I went back to that interview with the Alter Rebbe from the ‘Czarist Archives’, to see if there were more historical details to tease out of it.

(You can read it HERE.)

In particular, I wanted to take a closer look at this paragraph:

My name is Zalman Boruchovitch. Some Jews call me rabbi, others don’t recognize me as a rabbi. I issue halachic rulings to those who seek that of their own volition. I live in Liozna in Belarus belonging to Count Khrapovizki, son-in-law of Laghinski.

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For once, it’s real people (apparently…) in real historical documents, with real names. Apparently.

The first question I tried to answer is: who is this ‘Count Khrapovizki’ who is the son-in-law of “Laghinski’?

How hard could it be, to answer that question? As we’ll see, much harder than you might think – but still very illuminating. Read on.

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First, you should understand the background of how the Jews came to be in Russia at the end of the 18th century.

Russia officially didn’t allow Jews to live in its territories, but then, they started conquering large tracts of land from neighbouring Poland, and much of that land had a bunch of Jews living on it, that Russia ‘acquired’ by default, and then didn’t know what to do with them.

This process is officially called ‘The Partition of Poland’, and it happened on three separate occasions in 1772, 1793, and the last one, in 1795.

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‘Liozna’, the part of Belarus where the Alter Rebbe lived and ran a tavern together with his wife, came under Russian control in the First Partition of Poland in 1772, during the reign of the Russian Tzarina, ‘Catherine the Great’.

These formerly Polish-Lithuanian territories that Russia acquired became known as ‘The Pale of Settlement’, and Jews could continue to live in them, even when they became part of Russia.

Now, it seems as though Liozna itself was some sort of privately-owned town, or mestechko, that was owned by this Count Khrapovitsky. Russia still practised a feudal system at this time, so the nobles had the right to decide who lived on their lands, to set the taxes they collected from residents, and to act as the highest ‘judge’ in disputes.

It happened a lot that these ‘absentee landlord’ nobles had a bunch of local Jews they invited into their territories to help run their massive estates, and provide a kind of ‘management’ layer between them and the local serfs who actually worked their land.

This suited the nobles, but made the Jews widely unpopular with their gentile neighbours.

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Also, the fact that the Jews generally had the rights to distill liquor and run taverns (all highly taxed by the nobles…) also made the Jews very unpopular, and made them an easy target of the church and other high-minded gentile ‘reformers’, who used to blame the Jews for turning the locals into drunkards.

So, as a Jew running a tavern in the private town of Liozna, the Alter Rebbe had a degree of local protection from his noble master, even though the central Russian government, which answered to the Tzar himself, could still arrest him, and bring him in for questioning.

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So now, was ‘Count Khrapovitzky’ a real person, and if yes, who might he have actually been?

It seems the best fit for the Alter Rebbe’s Count is:

Alexander Vasilyevich Khrapovitsky

He was Catherine the Great’s personal secretary from 1783-1793.

HERE is his Wiki page in Russian, machine translate it if you want to read more.

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Now, I tried to also find out where the original ‘archive material’ this Chabad article is based on is being kept, who else wrote on it, academically.

Here’s three options that I got given by AI:

• Immanuel Etkes’ Biography: Professor Immanuel Etkes, emeritus professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote a comprehensive biography that draws on historical source materials including Shneur Zalman’s own works and correspondence, as well as documents concerning his imprisonment and interrogation by the Russian authorities. The book was originally published in Hebrew and then translated into English as “Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady: The Origins of Chabad Hasidism” (Brandeis University Press, 2014).

• Yehoshua Mondshine’s Works: There are books specifically about the arrests, including “המאסר הראשון” (The First Imprisonment) that focus on the archival documentation.

• Levi Liberow’s Translation: There’s a Kindle edition titled “The Written Deposition of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi” that provides an English translation of the deposition submitted to the Czarist Secret Commission chabad.

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Because Mondshine and Liberow are Chabadniks, I decided to start with the hopefully less-biased material of Pror. Immanuel Etkes’ biography of Shneur Zalman.

Guess what?

It’s almost totally unavailable. Even to history students enrolled at proper universities.

If I want to spend $600 I can get a second-hand copy on Amazon…

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So, I’m putting this out there, if there is anyone willing or able to help me track this down via a library (because even the NLI says the book is ‘on order’, which is ridiculous, as it’s from 2014…)

I would be very grateful.

In the meantime, it serves as another example of how ‘real history’ has a habit of falling down the memory hole, whenever it gets anyway near the ‘badd.

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In the meantime, I tried searching on this Count’s father-in-law, who Shneur Zalman referred to as “Laghinsky”.

I turned up a huge, fat zero for this name.

