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Sabbatean Origin of the Illuminati Cult
JohnLitteral
Sabbatai Zevi on the left and Jacob Frank on the right
In my last book called HANDBOOK ON THE POWERS THAT “SHOULD NOT” BE, I described how the world has been under the control of a Global Cabal, a global network that has been called by many different names such as the Illuminati, the Elite, Globalists, etc. This has been described by researchers as being a secret society and/or a network of secret societies that has managed over the course of centuries to infiltrate and control nearly every government in the world, and every institution that has major influence over different groups of people. This Cabal is also, and perhaps, better described as a cult, and it has been around for as long as written history records. Of course, they have had different names, but the same Satanic spirit has been at the inner core of this cult and has always been the driving force behind their agenda. Their agenda has been global domination, and they see themselves as being superior to the rest of the world, even considering themselves to be gods, while they view humanity as nothing more than human cattle.

Their activities trace back to ancient times to the present day, and their agenda for total world domination has reached a staggering level since the year of 2020. The formation of a one world government has been taking shape quicker than ever, but this has been a long-term plan that is now reaching its fulfillment (the end game), now that technology has caught up with the agenda. Their plans have been called the New World Order for decades, and this plan has progressed and has been labeled by many elites as the Great Reset. The intended outcome is a one-world totalitarian dictatorship, with a one world currency, and one world religion. Yes, religion!

The Cult

As mentioned above, this is a cult. Henry Makow titled a book that he wrote with the perfect title that describes them perfectly, “Illuminati, The Cult that Hijacked the World.”4 This cult has hijacked the world, and it is a Satanic Cult. Many researchers trace the Illuminati back to the formation of the Bavarian Illuminati in 1776, and its founder Adam Weishaupt. But this formation was more of an update and renewing of the agenda, for the inner core has been around for centuries. With the alliance of three key figures, Adam Weishaupt, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, and Jacob Frank, this brought a mastermind plan together with the financial backing of the Rothschilds, and the Satanic teachings of Jacob Frank, who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah.

1666 and the rise of Zevi and Frank

Jacob Frank brought his developed version of the Sabbatean religion, called Sabbatean-Frankism, which is the Satanism, based upon the Kabbalah, which is practiced by the inner core of the Illuminati today. But this cult practice didn’t start there, as Henry Makow describes, “The Sabbateans were predated by different Illuminati manifestations which date back to the ancient mystery religions of Egypt and Babylon.”4 Jacob developed Sabbateanism and took it into darker and more depraved levels. His successor Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676), who had over a million Jewish followers, claimed to be the Jewish Messiah in 1666, and he inverted Judaism and turned religious practices backwards, such feast days to fast days and vice-versa, and taught that the more sin that is committed, then the faster God will establish the Kingdom. So Zevi promoted and practiced everything from group orgies and wife swapping, among many other things, claiming that God will bring redemption through sin. One thing I found very interesting is a striking parallel between Zevi and the prophecy of the Antichrist (beast) and the false prophet in the Bible, found in Revelation chapters 13,19,20. Zevi claimed to be the Jewish Messiah, which is what the Antichrist will do in the future, and the Antichrist had a “false prophet” that operates as sort of a forerunner and convinces many to worship the Antichrist. Sabbatai Zevi also had a forerunner that was a false prophet by the name of Nathan of Gaza. Robert Sepehr says…

“Nathan of Gaza, the proponent closest to Zevi, who had caused Zevi to reveal himself as the Messiah, and in turn became his prophet…”2  

This is not to say that Zevi is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, but one thing that Scripture does, is along with future prophecies one will find places in history where there are types and prefigurements of things and people prophesied for the future. Such as Zevi is a type of the Antichrist to come, which I will discuss in greater detail when I get to the topic on the Antichrist.

As for Jacob Frank, Robert Sepehr says…

“Jacob Frank asserted that God, the creator was different from the God who had revealed himself to the Israelites. He believed the Biblical God was evil, belief widely held in Gnostic circles. Where Frank separated himself was by rejecting every moral law and commandment, and declaring that the only way to a new society was through the total destruction of the present civilization. He insisted that child sacrifice, rape, incest and the drinking of blood were perfectly acceptable and necessary religious rituals… Frank totally rejected the traditional interpretation of the Torah. He converted to both Islam and Catholicism. He often slept with his followers, as well as his own daughter, while preaching a doctrine that the best way to imitate God was to cross every boundary, transgress every taboo, and mix (as he claimed God did) the sacred with the profane” 2

Islam

Jacob Frank’s predecessor Sabbatai Zevi also converted to Islam, but under a different circumstance. Zevi was given a choice by the Sultan to either convert to Islam or be beheaded. Robert Sepehr says…

“Sabbatai returned to Turkey, where the Sultan of the Ottoman empire had already allowed the Zevi phenomenon to unfold for several years. The Sultan did not initially oppose Zevi’s religious claims, probably because those claims brought in so much money from Jewish tourism, as Jews flocked to Turkey from all over the world, from England to Persia, German to Morocco, Poland to Yemen. Though at first the Sultan did not interfere with Sabbatai’s movement, the last straw came, according to one of many rumored accounts, when Sabbatai publicly proclaimed that, in the next year, the Temple in Jerusalem would be rebuilt. The Sultan took umbrage. The most commonly accepted version of the story is that the Sultan offered Sabbatai Zevi the choice of either publicly converting to Islam or being beheaded.”2

 Zevi converted publicly but still practiced his Sabbateanism underground. Obviously, this backfired against the intentions of the Sultan because his religion had become infiltrated by Zevi and his followers (called the Donmeh). They infiltrated Islam and eventually it manifested as the Saudi Royal family and the extreme British-Saudi version of Islam known as Wahhabism. David Icke explains…

“This is the religion of extreme suppression of woman and beheading non-believers and ‘infidels’. Western/Saudi-funded, armed and trained terrorist groups like ISIS are its most famous manifestations along with the fascistic Saudi state itself. Wahhabism set the new blueprint for how Islam is perceived both by many of its followers and the wider global public. From this came the perception that Islam is about death and destruction… majority of Muslims are not violent… By contrast Wahhabism is anything but kind. It is a brutal, merciless, deeply psychopathic and supremacist creed that appropriately mirrors in its mind-set the Sabbatian-Frankist Death Cult.”1

Rothschilds and Israel

Sabbatai Zevi taught that his followers would return to their Jewish homeland on the ancient location of Israel, and this was pursued by this cult. ‘Later, within this cult, those such as the Rothschilds began to invent a mythical history about the ‘Kingdom of David’ and a racial connection back to Biblical Israel. This was supported by their religious belief that the Jewish Messiah would come one day and draw them back to Jerusalem and establish his kingdom. This was opposed by orthodox Jews who did not support this ideology of Zionism and the State of Israel, and most Jews of the 19th century did not share this belief either. But a movement to spread this narrative was backed politically and financially to push for the spread of the political philosophy of Zionism and the right of the Jewish people to seize their ‘historic right to the land of Palestine’. This was politically pushed by British Foreign Secretary Palmerston who wrote to British Ambassador in the Islamic Turkey based Ottoman Empire which controlled Palestine in 1840, and encourage the support for the Jews who were dispersed throughout Europe to return to Palestine. Lord Palmerston just happened to be the Grand Patriarch of Grand Orient Freemasonry, which was the elite version controlled by the Sabbatian-Frankists. This campaign continued throughout the 19th century with the financial backing that pushed for ‘academics’ and ‘historians’ to push this fraudulent narrative. This culminated at the end of the century with the establishment by the Rothschilds of Zionism. The push was to get the Jewish people throughout the world to support this vision of going ‘back to their homeland’, but most of them opposed it. There was early Zionist attempts that advocated for a homeland, but not necessarily one in Palestine. Uganda and Argentina were discussed, and many were okay with that, but Palestine was the one they committed to. The World Zionist Organization with Theodor Herzel got support from Edmond de Rothschild. The Rothschilds demanded control of Jewish settlements and established a structure of administration which still calls the shots in Israel today. The Rothschilds were essential for the establishment of Israel. Being Sabbatian-Frankists, they manipulated events that led to the WWI, and funding all sides and exploited to secure the Balfour Declaration in 1917 in which the British Foreign government pledged support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.’1

So basically the Rothschilds created the state of Israel for their own benefit. I have not gone into the history of how there was a highly orchestrated strategy to have Jews throughout the world persecuted, and make life extremely tough on them in order to convince many of them to go to Israel to live. As for the Rothschilds and Israel, it would be accurate to say that Israel is basically the Rothschilds private country with their private military and headquarters for influencing and manipulating the world to usher in the New World Order.

As pointed out above, the Rothschilds are Sabbatean-Frankists (Satanists), and this cult is where the Antichrist (false Messiah) will apparently come from. False Messiahs from this cult follow a certain linage and succession, and the Rothschilds appear to be a part of this linage, and may even fill the role of the Antichrist in the End Times during the Great Tribulation as prophesied in the Bible. Jack Manuelian gives some very interesting information concerning this…

“Another main Sabbatean belief is that ‘Godhead takes a human form which allowed for leaders of the sect to be incarnated into that Godhead, from Sabbatai Zvi through to Frank and others.’ (source Scholem). Hence, when Frankists convert to Christianity and Donmeh convert to Islam, their God does not become Jesus Christ and the Christian Trinity or Mohammad and his Allah but the ‘Godhead of the Frankists included members of the sect’ (Antelman). Therefore Sabbatai Zvi was their first incarnate God, after him, Jacob Frank was their incarnate God. After Frank, the godly reign apparently passed to the Rothschilds, and now their incarnate god is either a Rothschild god-man or they are waiting for his incarnation and manifestation among them like it is made clear in the Protocols of Zion.”2

___________________________________________________________________________________

1 David Icke, The Trigger: The Lie That Changed the World, David Icke Books; Illustrated edition (September 1, 2019), ISBN-10 : 1916025803, ISBN-13 : 978-1916025806

2 1666 Redemption Through Sin: Global Conspiracy in History, Religion, Politics and Finance Paperback – May 15, 2015 by Robert Sepehr, Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atlantean Gardens; 1st edition (May 15, 2015) ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1943494010, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1943494019

3 Jack Manuelian, Sabbateans are the Illuminati, November 12, 2019, https://www.henrymakow.com/2019/11/sabbatean-frankist-illuminati.html

4 Illuminati 2: Deceit and Seduction Paperback – by Henry Makow, Publisher ‏: ‎ Silas Green (April 28, 2010), ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 161577145X, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1615771455

5 Handbook On The Powers That “Should Not” Be: A Straight Forward Look At The Global Cabal And What You Can Do – by John Litteral (Author) Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (December 25, 2020), ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8584078218





The "Jewish Banker Conspiracy"

March 26, 2019, 3:47 am
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(Cabalist Judaism has pitted Jews, and Freemasons, against God and man alike.)

I am reposting key articles because increasing numbers of people are waking to the mortal threat facing humanity.

"Jewish Pharisees accepted the offer from Satan that Jesus rejected: "I will give you the Kingdom of the World (i.e. Money, Power) if you obey me." Talmudic Judaism is dedicated to enthroning Lucifer and always has conspired to destroy Christianity." (The destruction of Christianity is almost complete)







(Updated from Jan 14, 2006)

By Henry Makow PhD.

Mention the "Jewish Banker Conspiracy" and you'll be as popular as a skunk at a garden party. Tolerant sophisticated people regard this concept as a hateful and tired cliche. They believe "anti-Semites" should be slandered, sent to jail, and lose their livelihood.

But what if there actually were a "Jewish Banker Conspiracy?" Then these sophisticates would have egg on their face, wouldn't they? They'd be exposed as rubes, victims of a stereotypical Jewish deception achieved by media coincidentally owned by the very same bankers.

The "Jewish Banker Conspiracy" is not a chimaera. It is the plan of Rothschild-controlled central bankers to create a totalitarian system to protect their illegal private monopoly of the world's credit. They create the medium of exchange, a mental construct, in the form of a debt to themselves. Thus, they print government currency for the price of the paper and then lend it to the government with interest.

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In the words of Bill Clinton's mentor, Georgetown University professor Carol Quigley, who was an insider, the plan is "nothing less than to establish a world system... able to dominate the political system of each country." They plan to control the whole system in "a feudalistic manner by the central banks of the world working in concert (and) by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences." (Tragedy and Hope, p. 324)

The central banking families and their allies used their unfair advantage to gain a monopoly of the world's wealth and a stranglehold on culture and politics. To make us accept their "New World Order," (a.k.a. globalization) they need to distract, divide and degrade humanity by destroying the four pillars of our personal identity and social cohesion (nation, race, religion and family.)

They sponsor Communism, Zionism, Socialism, Neo-Conservatism, Liberalism, Feminism, Multi-culturalism and "Diversity" to achieve this purpose. (Socialism substitutes government for the family.) Through control of intelligence agencies and secret societies, they sponsor terrorism (incl. 9-11), assassinations, revolutions, wars and depressions. They may be planning another world war.

Anti-Semitism is caused because Jewish idealists, opportunists and dupes play a prominent role in the above movements, especially Communism. As the New World Order becomes more onerous, anti-Semitism will inevitably increase. Jews need to acknowledge this rather than pretend "anti-Semites" are hallucinating.

On the other hand, "anti-Semites" need to stop generalizing. Jews are very far from cohesive.

Jews are fleeing Jewish organizations in droves. According to a 2001 survey, 25% of the roughly 5 million American Jews identify with another faith. Another quarter are "secular" leaving just 51% to say they are Jewish by religion. One half of all Jews intermarry and three-quarters of these raise their children in another religion.

The majority of Jews probably would oppose the banker agenda if they understood it. I was heartened to hear Texe Marrs say recently that only 5% of Jews are aware of the big picture. Yet the other 95% may suffer if they continue to be indifferent to what is happening.


THE BIG PICTURE


Many "anti-Semites" like Texe Marrs and Des Griffin believe that the Jewish Pharisees accepted the offer from Satan that Jesus rejected: "I will give you the Kingdom of the World (i.e. Money, Power) if you obey me." They believe Talmudic Judaism is dedicated to enthroning Lucifer and always has conspired to destroy Christianity. The recent treatment of Christmas is proof that they are not hallucinating.

Enthroning Satan/Lucifer means enthroning man in the role of God. This is called humanism or Illuminism (hence the "Enlightenment.")

God is rejected. (God represents the natural development of mankind through adherence to spiritual absolutes like morality, justice and truth.)

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A strong element in Talmudic Judaism restricts the definition of "man" to Jews. Thus, the course of human history can be seen as the replacement of God with man, and ultimately man with Jews (or man becomes Jewish.) Everything we call "modern" speaks to the banishment of God from the universe and the attempt to fill the void with the utterances of men/Jews/illuminists. That's why so much modern culture is a fraud.

Israel Shamir has suggested that the Jewish Holocaust is being used to deify Jews. The holocaust replaces the crucifixion as a sacred symbol of God-sacrifice. The Holocaust Museums are the temples.

Those Jews who welcome this scenario might be in for a rude awakening. The definition of Jewish is blurred. As I have suggested elsewhere, the central bankers have forged alliances based on money, marriage and Freemasonry with the leading families of Europe and America.

When gold is God, the extremely rich are the "Chosen People." This myth, together with the Talmudic and Cabalistic traditions, is a perfect mechanism for elite totalitarian control. According to Israel Shahak, Talmudic Judaism has always been a model for a closed oppressive society.

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"Zionism is but an incident of a far-reaching plan," said leading American Zionist Louis Marshall, counsel for bankers Kuhn Loeb in 1917. "It is merely a convenient peg on which to hang a powerful weapon."

In other words, the whole Jewish enterprise, Judaism etc. may be a "powerful weapon" to enthrone a rule of the super rich, who are "Jewish" mainly by virtue of wealth. But the average Jew will take the blame in the form of anti-Semitism.

For example, the British royal family sees itself as descending from the House of David. A Jewish Mohel circumcised Prince Charles. Are the Windsors Jewish? (Douglas Reed, Somewhere South of Suez, p.356.)

Henry Kissinger once said, "a people who have been persecuted for 2000 years must be doing something wrong." His unsympathetic attitude may echo his employers, the Illuminati bankers.

What could Jews be doing wrong? The answer: Trusting their "leaders."

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See also "The Riddle of Anti-Semitism"

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Even Jews Ask: Is Judaism a Satanic Cult?
March 27, 2019, 2:12 am
 Next  The Banishment of Donald's Trump's Older Brother
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Rabbi-Rabbinovich1-298x300.jpg'Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer -- so I wasn't lying -- and we are his chosen people. Lucifer is very much alive.'"  Harold Rosenthal

Most Jews and Christians don't know this:

The reason for antisemitism is that Judaism is defined by Cabalism, a satanic cult whose aim is to possess humanity. Using central banking and Freemasonry as their instruments, Cabalist Jews have taken control of the world.

 Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, Feminism, Zionism are just masks for this agenda. The question is so urgent that I am reprising this 2010 article, Is Lucifer the God of Judaism? by Will Newman, a fellow Jew who describes the satanic symbols and rituals of Judaism.



From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. Winston Churchill, 1920


"Sabbateanism [Satanism, Cabala] is the matrix of every significant movement to have emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, from Hasidism, to Reform Judaism, to the earliest Masonic circles and revolutionary idealism. The Sabbatean "believers" felt that they were champions of a new world which was to be established by overthrowing the values of all positive religions ." - Gershom Scholem (Respected Jewish scholar) THIS IS THE ORIGIN OF THE ILLUMINATI AND COMMUNISM


WILL NEWMAN, holds a B.A. in Religion, attended Jewish synagogue, and has relatives involved in Talmudism, Cabala, B'nai Brith and Masonry.

from Aug 8, 2015
BY WILL NEWMAN
(for henrymakow.com)

In 1976, Walter White, Jr., "a concerned patriot" conducted an interview with a young Jew named Harold Rosenthal who was an assistant to Sen. Jacob Javits of New York.

TheHiddenTyranny.jpgIn the interview, later published as "The Hidden Tyranny", the arrogant Rosenthal belligerently boasts (on tape) that the Jewish people have fabricated certain "falsehoods which work to conceal their nature and protect their status and power."

Rosenthal debunks the commonly accepted lie that, "the Jews are Israelites, and thus God's chosen people".

Rosenthal said in part: 'Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer -- so I wasn't lying -- and we are his chosen people. Lucifer is very much alive.'" (The Hidden Tyranny)

Lucifer's goal is to "be like the most High" (Isa 14:14) and to usurp the worship of God (Mat 4:9).

Lucifer's purpose is to deceive the whole world (Rev 12:9) by transforming himself into an angel of light (2 Co 11:4). This is best exemplified by the Freemasons. Their motto of "making good men better" produces a far more favorable public image than the more accurate alternative: "how to become demon-possessed in 33-easy-steps." The Jewish and Masonic religions both worship the same god- Lucifer.

BRIGHT LIGHT

In most Jewish synagogues, a bright burning flame represents their god. The Hebrew word for Lucifer is "Hillel" (Strong's Concordance #H1966) meaning "bright light." Curiously, this is the name chosen for the Jewish student organization. A central text in Cabalism is entitled "the Zohar," which translates to the book of brightness or splendour.



The Jewish six-pointed star is the highest symbol in the occult and goes by various names--the Star of Moloch/Saturn/Chiun/Remphan. It is a symbol of the union of male and female and is identical in meaning to the Masonic square and compass, which is also a six-pointed symbol around the letter "G" representing the generative sexual act. In place of the "G" we find יהוה amidst many Jewish stars.



The Hebrew symbol חי worn around the necks of many Jews ostensibly symbolizes "life" (lachaim). The word literally translates to a "living thing" or "beast" (H2416); this symbol is an idol for The Beast.



The Jewish name for god is represented by the Tetragrammaton יהוה (YHVH) can be pronounced Yahweh or Jehovah. The significance of God's name is repeatedly emphasized throughout the scriptures.



When dissected in the Hebrew, the true definition of Jehovah (Yah-Hovah) is revealed. "Yah" (#H3050) means "god". "Hovah" (#H1942) translates to "eagerly coveting, falling, desire, ruin, calamity, iniquity, mischief, naughtiness, noisome, perverse, very wickedness."



baal-worship.jpgJehovah is synonymous with Baal: "Baali (#H1180) From ba'al with pron. Suff.; my master; Baali, a symbolical name for Jehovah -- Baali."



The Jewish Encyclopedia ("Adonai and Ba'al") reveals: "The name Ba'al , apparently as an equivalent for Yhwh."
Since the days of Jeremiah, the Jews have forgotten their god's name and replaced it with the title "Baal" or "YHVH": The lying prophets "Which think to cause my people to forget my [God's]name...as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal." (Jer 23:27).



YHVH and Ba'al both represent the god of sexual perversion and wickedness, Satan.  The Jewish Encyclopedia continues:



"The chief evil arose from the fact that the Ba'als were more than mere religious fantasies. They were made the symbols of the reproductive powers of nature, and thus their worship ministered to sexual indulgences, which it at the same time legalized and encouraged. Further, there was placed side by side with the Ba'al a corresponding female symbol, the Ashtoreth (Babyl. "Ashtar") and the relation between the two deities was set forth as the example and the motive of unbridled sensuality. The evil became all the worse when in the popular view Yhwh himself was regarded as one of the Ba'als and the chief of them (Hosea ii. 16). "Baal and Baal Worship," The Jewish Encyclopedia, p.380  (See also, Makow-Cabala-How Sex Became Our Religion)



However, Jews claim that this name (YHVH) is not to be spoken aloud, despite God's command to declare His name throughout the earth (Exo 9:16). Why ignore this commandment?


UTTERING GOD'S NAME


Judaism claims to be the authority on the Old Testament; however they do not practice what they preach. They dress in black, the color of death, in spite of the scriptural precept to wear white (Ecc 9:8), reject Christ as Messiah (who is prophesied throughout the Old Testament) and refuse to speak "God's name" in violation of the scriptures.

By referencing their name of God (YHVH) by not speaking it, Jews create an air of mystery and holiness around the name while enhancing the curiosity surrounding its pronunciation and power. When curious Jews and non-Jews alike see the "sacred" tetragrammaton being used in occult practice, they are intrigued by the perspective that these sorcerers have harnessed the mystical powers of the name.

Wicca, Satanism, Tarot, occult Catholicism, Masonry and Cabalism use their knowledge of the "sacred name of god" as bait to recruit cult members. If the name were not hidden, these cults would lack a critical tool in their recruitment processes. They could not offer this forbidden knowledge if the Jews, the self-proclaimed authority on God, spoke this name openly.

The mystery religions and witchcraft covens owe a great debt to Judaism for conditioning the mainstream to accept the importance and secrecy of this name. The vocal praise of the name YHVH is reserved for the "elect" who learn the Cabala (and pay money to do so) and is forbidden by the "profane." Judaic doctrine is fundamental to selling the occult as a righteous practice.

Satan is the author of confusion and goes by many names. Many of the ancient pagan deities were Satan and his angels in other forms ("The Two Babylons," by A. Hislop). The Jews employ a number of false names for god in their rituals, which are also alternate titles for Satan and other powerful demons.

In the same manner, the Black Magician and Satanist invokes demons by name. In the Satanic Bible, Anton LaVey (Jewish) provides an extensive list of "infernal names" that, when summoned, provide the practitioner with superhuman abilities namely intelligence, power, skills in manipulation, enhanced creativity, material wealth, and the satisfaction of diverse lusts.

PRAYER



Jewish prayers are conducted in Yiddish, a composite language far from the intended pronunciation of the original Hebrew (A.C. Hitchcock, "The Synagogue of Satan," 1). The prayers in modern synagogues are nothing more than disguised demonic invocations. They are hypnotic spells, similar to the Enochian language of the Church of Satan.

bar-mitzvah-ceremony.jpgYoung Jews spend countless hours preparing for their Bar Mitzvah, which consists of memorizing long chants and proper cadence and tone. Most who complete the Bar Mitzvah will not be able to translate more than a handful of words. These young men and women have no idea what they are saying or to whom they are praying. Jews are invoking demons named adonai, elohim, el shaddai, zeba'ot, diyenu (Diana) et al in their rituals.

Vain repetitions and head-bobbing during Jewish prayers aid the entrance into a trance state. Large numbers of atheistic Jews engage in the pseudo-religious worship of status and knowledge.

As Bill Cooper writes, "The WORSHIP (a lot different from STUDY) of knowledge, science, or technology is Satanism in its purest form, and its god is Lucifer" ("Behold A Pale Horse," 70). Judaism fills its members with the same Satanic powers as the Church of Satan and Freemasonry.


CABALISM

The foundation of Cabalism is identical to Satanism: the reversal of the roles of God and Satan. It is the pursuit of hidden (occult) knowledge which allows one to achieve god-like abilities by calling on the so-called names of god. These are the names of fallen angels/demons/spirit guides who are the gatekeepers to occult knowledge (Gen 6:4, Jubilees, Enoch). While not all Jews actively practice Cabala, they all accept the highest Cabalistic name as their god--YHVH.

The infamous Cabalist and Satanist Aleister Crowley writes, "There are thus 72 'Angels'...these [names] are derived from the "Great Name of God"...The "Name" is Tetragrammaton: I.H.V.H., commonly called Jehovah. He is the Supreme Lord of...the whole Universe ("The Book of Thoth," 43). A number of other secret pronunciations of YHVH are used in the occult in addition to Yahweh and Jehovah.

"Of the 54 sacred names in the Jewish Kabbalah, the primary one is YHWH" (R. Hathaway "Sacred Name of God? Or Blasphemy," remnantradio.org/Archives/articles/sacred_name.htm).

The Jewish creed, the Shema, states: "our Lord is One," so why invoke these other names?

DEMONOLOGY

The secret of the ancient Egyptians, and their modern disciples, the Freemasons, is the art of demonology for gaining power--mainly through the devil, Jehovah.



In the Royal Arch degree, the Freemason " acknowledge[s] that the devil, in the guise of Jahbuhlun, is his sacred Lord"--the name Jahbulun being a "composite of Jahweh, Baal, and Osiris." He chants "Jah-buh-lun, Jah-buh-lun, Jah-buh-lun, Je-hov-ah" (Texe Marrs, Codex Magica, Ch. 4). Albert Pike discusses the Cabalistic/Masonic significance of IAHOVAH in great length in Morals & Dogma (66, 213, 401, 467, 519).

The name YHVH was injected into the text of the Old Testament by the Pharisees and others who practiced Babylonian Satanism (the precursor to Cabalism and Talmudism). For those who don't believe the Talmud is Satanic it proclaims that Christ is in Hell boiling in excrement and semen (Gittin, 56b,57a).



An agreement was forged between the Jewish Masoretes and the Catholic Church c. 1000 A.D. to change the name of God in the Hebrew Old Testament to the pagan name Yahweh/Jehovah via the tetragrammaton (remnantradio.org/Archives/articles/sacred_name.htm).

This explains Rosenthal's saying, "We are amazed by the Christians' stupidity in receiving our teachings and propagating them as their own."

In Henry Ford's words, "The Christian cannot read his Bible except through Jewish spectacles, and, therefore, reads it wrong." ("The International Jew," Vol. IV, 238).

GOD'S REAL NAME

The demonic disdain for humanity exhibited by the Luciferian Jew, Harold Rosenthal, typifies the end result of a lethal amalgamation: Jewish religious ritual combined with the worship of knowledge and self. The Jews as a people, by rejecting God and/or accepting Jehovah, have been given over "to a reprobate mind...Being filled with all unrighteousness..." (Rom 1:28-31).

Of course, Mr. Rosenthal was a member of an elite, openly Satanic minority among the Jewish people. Everyday Jews do not know that the god of their faith is in fact Satan hiding behind a mystical name. It is of no consequence to Satan whether he is worshiped deliberately or through subtle lies and deceptions (Gen 3).

The wise Solomon asks, "what is [God's] name, and what is his son's name, if thou canst tell?" (Pro 30:4). God's name is אהיה AHAYAH (sometimes transliterated Ehyeh) meaning I AM. This is the name given to Moses along with the Law. "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you...this is my memorial unto all generations."(Ex 3:14-15). "I AM the Lord thy God...thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Exo 32:4-5).


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Guy Carr - Satan: Prince of this World
Nimoy's Vulcan Sign is Invocation of Devil
Makow - Humanity is Satanically Possessed
-------------Ten Sign Western Society is a Satanic Cult

Freedman - Does Talmud Condone Pedophilia, Incest Bestiality?

Makow Comment- My own view, expressed in my introduction to Illuminati, is that Judaism is not a religion because its God is not universal, and the Cabala does not renounce worldly desires (lust, greed, power etc.) Thus Illuminati Jews have always been on the forefront of "revolution," which ultimately is about supplanting God.  The subtitle of Illuminati3 - "Satanic Possession" refers to the true meaning of the "New World Order." 




The Banishment of Donald's Trump's Older Brother
March 28, 2019, 3:32 am
 Next  Mike Stone - Negative Emotions affect Your Health
 Previous  Even Jews Ask: Is Judaism a Satanic Cult?

ftjr.jpg
(That's Fred Trump Jr. in the black jacket. Donald is at his right)



Donald Trump was
raised to raised to "win"
even if it means running roughshod
over all opposition 
including his own brother.









by Henry Makow PhD.

Watching A&E's The Trump Dynasty,  I was surprised to learn that the President had a brother, eight years older, who had been the designated heir to the family business. Frederick Trump Jr. did not have the "killer, winner-take-all instinct" that his father demanded of his sons.
So Donald supplanted him.

What is unusual about this story is the downright cruelty with which he was treated by his family. Instead of acknowledging he was just not ruthless enough and given a position of honor and love, he was virtually driven out of the family.

THERE WERE ONLY TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE - WINNERS AND LOSERS AND FRED JR. WAS A LOSER.

He began a new career as an airline pilot but the wounds drove him to drink. When he returned to his family home, they gave him menial jobs. He died prematurely "of alcoholism" at age 43 in 1981.

He had married and had two children before divorcing. When Fred Trump Sr. died in 1999, Fred's family was not in the will. When they sued, the Trump family cut off health insurance on which they depended for the care of a gravely sick child.

WHAT MAKES DONALD RUN?

