Some more very interesting alt-history from the Rav.

Enjoy!

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Zevulun was born ‘without a heart’.

He was born ‘without a heart’![1]

Like the Chacham Tzvi, who permitted a chicken that had no heart.[2] [After this] he had to run away from place to place, because everyone came out against him, about this, that he poskened to permit a chicken without a heart.

So, he ran away from Amsterdam to…[missing in original] From place to place.[3]

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His father, he was called Yankel.

So, two witnesses came, to say who they’d seen him having his head cut off. They testified!

And his mother, she was called Nechama, she didn’t agree to believe the witnesses, on no account, no! She said:

I feel as though he’s alive!

And her uncle, Rabbi Heshel of Krakow – just now, we were by his kever in Krakow – he ran away from Lublin, to Krakow.

He said to her [to his niece, Nechama] do not cross my threshold again! There are witnesses here, who testified that they saw him dead – that they cut his head off! What, you don’t believe this?!

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She [Nechama] was the daughter of his sister [Reb Heshel’s sister]. And she said:

No! I feel that he’s still alive!

And in truth, after half a year, ‘the dead man appeared on his own legs’. And then he said that in truth, he’d been standing in line…[to have his head chopped off, as the 100th man].

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The Cossacks were very organised, not like in Shuvu Banim, where everything is a balagan (big mess). And they stood everyone in line, and they went along chopping each one’s head off, and he was number 100.

When they got to him, the Cossack had mercy on him. So he told him:

I am going to give you a blow here, in the neck with the sword, and make out like you are going to drop down dead on the floor.

And so, he stayed laying on the floor for eight days. After eight days, he got up and ran away.

And after half a  year, he returned. This was in the year ח”ת, (5408 = 1648) because Avraham bowed to the Children of Heth[4]. And so, there were murders in the year ת”ח, . ‘Heth’ is written eight times, and Avraham already prayed over who would live and who would die, in the years ח”ת.

Excerpted and translated from Shivivei Or 435.

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Ad kan, from the Rav.

The Chacham Tzvi was born in 1658, ten years after the Chielminicki pogroms of 1648-9.

His mother was Nechama Cohen (1630-1690), the daughter of R’ Ephraim ‘Sh’aar Ephraim’ haCohen. She married R Yaakov Ashkenazi of Vilna, or ‘Yankel’, just as the Rav said.

Her mother was Rochel (1619-1685) – although, I personally doubt ‘Rochel’ had a child when she was 11, but who knows.

The Rav tells us that Nechama’s mother was the sister of the Hanukat HaTorah, Avraham Yehoshua Heshel, head of the yeshiva in Krakow, i.e., ‘Rabbi Heshel’, above.

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You will be shocked, shocked!!! To know that on geni, all this information is scrambled.

There, the sister of ‘Reb Heshel of Krakow’ is some anonymous woman who is meant to have married: Benjamin Zev Wolf Ashkenazi. – i.e. the father of the Chacham Tzvi’s father, Yaakov Ashkenazi of Vilna.

So, instead of Nechama (the Chacham Tzvi’s mum) being Reb Heshel’s niece, geni has it that Yaakov Ashkenazi (the Chacham Tzvi’s dad) is Reb Heshel’s nephew, instead.

Why?

It’s not obvious.

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One possibility, is that the Chacham Tzvi’s mother actually ‘remarried’ before her supposed dead husband showed up again, and that would cause a whole bunch of difficulties, as you might expect.

Another possibility is that according to the Rav’s version, the Chacham Tzvi was actually the first cousin of the leading ‘Sabbatean’ the Meir Panim of Eisenstadt, enthusiastic supporter of the Sabbatean ‘prophet’ Yehuda Leib Prossnitz.

(Remember, we have a theory that Yehuda Leib Prossnitz was also the father of Jacob Frank….) And, he for sure was the teacher of the young Yonatan Eibshitz.

Another Chacham Tzvi first cousin would be yet another Sabbatean ‘false messiah’ called Mordechai Mokiach – the Meir Panim’s brother.

So we see, that the ‘Chacham Tzvi’s close family tree is actually stuffed-full of Sabbateans, his own stance notwithstanding….

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As I mentioned, this happens all the time.

The ‘big sabbatean’ and the ‘anti sabbatean’ are always close family.

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The Sh’aar Ephraim HaKohen (d. 1678) is meant to fit into the Chacham Tzvi’s picture as his grandpa.

This snippet comes from the Jewish Encyclopaedia site:

Lithuanian Talmudist; born at Wilna 1616; died June 3, 1678, at Ofen, Hungary. Driven by the Chmielnicki persecutions from his native city, where he was dayyan, he went to Moravia. He filled the office of rabbi, first at Trebitsch and then at Ofen.

On Geni, the Sha’ar Ephraim is meant to marry Rochel, who is the great-grand-daughter of R Eliyahu, the Baal Shem of Chelm, who makes the golem. According to the Rav’s version, that would make Reb Heshel of Krakow also the great-grandson of R Eliyahu the Baal Shem…

But for now, we will have to wait for the Rav to drop us a few more clues, as to what is really going on here, and why he wants us to know about Reb Yankele, who didn’t get his head cut off by the Cossacks, after all.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is a theme that the Rav has mentioned many times previously. One of the explanations is that it denotes a person with no fear, who just does whatever the Tzaddik tells them to do, even if it’s scary.

[2] I.e. ruled that it was kosher to eat.

[3] In ‘official history’, the Chacham Tzvi was hounded out of Amsterdam because of his opposition to the Sabbatean Nehemiah Chiyoun.

[4] See Bereishit 23:7 – when Avraham was buying the Me’arat HaMachpelah.