Shavua tov!

On Shabbat, (which btw, was one of the nicest I’ve had for quite a while, thank God I’m not buying into all the ‘fear p*rn’ and running off to buy a generator…) – I went to learn some Rabbenu with a new chevruta.

We opened it up ‘randomly’ to Likutey Moharan 2:2.

It’s a long lesson, and we got through about 4 pars, but here’s how it starts:

“The days of Chanuka are days of thanksgiving, as stated:

“They instituted these eight days of Chanuka for thanksgiving and praising.” (Al haNissim, Tractate Shabbat 21b)

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And days of thanksgiving represent the delight of the World to Come, for the essential delight of the World to Come is to express thanksgiving and praise to God’s great Name and to acknowledge Him.

In this way, we come closer to Him, for the more that we know and acknowledge Him, the closer we are to Him.

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Everything else will disappear in the future, as in, “All the sacrifices will be abolished except for the korban todah” (Vayeira Rabbah 9:7).

Only thanksgiving and praise will remain in the future – thanking and praising God….That is the essence of the delight of the World to Come.

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This is the destination we’re aiming at.

Being able to thank Hashem for all the good things, and seeing how everything is totally for our good, after all.

BUT – and it’s a huge, massive but – trying to say thank you for all the good in our life doesn’t mean that we pretend there is no bad.

No suffering.

No pain – no days where we are so weighed down by misery and despair, we find it hard to even get out of bed in the morning.

(This is describing a serious FREEZE response, btw, where the initial reactions of FIGHT or FLIGHT either didn’t work, or aren’t on the table, so now, the snake brain is flooding the body with the chemicals designed to ‘FREEZE’ a person in place, in hibernation, to numb them until the danger passes, one way or another.)

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Problem is, in our superficial world, where real emotions have been pathologised to the point where a person feels they need medication, or self-medication in the form of cannabis or alcohol any time a ‘real emotion’ pops it head above the parapet, there is a tendency to wave off another person’s real pain with platitudes about ‘just be grateful you’re alive.’

On a very deep level, this is of course true.

But when a person is stuck under a huge amount of misery and pain, and actually trapped in a bio-chemical ‘FREEZE’ response, they often just can’t get to that point.

At least, not immediately.

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I’m going to bring some relevant stuff from Pete Walker in a mo, but before I do, let’s continue with one more par from Rabbenu’s lesson 2:2:

(It’s a puzzling par. Me and the chevruta chewed it over for an hour on Shabbat, and looked up all the stuff being referenced by Rabbenu. In the process of doing that, we learnt some amazing insights, which I’ll bring below, so hang on, if this is sounding like gobbledy-gook.)

“This corresponds to, “Four people are required to express thanksgiving.” (Brachot 54b)

They are listed in Psalms 107, which concludes with, “He who is wise and observes these will understand God’s kindnesses.

‘God’s kindnesses’ correspond to halachot, as Chazal said, “Whoever does not allow his student to serve him is as if he denied kindness from him, as written: “He who withholds kindness from another.” (Job 6:14; Ketubot 96a).

Serving the wise corresponds to halachot, which correspond to, “David’s kindnesses.” (Isaiah 55:3), in that the halachah is according to his opinion, as Chazal said: “God was with him”, (Samuel I, 16:18)….

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“God was with him” means that he was close to God, which represents the World to Come, which corresponds to halachot.

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The four people who have to give ‘thanksgiving’ are those who cross a desert or ocean, get freed from prison, or are healed from a life-threatening illness.

I.e. they say ‘thank you’ just for the gift of still being alive.

They don’t cross a desert and then get a million bucks to pay off their debts, or buy a house in Jerusalem.

They don’t get off the boat and someone is waiting to propose. No-one is curing their infertility, their shalom bayit issues – or ending ‘the war’ in Gaza.

Nope.

But they have an obligation to say thank you – simply because they came through a dangerous situation, and they are still alive.

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Chazal are setting the bar really low, here, when it comes to finding things to say ‘thank you’ for.

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But as this is Rabbenu, there is a much deeper dimension to all this, that takes it out of ‘fake gratitude / fake emuna’ mode, and puts it in a way more deeper place that can work and resonate for so many of us who are actually struggling to say ‘thank you’ for being alive, at the moment.

Because the pain is overwhelming.

Because we are suffering so greatly.

And because we are stuck in a ‘FREEZE’ response to all the stress, that is literally keeping us trapped in mochin de’katnut, and all the bad middot and difficult emotions that hang out in that place.

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When we looked up the reference to Job, we got to the passage where Job’s ‘best friend’ Eliphaz (not coincidentally, the name of the son of that arch-religious hypocrite, Esav) is trying to ‘help’ Job like this:

(These are some of the key arguments that begin Eliphaz’s ‘speech’ to Job, in Chapter 6 of Iyov):

“If He tests you with one thing, are you going to be tired out?!…Remind me, please, which innocent person ever died? When have upright people ever been obliterated?…Destruction does not emerge from the the dust, and nor does misery grow from the earth….

Behold! Fortunate is the man whom God rebukes!!!”

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In other words, Eliphaz is telling Job:

Suck it up man, and stop whining! You totally deserve what’s going on right now! And not only that, you are ‘lucky’ that God is doing this to you, so SAY THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUFFERING!!!

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You know why I love Rabbenu so much?

Because Rabbenu gives real advice, for real people.

Straight after telling us that ‘gratitude’ is the ideal destination, our taste of the world to come down here in this lowly world that is so full of suffering – he then throws in a hint about what Pete Walker calls: FLIGHT INTO LIGHT.

But what I usually refer to as ‘fake gratitude’ or ‘fake emuna’.

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There is a whole bunch of important nuance here, let’s try to tease it out.

First, here is Walker’s description of ‘FLIGHT INTO LIGHT, which you can find online HERE, but which I actually read as part of his biography ‘Homesteading through the Calm Eye of the Storm’:

Flight-into-Light

Like many survivors, my recovery process began unconsciously with a spiritual quest. I needed to find something profoundly good about life to counteract the soul crushing effects of my family.

But striving for enlightenment was a salvation fantasy, and only helped marginally with my CPTSD. My Icarus-like flights into the Light did however give me powerful subjective experiences of a Benevolence at the core of life.

Trying to permanently merge with this Light however, melted my waxen wings and repeatedly sent me plummeting into the sea of my abandonment depression.

The Icarus in me won some and lost some. When I caught enough glimmers of the Light to know that an ultimate good exists, I felt buoyed enough to journey inside – to search for something worthwhile at my psychological core.

When I finally learned to meditate effectively, I gradually found Spirit within.

Now my flights-into-light are sojourns inside to find an inner glow. My ongoing meditative practice regularly brings me helpful insights, restores my equanimity and self-acceptance, and occasionally provides me glimpses of THAT which is so much greater.

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My ultimate flight-into-light was an eight hour Enlightenment experience with LSD – an experience of feeling transcendently at one with a loving God that permeated everything….

This LSD journey impassioned me to search for permanent enlightenment.

Luckily my quest short-circuited two years later, but I had enough tastes of God as Love to convince me that life is a stunning gift from an unfathomable and generous Creator. Like Walt Whitman and other poets, I increasingly saw love and beauty in life’s ordinary and myriad details.

Delusional or not, I feel lucky to believe in a Benevolent Creator.

This is not a choice but a profound subjective sense of knowing. The years before my huge epiphany – especially the Catholic ones – were desolately empty without this deep sense of a Higher Power…..

It blessed me with an increasing capacity to appreciate being alive.

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Walker came of age in the 60s, when so many good people started ‘experimenting’ with drugs as the ‘shortcut’ to enlightenment – and especially weed and LSD.

Walker himself dabbled – but when he saw how many of his hippie friends literally went insane from regular use of CANNABIS, all by itself, or spent their days totally ‘drugged out’ of reality – he stopped doing drugs cold turkey, and now he counsels people to avoid using drugs to escape their emotional pain.

Over time, he found that ‘meditation’ – i.e. hitbodedut, where you talk to God and also check in with your own soul, and let your real feelings surface and be expressed – was a WAY better way of dealing with his ongoing pain.

The reason I’m quoting him here, is because his books were one of the best resources I found, for helping to figure out and overcome C-PTSD – something that I think most people today are dealing with, one way or another.

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Rabbenu teaches, feel your pain for one hour a day, in hitbodedut! But the other 23 hours – be happy!!!

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So, one example of ‘FLIGHT INTO LIGHT’ is trying to turn off the pain and suffering of reality, and ‘run away’ by using drugs – and that includes prescribed medication that alters a person’s mind.