Unfortunately, Donald Trump is our only defence against the Commie hoards. We like his policies on migration, gender and the Supreme Court.
We appreciate his defence of white people, Christians and heterosexuals from Communist onslaught. We hate his servile support of Israel. (Did you know his family was close to Netanyahu when the latter was the UN Ambassador?) We hate his gratuitous sabre rattling with Russia, a betrayal of his campaign promises.

However, we need to recognize that he is a typical New York Jewish hustler/wheeler-dealer whose whole life is predicated on the pursuit of money, sex, fame and power. Typical of many Jewish families, children have to "earn" their parents' love by overachieving.

SAMMY.jpeg
Whatever the reasons, the fact is, Trump is all about glitz, bluff and bullying. For example, he called the editor of the  Forbes 400 (richest people in America) pretending to be "John Barron" the head of finance at the Trump Organization.  He convinced the editor that  Trump was worth a lot more than he was. Trump was later able to literally take this to the bank. His empire was built on bank loans and tax breaks.

He went belly up in the 1990s but the bankers spared him because they saw a use for him down the road. How right they were!
 
There's more. Trump is a highly compromised character, not because of the things the Democrats go after, but because of the things they don't, which indicates the whole thing is a charade. Trump rode Jeffrey Epstein's Lolita Express and is being blackmailed by Mossad.

But there's more. Ever wonder how his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner got to be White House advisors and impose a satanic Chabad agenda on US Foreign policy?

Trump was never shy about inferring an incestuous relationship with Ivanka when she was a teenager.  He is basically in their thrall.

COMPROMISED

The following is sourced here.

"Many of Trump's disturbing comments have been towards his eldest daughter, Ivanka (his favorite child). When appearing on The Wendy Williams Show with Ivanka once, host Wendy Williams asked what their favorite father/daughter pastimes were.
The president replied, "I was going to say sex, but I can relate to [golf and real estate]."

donald_trump_ivanka.jpg
Most fathers would not want to discuss their daughter's nude photoshoots, whether hypothetical or otherwise. However, Trump is apparently not most fathers.

Once during an interview on The View, Trump made everyone uncomfortable when he said,

"Ivanka posing for Playboy would be really disappointing ... not really. But it would depend on what was inside the magazine. ... I don't think Ivanka would [do a nude shoot] inside the magazine, although she does have a very nice figure. I've said that if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."

Most women feel as though they can relax around their fathers, and they won't have to face the same objectification they must deal with in the world. However, that isn't the case with Trump and Ivanka.

On The Howard Stern show back in 2003, Trump said, "You know who's one of the great beauties of the world, according to everybody? And I helped create her. Ivanka. My daughter, Ivanka. She's 6 feet tall; she's got the best body."

Next: Trump grants permission for a cruel comment.
A piece of a**

John Harwood ✔@JohnJHarwood
STERN: Ivanka looks more voluptuous. breast implants?
TRUMP: She's always been very voluptuous
STERN: Can I say, a piece of ass?
TRUMP: yeah

Strange praises
Apparently, Trump's fascination with Ivanka started well before she was an adult. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen reported that when Ivanka was just 13 years old, her father asked, "Is it wrong to be more sexually attracted to your own daughter than your wife?"

The Post reportedly removed the quote from the column before it was published."



CONCLUSION

A recent poll of 250 people on this site found that more trusted Putin than Trump (25% to 17%) and most (45%) trusted neither.

Politics is basically a charade run by the central bankers. I wouldn't be surprised if the self destruction of the Democratic Party is designed to re-elect Trump in 2020.

We are caught between a Masonic Jewish rock and a hard place - Communism and Zionism, two paths to the same destination, global tyranny. The bankers always control both sides of every conflict so they can determine the outcome.

In any case, do we have any reason to feel loyalty to Trump? He is the lesser of two evils, but evil nonetheless.

His view of personal self worth is extremely superficial. His ruthless pursuit of power, sex, money and fame does not bode well.

His gun-to-the-head style of negotiation could result in a nuclear war.



Mike Stone - Negative Emotions affect Your Health
March 29, 2019, 5:03 pm
 Next  A Touch of Crass- Hollywood's Sabbatean Sex Propaganda
 Previous  The Banishment of Donald's Trump's Older Brother
emotional-state-500x325.jpg

 Conversely, all forms of love are healing,
whether it's love for a child,
love of country, or even love of one's job.

The world is run by psychopaths and
moral cretins but we should not allow that
to make us sick.





by Mike Stone
(henrymakow.com)

Did you know that your emotions correspond to specific organs of your body? For instance, the emotions of envy and jealousy correspond to the gallbladder. That's where the expression "green with envy" comes from. Gallstones produced by a debilitated gallbladder are bright green in color.

Anger corresponds to the liver and often results in high blood pressure or skin rashes. Perhaps that is why anger is associated with the color red.

Fear corresponds to the kidneys. That's why a person who is frightened will sometimes lose control of their bladder. Grief corresponds to the lungs, etc.

In order to improve your health, particularly if you've been diagnosed with a major illness, it's important to work on your emotions. By "work," I mean to release as many negative emotions as you can. Granted, that's easier said than done, but it's essential for healing the body.

gratitude.jpg
If you're having trouble releasing negative emotions, you might want to try concentrating on their opposites. If you have a lot of anger in your life, try cultivating kindness and generosity. Be extra nice to others until your anger subsides. If envy is your thing, try practising gratitude. Be thankful for the little things in your life. (https://www.henrymakow.com/2018/11/a-short-thanksgiving-message.html)

You can also look for the benefits of negative emotions. Anger can be a great motivator. If channelled correctly, anger can lead one to an attitude of "I'll show them," with very productive results. As a sophomore, Michael Jordan was deemed too short to make the varsity basketball team in high school. His anger spurred him on to become one of the greatest basketball players of all time.

Fear is another great motivator. If it wasn't for fear of spending eternity in hell, the majority of Christians (aka traditional Catholics) would be committing mortal sin on a daily basis. (https://www.henrymakow.com/2019/03/time-to-believe-in-hell.html). If it wasn't for fear of arrest or being socially ostracized, most humans would be breaking the law on a daily basis. Indeed, you could make an argument that fear is necessary for any civilized society to survive.

On the flip side, positive emotions also correspond to organs of the body. Joy corresponds to the heart. If you want a healthy heart, then in addition to exercise and a good diet, find things in your life to be joyful about. Does a child's smile bring you joy? Spend some time around children. Do colorful flowers brighten your day? Spend some time in nature or the local park.

Lloyd.jpg
Cousins was diagnosed with a rare heart disease and told he had a 1-in-500 chance of living. He did two things: First, he started taking huge doses of vitamin C. Second, he began watching comedy movies, hoping that the laughter and joy they produced would stimulate his heart and immune system. It worked and he healed himself. Cousins wrote a book about his experience called "Anatomy of an Illness."

Cousins is not an isolated case. Tens of thousands of people in this country have healed their bodies through emotional release work. Traditional Chinese medicine has stressed emotional healing for centuries.

Have you ever been in love? The euphoria you felt at the time was the best immune system booster ever. It's actually quite hard for someone in the initial stages of romantic love to get sick. The excitement that they're feeling strengthens every organ in their body. (Note: I'm not talking about lust, which can be debilitating to the body. That's why old-time boxing trainers admonished their fighters to avoid sex - and especially what they called "strange stuff" - before a fight.)

Don't fret if you're single and in need of emotional healing, yet the prospect of romantic love seems a dark and distant dream. All forms of love are healing, whether it's love for a child, love of country, or even love of one's job. Anecdotally, I've noticed that artists who create works of beauty rarely get sick. They tend to remain healthy and age gracefully.

So do your best to release negative emotions and cultivate positive ones. Your health will improve, others will find you pleasant to be around and become attracted to you, and who knows - you just might fall in love.

Mike Stone is the author of A New America, the first novel of the Alt-Right, a dark comedy set on Election Day 2016 in Los Angeles -  - Available exclusively on Amazon. His book, It's Ok to be White was banned by Amazon.
--
Related - Americans are Stressed Out  and it's Affecting Life Expectancy

A Touch of Crass- Hollywood's Sabbatean Sex Propaganda
March 30, 2019, 8:05 am
 Next  The "Forbidden" Christchurch Video - 22 Discrepancies
 Previous  Mike Stone - Negative Emotions affect Your Health
crass.jpg
My two biggest regrets in life are 1) my naive assumption that
society was dedicated to improving its citizens lives rather than degrading and
mentally enslaving, if not killing them. (See WW1 and 2)

My second was to embrace the prevalent Cabalist lie that sex is a religious experience,
the highest experience life offers. This led to the worship of an imaginary female
ideal resulting in a kind of male impotence. This is why so many men, (#MeToo),
cannot see women realistically and establish healthy relationships.

Movies like "A Touch of Class" (1973) unwittingly indoctrinated me. 
Cabalist Jews used Hollywood to substitute their satanic vision
of reality for the real thing. For 100 years, they have trashed marriage and family, and
promoted sexual promiscuity and homosexuality. They have led us all astray.





(updated from Aug. 1, 2011)
by Henry Makow Ph.D,

In a fit of nostalgia, I watched one of my favorite movies again, "A Touch of Class" (1973). I had fond memories of a classy romantic comedy starring George Segal and Glenda Jackson that had influenced me.

What a shock! I quickly realized why I was so messed up as a young man. 

The movie presented a man betraying his wife and children as the height of sophistication and fun. It presented random sexual intercourse as if it were the Holy Grail.  As an impressionable 23-year-old, I adopted these attitudes which ultimately undermined my ability to form healthy relationships with women. (I am now on my fourth and final marriage.)

Then, I happened to see a trailer for an upcoming movie, "No Strings Attached"  which teaches young people that promiscuous sex is the ultimate in modern thinking.

Both these movies were made by Jews. Although almost 40 years apart, Hollywood Jews are pumping out socially destructive agitprop in the guise of sophisticated comedy.  If "A Touch of Class" damaged me, I can't imagine the damage Hollywood is now doing to the new generation.

Illuminati Jews Melvin Frank and Ivan Reitman directed the two movies respectively. Their sex for sex's sake dogma is hardly the "latest thing." The Illuminati are a continuation of the Sabbatean-Frankist Jewish heresy dating back to the 17th and 18th century.

The Sabbatean-Frankists were Satanists who believed in "redemption through evil." The believed the Messiah would return when the world had descended into chaos. They advocated the destruction of marriage and family and engaged in adultery, orgies, incest and paedophilia.  They believed sexual intercourse was both divine offering and mystical union with God. Little did I imagine that these were occult teachings and society had been subverted by a satanic cult.

MORE ON THESE MOVIES

Illuminati Jews who own Hollywood have been making home movies for decades and passing them off as entertainment.

"A Touch of Class" is really "A Touch of Crass." (That's what they do, present crass as class.) George Segal plays a typical narcissistic Jew yet the "J" word is never mentioned.  There is no explanation of why anyone would find him attractive, except for his money. His friend "Walter Menkes" played by Paul Sorvino, is also a Jew. The movie oozes self-serving "Jewish humanistic" values yet the audience is totally unaware.

Glenda Jackson plays the Gentile divorcee supposedly looking for uncomplicated sex on the side. Since Segal is married, there is no danger of "falling in love."
 
Which of course always happens. But on Menkes advice, Segal summons up the strength to end it for her sake, because he really loves her and doesn't want to hurt her any more.

no-strings.jpgBased on the trailer, "No Strings Attached" seems to follow the same theme. "Uncomplicated sex" leads to "wanting more."

"Monogamy goes against human nature," Jewish actress Natalie Portman exclaims. "Why can't we just have sex?"   In fact, it is promiscuity that is against human nature. They want "more."

It seems like Illuminati Jews are obsessed with having sex as long as it is out of wedlock. The "falling in love" part is a fig leaf to cover making sexual promiscuity pervasive and socially acceptable. People who have developed a habit of promiscuity do not stop on a dime when they marry. Combined with feminism, it effectively kills the institution of marriage. The habit includes homosexuality as Kutcher, in the trailer, awakes and wonders if he had sex with the guy. 

Recently I walked in on someone watching "Hot Tub Climate Change," directed by another cabalist, Steve Pink. The scene was pure porn, interracial at that. A naked white girl with ample jugs is having intercourse with a black guy in a hot tub. Mainstream movies today would be banned as obscene as recently as 20 years ago.  

Some of these movies are just Jewish navel-gazing. Recently I rented "Greenberg" with Ben Stiller, directed by Noah Baumbach. The title character is a self-obsessed middle-aged Jew at loose ends. The tiniest thing he does for anyone is treated as earth-shattering. He is of no interest to anyone yet his sense of self-importance is staggering. He says he's the "funniest person he knows" yet there is zero evidence on display. Nothing happens except that he has sex with a Gentile girl, avoids commitment and helps her get an abortion.  To be fair, Noah Baumbach has made some fine movies, "The Squid and the Whale" & "Margot at the Wedding."

When you own Hollywood, it appears you can inflict your vulgar home movies on the world, even if they are derived from Sabbatean satanism.

Related - Gaslighting the White Normie

----------- Pleasantville - Sex as Self Actualization (at middle)
----------- Does Seinfeld Serve a Darker Purpose?
-----------  Hollywood Home Movies Portray Jewish Nightmare


The "Forbidden" Christchurch Video - 22 Discrepancies
March 31, 2019, 9:44 am
 Next  "Brotherhood of the Bell" Exposed Masonic Control
 Previous  A Touch of Crass- Hollywood's Sabbatean Sex Propaganda
new-zealand.jpg

(left, Brenton Tarrant)



The video was suppressed because it is obviously bogus.

In 2003, German historian Wolfgang Eggert sounded the alarm about the

Cabalist doomsday cult whose thinking now pervades the Trump Whitehouse.

Today he says it is vital that the Christchurch massacre fraud be exposed.

He says:

"The Christchurch „massacre" is our chance to destroy the power of mainstream media narratives. Although in most cases I usually reject the classification of terror attacks as hoaxes, this one seems to be such a false flag non-incident. And it threatens all of us truthers. The looming threat for us to be muzzled by increasingly rigid internet legislation is now spread by the mainstream media on a daily basis since 15th March.

We have to fight this shutdown. We do that best by eventually (!) once (!) clarifying/solving one - THIS- "terror" case completely."



by Wolfgang Eggert

transl. by Laura Kölsch

(henrymakow.com)

What we know

1. The official offender Brenton Tarrant. This unemployed man has travelled to exciting crisis areas halfway around the world in recent years, allegedly radicalizing himself to the far right. Whether this happened in North Korea or in the Balkans, in Israel, in Turkey, in Iran, in Afghanistan or China's civil war region Xinjiang is not explained. In Pakistan, where the alleged racist and Islam-hater also stayed near the embattled Kashmir area https://www.thequint.com/news/world/new-zealand-christchurch-terrorist-leaves-behind-seventy-four-page-manifesto-calling-indian-chinese-turkish-invaders only 5 months before the gunshots of Christchurch, he seems to have felt totally at ease. In a Facebook post he praises the inhabitants and indirectly also the government of the Muslim country. That is the vita, the official vita, which seemed "complete" until a few weeks ago.

By now we know that Tarrant was a member of the right-wing Knights Templar Order, which, among others, has the goal to "infiltrate Islamist groups to report their terrorist plans to the authorities" https://www.zeit.de/2012/21/DOS-Breivik/seite-3.

Might one think of intelligence work looking at this vita?

Wolfgang-Eggert.png
(left, Wolfgang Eggert)

2. As already mentioned, a reality-based anti-terrorism exercise also took place in Christchurch on the very day of the drama, topic: how to deal with armed offenders.

https://m.focus.de/politik/ausland/terroranschlag-in-neuseeland-sie-rammten-sein-fahrzeug-so-stoppen-zwei-polizisten-den-attentaeter_id_10464998.html

 Members of these training forces, not ordinary police, secured, possibly according to the training script, "explosives" in several cars, including the vehicle of the mosque shooter.

Commissioner Bush, three hours after the attacks: "several IEDs attached to cars have been made safe now." "This speaks to the seriousness of what occurred."

And it was they who arrested Tarrant. There is a video showing the "arrest". The professional action - the car was rammed - may indicate that the "arrest" was part of the ongoing training.

Considering Tarrant's resume, which suggests anti-terrorist activities, the headline could read: How special forces correctly retire a colleague. In fact, the New Zealand Herald reports that Australian snipers participated in this or an accompanying exercise and were also seen near the crime scenes.

 3.The suppression of the "evidence video"

Tarrant's video, still to find HERE

https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=WO4NOH7OD8Y2 (New Zealand Mosque Shooting Uncensored) https://www.bitchute.com/video/Ik6VYAJGF7os/ https://videos.files.wordpress.com/AHg7RSw6/new-zealander-shoots-up-mosque-march-15th-2019-1_hd.mp4

thot-crime.jpg
has been "classified by the Chief Censor's Office as objectionable," under a 1993 New Zealand law, which allows convictions up to 10 years of prison for downloading and/or distributing incriminating films. New Zealand Police have also been searching personal data of users who even controversially discuss Tarrant's 'manifesto' or video.

These censorship measures took over the entire world network within hours and subsequently made it impossible for non-New Zealanders to form an opinion on the video.

Remarkably, such measures have NOT been applied to the much crueller ISIS videos, which show beheadings, drownings, and burning alives. The relevant "Charlie Hebdo videos" are still available on the internet.

Why this time is different, so say the Hoaxer, has its reason in numerous vulnerabilities of the Christchurch perpetrator's video.

And they have more than a few arguments on their side.

What the video shows

4. The „perpetrators" selfie -13.46 (3.09) Tech-Fail (Above)

The driver intentionally swings the camera over to his face at one point, allowing to 'recognize' him. It's the only 'evidence picture' because there is no surveillance camera footage of the attacked mosques. The mask-like face seen in the car video may well be that of today's "offender" Brenton Tarrant. But it looks like it has been cut out and does not fit in with the body, or -the stills show it particularly clear - the body seems too far behind the head. Post-production comes into mind.

https://s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/images.deccanchronicle.com/dc-Cover-m482e2r1n2tei6lsvek9ovrvb3-20190315141031.Medi.jpeg

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Brenton-Tarrant.jpg https://fijisun.com.fj/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Brenton-Tarrant-750x403.jpg

5. The blind „eyewitnesses" -10.28 (6.25) Basis-Video vs Endproduct

The "shooter" walks past two people in front of the gate of Al-Noor mosque. They are not surprised by the helmeted, camouflaged and armed passerby, who in turn ignores both "witnesses"

6. To counter the impression, that the guns might have been "invisible" when the film was made, we have an eyewitness. The msn-article reads as followed: Mohamed Yama was praying in the Al Noor mosque having the closest of escapes after bravely confronting the gunman. "I am shocked," he said.

"I say hey. What are you doing? What's the gun? This is a mosque."

Mr Yama then recounts the moment the gunman turned to him and fired miraculously missing him by the slimmest of margins.

As worshippers tried to escape, Mohamed fled onto the street calling ambulances.

 https://www.9news.com.au/national/news-melbourne-stories-of-survival-from-christchurch-terror-attack/e69bd4b2-17f8-4f26-ade5-e475448a30e4

BUT: We don´t find this "occurrence" on "Tarrant´s film" - it is neither to be seen nor to be heard there.

HERE https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=1XMGXKR2W7WU (0:37) we see and hear a second Mohamed Yama, another man under the same name who recounts the same incident. Watch "Tarrant´s film", when he passes the cars, that this man is talking about. There is no voice to be heard by someone speaking to him in this area. And there is not the slightest reaction by the film-maker, that he might had been touched from behind. Besides the man recounts a false position of the film-camera. He points to his upper breast, instead of the head.

The aggressor greeted like a friend -10.19 (6.36) Basic vs Finished Product

This obvious discrepancy continues at the entrance gate to the mosque, where the "perpetrator" points his gun at people standing at the door while these first "victims" greet him with the words "hello brother" which is common among Muslims.

cc-yt.jpg
7. No weapon recoil -10.18 (6.37ff) Tech-Logic-Fail

The "shooting" starts at the mosque gate. The tremble-free video does not show any weapon recoil which gives rise to the assumption that the filming person was unarmed. For comparison, see 3.00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=134&v=ItILe1yWvZ8

8. 52 shots from a 30 shots magazine -10.11 (6.44ff) Tech-Logic-Fail

After the entry scenario (9 shots) the "shooter" drops the weapon and changes to his second rifle. Here the shot sequence: Creeping: 3 shots; side room: 4 shots; forward in the hallway: 4 shots; entrance to the prayer room (crawling and second body): 9 shots; on group right in the room: approx. 24 shots; on approaching person: 5 shots plus 3 on the ground. That makes - with a 30 shots magazine! - about 52 shots without apparent magazine change.

9. Why is no one escaping? -9.59 (6.57) Logic-Fail

When the shooter first enters the prayer room, he spares the group already crammed into the left corner. At -9.49 (7.06) he is back in the corridor, where he reloads --9.41 (7.14) and then goes back to the prayer room and only now, -9.36 (7.19) shoots at the body pile on the left. They had until then been able to escape to the garden through a glass door just two steps away, but with one exception - -9.36 (7.19) no one did.

10. No room damage Tech-Logic-Fail

In the same scene the "perpetrator" fires with high salvo density especially at the right side of the room. It is completely inexplicable why the walls and windows show no ammunition effects.

socks.jpg

11. Barefoot "victim" in socks -8.13 (8.42) Different takes within filmmaking

A „victim", which at the beginning crawls barefoot on the hallway's floor, -10,06(6.47) wears blue socks in a later camera shot. http://i.4cdn.org/pol/1553029204727.webm

12. Water without rain -7.58 (8.55) Different takes within filmmaking

The "shooter" leaves the mosque and takes to the streets. At the entrance to the mosque there is a large water mark, which according to the video time code two and a half minutes before -10.27 (6.27) was still considerably smaller or narrower. In the short meantime - a cone locking the exit underlines this - no cars can have come out. This is an indication a prolonged stage setting, disguised by a hidden camera cut.

13. Senseless shooting & cool vehicles -7.58 (8.57ff) Basic vs Finished Product

If the scenic routes "sidewalk/street/side road" were pre-recorded like all tracking shots in the open air, then there was some action required to put on top the pre-recorded material. The senseless shooting on the streets when no one was around, appear suitable for such a use. Strikingly, the car traffic on the road continues undisturbed!

14. Dissolving cartridges -7.58 (8.57ff) Tech-Logic-Fail

The phenomenon of the "phantom cartridges", which has already been mentioned in 15, is particularly clearly confirmed when the shooter takes the street in front of the mosque under "fire". Here you can see the ejection of the cartridge cases - which, however, a thing of impossibility, DISSOLVE in the air! The few cartridges that seem to reach the ground without the typical clanking noise magically disappear within seconds.

https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=W9956S2AYY9H

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpdRzQZAGxw

15. No consequences for cars -7.04 (9.52ff) Basic vs Finished Product

While the "shooter" passes the entrance area of the mosque on the road, we notice in the right angle that a silver van parked in front of the gate is moving in the yard. https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=BGORUSUB2H4N However, the "perpetrator" ignores the car and rather shoots in the empty side road. As he walks back down the alley to the mosque, the van is already gone. There is only one (!) scene in which "shots" are aimed at a car: This is the front window shot at -3.58 (12.50) where the "shooter", despite three attempts, hits nothing.

16. Music contradicts live stream -6.55 (10.01ff)Post-production

In the video, you can almost continuously hear music, regardless of whether the 'offender' in the car, outdoors or in the mosque. This would only make sense if he had a portable music device with him. If he had, then still the question arises, why the temporal settings of the shots is not backed by music. This can actually only be explained by post-production. An additional indication is the 'suitable' mood influencing use of music after the head shot at an 'escaping woman' -4.45 (12.13). The background music changes to the song "I am the God of Hellfire" then.

Additionally, it should be noticed, that the reloading of the weapon(s) always sound the same, so as if someone used one and the same sound-effect on multiple occasions.

17. The mumbling and tipping over Tech-Fail

The background acoustics from the "victims" are striking as well: throughout the massacre, we only hear some sort of a continuous murmur. Individual screams of pain, shouts, or warning calls are nowhere to be heard. Almost all "victims" are already motionless on the ground when the camera hits them the first time, without any visual effect of being hit or of suffering, sometimes -9.59 (6.56) even related shot on (seemingly) targeted people are questionable.

bodies.jpg

18. Dolls and Photoshop? -6.00 (10.55) Basic vs Finished Product

There is too little blood caused by the massacre. This is 100% correct for the first run; what would explain - in case of a virtual manipulation of the film - why the "perpetrator" had to leave the mosque and "return" to document at least "standing" blood near the entrance and in two or three places of the prayer room. The hoax community, therefore, suspects fake victims. The analysis of one scene out of this community https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=XSY1S9AM6W8X judges by a 'victim's' arm movement that the bodies were not on-site as a group at the time of filming but are individually extracted from other picture and film footage and merged into a group per mouse click. However, this arm movement is less compelling than the leg posture of the jeans wearing 'victim' lying next to it. His legs (a short-term illumination underlines it) seem to FLOAT.

Another example for unnatural body positions is the man "shot dead" at the main room's entrance, -7.20/8.13 lying face down but legs somehow bent in the air, looking rather like a doll than a human being.

19. Shoes taken off -5.08 (11.47ff) Logic-Fail

Finally leaving the mosque the "shooter" at the entrance targets two "refugees" escaping through a side gate in the property wall. To hit them is actually impossible because of the distance, the moving target and the very narrow shooting angle. But he seems to make it with two shots. The camera moves to the "victim" on the sidewalk, passes the (again?) closed gate and captures one meter next to the "victim", for whatever reason, her shoes. The "assassin" "shoots" her in the head, blowing her hair to the side like under the effects of a hairdryer. The mortally hit woman's hand reaches for her head. Meanwhile, the car traffic moves calmly. The second person, who escaped, has not been presented by the media yet.

20. No bumpers whilst run over -4.29 (12.26ff) Basic vs Finished Product

Leaving the crime scene the "perpetrator" drives over that woman's body. The noticeable "bumpers" in the car are far too small to have come from overrunning a human body.

21. Silence on chaos day -4.27 (12.28ff) Basic vs Finished Product

Although the police was alerted already 2 minutes after the first shots at Al Noor mosque and 20 ambulances were on their way there, you can only hear one siren during the "shooters" drive away from Al Noor mosque to Linwood mosque.

22. The unbreakable front window -3.58 (12.50ff) Tech-Logic-Fail

The "offender" fires his weapon from in (!) the car through his front window without causing any visible destruction. The video footage of his arrest as well shows no damage to the front window.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/111328483/video-captures-moment-police-arrested-shooting-suspected

In reality, the blast - multiplied in a closed and even more so in a small space - is enormous with live ammunition. The "shooter" should have been "deaf" first and the microphone should have had to override at this point. This means that the recording device could not have processed more sounds in the same line, but in this case, it surprisingly can.

CONCLUSION



The fact is that those who point out the possibility of a faked attack have a number of points in their favor:

52 shots from a 30-shot magazine

Self-dissolving cartridge

Missing ammunition effects on walls and car windows

A barefoot victim with socks

All these are real killer arguments against the credibility of the video and thus against the official narrative.

Furthermore, there is clear evidence that the video was "produced" and processed in two rounds, and this before the crime. The first round is a pure video recording of only the car drive and the mosque. In the second round, the hoax-community says, the shocking action scenes were subsequently layered on top of the plain drive-location video, partly with the help of blue box / green screen effects and Photoshop, possibly even with the use of dolls and so-called crisis actors, the latter typical for training scenarios.

The question is: who then was the political director? The mosques operators and the New Zealand government, together with the subordinate investigating police would be the first to suspect because they 'behaved' according to the - supposedly fictional - narrative. But the reason for them to make such a dubious evidence video remains puzzling. It may have been a pure training movie, designed for internal drill use, on this day. But New Zealand may have pursued further external intentions with the film.

Anyway, there is the suspicion that this very product was seized by third parties and modified in a way that literally produced their own movie and put New Zealand's government under pressure. We probably will never know the whole truth.

----

Related- The Christchurch "Shooting" Is Indeed A Fake: New Updates Show What Else Is WRONG With That Event!

https://northerntruthseeker.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-christchurch-shooting-is-indeed.html

Note from Eggert- Guide to Investigation

The Christchurch „massacre" is our chance to destroy the power of mainstream media narratives. Although in most cases I usually reject the classification of terror attacks as hoaxes, this one seems to be such a false flag non-incident. And it threatens all of us truthers. The looming threat for us to be muzzled by increasingly rigid internet legislation is now spread by the mainstream media on a daily basis since 15th March.

We have to fight this shutdown. We do that best by eventually (!) once (!) clarifying/solving one - THIS- "terror" case completely. This can be done using the search instructions below. Of course, we can hardly accomplish this work alone from the US or Europe as the research requires being on-site. I, therefore, ask you to send the search instructions to friends, readers, followers, ex-Muslims etc. (ideally in NZ) to move things forward and find people to investigate in Christchurch. In view of the increasing persecutions (possession and distribution ban regarding the Christchurch shooting video), the volunteers are well advised to obtain press accreditations from alternative media.

Groups worth investigating

1.Problematic because potentially ‚part of the game':

⦁ Members of forces conducting the exercise

⦁ Members of conventional police forces

⦁ Members of emergency medical care

⦁ Hospital staff

2.Partly problematic because potentially (already) included:

⦁ Residents with views on the mosques

⦁ Muslims (Questions, e.g.: does the time of crime match the Friday prayer time window? Were the mosques on 15th March accessible for usual worshippers traffic? Did family, friends or the like visit the mosques on the day/time of the crime? Who knows the victims portrayed in the media? https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/03/16/13/11074574-6816117-image-a-21_1552743767140.jpg)

3. Unproblematic

⦁ Investigations in nearby shops, offices

⦁ Identify and locate people who were near the ‚crime scene' on 15th March (e.g. by publishing still images of people /cars taken from the shooting video, combined with interview requests/search queries)

 Facts, unproblematic to check

⦁ Were the streets shown in the shooting video accessible to the public on 15th March? Did they appear as in the video or were circumstances/objects noticed which contradict the video's narrative (e.g. construction sites, traffic signs, billboards)?

