In part one, we started to unpack some of the teachings found in Kol HaTor, especially about ‘Moshiach ben Yosef’.

(Read that HERE).

And we also started to explore just how easily those teachings can be ‘twisted’, to make a MBY out of pretty much anyone in the world.

Even if they’re evil.

Even in if they aren’t Jewish.

But, where did these teachings really come from? And how much of what is found in ‘Kol HaTor’ – if anything – can be found in the GRA’s other teachings?

In this post, we’re going to make an attempt at pinning more of this stuff down.

Ready?

Let’s dive in.

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The original idea is that KOL HATOR was written by HILLEL RIVLIN of Shklov, son of BINYAMIN RIVLIN – author of the Gabia HaKesef, and a guy I’ve written a ton about.

Why?

Because as well as hanging out in YEHOSHUA ZEITLIN’s mansion in Kherson doing ‘science experiments’ with the Freemason, maskil (and grandchild of the Alter Rebbe….) BARUCH SHICK; and (apparently….) leading the attack against chassidut, BINYAMIN RIVLIN was also (apparently…) the ‘secret Frankist Rebbe’ who stayed behind in the Jewish community, to corrupt it from within.

And it’s his son, HILLEL RIVLIN of SHKLOV[1], who is meant to have composed the KOL HATOR.

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This is OPTION 1, for who wrote it down.

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Now, let’s head over to the Hebrew Wiki page for KOL HATOR to pick up some more clues and suggestions.

There we learn the following:

The book was first published in 1947, and then again in 1968 by one SHLOMO ZALMAN RIVLIN.

When it was republished in 1968 – with some key parts missing – R MOSHE STERNBUCH wrote a ten page pamphlet denouncing it, and claiming it could only have been written by a speaker of modern Hebrew.

I.e. Rav Sternbuch claimed that the author was trying to ‘twist’ some of the GRA’s Torah many years after the fact, to make is seem as though the GRA had provided the spiritual basis and impetus for secular ‘zionism’ and what became the State of Israel.

R Sternbuch wrote more against the KOL HATOR in his work, Teshuvos VeHanhagos Part 4, Chapter 328. Pp. 411-419.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the argument, there appears to be people like R PINCHAS WINSTON, who is quoted on the English Wiki for Kol HaTor as saying:

“In 1947, Rabbi Shlomo Rivlin, with the advice of the great Kabbalists of Jerusalem, decided to publish an abridged version of this lengthy and difficult treatise keeping the Kabbalistic terminology as simple as possible so that it could also be studied by non-Kabbalists.

Therefore, the printed Kol HaTor is not the original text.

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In 1968 it was reprinted again by two different editors (unknown to each other), Rabbi Menachem Kasher and Rabbi Chaim Friedlander (Committee For The Dissemination of Kol HaTor). Rabbi Kasher omitted the chapter on the confluences of Kabbalah and science called Sha’ar Be’er Sheva (Gate of The Seven Fields of Wisdom).

The B’nei Brak edition, which did contain this chapter, was out of print for over twenty years, thus making this “lost doctrine” of the GR”A [the Vilna Gaon] totally unnoticed by scholars and the public. Only recently a new print has appeared in Jerusalem with the Sha’ar Be’er Sheva.”[3]

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The so-called ‘Religious Zionists’, or ‘Dati Leumi’ world lapped up the KOL HATOR, and are very happy to believe that it is a genuine reflection of the GRA’s teachings.

Of course, getting the religious population to believe anyone engaged in the State of Israel project is an ‘aspect of MBY’ is clearly appealing to the corrupt people who are running the show here.

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Back on the Hebrew Wiki page – which I highly recommend you machine translate and read –  we get more info on who is ‘for’ the book being authentic, and who claims it’s either a modern fake, or an adulterated version of what the GRA may have originally taught.

In the PRO-KOL HATOR camp, we notably have:

R YEHUDA ZVI KOOK – Rav Kook’s son, and the ‘rebbe’ of BETZALEL NAOR, English translator of R Kook’s work ‘OROT’, who publically claims Yoshki and Shabtai Tzvi are also sparks of ‘MBY’.