But another way of FLIGHT INTO LIGHT is where you still try to ‘duck the pain’ by covering it all up with ‘just say thanks!!!!!’

Or by trying to change the subject some other way. And so many misguided therapists and even, so-called ‘frum’ mentors and rabbis,  also encourage this – especially the ones who don’t do regular hitbodedut themselves, and don’t have God in the picture in any real way.

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Here’s another snippet from Walker:

My first foray with Kleinian[1] Dr. L was awful. To avoid repeating this, I had test- sessions with seven highly touted therapists.

In one interview-session after another, each renowned therapist tried to distract me from venting pain.

It was so hard to believe.

Each paid lip service to welcoming grief, but when my feelings surfaced, they [the therapists] apparently could not go where they had not been [themselves].

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We all have painful stuff going on inside.

All of us.

If we aren’t talking to God about what’s going on, the pain overwhelms us in a million ways. And even if we’re going to a shrink regularly – if that shrink isn’t encouraging us to turn to God, to put God in the picture, and to develop a more emuna-dik approach to what’s going on, then even the best shrink is very limited in how much real ‘help’ they can provide.

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Sometimes, it’s OK to open our hearts to another person who can actually deal with it in a healthy way. We all need some encouragement and human warmth, sometimes.

And it’s important to find people who can really empathise with us, without trying to shut us up with pat answers about ‘gratitude’ or ‘having emuna’, like Job’s ‘friend’ Eliphaz.

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At the same time – the real answer to our problems actually isn’t dumping it all on to other people – and not even the people we pay a fortune to, to listen to us.

The real answer is talking to God, honestly, and regularly, every single day.

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The time we spend in hitbodedut is where we find the courage to really face our inner pain.

And the strength required to really work through our ‘stress’, our anger, our fear, our disappointment, our unmet expectations, for how we hoped life would be.

That’s where we start to get some real, soul-satisfying answers, about why does it have to be like this?! Why am I suffering so much?! Why are you putting me through all this stuff, God?!

Because everything really is a message from God, even – especially – the stuff that comes wrapped in very difficult circumstances.

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When we start to finally unwrap ‘the message’, and to learn the lessons, that’s when the real feelings of gratitude can start to bubble up, naturally. Without being forced or faked.

For me personally, I only got into doing hitbodedut for an hour a day because I thought that was the way to ‘force’ God into giving me what I thought I wanted, especially, more children.

About five years into the process, no more kids were forthcoming, and that’s when I had a crossroads moment, when I could have jacked the whole thing in, God forbid, as “not working out as planned.”

But instead, I started to realise how many enormous benefits I was getting, from taking the time to talk to God for an hour every single day.

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The really bad FREEZE depressions I use to get all the time, even when life was externally ‘great’, pretty much totally disappeared.

I started to make some big inroads on my awful temper and anger fits, and that literally transformed the atmosphere in my house, and especially, with my kids.

And more and more, I started to realise that even though life was so very difficult, so much of the time – there was still so much to be grateful for.

And still so much that could and would improve, when I stopped running around to ‘other people’ for the answers and the comfort and the insights I needed – and instead, I dealt direct with God, and started to take responsibility for how I was really feeling about stuff.

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God gets us.

God loves us unconditionally.

When God tells us ‘hard things’, He still does it with so much compassion and kindness, so we can actually hear it, without feeling even more gross about ourselves.

 

God is simply the best shrink you could possibly ever have.

And He’s available 24/7, and free.

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Tov.

Let’s pull this back around to where we began.

Rabbenu taught us in Lesson 2:2:

The essential delight of the World to Come is to express thanksgiving and praise to God’s great Name and to acknowledge Him.

In this way, we come closer to Him, for the more that we know and acknowledge Him, the closer we are to Him.

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Being close to God is the biggest present a person can give themselves, in the crazy circumstances we currently all find ourselves in.

Sometimes – actually, at all times – the only way God can take down our ego enough to get us to come closer to Him, and to start really talking to Him, and including Him in our lives, is by literally crushing our yetzers into the floor, with difficulties and hard circumstances.

The point is not to kill us, God forbid, (although sometimes, it can feel like that.)

The point, is to bring us closer to Him.

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When we try to ‘short’ this pain, by disappearing into medications, cannabis, never-ending ‘shrink’ sessions etc etc, we just end up prolonging the agony.

Because the point, the only point of the suffering, is just to bring us closer to God, in a real, raw, honest way.

When we get close to God like that, that is when we find the courage and support required to really face our ‘inner demons’ down, and to stop running away from ourselves, and our own hard, difficult feelings about life.

When we let our real feelings surface and pass through and out – that’s when the real healing begins.

And that’s when we start to understand that hard as everything is, it’s not stam.

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Life is a process, ad 120, and there are no quick fixes.

Our mad world is bringing so much pain and hard feelings up to the surface at the moment.

God is designing things to do exactly that.

To finally get us to understand that we can’t do this without God, without regular hitbodedut, without trying to come closer to Hashem.

We can’t do this, without following the advice of Rabbenu.

And without drawing closer also to the real Tzaddikim of our generation, like Rav Berland.

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So, do yourself a favor, turn this off, and go to some quiet place where you can talk to God for a while.

All of us are stuck in a paradigm that we can’t seem to change from with-out, or with the ‘power and strength of our own hands’.

All we can do, is to take responsibility for ourselves, and to begin the process of trying to change things from within.

But ultimately, that is what is going to change everything.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Melanie Klein advocated a therapeutic approach where this is almost no interaction at all between the client and the therapist, with the therapist even sitting behind the client’s head to avoid eye contact, or anything that could be construed as empathy, human warmth or encouragement.

 

Hold onto your hats…. This is a great post for ‘real Jewish history’ aficionados.

The story begins when I was trying to track down a bit more about R ELIYAHU MANI, of Baghdad, then Hevron (with some places in between).

There is a lot of strangely conflicting information, about when he was meant to have been the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Hebron, and who came before him. And after him.

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So, I was looking through more of his descendants, to try and get a ‘feel’ for where the truth may lie, when I noticed that his son, the ‘Chacham Bashi’ SULEIMAN MANI married a woman called REINA PEREIRA.

Reina’s father is R MOSHE FEREIRA (= PEREIRA) of HEVRON, who was meant to be the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Hevron before ELIYAHU MANI took over.

Or something like that.

Except, the guy’s been mostly scrubbed out of the history books, and what remains are just faint traces of something interesting.

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You’ll recall from the first post in this series about Sabbateans in Hevron that AVRAHAM PEREIRA, the wealthy patron of MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL in Amsterdam:

a) built a yeshiva in Hevron called CHESSED L’AVRAHAM.

And b) was a massive Sabbatean himself, and had notorious Sabbateans like MEIR HIYYA ROFE running his yeshiva in Hevron.

You’ll also recall that AVRAHAM PEREIRA was a converso, had a ton of cash, and was rubbing shoulders with royalty and nobles all over the place.

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After he died, his son YAAKOV PEREIRA took over funding the Sabbatean yeshiva in Hevron, and renamed it CHESSED L’AVRAHAM V’EMET L’YAAKOV.

It seemed like a no-brainer that this ‘MOSHE FERREIRA’, scrubbed Chief Rabbi of Hevron, was a descendant of this family of wealthy converso Sabbateans from Amsterdam.

So, I started checking around, to see if the facts fit the theory.

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When I started tracing back REINA FERREIRA on Geni, I learnt some interesting things straight out the gate.

Like for example, her sister PERL married a very Ashkenazi man from Hungary named SHMUEL KORNFELD.

And their son, ABRAHAM KORNFELD, happened to marry MIREL, the sister of that same R AKIVA YOSEF SCHLESINGER who was trying his hardest to buy land in Eretz Yisrael, to start up agricultural colonies – a full 50 years before anyone had even heard of Herzl.

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We will come back to R AKIVA YOSEF SCHLESINGER again, but as usual, I am just pointing out that when it comes to Eretz Yisrael, it’s always the same people.

And they are all tightly related to each other, however it may look from a distance.

(BTW, the Schlesingers are great-grandchildren of R AKIVA EGER – who has more Frankists in his family tree than most of us. At some point, we will deep-dive on him, too.)

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Tov, back in Hevron, as I’m chasing REINA FERREIRA’s family tree back down the centuries, it looks ilke this:

ABRAHAM ISRAEL PEREIRA (SABBATEAN FUNDER OF HEVRON YESHIVA) ? > ? > ABRAHAM FERREIRA  > R MOSHE FERREIRA, CHIEF RABBI OF HEVRON (1820-1864, moves to Israel in 1851) > REINA FERREIRA (m SULEIMAN MANI)

Strange, that such a prominent family should have such big gaps in its family tree….

