wrote the get. R’ Yisrael wrote the get, and the [dayanim who organised the get], they were the chassidim of R’ Abish of Frankfurt.

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Let’s start by trying to track down this ‘SHIMSHON of COPENHAGEN’, the bride’s uncle.

If you go to the Kestenbaum site HERE, you’ll find an edition of the book he wrote about the Get of Cleve, called ‘Or Yashar’ And it has his name as: AARON SHIMON of COPENHAGEN.

Here’s the description from the site:

Concerns The Cleves Get controversy, one of the great causes célèbres of the 18th century, which involved most of the great rabbinic adjudicators of the day. This work includes opinions by R. Ya’akov Emden, the Noda BeYehuda), (the Sha’agath Aryeh, R. Saul of Amsterdam, etc.

Shmuel Heller (1803-83) was a leading Chassidic presence in Safed and central to communal affairs both in the Land of Israel and Europe.

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I should tell you now, that the Vilna Gaon didn’t give an opinion – at all – on this cause celebre. Which is kind of strange, for a lot of reasons.

On a German-Jewish historical website HERE, that’s sourcing it’s info from the Leo Baeck Institute, we get more details, including these:

The story was of Leah’s brother, Aaron Simeon Copenhagen in the collection of his recorded rabbinical decisions Or ha-Yashar (Amsterdam, 1769).

Brother or uncle of the bride? I don’t know. Let’s see if we can figure out a bit more.

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On the Seforim blog HERE, we learn that Aaron Shimon is the son of a ‘Yaakov’.

And that excellent article on gets down the ages also brings the full name of the bride as:

Leah bas Jacob Guenzhausen of Bonn.

So, according to this, Aaron Shimon is the bride’s brother. The Seforim article also tells us:

Aaron Simon was the secretary of the Jewish community of Cologne.

However, the Rav tells us this:

R’ Shimshon Copenhagen – this was the uncle of the bride. He was the brother of her mother.

Given all the routine ‘twisting’ of info these people engage in to hide their family tracks, it’s probably going to be very difficult to figure out which version is correct.

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On another Kestenbaum page HERE, we learn who AARON SHIMON’s father-in-law is:

The author, R. (Aaron) Shimon of Copenhagen, was the son-in-law of R. Yehudah Miller of Bonn and a significant protagonist during the Cleves Get controversy.

On the National Library of Israel (NLI) site HERE, we get a bit more info about R YEHUDA MILER (1660-1751).

There’s this link on his profile to this book:

שאלות ותשובות מאת יהודה מילר מבינגא | Manuscript | NNL_ALEPH990000693670205171 | The National Library of Israel

It’s a book of his responsa, which includes this piece of information about R YEHUDA MILER:

על המחבר: “וזהו הסכמת הגאון אב”ד … מהור”ר יודא מילר … ואב”ד ור”מ מדינת בונא וגלילותיו” (19א)

Translation: About the author: “And this is the consent of the gaon Av Beit Din … from Rabbi Yuda Miller … an Av Beit Din And the Lord of the Land of Bonn and its Provinces.”

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And R YEHUDA MILER, the ABD of BONN, has some fantastic yichus. That intro to his book continues:

והוא מעיד על עצמו “שאני נין ונכד להגאון מהור”ר חיים ב”ר בצלאל ז”ל שהי’ אב”ד בק”ק פרידבורג והוא אחי הגאון מהור”ר יהודא לוי זצלל”ה אב”ד דק”

Translation: He testifies about himself, that ‘I am the great-grandson and grandson of the Gaon R Chaim ben Bezalel, zl, who was the ABD of the holy community of Freidburg, and he was the brother of R Yehuda Leib…

I.e. he descends from the brother of the MAHARAL of PRAGUE. With that bit of info, I finally tracked down this family on Geni HERE:

He’s called JUDA MEHLER / MEILER II and is married to one FROMMET GUMPRECHT, daughter of EPHRAIM GUMPRECHT[1].

His daughter FOGEL is indeed married to our AARON SHIMON COPENHAGEN.

You can see the tree for him HERE – and of course, he is totally cut off from his infamous sister / niece LEAH COPENHAGEN, and there is no mention anywhere of the connection with the Get of Cleve.

And the last thing to notice is that there WAS a Beit Din in Bonn.

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The other thing I can tell you, is that the MEHLER tree is crawling with Sabbatean families, and the ‘enlightened maskilim’ and Frankists they spawned.