⦁ Technical forensics: The suspected greenscreen shooting video should be reviewed in depth. Possible starting points are the audio track, the camera move on the suspects face, the disappearing cartridge cases, the gunshots on the car's windscreen, noticeable cuts.



"Brotherhood of the Bell" Exposed Masonic Control
March 24, 2019, 10:47 pm
 Next  Neurologist Andrew Moulden - Vaccinations Cause Many Sicknesses
 Previous  The "Forbidden" Christchurch Video - 22 Discrepancies


Brotherhood-of-the-Bell-Exposed-Masonic-Control.jpg
A 1970 made-for-TV movie is the only
drama to properly describe the
problem of Masonic subversion.

We are mind controlled and
don't even know it.











" Freemasons represent a class of Gentile traitors put in power by the Illuminati Jewish bankers to carry out their pernicious agenda. For some reason, in spite of betraying their countrymen in the most egregious way, Freemasons are rarely mentioned by fierce opponents of the 'Jewish Conspiracy.'"






Updated from Feb 2, 2013
by Henry Makow Ph.D.

The fact that a satanic cult, Freemasonry, controls society is confirmed by the fact this entity is rarely mentioned in the
mass media. And if it is, never portrayed in its true light. 

A 1970 made-for-TV movie "Brotherhood of the Bell" is a rare exception. It shows what happens when a successful university professor disobeys his vow of secrecy. It is available here.

Andrew Patterson, played by Glenn Ford, is ordered to blackmail a close friend and colleague. When the colleague commits suicide, Patterson is consumed by guilt and vows to expose the Brotherhood.

His subsequent experience mirrors a description posted here at henrymakow.com. See The Masonic Intelligence Network.  Here is another example of gangstalking.

A "MADE" MAN

Patterson has the air of a self-made man. But when he goes public about the suicide, he discovers that his success is largely due to his 20-year membership in the "fraternity."

Francis-hidden-hand.jpeg
(Pope Francis has made a fetish of signalling his fealty to Satan)

Money that supported his academic department is cut off, and he finds himself unemployed.  His father's engineering company is suddenly audited and accused of fraud.  His wife rages at his silly "honor" and packs her bags.

In a wonderful scene, he realizes that not only did he own his success to this cult, he owed his wife to it as well. Her father is a member of the Brotherhood.  "You were part of my reward," he tells her. "Get the hell out."

The film captures Patterson's naivety. He was a member of this group for 20 years but apparently doesn't realize the extent of its power. He doesn't realize that the President of the US and everyone else of importance is involved in this conspiracy.

The film was written by David Karp (The Untouchables, The Defenders) based on his novel; and directed by veteran TV director Abraham Paul Wendkos (Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare.)  

jewishconcp.jpg
I think it got made because they spun the Brotherhood as being wholly WASP. When a member of a TV audience (left) tries to connect it with the "Jewish Conspiracy" she is wholly discredited and hooted down.

In fact, Freemasons represent a ruling class of Gentile traitors put in power by the Jewish central bankers to carry out their pernicious agenda. For some reason, in spite of betraying their countrymen in the most egregious way, Freemasons are rarely mentioned by opponents of the "Jewish Conspiracy." 

Otherwise, the movie is pretty realistic. It sizzles with the intensity characteristic of the Golden Age of TV drama, and captures the helplessness of the individual against a shadowy, well organized and financed conspiracy.

hand-sign.jpeg
Patterson is able to recruit one other member of the Brotherhood to his cause, and the movie ends on this positive if dubious note.

If humanity goes the way of the dinosaurs, or continues to descend into a comatose  slave state, it will be because men didn't stand up, like Andrew Patterson does. This is because they never grew up.

Instead, they chose the easy way: Personal gain by betraying their community and their culture to an alien satanic conspiracy.

Now all that is left, is for us all to reap the whirlwind.
----
Related- Freemasonry- The Elephant in the Room
------------    Media Mask Masonic Control
----------------  Donald Trump - Masonic Crypto Jew
----------------   My Lifelong Struggle With Freemasons
------------------  The Masonic Intelligence Network

First Comment from Jeffrey:

I watched this when you first posted it two years ago, and you're right about the Jewish spin as far as the talk show with the antisemitic lady and the WASP scapegoating and targeting, much like so many Jewish "investigative journalists" tried to infiltrate Skull & Bones some time ago (as if WASPS like Kerry and Bush don't do their master's will).

The only problem I had with it is Patterson's being in the brotherhood without knowing it.  Working your way up the Masonic ladder is something that Masons are conscious of, to say the least. Otherwise, it's a great find and great television, the likes of which will not happen again.

The way his wife deserts him for stepping up, being a man and doing what's morally right in the face of evil (which she's covertly a part of) is really heartbreaking.  Anyway, that's how I remember it.  Thanks for putting it out there.

Jennifer wrote:

I once loved a Freemason. He knew "they" were helping him but they convinced him it was because he was "special," "intelligent," "extraordinary," and "unique."

He believed he had earned their respect and thus his business success.  Years later, after he was deeply in, I was with him when he had his epiphany.  He realized he wasn't that special or smart. He was deluded by them into thinking he was a hero when he was actually an anti-Christ and a son of Satan.

Shocked he said, "They" lied to me!"  He realized they were using him for their evil agenda.  Upon this realization, he cried all night till early dawn using every tissue and roll of toilet paper in the house. He was crying for the loss of his soul and the death he was bringing to humanity.

I cried with him and for him. There was no way out for him because part of his mind control/brainwashing was that God did not exist.  He was an atheist.  He had closed the one door that could have saved him.  Thus there was no hope, no forgiveness - not even God could save him. I still pray for him....I felt like Gretchen in Faust.




Neurologist Andrew Moulden - Vaccinations Cause Many Sicknesses
April 2, 2019, 3:13 am
 Next  Massacre was Masonic Gun Grab, says NZ Man
 Previous  "Brotherhood of the Bell" Exposed Masonic Control
(left, Canadian neurologist Andrew Moulden, PhD. MD 1964-2013 explains it all here in 20 six-minute segments. He was told to play ball or have the ball taken away.)

Often a comet will streak
across the night sky
and we will miss it.
So our true champions
are murdered and flushed down
the memory hole while
scoundrels and traitors get Nobel Prizes.

The healthcare industry cannot leave sickness to chance. It is a bigger business than war.


by Henry Makow PhD

Andrew Moulden should have been awarded a Nobel Prize for showing how the "healthcare industry" is
poisoning the general population with vaccines.  He showed how vaccines were responsible for causing "microscopic strokes"
by limiting the flow of oxygen in the bloodstream reaching capillaries.

In his 2009 interview on vactruth.com, Moulden stated: "I have now conclusively shown that ALL vaccines, from infancy to geriatric, are causing the exact same brain damages irrespective of what disease or disorder comes out. The damages are specific to end vascular "mini-strokes" that are beneath the resolution of our neuroimaging, but measurable in a before/after vaccination protocol. They are also directly measurable in real time - however, this involves techniques and technology I have not disclosed to the public as yet."

AND "The evidence is now self-evident. All you have to do now is receive the education you need to appreciate and see what is before your very eyes - layperson and Doctor."

AND "It is no longer an opinion as I now have conclusive evidence to show that ALL vaccines are causing the exact same damages for us all in the exact same manner that wild poliovirus caused paralysis, respiratory failure, death, bleeding into the brain, and more."



andrew.jpeg
For revealing the truth and trying to save innocent millions from sickness and death, which enrich the health care industry and their accomplices in government and media, Moulden, left, died prematurely in 2013 supposedly of suicide. They claimed he was bipolar but the videos show a very competent and credible young neurologist. He joins the scores of holistic doctors reported murdered in recent years. 

A colleague of Dr. Moulden who wishes to remain anonymous reported to Health Impact News that he/she had contact with him two weeks before he died in 2013. Dr. Moulden told our source and a small number of trusted colleagues in October of 2013 that he was about to break his silence and would be releasing new information  which could have destroyed the vaccine model of disease management, destroyed a major source of funding for the pharmaceutical industry, and at the same time seriously damaged the foundation of the germ theory of disease. He was ready to come back. Even though he had been silenced, he had never stopped his research.

Then, two weeks later, Dr. Moulden suddenly died.

I know Moulden represented a real challenge because of the unforgivable smear in this rationalwiki article:

Andrew Moulden (c. 1964-2013) was a Canadian quack who pushed an extreme form of anti-vaccine woo, claiming that vaccines are the causes of most illnesses and diseases, including autism. In addition to his anti-vaccine ideology (which is frequently too extreme even for other anti-vaxers) Andrew Moulden was a germ theory denialist, a conspiracy crank, a 9/11 truther, a failed politician, and a snake oil salesman offering an Internet-based magical procedure that will uncover the true causes of everything from shaken baby syndrome and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) to dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Moulden claimed several academic degrees, including a medical degree, but he was not licensed to practice medicine anywhere. In fact, there were apparently restraining orders to keep him out of major medical conferences -- according to him, anyway.

Moulden didn't practise medicine because he was a neurologist. The article challenges his credentials but they are all authentic. He held a PhD and an MD and had studied the effect of vaccines on the brain in a clinical setting for 20 years.

He wrote:  As many know, I officially quit my medical career in 2007. I did this in order to travel around North America to do research into vaccine safety and to present my research on vaccine safety across Canada and the United States. I only spoke the truth. I was not well received. I only tried to help you save yourselves from where you are right now...Harm's way, you ARE in it. It IS in ALL of you. Like a ticking bomb, it is about to go off.

Where have I been? In 2010-11 I returned to my PhD training to complete a full year accredited Clinical Neuropsychology internship at the Baycrest Center for Geriatric Care in Toronto. During this time I also taught a University course on Health Medicine at York University in Toronto. I stopped talking about my research and vaccines...

The Public Health Department advocated that I NOT be allowed to return to clinical medicine as they were incensed by the message (truth) of my lectures and teaching prior to 'disappearing.' The only way I was allowed to return to organized medicine to work with medical patients was if I signed a contract drawn up by the public health department which states: 1) I am mentally ill and therefore my research and teachings on vaccine safety were delusional. 2) I am not allowed, whatsoever, to speak or present my research or views on vaccine safety, in public, at all, as a condition of being allowed to return to clinical medicine, receiving a medical license, and for maintaining that license.

At this junction, the contract the Public Health Department has me shackled to (it is like my mind and freedom of will and thought and speech is in prison) states that they can take my medical license away and expel me from the University of College of Medicine for which I am employed by. I am about to break my silence. In order to bring my truth forward, for you, I am once again, taking a form stand. I will ONLY stand for Truth and speak the Truth, so help me God.

Rationalwiki claims Moulden presented no proof when in fact he released a six-hour presentation.

bigtree.jpeg
(Del Bigtree is producer and director of Vaxxed)


He writes: "The end-result of my focused, and dogged investigations, born only of a mind that "enjoys figuring neurobiological enigmas out", has been the discovery not only of the cause of vaccine-induced autism and other medical morbidities but the means to demonstrate this to everyone on a case by case basis. Moreover, the answers that have emerged have also solved several other medical enigmas and has culminated in a re-write of Louis Pasteur's, and contemporary Western style allopathic medicines', entire medical model - "The Germ Theory" of human disease. As it turns out, the reason we have made a "mess of it" with one size fits all vaccines specifically, and antibiotics and pharmaceutical counter-attack measures, in general, is that the Germ Theory was just that - a theory, which has turned out to be wrong, in very fundamental ways. I look forward to sharing what I have discovered with the world.

"The medical establishment is very protective of "core dogma" and reluctant and slow to accept change. Recognizing this, I have elected to release what I have discovered, to the lay and the scientific communities, as well as the criminal justice system, in short succession - beginning August of 2008. THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT!

"The tide of acceptance and change may be slow. However, with the confidence of Columbus, I can now definitively say "the world of human disease is "round" not flat, and it is not so much the substance placed in the body that causes disease. Remarkably, irrespective of the triggering "substance", toxin, metal, particulate, living or dead "bug", or portions thereof, the response of the body is the same across many disease categories, and ultimately medical diagnoses, and remarkably from infancy to adulthood -the pathophysiological mechanism is the same.

"Having solved this medical mystery, has resulted in the solution not only for cause of autism, by for many other mammalian ailments, "diseases" , and the mechanism by which many infectious diseases, including tetanus, smallpox, Spanish flu, rubella, measles, and others, have been causing damage and disease to the human body. As it turns out, it is not the Germs that have been the foe, for which we "attack" with vaccines and drugs, it is something in the bodies' defence systems itself. I look forward to revealing this medical mystery, which has been shrouded in darkness, to the world. I see the truth. Come see for yourself - I have made it that simple for you


CONCLUSION

I urge you to also watch this video because it demonstrates Moulden's awareness of the New World Order. He knew that the central banking fraud begets all other frauds, including war and healthcare. They have to sicken and enslave us to protect this credit monopoly. Moulden was active in a number of political parties attempting banking reform.

The takeaway is that the world is divided between a relatively small number of people who profit from the central banking fraud and the sheeple who are exploited by it. The former include our traitorous political, cultural and business leaders.  Whether it is migration, sugar, chemtrails, gender dysphoria or vaccines, we are being poisoned. A satanic cult such as Western society controls and exploits its members by perverting, corrupting and making them sick.

Moulden reminds me of Larry McDonald, the dynamic leader of the John Birch society who died when a Korean Air flight was shot down by Russians in 1983. When they are not killing them in gratuitous wars, this is what they do to real patriots who are potential leaders.
 

Related - Taking No Prisoners - The Vaccine Culture War
------------------  Recommended - Why You Should Say No to Vaccines
----------------  Vaccinated Children have 2-5 Times More Disease
----------------- Eustace Mullins - The Rockefeller Medical Establishment
------------ J & J Baby Shampoo Causes Cancer?

http://vaccinepapers.org/wp-content/uploads/Moulden-Biography.pdf

https://www.drandrewmoulden.com/

His 6-hr Proof- Part One

 
Part 2 -- Continuation of the video above

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhnImVnAwYs

http://vaccinepapers.org/dr-andrew-moulden/



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Massacre was Masonic Gun Grab, says NZ Man
April 3, 2019, 7:29 am
 Next  Article 0
 Previous  Neurologist Andrew Moulden - Vaccinations Cause Many Sicknesses
ardern-fm.jpg
New Zealand is a Freemason colony. Everyone in power
from the PM down is a traitor.

NZ Citizen Outs NZ's Masonic Masters

"There can be no Just and Free society when people
who enter secret agreements to advantage themselves
over the rest of us end up in the top positions."



This is typical throughout the world, but don't worry, Jews will take all the blame. And when the Jews are gone, nothing will have changed.  The West is a corrupt termite-infested structure teetering on collapse. We have folded like a cheap tent. The tent pole is God.

With their guns confiscated, New Zealanders had better brush up on The Red Terror. 


by Anonymous
(henrymakow.com)


I am from NZ and have a lot of information on the shooting and Freemasons in NZ. First a little background.

I got into what today is called Conspiracy Theories when I was 17. Back then it was called Cover-ups and should still be called that. You could only buy the books at Christian Bookstores as mainstream shops would not sell them in NZ.

hijab.jpeg
(In sympathy with mosque victims, NZ becomes an Islamic state.)

My paternal Grandfather was Head of the Phoenix Lodge, a Blue Lodge in Westport. An English constitution Lodge. They told us at his funeral he was head of all the Lodges for the South Island.

My father refused to join. All doors to good employment were closed to him in my hometown. The father is only allowed to ask once, but my father said his father's lodge brothers never stopped hassling him to join for 30 years. They told him it would bring them prestige to bring in the son of a brother who could bring his own son in. My father rejected them as a rational man who would not join an organization who would not tell you what they were about until after you joined.

My other Grandfather had been a Lodge member who came home from a meeting one night and burned all his Lodge gear in front of his family and told them, "Have nothing to do with them, they are Evil."

His employment went badly after that, like all Masons who leave the Lodge in small towns.

For people who say they are for equality they certainly don't act like it.

THE SHOOTING PSY-OP

Here is some of what I know about the shooting psy-op. I have been hand circulating this where I live. Trying to get the information to non-Freemason cops and former non Freemason military people. Publish as you feel appropriate.

Upon reaching the Rank of Master Mason a Freemason enters into a verbal contract known as The Oath of Obligation of a Master Mason. This Oath is damning and an act of Treason.

ardern.png
(left, How creepy are these lizards?)

The Master Mason agrees in employment situations he will always employ a Freemason over a non-Freemason. This is why our courts, government Military and Intelligence heads are Freemasons.

The master mason also agrees to obey the call for aid from another Freemason and obey any higher ranked Freemason without hesitation unless it endangers his life or his family's life.

This is why all Royal Commissions of Inquiry are headed by a Freemason in NZ. This way they can protect their own and always have done. It is why the Erebus report was a litany of lies.

There can be no Just and Free society when people who enter secret agreements to advantage themselves over the rest of us end up in the top positions.

(In NZ all Royal Commissions of Inquiry have been headed by a Freemason or their spouses, utter cover-ups. In NZ to be a Sir or Dame you have to enter the order and be at least an Entered Apprentice to qualify.)

The Mosque shooter was identified as a member of the Masonic Forum in Canberra Australia. This means he is a Freemason. This was censored on the NZ internet by 9AM the next day by the Freemason Prime Minister and the Freemason Head of Police Mike Bush.

(NZ'ers have been denied the information via mass government censorship, this is Unlawful in NZ, please let NZ'ers know through any channels possible)

The Freemason shooter kills 50.

The Freemason cops didn't turn up on time and helped the two other shooters get away.

They then threatened anyone who shared video of the other shooters with 10 years in jail. (The 22-year-old who was hiding out the back in the car park during the shooting captured 8 seconds of footage on his cell phone of the other two shooters- also censored in NZ - has been arrested and threatened with 15 years in jail. It is likely his defence lawyer provided is a Freemason. This is how they railroad people in court in NZ.)

The Freemason PM says the Freemason Intel services knew nothing... but don't worry the Freemason courts will handle it.

She also starts an Inquiry, headed by a Freemason. The Freemason controlled NZ Media all bob their heads in time and never question the illegal actions the NZ govt and PM have taken.

The senior CHCH cops are Freemasons

ja.jpeg
(Well connected and well hung)

Every head of police in NZ has been a Freemason.

The heads of the NZ military are all Freemasons.

The heads of the NZ Intelligence services are Freemasons.

The heads of the NZ courts and snr judges are Freemasons.

The NZ PM is a member of The Order of The Eastern Star, female Freemasons.

Head of Police in NZ is Mike Bush. Mike is from my hometown of Westport. That is how I know for a fact he is a very senior Freemason.

After WWII the western governments of the world promised their people they would never pass a law regulating human beings ever again because that is what the Nazi's did.

They have not as they can only create Commercial Law not Common Law which is set in stone and includes the Right to Privacy. No one can spy on you without your permission and the NZ govt, NZ Judges and Lawyers all know this. They have betrayed us all.

After WWII the people of NZ made agreements between themselves so no force like the Nazi's could rise again.

They promised never to accept Censorship or Criminalization of Opinion.

They promised if it ever happens the NZ people would march on Parliament the next day and drag them out into the streets and give them the beating of their lives and tell them they are fired.

They did so to preserve Freedoms the NZ soldiers had fought and died for. If you accept Censorship or Criminalization of Opinion you have reverted to what the Nazi's were doing to their people and all of Oppressed Europe.

NZ people have forgotten the agreements their great grandparents made to preserve Freedom in NZ.


They said The price of Freedom is people will make mistakes.


If you don't accept that then you don't really believe in Freedom.


There is a Agency which controls the NZ Media. They decide what is censored and what is promoted. My information is that agency is headed by a snr Freemason intelligence official, who is not a NZ'er. A foreign actor of another nation controls what is censored to the public in NZ.  The NZ govt refuses to let you know this even exists.

---
PS I have been hacked and threatened for trying to get this information out to the NZ people.

I have been anonymously distributing this to non-Freemason cops and non-Freemason ex-military in NZ and telling them to pass it on.

Later today I will e-mail every member of the NZ Media and let them know if they do not make full disclosures their relations will be informed they did not stand for their nation when needed and chose their careers over honestly. NZ only has 5 million people and only 2 degrees of separation as a result and social justice is more effective than legal justice here. These sort of tactics works well over here as people don't like to see their family name shamed.

I will also suggest whoever publishes it first will be King or Queen of the NZ Media afterwards and will be seen as a hero to the NZ people.

The day after will e-mail the Law Commission in NZ and let them know I am willing to expose the full mechanisms of Western Law for what they allowed to occur and the deception they have created to make money of people ignorant of The Law.

What will occur in NZ will be in their hands. Either it will be peaceful if they make full confessions and beg the public forgiveness or the former non Freemason military and non Freemason cops will take appropriate action.

In a small nation, the cops and military are our family, directly related to many of us. They will stand with us not with their Freemason commanders...as long as the information gets out.

Article 0
April 3, 2019, 8:05 am
 Next  It's OK to be a Woman!
 Previous  Massacre was Masonic Gun Grab, says NZ Man


nz.png
New Zealand is Test Ground for New World Order



"Not many NZ people don't know NZ is a registered corporation at the SEC-registered to The Queen under her official corporate titles. The nation is controlled through her representative the Governor General who has letters of patent authorizing them. This contravenes Article 4 of the United Nations, the right of a nation to self-determination. In NZ when the government creates law it is not official until signed off by the Governor General."



by Anonymous

(henrymakow.com)



The Censorship here has been insane.

The NZ online Media uses a site called Stuff nz. The chief editor is a Freemason from my hometown, Glen Scanlon. That is how they are able to coordinate this.

I have a TOR browser. By 9 AM the day after the shooting I could see some sites were not loading, Zero Hedge for one. When I accessed Zero Hedge it was obvious they had censored it because Rush Limbaugh had suggested it was a false flag and the shooter could really be a left winger posing as a right-winger.

I kept looking over the next couple of hours and found the Turkish government had videos of the guy trying to get people to oppose the Turkish leader in the last series of elections. They said without a doubt the guy was a US asset. They said they had the guy on their watch-list since 2012. This is censored in NZ. It is dangerous because Turkey is threatening NZ and the NZ people don't know why. The Turks see clearly this is a cover-up.

In the NZ Media, they censored the gunman's travel movements. They told us where he went in Europe and for how long but left out his time in Israel where it is believed he received paramilitary training. They also left out his trip to the UK from France where he is alleged to have visited MI6 HQ before travelling to the Temple Bar district. That source is not able to be verified but they claim a photo of him exists leaving MI6 HQ.

The Third largest internet router in the world is in CHCH NZ. Makes no sense to have it here, until you look across the road and understand the building opposite is a NSA/CIA data intel gathering operation plugged straight in. NZ has been a testbed for NWO operations. We have had a cashless/cash economy for 30 years with plastic cards making cash rare to see these days. They tested the Echelon program here before rolling it out elsewhere. NZ activist Nikki Hagar testified in the UK about it and wrote a book about.

From the moment NZ said they were on high terror attack alert, they switched on a system which is listening to every call and tapping people's cell phones. I believe this is how they knew who the eyewitnesses were and who to round up and threaten in the night. At least 2 other shooters were seen and at least one getaway driver (a woman). Initial reports have the police capturing these people then saying they were released because they had nothing to do with it and it was suggested they were civilians.

A Sharp Shooter competition was being held that day just outside of CHCH in Melton. Those foreigners were given instant authority to help. That is not lawful or legal in NZ without Governor Generals' say so as they are the ultimate control of NZ.

Not many NZ people don't know NZ is a registered corporation at the SEC-registered to The Queen under her official corporate titles. The nation is controlled through her representative the Governor General who has letters of patent authorizing them. This contravenes Article 4 of the United Nations, the right of a nation to self-determination. In NZ when the government creates law it is not official until signed off by the Governor General. This information was obtained 15 years ago and the MP who was asked to look into had been a career politician for 30 years and confessed he didn't know that is how the nation ran.

People in CHCH say the gunman cannot have got from A to B in the time shown on the vid as it takes 15 minutes in Friday traffic. They say would need a police escort. We see once again the footage streamed must have been faked as the Mosque shown in the vid does not match the one in real life, different carpets. In NZ to view it a 10-year jail sentence.

The manifesto is obviously bogus. In NZ and AU, you are taught English Spelling and American Spelling used to be punished by strapping. The Manifesto is full of US spelling. Once again for any NZ'er to view this is 10 years in jail.

I have been pointing out to people our soldiers who fought WWII did so because the Nazi's ethics were incompatible with our values. They fought to never be censored by their government or have Opinion Criminalized.

My grandmother would often defend people who were obviously wrong from being verbally attacked by others. She told us "People have a right to be wrong. Millions of young men died for that right."

NZ is proposing Hate Speech laws, Criminalization of Opinion.

The rights those young men paid for were paid in Blood.

NZ has been censored online for some years. Under the last government is was discovered NZ'ers had been censored online for 6 months before discovery and admission by the NZ govt. The Media acted as if it meant nothing.

The NZ govt censors the NZ Media on average 28 times a year. If you look internationally to see what was censored it is not matters of national security, but just things that would damage the reputation of the sitting government of the day with voters. Utterly corrupt aided and abetted by the Freemasons who head our Media.

The NZ PM gets her Media Power from her PR person, who is not an NZ'er and appears to be MI6. All the international promotion of her is through him and his connections to international Media.

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He was also the PR person for Helen Clark, left, the previous female Labour Party leader who ruled as PM for nearly a decade. She was gifted a top job at the UN afterwards for her service to the NWO and nearly got the top job. Her task was to get Universal ID implemented by stealth in NZ via everyone's drivers License which includes a photo of you which is used in facial recognition.

NZ drivers licenses have a hidden chip in them which is read by near field readers installed on NZ roads. I watched them being installed 12 years ago around the nation. The official story is they are to monitor trucking and heavy trucks. They just tested it for the USA who will roll it out if they have not already in one form or another.

GMO corn was tested in NZ. PM Helen Clark (another female Freemason, Order of The Eastern Star) approved it despite protests of the potential danger when she was the leader of NZ.





It's OK to be a Woman!
March 25, 2019, 1:24 am
 Next  Becoming a Parent "Kicked My Ass into Gear"
 Previous  Article 0
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(Photo Credit: Flickr, Konstantin Sutyagin)


"Feminism has destroyed the things you most want, namely love, courtship, marriage and children."

If you want to be surrounded by love, you have to marry while you are young and able to attract a
committed male. The Illuminati want you to be lonely and bitter, better to exploit you politically.
You have been betrayed by society which has gone over to the dark side. Feminism,
a lesbian and occult ideology which denies gender differences is poison for women.


"We must introduce into their education all those principles which have so brilliantly broken up their order." Protocols of Zion 16-3


By Henry Makow PhD.
(from April 28, 2013)

"In Spring, a young man's thoughts turn to love" and so do a young woman's.

Like pretty daffodils poking their heads above matted leaves,  attractive young women are suddenly in evidence on neighborhood streets. They are usually alone and strike me as confused. They want male approval but are told men are evil.  Their instincts say, get married and have children but society tells them families are oppressive: "Get a career instead."

If I could talk to these young women, I would say this:

You have been betrayed by society which has gone over to the dark side. Feminism, a lesbian and occult ideology which denies gender differences, is poison for women. It has destroyed the things you most want and need, namely love, courtship and marriage.

Young men no longer think in terms of winning your friendship and love. They no longer need to marry or even commit to get sex. If you don't go to bed, another girl will. No more dates. No more flowers, dinners, dances and movies.

It's booze, bed and  "Good Bye."

"Women's rights" indeed.

ELITE SOCIAL ENGINEERING

DC05nOWVwAAJhha.jpgFeminism was not a spontaneous, grassroots social phenomena. It was top-down elite social engineering i.e. behavior modification orchestrated using the mass media, government and education.  It was wholly sponsored by the Illuminati (satanist) central bankers in order to make women have careers instead of families.

Film producer, the late Aaron Russo was told this by the Rockfellers. Watch this video. The purpose is to undermine the family as the primary social institution so people will be dependent on government and corporations.

It is part of a larger plan to bring in a veiled totalitarian world government by dynamiting the four legs of our human identity: race, religion, nation and family. FEMINISM TARGETS FAMILY. The "war on terror" and 9-11 are other aspects of this elite agenda.

You are in the springtime of your life. Just as flowers blossom now, the years 18-26 are when you are at the height of your fertility and most attractive to males. This is the time when you must marry and have children if you want to be surrounded by loved ones when you are older. We are part of a natural cycle and we can't get a raincheck from nature.

So my message is: reject casual sex. Demand courtship and love. (If you don't have a strong exclusive connection with a man before sex, he certainly won't have time for you after the challenge is gone. )

Consecrate yourself for your future husband and children. If you belong to many men, it will be hard to ever belong to one. Concentrate on prospective marriage-minded males, usually a few years older than you. Don't waste your time on boys or nomads. You want a home builder.

Do not compete with other women on the basis of sex. Let the sluts have the sex.  You are looking for a permanent lifetime commitment. Therefore cultivate the qualities and skills desirable in a wife and a mother.

Essentially this is a willingness to sacrifice for the right man. (This will make him love you.) And the right man is someone you admire and love, who is dedicated, trustworthy, loyal and demonstrates his love for you.

Meanwhile, pursue a career as a second priority. You need to be independent in order to hold out for the right man.

I also describe the dynamics of heterosexuality, the exchange of female power for male love, here.

SEX IS THE SECRET RELIGION OF SECULAR SOCIETY

Sexual intercourse is the most physically intimate you can be with another person so you must be emotionally intimate first. People think they can get intimacy with physical intimacy. It doesn't work that way.

FOR EMOTIONAL INTIMACY YOU NEED TRUST, AND FOR TRUST YOU NEED COMMITMENT AND FIDELITY.

Our neo-pagan society has turned sex (and romance) into mystical religious experience and way of achieving salvation. This is because our society is secretly run by a sex cult, Freemasonry.  (What do you think obelisks like the Washington Monument represent?)

Eckhardt Tolle was asked a question that illustrated how sex and romance have become our religion.

"I always thought that true enlightenment is not possible except through love in a relationship between a man and a woman. Isn't this what makes us whole again? How can one's life be fulfilled until that happens?"