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I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say I spent 4 hours today trying to fill those gaps in – and I hit ‘Sabbatean-Frankist-Freemason’ gold, in the process.

First, I went back to a different family tree for ABRAHAM ISRAEL PEREIRA, the Sabbatean funder of MANASSEH BEN ISRAEL in Amsterdam, and CHESSED L’AVRAHAM yeshiva in Hevron, and filled in more gaps.

Here’s some of what I learnt.

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His son YAAKOV ISRAEL PEREIRA (who continued to fund the yeshiva in Hevron) was apparently married to one REBECCA DE PAIVA.

If you cast your mind back four years to when we were discussing the crypto-Jew from Wales, ELIHU YALE, for whom Yale University is named, the name of his converso mistress was HIERONIMA DE PAIVA, widow of the converso diamond dealer and Paradesi Jew, JACQUES DE PAIVA.

You can read more about Eliahu Yale, Golconda diamonds and the East Indies Company HERE – but REBECCA DE PAIVA is close family.

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This is a snippet from HERE, about JAIME DE PAIVA’s last voyage, and last will and testament:

Jacques notes in his will that his cousin Moses (Pereira de Paiva) should marry Mariana Gonzales. According to E.R. Samuel (see above) the mother of Moses was Ribca de Paiva, this is possibly Ribca de Paiva (b. 1631 in Seville) who in 1651 married Jacob Pereira (b. 1629 in Madrid).

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YAAKOV PEREIRA and REBECCA DE PAIVA’s kids are interesting.

One of them is called SALOMON PEREIRA – and he causes a massive scandal in Amsterdam high society when he carries on a public affair with a non-Jewish noblewoman called SOPHIA VAN NOORTWIJCK, (1675-1710).

 

Van Noortwijck (and also her mother….) are prosecuted by the State…. But not before she bears SALOMON PEREIRA a son out of wedlock.

Read more about that HERE (translate from the Dutch):

Snippet:

On 1 July 1700, Sophia van der Maa and her daughter were taken to the prison gate and each imprisoned in their own cell. Sophia van der Maa was accused of inciting her daughter to illicit behavior, but she refused to confess. 

Her daughter, on the other hand, immediately confessed everything that was charged to her, although she firmly denied that her mother had played any role in this. In the end, the court ruled that Sophia Van noortwijck’s actions were the result of her youthful age and the insistence of other persons. 

She was fined ten thousand guilders because of the legal costs incurred – which, incidentally, amounted to 5246 guilders for mother and daughter together – and was allowed to serve her detention at home. Sophia van der Maa was sentenced on 7 October to life imprisonment and a fine of 68,000 guilders for inciting her daughter to an affair with a married Jewish man.

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And this snippet from HERE tells us more what happened to SALOMON PEREIRA:

Salomon Pereira showered Sofia Van Noortwijck and her mother with gifts.

However, he played too much fair weather with his father’s fortune, and in early 1700 he had to flee from his creditors.

Father Pereira [i.e. YAAKOV PEREIRA – funder of the Hevron yeshiva] asked and received permission from the Court of Holland to lock Salomon in a reformatory. He was eventually arrested and imprisoned in Delft.

Sofia visited him regularly and also kept sending him letters. Meanwhile, following father Pereira’s request, the court delved into the case and into what it called the’vexatious life ‘of Salomon Pereira, Sofia van noortwijck and the widow of Noortwijck.

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So we learn from this that the person who had SALOMON PEREIRA locked away and investigated was….. his own father.

Lovely!

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Meanwhile, SOLOMON’s brother is called MOSES ISRAEL PEREIRA (1651-1702).

He is the cousin of JACQUES DE PAIVA, mentioned above (as is the infamous adulterer, Solomon Pereira of Amsterdam).

Moses son marries MIRJAM MACHADO, and she links us straight up with a bunch of the most prominent Frankist-Reformer bankers in Berlin and Vienna.

MIRJAM’s brother is JACOB HISQUIAS MACHADO (1686-1750) > HANA MACHADO m ELISHA DE DAVID PEREIRA > HEINRICH ARON VON PEREIRA-ARNSTEIN (1774-1835) m HENRIETTE ARNSTEIN (1780-1859).

Henriette Arnstein is the grand-daughter of DAVID ITZIG, the mint master of Berlin who lived in this palace:

To say her family tree is absolutely, totally, heaving with Frankist-Reform-Masons is still a massive understatement.

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Both ITZIG and BERNHARD ESKELES – another one of ITZIG’s sons-in-law – are ardent Bros of the ASIATIC BRETHREN, amongst many other masonic endeavors.

If that was all that was hiding out in this family tree – dayenu!

But we’re still just getting started, and the best is yet to come.

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Once I realised the PEREIRA family tree is literally converso-Sabbatean royalty, I spent a couple more hours seeing who else is hanging out there.

Another of ABRAHAM PEREIRA’s sons is called AARON ISRAEL HISQUIAU PEREIRA.

The tree has been messed-around with, so while it says he married his niece – and these people did stuff like that all the time – I think he probably married someone else they are trying to scrub out of history.

Either way, his son is JOSEPH HAIM ISRAEL PEREIRA, who marries DEBORAH FONSECA.

And his children marry into the TOURO family – who two generations later spawn the famous American (masonic….) philanthropist JUDAH TOURO.

JUDAH TOURO leaves a fortune behind him, and appoints (fellow mason and Rothschild B-I-L) MOSes MONTEFIORE, to go and spend the money buying up land and building stuff in Eretz Yisrael.

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But NOT just for Jews….

Here’s another snippet about JUDAH TOURO, from Wiki:

He was a major contributor to many Christian charities in New Orleans, as well as to such varied causes as the American Revolutionary War monument at Bunker Hill, and the relief of victims of a large fire in Mobile, Alabama.

In a New Orleans fund-raising drive for Christians suffering persecution in Jerusalem, he gave ten times more than any other donor.

It’s these small details that really underline who we are dealing with, here.

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Meanwhile, DEBORAH FONSECA’s niece, DONA SIMHA de FONSECA, also marries a very interesting person, namely:

BARON DIEGO LOPES PEREIRA D’AGUILAR.

I am going to quote a fairly lengthy description of him from HERE, so you start to get a feel for:

a) how much money and influence these people had

b) how ‘xtian’ they actually still were, even though they were parachuted back into the Jewish community, where they effectively used their wealth and connections to take it over.

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Snippet:

Baron Diego Lópes (Moses) Pereira d’Aguilar, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire (cr 1726), banker, financier and confidant of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.

[Ed. Note: she is the mother of Marie Antoinette of France, and Emperor Josef II of Austria, who was a massive ‘mason’ and satanic-secret-society adept. You can read more about all this HERE.)

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Snippet continues:

Background

“Diego Lópes (Moses) Pereira d’Aguilar, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire, was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1699….

He was a Marrano financier, born in Porto, Portugal, where his father held the tobacco monopoly. He himself farmed the tobacco revenue in Portugal before establishing branches of his banking house in London and Amsterdam.

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“After the War of the Spanish Succession, in 1722 Diego Lopes Pereira followed Charles VI to London, where he established a firm in the City called Pereira and Lima.

It was one of the Jewish firms which imported gold from Portugal (other Jewish merchants who did so included Francis Salvador and Moses Mendes da Costa).

The firm continued to prosper when in 1736 he went to Vienna, to make proposals to the then Empress to farm the tobacco and snuff duties, in which he was very successful, so much so that the Empress appointed him her cashier.

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“Immediately on his arrival, he reverted to Judaism (ie probably he was circumcised; he probably practised Judaism privately already), adopting the name of Moses and championing other Jews whenever persecution threatened.

To this day they hold an annual service in his honour in the Sephardi synagogue in Vienna.”

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Snippet continues:

Baron D’Aguilar (1726)

“In 1726 the Emperor created him Baron D’Aguilar.

Empress Maria Theresa

“Maria Theresa made him a Privy Councillor, and he was responsible for building the imperial palace at Schönbrunn.

“Ultimately, the Spanish government requested the extradition of ‘this wealthy renegade’ for trial by the Holy Office. In order to avoid being returned to Portugal to face the Inquisition, in 1757 he moved, with his fourteen children, together with his retinue of servants and slaves, to London, where he was active in the Sephardi community.