RABBI YITZHAK SHLOMO ZILBERMAN

And in the ANTI- KOL HATOR camp, we have:

RABBI YISRAEL ELIYAHU WEINTRAUB

RAV ELAZAR MENACHEM SHACH

And R MOSHE STERNBUCH

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Who is R YITZHAK SHLOMO ZILBERMAN?

THIS is the English Wiki page for him, and here is a snippet:

Yitzchok Shlomo Zilberman (1929 – 2001) was an Israeli Haredi rabbi and educator, pioneer of the Zilberman Method of Torah study. He founded Yeshivat Aderet Eliyahu, part of a community that follows the path of the Vilna Gaon.

As I’m clicking around his tree, I see that he has extended family members who were imprisoned accused of helping out with the ritual murder of a 14 year old xtian girl in Hungary…

I think we will come back to the ZILBERMAN family another time.

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So, what are the other options being discussed for who actually could have put this book together, if it wasn’t HILLEL RIVLIN?

Interestingly, the Hebrew Wiki contains a ton of info that is curiously missing or ‘scrubbed’ from the English Wiki.

Let’s list the people in the frame for putting together KOL HATOR, for their own reasons:

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CANDIDATE 1 for authoring / editing Kol HaTor: SHLOMO ZALMAN RIVLIN – the guy who first published it in 1947.

This is the suggestion of Prof IMMANUEL ETKES who just wrote a book about who wrote the Kol HaTor called ‘The Invention of a Tradition.”

I went to the National Library and read that book, and I have to say I was very under-whelmed by the scholarship and the critical thinking displayed.

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On Eli Eshel’s archived blog, there is a very detailed post about the authorship of Kol HaTor, in Hebrew, HERE.

I highly recommend you take a look, as Eshel brings a much greater level of detail to this discussion, while I’m basically hitting the top notes in this post, to avoid reader overwhelm.

Here’s a snippet:

What are the historical family sources that attribute “The voice of the turtle dove” to Hillel Rivlin ?

These are books called “Hazon Zion – Shklov and Jerusalem[2]“; “Mossad Yesod[3]” and “HaMaggid Doresh Zion”.

They are all the work of a cantor and a very well-known composer and preacher in Jerusalem named Shlomo Zalman Rivlin…

Shlomo Zalman Rivlin (1884-1962) became famous, among other things, for creating the “Shirat Yisrael” choir, which was housed in a girls ‘ school called “Ruhama”, and as a teacher of thousands of chazans over the years.

He also founded a school of interpretation called “Midrash Shlomo “.

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SHLOMO ZALMAN RIVLIN is meant to be a direct descendant of HILLEL RIVLIN of SHKLOV.

But many people, including academic ARYEH MORGENSTERN, who wrote THE GAON OF VILNA AND HIS MESSIANIC VISION, state that SHLOMO ZALMAN RIVLIN didn’t have the ability to put something like KOL HATOR together.

This statement rings true to me.

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CANDIDATE 2 for authoring / editing Kol HaTor::

“Kabbalist RABBI YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN, “the preacher of the Redemption,” who may have been assisted in the writing by RABBI ELIYAHU LANDA[4], the grandchild of the Gra.”

This suggestion comes from the writer I mentioned above, ELI ESHED, who put together a ton of information about his own family tree, as a descendant of the GRA – which has now been mostly ‘disappeared’.

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This is a picture of YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN:

What vibe are you picking up?

YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN was the uncle of SHLOMO ZALMAN RIVLIN the cantor, and the son of this guy, YOSEF YUSHYA RIVLIN:

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This is how SHLOMO ZALMAN RIVLIN himself explains how he came to acquire, and then print, the KOL HATOR mss, (excerpted from Eli Eshel’s blog post):

How exactly did the manuscript reach Yitzhak Zvi Rivlin ?

According to a note in the book “Midrash Shlomo,” written with the help of Yitzhak Zvi, the book existed for many decades in handwriting only, and its part was preserved in the city of Shklov by Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Rivlin, son of Hillel Rivlin and author of the book “DIVREI SHLOMO”… and is accompanied by light and chidushim from his son-in-law Asher Luria….