Salvation!!?? Can you see how difficult it is to establish stable relationships if expectations are so high?

No wonder many men find women unapproachable. Women hold the key to their salvation! It doesn't help that the culture is inflating women's egos--telling them they are goddesses. Despite their beauty, young women are just as ordinary as men.

Don't think in terms of salvation. Think in terms of what kind of life you want and what your needs are. Look for a compatible person who will fulfil your needs, and vice-versa. If two people come through for each other over the course of time, they will love each other.

Put the romantic stuff on the back burner. Usually, it is based on Hollywood nonsense and idealization. People aren't perfect and not worthy of adulation. They are all flawed and the good is a reward for putting up with the bad.

In conclusion, you have been betrayed by society. Feminism is elite social engineering. Your choice is whether you want to participate in the natural life cycle, and grow and be fulfilled, or be another casualty of the elite war against gender and family.
 
----
Related - "The Dying Art of Femininity"
Makow -  Feminism can be Cured if Detected Early


Reply From a Special Young Man:

Thanks Henry for writing a great article. I'm a 22 yr. old American guy who gets plenty of attention from women, but I wish I could pass out this article to every girl I've ever met.

Even though it would probably mean that sex would be less available for me if these women would take this articles advice. I DON"T CARE ! , As strong as my desire to have sex with pretty girls is, it doesn't compare to the desire I have to truly Love a woman. The strongest desire I have in my heart has always been to find a girl that could unleash all the love that I have in my heart.

Thankfully, it only takes one women, and hopefully she's reading this article right now.




Becoming a Parent "Kicked My Ass into Gear"
April 4, 2019, 8:00 am
 Next  I have been shut out by Twitter for a week
 Previous  It's OK to be a Woman!

I have been shut out of Twitter for a week.  Details HERE



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Satanism is the inversion of Good and Evil. Humanity is under concerted satanic attack by the Masonic Jewish central banking system which controls most social institutions.
 
Thus, a recent Reddit comment observed that much popular music today is sexually depraved. It inspired a refreshing realization that marriage and family often are essential to personal development-

Satanic Music:

"The music industry actively mocks the idea of fidelity in a relationship, celebrates sexual deviancy and non-committed relationships. The collapse of the family. So I don't really think many people would challenge the underlying premise of this observation. It is fairly obvious that the music industry tends to promote a lifestyle of extravagance, frivolousness, sexual promiscuity, and a fixation on the "passion" or "fairytale" parts of a relationship, namely getting together, breaking up, falling in love, or fantasizing about having now met your "one and only". None of these things is sustainable and creates false ideas of what love for another person really is."

Response:  "Having kids fundamentally alters your view on life. I never imagined loving someone more than my own self."


"Yes...kids today are utterly fed a false picture of what life is, and what they should aspire to be.

When I got my girlfriend pregnant about 10 years ago...we were 20...I didn't see any way we could care for the kid and begged her to have an abortion (you can't be successful while you're young if you have a child tying you down.)

I shudder at that thought today. That kid was the single greatest thing for us. It pulled us out of a fucking meaningless lifestyle of partying on weekends. It kicked my ass into gear. When I had that child, it felt like I was working on a different level. All of my coworkers wanted to get the fuck out to go get down at night...I was happy for overtime...partly because I needed the money, and partly because I wanted to give a better life to my kid...I thought I was missing out on so much. But I now see I didn't miss a goddamned thing other than the pointless drama that would only complicate my life.

Having a kid really straightened me up. It got me to where I am today. It made things more difficult...but there's literally nothing positive about party culture...it's fun, but there's no real-world benefit...and you can only look back and think about how much more you could have improved your life in all those hours...sure, you get to see some skank's tits...but that doesn't mean much now that I'm in my late 20's.

I was fortunate to find a good girl who is a tremendous mother (which, oddly is like the sexiest thing in the world to me now.) I have to question the motives of people who have children who also push not having children. Sure, I could pave a fancy sports car with all the money I've spent on them...but who gives a fuck...two years from now that car will be old news, but your kids are forever.

dad_preschooler_bicycle.jpg
Fuck, coaching your kid in sports they're interested in is so much more fulfilling. And I'm really into cars, I would kill to have a supercar, and I promised myself I would own one, one day...now, I don't give a fuck about a fucking overpriced piece of shit. I would much rather send my kids to school, or help them out in s time of need.

Having kids fundamentally alters your view on life. I never imagined loving someone more than my own self. Now I completely understand why parents in war-torn nations risk their lives to help their kids. Maybe this is unique to me, but I would suffer greatly just to help my children in a small way. I truly believe it makes you a better human...and, I truly believe the only judge of human character is your children. If you raise a complete piece of shit...that says a lot more to me than being poor, lazy, or a criminal. If your kids are good people, you had to do something, the most important thing, right.

Comments from Reddit Readers:

My mom was 16 and my dad was 18. I was a party mistake, but you sound a lot like my parents. They have said things like you said here. They have told me that I saved them and made them better people. We kinda grew up together. It was great having young parents. I am glad they didn't abort me. Cheers
---------

Yep...that would have been the single greatest mistake of my life...but I would have never known it. It's odd to know a truth that nobody can know until they live it. And, don't get me wrong...having a kid fundamentally changes your life forever....and it's scary. I was terrified...but It really showed me that the life I had before was complete bullshit.
------------

Now, if you get some trifling whore pregnant...that may not end up good for you. But someone you truly love and get along with...it could possibly be the best thing to ever happen to you.
---------------

 That was a beautiful comment, brother. It moved me on a really deep place. Never mind the naysayers, I feel where you're coming from, and I totally respect what you just said. I've always felt having a child will show you if you're a real man, or someone who bitches out. Much respect, coming from someone who's dad bitched out. I'm over it, but it'll fuck your head up for a minute.

(author reply)

Not beautiful...just my lived experience. Many people think that is complete retardation. That's what I've seen in my life. I'm not claiming to be rich, a good person or someone people should aspire to be...but my kids have truly brought me happiness that I haven't been able to find in the "dream world of a single bachelor."

---------
 It's like the party life brings you fleeting pleasure, but your children bring you genuine, deep down joy.
----------
 I can second this. It's kind of crazy the transformation I have gone through since having a kid. I was the biggest shit bag, I had no ambitions in life besides getting fucked up, and trying to fuck new women. Now my entire life is geared towards being the best father I can be, and being a so so husband... Something happened to me the first time I saw my kid, it was by far the most powerful moment in my life.
----------
Yeah, that's the life that's glorified. Getting shit-faced, and hooking up with some skank. I've lived that life, and it sounds like you did. There's nothing fulfilling about it. After the night is over, you feel like shit, and there's nothing gained, but the money lost.

I find it so bizarre that that is the life that is glorified. Perhaps if you're a famous celebrity it could be fun...but for 99.999999% of people that life is going to be shit.
---------

Strong families support each other, just like strong communities do. The Government doesn't like competition. Marx wrote that Capitalism is flawed, that ultimately it would collapse. Marx wrote when the crisis occurs citizens would demand a solution. Of course, Marx wrote that Communism was the solution...

What happened though is that when there was a crisis people came together and helped each other. Families supported each other, as did communities. Today though we are more divided than ever. Race, gender, sexuality, etc we have all been pitted against each other.

The idea is if there are no more support systems in place the only place one could run to for help is the Government.

----
I have been shut out by Twitter for a week
April 4, 2019, 11:44 am
 Next  Article 11
 Previous  Becoming a Parent "Kicked My Ass into Gear"

clark.jpeg
for referring to former NZ PM Helen Clark (left) as a "freak"
I have started the newsfeed on this site (where the twitter feed was.) Best to follow me on GAB    @hmakow

This happens when you insult Illuminati toadies. If someone called me a freak, I doubt they would be suspended. Look at what they call Trump.

To castigate Evil and Evil Do'ers is a human right. We claim it.

This happens in dictatorships. The sooner we adjust the better.
We need to be able to communicate freely.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Holiness of Sin
Commentary Mag
An excerpt from a book by Gershom Scholem on Sabbatai Zevi and his followers.
by Gershom Scholem
Since its original appearance in Hebrew in the mid-30’s under the title “Mitzvah ha-ba’ah ba-Averah,” Gershom Scholem’s study of those Jews of the 18th and 19th centuries who clung to their belief in the Messiahship of Sabbatai Zevi even after his conversion to Islam, has been widely regarded as one of the classics of modern Jewish scholarship and one of the great works of the historical imagination in our time. What follows is the first translation of that essay into English, done by Hillel Halkin; the text has not been cut or altered in any way except for the elimination of certain footnote references.

No chapter in the history of the Jewish people during the last several hundred years has been as shrouded in mystery as that of the Sabbatian movement. On one point, at least, there is no longer any disagreement: the dramatic events and widespread religious revival that preceded the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi in 1666 form an important and integral part of Jewish history and deserve to be studied objectively, to the exclusion of moralistic condemnations of the historical figures involved. It has come increasingly to be realized that a true understanding of the rise of Sabbatianism will never be possible as long as scholars continue to appraise it by inappropriate standards, whether these be the conventional beliefs of their own age or the values of traditional Judaism itself. Today indeed one rarely encounters the baseless assumptions of “charlatanry” and “imposture” which occupy so prominent a place in earlier historical literature on the subject. On the contrary: in these times of Jewish national rebirth it is only natural that the deep though ultimately tragic yearning for national redemption to which the initial stages of Sabbatianism gave expression should meet with greater comprehension than in the past.

In turning to consider the Sabbatian movement after Sabbatai Zevi’s conversion to Islam, however, we are faced with an entirely different situation. Here we find ourselves still standing before a blank wall, not only of misunderstanding, but often of an actual refusal to understand. Even in recent times there has been a definite tendency among scholars to minimize at all costs the significance of this “heretical” Sabbatianism, with the result that no adequate investigation yet exists of its spiritual foundations, its overall impact on 18th-century Jewry, or its ultimate fate. It is impossible, in fact, to read any of the studies that have been done in these areas without being astounded by the amount of invective directed against the leaders and adherents of the various Sabbatian sects. Typical of this approach is David Kahana’s A History of the Kabbalists, Sabbatians, and Hasidim (in Hebrew), but the angry moralizing that characterizes this volume has not been confined to any one historical school; rather, it has been shared by writers of widely differing points of view, secular as well as religious. The problem itself, meanwhile, remains as recondite as ever.

Two enormous difficulties, therefore, confront the student of the Sabbatian “heresies”: on the one hand, there are the obstacles posed by the sources themselves, and on the other, those created by the attitude generally taken toward them. To a great extent, moreover, these two sets of difficulties have always been related.

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Why should this be so?

The Sabbatian movement in its various shadings and configurations persisted with remarkable obstinacy among certain sectors of the Jewish people for approximately one hundred and fifty years after Sabbatai Zevi’s conversion. In a number of countries it grew to be powerful, but for various reasons, internal as well as external, its affairs were deliberately hidden from the public eye. In particular, its spokesmen refrained from committing their beliefs to print, and the few books that they actually published concealed twice what they revealed. They did, however, produce a rich literature, which circulated only among groups of “believers” (ma’aminim) —the term by which Sabbatian sectarians generally chose to refer to themselves, down to the last of the Dönmeh in Salonika and the last Frankists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As long as Sabbatianism remained a vital force within the Jewish ghetto, threatening to undermine the very existence of rabbinic Judaism, its opponents labored ceaselessly to root it out and systematically destroyed whatever of its writings came into their possession, “including [even] the sacred names of God [azkarot] which they contain,” as the bans upon them read. As a result many of their writings were lost without a trace, and had it been left solely up to the rabbinical authorities nothing would have come down to us at all except for certain tendentiously chosen fragments quoted in anti-Sabbatian polemics. In addition, although an extensive religious literature was still to be found in the hands of Frankists in Moravia and Bohemia at the beginning of the 19th century, the children and grandchildren of these “believers” in Prague and other Jewish centers themselves attempted to obliterate every shred of evidence bearing on their ancestors’ beliefs and practices. The well-known philosopher and historian of atheism Fritz Mauthner has preserved the following interesting story in his memoirs: in the declining days of the movement in Bohemia, Frankist “emissaries” came to his grandfather (and undoubtedly to other members of the sect as well) and requested that he surrender to them a picture of “the Lady” and “all kinds of writings” which he had in his possession. The emissaries took them and left. The incident took place sometime during the 1820’s or 1830’s. In spite of all this, at least two large manuscripts from these circles have survived.

One must therefore bear in mind in dealing with the history of Sabbatianism that powerful interests and emotions have often been at stake. Each for reasons of his own, all those who have written on the subject in the past shared one belief: the less importance attributed to the Sabbatian movement, the better.

_____________

Authors and historians of the Orthodox camp, for their part, have been anxious to belittle and even distort the overall role of Sabbatianism in order to safeguard the reputations, as they have conceived of them, of certain honored religious figures of the past. Such apologetics have had their inevitable effect upon the writing of history, as has the fundamental outlook of their proponents, tending as it does to idealize religious life in the ghetto at the expense of completely ignoring the deep inner conflicts and divisions to which not even the rabbis were necessarily immune. To acknowledge the Sabbatianism of eminent rabbis in Jerusalem, Adrianople, Constantinople, or Izmir, Prague, Hamburg, or Berlin, has been in the eyes of such authors openly to impeach the integrity of an entire body of men who were never supposed to be other than learned and virtuous defenders of Jewish tradition. Given such an attitude, it is hardly to be wondered at that one should instinctively avoid the kinds of inquiry that might lead to the discovery of heretical opinion, to say nothing of actual licentiousness, in the most unlikely places. One might cite endless examples of this kind of mentality in historical literature dealing with rabbinical and congregational life in the 18th century, and in at least one case, A. L. Frumkin’s A Historical Account of the Scholars of Jerusalem (in Hebrew), the author goes so far as to “acquit” some of the most dedicated Sabbatians of the “scandal” of heterodoxy!

Secularist historians, on the other hand, have been at pains to deemphasize the role of Sabbatianism for a different reason. Not only did most of the families once associated with the Sabbatian movement in Western and Central Europe continue to remain afterward within the Jewish fold, but many of their descendants, particularly in Austria, rose to positions of importance during the 19th century as prominent intellectuals, great financiers, and men of high political connections. Such persons, needless to say, could scarcely have been expected to approve of attempts to “expose” their “tainted” lineage, and in view of their stature in the Jewish community it is not surprising that their wishes should have carried weight. Furthermore, in an age when Jewish scholarship itself was considered to be in part an extension of the struggle for political emancipation, the climate for research in so sensitive an area was by no means generally favorable. In consequence, those Jewish scholars who had access to the wealth of Sabbatian documents and eyewitness reports that were still to be found early in the century failed to take advantage of the opportunity, while by the time a later generation arrived on the scene the sources had been destroyed and were no longer available even to anyone who might have desired to make use of them.

The survivors of the Frankists in Poland and of Dönmeh or “apostates” in Salonika formed yet a third group having a direct interest in disguising the historical facts. These two Sabbatian sects, both of which formally renounced the Jewish religion (the Dönmeh converting to Islam in 1683, the Frankists to Catholicism in 1759), continued to adhere to their secret identities long after their defection from their mother faith; the Dönmeh, in fact, did not disappear until the present generation, while in the case of the Frankists, whose history in the course of the 19th century is obscure, it is impossible to determine at exactly what point in time they were finally swallowed up by the rest of Polish society. There is reason to suspect that until the eve of World War I many original manuscripts and documents were preserved by both these groups, particularly by a number of Frankist families in Warsaw; but how much of this material may yet be uncovered, and how much has been purposely destroyed by its owners in order to conceal forever the secret of their descent, is in no way ascertainable.

Nevertheless, the total picture is not as dark as it may seem to have been painted: despite the many efforts at suppression, which supplemented, as it were, the inevitable “selective” process of time itself, a considerable amount of valuable material has been saved. Many of the accusations made against the “believers” by their opponents can now be weighed (and more often than not confirmed!) on the basis of a number of the “believers’” own books which were not allowed to perish. Little by little our knowledge has grown, and although many of the historical details we would like to know will undoubtedly never come to light at all, there is reason to hope that this important chapter in Jewish history will yet be fully written. In any event, it is clear that a correct understanding of the Sabbatian movement after the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi will provide a new clue toward understanding the history of the Jews in the 18th century as a whole, and in particular, the beginnings of the Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement in a number of countries.

I do not propose in this essay to trace the outward history of Sabbatianism in its several manifestations over the century and a half in which it retained its vitality, nor (although I can hardly conceal my opinion that the entire movement was far more widespread than is generally conceded even today) do I mean to debate the question of whether this or that particular individual was or was not a Sabbatian himself. Suffice it to say that the sources in our possession, meager as they are, make it perfectly clear that the number of Sabbatian rabbis was far greater than has been commonly estimated, greater even than was believed by that anti-Sabbatian zealot Rabbi Jacob Emden, who has almost always been accused of exaggeration. In the present essay, however, I shall put such questions aside and limit myself to the area that has been the most sadly neglected in the entire field, namely, the origins and development of Sabbatian thought per se.

If one accepts what Heinrich Graetz and David Kahana have to say on the subject of Sabbatian theology, it is impossible to understand what its essential attraction ever was; indeed, if it is true, as both these writers claim, that the entire movement was a colossal hoax perpetrated by degenerates and frauds, one might well ask why a serious historian should bother to waste his time on it in the first place. And if this is the case with Sabbatianism in general, how much more so when one ventures to consider what is undoubtedly the most tragic episode in the entire drama, that of the Frankists, the psychological barriers to the understanding of which are incomparably greater. How, for instance, can one get around the historical fact that in the course of their public disputation with Jewish rabbis in Lvov in 1759 the members of this sect did not even shrink from resorting to the notorious blood libel, an accusation far more painful to Jewish sensitivities than any of their actual beliefs? A great deal has been written about this incident, particularly by the eminent historian Meir Balaban, in whose book, On the History of the Frankist Movement (in Hebrew), it is dealt with exhaustively. Balaban, who makes the Lvov libel a starting point for his overall inquiry, reaches the significant conclusion that there was no organic connection between it and the Frankist “articles of faith” presented at the disputation. The members of the sect, in fact, were reluctant to make the accusation at all, and did so only at the instigation of the Catholic clergy, which was interested in using them for purposes of its own, having nothing to do with their Sabbatian background. That they finally agreed to collaborate in the scheme can be explained by their desire to wreak vengeance on their rabbinical persecutors.

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Thus, though the behavior of the Frankists at Lvov must certainly be judged harshly from both a universal-ethical and a Jewish-national point of view, it is important to keep in mind that the blood libels against the Jews (the indications are that there was more than one) do not in themselves tell us anything about the inner spiritual world of the sect, in all of whose literature (written one and two generations after the Lvov disputation) not a single allusion to such a belief is to be found. The truly astonishing thing is that although several important texts of Frankist teachings actually do exist, not a single serious attempt has so far been made to analyze their contents. The reason for this is simple. Graetz and A. Kraushar, two reputable scholars, one of whom wrote a full-length study of Jacob Frank and his Polish followers, were both of the opinion that there was no such thing as a Frankist “creed,” and that The Sayings of the Lord, which has come down to us in a Polish version alone, was incoherent nonsense. According to Kraushar, Frank’s sayings are “grotesque, comical, and incomprehensible,” while Graetz, whose attitude toward all forms of mysticism is well known, could hardly have been expected to show much insight into the religious motivations of the sect. Balaban, on the other hand, is mainly concerned with the outward history of the Frankists up to the time of their mass conversion, and his reconstruction of their theology is based solely on the positions publicly taken by them in their disputations with the rabbis. It is his reliance on these “articles of faith,” in fact, which were actually far from accurate reflections of the Frankists’ true beliefs, that leads him to conclude that after 1759 the history of the sect was “determined more by the personalities of Jacob Frank and his disciples than by any intrinsic religious relationship to Judaism.”

I myself cannot agree with Balaban on this point, and in the following pages I shall attempt to show, at least summarily, that Sabbatianism must be regarded not only as a single continuous development which retained its identity in the eyes of its adherents regardless of whether they themselves remained Jews or not, but also, paradoxical though it may seem, as a specifically Jewish phenomenon to the end. I shall endeavor to show that the nihilism of the Sabbatian and Frankist movements, with its doctrine—so profoundly shocking to the Jewish conception of things—that the violation of the Torah could become its true fulfillment (bittulah shel torah zehu kiyyumah), was a dialectical outgrowth of the belief in the Messiahship of Sabbatai Zevi, and that this nihilism, in turn, helped pave the way for the Haskalah and the Reform movement of the 19th century, once its original religious impulse was exhausted. Beyond this, I hope to make the reader see how within the spiritual world of the Sabbatian sects, within the very sanctum sanctorum of Kabbalistic mysticism, as it were, the crisis of faith which overtook the Jewish people as a whole upon its emergence from its medieval isolation was first anticipated, and how groups of Jews within the walls of the ghetto, while still outwardly adhering to the practices of their forefathers, had begun to embark on a radically new inner life of their own. Prior to the French Revolution the historical conditions were lacking which might have caused this upheaval to break forth in the form of an open struggle for social change, with the result that it turned further inward upon itself to act upon the hidden recesses of the Jewish psyche; but it would be mistaken to conclude from this that Sabbatianism did not permanently affect the outward course of Jewish history. The desire for total liberation which played so tragic a role in the development of Sabbatian nihilism was by no means a purely self-destructive force; on the contrary, beneath the surface of lawlessness, antinomianism, and catastrophic negation, powerful constructive impulses were at work, and these, I maintain, it is the duty of the historian to uncover.

Undeniably, the difficulties in the face of this are great, and it is not to be wondered at that Jewish historians until now have not had the inner freedom to attempt the task. In our own times we owe much to the experience of Zionism for enabling us to detect in Sabbatianism’s throes those gropings toward a healthier national existence which must have seemed like an undiluted nightmare to the peaceable Jewish bourgeois of the 19th century. Even today, however, the writing of Jewish history suffers unduly from the influence of 19th-century Jewish historiography. To be sure, as Jewish historians we have clearly advanced beyond the vantage point of our predecessors, having learned to insist, and rightly so, that Jewish history is a process that can only be understood when viewed from within; but in spite of all this, our progress in applying this truth to concrete historical situations, as opposed to general historiosophical theories, has been slow. Up to the present [1935—Ed.] only two men, Siegmund Hurwitz in his From Whither to Where (in Hebrew) and Zalman Rubashov (Shazar) in his essay “Upon the Ruins of Frankism” (in Hebrew), have shown any true appreciation of the complexities of Sabbatian psychology, and their work has by and large failed to attract the attention it deserves.

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And now, one last introductory comment. In dismissing the need for objective research on the Sabbatian and Frankist movements, it has often been asserted that since the phenomena are essentially pathological, they belong more properly to the study of medicine than to the study of history. Indeed, an article on “Frank and His Sect in the Light of Psychiatry” (Bychowski, Ha-Tekufah, Vol. XIV) has actually been published, but it only succeeds in demonstrating how incapable such an approach is of dealing satisfactorily with the problem. From the standpoint of sexual pathology it can hardly be doubted that Frank himself was a diseased individual, just as there can be no question that at the center and among the ranks of the Sabbatian movement (as in all radical movements that spring from certain particular tensions, some of which are not so far removed from those of “ordinary” life) it would be possible to find cases of marked mental aberrance. But what is the significance of all this? We are not, after all, so much concerned with this or that prominent Sabbatian personality as with the question of why such people were able to attract the following that they did. The diagnosis of a neurologist would be of little value in determining why thousands of human beings were able to find a spiritual home in the labyrinth of Sabbatian theology. We must refuse to be deluded by such convenient tags as “hysteria” or “mass psychosis,” which only confuse the issue at the same time that they provide an excuse for avoiding it and comfortably reassure one of one’s own comparative “normality.” It is undoubtedly true that Jacob Frank was every bit the depraved and unscrupulous person he is supposed to have been, and yet the moment we seriously ponder his “teachings,” or attempt to understand why masses of men should have regarded him as their leader and prophet, this same individual becomes highly problematic. Even more than the psychology of the leader, however, it is the psychology of the led that demands to be understood, and in the case of Sabbatianism, a movement built entirely upon paradoxes, this question is crucial indeed. Whatever we may think of Sabbatai Zevi and Jacob Frank, the fact is: their followers, while they were certainly not “innocents”—if there was one thing lacking in the paradoxical religion of the Sabbatians, it was innocence!—were sincere in their faith, and it is the nature of this faith, which penetrated to the hidden depths and abysses of the human spirit, that we wish to understand.

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II

As a mystical heterodoxy Sabbatianism assumed different and changing forms: it splintered into many sects, so that even from the polemical writings against it we learn that the “heretics” quarreled among themselves over practically everything. The word “practically,” however, must be stressed, for on one essential, the underlying ground of their “holy faith,” as they called it, the “believers” all agreed. Let us proceed then to examine this common ground of faith as it manifested itself both psychologically and dogmatically.

By all accounts, the messianic revival of 1665-66 spread to every sector of the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora. Among the believers and penitents a new emotion, which was not restricted to the traditional expectation of a political deliverance of Israel alone, began to make itself felt. This is not to say that hope for a divine liberation from the bondage and degradation of exile was not an important element in the general contagion, but rather that various psychological reactions which accompanied it soon took on an independent existence of their own. Prior to Sabbatai Zevi’s apostasy, great masses of people were able to believe in perfect simplicity that a new era of history was being ushered in and that they themselves had already begun to inhabit a new and redeemed world. Such a belief could not but have a profound effect on those who held it: their innermost feelings, which assured them of the presence of a messianic reality, seemed entirely in harmony with the outward course of events, those climactic developments in a historico-political realm that Sabbatai Zevi was soon to overthrow by means of his miraculous journey to the Turkish sultan, whom he would depose from his throne and strip of all his powers.

In the generation preceding Sabbatai Zevi’s advent the rapid spread of the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria and his school had resulted in a grafting of the theories of the Kabbalists, the de facto theologians of the Jewish people in the 17th century, onto the traditional Jewish view of the role and personality of the Messiah. Mystical Lurianic speculations about the nature of the redemption and “the restored world” (olam ha-tikkun) which was to follow upon its heels added new contents and dimensions to the popular messianic folk-myth of a conquering national hero, raising it to the level of a supreme cosmic drama: the redemptive process was now no longer conceived of as simply a working-out of Israel’s temporal emancipation from the yoke of the Gentiles, but rather as a fundamental transformation of the entire Creation, affecting material and spiritual worlds alike and leading to a rectification of the primordial catastrophe of the “breaking of the vessels” (shevirat ha-kelim), in the course of which the divine worlds would be returned to their original unity and perfection. By stressing the spiritual side of the redemption far more than its outward aspect, the Kabbalists of the Lurianic school, though by no means overlooking the latter, gradually converted it into a symbol of purely spiritual processes and ends. As long as the messianic expectancies they encouraged were not put to the test in the actual crucible of history, the dangers inherent in this shift of emphasis went unnoticed, for the Kabbalists themselves never once imagined that a conflict might arise between the symbol and the reality it was intended to represent. To be sure, Lurianic Kabbalah had openly educated its followers to prepare themselves more for an inner than for an outer renewal; but inasmuch as it was commonly assumed that the one could not take place without the other, the procedure seemed in no way questionable. On the contrary: the spread of Lurianic teachings, so it was thought, was in itself bound to hasten the coming of the historical Redeemer.

The appearance of Sabbatai Zevi and the growth of popular faith in his mission caused this inner sense of freedom, of “a world made pure again,” to become an immediate reality for thousands. This did not of course mean that Sabbatai Zevi himself was no longer expected to fulfill the various messianic tasks assigned him by Jewish tradition, but in the meantime an irreversible change had taken place in the souls of the faithful. Who could deny that the Shekhinah, the earthly presence of God, had risen from the dust?

“Heretical” Sabbatianism was born at the moment of Sabbatai Zevi’s totally unexpected conversion, when for the first time a contradiction appeared between the two levels of the drama of redemption, that of the subjective experience of the individual on the one hand, and that of the objective historical facts on the other. The conflict was no less intense than unforeseen. One had to choose: either one heard the voice of God in the decree of history, or else one heard it in the newly revealed reality within. “Heretical” Sabbatianism was the result of the refusal of large sections of the Jewish people to submit to the sentence of history by admitting that their own personal experience had been false and untrustworthy.

Thus, the various attempts to construct a Sabbatian theology were all motivated by a similar purpose, namely, to rationalize the abyss that had suddenly opened between the objective order of things and that inward certainty which it could no longer serve to symbolize, and to render the tension between the two more endurable for those who continued to live with it. The sense of contradiction from which Sabbatianism sprung became a lasting characteristic of the movement: following upon the initial paradox of an apostate Messiah, paradox engendered paradox. Above all, the “believers,” those who remained loyal to their inward experience, were compelled to find an answer to the simple question: what could be the value of a historical reality that had proved to be so bitterly disappointing, and how might it be related to the hopes it had betrayed?

The essence of the Sabbatian’s conviction, in other words, can be summarized in a sentence: it is inconceivable that all of God’s people should inwardly err, and so, if their vital experience is contradicted in the facts, it is the facts which stand in need of explanation. In the words of a Sabbatian “moderate” writing thirty years after Sabbatai Zevi’s apostasy: “The Holy One, blessed be He, does not ensnare even the animals of the righteous, much less the righteous themselves, to say nothing of so terribly deceiving an entire people. . . . And how is it possible that all of Israel be deceived unless this be part of some great divine plan?” This line of argument, which was adopted by many persons from the very beginning of the Sabbatian movement, is known to have impressed even the movement’s opponents, who were equally disinclined to find fault with the entire Jewish people and sought instead some other explanation for what had happened.

During the century and a half of its existence Sabbatianism was embraced by those Jewish circles which desired to prolong the novel sensation of living in a “restored world” by developing attitudes and institutions that seemed commensurate with a new divine order. Inasmuch as this deliberately maintained state of consciousness was directly opposed to the outlook of ghetto Jewry as a whole, of which the “believers” themselves formed a part, the latter of necessity tended to become innovators and rebels, particularly the radicals among them. Herein lay the psychological basis of that spirit of revolt which so infuriated the champions of Orthodoxy, who, though they may at first have had no inkling of the lengths to which it would be ultimately carried, rightly suspected it from the outset of striving to subvert the authority of rabbinic Judaism. Herein, too, lay the basis of all future efforts to construct a Sabbatian theology, to the consideration of which we must now turn our attention.