As we know these families routinely married each other, that provides some support for the idea that the Get of Cleve was a Sabbatean plot, right from the start, to destroy the authority of the rabbis in the eyes of the public.

And lastly, I notice that there are SCHNAPPERs, CASSELLs, BINGENs  – and even a NATHAN MAYER in the YEHUDA MEHLER / MEILER / MILER tree.

I have a hunch we just hit the real ancestors of that famous banking family that is still causing the Jews so much hardship, even today. You can tootle around yourself, HERE.

Let’s see what clues we can pick up on the other side of the aisle now, with the groom.

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The Rav tells us this:

[T]he bride was called Leah Gushuisen from Bonn And he was called Itzhik ben R’ Eliezer Mannheim. The wedding was on the 8th of Elul 5522 (1762).

Later on, the Rav says this about the groom:

So he [her ex] built [in London] the synagogue of R’ Yitzhak Hamburger, he became a very wealthy man. A milionaire. A billionaire.

He built a synagogue, it’s still standing until this day, of R Yitzhak Hamburger, R’ Yitzhak Horowitz Hamburger.

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You can read an overview about the Jewish community of Mannheim HERE.

This is the snippet that took my eye:

The charter of 1717 (also including the Portuguese) raised the number of tolerated families to 200 and permitted an interest rate of 10%.

The favorable position of the Jews there is expressed in a contemporary reference to Mannheim as “New Jerusalem.”

There were many local followers of Shabbetai Ẓevi in the community, vigorously opposed by its rabbi, Samuel Helmann (172651). In 1708 the synagogue and ḥeder (Klaus), donated by Lemle Moses Rheinganum, was consecrated ad later endowed with 100,000 gulden.

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So, Mannheim is a Sabbatean stronghold, and also has a lot of the Portuguese ‘crypto Jewish’ families that have also been causing us so much trouble, for so very long.

That’s also an important link between Mannheim and London, where the Spanish-Portuguese Jews were heavily involved in a whole bunch of interesting things, involving trade, finance, ‘liberalism’ and international politics, generally.

I wasn’t expecting anything helpful to turn up on Geni, but whaddya know, there was THIS record for one ITZIK NEUBURG, married to a LEAH MARX, at exactly the right time – no details for either of their parents, but hey, they had a daughter together:

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The daughter is called JUDULA NEUBURGER (1772-1850), and she marries a MICHAEL MAY – and has two children, FANNY and SUSMAN.

Fanny marries a guy called: Mendel / Menachem Levi / Jehuda Levison (or Levy) (1786 – 1852), from Cologne – the place where AARON SIMON COPENHAGEN was the Jewish community’s ‘secretary’.

One of their kids is HERMAN MENDEL, who marries JOSEPHINE GOLDSMIDT – and voila, we are once again connected to the known Sabbatean GOLDSMIDT family (of London and Germany….), plus some Rothschilds and Oppenheimers.

Sadly, this is where Kevin Lawrence Hanit starts nobbling the wider connections on geni, as we have seen so very many times before.

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OK, let’s take a closer look at this next bit of the Rav’s comments:

So he [her ex] built [in London] the synagogue of R’ Yitzhak Hamburger, he became a very wealthy man. A milionaire. A billionaire.

He built a synagogue, it’s still standing until this day, of R Yitzhak Hamburger, R’ Yitzhak Horowitz Hamburger.

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I found a three part series on the Get of Cleve by Pini Dunner that gives us some more interesting details.

You can see the first part HERE. In the second part HERE, we get the extra detail that the Frankfurt rabbis ask R DAVID TEBELE SCHIFF formerly of Frankfurt, now ‘Chief Rabbi’ of London to interview the groom, ‘Itzik ben Eliezer Mannheim’ Neuborg.

Here’s a picture of R SCHIFF pulling the standard ‘Freemason’ hidden hand pose.

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It’s also interesting to note that when R SCHIFF moved from Frankfurt to London, he sold his ‘half of a house’ to…. The ROTHSCHILD family, who owned the other half of the house.

It’s a small world.

(And isn’t it funny, how many books and academic articles I had to read before I learned that piece of information.)

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I hadn’t realised that the Get of Cleves got so stuck and explosive because of the Frankfurt Rabbinate, who were under the sway of the Rothschilds of Frankfurt – known followers of Jacob Frank, the false messiah.

All of this is starting to make way more sense.

