Yoshki, Shabtai Tzvi and ‘Moshiach ben Yosef – the transcript
Transcribed notes from Betzalel Naor’s shiur, aka ‘whitewashing Yoshki and Shabtai Tzvi’
I decided to try and transcribe most of Betzalel Naor’s shiur, below, about how only stupid people who don’t study kabbalah believe people like Yeshu HaNotzri and Shabtai Tzvi were evil, false messiahs.
==
Betzalel Naor is / was the main English translator of Rav Avraham HaKohen Kook’s works into English, including the OROT books.
He also describes himself as a student of R Kook’s son, TZVI YEHUDA KOOK.
A very interesting guy in his own right, who we didn’t quite get around to taking a closer look at. Yet.
B’kitzur – he’s quite a big ‘influencer’, in so many ways.
And here is what he’s saying, and the sources he is bringing, including of course, R KOOK.
Meet me below, for more of a discussion.
==
Video I, beginning 1:12 min mark:
Betzalel Naor (BN) starts by explaining his teacher was TZVI YEHUDA KOOK, and he’s the English translator of the OROT books of R AVRAHAM HAKOHEN KOOK’s teachings. He brings a passage from OROT, as written 20 years ago, but then explains that 8 new notebooks of R Kook’s writings were found since then, which change the picture, somewhat, of what R KOOK was saying.
BN starts talking about ‘fallen messiahs’, quoting R KOOK thus:
[5 min mark]: “Those great souls, the masters of the YESOD (foundation), who will uplift all of the NAFLOT (downfall), whether their own personal downfalls, or the downfalls of the Jewish nation; or all of the NEFILIM (fallen giants), who were in a position to be ‘moshiachs’, and they fell, and were trapped and were broken.”
==
BN then explains the 8 new journals show R Kook referring to slightly different terms. Instead of YESOD, he was writing about ‘ba’alei ha-sod’ – i.e. Masters of Jewish mysticism, kabbalah.
And instead of NEFILIM – ‘giants’, R Kook was talking about HANAFALIM, ‘the aborted ones’.
==
BN then says:
“According to R Kook’s methodology, there are no false messiahs, just people who had potential but fell, trapped and broken.”
According to R Kook (via BN), these “sparks of aborted attempts to bring the redemption are still floating around.”
When it’s the geula shleimah, BN says that:
“All of those sparks will find their way into Moshiach’s being. Moshiach will find the way to uplift these sparks of the fallen predecessors. That’s R KOOK’s methodology.”
==
BN then detours to talk about a book that was printed a few years ago in Bnei Brak about ‘False Messiahs’, which included SHLOMO MOLCHO. BN was very upset about this, and was very pleased that SHLOMO MOLCHO’s name had been ‘disappeared’ out of the book by its second printing.
BN says: People who are far from sod (i.e. Kabbalah) write history like secular historians, “so [to them], Shlomo Molcho was a false messiah.”
==
VIDEO II, beginning at the 1 min mark.
BN says:
“If you approach things from nigleh without kabbalah, so yeah, SHLOMO MOLCHO is a ‘moshiach sheker’. Bar Kokhba is a ‘moshiach shekder’. Shabtai Tzvi is a ‘moshiach sheker’.
“But Rav KOOK is coming from a different vantage point of SOD….That’s the general methodology of R Kook.”
==
BN then starts quoting a letter from Rav Kook written on the 11th Nissan, 1934, which BN points out is the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s birthday, where Rav Kook is discussing why the BNEI AKIVA youth organisation was called that.
He talks about how R AKIVA saw Bar Kohkba as a true candidate for the moshiach – and then this is the springboard for BN’s discussion ‘whitewashing’ all the other false moshiachs.
==
9.40 min mar, BN says:
“I want to broaden the base.” It’s not just R KOOK, BN says, it’s a ‘consensus’ amongst the kabbalists and chassidic masters (that none of the false moshiachs are ‘false’, so much as ‘failed’.)
BN says: “This would be par, for a kabbalist.”
==
Next, BN starts quoting the teachings of MORDECHAI YOSEF LEINER (1801-1854), the ISHVITZER Rebbe, as brought in the work TIFERET GERSHUNI, written by the ISHVITZER’s grandson, GERSHON HANOCH LEINER.
==
Before we get to these quotes, I went to look up both of these gentlemen to get a feel for them. They are both extremely interesting, as you probably expected, and link us back to the massive spiritual problems brewing at the court of MENACHEM MENDEL OF KOTZK.