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The notes give us more details, about who this MOSHE PEREIRA, BARON D’AGUILAR, really was, quoting a Jewish Families Claim Legacy dispute, from August 29, 1931, that happened in Vienna:

A story about a claim by a number of Jewish families in Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, and other countries, to a vast fortune estimated at about 42 million pounds, said to have been left by the Jewish banker, Baron Moses d’Aquilar, or d’Aguilar, who fled from Spain, where he had been a Bishop in the Catholic church, while secretly practising Judaism, and went to London, where he died in 1759, is the sensation of the day here.

==

The account continues:

The d’Aquelar family is stated to have owned enormous estates in Spain.

At the time of the Inquisition, they outwardly adopted Christianity, but continued secretly true to the Jewish faith. The Baron in question became a priest and after-wards a Bishop.

The Empress Maria Theresa, who had interests in Spain, entrusted her diplomatic missions to him, but when it was discovered in Spain that he was acting for Austrian interests, he had to fly. He went to Vienna, where he obtained admission to the Royal Court, and in Vienna he again became a Jew.

He lent the Empress 300,000 Taler, and applied the rest of the huge fortune he brought from Spain to speculation and it grew enormously. He then settled in London.

The brother had his wine distillery in Kosteletz, on the estate of Count Sternberg. His grave has been located in Wamberg, in Bohemia. The Spanish Synagogue in the Zirkus Strasse, in the Vienna Jewish quarter known as Leopoldstadt, has a memorial slab on the front of the building, with a gold inscription reading: Turkish-Israelite Community, founded in Vienna, in 1737-5497 by Moses Lopez Perera Diego d’Aquelar.

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[Now I’m going back through this, I see I need to take a closer look at the ‘War of the Spanish Succession’, and Charles VI of Spain, who ends up in London….There is a lot there that could probably shed more light on what’s really going on in the world today.]

====

Who is MOSES PEREIRA’s anonymous brother, also said to have been ‘spectacularly wealthy’?

He’s called EPHRAIM in some accounts, he’s said to have changed his surname to WEINBERG in other accounts.

But one thing I’m sure of, is that this MOSES PEREIRA, spanish-catholic bishop, is directly related to ABRAHAM PEREIRA, enthusiastic Sabbatean and supporter of MANASSEH ben ISRAEL and Hevron.

The DOBRUSHKA family of Brunn – cousins of the false messiah ‘JACOB FRANK’ were also meant to have held the tobacco monopoly in Moravia under Maria Theresa at this time.

We are dealing with exactly the same family – just sometimes they have a sephardi name, sometimes they have a spanish-catholic name, and sometimes, they have an ‘ashkenazi’ name.

Let’s continue, we aren’t done yet.

==

In the first post, we already realised that ABRAHAM PEREIRA’s brother was also a ‘big deal’ in the spanish-catholic world – including being a Knight of the secret society of the ALCANTARAs.

====

That brother – SALVADOR VAEZ MARTINEZ – had a grandson called MOSES MARTINS (born in London in 1671) – who married into the NUNES HENRIQUES family.

One of his nephews was called ISAAC TEIXARA D’ANDRADE.

We’ll get to him in a minute.

Meanwhile, MOSES MARTINS’ niece by marriage was one RACHEL FRANCO…. Who married one YEHUDA LEIB ESKELES FUERTH….

And their son was the false messiah, ‘JACOB FRANK’.

It’s a small world.

==

OK, so now, who did this ISAAC TEIXARA D’ANDRADE (1705-1730) marry, and why should you care about it?

Read on.

Isaac marries a woman called RACHEL ISRAEL SUASSO, in the Hague.

When I go to look up her family, that’s when all the bells and whistles start tootling, because I am finally pinning this down in the real world.

==

First things first.

If you go HERE, you’ll open a PDF of the AGUILAR-PEREIRA family tree.

BARON D’AGUILAR, MOSHE PEREIRA (erstwhile catholic bishop and purveyor of fine tobacco) is the grandson of ‘CATARINA MARTINS / ALVERES’.

But there is somone important missing off this PEREIRA / AGUILAR family tree.

Another grandson of CATARINA MARTINS / ALVARES by the name of:

DON ISAAC ANTONIO FRANCISCO ISRAEL LOPES SUASSO (1614-1685).

This guy:

==

To cut a very long short – this is the guy who gave William III of Orange 1.5 million guilders to go and ‘invade’ England, back in 1688.

Snippet from HERE:

“Like his father Antonio, Francesco Lopes Suasso was also a moneylender to the King of Spain.

He regularly supported King Charles II of Spain financially in his fight against the French king. He also lent money to Stadtholder William III, among other things to finance the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697) and gave financial assistance to William III when he wanted to claim the English crown from his father-in-law.

Francesco supported William III’s passage to England with an amount of one and a half million guilders (about 17 million euros today).”

==

William III was grateful to his Jewish donors. Constantijn Huygens enviously remarked in his journal that the Jewish financiers were very prominent in the first support boat when the stadtholder of the Republic crossed to England.

Stadtholder William III’s important financiers were Portuguese Jews who had good contacts with the court and the government bodies, such as Antonio Lopes Suasso and his son Francesco.

Salomon de Medina and Jacob Pereira from The Hague also gave a lot of money to the stadholder for his ‘Glorious Revolution’.

==

The link for JACOB PEREIRA is misdirected to a different page.

They tried very hard to scrub him out of this story.

But, this ‘JACOB PEREIRA’ seems to be one and the same as the YAAKOV PEREIRA above, who funded the Hevron (Sabbatean….) yeshiva, and arranged for his own son to be locked up for having an affair with SOFIA NOORTWIJCK.

====

One more strange snippet, and then I’ll tell you one more interesting detail about all this, before we close for today:

In 1685 Francesco [SUASSO] bought a house on the Juffrouw Idastraat. Seven years later, the family moved to Korte Voorhout 11.

Here the rich Francesco had bought the large house for ƒ27000, – where originally Maarten Tromp lived.

==

Hey look!

There’s another historical Tromp / TRUMP link up with the people who are pulling the strings here, behind the scenes.

Here’s his picture (left), and this is a snippet from his Wiki page, HERE:

“In 1610, after his father’s discharge because of a navy reorganization, the Tromps were on their way to Guinea on their merchantman when they were attacked by a squadron of seven ships under command of the English pirate Peter Easton.

During the fight, Tromp’s father was slain by a cannonball, where after the battle his body was thrown overboard by the boarding party.

According to legend, the 12-year-old boy rallied the crew of the ship with the cry “Won’t you avenge my father’s death?” The pirates seized him and sold him on the slave market of Salé where he ended up serving as a cabin boy. Two years later, Easton was moved by pity and ordered his redemption.

Set free, Tromp supported his mother and three sisters by working in a Rotterdam shipyard. He went to sea again at 19, briefly working for the navy, but he was captured again in 1621 after having rejoined the merchant fleet, this time by Barbary corsairs off Tunis.

He was kept as a slave until the age of 24 and by then had so impressed the Bey of Tunis and the corsair John Ward with his skills in gunnery and navigation that the latter offered him a position in his fleet. When Tromp refused, the Bey was even more impressed by this show of character and allowed him to leave as a free man in 1622.”

====

Strangely, this story is also dinging off the ‘BS’ bell loudly….

Perhaps more on ‘MAARTEN TROMP’ another time.

==

OK, we have one more item to address:

BARON DE SUASSO’s son, ANTONIO LOPES, marries one RACHEL MENDES DE COSTA.

Her sister, SARAH SIMCHA marries the second BARON D’AGUILAR – son of MOSES PEREIRA D’AGUILAR, who runs away to London apparently to avoid being extradited and burnt at the state in an auto da fe.

And RACHEL and SARAH SIMCHA’s father is MOSES (ANTHONY) MENDES DE COSTA (1668-1747) – who sets up the Bank of England.

==

Snippet from HERE:

Moses was a very successful banker and owned substantial shares in the Bank of England, though he was never on the board.

In 1727 he took an action against the Muscovy Company, a trading company, that had refused to admit him as a member on the grounds of his Jewish background. Although the Attorney-General decided that he should be admitted, the Company petitioned parliament to change the law so that they could refuse membership to Jews.

Mozes was Governor of the Bank of England (in fact he wasn’t)

==

Let’s just recall that snippet we saw above, about ‘BARON D’AGUILAR’:

After the War of the Spanish Succession, in 1722 Diego Lopes Pereira followed Charles VI to London, where he established a firm in the City called Pereira and Lima.

It was one of the Jewish firms which imported gold from Portugal (other Jewish merchants who did so included Francis Salvador and Moses Mendes da Costa).