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In the history of religion we frequently encounter types of individuals known as “pneumatics” (pneumatikoi) or “spiritualists” (spirituales) . Such persons, who played a major role in the development of Sabbatianism, were known in Jewish tradition as “spiritual” or “extra-spirited” men or, in the language of the Zohar, as “masters of a holy soul.” These terms did not refer to just anyone who may have had occasion in the course of his life to be “moved by the spirit”; rather, they applied only to those few who abode in the “palace of the king” (hekhal ha-melekh), that is, who lived in continual communion with a spiritual realm through whose gates they had passed, whether by actually dwelling within it to the point of abandoning their previous existence, or by appropriating from it a “spark” or “holy soul,” as only the elect were privileged to do. One so favored was in certain respects no longer considered to be subject to the laws of everyday reality, having realized within himself the hidden world of divine light. Naturally, spiritualistic types of this sort have always regarded themselves as forming a group apart, and hence the special sense of their own “superiority” by which they are characterized: from their lofty perspective the world of material affairs tends to look lowly indeed. Here, then, we have all the prerequisites for the sectarian disposition, for the sect serves the illuminati as both a rallying point for their own kind and a refuge from the incomprehension of the carnal and unenlightened masses. The sectarians regard themselves as the vanguard of a new world, but they do not therefore need to renounce the parent religion which inspired them, for they can always reinterpret it in the light of the supreme reality to which they owe their newly discovered allegiance.

For a number of reasons, which cannot be gone into here, such spiritualists were rarely allowed to develop within the Jewish community after the period of the Second Temple. In part this was a consequence of Christianity, to which many of them ultimately passed; but even when they continued to exist within Judaism itself, it was always as isolated and unorganized individuals. It is a well-known fact, for instance, that spiritualism particularly abounds in the domain of religious mysticism; and yet, as the history of Kabbalism amply demonstrates, despite the opposition between conventional religion and the ecstasy, at times even abandon, of the pneumatic, medieval Judaism was capable of absorbing the latter into its orbit. Such was not the case, however, with either Christianity or Islam: here the conflict broke out openly and fiercely on numerous occasions, and the spiritualist sects which it produced went on to play important roles in the development of new social and religious institutions, often giving birth, albeit in religious guise, to the most revolutionary ideas. To take but one example, historical research during the last several decades has clearly shown the direct connection between Christian sectarianism in Europe and the growth of the Enlightenment and the ideal of toleration in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The existence of similar forces in Jewish history, on the other hand, has been all but neglected by the historians, an oversight facilitated by the fact that Jewish spiritualism has either long been outwardly dormant or else, as in the case of Kabbalism, has always preferred to work invisibly and unsystematically beneath the surface. Indeed, as long as Jewish historiography was dominated by a spirit of assimilation, no one so much as suspected that positivism and religious reform were the progeny not only of the rational mind, but of an entirely different sort of psychology as well, that of the Kabbalah and the Sabbatian crisis—in other words, of that very “lawless heresy” which was so soundly excoriated in their name!

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In the Sabbatian movement, which was the first clear manifestation (one might better say explosion) of spiritualistic sectarianism in Judaism since the days of the Second Temple, the type of the radical spiritualist found its perfect expression. To be sure, illuminati of the same class were later prevalent in Hasidism too, particularly during the golden age of the movement; but Hasidism, rather than allow itself to be taken over by such types, forced them after a period of initial equivocation to curb their unruly spirituality, and did so with such success that it was able to overcome the most difficult and hazardous challenge of all, that of safely incorporating them into its own collective body. Unlike Sabbatianism, whose followers were determined to carry their doctrine to its ultimate conclusion, it was the genius of Hasidism that it knew where to set itself limits. But the Sabbatians pressed on to the end, into the abyss of the mythical “gates of impurity” (sha’are tum’ah), where the pure spiritual awareness of a world made new became a pitfall fraught with peril for the moral life.

Here, then, were all the materials necessary to cause a true conflagration in the heart of Jewry. A new type of Jew had appeared for whom the world of exile and Diaspora Judaism was partly or wholly abolished and who uncompromisingly believed that a “restored world,” whose laws and practices he was commanded to obey, was in the process of coming into being. The great historical disappointment experienced by the Sabbatian had instilled in him the paradoxical conviction that he and his like were privy to a secret whose time had not yet come to be generally revealed, and it was this certainty which, in Hebrew literature of the period, imparted a special meaning to his use of the terms “believer” and “holy faith,” the peculiar shadings of which immediately inform us that we are dealing with a Sabbatian document even when there is not the slightest allusion there in to Sabbatai Zevi himself: by virtue of his “holy faith” in the mysterious realignment of the divine worlds and in the special relationship to them of the Creator during the transitional period of cosmic restitution (tikkun), the “believer,” he who trusted in the mission of Sabbatai Zevi, was exalted above all other men. Hidden in the “believer’s” soul was a precious jewel, the pearl of messianic freedom, which shone forth from its chamber of chambers to pierce the opaqueness of evil and materiality; he who possessed it was a free man by power of his own personal experience, and to this inner sense of freedom, whether gotten during the mass revival that preceded Sabbatai Zevi’s apostasy, or afterward, in the ranks of “holy faith,” he would continue to cling no matter how much he knew it to be contradicted by the outward facts.

All Sabbatian doctrine had as its aim the resolution of this contradition. The conflict was bitterly clear. Those who were disillusioned by Sabbatai Zevi’s apostasy were able to claim that nothing had really changed: the world was the same as ever, the exile was no different than before; therefore the Torah was the same Torah and the familiar Kabbalistic teachings about the nature of the Godhead and the divine worlds remained in force. A great opportunity had perhaps existed, but it had been missed: henceforth the one recourse was a return to Israel’s traditional faith in its God. The “believers,” on the other hand, could say, in paraphrase of Job, “our eyes have beheld and not another’s”: the redemption had begun indeed, only its ways were mysterious and its outward aspect was still incomplete. Externals might seem the same, but inwardly all was in the process of renewal. Both the Torah and the exile had been fundamentally altered, as had the nature of the Godhead, but for the time being all these transformations bore “inward faces” alone.

The Sabbatian movement soon developed all the psychological characteristics of a spiritual sect, and before long many of its followers proceeded to organize themselves along such lines. The persecutions against them on the part of various rabbinical and congregational authorities, their own special feeling of apartness and the need to preserve their secret, and the novel practices which their beliefs eventually compelled them to pursue, were all factors in bringing this about. I do not propose to dwell at length on the history of any of these groups, but I do wish to emphasize briefly at this point that large numbers of Jews, especially among the Sephardim, continued to remain faithful to Sabbatai Zevi after his conversion. Even such opponents of Sabbatianism as Jacob Sasportas, who claimed that the followers of the movement were now an “insubstantial minority,” was forced to admit on other occasions that the minority in question was considerable indeed, particularly in Morocco, Palestine, Egypt, and most of Turkey and the Balkans. Most of the Sabbatian groups in these areas maintained constant contact with each other and kept up a running battle over the correct interpretation of their “holy faith.” From these regions came the first theoreticians of the movement, men such as Nathan of Gaza, Samuel Primo, Abraham Miguel Cardozo, and Nehemiah Hayon as well as the believers in “voluntary Marranism,” who went on to form the sect of the Dönmeh in Salonika. In Italy the number of Sabbatians was smaller, though it included some of the country’s most important Kabbalists; within a generation after its appearance there, Sabbatianism had dwindled into the concern of a few rabbis and scholars (chief among them Rabbi Benjamin Cohen of Reggio and Rabbi Abraham Rovigo of Modena), in whose hands it remained for a century without ever penetrating into wider circles.

In Northern Europe Sabbatianism was also restricted at first to small groups of adherents, devotees of such “prophets” as Heshel Zoref of Vilna and Mordecai of Eisenstadt in Hungary, but after 1700, following the commencement of a “Palestinian period” during which organized Sabbatian emigrations to the Holy Land took place from several countries, the movement spread rapidly through Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In Lithuania it failed to take root, but in Podolia and Moravia it became so entrenched that it was soon able to claim the allegiance of many ordinary Jewish burghers and small businessmen (according to Jacob Emden, the numerical value of the Hebrew letters in the verse in Psalms 14, “There is none that doeth good, not even one,” was equivalent to the numerical value of the letters in the Hebrew word for Moravial). In Prague and Mannheim Sabbatian-oriented centers of learning came into being. The influence of the “graduates” of these institutions was great; one of them, in fact, was the author of the heretical treatise Va-Avo ha-Yom El ha-Ayin (“And I Came This Day unto the Fountain”) which provoked so much furor at the time of the controversy surrounding Jonathan Eibeschütz (1751) and led to a polemical “battle of the books” which has enabled us to trace the identities of many Sabbatians of whom otherwise we would have known nothing at all. In the middle of the 18th century many of the Sabbatians in Podolia converted to Christianity after the example of their leader Jacob Frank, but still others remained within the Jewish fold. Finally, a Sabbatian stronghold sprang up again in Prague, where Frankism was propagated in a Jewish form. After 1815, however, the movement fell apart and its members were absorbed into secular Jewish society, like the Frankist ancestors of Louis Brandeis.

It is now time to turn our attention to the actual content of the spiritualism of these Sabbatian groups, for although the details of their theosophical teachings cannot be understood by anyone not already familiar with the intricacies of Kabbalistic speculation in both the Zohar and the writings of the Lurianic school, other vital questions which concerned them, as well as their doctrine of the Godhead in its more general form, can be rendered intelligible even to those who are not fully versed in the esoteric side of Jewish mystical thought.

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III

The question which first confronted the “believers” after the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi, and one to which they never ceased returning, was of the following order: since by all external tokens the redemption had already been at hand, and since the Messiah, the authenticity of whose mission was beyond doubt, had actually revealed himself to his people, why had he forsaken them and his religion, and why had the historical and political deliverance from bondage which was to have naturally accompanied the cosmic process of tikkun been delayed? To this a paradoxically compelling answer was quickly offered: the apostasy of the Messiah was itself a religious mystery of the most crucial importance! No less an authority than Maimonides himself, it was argued, had stated that the actual details of the redemptive process were not to be known in advance; and although the truth of the matter was that everything that had happened was fully alluded to in the Holy Scriptures, these allusions themselves could not be correctly understood until the events they foretold had come to pass. All might be found to have been predicted in the relevant prophecies and legends which Nathan of Gaza, and even more so Abraham. Cardozo, now proceeded to expound in the form of a new doctrine to which Sabbatai Zevi himself apparently subscribed.

As long as the last divine sparks (nitzotzot) of holiness and good which fell at the time of Adam’s primordial sin into the impure realm of the kelipot (the hylic forces of evil whose hold in the world is particularly strong among the Gentiles) have not been gathered back again to their source—so the explanation ran—the process of redemption is incomplete. It is therefore left to the Redeemer, the holiest of men, to accomplish what not even the most righteous souls in the past have been able to do: to descend through the gates of impurity into the realm of the kelipot and to rescue the divine sparks still imprisoned there. As soon as this task is performed the Kingdom of Evil will collapse of itself, for its existence is made possible only by the divine sparks in its midst. The Messiah is constrained to commit “strange acts” (ma’asim zarim; a concept hereafter to occupy a central place in Sabbatian theology), of which his apostasy is the most startling; all of these, however, are necessary for the fulfillment of his mission. In the formulation of Cardozo: “It is ordained that the King Messiah don the garments of a Marrano and so go unrecognized by his fellow Jews. In a word, it is ordained that he become a Marrano like me.”

Before proceeding to take a closer look at this bold and heretical doctrine, one might well dwell for a moment on Cardozo’s own words, which provide in my opinion an invaluable clue to the motivation behind it, as they do in fact to nearly every other feature of the Sabbatian movement as well. Underlying the novelty of Sabbatian thought more than anything else was the deeply paradoxical religious sensibility of the Marranos and their descendants, who constituted a large portion of Sephardic Jewry. Had it not been for the unique psychology of these re-converts to Judaism, the new theology would never have found the fertile ground to flourish in that it did. Regardless of what the actual backgrounds of its first disseminators may have been, the Sabbatian doctrine of the Messiah was perfectly tailored to the needs of the Marranic mentality. Indeed, we know for a fact that Abraham Cardozo, one of the movement’s most successful proselytizers, was of definite Marrano origin—he was born in Spain in 1627—a particular which goes far to explain the remarkable zeal and sincerity with which he defended the new doctrine. Historians in our own day have pointed out at length the degree of contradiction, of duplicity and duality, which was involved in the religious consciousness of the Marranos. For these undercover Jews “to don the garments of a Marrano” was by no means an unjustifiable act; in its defense they were fond of citing the story of Queen Esther, as well as various other biblical fragments and verses. Formal apostasy had never been considered by them to represent an irreconcilable break with their mother faith. And now along came a religious metaphysic which exalted just such a form of life to the highest possible level by attributing it to the person of the Redeemer himself! Certainly all kinds of implications, which we shall deal with later on, were contained in this original idea. Let us examine it more closely.

To begin with, the new doctrine could no longer be harmonized with the traditional messianic folk-myth held to by the Jewish masses unless room could be found in the latter for such a “contradiction in terms” as the apostasy of the Redeemer. At first it was no doubt believed that the Messiah’s descent into the realm of the kelipot was but an incidental aspect of his mission, “as happened to King David [when he sojourned] with Achish King of Gath,” but it soon came to be realized that such an extraordinary event must occupy the center of any messianic schema, which if necessary would have to be rebuilt around it: if the Messiah’s task indeed contained a tragic element, as was now being proposed, support for this belief would have to be found in the sources and attitudes of Jewish tradition. What now took place in Sabbatianism was similar to what happened in Christianity at the time of the apostles, the chief difference being the shifting of the tragic moment in the Messiah’s destiny from his crucifixion to his apostasy, a change which rendered the paradox in question even more severe. And to this novel conception another was soon added, one which indeed had a basis in aggadic literature, but whose hidden implications had gone unnoticed as long as no pressing reality had existed to force its application outside of the domain of pure theory and imagination; this was the notion that the King Messiah was to give “a new Torah” and that the commandments of the Law (mitzvot) were to be abrogated in messianic times. Speculations of this nature could be found in various Midrashim and Aggadot, but possessed no particular authority and were easily challenged by means of other exegetical passages to the opposite effect, with the consequence that, in Jewish tradition, the entire question had hitherto been allowed to remain in abeyance. Even those visionaries who dreamt through the ages of a new Word of God in a redeemed world did not, in fact, particularly connect this idea with the activities of the Messiah himself, and it was not until it was seized upon by the new “Marranic” doctrine that its latent explosive power was revealed.

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The doctrine of the necessary apostasy of the Messiah did not originate in the realm of literature, but was rather rooted in new religious feelings that had come to exist. It was only after the initial manifestation of these that the effort to justify them on the basis of authoritative sources began, and with truly remarkable results, for practically overnight a new religious language was born. From bits and pieces of Scripture, from scattered paradoxes and sayings in the writings of the Kabbalah, from all the remotest corners of Jewish religious literature, an unprecedented theology of Judaism was brought into being. The cynicism of most Jewish historians toward these “inanities” does not reveal any great understanding of what actually took place. Suddenly we find ourselves confronted by an original Jewish terminology, far removed from that of Christianity, yet equally determined to express the contradictions inherent in the life of the Redeemer and in redemption itself. Striking as it did a hidden wellspring of deep religious emotion, one can hardly deny that this gospel must have possessed a powerful attraction, nor that it often managed to inject new meanings into familiar phrases and figures of speech with a fascinating profundity. Such a dialectical eruption of new forces in the midst of old concepts is rare indeed. Because Graetz and other historians insisted on regarding its articulation as being nothing more than a pretext for a monstrous debauchment of moral and spiritual values, they completely overlooked its true significance. To be sure, the doctrine of an apostate Messiah did serve as a pretext too, but it was also a great deal more; and had it not appealed (and by virtue of its very paradoxically!) to vital components in the spiritual makeup of the Jew, and above all to his sense of spiritual mission, it would never have succeeded in attracting a following in the first place. This missionary ideology reached a peak in the writings of the Lurianic Kabbalah, which strove to inculcate in every Jew a sense of duty to “elevate the sparks” and so help bring about the ultimate tikkun of the Creation.

Here the 53rd chapter of Isaiah played a key role, for as it was now reinterpreted the verse, “But he was wounded because of our transgressions” was taken to be an allusion not only to the Messiah ben Joseph, the legendary forerunner of the Redeemer who according to tradition was to suffer death at the hands of the Gentiles, but to the Messiah ben David as well, who “would be forcibly prevented from observing the Torah.” By a play on words, the Hebrew ve-hu meholal, “but he was wounded,” was interpreted as meaning “from sacred he [the Messiah] will be made profane [hol].” Thus,

all Gentiles are referred to as profane [hol] and kelipah, and whereas Israel alone is called sacred, all the other nations are profane. And even though a Jew commit a transgression, as long as he remains a Jew among Jews he is called sacred and an Israelite, for as the rabbis have said, “Even though he has sinned, he is still an Israelite.” It follows that there is no way for the King Messiah to be made profane except he be removed from the Community of Israel into another domain.

Many similar homilies were written on the rest of the chapter, especially on the verse, “And he made his grave with the wicked.” Yet another favorite verse was Deuteronomy 33:7 (“And this for Judah, and he said: Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people”), which was assumed to allude to the Davidic Messiah of the House of Judah, whose destiny it was to be taken from his people (hence Moses’s prayer that God bring him back to them). Endless biblical verses were cited to prove that the Messiah was fated to be condemned as an outcast and criminal by his own people. Clothed in Messianic radiance, all the typical arguments of the Marranos were applied to Sabbatai Zevi:

And similar to this [the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi] is what happened to Esther, who was the cause of great salvation to Israel; for although most of the people, being ignorant, most certainly despised her for having given herself to an idol-worshiper and a Gentile in clear violation of the bidding of the Torah, the sages of old, who knew the secret [of her action], did not regard her as a sinner, for it is said of her in the Talmud: “Esther was the ground of the entire world.”

In the same vein, the familiar aggadic saying that “the last Redeemer will be as the first” was taken to mean that just as Moses lived for many years at the court of Pharaoh, so the Messiah must live with “the Turk,” for as the exile draws to a close the Messiah himself must be exiled to atone for Israel’s sins.

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Next came the turn of the Zohar, and here too, with the help of major or minor distortions, a world of new symbols was made to emerge, such as the figure of “the king who is good within but clothed in evil garments.” In vain it was argued against this interpretation that the passage does not refer in this context to a king at all, much less to the Messiah; the image, so expressive in its obscurity, penetrated deep into the Sabbatian consciousness where it remained for generations to come. Two other writers whose works were mined in this fashion were Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague and Rabbi Joseph Taitatsak of Salonika, one of the emigrés from Spain in 1492: the former was found to have cryptically predicted that the Messiah would be bound to the world of Islam, while the latter was supposed to have stated, “when the rabbis said that the Son of David would not come until the kingdom was entirely given over to unbelief [Sanhedrin 97a], they were thinking of the Kingdom of Heaven, for the Shekhinah is destined to don the garments of Ishmael.” In a word, the attempt to justify the belief that the fall and apostasy of the Messiah were necessary actions was carried out assiduously and successfully and led to the composition of many homilies, treatises, and books, some of which have not yet been recovered from their resting places. Endless vindications and defenses of the new doctrine were brought from practically every corner of Jewish literature. At first the tendency was to assert that although the Messiah’s conversion had been forced upon him, it was qualitatively to be considered as a deliberate act; gradually, however, this motif disappeared, and the emphasis came to be placed squarely on the paradox that the Messiah should convert of his own free will. The descent into the kelipot was, indeed had to be, a voluntary one.

It was at this point that a radically new content was bestowed upon the old rabbinic concept of mitzvah ha-ba’ah ba-averah, literally, “a commandment which is fulfilled by means of a transgression.” Once it could be claimed that the Messiah’s apostasy was in no way a transgression, but was rather a fulfillment of the commandment of God, “for it is known throughout Israel that the prophets can do and command things which are not in accord with the Torah and its laws,” the entire question of the continued validity of the Law had reached a critical stage. We know that even before his apostasy Sabbatai Zevi violated several of the commandments by eating the fat of animals and administering it to others, directing that the paschal sacrifice be performed outside of the Land of Israel, and cancelling the fast days. His followers soon began to seek explanations for these acts, and here began a division which was to lead eventually to an open split in the movement.

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IV

The new doctrine of the necessary apostasy of the Messiah was accepted by all the “believers.” In fact, it proved to be symbolically richer than was at first assumed, for it expertly expressed the contradiction between the outward reality of history and the inward reality of the “believers’” lives. It was now no longer to be wondered at that the outward deliverance had been delayed, for this could be explained by the mystic principle of “good within but clothed in evil garments.” In turn, however, other questions arose which the doctrine of necessary apostasy was in itself insufficient to answer.

First of all, it was asked, what was the nature of the Messiah’s act? Was it intended to be an exemplar for others? Were all Jews enjoined to follow suit? Or was it essentially inimitable and to be looked upon as a theoretical model only?

Second, what was the nature of the transitional period during which the Messiah was in the clutches of the kelipot? Could it properly be called the redemption or not? Since it was agreed by all that the Shekhinah had “risen from the dust,” where was the Shekhinah now? Did it still make sense to speak of her “exile” and to mourn for her? What exactly was the relationship of inwardness to outwardness in the present age?

Third, what was the status of the Torah during this period? Had a new aspect of it been revealed? How was the principle of mitzvah ha-ba’ah baaverah to be understood? Could it not be argued that the change which had taken place in the relationship of the divine worlds necessitated a corresponding change in the performance of the commandments, the purpose of which had been to restore the harmony of the old, unredeemed cosmos that had been shattered by the primordial sin? Was not the Lurianic Kabbalah in its traditional form now outdated?

These were the principal dilemmas which were to shape the development of Sabbatianism in the course of the following hundred years, and in several countries to transform it from a messianic movement into a nihilistic movement operating within a religious framework. And just as these questions were themselves mutually related, so the nihilism which resulted from them was to be characterized by its internal unity and consistency.

Here, then, it is necessary to distinguish between two opposing Sabbatian factions which emerged from the clashes of opinion surrounding these disputed points, as well as from differing interpretations of the theosophical “mystery of the Godhead” (sod ha-elohut) revealed by Sabbatai Zevi to his disciples: a moderate and rather piously inclined wing of the movement on the one hand, and a radical, antinomian, and nihilistic wing on the other. (Both of these factions, in turn, contained many subdivisions, but here we are concerned only with the more general features of each.) In the case of some Sabbatians, who have left us no completely candid record of their feelings, it is difficult to determine to which of these two camps they belonged.1 As might naturally be expected, in face of the persecutions against them the “believers” were not often in a position to expound their beliefs undisguisedly, and certainly not to permit them to appear in print. This was particularly true of the nihilists, who had good and compelling reasons for concealing their doctrines.

Moderate Sabbatianism, which we shall consider first, was a view shared by many rabbis and was represented by men like Nathan of Gaza, Abraham Cardozo, and Abraham Rovigo. Of these three, Cardozo and Rovigo are the more valuable sources, especially the former, a large number of whose many treatises have survived thanks to the refusal of his disciples in London, Turkey, and Morocco to burn them in compliance with the injunctions of the rabbinical courts.

According to the “moderates,” the apostasy of the Messiah was not intended to serve as an example for others. To be sure, Sabbatai Zevi had done what was necessary, but to attempt to follow in his footsteps was to belie the significance of his act, which was performed in behalf of everybody. In the words of Isaiah 53: “The Lord hath made to light on him the iniquity of us all.” Strictly speaking, “all were [originally] under the obligation to convert,” but God in His mercy permitted the apostasy of the Messiah to atone for the sins of His people. Besides being strange and scandalous in its nature, Sabbatai Zevi’s conversion was in a class by itself and was not an object of imitation. The Jew was expected to remain a Jew. True, a new world-era had undoubtedly been ushered in, the spiritual worlds had undergone tikkun, and their structure was now permanently altered; nonetheless, as long as the redemption did not manifest itself outwardly in the realm of objective events in history, as long as the external bondage continued and the phenomenal world remained unchanged, no aspect or commandment of the Torah was to be openly tampered with except for the small number of innovations, such as the cancellation of the fast of Tish’ah be-Av (the day of the destruction of the Temple), which had been proclaimed by the Messiah and his prophets as symbolic tokens of the redemption’s commencement. Even on this point, however, there was disagreement, for several Sabbatians, including Abraham Rovigo himself, decided to reinstate the fast after a period of hesitation lasting a number of years during which they had disregarded it—not because they had “gone back” on their beliefs, but because of the questionable nature of the practice itself, as witnessed by the fact that Rovigo’s disciple, Mordecai Ashkenazi, had been bidden by a maggid or “spiritual intelligence” to desist from it. On the whole, it was the view of the “moderates” that during the transitional period under way the kelipot still retained a good deal of their power, which could only be eliminated by continued performance of the mitzvot: the “façade” of rabbinic Judaism must be allowed to remain temporarily standing, although great changes had already taken place within the edifice. One unmistakable testimony to this inner transformation was the abandonment by many of the “moderates” of the mystical meditations (kavvanot) of Isaac Luria. The first to discontinue their use was Nathan of Gaza, whose reasons for doing so were as follows:

The kavvanot of the Lurianic Kabbalists were inward actions of thought designed to relate the performance of given commandments or prayers to specific stages in the dynamic chain of the divine worlds and thereby to reintegrate the latter by helping to restore them to the places they had occupied before their catastrophic fall. Thus, each kavvanah was a spiritual act demonstrating that the outward undertaking which occasioned it harmonized invisibly with the overall structure of the cosmos. Now, however, with the advent of the Messiah, this structure had changed. The sense of inner freedom possessed by the “believers” was not a subjective illusion, but was caused by a real reorganization of the worlds illuminating the soul, as a result of which the Lurianic kavvanot had become obsolete. This in turn led to a revaluation of the entire Lurianic Kabbalah, and on occasion both Nathan of Gaza and Abraham Cardozo went so far as to direct veiled criticisms at Isaac Luria himself. Nathan, for example, writes: “In the present age it is no longer in order to read the tikkunim composed by Rabbi Isaac Luria of blessed memory and his disciples, nor to meditate according to their kavvanot, for the times have changed. The kavvanot of Rabbi Isaac Luria were meant for his own age, which was [like] an ordinary day of the week, whereas now it is the eve of the Sabbath, and it is not proper to treat the Sabbath as though it were a weekday.” Elsewhere he writes: “My meaning is that the kavvanot discovered by our teacher Rabbi Isaac Luria, may his saintly and righteous memory be blessed, are no longer appropriate to our own time, because the raising up [of the divine worlds] has entered a new phase, so that it would be like employing kavvanot intended for a weekday on the Sabbath. Therefore, let everyone beware of using them, and likewise let none of the kavvanot or homilies or writings of Rabbi Isaac Luria be read henceforward, for they are abstruse and no living man has understood them except Rabbi Hayyim Vital, who was a disciple of the master [Isaac Luria] for several years, at the end of which he surpassed him in knowledge.”

In a similar vein: “It is no longer in order to perform the midnight vigil, that is, to weep and mourn for the exile of the Shekhinah, for she has already begun to rise from the earth, so that whoever mourns for her is a blunderer and attracts the company of that guilty [demon] Lilith, since it is she now who weeps and wails.” Many other passages like these could be cited. As a matter of course Cardozo hastened to compose a new series of updated kavvanot, but these were never to prove popular with his fellow Sabbatians, who either gave up the practice of mystical meditations entirely, or else, like many of the Hasidim who came after them, took to composing their own as they individually saw fit.

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It was generally held by all the Sabbatians that now, on the “eve of the Sabbath,” the mystery of the Godhead that had eluded the rabbis, philosophers, and Kabbalists throughout the ages was finally to be revealed. This was not to say that the secret had not been hinted at by the last of the Gnostics living in the Tannaitic period, who cryptically concealed it in the pages of the Zohar and in several Aggadot, particularly those known as the aggadot shel dofi, or “offensive Aggadot,” which had served as milestones for the contemplation of the mystics and as obscure hints at the mysteries during the dark night of exile. But the true meaning of these had been overlooked; nor could it be fully comprehended until the End of Days. On the other hand, although the “mystery of the Godhead” was yet to be revealed in its entirety, a part of it had now been made known. Here again a rejection of Lurianism and the substitution of a new Sabbatian Kabbalah in its place were involved. The first written exposition of the new system, which was to be subject to a great many different inferences and interpretations, was the small tract Raza de-Mehemanuta (“The Secret of the Faith”) which was orally dictated by Sabbatai Zevi to a disciple after his apostasy. Its effect was to prefix yet another stage to the theogonic speculations of the Kabbalists, for it treated (and quite remarkably) of the mysterious inner life of the Godhead before its tzimtzum or primordial contraction, whereas Lurianic Kabbalah had dealt only with the counter-expansion of the deity once the tzimtzum had taken place.

We have already seen in connection with their doctrine of the apostate Messiah that the Sabbatians were not in the least bit chary of paradoxes, and indeed, their theological reflections on the true nature of “the Faith” and its history in Israel reveal a dialectical daring that cannot but be respected. Here we are given our deepest glimpse yet into the souls of these revolutionaries who regarded themselves as loyal Jews while at the same time completely overturning the traditional religious categories of Judaism. I am not of course speaking of a feeling of “loyalty” to the Jewish religion as it was defined by rabbinical authority. For many, if not for most Sabbatians, the Judaism of the rabbis, which they identified with the Judaism of the exile, had come to assume an entirely dubious character. Even when they continued to live within its jurisdiction it was not out of any sense of positive commitment; no doubt it had been suited to its time, but in the light of the soul-shaking truth of the redemption that time had passed. Taking into account all that has been said here, it is hardly surprising that this attitude should have existed. What is surprising, however, indeed astoundingly so, is the nature of the spiritual world that the Sabbatians should have stumbled upon in the course of their search through the Bible for “the mystery of the Godhead” which exilic Judaism had allowed to perish, for here we are confronted with nothing less than the totally unexpected revival of the religious beliefs of the ancient Gnostics, albeit in a transvalued form.