Let’s continue to Dunner’s third and concluding post, HERE.

Let’s quote a bit of how Dunner tells the story of how the NODAH B’ YEHUDAH gets involved, and starts issuing open rulings that LEAH (MARX) of Bonn can remarry, which don’t go down well at all in Frankfurt:

Rabbi Landau was not alone defending the Get of Cleve.

In the early Fall of 1767, Rabbi Yosef Steinhardt went public with his ruling in favor of the Get. The following month Rabbi Yehoshua Heschel of Ausbach did the same. Towards the end of the year ten rabbis from Brody in Poland validated the Get.

Rabbi Shlomo of Chelm, a renowned and respected halachic expert, was next to come out in support of the get, and he was followed by Rabbi Arye Leib of Hanover, son of the former Chief Rabbi of Frankfurt, Rabbi Yaakov Yehoshua Falk, author of Pnei Yehoshua, and whose students included the dayanim of Frankfurt.

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Dunner continues:

It had also become a matter of great concern among the rabbinic community that the Frankfurt beit din had refused to publish their legal arguments, or to publish refutations of the reasons published by those who opposed them. Especially because their stance was so contentious, it seemed odd – at best – that they refused to back up their views with solid evidence and source based material to support their views on the matter…..

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The main figure on the Frankfurt Beit Din writing the letters and causing the trouble was called R Nathan Maas, author of a book called ‘Binyan Shlomo’.

Dunner says that when R Abish passed away, the man who replaced him as Rav of Frankfurt was R Pinchas HaLevi Horowitz – and according to Dunner, the story with the ink spilling happened to him.

Here’s what the Rav said, apparently linking that story to the Pnei Yehoshua (whose son is the bad ‘Baal Shem’ Sabbatean of London, who is close friends with DAVID TEBELE SCHIFF and the GOLDSMID bankers, amongst others):

So, there was [the River Maine] in Frankfurt, that’s where the Pnei Yehoshua was.

And he didn’t agree to sign on the get (bill of divorce), because the inkwell turned over. All those who were against the get [were prevented from becoming the Rav of Frankfurt]. This was in Frankfurt.

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Another Frankfurt Rabbi, Marcus Horowitz (there’s that name again…) stirred the whole thing up again a century later, by writing a book claiming to be from the Frankfurt rabbinate’s perspective, that justified their actions.

See Dunner’s blog for more details of that, and let’s end with this interesting snippet from part 3:

There is quite a curious side story with regards to Rabbi Lipschuetz’s publication. In 1770 he published his work, which he called ‘Ohr Yisrael’. On pages 31 and 32, after he had accused the Frankfurt rabbis of spreading lies about him, and of being utterly dishonest, he included the text of a public declaration he had made in Cleves that described the ‘wickedness of these men’ in explicit detail, even referring to Rabbi Maas as ‘the evil and corrupt dayan of Frankfurt’.

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But that version of the ‘Ohr Yisrael’ was quickly pulled and replaced with a version that didn’t say this. Dunner apparently has both books in his personal collection.

This screenshot comes from the Kestenbaum site HERE.

Pay attention, that the Ohr Yisrael says this about NATHAN MAAS of Frankfurt:

1. Nathan Maas, of the Frankfurt Beth Din, is singled out for especially harsh invective and called “Nathan ha-Azati” – a reference to the infamous Sabbatian prophet Nathan of Gaza (see f. 9v.).

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If you go HERE, you’ll find a family tree on the ‘GOLDSCHMIDT’ site (!) you’ll find a family tree for R NATHAN MAAS, the ‘evil and corrupt dayan of Frankfurt’, who died in 1794. It looks like this:

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Here is where we saved the best for last.

NATHAN MAAS is the son of SALOMON NATHAN MAAS, and the grandson of NATHAN AMSCHEL ZUR WEISSEN SCHILD, d. 1714.

On the GENI site, grandpa NATHAN AMSCHEL is called:

Nathan Amschel Meise, zum goldenen Strauß (b. – 1714) – Genealogy

He is the husband of one FRUMET SCHNAPPER.

(One of his other wives is a SCHIFF).

We are straight back in the Sabbatean-Frankist family tree, with Bingens, Zunzs, Goldsmidts, Wertheims, Bacharachs, Adlers, Oppenheims, Sinzheims, Arnsteins – and a few others, too.

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HERE is the family tree for GUTLE SCHNAPPER – the wife of MAYER AMSCHEL ROTHSCHILD.