====

This ‘I own the Bank of England’ guy is this same MOSES MENDES DA COSTA who was importing gold to the UK from Portugal.

All the people that like to talk about ‘conspiracy theories’ hate the suggestion that catholic-former-Jews financed the take over of the UK, via their front men MANASSEH ben ISRAEL and OLIVER CROMWELL, and then via all the conversos in Amsterdam who paid for William of Orange to ‘invade’ – while their family members got to set up ‘the Bank of England’….

But that is just what we’ve discovered in this post, in real time.

=====

In the past, I would stop here.

But, I am 100% sure at this point, that all these ‘catholic-Jews’ were actually just agents of the Jesuits.

ANTONIO SUASSO didn’t just get 1.5 million guildens to ‘give away’ to William of Orange to invade England all by himself.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to start researching the Jesuit angle more to see what shakes out.

But in the meantime, we learnt a lot in this post.

Didn’t we?

Thanks to Nahman for the original idea – and also to ASD and especially, Yosef D, for completing it.

Yosef D. put together a more complete translation of this video I put up yesterday, of Rivka HaTzaddika.

You can watch that here:

====

I still don’t know what I really think about all this, to be honest.

I am kind of out of my own ‘comfort zone’ here. But I know R Elmaliach is kodesh kodeshim, and I’m just going with the flow, and having (trying to have….) simple emuna.

So, thanks to Nahman for the original impetus to get this translated. And thanks to ASD and Yosef D for more impetus to get it properly translated.

Taken as a whole, it makes way more sense.

This video is from six months ago, BTW.

====

Yosef D.’s translation of ‘Rivka HaTzaddika’s comments:

Not sure if this is appropriate, but here’s a translation based on Nahman’s translation, youtube subtitles, and the audio track of the video.
“””
Hello, I’m Rivka. Today is Wednesday, the 86th birthday of Rabbi Berland Shlit”a and also soon it will be my 46th birthday this year. And when it was last year – I am now 45 years old; last year I was already 45 because I was born in a the month of Shvat, on the ninth of Shvat.

==

On Lag BaOmer, I saw Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and many other tzaddikim, including Moses our Rebbe. The vision was full of a huge line of tzaddikim, yes, I am talking about a spiritual vision that I see them, this is not the first time I have seen Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Lag Ba’Omer.

Also that in the year – there passed away there 45 tzaddikim – I also saw Rabbi Shimon and other tzaddikim literally sitting as if they were sleeping in some gathering and then they said oy vavoy! and immediately after that, what happened happened.

45 years old, last year, then they told me that returnees were asked of all the tzaddikim. So it was – Lag Ba’Omer. Again I saw a committee with Rabbi Shimon.

R’ Shimon – and he asked all the tzaddikim – and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was at the head of it and he was there as well – Rav Berland, spiritually, and other tzaddikim. It was a kind of committee in the Lag BaOmer that we had passed – we had passed and they said that they should ask every tzaddik [Rashi?] to pass the merits of their Torah study and all their many merits everything they wrote[transfered] to the Shekinah.

And I saw each one simply take the unknown and simply stop(?) their Torah words and give it to the Shekinah and I was there because I am connected to the Shekinah.

==

In essence, from the beginning years Rabbi Berland tells me spiritually that I am Bat Sheva. Actually, I am connected to the soul of Bat Sheva and Bat Sheva is the Shekinah, as we know.

And this also explains to me all the enormous and terrible yearning that I have for building the Temple. Not once and not twice, in my messages I am literally begging and begging and with the love of fire for Hashem to build the Beit HaMikdash.

Every morning, I look out of my living room window towards the hills of Jerusalem. Jerusalem – and many times I wake up in the morning looking out the window and go to see if we have a Beit HaMikdash. This is simply because the connection that is going to be in the Beit HaMikdash will heal the neshama for all of us.

This will connect us in connection with the Kadosh Baruch Hu. The connection, the love we have [for the third beit hamikdash] will heal our nefesh, neshama, and bodies, and all simply bringing us closer to God. My experiences with the Shekinah have been significant.

==

I grew up in Chabad, as you know.

I studied at Beit Chana, and my parents made Aliyah from the USA, from Michigan, from Detroit Michigan. My mother is Esther, my father is Zvi, and they made Aliyah when I was five years old from the United States and my father is a Chabad hassid.

==

And this is what I can tell you about myself: we had nothing to do with Shuvu Banim.

we live in the place of [Brachfeld – Kiryat Sefer]. I married someone from the Lithuanian community, and my children studied in Lithuanian institutions. Before connecting with Rabbi Berland, I really had no association with the Breslov community, and I didn’t know who Rabbi Eliezer Berland was, and as I said, I’ll tell you a little more that.

==

About six or seven years ago, on Yom Kippur night, I fell asleep and around 12 at night, when I sleep, I see a giant gathering, the floor up to the sky, in a dream, I see my soul is up in gan eden.

There is a giant gathering of avreichim – torah students, many, many, until the heights, avreichim, and Rav Tzaddik talks to them in a long drasha. This was HaRav Ovadia Yosef Ztz”l.

It was after he passed away and I didn’t know it was HaRav Ovadia Yosef because I know him from the pictures that he is older but in the dream he looked young with the black beard and the glasses and he gave them a long long drasha about lots and lots of subjects[dvarim] also about when the geulah will be and all kinds of things about the process of the geulah, a drasha to the multitudes, to the multitudes, many, many, many, many, many avreichim, many.

And then he turned to me, my soul was up there, I didn’t understand either, so what was my neshama doing up there next to him, who am I, after all, then, no, I wasn’t that famous.

The subjects I’ve been talking about for two years, seems like I didn’t understand what exactly I was doing next to Rabbi Ztz”l and then he turns to me and asks me when the geulah will come, when the Moshiach be revealed, and then suddenly I wake up and it’s chatzot laila Yom Kippur and then I look next to me in my room I see for the first time in my life as if before.

==

Yes, I had real dreams that came true, but seeing a tzaddik full of light standing in my room, that was [new to] me.

I simply went into a bit of a shock because it was the first time. Today, I’m used to it because I communicate with many tzaddikim, and it’s already from the side of kedusha. Many also told me that it’s from the side of kedusha that [?].

==

And I see a great tzaddik rabbi, so I didn’t know it was Rav Eliezer Berland because I didn’t know him.

Because no, we had no connection with him, with a white beard all white and I see the Shekinah above. I see a great light full of love communicating with me I realized it was the Kadosh Barukh Hu, He is holding a shofar full of oil and a crown and He asks me telepathically whether to pour it on him or to enthrone him and I am like that. yes!

I answer him telepathically with such joy my whole soul has been filled with light I am like this wow!

==

Halavai there is a tzaddik here who would be recommend to be already a moshiach, and from that day my neshama is simply like a greater essence[?].

I felt myself existing above and below, half down, as if my neshama [….?] and since then I began to see tzaddikim and spirituality and Rav Berland, so I will continue to tell nothing how did I even find out that it was Rabbi Ovadia Yosef I saw in a dream?

==

On the Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, that same year in the month of cheshvan, I was in the library with my children, and my children, they went to read the children’s books, and I sat next to the adult books, and I took out a book by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef because it’s his Yahrtzeit.

And where I actually opened the book, I opened the book, where I opened the book the picture was exactly what I saw in the dream, which is what I saw in the dream, the young man with the glasses the short beard.

And then I realized, Wait a moment, essentially it was HaRav Ovadia Yosef that I saw in a dream on Yom Kippur and then a figure appeared to me because I realized that the Rav, in essence, came to tell me on his Yahrtzeit in cheshvan that it was a true dream.

And then I took things more seriously from that day.

==

And then since then Rav Berland accompanies me full of light talking to me with telepathy, and helps me in every step.

I went, thus, through so many corrections and thus, through so many big things. Language is not the paper(idiom?). Even if I talk about it for hours and hours, I wouldn’t tell the whole number of times that Rabbi Berland was with me all over the world, almost half the world, and all kinds of places to complete nitzotzot.

It’s not the place now to tell all the tikkunim of the Shekinah that I went through, but from that day on Yom Kippur my life changed from one end to the other.

I am telling you that I did not have one phone call with Rav Berland. Just in dalet amot, in spirituality. [….?]

==

He decides it from heaven.

There is above me a giant angel, a huge angel who directs me with Rav Berland and I hear an echo of a voice from the Kadosh Barukh Hu, all the time.

[….?] tikkunei of the Shekinah …. that’s it. I still haven’t met the rabbi face to face. I mean, I didn’t need to. Seven years I’m led by the Kadosh Barukh Hu and the Rav to make tikkunim for everything.