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The Gnostics, who were the contemporaries of the Jewish Tannaim of the 2nd century, believed that it was necessary to distinguish between a good but hidden God who alone was worthy of being worshiped by the elect, and a Demiurge or creator of the physical universe, whom they identified with the “just” God of the Old Testament. In effect they did not so much reject the Jewish Scriptures, whose account of events they conceded to be at least partly true, as they denied the superiority of the Jewish God, for whom they reserved the most pejorative terms. Salvation was brought to mankind by messengers sent by the hidden God to rescue the soul from the cruel law or “justice” of the Demiurge, whose dominion over the evil material world, as testified to by the Bible, was but an indication of his lowly status. The hidden God Himself was unknown, but He had entrusted Jesus and the gnostic faithful with the task of overthrowing the “God of the Jews.” As for the claim of both Jews and orthodox Christians that the God of Israel who created the world and the transcendent God of goodness were one and the same, this was a great falsehood which stood in the way of true gnosis. This kind of “metaphysical anti-Semitism,” as is well known, did not vanish from history with the disappearance of the gnostic sects, but continued to reassert itself within the Catholic Church and its heretical offshoots throughout the Middle Ages.

“The mystery of the Godhead” which Sabbatianism now “discovered,” and which it believed to be identical with “the mystery of the God of Israel” and “the faith of Father Abraham,” was founded entirely on a new formulation of this ancient gnostic paradox. In the version made current by Cardozo it was expounded as follows:

All nations and philosophers have been led by irrefutable laws of the intellect to acknowledge the existence of a First Cause responsible for setting all else in motion. Given the fact, therefore, that anyone capable of logical reasoning can demonstrate to his own satisfaction that such a Cause exists, what need is there for it to be specially revealed to mankind? What possible religious difference can such a revelation make when we are no less the wiser without it? The answer is, none at all. The First Cause, which was worshiped by Pharaoh and Nimrod and the wise men of India alike, is not the concern of religion at all, for it has nothing to do with the affairs of this world or its creation and exerts no influence on it for good or for bad. The purpose of a divine revelation must be to make something known which cannot be grasped by the intellect on its own, something which has specifically religious value and content. And indeed, this is precisely the case with the Jewish Torah, which does not dwell at all on that Hidden Principle whose existence can be adequately proven by the intellect, but speaks only of the God of Israel, Elohei Yisrael, who is the creator of the world and the first emanation to proceed from the First Cause. This God, in turn, has two aspects, or “countenances” (partzufim), one male and one female, the latter being known as the Shekhinah; He alone it is who creates and reveals Himself and redeems, and to Him alone are prayer and worship to be rendered. It is this paradox of a God of religion who is distinct from the First Cause that is the essence of true Judaism, that “faith of our fathers” which is concealed in the books of the Bible and in the dark sayings of Aggadot and the Kabbalah. In the course of the confusion and demoralization brought on by the exile this mystery (of which even Christianity was nothing but a distorted expression) was forgotten and the Jewish People was mistakenly led to identify the impersonal First Cause with the personal God of the Bible, a spiritual disaster for which Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, and the other philosophers will yet be held accountable. It was thus that the words of the prophet Hosea, “For the Children of Israel shall sit solitary many days without a king” (3:4), came to be fulfilled. At the exile’s end, however, Israel’s God will reveal Himself once more, and this secret is a source of precious comfort to the “believers.”

Here we have a typically gnostic scheme, only inverted: the good God is no longer the dens absconditus, who has now become the deity of the philosophers for whom there is no room in religion proper, but rather the God of Israel who created the world and presented it with His Torah. What daring labyrinths of the spirit are revealed in this new creed! What yearnings for a regeneration of faith and what disdainful negation of the exile! Like true spiritual revolutionaries, with an unfeigned enthusiasm which even today cannot fail to impress the reader of Cardozo’s books, the “believers” unflinchingly proclaimed their belief that all during the exile the Jewish people had worshiped a powerless divinity and had clung to a way of life that was fundamentally in need of reform. When one considers how wildly extravagant all this may appear even now, it is easy enough to appreciate the wrath and indignation with which such a theology was greeted by the Orthodox camp in its own day. Determined to avoid a full-scale revolution within the heart of Jewry, the rabbinical traditionalists and their supporters did all they could to drive the “believers” beyond the pale. And yet in spite of all this, one can hardly deny that a great deal that is authentically Jewish was embodied in these paradoxical individuals too, in their desire to start afresh and in their realization of the fact that negating the exile meant negating its religious and institutional forms as well and returning to the original fountainheads of the Jewish faith. This last practice—a tendency to rely in matters of belief upon the Bible and the Aggadah—grew to be particularly strong among the nihilists in the movement. Here, too, faith in paradox reigned supreme: the stranger the Aggadah, the more offensive to reason and common sense, the more likely it was to be seized upon as a symbol of that “mystery of faith” which naturally tended to conceal itself in the most frightful and fanciful tales.

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I have alluded to the fierce discussions that broke out among the Sabbatians over the issue of how “the mystery of the Godhead” was to be interpreted. Several of the elucidations of the doctrine that are known to us differ substantially from the version given by Cardozo, who devoted his very best speculative powers to the question. All of these treatises employ the terminology of the Zohar and the Lurianic Kabbalah, but proceed to attribute to them meanings that are entirely their own. Among the speculations on the subject that have come down to us in detail are those of Nehemiah Hayon, Samuel Primo, and Jonathan Eibeschütz. Despite their division of the Godhead into three hypostases (partzufim)—the First Cause or “Holy Ancient One” (atika kadisha), the God of Israel or “Holy King” (malka kadisha), and the Shekhinah— all of these writers sought to uphold the essential dynamic unity of the divinity. The central problems as they saw them—problems, be it said, which did not exist for non-Sabbatian Kabbalah at all—were first of all to determine the nature of the relationship, the “three knots of faith” as they called it, between the First Cause, the God of Israel, and the Shekhinah, and secondly to establish the exact content of the new revelation concerning the essence of the God of Israel. Characteristic of the approach of these Sabbatian “moderates” was their stubborn refusal to leave any room in their gnostic theories for a doctrine of divine incarnation. Indeed, the literature of “moderate” Sabbatianism is in general filled with violent denunciations of Christianity and of the Christian dogma of the Trinity.

According to several of the “moderates,” “the mystery of the Godhead” had not yet been fully revealed: during the original messianic revival period of 1665-66, they argued, there had been an initial revelation which it was permitted to make known freely, but now, during the period of transition, eclipse, and uncertainty, the situation was no longer the same. The Shekhinah had indeed “begun to rise,” but “she has still not returned to her place entirely, for had she returned we would no longer be in exile.” These words were written by Abraham Rovigo more than thirty years after Sabbatai Zevi’s apostasy, of the mystic meaning of which he had absolutely no doubt, and they illustrate in a nutshell the psychology of “moderate” Sabbatianism while at the same time solving the riddle of how so many rabbis who were confirmed “believers” nevertheless managed to remain in their rabbinical posts. The redemption had truly begun, but it was a gradual process: “[It proceeds] step by step. In the End the Holy One, blessed be He, will raise her from the dust.” This was not to say that the Shekhinah had not already begun to rise of her own accord, but “as long as He does not lift her up Himself it is said that she is still in exile.” It goes without saying that those who subscribed to this view were obliged to keep up all the traditional practices of exilic, i.e., historic, Judaism. Even the midnight vigil for the Shekhinah was ultimately reintroduced.

In a word, at the same time that it was completely transforming the historic inner world of Judaism in its own unique manner, “moderate” Sabbatianism continued to adhere to traditional Jewish observance not for the sake of mere camouflage, but as a matter of principle. The inward crisis which every “moderate” underwent was permitted little or no outward expression, and inasmuch as such an objectification of his feelings was barred by either the exigencies of the situation or the compunctions of his own religious consciousness, he was forced to retreat even further into himself. But although the new sense of inner freedom bore purely inner consequences, we can nevertheless rely on the judgment of those anti-Sabbatian polemicists who saw perfectly clearly that the inward devastation of old values was no less dangerous or far-reaching than its outward manifestation. Whoever reads such a volume as Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz’s The Book of the Eternal Name, a treatise on “the mystery of the Godhead” composed in the traditional style of Talmudic dialectics, will readily see what abysses had opened up in the very heart of Judaism. From these were to come the deluge: pure founts of salvation and spiritual rebirth to the one camp, gross waters of corruption and shameless sacrilege to the other.

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V

We have seen how the principal feature of “moderate” Sabbatian doctrine was the belief that the apostasy of the Messiah was sui generis. The Messiah must go his lonely way into the kingdom of impurity and “the other side” (sitra ahra) and dwell there in the realm of a “strange god” whom he would yet refuse to worship. The enormous tension between the subjective and the objective which had developed in the ranks of his followers had so far found a legitimate expression in this one act alone. Whereas Sabbatai Zevi had actually done strange and objectionable things in the name of the holy, the celebration of this paradox among the “believers” was restricted to the domain of faith. “Moderate” Sabbatianism drew a circle around the concept of “strange holiness” and forbade itself to enter: it was indeed the Messiah’s fate to scandalize Israel by his deeds, but it was decidedly his fate alone.

Once drawn, however, the line was clearly difficult to maintain. The more ardent “believer” found himself becoming increasingly restive. Was he to abandon the Messiah entirely just when the latter was engaged in the most bitter phase of his struggle with the power of evil? If the spark of the redemption had been experienced by all, why should not all do as the Redeemer? How could one refuse to go to his aid? And soon the cry was heard: Let us surrender ourselves as he did! Let us descend together to the abyss before it shuts again! Let us cram the maw of impurity with the power of holiness until it bursts from within.

Feelings such as these formed the psychological background for the great nihilistic conflagration that was to break out in the “radical” wing of the Sabbatian movement. The fire was fed by powerful religious emotions, but in the crucial moment these were to join forces with passions of an entirely different sort, namely, with the instincts of anarchy and lawlessness that lie deeply buried in every human soul. Traditionally Judaism had always sought to suppress such impulses, but now that they were allowed to emerge in the revolutionary exhilaration brought on by the experience of redemption and its freedom, they burst forth more violently than ever. An aura of holiness seemed to surround them. They too would be granted their tikkun, if only in the “hindparts of holiness.”

Ultimately, too, the disappointing course of external events had a telling effect. Though he possessed the heroic soul of the warrior Bar Kokhba, Sabbatai Zevi had not gone forth to do battle on the Day of the Lord. A yawning chasm had appeared between inner and outer realities, and once it was decided that the former was the truer of the two, it was only to be expected that the value of the latter would increasingly come to be rejected. It was precisely at this point that messianism was transformed into nihilism. Having been denied the political and historical outlets it had originally anticipated, the new sense of freedom now sought to express itself in the sphere of human morality. The psychology of the “radical” Sabbatians was utterly paradoxical and “Marranic.” Essentially its guiding principle was: Whoever is as he appears to be cannot be a true “believer.” In practice this meant the following:

The “true faith” cannot be a faith which men publicly profess. On the contrary, the “true faith” must always be concealed. In fact, it is one’s duty to deny it outwardly, for it is like a seed that has been planted in the bed of the soul and it cannot grow unless it is first covered over. For this reason every Jew is obliged to become a Marrano.

Again: a “true act” cannot be an act committed publicly, before the eyes of the world. Like the “true faith,” the “true act” is concealed, for only through concealment can it negate the falsehood of what is explicit. Through a revolution of values, what was formerly sacred has become profane and what was formerly profane has become sacred. It is no longer enough to invent new mystical meditations (kavvanot) to suit the changed times. New forms of action are needed. Prior to the advent of the Redeemer the inward and the outward were in harmony, and this is why it was possible to effect great tikkunim by means of outwardly performing the commandments. Now that the Redeemer has arrived, however, the two spheres are in opposition: the inward commandment, which alone can effect a tikkun, has become synonymous with the outward transgression. Bittulah shel torah zehu kiyyumah: the violation of the Torah is now its true fulfillment.

More than anything else, it was this insistence of the “radicals” on the potential holiness of sin—a belief which they attempted to justify by citing out of context the Talmudic dictum (Nazir 23b), “A transgression committed for its own sake is greater than a commandment not committed for its own sake”—which alienated and offended the average Jew and caused even the “believers” themselves to undergo the severest of conflicts.

In the history of religion, whenever we come across the doctrine of the holiness of sin it is always in conjunction with one or another spiritualistic sect. The type of the pneumatic, which I have previously discussed, is particularly susceptible to such a teaching and it is hardly necessary to point out the connections that exist between the theories of nihilism and those of the more extravagant forms of spiritualism. To the pneumatic, the spiritual universe which he inhabits is of an entirely different order from the world of ordinary flesh and blood, whose opinion of the new laws he has chosen to live by is therefore irrelevant; insofar as he is above sin (an idea, common to many sectarian groups, which occasionally occurs in the literature of Hasidism as well) he may do as the spirit dictates without needing to take into account the moral standards of the society around him. Indeed he is, if anything, duty-bound to violate and subvert this “ordinary” morality in the name of the higher principles that have been revealed to him.

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Although individuals with inclinations in this direction existed in Judaism also, particularly among the Kabbalists, up to the time of the Sabbatians their activities were confined entirely to the level of pure theory. The most outstanding example of such speculative or virtual “spiritualism” to be found in Kabbalistic literature is the Sefer ha-Temunah (“The Book of the Image”), a mystical treatise written in early 13th-century Spain, in which it is stated that the Torah consists of a body of spiritual letters which, though they remain essentially unchanged, present different appearances to the reader in different cosmic aeons (shemitot) . In effect, therefore, each aeon, or shemitah, possesses a Torah of its own. In the current shemitah, which is ruled by the divine quality of din, stern judgment or rigor, the Torah is read in terms of prohibitions and commandments and even its most mystic allusions must be interpreted in this light. In the coming aeon, however, which will be that of rahamim, divine mercy, the Torah will be read differently, so that in all probability “what is prohibited now will be permitted then.” Everything depends on the particular aeon and the divine quality (or attribute) presiding over it. Sensing the dangers inherent in such a doctrine, certain Kabbalists, such as Moses Cordovero, attempted to dismiss it as entirely unworthy of consideration. But it was precisely those works that propounded it, such as the Sefer ha-Temunah and the Sefer ha-Kanah, which influenced the Sabbatians tremendously.

To the theory of the cosmic aeons the Sabbatians assimilated a second, originally unrelated concept. The Zohar itself does not recognize or, more exactly, does not utilize the idea of the shemitot at all (a fact that was instrumental in making it suspect in the eyes of later Kabbalists), but in two later additions to the Zoharic corpus, the Tikkunei ha-Zohar and the Ra’ya Mehemna, a great deal is said on the subject of four emanated worlds, the World of atzilut or “Emanation,” the World of beriah or “Creation,” the World of yetzirah or “Formation,” and the World of asiyah or “Making,” which together comprise the different levels of spiritual reality. In connection with these we also occasionally hear of a “Torah of atzilut” and a “Torah of beriah,” the meanings of which are not entirely clear. By the time of the Kabbalists of the School of Safed, however, we find these latter terms employed in a definite sense to indicate that there are two aspects of the one essential Torah, i.e., the Torah as it is understood in the supernal World of atzilut and the Torah as it is understood in the lower World of beriah. What the Sabbatians now did was to seize this idea and expound it in the light of the theory of cosmic aeons. The Torah of beriah, they argued, borrowing a metaphor from the Zohar (I, 23) is the Torah of the unredeemed world of exile, whose purpose it was to serve as a garment for the Shekhinah in her exile, so that whoever observed its commandments and prohibitions was like one who helped clothe the Shekhinah in her state of distress. The Torah of atzilut, on the other hand, is the “true” Torah which, like “the mystery of the Godhead” it makes manifest, has been in a state of concealment for the entire period of the exile. Now that the redemption has commenced it is about to be revealed, and although in essence it is identical with the Torah of beriah, its way of being read will be different; thus, all the commandments and prohibitions of the Torah of beriah will now be reinterpreted by the light of the World of atzilut, in which (to take but one example), as is stated in several Kabbalistic sources, there is no such thing as forbidden sexual practices. It was in this manner that assertions made in a completely different spirit and in terms of a wholly different understanding of the concepts “World of atzilut “and”Torah of atzilut” were pressed into service by the “radical” Sabbatians as slogans for their new morality.2

The concept of the two Torahs was an extremely important one for Sabbatian nihilism, not least because it corresponded so perfectly to the “Marranic” mentality. In accordance with its purely mystical nature the Torah of atzilut was to be observed strictly in secret; the Torah of beriah, on the other hand, was to be actively and deliberately violated. As to how this was to be done, however, the “radicals” could not agree and differing schools of thought evolved among them. It is important to keep in mind that we are dealing here with an eruption of the most diverse sorts of emotion. The Gordian knot binding the soul of the exilic Jew had been cut and a vertigo that ultimately was to be his undoing seized the newly liberated individual: genuine desires for a reconsecration of life mingled indiscriminately with all kinds of destructive and libidinal forces tossed up from the depths by an irrepressible groundswell that undulated wildly between the earthly and the divine.

The psychological factors at work were particularly various in regard to the doctrine of the holiness of sin, which though restricted at first by some of the “believers” to the performance of certain specified acts alone, tended by virtue of its own inner logic to embrace more and more of the Mosaic Law, especially the biblical prohibitions. Among the leaders of the Dönmeh the antinomian blessing composed by Sabbatai Zevi, “Blessed art Thou O Lord our God, King of the universe, who permittest the forbidden [mattir isurim] ,”3 became a byword. In fact, two somewhat contradictory rationalizations of antinomi-an behavior existed side by side. On the one hand there were those who said: in the world of redemption there can be no such thing as sin, therefore all is holy and everything is permitted. To this it was retorted: not at all! what is needed rather is totally to deny the beriah, “Creation” (a word that had by now come to denote every aspect of the old life and its institutions), to trample its values underfoot, for only by casting off the last vestiges of these can we truly become free. To state the matter in Kabbalistic terms, the one side proposed to withhold the sparks of holiness from the kelipot until they perished from lack of nourishment, whereas the other insisted that the kelipot be positively filled with holiness until they disintegrated from the pressure. But in either case, and despite the many psychological nuances which entered into the “transgression committed for its own sake” and the sacred sin, all the “radicals” were united in their belief in the sanctifying power of sin itself “that dwelleth with them in the midst of their uncleannesses,” as they interpreted the phrase in Leviticus 16:6.

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It would be pointless to deny that the sexual element in this outburst was very strong: a primitive abandon such as the Jewish people would scarcely have thought itself capable of after so many centuries of discipline in the Law joined hands with perversely pathological drives to seek a common ideological rehabilitation. In the light of what happened there is little to wonder at when we read in the texts of rabbinical excommunications dating from the 18th century that the children of the “believers” were automatically to be considered bastards, just as it is perfectly understandable that these children and grandchildren themselves should have done everything in their power to obscure the history of their descent. One may readily grant, of course, as Zalman Rubashov justly observes in his study of the Frankists, that “every sectarian movement is suspected by the church against which it rebels of the most infamous misconduct and immorality,” a conclusion which has led to the hypothesis that such accusations invariably tell us more about the depraved fantasies of the accusers than they do about the actual behavior of the accused. It is Rubakhov’s opinion, indeed, that although the conduct of the Frankists was “in itself adequate cause for indignation and amazement,” there is also “every reason to assume that as a matter of course it was greatly exaggerated.” As valid as the general rule may be, however, the plain facts of the matter are that in the case of the “radical” Sabbatians there was hardly any need for exaggeration. As Nahum Sokolow has pointed out in a note to Kraushar’s history of Frankism, no matter how thoroughly fantastic and partisan the allegations of the anti-Sabbatians may seem to us, we have not the slightest justification for doubting their accuracy, inasmuch as in every case we can rely for evidence on the “confessions” of the “believers” themselves, as well as on a number of their apologias which have come down to us in both theoretical and homiletical form.

All this has recently been confirmed by an unexpected discovery. For many years—well into the present age, in fact—the Sabbatians in Salonika, the Dönmeh, regularly held a celebration on the twenty-second day of the Hebrew month of Adar known as “the Festival of the Lamb,” the exact nature of which was kept a carefully guarded secret until some of the younger members of the sect were finally prevailed upon to reveal it to outsiders. According to their account the festival included an orgiastic rite called “the extinguishing of the lights.” From what we know of this rite it probably came to Salonika from Izmir, for both its name and its contents were evidently borrowed from the pagan cult of “the Great Mother” which flourished in antiquity and continued to be practiced after its general demise by a small sect of “Light Extinguishers” in Asia Minor under the cover of Islam. There can be no question that the Dönmeh took over this ancient bacchanalia based on immemorial myths and adapted it to conform to their mystical belief in the sacramental value of exchanging wives, a custom that was undoubtedly observed by other “radicals” in the movement as well.

The history of Sabbatian nihilism as a mass movement rather than as the concern of a few isolated Jewish scholars who “donned the fez” like Sabbatai Zevi, began in 1683, when several hundred Jewish families in Salonika converted to Islam “so as to conquer the kelipah from within.” From this point on organized Sabbatian nihilism appeared in four main forms:

That of the “believers” who chose “voluntary Marranism” in the form of Islam. The research that has been done on the subject of the Dönmeh, particularly the studies of Abraham Danon and Solomon Rosanes, definitely establishes that the sect was purely Jewish in its internal character, not, of course, in the accepted rabbinical sense, but rather in the sense of a mystical heresy. The apostasy of the Dönmeh aroused violent opposition among the “moderates,” for reasons which I have already made clear.
That of the “believers” who remained traditional Jews in outward life while inwardly adhering to the “Torah of atzilut.” Several groups of such individuals existed in the Balkans and Palestine (beginning with the arrival there of Hayyim Malakh), and afterward, in the 18th century, in Northern and Eastern Europe, where they were concentrated particularly in Podolia and in such nearby towns as Buczacz, Busk, Gliniany, Horodenka, Zhólkiew, Zloczow, Tysmenieca, Nadworna, Podhaice, Rohatyn, and Satanow, but also in other countries, especially Rumania, Hungary, and Moravia.
That of the Frankists who “Marranized themselves” by converting to Catholicism.
That of the Frankists in Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, and Rumania, who chose to remain Jewish.
Despite the differences among these groups, all of them were part of a single larger entity. Inasmuch as it was believed by all the “radicals” that externals were no indication of true faith, apostasy was not a factor to come between them. A Jew in the ghetto of Prague, for example, who went on publicly observing the commandments of the “Torah of beriah” while at the same time violating them in private, knew perfectly well that the “believer” in Warsaw or, say, Offenbach who had recently been baptized “for mystical reasons” was still his brother, just as fifty years earlier Sab-batians in Northern Europe had continued to remain in close touch with the Dönmeh in Salonika even after their conversion to Islam. Essentially, the “radicals” all inhabited the same intellectual world. Their attitudes toward the Torah, the Messiah, and “the mystery of the Godhead” were identical, for all that they assumed new and unusual forms among the Frankists.

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VI

The systematic violation of the Torah of beriah was considered by the “radical” Sabbatians to be the principal attestation of the new epoch ushered in by Sabbatai Zevi. But exactly how was one to distinguish between what belonged to the lower World of beriah and its Torah, and what belonged to the higher World of atzilut and its Torah? Here opinion was divided. Baruchya Russo, better known as Berahya or Berochia, the leader of the radical wing of the Dönmeh in the beginning of the 18th century, preached to his followers that even the thirty-six transgressions deemed worthy by the Torah of the ultimate punishment of karet, i.e., being “cut off” from Israel and from God (a category that included all the forbidden sexual practices), were aspects of the Torah of beriah only. By the same token it was decreed permissible to eat of the sinew of the thigh-vein, for with the advent of the Messiah “Jacob’s thigh has been restored.”4 In the opinion of some, who based their argument on a passage from the Zohar, refraining from the sinew of the thigh-vein and fasting on Tish’ah be-Av were mutually connected observances: “As long as it is forbidden to eat on Tish’ah be-Av it is forbidden to eat the sinew of the thigh-vein, and when it is permitted to eat on Tish’ah be-Av it is permitted to eat the sinew of the thigh-vein.” Others went still further: “It is widely known that belonging to these sects are those who believe that [with the advent of the Messiah] the Torah has been nullified [betelah] and that in the future it will be [read] without [reference to] the commandments, for they say that the violation of the Torah has become its fulfillment, which they illustrate by the example of a grain of wheat that rots in the earth.” In other words, just as a grain of wheat must rot in the earth before it can sprout, so the deeds of the “believers” must be truly “rotten” before they can germinate the redemption. This metaphor, which appears to have been extremely popular, conveys the whole of sectarian Sabbatian psychology in a nutshell: in the period of transition, while the redemption is still in a state of concealment, the Torah in its explicit form must be denied, for only thus can it too become “concealed” and ultimately renewed.

There were, however, even more extreme cases than these. Jacob Emden relates how he was told by a rabbinical associate of great learning, the Rabbi of the Amsterdam Ashkenazim, that

when he was in Zhó1kiew he became involved with one of these heretics, a man named Fishl Zloczow, who was expertly versed in the entire Talmud, which he knew practically by heart, for he was in the habit of shutting himself up in his room in order to pore over it, never ceasing from his studies (for he was a wealthy man) nor engaging in idle conversation. He would linger over his prayers twice as long as the Hasidim of olden times and was considered by all to be a most pious and ascetic individual. Once he came to him [i.e., to Emden’s informant] in order to confess his sins and revealed that he belonged to the sect of Sabbatai Zevi, that he had eaten leavened bread on the Passover, and so forth, carrying on contritely all the while as though he had truly repented of his deeds. Soon afterward, however, he was caught in the act of committing grave transgressions of the Law and was excommunicated by the rabbis of Lithuania and Volhynia. When asked why he had not continued his hidden sins in private instead of [committing acts that led to his exposure] in public . . . he replied that on the contrary, the more shame he was forced to suffer for his faith, the better it was.

Here we are confronted with the type of the “believer” in its most paradoxical form, and, significantly, the individual in question was no ordinary Jew, but was rather conceded to be an excellent rabbinic scholar by an eminent authority who was in a position to know. One could hardly wish for a more perfect example of the nihilistic rejection of the Torah of beriah, which in this case was studied for the sole purpose that it might be better violated in spirit! The Jewish world was indeed showing signs of inner decay if types such as these were able to make themselves so easily at home in its midst. And yet underneath all these vagaries there was obviously a deep-seated desire for something positive which for lack of suitable conditions under which to function had come to nought.

Illustrative parables and homilies were also brought to bear on the doctrine of the sacred sin itself, and the reader cannot fail to notice that they are more than just paradoxical and highly offensive sayings. They breathe an entirely new spirit. “The patriarchs came into the world to restore [le-takken] the senses and this they did to four of them. Then came Sabbatai Zevi and restored the fifth, the sense of touch, which according to Aristotle and Maimonides is a source of shame to us, but which now has been raised by him to a place of honor and glory.” As late as the beginning of the 19th century we find a fervent “believer” in Prague commenting in connection with the verse in Psalm 68, “Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivity captive,” that the captive in question is the spiritual Torah of atzilut, which is called a “prisoner” because it was captured by Moses and forced to dwell in the prison cell of the material Torah of beriah:

Such is the case with the inner Torah, for the outer is in opposition to the inner . . . and must be annihilated before the inner can be freed. And just as a woman from Ishmael [i.e., from a Moslem country] feels as though she has been freed from her confinement when she comes to Edom [i.e., a Christian country] . . . so continuing [to live] in Israel under the Torah of beriah is called “captivity,” nor can she be given in marriage under the Torah of beriah but only in Edom, whereas in Israel one must remain a virgin—and [he who is able to, let him] understand.

The cryptic Frankist allusions at the end of this passage to Christianity and to “remaining a virgin” are rather obscure, but it is evident from the whole how strongly the rejection of the lower, or material, Torah of beriah continued to be upheld by Sabbatian Jews right down to the movement’s last years. Elsewhere the author of the above, a thoughtful and deeply religious individual, explains that the commonly expressed belief that “no mischief can befall the righteous man [Prov. 12:21] nor can he be a cause of sin” must be understood in the light of the Torah of atzilut to mean that no matter how sinful the acts of the righteous may appear to others they are in fact always fully justified in themselves. He then adduces a number of astute mystical reasons for the necessity of certain transgressions, such as eating on the fast days, which he defends by arguing that fasting is a kind of spiritual “bribe” given to the kelipot and as such is not in keeping with the pure spiritual nature of the Torah of atzilut.

