The Golem of Chelm, and the Chacham Tzvi’s dodgy ancestry

After I posted up the article on the ‘Golem of Chelm’, I remembered I’d written a bunch of stuff connecting to the Chacham Tzvi, back in 2021.

First, you can read the Golem of Chelm by clicking the link – it’s recent comments from the Rav.

The following was extracted from a huge post that came down with the first version of this site, called:

Karaites, Copernicus and Yom Tov Lippman Heller

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Here’s some relevant snippets from that monster post, and then meet me below, for some updated thoughts on how all this ties together.

Firstly, about the Magen David symbol.

  • Sabbatians were the first people to popularise the Star of David symbol, and it appeared on the graves of yucky people who were into kabbalistic black magic, like the Bad Baal Shem of London.
  • The Freemasons also used that symbol.
  • A red Star of David in a circle was the ‘seal’ of another secret society called the Martinists:

“Martinism is a form of Christian mysticism and esoteric Christianity concerned with the fall of the first man, his state of material privation from his divine source, and the process of his return, called ‘Reintegration’ or illumination. As a mystical tradition, it was first transmitted through a masonic high-degree system established around 1740 in France by Martinez de Pasqually, and later propagated in different forms by his two students Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Jean-Baptiste Willermoz.”

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In Jeremy Brown’s book, he identifies the first time the ‘Star of David’ showed up in the Jewish community.

It was on the tombstone of one David Gans, buried in the cemetery of Prague, who wrote a treatise called Magen David:

Magen David was the name of a textbook on science and astronomy that Gans wrote, the very first Hebrew book to mention Copernicus by name.”

(Page 43, in ‘New Heavens and a New Earth’.)

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Here’s a bit more background about Gans, from Wikipedia:

David was born in Lippstadt, in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. His father, Shlomo, was a moneylender. He studied rabbinical literature in Bonn and Frankfurt am Main, then in Kraków under Moses Isserles. Later he attended the lectures of the Maharal of Prague and of his brother, Rabbi Sinai. They introduced philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy into the circle of their studies, and from them Gans received the impulse to devote himself to these branches of science.

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The anti-Torah idea of ‘Heliocentrism’ in the Jewish community is closely connected to the Maharal of Prague, and his circle.

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So much of what was really going on in Prague around this time has been totally and deliberately obscured from view. According to Allen E Goldenthal – that Karaite historian who also has a very warped view of ‘history’ – there was something of a turf war going on between the Karaite Jews in Prague, the Maharal of Prague, and the xtian community.

In his re-telling of history, the Golem was actually unleashed to terrorise the wider community for less than holy motives, and King Rudolph II called in the Karaites to try and help him solve the problem, and to contain the ‘kabbalists’ who were causing it. Do I believe this whole story? I think I don’t. Do I believe there were a lot of unsavory machinations going on, in a million different ways, in the Prague Jewish community? Sadly, yes.

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Now, we start getting into the ancestry of the Chacham Tzvi:

I have been trying to track down the real story of the Chacham Tzvi for a very long time.

It was clear to me that so much of the ‘official narrative’ is hooey, but again I just haven’t been able to find an alternative version that I can stand up. Now, more information is appearing.

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There are two famous ‘stories’ about a man who was apparently seen killed during the Chmielniki uprisings in 1648, so the rabbis permitted his wife to remarry. Trouble was, the man wasn’t killed, and came back home a year later.

In one version of that story – the one attributed to Yaakov Emden, apparently the Chacham Tzvi’s son – this ‘resurrected’ man is called the Shaar Ephraim, and is meant to be the father or grandfather of the Chacham Tzvi. In turn, the Shaar Ephraim is meant to have descended from the wonder-working ‘Rabbi Elijah Baal Shem of Chelm’.

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Remember in the Rav’s shiur on the Golem of Chelm, he first brought that strange story of R’ Heshel of Krakow’s niece, who was apparently ‘arguing’ with two witnesses that her husband hadn’t been beheaded, as the last of a 100 Jews publically killed in line by the Cossacks?

That part of the shiur was actually directed connected to the part about the Golem of Chelm, and Elijah Baal Shem of Chelm.

Let’s continue with the snippets from that old post from 2021:

The Shaar Ephraim is meant to be the grandson of Ephraim Fishel, who CO-INC-ID-ENT-ALLY is the brother of that royal tax collector who became a xtian,  Moshe Stefan Fiszel Powditzky.