I mean yes, I went around the world.

I also had to talk about tzniut with all kinds of rabbis in the world and in the United States, and in Europe, and I conveyed many, many messages about tzniut, and encouragement to the women and girls of Israel.

And besides that, I had to finish many, many, many sparks to raise them to the Shekinah.

==

Now Rabbi Berland has talked with my neshama, they actually connected me to the neshama of the tzaddikim, and also to the neshama of the tzaddikim above, and to his soul, essentially, and so on.

Now what happens is that they collect nitzotzot of all kinds with me even when I speak on the line and the crowd hears me all over the world, so then they connect to my neshama, and I collect nitzotzot and return them to the Shekinah.

Now what happens is how do you actually return it to the essence of the Shekinah and then I connect to the connection[?] of the tzaddikim and they also pass it on to me now.

So, I will explain to you a little, I can’t talk about everything, but I can explain to you a little.

==

So that you will understand when I actually connect my soul to the Shekinah – to the Shekinah and I connect to the Kadosh Barukh Hu, because He lifts me up to a [atik?].

It is all spiritual. and I [?] more and more [….?] and I simply give everything. This happens to me spiritually, but physically I feel everything.

That really connects me to the Kadosh Barukh Hu, to the tzaddikim, and then I feel the love of Hashem so immense and I feel that all the nitzotzot rise to the Shekinah – and it simply purifies the people of Israel and it brings shefa – abundance.

==

And I can tell you there is no count the number of times that the Rav told me or I received a message that, chas vchalila, all kinds of things that should not happen, and if we make a Shekinah connection again, it will be – it will be sweetened – mitigated!

==

But I can tell you that when the daughters of Israel become stronger in modesty and people and the men become stronger by studying Torah, guarding their eyes and guarding the covenant, the tiqun of the Shekinah is much easier.

[This] reduces harsh decrees on the people of Israel – especially when the children of Beit Raban also study Torah.

I tell you that studying Torah and modesty, because what I experience and what I see, this is especially powerful in supporting the Jewish people – Am Yisroel.

Good. May we hear only good news.
“””

====

Seeing it written out like this is very helpful – and also, kind of mind-blowing.

I’m still in the middle of the Hebron stuff, but as part of that, I actually went back to read more of what the original Chessed L’Avraham, R Avraham Azulai, wrote about the Land of Israel, and the Shechina.

I will BH post that up separately….

But the CHESSED L’AVRAHAM’s words on the Shechina, and the Land of Israel, connect up with a lot of what Rivka HaTzaddika is explaining here.

====

Ashreynu, that we have a rabbi like Rav Berland in our generation!

He’s truly One in a Generation.

It happens like clockwork.

Yesterday, me and my husband were up in the North, driving all over the place, including to RASHBI in Meron.

We saw some patches of burnt ground…. but it was otherwise totally quiet.

Today – apparently, the failed State is trying to get it’s war in the North going again, on a few different fronts.

St Bibi headed off to the masonic Bros in the USA, for a confab last week, and here we are, already reaping the bitter fruit.

All this stops, when we stop buying into it.

All this stops, when we stop believing the news, and taking things at face value.

Ismail Haniyeh was working for the failed State, and the mason Bros of the USA.

Dead or not, it makes no difference – because the real Evils are still firmly in power, still channelling cash to ‘Hamas’, and all the other terrorists, including the ones who head up our government and army.

====

But you know where the ‘hope’ lies, in all this?

It lies in the fact that this is really a spiritual war.

When we stop fooling ourselves, the Evils no longer have the spiritual koach required to keep fooling us – and trapping us in more of their fabricated ‘wars’, which are just designed to turn the good people of the world against each other.

And of course, to get as many of those good people – and good Jews! – killed and maimed as possible.

====

You can’t save the next guy.

You can’t ‘save’ the stoopid who still believes in St Trump, St Bibi, the IDF, the ‘security apparatus’.

But you can for sure save yourself.

And you can also hopefully rescue the people who are closest to you, from following the satanic-masons all the way down into the pit.

How?

Simply, by sticking to the truth.

Simply, by working on your own bad middot, arrogance and denial – and not being afraid to get some bizayon when you are trying to stand up for that truth.

====

When they first started talking ‘covid pandemic’, I got bizayon across the board, for daring to suggest it wasn’t what it seemed.

Even my husband thought I was nuts…. and never mind my wider family, circle of friends, readers – and other ‘bloggers’.

To name but a few.

But I stuck to my guns.

So none of my immediate family got the shots, and even the big believers in ‘innoculations’ in my wider family thought long and hard before submitting to the needle. (At least, by the end….)

I know that being willing to argue about this, being willing to ‘make a big deal’ about not masking up, not ‘following the rules’, made a big difference to the people who are closest to me.

====

The war of Gog and Magog is spiritual.

Every time we fall into fear and despair, waste time engaging with fake news, instead of trying to go ‘beyond superficial’, come away from Hashem, and continue believing the lies the media and our failed State feeds us 24/7 – we are giving koach to the Evils.

And conversely, every time we spend some time trying to birur stuff within and without, in our hitbodedut, and work on overcoming the bad middot that keep us blind to the truth – we are giving our koach to the real Tzaddikim and the side of good.

Ditto, for when we say Tikkun Haklalis. Ditto, for when we participate in efforts to get the Rav’s Torah-to-end-the-war written.

Ditto, for each time we accept bizayon and disgrace, for trying to stand up for ‘truth’, and going to bat for the people we really love, to drag them out of the world of lies.

====

From my experience, 98% of the world have no firm opinion about things, and just ‘follow what’s fashionable’.

They just go with the flow.

The 1% of the world working directly for the Evils know this, and they are the ‘leaders’ and ‘loudmouths’ and ‘influencers’ setting the agenda, and washing the brains of the 98%.

But there is the 1% on the OTHER side of the argument – and each tiny effort they make to stand up for truth pays enormous dividends, in ‘persuading’ and affecting the 98% in the middle.

In some ways, their job is way easier than the Evils – because truth resonates in the soul of every human being in the planet.

It takes way more effort, time and money to maintain the lies, then it does to uncover the truth.

Because the truth is in each person’s heart, and when we uncover the truth in our own hearts, that ‘truth’ then shines out to the people around us.

If we let it.

If we don’t get scared of being ostracised or argued with, or ‘shut down’.

If we’re willing to stand up for it.

====

You can’t save a stoopid.

All you can do for a stoopid is pray for them, and possibly, if they are a stoopid you really care about, pay a pidyon nefesh, so the klipah that is keeping them stuck in the world of lies can somehow get lifted off them.

But the more you live in the world of truth yourself, or try to, the more all the evil, all the lies, just can’t get close in the same way.

The less you’ll be pushing your relatives to ‘join the army’. The less you’ll be encouraging them to ‘mask up’. The less you’ll believe in politics, politicians, ‘influencers’ all the rest of it.

And the more time you’ll spend engaged in things that really do make a difference, not least to you, such as talking to God, praying, and working on your bad middot.

====

Don’t take anything at face value right now, especially not stuff reported in the media.

The masonic-controlled ‘terrorists’ are on all sides of this equation… and their main target is you and me, the small people of the world, who yearn for peace, and for God to be openly revealed, and for geula to come soon, the sweet way.

Once enough of us realise that… maybe, just maybe, geula will actually start to speed up again.

The sweet way.

====

PS: My friend S. sent me this video of ‘Rivka HaTzaddika’ from six months ago, where she explains a lot more how she came to be doing what she is now doing, for Rav Berland:

====

I’ve been trying to ‘engage’ with her new messages, but maybe because I’m braindead from wedding stress, or something, I’m not making a lot of headway at the moment.

If you pick up something that should be emphasised, let me know.

Enjoy!

Welcome back to part 2, of what is becoming a very interesting series on the Sabbatean rabbis – and funders – of Hebron.

Let’s begin by reminding ourselves where we got up to, and what we are researching. The Rav made some comments last week, like this:

Four cities: Hevron – there, there was the Rav Mani. HaRav Mani was the Chief Rabbi of Hevron, there, there were all the rabbonim.

There was there the ‘Chessed L’Avraham’, and there was there the ‘Sdei Chemed’ – he’s buried in Hevron still today.

==

Today, we’re going to ‘deep dive’ on the Sdei Chemed, R’ Chaim Chizkiyahu Medini.

But before we get to him, let’s square off what we learnt about the ‘CHESSED L’AVRAHAM’.