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As to the ultimate step of apostasy, the arguments presented by the “radicals” in its behalf closely resemble those brought forward by the “moderates” to vindicate the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi himself. We happen to have in our possession an illuminating document bearing on the disputes that arose over this question among the “believers” in the form of a homily by the well-known Sabbatian Nehemiah Hayon on the verse (Deut. 29:17), “Lest there be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God, to go serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood.” The paradoxical solution arrived at by Hayon toward the close of his long discourse, which I quote here in abbreviated form, is an invaluable reflection of the perplexity and deep inner conflict experienced by those Sabbatians who were unable to choose between the “radical” and “moderate” positions:

It is supposed among those versed in esoteric lore that the redemption can be brought about in either one of two ways: either Israel will have the power to withdraw all the sparks of holiness from [the realm of] the kelipah so that the kelipah will wither into nothing, or else the kelipah will become so filled with holiness that because of this repletion it must be spewn forth. . . . And this [fact], that the coming of the redemption can be prompted in one of two ways, was what the rabbis of blessed memory had in mind when they said that the Son of David would come either in a generation that was entirely guiltless (meaning when Israel by virtue of its good deeds had withdrawn all the sparks of holiness from the kelipah), or else in a generation that was entirely guilty (meaning when the kelipah had become so filled with holiness that it split its maw and perished). . . . And it is in consequence of this thesis that many, though their intentions are good, have mistakenly said, “Let us go worship other gods that we may fill the kelipah to bursting that it die.” . . . Nay, do not reason with yourself, “Since it is impossible for all to become guiltless so as to withdraw the holiness from the kelipah, it is better that I become a sinner and so hasten the doom of the kelipah in that way that it might die and salvation might come,” but rather, “Wait for the Lord and keep His way” [Ps. 37:34]: it is better that you endure the length of the exile and look to salvation than that you sin by worshiping other gods in order to bring on the redemption. This brings us to the meaning of the verse, “Lest there be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood [29:17], and it come to pass when he heareth the words of this curse” [etc.; 29:18]. In other words, when he hears the words of the curse that is threatened . . . he turns away his heart from God and blesses himself in his heart [29:18], saying: “What Moses has written is true” . . . but [he thinks that] if he does not turn away his heart from God and if his intentions are good, that is, if he means to quench the kelipah by giving it holiness to drink, then certainly no evil will befall him, but on the contrary, God will turn the curse into a blessing. And this is the meaning of the words “and he blesses himself in his heart,” for he says to himself, “I am sure that no harm will befall me . . . because I did not turn my heart [from God] . . . and because my intentions are good . . . [namely] to water the kelipah, the thirsty one, with the holiness that I extend to her that she may partake of it and die. It is of such a one that Moses said, “The Lord will not be willing to pardon him” [29:19]. . . . Even though his intentions were good and he only desired to hasten the redemption, he cannot be forgiven. . . . Nor does [the principle of] “A transgression committed for its own sake” [is greater than a commandment not committed for its own sake] apply here, since there [in its original context] it refers to an ordinary sin, as in the case of Jael [in killing Sisera; Judg. 4], whereas here, where it is a question of worshiping other gods, the Lord will not be willing to pardon him. . . . They [who act on this mistaken assumption] are powerless to destroy the kelipah; on the contrary, he [who attempts to fill the kelipah with holiness] will remain stuck in its midst, and this is why it is said that the Lord will not be willing to pardon him. . . . There is also another possible explanation [of the verse], namely, that when Moses said that the Lord would not be willing to pardon him he was not pronouncing a curse . . . but was thinking the following: . . . since he [the deliberate sinner] believes in his heart that God will not account his actions as sins, but will rather reward them . . . it is inconceivable that he should ever repent for he does not believe he has done wrong. . . How then can the Holy One, blessed be He, forgive him? On the contrary, each time [he sins] he only angers Him the more . . . by thinking that he has done good instead of evil . . . and by saying that the greater a sinner he is the more he hastens the coming of the redemption. Such a one undoubtedly incurs the full power of the curse, since he deliberately violates all its injunctions. . . . “And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel” [29:20]. . . . But perhaps one can interpret the meaning of the text as follows: since such a person intends his deeds to redound to the benefit of all Israel . . . if after sinning and passing through the kelipah he reconsiders and repents completely, he undoubtedly succeeds in raising up many sparks from the kelipah, just as in the case of the human body when one is administered an emetic he does not simply vomit up the drug itself, but rather having opened his mouth proceeds to spew forth both the drug and everything that was near it. And so it is with the kelipah: sometimes it gains power over a man whose soul is great and does him harm, but as soon as he repents he spews forth all that was within him. And this is what Solomon meant when he said [Eccl. 8:9] there is a time when one man rules another to do him harm. [But since] There is a time [for such things] and miracles do not happen every hour, therefore Moses warns that one should not place himself in this peril. . . . “And the Lord shall separate him unto evil”; in other words, if he [the deliberate sinner] has been a cause of evil he is singled out [for judgment] from the tribes of Israel, for [it is a halakhic principle that] one cannot commit a transgression for another by proxy even if one has been authorized to do so, much less if one has not been, so that having gone [and committed evil] of his own accord, there is no doubt that the evil which results [from his actions] will not be imputed to Israel as a whole. But if he does good—that is, if he repents wholeheartedly and raises up sparks from Israel by virtue of his repentance—then all the tribes of Israel have a part in this good; it is only in the evil that they do not have a part.

Likely as not, this entire passage has an autobiographical basis. In any event, it is clear that the attitude of its author toward the “voluntary Marranos” whose conversion he decries yet understands so well is far from being hostile or vindictive.

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One of the strongest factors in the development of a nihilistic mentality among the “radicals” was their desire to negate an objective historical order in which the exile continued in full force and the beginnings of the redemption went unnoticed by all but the “believers” themselves. Understandably, during the period now in question this antipathy toward outward reality remained confined to the area of religion alone, the world of ghetto Jewry still being sufficiently stable to preclude its active politicalization. Prior to the French Revolution, indeed, there was no connection between the ideas of Sabbatianism and the growing undercurrent of discontent with the ancien régime in Europe. It was only when changing times had widened the “believers’” horizons and revealed to them the existence of more tangible ways of affecting the course of history than the violation of the Torah of beriah that they too began to dream of revolutionizing the structure of society itself. In a sense this was to mean the restoration to Jewish Messianism of its traditional political content, which, as I have shown, the Sabbatian movement transformed beyond recognition. As long as external conditions were not conducive to this, even the “radicals” remained politically unaware, nor were they able to conceive of any other method of revitalizing Jewish life than the subversion of its most sacred values; but it is not surprising that once the opportune moment arose the essentially this-worldly emphasis of Jewish Messianism which Sabbatianism had striven to suppress should have come to be stressed again. I shall have more to say on this important subject; first, however, I would like to comment on a related matter, one which will serve as yet another example of the uniquely paradoxical dialectic of Sabbatian thought: its attitude toward Palestine.

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Immediately after the collapse of the initial messianic expectations aroused by Sabbatai Zevi, scattered groups of Sabbatians began to express their opposition to the idea of emigration to the Holy Land. As has now been established, Nathan of Gaza himself was of the opinion that “for the time being it is best not to go to the Land of Israel.” But this point of view did not go unchallenged. A number of “believers,” especially after 1700, attempted to demonstrate by mystical reasons that in the light of Sabbatian doctrine emigration was indeed desirable after all. Individuals from both the circle of Abraham Rovigo and the whole band of “Hasidim” centered around Rabbi Judah Hasid actually settled in Palestine as a result of specifically Sabbatian aspirations. One belief that was current at the time was that on the occasion of Sabbatai Zevi’s second advent, which would take place forty years after his “concealment,” a true mystical knowledge of his nature would be revealed to those of his followers, and only to those, who were living in the Holy Land. Sabbatian nihilists like Hayyim Malakh, who were contemporaries of such groups, also were in favor of going to the Land of Israel, from which they too undoubtedly expected special revelation to come; in addition, they may have felt that there was an advantage to violating the Torah of beriah on the most consecrated ground of all, on the analogy of “conquering the queen in her own home.” As late as the middle of the 18th century Sabbatian nihilists in Podolia still had contacts and acquaintances in Palestine, while a number of the emissaries sent by the Palestinian Jewish community to raise funds in the Diaspora were Sabbatian scholars who acted on the side both as secret propagators of the faith and as contacts between “believers” in different localities. Many of these, such as the author of the The Book of the Adornment of Days, a beautiful and detailed description (in Hebrew) of the life of a Kabbalist devotee all through the year, were undoubtedly “moderates,” but regarding many others we will probably never know exactly where they stood.

Toward the middle of the 18th century, however, a reaction took place, so that we find a distinct anti-Palestinian bias setting in throughout the movement. Whether or not the anti-Palestinian sermon cited by Jacob Emden in his Edut be-Ya’akov (44b) is really the handiwork of Jonathan Eibeschütz is uncertain, but in any case there can be no question of its being a total fabrication, inasmuch as similar ideas to those expressed in it can be found in other Sabbatian documents which Emden could not possibly have seen. Among the Frankists an astonishing and clear-cut ideology of Jewish territorialism (as distinct from Palestine-centered tendencies) developed at about this time, apparently as a result of Frank’s own personal ambitions. In a word, on the very eve of its absorption of new political ideas Sabbatian nihilism completely reversed its previously positive evaluation of the role of the Land of Israel, so that when shortly afterward it began to speak the language of a revived political Messianism and to prophesy the rebirth of the Jewish nation as one outcome of an impending world revolution, there was no longer any real interest on its part in the idea of the Land of Israel as a national center. As stated by the Frankist writer in Prague whom we have already had occasion to quote, Israel’s exile is not a consequence of its sins at all, but is rather part of a plan designed to bring about the destruction of the kelipot all over the world, so that “even if several thousands or tens-of-thousands of Jews are enabled to return to the Land of Israel, nothing has been completed.” According to the same author this new doctrine of the exile is “a secret mystical principle which was hidden from all the sages until it was [recently] revealed in Poland.” And thus we see how in the final stages of Sabbatianism the intrinsic nature of the exile came to be reconsidered in an entirely new light

The figure of Sabbatai Zevi himself was also recast by the passage of time, becoming entirely mythical: gradually the element of historical truth was diminished until nothing was left but a legendary hero who had inaugurated a new epoch of world history. Even in Sabbatai Zevi’s lifetime one of his first disciples, Abraham Yakhini, could write of him (in his book Vavei ha-Amudim): “Just as one of the seventy faces of the Torah is concerned entirely with the resurrection of the dead, as is to be seen in [the commentaries of] the Zohar on several chapters [of the Pentateuch], [the allusions to the resurrection in] the other chapters being inaccessible to us because of the limitations of our intellects, so one of the seventy faces of the Torah is concerned entirely with the Messiah, our lord and master, may his majesty increase, and shortly, when he reveals himself to us [completely], we shall be privileged to understand the entire Torah in this way.” It is little wonder that the concrete historical figure of Sabbatai Zevi came to be transformed by his followers in much the same manner as Jesus’s was by his, if not more so, since his conversion into a mythological figure was even more complete. Like the early Christians, in fact, the “radicals” eventually came to believe that the Messiah had not been a mere superior human being, but an incarnation of God Himself in human form. This new interpretation of “the mystery of the Godhead” was accepted by all the “radical” groups down to the last of the Frankists and was considered by them to be the most profound mystic truth in their entire body of doctrine. Whence it came cannot yet be determined: perhaps from the collective memory of thousands of Marranos, perhaps from Christian books or anti-Christian polemics, or perhaps from the “believers’” own inner conflict, the paradoxical cause of which—an apostate Messiah—may have led them to adopt the same paradoxical solution that a like contradiction—a crucified Messiah—produced in yet another group of Jews caught in the toils of religious turmoil. And perhaps, too, all of these factors combined to work together.

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The doctrine of an incarnate God, which immediately became a bone of contention between the “radicals” and the “moderates” in the Sabbatian camp, was limited at first to the figure of Sabbatai Zevi himself. According to one view, when the redemption began, “the Holy One, blessed be He, removed Himself upward and Sabbatai Zevi ascended to be God in His place.” Since in the Sabbatian faith “the Holy One, blessed be He,” was synonymous, as we have seen, with “the God of Israel,” this meant that Sabbatai Zevi had now assumed the latter’s title and become “the Holy King.” Before long, however, the “believers” in Salonika replaced this teaching with another: “the Holy King” had Himself been incarnated in the person of the Messiah in order to restore the world and nullify the Torah of beriah. It was in this form that the doctrine was accepted by the Sabbatian nihilists in Podolia. A prayer of theirs that has come into our possession reads: “May it be Thy will that we prosper in Thy Torah and cling to Thy commandments, and mayst Thou purify my thoughts to worship Thee in truth . . . and may all our deeds in the Torah of alzilut [meaning: transgressions!] be only for the sake of Thy great name, O Señor Santo,5 that we may recognize Thy greatness, for Thou art the true God and King of the universe, our living Messiah who wast in this earthly world and didst nullify the Torah of beriah and didst reascend to Thy place to conduct all the worlds.”

But this doctrine of a single incarnation did not long remain unaltered in turn. Apparently among the Sephardic converts to Islam the belief developed that the leaders of the “believers” in every age were reincarnations of Sabbatai Zevi. Whether this actually meant that these leaders—particularly Baruchya, who was one of the foremost promulgators of the new belief—were thought to be, or considered themselves, divine incarnations no less than the Messiah himself is not entirely clear, but there are good reasons for believing that the gospel preached by facob Frank at the beginning of his career was nothing but this Sephardic teaching with a number of modifications to suit his own personality, and Frank himself, though he never said so in so many words, was correctly understood by his disciples to imply that he personally was the living God once again incarnated on earth. Not without a certain “consistency” the Frankists held that each of the three hypostases of the Godhead had its individual incarnation in a separate Messiah: Sabbatai Zevi, whom Frank was in the habit of referring to simply as “the First One,” had been the embodiment of “the Ancient Holy One,” Frank himself was the personification of “the Holy King,” and the third hypostasis, the Shekhinah, variously known in the writings of the Kabbalah as “the Kingdom” (malkhut), “the Lady” (matronita), “the Maiden,” and “the Doe,” was to appear in the form of a woman. It is hard not to associate this novelty—a female Messiah, referred to by Frank as “the Virgin,” who was yet to be revealed and whose task it would be to complete the work of the redemption—with the influence of certain mystical Christian sects prevalent at about this time in Eastern Europe that believed in a triad of saviors corresponding to the threefold nature of God and in a feminine incarnation of the Sophia, the Divine Wisdom or Holy Spirit. With one of these groups, in fact, the “Philipovicites” in Rumania and the Ukraine, the Frankists were in such close contact that one of its former leaders publicly defended them before the Catholic authorities of Poland.

Interpreted in this manner the redemption was a process filled with incarnations of the divinity. Even the “radicals” in Prague who clung to their Jewish identity and strove to defend their beliefs by means of Jewish concepts and sources were won over to this view, and although their hostility to Christianity as an institution knew no bounds, references to “the mystery of the incarnation” can be found throughout their literature. The anti-Sabbatian polemicists who accused the “believers” of corporealizing the idea of God were perfectly right in their assertions, but this fact, which seemed to them a damning admission of weakness, was in reality their opponents’ greatest source of pride! “Because the Godhead has a body the sting of death is gone,” wrote one “believer.” On the surface it would seem that the exaggerated spirituality of the World of atzilut and the yearning to see God in the flesh that was evidenced by the doctrine of a messianic incarnation were two mutually opposed tendencies, and yet, after all that has been said here, it should not be difficult to see that underlying both was the struggle of a new sensibility toward life to express itself by means of a religious vocabulary inherited from the old. In such cases the paradox is always the only solution.

In summary, the five distinguishing beliefs of “radical” Sabbatianism are:

The belief in the necessary apostasy of the Messiah and in the sacramental nature of the descent into the realm of the kelipot.
The belief that the “believer” must not appear to be as he really is.
The belief that the Torah of atzilut must be observed through the violation of the Torah of beriah.
The belief that the First Cause and the God of Israel are not the same, the former being the God of rational philosophy, the latter the God of religion.
The belief in three hypostases of the Godhead, all of which have been or will be incarnated in human form.
These theses amply demonstrate, in my opinion, that in the onward course of the Sabbatian movement the world of traditional Judaism was shattered beyond repair. In the minds of those who took part in this revolutionary destruction of old values a special susceptibility to new ideas inevitably came to exist. Well might the “believers” have asked how long their newly released energies and emotions were to go on being aimlessly squandered. Were their lives required to be dominated by paradoxes forever?

But just as the character of the Sabbatian movement was dictated by the circumstances of the movement’s birth, so, in turn, it was to dictate the circumstances of the movement’s disintegration and death. For as the “believers” had meant to fire the sparks of holiness with the kelipot, so they were to wander in the blackest of blind alleys; and as they had wished to “play” with “the other side,” the dark side of life, so they were to dance in the devil’s own arms. And last and most ironically of all: as they had hastened to come to the aid of the Redeemer—“to do as he did for strange are his deeds, to worship as he worships for his worship is alien” (Isa. 28:21)—so they were to be induced in the end to play into the hands of a man like Jacob Frank.

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VII

Jacob Frank (1726-91) will always be remembered as one of the most frightening phenomena in the whole of Jewish history: a religious leader who, whether for purely self-interested motives or otherwise, was in all his actions a truly corrupt and degenerate individual. Indeed, it might plausibly be argued that in order to exhaust completely its seemingly endless potential for the contradictory and the unexpected, the Sabbatian movement was in need of just such a strongman, a man who could snuff out its last inner lights and pervert whatever will to truth and goodness was still to be found in the mazelike ruins of the “believers’” souls. Even if one is willing to concede that the doctrine of the sacred sin, the mitzvah ha-ba’ah ba-averah, was not lacking in certain insights, there can be no question but that these were thoroughly debased upon coming in contact with the person of Frank. But just as the “believers” had deliberately chosen to follow that dangerous path along which nothing is impossible, so it was perhaps precisely this that attracted them to Frank, for here was a man who was not afraid to push on to the very end, to take the final step into the abyss, to drain the cup of desolation and destruction to the lees until the last bit of holiness had been made into a mockery. His admirers, who themselves fell far short of him in respect of this ability, were won over by his intrepidness, which neither the fear of God nor the terrors of the bottomless pit were able to daunt, and saw in him the type of the true saint, a new Sabbatai Zevi and an incarnate God.

If the full truth be told, however, even after one has taken into account Frank’s unscrupulous opportunism, his calculated deceits, and his personal ambitions, none of which really concern us here, he remains a figure of tremendous if satanic power. True, neither the promises and pledges with which he lured his disciples, nor his visionary schemes for the future that was to follow the general cataclysm of the times seem particularly impressive today, although of his territorialist program it may at least be said that besides revealing his own lust for power it expressed in a bizarre yet unmistakable manner the desire of his followers for a reconstruction of Jewish national and even economic existence; and yet for all the negativism of his teachings, they nonetheless contained a genuine creed of life.

Frank was a nihilist, and his nihilism possessed a rare authenticity. Certainly, its primitive ferocity is frightening to behold. Certainly, too, Frank himself was not only an unlettered man, but boasted continually of his own lack of culture. But in spite of all this—and here is the significant point—we are confronted in his person with the extraordinary spectacle of a powerful and tyrannical soul living in the middle of the 18th century and yet immersed entirely in a mythological world of its own making. Out of the ideas of radical Sabbatianism, a movement in which he was apparently raised and educated, Frank was able to weave a complete myth of religious nihilism. This, surely, is worthy of attention.

Frank was not an original speculative thinker, but he did have a decided talent for the pithy, the strikingly illustrative, and the concretely symbolic expression. Despite their nihilistic content, his sayings in The Sayings of the Lord (Slawa Pa?skie) are not very different in form from those of many famous Hasidic Zaddikim, and for all his despotic nature he possessed a hidden poetic impulse which appears all the more surprising in the light of his customary savagery. Even Kraushar, who like his predecessors was intent on emphasizing everything that seemed incoherent or grotesque in Frank’s recorded sayings, was forced to admit that on occasion they show vigor and imagination. For my own part, I fail to see how any sensitive individual who reads the many excerpts published by Kraushar from The Sayings of the Lord with a degree of understanding—something which it is far from impossible to do—can contemplate them without emotion. But how many have even troubled to make the effort?6

Frank was particularly gifted at the creation of new images and symbols, and in spite of its popular coloration his language is full of mystical overtones. Of the terminology of the Kabbalah he rarely made use, at times even criticizing the Sabbatian sectarians in Podolia for their continuing absorption in Kabbalistic ideas, which he called “madness.” Anyone familiar with “radical” Sabbatian thought, however, can readily detect its continued presence beneath the new verbal façade. Thus, in place of the familiar Sabbatian “three knots of the faith” we now have “the Good God,” “the Big Brother who stands before the Lord,” and “the Virgin,” terms which are highly suggestive for all their earthy quality. The kelipah, the Torahs of beriah and atzilut, the sparks of holiness, indeed all the conceptual usages that are basic to Sabbatian theological discourse, have disappeared entirely, to be replaced by a completely exoteric vocabulary. Even the figure of Sabbatai Zevi has greatly declined in importance. The world of Sabbatianism itself, on the other hand, remains intact, or rather, has reached that ultimate stage of its development where it verges on self-annihilation.

In the following pages I will attempt to present an overall view of Frank’s religious teachings, to the extent, that is, that they can be fully reconstructed from his many sayings, and in a form that they apparently did not completely attain until after his conversion to Catholicism. Although they will occasionally seem to contradict one another, they are for the most part mutually consistent. The somberness of their world or, more accurately, world-ruin, did not in fact encourage a great deal of variety, although this did not prevent the “believers,” including even the traditionalists among them in Prague, from finding a dark fascination in its tidings, which Frank himself brutally summed up in a single brusque remark: “It is one thing to worship God—and quite another to follow the path that I have taken.”

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According to Frank, the “cosmos” (tevel), or “earthly world” (tevel ha-gashmi) as it was called by the sectarians in Salonika, is not the creation of the Good or Living God, for if it were it would be external and man would be immortal, whereas as we see from the presence of death in the world this is not at all the case. To be sure, there are “worlds” which belong to “the Good God” too, but these are hidden from all but the “believers.” In them are divine powers, one of whom is “the King of Kings,” who is also known as “the Big Brother” and “He who stands before the Lord.” The evil power that created the cosmos and introduced death into the world, on the other hand, is connected with the feminine, and is most probably composed of three “gods” or “Rulers of the World,” one of whom is the Angel of Death. In any case, it is these “Rulers,” all of whom have been incarnated on earth in human form, who block the path leading to “the Good God,” who is unknown to men, for mystic knowledge of Him has as yet been revealed to no one, nor has the holy soul (nishmata) that emanates from Him been in any creature, not even in Sabbatai Zevi. In the current aeon there are three “Rulers of the World,” “Life,” “Wealth,” and “Death,” the last of which must be replaced by “Wisdom” -a task, however, that is not easily accomplished, for although “Wisdom” is in some mysterious manner connected to “the Good God,” the latter is still not able to reveal Himself to mankind, “for the world is in the thrall of laws that are no good.”

Hence it is necessary to cast off the domination of these laws, which are laws of death and harmful to mankind. To bring this about, the Good God has sent messengers such as the patriarchs “who dug wells,” Moses, Jesus, and others, into the world. Moses pointed out the true way, but it was found to be too difficult, whereupon he resorted to “another religion” and presented men with “the Law of Moses,” whose commandments are injurious and useless. “The Law of the Lord,” on the other hand—the spiritual Torah of the Sabbatians—“is perfect” (Ps. 19:8), only no man has yet been able to attain it. Finally, the Good God sent Sabbatai Zevi into the world, but he too was powerless to achieve anything, because he was unable to find the true way. “But my desire is to lead you toward Life.” Nevertheless, the way to Life is not easy, for it is the way of nihilism and it means to free oneself of all laws, conventions, and religions, to adopt every conceivable attitude and to reject it, and to follow one’s leader step for step into the abyss. Baptism is a necessity, as Frank said prior to his conversion, “because Christianity has paved the way for us.” Thirty years afterward this same “Christian” observed: “This much I tell you: Christ, as you know, said that he had come to redeem the world from the hands of the devil, but I have come to redeem it from all the laws and customs that have ever existed. It is my task to annihilate all this so that the Good God can reveal Himself.”

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The annihilation of every religion and positive system of belief—this was the “true way” the “believers” were expected to follow. Concerning the redemptive powers of havoc and destruction Frank’s imagination knew no limits. “Wherever Adam trod a city was built but wherever I set foot all will be destroyed, for I came into this world only to destroy and to annihilate. But what I build, will last forever.” Mankind is engaged in a war without quarter with the “no-good” laws that are in power—“and I say to you, all who would be warriors must be without religion, which means that they must reach freedom under their own power and seize hold of the Tree of Life.” No region of the human soul can remain untouched by this struggle. In order to ascend one must first descend. “No man can climb a mountain until he has first descended to its foot. Therefore we must descend and be cast down to the bottom rung, for only then can we climb to the infinite. This is the mystic principle of Jacob’s Ladder, which I have seen and which is shaped like a V.” Again, “I did not come into this world to lift you up but rather to cast you down to the bottom of the abyss. Further than this it is impossible to descend, nor can one ascend again by virtue of one’s own strength, for only the Lord can raise one up from the depths by the power of His hand.” The descent into the abyss requires not only the rejection of all religions and conventions, but also the commission of “strange acts,” and this in turn demands the voluntary abasement of one’s own sense of self, so that libertinism and the achievement of that state of utter shamelessness which leads to a tikkun of the soul are one and the same thing.

“We are all now obliged to enter the abyss” in which all laws and religions are annihilated. But the way is perilous, for there are powers and “gods”—these being none other than the three “Rulers of the World”—that do not let one pass. It is necessary to elude them and continue onward, and this none of the ancients was able to do, neither Solomon, nor Jesus, nor even Sabbatai Zevi. To accomplish this, that is, to overcome the opposing powers, which are the gods of other religions, it is imperative that one be “perfectly silent,” even deceitful. This is the mystic principle of “the burden of silence” (masa’ dumah; Isa. 21:11), i.e., of maintaining the great reserve that is becoming to the “believer” (a new version of the original Sabbatian injunction against appearing as one really is!). Indeed, this is the principle of the “true way” itself: “Just as a man who wishes to conquer a fortress does not do it by means of making a speech, but must go there himself with all his forces, so we too must go our way in silence.” “It is better to see than to speak, for the heart must not reveal what it knows to the mouth.” “Here there is no need for scholars because here belongs the burden of silence.” “When I was baptized in Lvov I said to you: so far, so good! But from here on: a burden of silence! Muzzle your mouths!” “Our forefathers were always talking, only what good did it do them and what did they accomplish? But we are under the burden of silence: here we must be quiet and bear what is needful, and that is why it is a burden.” “When a man goes from one place to another he should hold his tongue. It is the same as with a man drawing a bow: the longer he holds his breath, the further the arrow will fly.”

From the abyss, if only the “burden of silence” is borne, “holy knowledge” will emerge. The task, then, is “to acquire knowledge,” “and the passageway to knowledge is to combine with the nations” but not, of course, to intermingle with them. He who reaches the destination will lead a life of anarchic liberty as a free man. “The place that we are going to tolerates no laws, for all that comes from the side of Death, whereas we are bound for Life.” The name of this place is “Edom” or “Esau,” and the way to it, which must be followed by the light of “knowledge” (gnosis) and under the “burden of silence” through the depths of the abyss, is called “the way to Esau.” This was the road taken by Jacob the patriarch, “the first Jacob,” all of whose deeds prefigured those of “the last Jacob”—Jacob Frank. “Esau” too was foreshadowed by the Esau of the Bible, though only in a veiled way: “Esau the son of Jacob was but the curtain that hangs before the entrance to the king’s inner chambers.” Herein lies the mystical principle of the wells dug by the patriarchs, as well as the mystic content of the story (Gen. 29) of how Jacob came to a well that had already been dug, rolled the stone from its mouth, and encountered Rachel and her father Laban. Another who found the passage to “Esau” was the sorcerer Balaam. “Esau” belongs to the realm of the Good God where the power of death is made nought, and it is also the dwelling place of “the Virgin,” she who is called Rachel in the biblical stories about Jacob and is elsewhere known as “the beautiful maiden who has no eyes.” She it is who is the real Messiah (who cannot, contrary to traditional opinion, be a man) and to her “all the king’s weapons are surrendered,” for she is also the much sought-after “Divine Wisdom” or Sophia who is destined to take “Death’s” place as one of the three “Rulers of the World.” For the present, however, she is hidden in a castle and kept from the sight of all living creatures; all the “strange acts,” in comparison with which the “strange fire” offered before the Lord by Aaron’s two sons (Lev. 10) was but a trifle, are committed for the sole purpose of reaching her. Again, she is the “holy serpent” who guards the garden, and he who asked what the serpent was doing in Paradise was simply betraying his ignorance. As of yet, the place of “Esau,” the home of “the Virgin” and of true salvation, has not been attained by anyone, but its hidden light will first be revealed to the “believers,” who will have the distinction of being its soldiers and fighting on its behalf.

These are some of the main features of Frank’s teaching. It is a veritable myth of religious nihilism, the work of a man who did not live at all in the world of rational argument and discussion, but inhabited a realm entirely made up of mythological entities. Indeed, to anyone familiar with the history of religion it might seem far more likely that he was dealing here with an antinomian myth from the second century composed by such nihilistic Gnostics as Carpocrates and his followers than that all this was actually taught and believed by Polish Jews living on the eve of the French Revolution, among whom neither the “master” nor his “disciples” had the slightest inkling that they were engaged in resuscitating an ancient tradition! Not only the general train of thought, but even some of the symbols and terms are the same! And yet, none of this seems as surprising as it may appear to be at first glance when we reflect that no less than the Frankists, the Gnostics of antiquity developed their thought within a biblical framework, for all that they completely inverted the biblical values. They too believed that Esau and Balaam were worshipers of “the Good God,” they too converted the serpent in the Garden of Eden into a symbol of gnosis, salvation, and the true “Divine Wisdom” that guided men to freedom from the evil rule of the Demiurge by teaching them to disobey his laws and institutions, and they too held that the Law of the good and “alien” God, which enjoined the commission of “strange acts,” was directly opposed to the Law of Moses, which was largely the promulgation of the irascible Creator.

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Frank’s ultimate vision of the future was based upon the still unrevealed laws of the Torah of atzilut which he promised his disciples would take effect once they had “come to Esau,” that is, when the passage through the “abyss” with its unmitigated destruction and negation was finally accomplished. In seeking to elucidate this gospel of libertinism I can do no better than to quote a passage from the excellent book on Gnosticism by the philosopher Hans Jonas in which he discusses the development of a libertinist ethic among the nihilistically minded pneumatics of the second century:7

The spiritualist morality of these pneumatics possessed a revolutionary character that did not stop short of actively implementing its beliefs. In this doctrine of immoralism we are confronted both with a total and overt rejection of all traditional norms of behavior, and with an exaggerated feeling of freedom that regards the license to do as it pleases as a proof of its own authenticity and as a favor bestowed upon it from above. . . . The entire doctrine rests on the concept of an “extra spirit” as a privilege conferred upon a new type of human being who from here on is no longer to be subject to the standards and obligations that have hitherto always been the rule. Unlike the ordinary, purely “psychic” individual, the pneumatic is a free man, free from the demands of the Law . . . and, inasmuch as it implies a positive realization of this freedom, his uninhibited behavior is far from being a purely negative reaction. Such moral nihilism fully reveals the crisis of a world in transition: by arbitrarily asserting its own complete freedom and pluming itself on its abandonment to the sacredness of sin, the self seeks to fill the vacuum created by the “interregnum” between two different and opposing periods of law. Especially characteristic of this over-all mood of anarchy are its hostility toward all established conventions, its need to define itself in terms that are clearly exclusive of the great majority of the human race, and its desire to flout that authority of the “divine” powers, that is, of the world-rulers who are the custodians of the old standards of morality. Over and above the rejection of the past for its own sake, therefore, we are faced here with an additional motive, namely, the desire to heap insult on its guardians and to revolt openly against them. Here we have revolution without the slightest speculative dissemblance and this is why the gospel of libertinism stands at the center of the gnostic revolution in religious thought. No doubt, too, there was in addition to all this an element of pure “daredeviltry” which the Gnostic could proudly point to as an indication of his reliance on his own “spiritual” nature. Indeed, in all periods of revolution human beings have been fond of the intoxicating power of big words.