As well as being a scientist, GERSHON HANOCH LEINER was also a scientific maskil, who was hanging out at the Vatican and made the wrong (like, TOTALLY WRONG!!!) identification of the cuttlefish, as being the source of the techeilet dye.
We will get to them both in more detail, perhaps in the next post.
But meantime, this is who Betzalel Naor is quoting, especially GERSHON LEINER’s commentary on the Zohar, based on his grandfather’s writings, his grandfather being the ISHVITZER Rebbe.
==
Video 3:
BN quotes the TIFERET GERSHUNI thus:
“In all the redeemers of Israel, there shines the soul of Moshiach.” BN clarifies: The nishmat moshiach becomes embodied in all the redeemers of Israel. Then he continues with the direct quote, from page 196-7:
“B’inyan shel Moshiach ben Yosef (in the matter of Moshiach ben Yosef.).
==
0.49 minute mark:
BN then stops to preface:
“We have a theory of two moshiachs going back at least to the Talmud….The earlier moshiach is descended from Joseph, the later moshiach, who is the final redeemer, is MBD, descended from King David. This is Gemara, Sukkah 52a.”
[The TIFERET GERSHUNI says]:
“What is the concept of Moshiach ben Yosef? My grandfather, my teacher [the ISHVITZER] explained: If there is a Jewish leader who is driving very hard to bring the complete redemption, at a time, a point in history, when it’s not yet the Divine Will to bring the complete redemption – such an individual comes under the rubric of ‘Moshiach ben Yosef’.”
==
Ed. Note: This is very shocking to me.
It’s basically saying that dafka those people who are going AGAINST God’s will, to try to bring ‘geula’ before the appointed time, are considered to be ‘Moshiach ben Yosef’….It’s mindblowing, and starts to uncover the spiritual basis for how the Jewish world has gone just so very ‘wrong’, the last 400 years.
How can any truly God-fearing person have the arrogance to think they can ‘force’ God to bring ‘redemption’ according to their own timetable?
==
2:10 min mark, BN continues:
“So, if someone is striving with all his might to bring the redemption, except the time is not right, so he falls under this rubric of MBY.”
BN then quotes more of the ISHVITZER’s teachings, from p 123 of TIFERET GERSHUNI:
“The Gemara in Sanhedrin 96B asks: Who is ‘bar Nifla’? That is code for moshiach….’On that day I will uphold the fallen sukkah of BAR NIFLAY.”….
4.30 min mark, BN continues:
“You know what it means BAR NIFLAY, the fallen son? Yes, he falls, he has some kind of spiritual downfall, and indoing so, he ‘uplifts’ the foundations of creation. Which are hidden in the most bizarre garb. And with this, you are able to understand why the Gemara refers to moshiach as ‘BAR NIFLAY’, the fallen son.
“He should be called the ‘risen son’…. But he’s BAR NIFLAY, because in order for him to ‘raise up’, he first has to fall down. That’s what the ISHVITZER Rebbe tells us.”
==
7.20 min mark, BN continues:
“Let’s hear from the Vilna Gaon, Tikkunei Zohar HaChadash, Vilna edition, 1867, folio 7A. There, it talks about the gestation of Moshiach. Just as a fetus has to go through nine months in a mother’s womb, so too, Moshiach.”
BN then explains that the GAON relates the nine months to the sefirot, with the first month as KETER etc, all the way down to MALCHUT (the 10 sefira). BN continues:
“Something happens in the 5th month, the NEFEL (miscarriage) takes place in Av, according to the Vilna Gaon.”
==
9 min mark:
“Says the Vilna Gaon, when the sins kick in and cause this kind of spontaneous abortion, even though the birth pangs of Moshiach have already started… Moshiach is already ‘in the womb’, but ‘Knesset Yisrael’ miscarries – that’s BAR NIFLAY.”
==
11.29 min mark:
“Now we understand what R KOOK was telling us in OROT. In OROT, it was revocalised ‘nefilim’. But that’s not what the man wrote. R KOOK wrote NEFALIM, NEFEL, ‘aborted fetuses’.
12 min mark, BN continues:
“Now, we are going to go back to an earlier abortion, an earlier NEFEL…. There was a Jew by the name of YESHU haNOTZRI, Jesus of Nazareth….
“You’ll say to me, he was one of these ‘nefelim’?! Absolutely!… It depends on what your vantage point is.
“If you’re coming from what we call the NIGLA d’ORAITA, which is the external Torah…But if your perspective is one of SOD, then hear me out.”
==
Ed. Note: from this point on, the ‘whitewashing’ begins in earnest.
