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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The groom said [he had to run away].

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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So, who is the rabbi in Cleve?

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

According to Wikipedia, R ISRAEL LIFSHITZ Snr is the:

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

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

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

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The story continues, that:

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

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

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

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

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Whoosh!

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

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

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

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

It sure did!

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

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

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Quote 1, from the Rav’s shiur HERE:

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s the description from the site:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leah bas Jacob Guenzhausen of Bonn.

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

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

However, the Rav tells us this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Rav tells us this:

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

Later on, the Rav says this about the groom:

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

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

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

This is the snippet that took my eye:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a small world.

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

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

All of this is starting to make way more sense.

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

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

Rabbi Landau was not alone defending the Get of Cleve.

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

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

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Dunner continues:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This screenshot comes from the Kestenbaum site HERE.

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

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

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

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Here is where we saved the best for last.

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

On the GENI site, grandpa NATHAN AMSCHEL is called:

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

He is the husband of one FRUMET SCHNAPPER.

(One of his other wives is a SCHIFF).

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

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

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

Fancy that!

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

That will have to wait for next time.

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FOOTNOTE:

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

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UPDATE:

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

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

Snippet:

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

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

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