There is also a second version of the story about the ‘man who faked his own death’. In that second version,  the man who is ‘resurrected’ is identified as the father of the Chacham Tzvi himself, and is called Yaakov Koppel Heller Wallerstein FRANKEL.

You remember who else was a Frankel, don’t you?

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JACOB LOB BENJAMIN FRANKEL = JACOB FRANK, THE FALSE  MESSIAH.

He had some truly fantastic yichus, on both sides of his fantastic family tree.

And yes, he still came from a notable, leading, Sabbatean family – who the rabbis helped ‘hide like the night’, to quote Yaakov Emden, because honestly, look at this yichus!

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Ad kan, from the first post from the old blog.

BTW, since I posted this up four years ago, all these family trees have gone ‘private’, or have been disappeared. Not only that, this series of posts from 2021 marked the time when Google started de-listing my site, and the censorship that’s apparently all in my head kicked in, well and truly.

That’s a big part of how I knew I was over the target with this Frankist stuff, because if it was baloney – why go to all that trouble to censor it so much?

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Now, we’re going to re-visit another old blog post, called:

Mystics, and Mad Martin, the Belarussian ‘Dracula’

Here is where the ‘Baddd start to join up with R Eliyahu the Baal Shem of Chelm. Back in 2021, I’d started reading through the Rebbe Rayatz’s ‘memoirs, and the following is pertinent for our discussion here:

From page 25, part of a discussion about an organised underground group of ‘kabbalist mystics’ who are spreading out across Eastern Europe, to help people ‘reach a higher spiritual levell:

“And don’t imagine…that each of these mystics is merely following his own particular plan. I can tell you positively that every one of them has had his ‘mission’ assigned to him and has been told in which area is his ‘sphere of influence’. Taken collectively, they all form part or a large, comprehensive whole, with its inspiration emanating from their chief. “This particular society of people,” continued Wolf, in a way that showed he knew all there was to know about it, and even as if he were also one of them, “is quite an old one.

It was first established by the tzaddik, the gaon, Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem of Wurms, Germany. Thus the movement is about one hundred and ten years old. “Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem established this society upon the request of a certain Kabbalist, whose identity is unknown to this day. We are told that this Kabbalist requested that chosen gaonim and tzaddikim, who would be prepared to dedicate their whole lives to this sacred work, should be sent out among the poor, simple, uneducated and unawakened Jews, and make them aware of their Creator, and of the spiritual values in life.

“It was about the year 5381 (1621) or 5383 (1623) that this society was established by Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem, and ever since, thousands and thousands of ordinary Jews have been brought back to the service of G-d!”

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Some historical context, to help you connect the dots for yourself:

Rabbi Israel ben Sarah, the Baal Shem Tov (BESHT) was only born in 1698. This ‘particular society of people’, apparently started up by ‘Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem’ was operating for 75 years before the BESHT was even alive. Even more interestingly, the standard dates given for ‘Shabtai Tzvi’ say he was born in 1626 – three years before this ‘particular society of people’ apparently started to operate across Jewish Eastern Europe.

So, who exactly were this ‘particular society of people’, and where did their teachings really come from?

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Next, I tried to pin down who ‘Eliyahu Baal Shem of Wurms’ actually is, in real life.

In various places, he’s described as the ‘grandfather’ or sometimes the ‘great-grandfather’ of none other than the Chacham Tzvi.

If you go to Wikipedia, HERE, you’ll find an entry for one ‘Eliezer Loans’, who could be the ‘real persona’ of Eliyahu Baal Shem of Chelm. Here’s a snippet: (Note: ‘Virmyze’ is another spelling of ‘Wurms’)

Elijah ben Moses Ashkenazi Loans also known as Elijah Ba’al Shem of Virmyze (1555 – July 1636) was a German rabbi and Kabbalist. He was born in Frankfurt-am-Main. He belonged to the family of Rashi, on his mother’s side was the grandson of Johanan Luria, and on his father’s of Josel of Rosheim.

After having studied in his native city under the direction of Jacob Ginzburg and Akiba Frankfort, Loans went to Cracow, where he attended the lectures of Menahem Mendel. While there he prepared for publication the “Darke Mosheh” of Moses Isserles.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century Loans was called to the rabbinate of Fulda, which he left in 1612, occupying successively the rabbinates of Hanau, Friedberg (1620), and Worms (1630), in which last-named city he remained until his death. Loans was a diligent student of Kabbalah, and for this reason was surnamed “Ba’al Shem.” He was also accomplished in music and calligraphy, and various legends circulated regarding his personality… Loans also edited the “‘Ammude Shelomoh” of Solomon Luria on the “Semag” (Basel, 1599), and the “Sha’are Dura” of Isaac ben Meïr of Dueren, to which he wrote a preface.