CHESSED L’AVRAHAM 1 is R AVRAHAM AZULAI, great-granddad of the CHIDA, a big kabbalist – and the person who got permission in a ‘dream’ to basically open R CHAIM VITAL’s grave, to take his kabbalistic manuscripts out.

We have no way of knowing if that ‘permission’ was actually ever given, or whether it came from the side of ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

What we do know is that R CHAIM VITAL left explicit instructions that his mss on the kabbalah should be buried with him….

==

R CHAIM VITAL’s son, SHMUEL, also became a Sabbatean.

And SHMUEL VITAL’s student, YAAKOV TZEMACH, helped R AVRAHAM AZULAI, the ‘CHESSED L’AVRAHAM’ to open R VITAL’s tomb and dis-intere his manuscripts.

==

Then, there is another CHESSED L’AVRAHAM – namely, the yeshiva set up in Hevron by another big supporter and funder of the false messiach SHABTAI TZVI, called ABRAHAM PEREIRA of Amsterdam.

There are many mysteries hanging out with the PEREIRA family, who seem to share a great deal in common with the OPPENHEIM clan of corrupted court Jews.

For the purposes of this series of posts, we’ll stick to the ‘known facts’, such as they are, that this ‘CHESSED L’AVRAHAM’ PEREIRA is a known Sabbatean, and his yeshiva in Hevron is run by hard-core Sabbateans, who continue to believe in their false messiah long after he a) converts to Islam and b) dies, including: MEIR HIYYA ROFE.

==

Maybe it’s a just a CO-IN-CID-ENCE, but both these ‘CHESSED L’AVRAHAMs’ seem to be tightly linked to some very dodgy stuff, spiritually.

==

One more point to pick up from Eliaou Attlan’s book on Hevron, before we move on to the SDE CHEMED, and how he fits into this whole, hot mess, going on in Hevron.

On pg 109, Attlan writes this:

“Born in Jerusalem in 1724, the Chida is the best personal illustration of the meeting of the Sephardi and Ashkenazi traditions.

Via his father [the grandson of R AVRAHAM AZULAI], he descends from a large and prestigious family of rabbis originally from Castille, installed in Eretz Yisrael for 5 generations….

Via his mother, R YOSEF DAVID AZULAI (the CHIDA) descends from an illustrious and learned family of Germans.

SARAH BIALER was the daughter of YOSEF BIALER, who came from Germany in 1700 with his master, R YEHUDA HA CHASSID.

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YEHUDA HACHASSID was a known Sabbatean, who led an aliya to Eretz Yisrael (partly funded by SAMSON WERTHEIMER, SHMUEL OPPENHEIMER’s SIL and Sabbatean court Jew).

That aliya occurred because many Sabbateans expected the ‘second coming of Shabtai’ in 1700, in Eretz Yisrael.

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Now, it’s possible that the CHIDA’s German ancestors weren’t Sabbateans, and just tagging along for the ride.

But it’s also very possible that they were Sabbateans.

Last point for now, SARAH BIALER, the CHIDA’s mum, seems to descend from yet another ‘YEHOSHUA FALK’, this time, Rabbi Yehoshua Falk HaCohen – Katz, (1555-1614) author of the “Sefer Meirat Einayim”.

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I don’t know what that means about the CHIDA himself.

I’m just pointing out the connections his ancestors had with known Sabbateans – repeatedly, on both sides of his family tree.

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OK, so now, who is the ‘SDEI CHEMED’ (1834-1904)?

HERE is the Hebrew Wiki page for him, and this is some of what we learn from it:

Hezekiah was born in Jerusalem to Rabbi Eliyahu Raphael Medini, the son of an old family in Jerusalem and Kalu Vida….

Due to his financial difficulties, he emigrated to Kushta [Constantinople]] to live with his wealthy relatives. His relatives did not help him as he thought, and his livelihood was not found.

In [?], he was called to be the chief rabbi in the Crimean city of Kerso-Bazaar in Russia for the Crimean community – an ancient Jewish community in Crimea and speakers of Crimean and the local Ashkenazi community.

He was well known in the area and also revered by local Christians and Muslims.

It was there that he began his encyclopedic work, ” Sh-a-dei Hamad.”

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Yeah, so the title of his famous book was not ‘SDEI Chemed’, but actually one-of-Hashem’s-ineffable-names Chemed.

And one of the names that halacha states it is forbidden to erase.

A lot of people were very unhappy about this, so the name was changed to the ‘mispronounced’ SDEI Chemed, instead.

R MEDINI apparently gets around this by publishing his own psak justifying the title he’s chosen as acceptable.

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Wiki continues that R MEDINI loses his vision for quite a while… But then is ‘miraculously’ cured and can see again.

And also, that after he dies in Hebron, the Arabs dig up his grave, apparently because they want to rebury him in the Muslim cemetery of Hevron.

(Just park these snippets for now. When we get to the post discussing R ELIYAHU MANI, next, we’ll find that exactly the same things described above also happen to him….)

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And here’s another snippet:

In 1899, he decided to resign his post and leave Crimea, after thirty-three years in his rabbinate, because he wanted to be buried in the Land of Israel.

He initially lived in Jerusalem for two years, then moved to Hebron.

When he arrived in the city, he opened a yeshiva at Beit Romano, where he finished writing the great Talmudic encyclopedia “Shadi Hamad”.

After the death of Rabbi Chaim Rahamim Yosef Franco, Rabbi of Hebron, in the year of 1901, he was appointed rabbi of the city and served in the post until the day of his death [in 1904].

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Elsewhere, we’re told that R MEDINI was appointed the Chief Rabbi of Crimea aged ‘33’.

That number keeps cropping up in this story, for masonic-number watchers out there.

Also, R RAHAMIM YOSEF FRANCO is also an interesting person in his own right, and apparently gets an audience with the Austrian Emperor, Franz-Josef, in Vienna.

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Snippet continues:

After concerns arose about the future of the Romano house, he arranged to sell the house to Rabbi Shalom Dober Schneerson of Lubavitch, who bought the entire area and established the Yeshiva of Torat Emet.

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And there’s more tight links between R MEDINI and CHABAD, like this (machine translated from Hebrew):

His series of books, “Shadi Hamad,”was published in Warsaw between the years of his death, thirteen parts of his life and five after his death.

He then sold the property to Rabbi Yosef Zvi. [5]

The rights were then sold to Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson of Lubavitch and his son-in-law Rabbi Menachem of Adal Schneerson Rebbe of Lubavitch who also re-edited the books and published them in his publishing house Kehat Press.

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CHABAD are just lurrrrving R MEDINI!

Let’s pick up a few more clues over in the Crimea – where a thriving community of Karaites lived for many hundreds of years.

Apparently, this was not the community R MEDINI was the Chief Rabbi of. Instead, he was the head of the strange KRYMCHAK community.

That probably deserves a whole post to itself, but I’m trying to keep this focussed on Hevron, so read THIS about KRYMCHAKs, if you are interested.

Snippet:

Krymchaks are often perceived as “the Crimean Jews” because they practice Orthodox Judaism. However, Krymchak prayer rituals differ from the traditions of other branches of Judaism.

They developed separately from neighbouring communities and, at the same time, interacted with them, so that different communities influenced and adopted customs from one another.

Doron Hondo, a Krymchak rabbi from Simferopol, claims the Krymchak Jewish tradition is over 1,000 years old.

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Now, there’s a strange story about R MEDINI apparently outlawing the study of Hebrew, and of the Tanach, while in Crimea.

You can read more about that on the On the Mainline blog, in a post entitled:

It is prohibited to study Hebrew and the Bible – a Crimean story from 1892, with an encounter with the Sde Chemed.

Snippet 1: (Reproduced from a newspaper article that appeared in 1892, in the HaMelitz ‘haskalah’ periodical of maskil Yehuda Leib Gordon):

“I asked him [i.e. The Sde Chemed] several questions….amongst these questions I also referred to the little talk I had had with his student about the Old Testament and Hebrew.

He too [i.e. The Sde Chemed] turned up his nose and answered:

“As far as I can see, you are one of this rising generation who cast off these old traditions and are infected by heresy. Is it not known to you what the Talmud expressly says, “Keep your children from thinking”, Rashi, adding ‘Study not the Old Testament too much.”

As for myself, from the day that I was elected Chacham over my congregation, more than 30 years ago, it has always been my strongest desire to clear away such deadly snares (his exact expression), and from this I will not turn aside till the day of my death.”

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On the Mainline doesn’t know what to make of all this, especially as points out that:

Medini quotes Haskalah sources in his Sde Chemed, was personally friendly with maskilim, etc.

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What we can take away from all this is that R MEDINI is clearly an interesting person, for a lot of different reasons.