There seems to be two religions going on, two versions of ‘authentic yiddishkeit’. One, which tells us people like Shabtai Tzvi and Yoshki are evil rebels against God, who destroyed the world in so many ways, as ‘false messiahs’.
And then, there is this cosy club of arrogant kabbalists, on both sides of the ‘ashkenazi / sephardi’ divide, who have a whole rationalisation process going on for why ‘evil’ is really just ‘good’.
Albeit, ‘veiled good’.
It’s an incredibly narrow bridge….
Hopefully, you are starting to understand how even the ‘greatest kabbalists’ fell off it, and dragged a whole bunch of Jews behind them into tremendous evil, trying to ‘force God’ to do what they wanted, instead of waiting patiently with emuna and real teshuva, for God to lead the way.
Let’s continue.
==
Video 4:
(Right at the end of Video 3, BN mentions there is a an Italian kabbalist by the name of MOSHE DAVID VALLI, the former teacher of MOSHE CHAIM LUZZATTO, the RAMCHAL, in Padua. BN continues that R VALLI’s teachings were pulled together in a work called SEFER HALIKUTIM, and then starts quoting:)
BN says:
“”Sefer HaLikutim, Helek Aleph, Vol p 83: “The mamzer [i.e. Yoshki] was worthy to be MBY, because a ‘mamzer talmid chacham kodem HaKohen HaGadol Am Ha’aretz’. Except because of his pritzut, he brought it upon himself. And also because of the sinat chinam that exists within Am Yisrael.”
==
At the 3.43 mark, Naor brings another quote from R Valli, in SEFER LIKUTIM I, P242:
“Referring to Yeshu HaNotzri, Jesus of Nazareth” [this intro is Naor’s words] “who was bvadai, the sod MBY, even though he was a mamzer. For a “mamzer talmid chacham kodem HaKohen HaGadol Am Ha’aretz'”.
But it was not the right time, because of the sinat chinam within Israel, v’lechen (and so) he was corrupted, and the Satan was within him, and he was destroyed.”
==
Ad kan, for these transcriptions for this post.
If appropriate, I will pick some more stuff out of the next 5 videos – to show you, what an-pervasive, massive issue we are up against here, in terms of how ‘corrupted’, spiritually, so many of our leaders and their teachings really are.
And it’s all corrupted in such a ‘fine’ place, that most people have no idea what they are even really saying.
And in the meantime, this corruption is spawning all these ‘false messiahs’ who are from the aspect of MBY – but apparently, MBY is not something ‘good’, the way most of us would understand it.
‘MBY’ is like the dark-side, the ‘shadow side’ of MBD, coming from a place of personal ego and arrogance, and so, very easily co-opted and corrupted by the forces of evil.
==
One of my readers just sent me the link to R VALLI’s Sefer Likutim, and the last par quoted by Betzalel Naor, HERE.
Screenshot:
====
There is so much to consider and digest, here.
But in the meantime, continue to think for yourself about how all these kabbalists turned into closet-xtians, sabbateans, frankists….
And how this ‘false kabbalah’ is still leading us astray in our days, especially with all these candidates being acclaimed ‘MBY’ – like that’s a good thing.
TBC
This is the book BN is referring to about false messiahs: https://moreshesashkenaz.org/en/other-publications/3-false-messiahs
It is only available in Hebrew.
The author is well-known for reviving and seeding Nusach Ashkenaz (aka “Yekke”) minyanim throughout HaAretz (one of which I davened at for many years). I highly doubt he writes like a “secular historian.” This is not a history book. There is also a separate and distinct Ashkenazi Kabbalistic tradition, which perhaps BN is not aware of or does not acknowledge.
The Talmud speaks of only one out of four entering and exiting Pardes intact. It makes sense that many that approach can still falter.
yosef hatzaddik is the prototype for MbY.
he was brought down to mitzraim without his permission.
this is the difference.
a true MbY observes halakha, maybe gets near a fence or in the course of legitimate tikunim provokes makhloket.
lhavdil, a ‘moshiach sheker’ would chas vshalom break fences.
==
maybe in talmud it says that the nations rejected torah, and kicked the sukkah.
(not sure about this one:)
sometimes the sukkah fell because, for example, the romans or the venetian navy interdicted a ‘rebel’ trying to be the next bar kochba, towards geulah shleimah.
==
the rebbe mlubawicz z”l said regarding the phrase ‘the nations should not hold israel back’: “if it has to be said, a goy should say it”.
==
eisav has a yetzer hara also. maybe amalek is eisav’s yetzer hara?
maybe the good in eisav fights (quietly) against amalek, or wants to.