Which is kinda weird, as Catherine the Great apparently asked the local nobles to start compiling books of their genealogy, to be sent to her in St Petersburg.

However, Alexander Khrapovitzky, Catherine the Great’s personal secretary, seems to be our guy as owner of Liozna, because he died in 1801 – which is exactly the year the Alter Rebbe was ‘invited’ to move to Liadi.

The dates work, from that perspective.

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So, Khrapovitsky was:

• A senator.
• The owner of an estate  in St. Petersburg, which was later renamed Bobrinsky Palace.
• Catherine the Great’s personal secretary.
• Author of diaries detailing his time at Catherine’s Court.
• Apparently, the Alter Rebbe’s landlord in Liozna – although proving that last bit of information is harder than you might expect.

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According to THIS Russian-language genealogical site, Khrapovitzky had a common-law wife (i.e. they weren’t officially married) called: Guryeva Praskovya Ivanovna (1757-1813).

She is meant to be the daughter of one ALEXANDER GURYEV (died 1788) – which sounds nothing like ‘LAGHISNKY’.

Guryeva and Khrapovitzky had 4 sons and 2 daughters together, and as out-of-wedlock relationships were almost de rigeur at this period of Russian royal history, it was apparently no problem for Khrapovitzky to get them ennobled and legitimised with his name and honours.

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Guryeva’s brother was one: Dmitry Alexandrovich Guryev.

He was the Russian Finance Minister under Tsar Alexander I, and also got given the title of ‘Count’.

This family is very tightly connected to the Russian courts of Paul I, and his son, Alexander I.

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The Finance Minister Guryev had a daughter, Alexandra, who married a polish Prince called “S. K. Lyubomirsky.”

The Lubomirski family owned ‘Lyubavitch’ = LUBAVITCH.

They also owned LIADI.

When Count Khrapovitzky died in 1801, a ‘Prince Lubomirski’ apparently invited the Alter Rebbe – who had apparently just been arrested for a second time, this time by Alexander I – to move from Liozna to his town of LIADI.

Info from Chabadpedia, HERE:

After the Alter Rebbe’s second imprisonment, the authorities requested that he reside in Petersburg. This decision caused great distress among the chassidim who lived far from Petersburg, as they feared losing proximity to their Rebbe. During that period, Prince Lubomirski, a prominent nobleman in Petersburg, expressed interest in meeting the Alter Rebbe. One of the chassidim described the greatness of the Alter Rebbe to the prince, including the deep admiration felt by thousands of his followers and the sorrow caused by the government’s decision to relocate the Alter Rebbe to Petersburg.

When Prince Lubomirski met the Alter Rebbe, he offered to advocate with the authorities to allow the Rebbe to settle in one of the towns under his jurisdiction. The Alter Rebbe agreed to settle in the town of Liadi, and the prince ordered the construction of homes for the Alter Rebbe and his chassidim.

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This Prince [Stanislaw] Lubomirski apparently provided the Alter Rebbe with a lot of support and protection in the 12 years he lived in Liadi, and his movement grew tremendously.

The question is: why would a polish nobleman want to provide so much help and support to Shneur Zalman?

I don’t have an answer for that, currently, but my guess is that if we ever manage to figure this out, we’ll know a lot more than we do now, about what was really going on 200 years ago.

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So, according to Chabad, a Prince Lubomirsky ‘personally intervened’ with Alexander I, to allow the Alter Rebbe to settle in his territory rather than being confined to St. Petersburg, after his second arrest.

Doesn’t this strike you as strange?

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At this point, I asked the AI to compare some of the tedious family trees that otherwise take me days to trawl through, to identify some candidates for a ‘Prince Lubomirsky’ who owned Liadi in 1801 – the year Alexander I ascended the throne.

In fact, Alexander’s ascension (after his father’s murder in a palace coup) is what ‘freed’ the Alter Rebbe this second time around.

Alexander I gave Shneur Zalman an unconditional pardon…

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The AI came back with this candidate– Jozef Aleksander Lubomirski:

• Józef Aleksander Lubomirski (1751-1817) was alive in 1801 and held the castellanship of Kiev
• His son Fryderyk Wilhelm owned estates specifically in the Mogilev district (where Liadi was located).

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Now, here’s another strange thing:

These Polish Lubomirsky princes, who were apparently ‘protecting’ the Alter Rebbe, were also engaged in ‘clandestine activities’ themselves, against the Russian authorities.

On the one hand, they were sucking up at the Russian Court, and befriending Alexander I, and on the other – they were scheming the whole time, to try and wrest ‘Greater Poland’ back from the hands of the Russians.

Is it possible, that the Alter Rebbe was somehow helping these polish nobles, in some as yet unknown way, and that is why they were going all out to ‘protect him’ from the Tzar, and to offer him their support?