On the Hebron website HERE, we pick up a few more clues:

The SDE CHEMED spends some time in Baghdad, between leaving Jerusalem and going to Constantinople.

One of his main rabbi / mentor in Baghdad is: Rabbi Haim Nissim Abulafia.

He returns to Jerusalem in 1899, stays there two years, then moves to Hevron.

Snippet:

Shortly after his arrival, Hebron’s two chief rabbis, Rabbi Eliyahu Mani and Rabbi Yosef Franco, passed away. At first, Rabbi Medini declined to become the new chief rabbi of Hebron, but he eventually agreed, serving as a community leader until his passing in 1904.

Together with the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi, Shimon Menashe Chaikin, he would pray every night in front of the Tomb of Machpela. He established educational funds and learning centers in Hebron such as the “Chen V’Chesed” free-loan society.

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If the name SHIMON MENASHE CHAIKIN sounds familiar, that’s because we met him in the second post on CHARIDEE, CORRUPTION and ERETZ YISRAEL.

Snippet:

Shmuel Menashe Chaikin (1777-1893) was a prominent disciple of the “Mitteler Rebbe” and the Tzemach Tzedek of Chabad. He moved from Slutsk to the Holy Land in the 1810s, and served as the Chabad rabbi in Hebron for over 70 years, until his passing at the age of 116.

At the time he signed this letter, he was 113 years old.

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SHMUEL MENASHE CHAIKIN apparently also had a different surname…. Namely, ZEITLIN.

How all this fits together, I still don’t know.

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Tov, let’s back to the French book by Attlan, to see what else we can learn about what CHABAD are doing in Hevron at this time.

According to the Rebbe RAYATZ’s ‘memoir’ ‘Beit HaRav’ – which could win some serious prizes for creative fiction – the first Chabad chassidim come to Hevron in 1816, under one SHIMON SHMERLING.

They are said to be trying to escape all the nasty arguments between the chassids and the ‘mitnagedim’ going on in Tiberious at this time.

Kind of strange, when the main ‘argument’ seems to between the Chabad Rebbes, and the other chassidic rebbes, with nary a ‘mitnaged’ to be found….

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Here is the GENI page for ‘SHIMON SHMERLING’ – he appears to be the son of ‘MOSHE OF SHKLOV’.

It’s at least possible that this ‘MOSHE of SHKLOV’ is MOSHE ZEITLIN of SHKLOV – son of YEHOSHUA ZEITLIN, and father of two ‘privates’ and one SHNEUR ZALMAN….

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What I can tell you for sure, is that SHIMON SHMERLING gets straight in ‘fundraising’ for EY, and seems to have pioneered the way of doing this that was later adopted by the KKL.

This snippet is machine translated from his WIKI Hebrew page:

At the time of his mission, R. Shimon used a special method for collecting the funds, similar to today’s practice of issuing certificates such as the “Minister of Chesed” or the “altar stone” so that the benefactor received the desired title.

R. Shimon used to travel around the Jewish colonies abroad and declare that whoever wanted to buy four amot nachala in Hebron would donate a substantial sum.

His method was successful, and it reached its climax when the middle Adm. recommended that Chabad’s followers buy an estate in Hebron and promised that whoever bought D’amot in Hebron would be saved from the crushing of the tomb^[2]

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According to the Rebbe RAYATZ, there is a second group of Chabadnikim who come to Hevron also in 1823, headed by (SHMUEL] MENASHE CHAIKIN, and including the legendary MENUCHA RACHEL SHNEURI / SLONIM, daughter of the MITTELER REBBE of Chabad.

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According to Attlan, beginning 1830 a Muslim sheikh from the nearby village of Dura starts demanding danger money from the Jewish community, and especially, from the European Chabad community that he figures are richer than their Sephardi counterparts in Hebron.

He gets his way, and his part of the haluka payment made to Hevron is written out to ‘The BLACK RABBI’, (i.e. Sheikh Abdel Rahaman).

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From 1830 on, the Sephardim and Ashkenazim (i.e. Chabad) communities of Hevron decide to present a united front, financially.

They send shadarim to fundraise for the city of Hebron together, and not just for the Sephardi or Ashkenazi (i.e. Chabad) community.

This next snippet is very interesting (from page 142 of Attlan’s book):

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The Chabad emissaries get as far as Bombay, in order to receive important sums of money from the prestigious Sassoon family, surnamed ‘the Rothschilds of the Orient’….

At the beginning of the [18]60s, R SHIMON MENASHE CHAIKIN is given the title of ‘Av Beit Din’ and Parnass, until 1892. He was the Rosh Yeshiva of the local Chabad yeshiva….

The [Chabad] Rebbe of that time, the Tzemach Tzedek, called SHIMON MENASHE CHAIKIN ‘my Tzaddik’.

He is succeeded at the head of the chassidim of Hebron by R DOV BAER EFRATI, despite the opposition of the Rebbe.

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I don’t know which ‘Rebbe’ Attlan is referring to, here – but I have a hunch it’s connected to the internal Chabad ‘war’ over the charity funds and Eretz Yisrael that saw Kopust Chabad split from Lubavitch Chabad.

Chabad internecine warfare was going on pretty much the whole of the 1800s…. And onwards. Even to our day.

Nevertheless, R DOV BAER EFRATI is still a g-great-grandson of the ALTER REBBE (of course…) like this:

ALTER REBBE > MITTELER REBBE > MENUCHA RACHEL SLONIM of HEVRON > ROZA MINA EFRAT m BARUCH MORDECHAI SLONIM > R DOV BER EFRAT.

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Attlan then says that DOV BAER EFRATI retires to Jerusalem, and is succeeded by R SHLOMO YEHUDA LEV ELIOZOROV, the disciple of R CHAIKIN, and Rav MANI.

Guess what?

SHLOMO YEHUDA LEV ELIOZOROV is also a descendent of the ALTER REBBE, like this:

ALTER REBBE > MITTELER REBBE > MENUCHA RACHEL SLONIM of HEVRON > SHTERNE RIZA m SHALOM KAZARNOVSKY > ELIEZER SHIMON KAZARNOVSKY > R SHLOMO YEHUDA LEIB ELIEZEROV of HEBRON.

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Attlan than says that one R SHNEUR ZALMAN ben MENACHEM MENDEL is designated by Hevron to go and fundraise in the East in 1852 – where he hits it off big time with DAVID SASsOON of Bombay, who then builds two synagogues in Hebron.

Attlan then totally misses out anything to do with R MEDINI and BEIT ROMANO, when saying that the 5th Lubavitcher Rebbe buys BEIT ROMANO from CHAIM ROMANO in 1912 – who is a ‘rich Turkish agent’ who decided to move to Hebron ‘33 years earlier’.

There is that number again.

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SHNEUR ZALMAN ben MENACHEM MENDEL is none other than the brother of CHAIM TZVI SHNEERSON, agent of the British who was a very early proponent of a ‘Jewish National State’ who we wrote about HERE.

CHAIM TZVI got run out of Tiberius in disgrace accused of stealing charity monies he’d raised for the yishuv for himself…. And believing himself to be Moshiach ben David, whilst also suspected of converting to xtianity.

He’s the great-grandson of MOSHE SHNEURI, the Alter Rebbe’s son who definitely DID convert to xtianity and become a missionary for the Russian Tzar.

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Point is, his brother SHNEUR ZALMAN is also hanging out with the SASSOON family of (drug baron) philanthropists.

And that connects us back to THIS very interesting post, about the BEILIS blood libel.

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Here’s the problem I’ve got:

When I try to track down when R CHAIM HEZKIAYHU MEDINI begins, and where Chabad ends…. I’m finding it very hard to disentangle who did what, when. Even though one is meant to be ‘Ashkenazi’ while the other is meant to be ‘Sephardi’, when it comes to the interesting people, these distinctions don’t actually count for much.

One of the clearest indications you are dealing with interesting people is when you find lots of high level intermarriage between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, many decades and centuries before that was actually a thing, for the rest of us.

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So, there are conflicting accounts about who started up the MAGEN AVOT Yeshiva in BEIT ROMANO – Chabad, or R MEDINI.

(I just decided to do a specific post on Chabad in Hevron, so I can keep this more focussed…. So we’ll keep the Chabad-flavored weird stuff – and there is plenty of it – for another time.)

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I could also write a ton more about the KRYMCHAKs of Crimea – and their strange connections with Khazars and Karaites.

But that will do for now.

In the next post, we’re going to finally get to RAV MANI of HEVRON – and there is plenty more weird stuff to discover over there, too.