==
sorry about the other comment.
We’re meant to daven that MBY should live and not die in a battle so he can’t have any bad in him. I wonder what this guy would make of that. We’re also told that MBD and MBY can be combined in the same person so what he’s saying wouldn’t work.
Part of the problem is that we’re all discussing this stuff from a place of not really knowing what we’re talking about – of having partial information, at best, even with the best of intentions.
That’s why increasingly, I’m seeing the tremendous wisdom of Rebbe Nachman’s path of simple emuna – and avoiding all this ‘trying to make stuff happen’ kabbalistically sophistication.
It’s the story of ‘The Cripple’ coming to life before our eyes…
I sent to you emails with original texts in the jemic…box. Read carefully everything from the begging till the end. To translate it in English and to write it down, takes a lot of time for me…. I’m trying to do it with my wife’s help. Naor doesn’t understand what the tsadikim hamekoubalim said . He deals with mysticism but like a university scholar and he admits that he is in contact with a university in his research about the Jewish ”mystics”. I heard carefully all the ten parts . In his lectures, the central idea is that Yioski and Sabbtai Tzvi etc. are like all of us, good and “MAINSTREAM JEWS” according to his own words. He call his audience to embrace them “their sparks are here with us and they are waiting to be elevated by us” ” I cried when I heard a story about Shabbtai Tzvi” from one of his followers in Turkey. Naor was not offended to seat at the table with Sabbateans singing Tzi’s praises…. “why I should be offended ??? The Marocaim sing for the Abbuhatzeira”…… He had plans to visit Sabbtai’s tomb in Albania….. ……..This moron (Naor) doesn’t understand that the sparks cannot be elevated in this way, the opposite is truth. And additionally , he puts in great danger other Jewish neshamot in their appoximity with the toumah. He brings as proofs of his nonsense the writings of the tzadik, rabbi Valli, where he wrote that Yoski had the potential to be MBY , and Yioski is BE SOD of MBY … BUT Naor promotes -and he says it also – that Yoski IS MBY (that is absolutely different). EVERYWHERE as you can see in rabbi Valli’s holy Torah, he explains that Yioski was a big rashah. And as you know all the Jewish big reshaim , are souls with great potential and are coming from a high source. ……………….Conclusion.: All the holy tzadikin and the mekubalim that Naor brings as proofs to his theories, they speaking the Truth , but Naor speaks sheker vecazav.
I was discussing with a family member today about the purpose of life. I could only provide a vague answer.
What is our exact purpose in life?
To rectify our bad middot and serve Hashem to the best of our ability.
bs”d
Simon, Rabbi Nachman’s story THE MASTER OF PRAYER will give a good answer.
hi,
thanks for those links peviously. still digesting all the info,
in the shivchei habesht he quotes from the baal shem tov who said that shabbtai tzvi contained a spark of holiness, (at this link https://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=24985&st=&pgnum=26&hilite= its on the left column about 2/3 of the way down). this idea is found in many sources and definitely isnt the invention of this youtube guy above…
Every Jewish soul contains a spark of holiness.
even the rambam in hilchot melachim 10:7 writes this way about yoshki and muhammad, and so does rav yaakov emden (see here https://www.kotzkblog.com/2019/12/253-r-yaakov-emdens-surprising-views-on.html)
The point, I think, is that while you say that the Rambam and R Yaakov Emden are saying these things, the devil is most certainly in the detail.
Did they both claim that Yoshki IS MBY, or from ‘the secret’ of MBY, or did they say something that sounds similar, superficially, but is actually neither of these statements?
Then, the next level of birur is to drill down a bit further, and to start a discussion about whether these statements were a) widely accepted and acceptable to normative halacha, or controversial.
(You’ll recall the Rambam was almost excommunicated and all his writings burnt, except for the intervention of the Ramban. And R Emden’s comments on Yoshki (and wanting to reinstate polygamous marriage…) were hardly mainstream.)
And al this is just the groundwork, for simple people like you and me being able to get near any firm idea of what might be going on here.
==
The True Tzaddikim are for sure ‘raising sparks’ out of the evil all the time.
That’s in our tradition – and why David came from Moab, AND the matter of Yehuda and Tamar… why Moshe was raised dafka in Pharoah’s palace…. why Moshe dafka married the daughter of Yitro, the biggest ‘idolatrous priest’ in the whole of the world.
These things are not at all simple.
And the leeway to be misled – all the way down the path to total spiritual destruction – is enormous.
the magen avraham quotes r shlomo molchos opinion about tzitzis and some people follow his custom even today
Great post, thank you