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If you go to Wikipedia HERE, you’ll find an alternative profile for ‘Elijah Ba’al Shem of Chełm‘:

Elijah Ba’al Shem (1550 – 1583) was a Polish rabbi and kabbalist who served as chief rabbi of Chełm. One of the most eminent Talmudists of his generation, he is recorded as the first person known by the epithet “Ba’al Shem” having been considered a great saint and believed to have used miraculous powers to create a golem.

Elijah was born to his father Aaron Judah in 1550. About 1565 he entered the yeshiva of Rabbi Solomon Luria of Lublin, and, after receiving his rabbinical ordination, became rabbi of Chełm, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. In 1564, he gathered with other prominent rabbis, including his teacher, to co-sign the halachic rulings which allowed an agunah to remarry.

His great-granddaughter married Rabbi Ephraim ha-Kohen (1616–1678), author of “Sha’ar Efrayim” and grandfather of Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi.

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There’s a few things to notice.

Firstly, ‘Elijah Ba’al Shem of Chelm’ appears to have died pretty young and is recorded as having no gravestone, despite having apparently risen from the dead during his funeral to make a church sink into the ground. That’s pretty weird, as we Jews venerate our saints, and visit their tombs.

So, it’s at least possible that these two ‘Elijah Baal Shems’ are really one and the same person.

The second thing is the connection between these two Elijahs, and Rabbi Solomon Luria of Lublin, (the MAHARSHAL) who apparently lived between 1510-1573. At least one of these Elijahs married the MAHARSHAL’s daughter, while another version has the MAHARSHAL marrying Elijah of Chelm’s daughter – which would be quite a feat, considering that even if the Baal Shem of Chelm got married at 13 and immediately had children, his oldest child would only be 10 years old when the MAHARSHAL died.

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According to the Freidiriker Rebbe (page 34), ‘Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem’s father was:

“A certain Spanish Jew named Yosef Jospa“, who arrived in Cracow aged 50 years old, either in 5261 (1501) or 5265 (1505), and then married 30 years later, apparently aged 80 (!)

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Meanwhile, the other ‘Elijah Baal Shem’ candidate,  Elijah Loans, has a grandpa called Josel (Yosef) of Rosheim (1476 – 1554), who according to Wiki,

“Was considered as the most important advocate of the Jews in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.”

This Yosel / Yosef styled himself ‘commander-in-chief’ of Germany Jewry, and is a very interesting character.

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Ad kan, from 2021.

Of course, still so much to unpick, even four years later.

But let’s see if we can shine a bit more light on this subject, beginning with the basic premise that:

All of the Shabbatean rabbis and prophets had at least one, if not more, ‘alter egos’.

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Here’s the next point we can sum up:

So many of the disparate groups of Jews leading our community, on all sides of the divide,  belong to the same small set of families. Many of these families trace back – via multiple ancestors – to the Maharal of Prague and the Maharam of Padua, and beyond. Way, way beyond.

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Let’s give one example:

Binyamin Netanyahu, whose family surname was originally ‘Milikovsky’, is a descendant of the Vilna Gaon.

See here for more information:

Nathan Milikowsky Netanyahu was born to Zvi in Krevo (Vilna area) in 1875, a descendant of the Gaon from Vilna. He studied at the Volozhin Yeshiva for 8 years and then became an orator preaching about Zionism. He migrated (with his children who were born in Warsaw) to Palestine in 1920 and served as headmaster of various Hebrew high schools in several towns before settling in Jerusalem as an official of the World Zionist Organization. On his arrival in Palestine, Milikovsky changed the family name to Netanyahu (“Lord has given”).

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(Two more examples: Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were both direct descendants of CHAIM of VOLOZHIN, said to be the GRA’s leading disciple… It’s always the same people, on all sides of the arguments.)

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BTW, on that original post from 4 years ago, Daisy left a comment that included this information:

My Tzaddik cousin Pinchas (Tibor) Rosenbaum ZT”L was a descendant of the Maharal of Prague – according to his children!

Go look that guy up, if you can be bothered. There’s a lot of very interesting stuff going on with him, that exactly fits with what we’re talking about here.