According to the Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Zvi Rivlin, it was from the aforementioned Shlomo Zalman Rivlin that he received”a large portion “of the” Kol Tor “letters ( in the book Midrash Shlomo, 143 note 51) from where he received the rest was not specified.

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According to ESHED’s research, there were two versions of KOL HATOR in handwritten mss:

1. An original text written in the handwriting of HILLEL RIVLIN OF SHKLOV (this original, if it exists, has never been found)
2. An edited version based on the original text, written by YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN and passed to his cantor nephew to publish, in 1947.

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We’ll come back to YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN in a moment.

He’s another interesting person.

Meanwhile, here is your third and final candidate for an alternative author / editor of KOL HATOR:

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CANDIDATE 3: YOSEF YUSHA RIVLIN

This is SHLOMO ZALMAN RIVLIN’s father, mentioned above..

This snippet is from the Hebrew Wiki:

Research on the book by Dr. Raphael Schuchat and Rabbi Avraham Kosman leads to the conclusion that the Kol Tor book contains authentic elements that appear in the Kabbalah books of the GRA and expands them…

It appears that the original manuscript of the book was not in the hands of the compiler R YUSHA RIVLIN, but only adaptations or abstracts, and he edited them.

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So, to sum this part up, here are your choices:

1. KOL HATOR is an accurate reflection of the GRA’s teachings, and was kept ‘secret’ for 100 years + before being published in an edited form in 1947, by SHLOMO ZALMAN RIVLIN.
2. KOL HATOR was based on some ideas found in the GRA’s writings, but then these ideas were edited / expanded / adulterated by a bunch of Rivlins, including BINYAMIN RIVLIN, and his son HILLEL RIVLIN, and / or YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN, and / or YUSHA RIVLIN and his son, SHLOMO ZALMAN RIVLIN.

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Whichever option you pick, it doesn’t change the notion that the concept of ‘MBY’ as typically represented as deriving from the KOL HATOR is meaningless, at best, or more accurately, spiritually misleading and very damaging.

The information about ‘MBY’ presented in Kol HaTor seems to open the door to all these horrible, heretical ideas that people like Yoshki and Shabtai Tzvi were somehow ‘good people’ who just ‘failed’ in their mission as ‘MBY’.

And all this stuff about ‘MBY’ as presented in Kol HaTor is also distracting so many people away from focussing on the ‘real’ Moshiach in the picture, here, which is the person who ends up being ‘MOSHIACH BEN DAVID’ – a son-after-son descendant of King David, who does all the things that the MBD actually has to do.

[I am in the middle of researching more about where these ideas about ‘MBY’ are actually coming from. More on this soon, BH, with some other sources.]

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Let’s end this particular post by taking a closer look at YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN, the so-called ‘PREACHER OF REDEMPTION’.

HERE is the Hebrew WIKI  page for him, where we learn the following:

He is the great-great grandson of that same HILLEL RIVLIN of Shklov, like this:

BINYAMIN RIVLIN > HILLEL RIVLIN of SHKLOV > MOSHE ‘MAGGID’ RIVLIN > YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN > BINYAMIN RIVLIN > YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN, PREACHER OF REDEMPTION.

Me being me, I went to check out his siblings, and I hit a rich vein of people I’ve already written about here, including LOEWY’s, SHAIDIKERS and ORENSTEINs.

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Wiki says:

He was born in the town of Tulchin, near Sheklov ,to Rabbi Binyamin and Reizel, both grandchildren of Rabbi Moshe Rivlin Meshklov, who was the ABD of the Ashkenazim in Jerusalem and son of Rabbi Hillel Rivlin Meshklov, author of Kol Tor and a student of the GRA.

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BTW – there is no firm evidence that HILLEL RIVLIN OF SHKLOV was ever a student of the GRA.

And the evidence that his father BINYAMIN RIVLIN OF SHKLOV was a student of the GRA is also apparently pretty shaky.