And, how does all this tie-in with the Alter Rebbe being accused of beginning a ‘new sect’ that pretended it was Jewish, but perhaps, had more of a Frankist-Sabbatean-Freemasonic flavour than anyone is letting on?

Let’s see if we can’t figure more of this out, with God’s help.

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Let me introduce you to another interesting character by the name of ADAM CZARTORYSKI.

He’s another Polish prince, a ‘good friend’ of Alexander I who was sent away from court when he was suspected of fathering two of Alexander I’s putative children…

Ahh, these Russian royals.

According to Chabad’s own sites, ADAM CZARTORYSKI was the BIL of none other than ‘STANISLAW LUBOMIRSKY’, saviour of the Alter Rebbe, who had married Adam’s sister, Elżbieta (1736–1816).

CZARTORYSKI became one of Alexander I’s key advisors, and stayed in that position for many years (even after the little filip of carrying on an open affair with the Tzar’s wife…)

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Why is all this like pulling teeth?

I have a possible explanation…. This is where the ‘magic’ in this post really begins.

‘Lubomirsky’ is a very familiar name to me, from the Frankist genealogy.

A certain Polish nobleman, who was a real creep in so many ways, called Jerzy (George) Martin Lubomirsky is meant to have married, and divorced, Jacob Frank’s daughter Eva.

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You’ll remember that Frank set his daughter up as royalty, with her own ‘court’, and Eva used to sign herself ‘Romanov’. Eva also had at least (the very least…) one high-profile affair with Emperor Josef of Austria, and the (pretend Jewish) Frankists and the non-Jewish atheist-satanic Freemasons mixed together a lot in those heady days, shortly before Napoleon’s failed ‘freemasonic takeover’ of France.

HERE is the Polish Wikipedia page for JERZY GEORGE LUBOMIRSKY, adherent of Jacob Frank. (This information has been totally scrubbed out of the English and Russian wiki pages….)

Snippet:

Eventually, he sold a large part of his possessions and in 1789 he left for Frankfurt am Main, where he became close to the sect of Jacob Frank,[4] whose funeral he attended in 1791.[3]

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HERE is the family tree for JERZY LUBOMIRSKI on Geni, which shows the Jacob Frank connection:

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In this version, his parents are named as: ANTONI BENEDICT CONSTANTINE LUBOMIRSKY and ANNA SOPHIA OZAROVKSKA.

How does this guy connect to ‘Prince Lubomirsky’, who is meant to have offered protection and sanctuary to the Alter Rebbe?

That’s what I wanted to know.

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I couldn’t find him in this first tree, so I went to ADAM CZARTORYSKI’s tree, HERE, who I knew was the BIL of ‘Stanislaw Lubomirsky’ and worked back.

Here are GEORGE JERZY LUBOMIRSKI’s parents, in that alternate family tree:

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Very interestingly, to me, this tree links us directly back to the Potocki family, who built the Gan Sophia in Uman, which Rabbenu mentions explicitly, and says a person should go to visit it.

Every word of our True Tzaddikim contains secrets and depths that it would probably take a million years to really figure out.

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So, to sum up where we got to in this post.

The LUBOMIRSKY family of Polish princes run interference for the Alter Rebbe with Alexander I, and offer him sanctuary in their ‘private town’ of LIADI after Shneur Zalman’s second arrest, in 1801. Later on, they invite the ‘Badd to really ‘take root’ in another of their towns, by the name of LYUBAVITCH.

The branch of the family that does this is headed up by DUKE STANISLAW LUBOMIRSKY (1722-1783), who marries ADAM CZARTORYSKI’s sister, ELIZABETH CHARTORYSKA (1736-1816).

STANISLAW LUBOMIRSKY’s brother is none other than ANTONI BENEDICT CONSTANTINE LUBOMIRSKY (aka ANTONI LUBOMIRSKY H. DRUYZNA, 1718-1782).

This guy has a son, GEORGE JERZY MARTIN LUBOMIRSKY, who is about as debauched as they come, and so, of course ‘draws close’ to JACOB FRANK, attends Frank’s funeral in Offenbach in 1791, and possibly also married his daughter, EVA.

So, it is GEORGE-THE-FRANKIST-LUBOMIRSKY’s first cousin, JÓZEF ALEKSANDER LUBOMIRSKI (1751-1817), who offers the Alter Rebbe ‘protection’ and sanctuary, on his Liadi estates.

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I’m sure that’s just another massive CO-IN-CID-ENCE.

I mean, Polish nobility with Frankist connections were always falling all over themselves to help out Jewish chassidic masters who weren’t connected to the ‘new sect’ of the Frankist-Freemasons…

Weren’t they?