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So, let’s get back to the ‘Baddd dimension to all this, and then we’ll stop there for today.

The Alter Rebbe was supposed to be the 7th generation from the Maharal of Prague.

The Baddd is very into their yichus, and they will stress over and over and over again, the fabulous yichus of the Rebbes…. except, it’s so very hard to pin down that information in anything approaching ‘the real world’. Kinda strange, for an organisation who devotes so much energy into claiming their leaders were ‘moshiach’, and so have to descend, son-after-son, from King David himself.

The link to the Maharal of Prague, who is meant to have descended from King David (good luck, standing that up…) is the whole basis for the claim that the ‘Baddd Rebbe(s) had the necessary yichus to be the Moshiach.

So, you’d really think all this stuff would be set out super-clearly, so even dunces and conspiracy theorists like yours truly could follow the yichus… wouldnt’ you?

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Here’s some screenshots from another old blog post, back when I wasn’t ‘blocked’ from doing stuff on Geni:

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I’d love to give you the link to that Geni discussion from four years ago, which also showed how the Loews descended from Cohanim from Baghdad, and also showed how JACOB FRANK is part of the Eskeles family tree…. but I can’t.

For some reason, I can’t find the post with that information, and I can’t find the discussion on geni, either.

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But never mind: this discussion will do instead:

https://www.geni.com/people/Hananya-ben-Haninai-haKohen-al-Nahr-Paqod-Dayan-of-the-Gate-Gaon-of-Sura/6000000001263102021

It’s a whole big can of worms.

Bottom line, the ‘Maharal of Prague’ is said to descend from this line. But here’s the thing about this line:

2) All the above (including Natronai from Pumpedisa) are descended from Adda, the daughter of Bustenai, who married Bustenai’s first cousin Chaninai ben Hunai hakohen. Thus, the family is a direct patrilineal descent from aharon hakohen, and direct patrilineal descent WITH ONE DAUGHTER IN THE LINE from King David.

Bottom line, the Maharal wasn’t ‘son after son’ from King David, the line is actually one of Kohanim (those same ‘bent’ kohanim that gave us the Tzadukim, and so much tzarot for 2,000 years already) – and the Chabad Rebbes COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MOSHIACH.

Proven from their own yichus.

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A lot to take in, I know.

My mum keeps telling me to write a book about all this. Maybe, one day.

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PS: Here’s the Rebbe’s yichus list, handwritten and illegible, from the ‘Baddd itself:

I got to it from THIS discussion on the Maharal’s genealogy on geni, where the genealogy hits a dead end pretty fast.

Here’s the relevant comments:

I looked through the drawings a bit, and there is a problem: there is a reference there through Rabbi Hai Gaon (hopefully I spelled his name correctly in English), the problem: the researchers are not at all sure he had children, so the lists should be treated with skepticism.

And this is a comment from the ‘Baddd’s own site:

The Rebbe is BEN ACHAR BEN from Dovid Hamelech. Not through the Alter Rebbe. Rather through Reb Sholom Shachne the father of the Tzemach Tzedek.

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HERE is the Tzemach Tzedek’s family tree, on geni.

The paternal line traces back to one ‘PINCHAS CHAJES‘ born 1485, connected to Prague – and then stops.

There is no ‘descent from King David’ in sight for the Tzemach Tzedek…

Quite an important issue to be getting wrong, given the claims made for his illustrious descendant. Don’t you think?

4 replies
  1. יוסף
    יוסף says:

    https://media.chabadinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/15-11-2016-11-30-28-IMG-20161115-WA0034-740×987.jpg
    https://media.chabadinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/15-11-2016-11-29-54-IMG-20161115-WA0033-740×987.jpg
    the two images above are fairly readable, although i’m not familiar with all the letters. easy enough to read through the known geneology from zerubavel to adam harishon to figure out probably most of them. some acronyms i don’t know, and seems like numbering at the beginning of each line.
    this third image has the reflection of the light source in a different place, but is lower resolution.
    https://media.chabadinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/15-11-2016-11-30-24-IMG-20161115-WA0035-740×555.jpg