Also, while the Rivlin family claim that HILLEL RIVLIN OF SHKLOV headed up the aliyah of the GRA’s students to Eretz Yisrael in 1809, the documentation shows that he didn’t get to Israel until 1832, at the earliest.

As usual with these people, we are dealing with a bunch of lies.

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Back to YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN, PREACHER OF REDEMPTION.

This guy divorces the mother of his five children when she doesn’t want to move to Israel with him.

And when he gets to Israel, he promptly becomes one of the founders of the pro-zionist MIZRACHI organisation in Jerusalem.

That’s not all.

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YITZHAK ZVI RIVLIN is also the rabbi of the ACHaVA neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Read more about that neighborhood HERE.

That would be the same ‘ACHaVA’ as the secret society that was operating in Eretz Yisrael at that time, that maneuvered R ABRAHAM KOOK into his position as (zionist-loving….) ‘Chief Rabbi’.

You can read a whole bunch more about ACHaVA in my collection of blog posts HERE.

This is the relevant snippet, for now:

Let’s end with the secret society of Rabbis in Jerusalem.

It was called AGUDAT AHAVA, and it was set up up in the late 1800s as a secret society. When word of this new organisation leaked out to Maharil Diskin, it was apparently described as: “[A] new cult in the style of Shabtai Zvi and Yaakov Frank.”

Apparently, SHMUEL SALANT then went to bat for the AGUDAT AHAVA – and we will take a closer look at him in another post, BH.

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You can read more about this secret society on Hebrew Wiki HERE.

Bottom line, they built ‘lodges’ all over Israel, and also in other places in the Jewish world, and lots of people you’ve heard of apparently belonged to this ‘secret society ‘ of rabbis, based on the Freemasons, that reminded at least some people of the ‘cults’ of Shabtai Tzi and Jacob Frank….

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Let’s end with another snippet about KOL HATOR from Eli Eshel’s extremely well-researched post on the subject:

In this fake preface [to the Kol HaTor]…

It is said that Yitzhak Zvi Rivlin obtained the material with hard work in Shklov and in Jerusalem, many of the writings were kept under the command of Rabbi Yaakov Liv Lawi and by Chaim Zalman Rivlin, director of the ‘ETZ CHAIM’ Talmud Torah.

The other part of the writings was in the city of Shklov, where Yitzhak Zvi found the relevant documents in Rabbi Yehoshua Zeitlin’s large book depository, where the documents were deposited by Hillel Rivlin’s sons, Rabbi Moshe Magid and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Rivlin.

It is noted that with Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Rivlin the first, as with Shmaryahu Zuckerman, many Gra manuscripts were preserved.

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I just tripped over a whole bunch of new stuff about how these individuals link up to the ‘secret societies’ that overran our community, beginning 350 years ago – but still going in our days, albeit with different branding.

But we’ll keep that for the next post, BH.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] According to the ‘scrubbed’ information in Neil Rosenstein’s original genealogies, BINYAMIN RIVLN of Shklov seems to have married DREIZA ZEITLIN, the daughter of BARON YEHOSHUA ZEITLIN – the big funder of the Russian maskilim and court agent for the Russian Tzars. This makes HILLEL RIVLIN of Shklov the maternal grandchild of YEHOSHUA ZEITLIN.

BINYAMIN RIVLIN’s sister, MINDEL, marries CHANOCH HEINACH SHICK, the ABD of Shklov and father of PINCHAS (ELIYAHU) ROSANES SHICK, who marries the Alter Rebbe’s daughter, Frieda, and has the freemason BARUCH SHICK of SHKLOV as a son.

And this family also links us directly to ELKA JOSS, the wife of the leading Frankist MOSES DOBRUSHKA (fake name… the guy played a leading role in the French Revolution, and apparently got guillotined.)

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[2] Which details the students of the GRA of Vilna, according to the Rivlin family.

[3] Which details how the students of the GRA rebuit Jerusalem.

[4] ELIYAHU LANDA is someone I’ve been circling around for a very long time. He’s said to be a descendant of both the Vilna Gaon, and the Nodeh B’Yehuda.  BH, we will take a closer look at him soon.