She is very close family with ‘the evil and corrupt dayan of Frankfurt’ behind the Get of Cleve machloket.

Fancy that!

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OK, we still didn’t get to to the Get of Galuna, or the Get of London, nor the ‘synagogue’ that Isaac NEUBORG apparently built in the name, or for, YITZHAK HALEVI HAMBURGER HOROWITZ, in London.

That will have to wait for next time.

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FOOTNOTE:

[1] I think this is EPHRAIM GUMPRECHT BACHARACH – the BACHARACHs are another link to that famous family of bankers – and many of them were also Sabbateans.

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UPDATE:

Here’s some more interesting snippets about R’ YEHUDA MEHLER / MILER, ABD of Bonn and father-in-law of AARON SHIMON COPENHAGEN, from another Jewish auction site:

YEHUDA MILLER. EXTREMELY RARE! BONN 1747! in United States

Snippet:

Yehuda Miller (1661-1751) was a talmid of R. Yaakov Reisher (Shvus Yaakov) and R. Gershon Ashkenazi (Avodas HaGershuni) both of which he quotes extensively in his responsa.

He served as Rav in various important Kehillos in Germany and was enormously revered as one of the pre-eminent Poskim of his era. He corresponded with many of the leading Poskim of his time who refer to him with extraordinary honorifics.

See Teshuvos Pnei Yehoshua (#27), Teshuvos Chacham Tzvi (#60) and Teshuvos Knesses Yechezkel (#93). Some of his responsa were published under the title Teshuvos R. Yehuda Miller.

 

This is the name of a famous song by Shuli Rand and Amir Dadon.

It means ‘between holy and secular’.

The words continue: I live. I live between holy and secular.

Here’s the song:

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The words are really speaking to me right now.

We are all stuck between ‘holy’ and ‘profane’, and that seems to be where God is keeping us, at least for now.

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Here’s another song that’s speaking to me right now:

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This version has excellent English translation subtitles – the words are so powerful.

Sadly, Eliezer Botzer passed away last month.

The big souls are still falling in this ongoing battle we are all fighting, on so many levels.

May this song be an ilui neshama for him.

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And then, an old playlist started up in the car, and lo and behold, there was this song from the Maccabeats, a cover of ‘Brave’:

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This was my anthem 10 years ago, when I was battling the ‘NARCISSIST KLIPA’ to the death, in my own dalet amot.

I’ve really been pondering on how much we all just keep flattering evil, in some misguided attempt to stay ‘polite’ and ‘nice’.

Thank God, living in Israel for 20 years is really curing me of this awful Anglo-European disability.

So yeah, I will continue calling out the stuff that seems wrong and bad and evil to me, regardless of who is doing it or saying it.

Because otherwise, I’m flattering evil.

And so are you.

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On that note, what is wrong with this picture, taken a few days ago on a Jerusalem Street:

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If you say ‘nothing’ – you have a real problem to address, spiritually.

Just ‘thinking good’ without putting God, and serious teshuva into the picture is going to get us precisely no-where.

At best.

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I am so, so sick of ‘Chabad marketing’ everywhere I turn.

And because we’re so used to it, we don’t even understand just how pernicious all the ‘messaging’ is, and just how much damage it’s done and continues to do to any real discussion of emuna, and what it really means to be serving God.

Here’s another example of ‘Chabad moshiach propaganda’, that we all see, all the time, every day:

[So, I have tried three different ways of uploading the mesichist yellow flag here… and it’s not working. It’s A-M-A-Z-I-N-G how much censorship I get, in so many different ways, when I bring this subject up. Mamash, the sort of censorship I get when I’m writing about masons and Frankists….]

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One of the commentators on the last post put up a link to a Zusha song, that’s kind of nice (Zusha songs usually take a while to grow on me).

Immediately it finished, some slick ad for a Chabad mashpia who teaches lots of obviously heretical ideas popped up.

Barf!

Enough already!

The Rebbe was not Moshiach, he wasn’t even the ‘presumptive’ Moshiach of his generation, as he didn’t descend father after father from King David.

The Rebbe also died a long time ago, and is not returning for a second coming.

This is all xtian emuna, not Jewish belief and understanding.

If you can’t say that out loud, or feel uncomfortable with me typing this so clearly – I suggest you take some time to explore why that is.

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It’s really hard to stop flattering evil.

Especially, when evil has so many misguided ‘good people’ working for it.