    Reply
  2. יוסף
    יוסף says:

    sorry that this is certainly mistranscribed, and possibly not appropriate. including the earlier generations, maybe some of my errors are consistent and it might help. some of it is in fact illegible at this resolution.
    אדם הראשן
    … אם כל חי
    שת
    אנוש
    ירד
    מתושלח
    למך
    נח
    שם – מלכיצדק
    ארפכשד
    שלח
    עבר
    פלג
    רעו
    שרוג
    נחור
    תרח
    אברהם אבינו
    יצחק אבינו
    יעקב אבינו
    יהודה
    פרץ
    יפונה
    כלב בן יפונה
    עחינדב
    אלישבע
    נחשון נשיא שבט יהודה
    שלחה שלמון
    בועז אבצןתשו..
    יהידם עובד.
    ישי
    דוד (המלך)
    שלמה המלך:
    ירובעם
    אביהו
    אשא
    יהושפט
    יהורם
    אחזיהו
    יהואש
    אמציהו
    עוזיהו
    יותם ירותם
    אחז
    חזקיהו המלך:
    םנשה
    אמון
    יאשיהו
    אליקים
    יהויאין

    חכליה
    זרובבל
    חנינה
    חנינא
    ברכיא
    חסדי.
    ישעיהו
    עובדית
    שכני.
    שמעית
    נעריה
    חזקיה
    התנא נתן דצוציתא
    בס”ד
    תונא
    עקוב
    נחום
    יוחנן
    שפש
    עינן
    הנא
    תן

    דצוציתא
    אנא
    ספרא
    זושרא
    סעדא
    .ריא
    זושרא ביסתנאי
    אשתו גיורת צדק בתו של מלך פרס
    רב יעקב
    רב ..י.
    רב נחמית
    רב אבדימא אבדימי
    רב פנחס
    רב חצוב
    רב שמואל גאון ריש בלה
    רב יהודה גאון יהודאי
    רב חנינא גאון חנני’ה
    רב שרירא גאון הי”ד
    רב האי גאון
    אשתו היא בת רב שמואל הצתן.
    הרה”ג ר’ יחיאיל.
    הרה”ג ר’ אברהם.
    הרה”ג ר’ עזריהו.
    הרה”ג ר’ יחזקאל.
    הרה”ג ר’ לעמיל.
    הרה”ג ר’ עזריהו.
    הרה”ג ר’ אליהו.
    תרה”ג י’ יוסף.
    הרה”ג י’ נחמן.
    הרה”ג י’ זלמן קלונימוס.
    הרה”ג י’ לייביש.
    הרה”ג י’ אלעזר.
    הרה”ג י’ ירחמיאיל.
    הרה”ג י’ א… …
    הרה”ג י’ …
    הרה”ג י’ בצלא_ל.
    הרה”ג י’ יחודה לי…. המהר”ל הזקן
    הרה”ג י’ בצלא_ל
    הרה”ג יהודה ליוואי – המהר”ל מפראג.
    היחיד י’ בצלא-ל חריף.
    הרה’ג י’ שמואל.
    הרה’ג י’ יהודה ליי’ב
    אשתו- בזיווג מלישי-חרת שרה בת ר’ היים חפוזנא.
    הרה’ג י’ שניאור זלמן.
    הרה’ג י’ ברוך
    הבכו’ר הוד כ”ק-אדמור הזקן- ר’ שנאור זלמן מלאדי.
    הראשון כ”ן רבי דובער – אדמור אמצעי.
    בתו השלישית היבנית חי’ה סושקא שניאורסון.
    הבכור הרה”ג ברוך: שלום- הרב”ש- שניאורסון.
    הרה”ג הרה”ח ר’ לני יצחק שניאורסון
    הר…ן

    Reply
  3. JR
    JR says:

    1) You can’t rely on Geni. Anyone can edit and people can make mistakes. Honest mistakes. Naive mistakes. Sloppy amateur mistakes. It doesn’t have to be malicious. The earlier documents (birth, death, marriage records) were handwritten (and only later digitized) leading to occasional errors. (And people lied sometimes. Especially about age!) Even the similar words חתן (son-in-law) and חותן (father-in-law) can cause confusion. And last names are not always standard. During the cantonist decrees, names were changed. There are also cases in which someone took the maternal last name instead of the paternal (e.g. the 2nd Akiva Eiger.)

    2) The חכם צבי was anti-Sabbatean activist. Why are you dumping suspicions on him?

    3) Frankel (and variants Frenkel, Frankl names) is a very common name. I knew a Frankel (central J’lem) who was very careful in his תפילות in shul. His father was a well know figure both for his secular and Torah achievements. A fine Jew beyond reproach!

    Reply

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