All of this is fully applicable to both “radical” Sabbatianism in general and to the Frankist movement in particular; the mentality that Jonas describes could not possibly, indeed, assume a more radical form than Frank’s nihilistic myth. It goes without saying, of course, that in a given age myth and reality do not always coincide, and in the case of Frankists the former was undoubtedly the extremer of the two, even if Fran himself was not far from living up to it in actual practice, as emerged from the manuscript of The Chronicles of the Life of the Lord which one of the Frankist families permitted Kraushar to use and which afterward vanished. But in any event the significant point is the fact that the myth should have been born at all and that a considerable number of ghetto Jews should have come to regard it as a way to “political and spiritual liberation,” to quote the words used by the educated Frankist Gabriel Porges in Prague to describe the movement’s aims to his son after Frank himself was no longer alive. Clearly, for the Jew who saw in Frankism the solution to his personal problems and queries, the world of Judaism had been utterly dashed to pieces, although he himself may not have traveled the “true way” at all, may even, in fact, have continued to remain outwardly the most orthodox of observers.

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VIII

We will apparently never know with any certainty why most of the Sabbatians in Podolia followed Frank’s lead and became Catholics while their counterparts in Western Europe, who for the most part also regarded Frank as their spiritual leader, chose to remain Jews. Our knowledge in this area, which is of such crucial importance to an understanding of Jewish history in the countries in question, is practically nil and we must content ourselves with mere speculation. Possibly the decisive factor was the differing social structures of the two groups. The majority of the Sabbatians in Podolia were members of the lower class and few (which is not to say none at all) of those who converted were educated individuals. The Sabbatians in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on the other hand, were largely from a more wealthy background and many of them were men of considerable rabbinical learning. As is frequently the case with religious sects, Sabbatianism was transmitted by entire families and not just by isolated individuals. Even today records exist to prove that a number of families, some of them quite prominent, which were known for their Sabbatian allegiances about 1740, were still clinging to “the holy faith” over sixty years later. For such groups traditional Judaism had become a permanent outer cloak for their true beliefs, although there were undoubtedly different viewpoints among them as to the exact nature of the relationship. Not all were followers of Frank, albeit the Frankists in Prague were spiritually the strongest among them and were extremely active in disseminating their views. Most probably those Sabbatians who had once been disciples of Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz were also to be found in this category. In any case, the fact remains that among these groups the number of conversions was very small. Many of their adherents may have desired to reach “the holy gnosis of Edom,” but few were willing to pass through the gates of Christianity in order to do so.

On the whole, however, in the years following Frank’s death the various Sabbatian groups still in existence continued to develop along more or less parallel lines. Four principal documents bearing on this final phase of Sabbatianism have come down to us: The Book of the Prophecy of Isaiah written by an apostate “believer” in Offenbach; a long sermon on the Alenu prayer published by Wessely from a lengthy Frankist manuscript; several Frankist epistles as presented in substance by Peter Beer; and a commentary on the book En Ya’akov that came into the possession of Dr. H. Brody, when he was Chief Rabbi of Prague. All of these sources share the same world, differing only in that the first speaks in praise of baptism and heaps “prophetic” imprecations on the Jewish people, its rabbis and officials, whereas the others, written by Jews, preserve silence on these topics. Also found in the volume containing the commentary on the En Ya’akov was a Frankist commentary on the Hallel prayer, the joyous faith and emotion of which are genuinely moving. The man who wrote these few pages was a pure and immaculate spirit and his jubilant profession of “the redemption and deliverance of his soul” is obviously deeply felt. Like most of the Sabbatians in the West, he may never have met Frank face to face, but on the other hand, the author of The Prophecy of Isaiah, who did, also believed him to be the incarnation of the Living God, “the true Jacob who never dies,” and clung to this feeling of salvation throughout his life.

In all of these documents the Frankist myth has lost much of its radical wildness. Most of its component parts are still recognizable in the form of “profound mysteries” that are to be revealed only to the prudent, but these too have undergone considerable modification. In many places, for instance, Frank’s insistence that the “believers” were literally to become soldiers is so completely allegorized that it loses both its logic and its paradoxicality. The most striking change, however, is that while the doctrine of “strange acts” remains, and continues to be associated with the appearance of “the Virgin” or “the Lady,” there is no longer the slightest reference to any ethic of libertinism. Here radicalism has retraced its steps and returned from the moral sphere to the historical. Even if we suppose that the authors of these documents were careful not to reveal themselves entirely in their writings—an assumption that many of their cryptic allusions would indeed seem to bear out—it is nonetheless apparent that libertine behavior is no longer considered by them to be a binding religious obligation. Instead there is an increased effort to understand the “strange acts” of the religious heroes of the past, particularly of the characters in the Bible, a book which the “believers” no less than the orthodox regarded as the ultimate authority; here too, however, the emphasis falls on vindicating such cases in theory rather than on imitating them in practice. In Offenbach, it is true, certain scandalous acts continued to be performed on no less than the Day of Atonement itself, but this had degenerated into a mere semblance, whereas “in good faith” among themselves the “believers” were no longer in the habit of carrying on such practices. As for the mystic principle of the “conjugation” of masculine and feminine elements in the divine worlds that had played so large a role in the unorthodox Kabbalistic theories of the nihilists and the “radicals,” this too, to judge by the sources in our possession, was now “toned down.” All in all, while the idea of violating the Torah of beriah reminded a cardinal principle of “the holy faith,” its application was transferred to other areas, particularly to dreams of a general revolution that would sweep away the past in a single stroke so that the world might be rebuilt.

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Toward the end of Frank’s life the hopes he had entertained of abolishing all laws and conventions took on a very real historical significance. As a result of the French Revolution the Sabbatian and Frankist subversion of the old morality and religion was suddenly placed in a new and relevant context, and perhaps not only in the abstract, for we know that Frank’s nephews, whether as “believers” or out of some other motive, were active in high revolutionary circles in Paris and Strasbourg. Seemingly, the Revolution had come to corroborate the fact that the nihilist outlook had been correct all along: now the pillars of the world were indeed being shaken, and all the old ways seemed about to be overturned. For the “believers” all this had a double significance. On the one hand, with the characteristic self-centeredness of a spiritualist sect, they saw in it a sign of special divine intervention in their favor, since in the general upheaval the inner renewal and their clandestine activities based on it would be more likely to go unnoticed. This opinion was expressed by Frank himself and was commonly repeated by his followers in Prague. At the same time that the Revolution served as a screen for the world of inwardness, however, it was also recognized as having a practical value in itself, namely, the undermining of all spiritual and secular authorities, the power of the priesthood most of all. The “believers” in the ghettos of Austria, whose admiration for certain doctrines of the Christian Church (such as Incarnation) went hand in hand with a deep hatred of its priests and institutions, were particularly alive to this last possibility. Here the fashionable anti-clericalism of the times found a ready reception. In great and enthusiastic detail the Frankist author of The Prophecy of Isaiah describes the coming apocalypse which is destined to take place solely that the Jewish people might be reborn, repudiate its rabbis and other false leaders, and embrace the faith of “the true Jacob” as befits “the People of the God of Jacob.” To the commentator on the Hallel prayer writing in Prague, the verse in Psalm 118, “The right hand of the Lord is exalted,” meant that “if the right hand of the Lord begins to emerge, the deceitful left hand of Esau and his priests and the deceitful sword will retire”—an allusion, of course, to the combined rule of the secular and ecclesiastical powers. Throughout this literature apocalyptic ideas mingle freely with the political theories of the Revolution, which were also intended, after all, to lead to a “political and spiritual liberation,” to cite that illuminating and undeservedly neglected phrase with which the Frankists in Prague, as we have seen, defined the aims of their movement.

All this culminated in the remarkable case of “The Red Epistle,” of 1799, a circular letter written in red ink and addressed by the Frankists in Offenbach, the last Mecca of the sect, to a large number of Jewish congregations, exhorting them to embrace “the holy religion of Edom.” The theoretical part of this document—approximately the last third of it—is highly interesting. Here, in a single page, the epistlers summarize their beliefs without a single overt reference to Christianity, the word “Edom,” as we have seen, possessing a more specialized meaning in their vocabulary. Besides bearing all the markings of the Frankist myth, the epistle contains the familiar ingredients of the Sabbatian homily as well, particularly in its audacious exegeses of biblical stories, Midra-shim and Aggadot, passages from the Zohar, and Kabbalistic texts. In sum, an entire mystical theory of revolution. The passage that I am going to quote exemplifies perfectly the thinking, style, and cryptic manner of expression of this type of Frankist literature:

Know that “it is time for the Lord to work, [for] they have made void Thy law” [Ps. 119:-226], and in this connection the rabbis of blessed memory have said [Sanhedrin 97a] [that the Messiah will not come] “until the kingdom is entirely given over to heresy” [this being the mystical meaning of the words in Leviticus 13: 13] “it is all turned white and then he is clean,” and as is explained in the book Zror ha-Mor, his servants are clean too. For the time has come that Jacob [was referring to when he] promised, “I will come unto my Lord unto Seir” [Gen. 33:14], for we know that until now he has not yet gone thither; and he [who will fulfill the verse] is our Holy Lord Jacob, “the most perfect of all” [Zohar, II, 23a] and the most excellent of the patriarchs, for he grasps both sides [Zohar, I, 147a], binding one extreme to the other until the last extreme of all. But although last, he who will rise upon earth and say, “Arise O Virgin of Israel,” is not least [i.e., he is more important and favored than the first Jacob]. Nay, he is certainly not dead, and it is he who leads us on the true way in the holy religion of Edom, so that whoever is of the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must follow in their path, for they have shown the way that their sons are to take at the End of Days, Abraham by descending to Egypt [Gen. 12], Isaac [by journey] to Abimelech [Gen. 26], and Jacob, the most excellent of the patriarchs, by leaving Beersheba and going to Haran [Gen. 28] [that is], by leaving the faith [of his fathers] and the Land of Israel for another realm of impurity, as is explained in the Zohar; for the Zohar explains that the redemption must be sought in the most evil place of all. Then he came to the mouth of the well [Gen. 29] and found Rachel and rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and came to Laban and worked for him [in the realm of evil] and brought out his own portion. And afterward he went to Esau [Gen. 32], but he was still not done [with his task], for although he rolled the stone [from the well] they rolled it back again [Gen. 29:3], and therefore he could not go to Seir [the place where there are no laws] and all this was but to prepare the way for the last Jacob [Frank], the most perfect of all, at the End of Days. For as the Zohar explains, the first Jacob is perfect but the last Jacob is perfect in everything, and he will complete [Jacob’s mission in] everything. And it is said [in allusion to this] in the Zohar: “Until a man comes in the form of Adam and a woman in the form of Eve and they circumvent him [i.e., the serpent] and outwit him,” and so forth. Therefore, we must follow in his path, for “the ways of the Lord are right, and the just do walk in them” [Hos. 14:10], and though there is a burden of silence [about this] and the heart must not reveal [what it knows] to the mouth, it is nonetheless written [Isa. 42:16], “And I will bring the blind by a way that they know not, in paths that they know not I will lead them, I will make darkness light before them and rugged places plain.” And here it was that Jacob “honored his Master,” and so forth [namely, by standing in the realm of evil]—and look in the Zohar [I, 161b, where these words are to be found]. And herein will be [found the mystical meaning of the verse] “Lord, when Thou didst go forth out of Seir, when Thou didst march out of the field of Edom” [Judg. 5:14] and “Who is this that cometh from Edom?” [Isa. 63:1], for as is [stated] in the Tanna debe Eliyahu, there will come a day when the angels will seek the Lord and the sea will say “He is not in me” and the abyss will say “He is not in me.” Where then will they find him? In Edom, for it is said, “Who is this that cometh from Edom?” And they who follow him into this holy religion and cling to the House of Jacob [Frank] and take shelter in its shadow—for it is said [Lam. 4:20], “Under his shadow we shall live among the nations” and [Mic. 4:2] “Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and the House of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths”—to them it will be granted to cling to the Lord, for they [the ways of the Lord] are a way of life to those who find them. And it is written [Deut. 4:29], “From thence ye will seek the Lord thy God and thou shalt find Him.” Why does the text emphasize “from thence”? Because light will be made known from darkness [Zohar, III, 47b], as it is written [Mic. 7:8], “Though I sit in darkness, the Lord is a light unto me.”

The government officials who intercepted copies of this epistle rightly suspected its authors of being hidden revolutionaries, but for the wrong reason. The many obscure references to an individual called “Jacob” led them to surmise that they were in reality dealing with—the Jacobins, who in this manner were supposed to spread their radical propaganda among the Jews of the ghetto. An investigation was ordered on the spot. The authorities who conducted it in Frankfurt and Offenbach, however, did not delve beneath the surface of the affair and were quickly satisfied that it involved nothing more than an intrigue to swindle and extort money from ignorant Jews. In our own day, a historian who has published their official report, rather naively concludes by remarking, “and so the ridiculous theories of a Frankist plot which had proved so alarming to these imperial bureaucrats were at last laid to rest,” thereby failing to realize himself that on a deeper level the authorities’ suspicions were fully if unwittingly justified! Had they bothered to read and understand not just the debtors’ notes of Frank’s children in Offenbach which were in possession of the town’s bankers and moneylenders, but also The Prophecy of Isaiah that had been composed within the four walls of the “court” itself, they would have been amazed to discover how ardently these Frankist “Jacobins” yearned for the overthrow of the existing regime.

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The hopes and beliefs of these last Sabbatians caused them to be particularly susceptible to the “millennial” winds of the times. Even while still “believers”—in fact, precisely because they were “believers”—they had been drawing closer to the spirit of the Haskalah all along, so that when the flame of their faith finally flickered out they soon reappeared as leaders of Reform Judaism, secular intellectuals, or simply complete and indifferent skeptics. We have already noted how deeply rooted the Sabbatian apathy toward Orthodox observance and Jewish tradition in general was. Even the “moderates” tended to believe that the commandments were for the most part meant to be observed only in the Land of Israel and that “in the exile there is no punishment [for not observing them], even though there is still as always a reward [if they are kept]”—a doctrine that was ultimately to have a catastrophic effect on all traditional ties and to help prepare the way for the philosophy of assimilationism. A man such as Jonas Wehle, for example, the spiritual leader and educator of the Sabbatians in Prague after 1790, was equally appreciative of both Moses Mendelssohn and Sabbatai Zevi, and the fragments of his writings that have survived amply bear out the assertion of one of his opponents that “he took the teachings of the philosopher Kant and dressed them up in the costume of the Zohar and the Lurianic Kabbalah.” It is evident from the commentary on the En Ya’akov and from the letters that were in Peter Beer’s possession that men like Wehle intended to use the Haskalah for their own Sabbatian ends, but in the meanwhile the Haskalah went its way and proceeded to make use of them.

Indeed, even for those “believers” who remained faithful to their own religious world and did not share the enthusiasm of the Prague Frankists for the “School of Mendelssohn,” the way to the Haskalah was easily traveled. It was surely no accident that a city like Prossnitz, which served as a center for the Haskalah in Moravia upon the movement’s spread there one generation earlier, was also a bastion of Sabbatianism in that country. The leaders of the “School of Mendelssohn,” who were neither Sabbatians themselves, of course, nor under the influence of mysticism at all, to say nothing of mystical heresy, found ready recruits for their cause in Sabbatian circles, where the world of rabbinic Judaism had already been completely destroyed from within, quite independently of the efforts of secularist criticism. Those who had survived the ruin were now open to any alternative or wind of change; and so, their “mad visions” behind them, they turned their energies and hidden desires for a more positive life to assimilation and the Haskalah, two forces that accomplished without paradoxes, indeed without religion at all, what they, the members of “the accursed sect,” had earnestly striven for in a stormy contention with truth, carried on in the half-light of a faith pregnant with paradoxes.

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1 One might particularly cite in this connection the puzzling case of the great Talmudic scholar Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz, a psychological enigma that still needs badly to be unraveled, although here is not the place to do so. I cannot conceal the fact, however, that after thoroughly examining both Eibeschütz’s own Kabbalistic writings and all the polemical works that they engendered I have been forced to conclude that he was indeed a Sabbatian, as both Jacob Emden and, in a later age, Heinrich Graetz insisted.

2 Among anti-Sabbatian Kabbalists there were a number of attempts to explain this monstrous perversion, as it seemed, of sacred writings. In his Divrei Sofrim ([1913], p. 32d), for example, R. Zadok Hacohen of Lublin cites an unidentified “book written by a saintly man” as his authority for asserting that the Sabbatians “came to the end that they came to because they engaged in the study of the Kabbalah with their hearts full of lust and therefore materialized much [of its spiritual meaning]; and in consequence of the fact that they saw references to copulation. kissing, embracing, and so forth [in what they read], they yielded to lascivious passions, may God preserve us from the same, and committed great evil.” In much the same vein, Rabbi Zevi of Zydaczow, one of the great Kabbalists of the Hasidic movement and possibly none other than Rabbi Zadok Hacohen’s “saintly man” himself, writes in his Sur me-Ra va-Aseh Tov: “I once heard my teacher [the Seer of Lublin] comment on certain students by mentioning the case of that well-known sect. . . . It [i.e., Sabbatian antinomianism] happened because they desired to achieve the revelation of Elijah and to prophesy by the Holy Spirit . . . without troubling to discipline their nature or their material selves. . . .”

3 A pun on the blessing in the morning prayer, “Blessed art Thou O Lord our God, King of the universe, who freest those who are in bondage [mattir asurim].” [Translator’s note]

4 The prohibition against eating the sinew of the thighvein is to be found in Genesis 32, which tells of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel: “Therefore the children of Israel eat not the sinew of the thigh-vein which is upon the hollow of the thigh unto this day; because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, even in the sinew of the thigh-vein” (32:33). [Translator’s Note]

5 The Spanish term used to denote Baruchya of Salonika in the sect of his followers who saw in him the reborn Sabbatai Zevi and God incarnate.

6 Frank’s sayings were never published in Hebrew because the Hebrew translation of the second volume of Kraushar’s history, in which they appear, was prevented from going to press at the last minute by the news of Kraushar’s conversion to Catholicism, which shocked the Jewish public. I am deeply indebted to my friend Miss Hadassah Goldgart for furnishing me with an exact version of the original Polish text.

7 Hans Jonas, Gnosis und spätuntiker Geist (1934), I, 234.


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The Rothschilds, Freemasons, and Illuminati
Big Sky Words
6/3/201515 Comments
 
The real power behind the United States is the Rothschild banking family, which can trace its roots to 1743 when Moses Amschel Bauer put the red hexagram above his doorway.


That was also the year his son Mayer was born in Bavaria. In 1760 Mayer would change the family name from Bauer to Rothschild after that red hexagram sign (‘Rot is German for ‘red’ and ‘Schild’ means ‘sign’).

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Symbol of the Rothschild Family
Mayer Rothschild continued his father’s money lending business and also got into the business of hiring out Hessian mercenaries to foreign countries at war, resulting in vast profits for the family. Loaning to governments directly was the logical next step, mainly because it was more profitable than loaning to individuals.


After all, a nation’s taxes were much more likely to come through and pay the debt than an embattled businessman’s profits. Seeing a way to control world governments through debt, Rothschild thought up a system based on the Rabbinical Jewish book, the Talmud.


The Kingdom of Israel and the Star of David
Talmudists are Jews that follow the teachings of the Talmud, which is one form of Jewish law, and one that many have claimed is anti-Christian and sexually immoral.


The nation of Israel was created in 1948 with a new flag showing the Star of David, a symbol that had come about in the 1600s and which the Zionists adopted as their symbol in 1897.

The Star of David is misleading, as King David never had a star symbol. His son, King Solomon, used the symbol when he ruled the Kingdom of Israel during the 900s BC, however, and that’s where we’ll begin.

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Map of Israel, c 800 BC
The symbol is an ancient sign of “magic, witchcraft, sorcery and occultism” as well as the casting of horoscopes and reading of the zodiac.

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The Deception of David

​Solomon was thought to have turned away from God, which led to Israel’s destruction. One of the reasons for that may have been the use of his star symbol, which was associated with Remphan, an ancient Egyptian ‘star’ god.


The symbol was also that of the worshippers of Moloch, a god of the Ammon people, who were a neighboring nation of Israel in the 900s BC.

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Map of Kingdoms around Israel, c 800 BC

​Moloch encouraged child sacrifice, typically by the parents. Solomon had many temples built for his foreign wives, and “pagan abominations” were worshipped there, including idols to Moloch.


The star symbol, or hexagram, helped with this. It had six points that formed six equilateral triangles, something that allowed the insides to form a six-sided hexagon. This leads to 6 points, 6 triangles and 6 sides…or 666, the mark of the beast.

All of this was associated with Moloch, or what we’d today consider Satan. Moloch was a false god that tempted Solomon, leading to the downfall of Israel, the Babylonian Captivity, and subsequent exile of the Jewish people, both those that were innocent and the idolaters.

How it happened was that Israel fell apart into two different countries in 930 BC, the Kingdom of Israel to the north and the Kingdom of Judah to the south. Sometime in the 720s BC the Assyrians invaded the Kingdom of Israel and defeated it.


The Assyrians hung on until 605 BC and the Israelis in Judah did the same until the Babylonians swallowed up their state about fifteen years later. At that point the Jews found themselves exiled until Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 586 BC, setting the groundwork for the Jews’ return in 539 BC.

The continued journey of the Jewish people is much too long of a story to explore here, but elements of their story are important to our own, and important if we’re to understand how the world truly operates today.

In the 1200s AD the Mongols were pouring out of Asia and killing or enslaving all that they came across. Part of their enslavement was mental more than anything, and consisted of converting to the Jewish faith.


Many that converted didn’t want to, and these people became the basis of the Ashkenazi Jews, a group that many believe rejects Jesus and accepts Satan.


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Mongol Conquests in the 1200s

​The real power behind the Ashkenazi Jews is the Rothschild banking family, which can trace its roots to 1743 when Mayer Bauer was born in Bavaria. That was also the same year his father had put the red hexagram above their doorway. Seventeen years later they’d be known as the Rothschild family.

Many believe the Talmud is the opposite of the Torah. While the Torah worships God, the Talmud worships Satan, they claim. Rothschild used a twisted form of the Jewish Talmud to create satanic teachings that formed the basis of his secret organization, the Illuminati.


In 1776 the organization was complete and Rothschild used his associate, Adam Weishaupt, to infiltrate the Continental Order of Freemasons so that Illuminati doctrine would appear in their lodges all over Europe, and later the world.



​The History of Freemasonry
Freemasonry can trace its origins back to 1400 BC when the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaton built a temple in El-Amarna that became the first “mystery school,” a place where “human sacrifice and mind control were common” with “initiation rites identical to those of modern Freemasonry.” Akhenaton was also the pharaoh that moved Egypt from polytheism to monotheism, a system of worshipping just one god.  (Henderson, p 159; Gould, p 13)

It would be nearly a thousand years later that those mystery school ideas came to Greece. It was during the time of Erechteus, who was known as the “earth-born king of Athens” and was raised by the Greek goddess Athena, so it's claimed.


From the Greek world the ideas circulated, heading to the Romans to become the “Mysteries of the Mithras,” or sometimes “Mysteries of the Persians.” Those ideas lasted from about 68 BC to around 500 AD. They changed considerably during that time, and two dominant schools of thought developed – the Serapis and the Mithras.


The Serapis spread east toward Persia while the Mithras spread west toward the fledgling nation-states of Europe, both eventually incorporating aspects of Christianity. Serapis was eventually suppressed in Rome in 391 but it morphed into Zoroastrianism in Persia. Mithras slowly took on more of the aspects of Gnostic thought in the West. (Gould, p 23-5)

As the Dark Ages took hold after the fall of Rome in the mid-400s the old mystery school ideas morphed with Christianity and eastern belief systems to take on the rudimentary form that Freemasonry has today.


The secret society continued up through the time Charlemagne was named the first Holy Roman Emperor in 800. The first mention of a Freemason temple on official records was in York in 926 under King Athelstan. Freemasonry also began to take on influence from the Jewish mysticism as it cemented itself into the Kabala around 1100. (Gould, p 34).

In 1620 we have records of Freemasons in London, and a short time later a strong sect rose up in Scotland. It wasn’t until 1717, however, that modern Freemasonry came into being, at least that’s the accepted version. Many Freemasons will claim their belief system goes all the way back to King David in Israel and the Temple of Solomon, and it’s likely there’s some truth in that.


It wasn’t until 1717, however, that four lodges in Great Britain formed together to become the first Grand Lodge of England. These were the first official Freemasonry lodges, and America saw its first in Philadelphia in 1730.

Thirty-nine men signed the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 and thirteen of them were Freemasons, or 33%. America has had many presidents that can call themselves Freemasons. “Every US President since FDR has been a 33rd Degree Illuminated Mason, except Ronald Reagan,” who Dean Henderson says, “was given the honorary title, and John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated.” (Henderson, p 159)


Henderson was educated at the University of Montana and was a reporter for the Montana Kaimin. He’s written extensively on the Freemasons and world banking in his book Big Oil and Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf. 

Freemasonry is a complex society with thirty-three degrees of advancement. “To achieve advancement to one higher degree, members are asked to spit on a cross,” Henderson tells us. “Those who refuse are congratulated while those who accept are advanced to the next level because they did what they were told.”


What’s more, each Freemason Lodge is officially warranted by the British government, meaning all Freemasons the world over are swearing fealty to that nation when they give their vows and say their rites. Henderson gives us an idea of how the organization operates:

“Lower level initiates don’t know this darker side of Masonry and spend their time planning circuses and parades, ostensibly to divert people’s attention from Illuminati plans for global dictatorship…the most corruptible men advance to the higher degrees of Masonry.” (Henderson, p 158)

Freemasonry wasn’t popular everywhere, however, and a lot of that had to do with the fact that well-off and wealthy men always seemed to be members. In 1822 Czar Alexander had banned Freemasonry from Russia. It’s rather ironic, as a Russian would give us the Freemason connection to the Knights Templar.



​The Knights Templar
The Knights Templar is another organization involved, and one that has grand designs on the world. The Templars were influenced heavily by Gnostic thought and the world knows about their crazy schemes because of an event in 1884. That’s when a Russian general’s daughter, Justine Glinka, paid 2,500 francs to Joseph Schorst, a member of a Freemason guild in Paris, to obtain a book called Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion.


That French Freemason guild was in reality the Knights Templar sect known as the Priory of Sion, which had been created in 1099 on Mount Zion in Jerusalem to “guard such relics as the Shroud of Turin, the Ark of the Covenant, and,” Henderson tells us, “the Hapsburg family’s Spear of Destiny which was used to kill Jesus Christ as he hung on the cross.” (Henderson, p 122)

Most of that loot, if any of it even existed, was seized from beneath Solomon’s Temple during the Crusades and then secreted back to Europe for safekeeping. Henderson gives us an idea of why this was done:

“To preserve the Holy Grail bloodline, or Sangreal, of Jesus Christ which they believe is carried forth by the French Bourbon royalty, the Merovingan family. The Priory of Sion elite believe Jesus faked his death with the help of certain herbs, then married the administer of those herbs, Mary Magdalene. The Priory believes the couple fled to southern France and had numerous children. During the 5th century, the theory goes, Jesus’ descendents married into the Frank royalty from which France takes its name, thus creating the Merovingan dynasty.” (Henderson, p 122)

The Priory believes that Jesus eventually died in Kashmir, Pakistan.  (Henderson, p 218) His bloodline – the Holy Grail – lives on, however, and it’s through the Hapsburg line. The Hapsburg family started on the Habichtburg estate in Switzerland in 1020.


They were in charge of the Holy Roman Empire until its demise in 1806. From its ashes rose the German Confederation and the Hapsburgs continued on until 2011 when their 640-year family line officially came to an end with the death of Otto von Hapsburg. (Henderson, p 472)


Sion is thought to mean Zion, which itself means Jeruselem in ancient Hebrew. The Knights Templar didn’t care about Judaism, however, except to use it to cover up their economic activity. Even securing the holy land of the Middle East didn’t really interest them; it was securing its resources and its trade potential.


All throughout history the small strip of land that became Israel in 1948 had been used for trade and commerce and travel. It was still, with oil being the main commodity, and the Knights Templar and Rothschilds used the religious aspects of Judaism to secure the land they needed.


If people in the world, including many disgruntled world leaders, lashed out at Judaism, so much the better – it would only distract more from the true motives, global financial control through trade, finance, and commodity markets.

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Locations of Templar sites in Europe, 1300 AD

​The Templars consolidated their power by legitimizing usury so they could lend from their banks. By the 1200s they’d used their extensive wealth from the Crusades and banking to buy 9,000 castles across Europe.


They controlled a magnificent fleet of ships from the French port of New Rochelle and bought the island of Sicily in the late-1100s from Richard the Lionheart, though it was later overrun by Turks in 1798.


So powerful and so wealthy did the Templars become that in 1307 the king of France and the Pope both teamed up to discredit the group, saying they used black magic and necromancy. It took place on Friday, October 13, and ever since then that day has had a bad connotation.

By 1864 the book Justine Glinnka had bought was printed up in another book and then the same happened in the 1890s. By then, however, the authorities weren’t happy to hear about this, and the Russian author was arrested and tortured. The Illuminati was taking over, consolidating power, and secrecy was becoming the order of the day. (Henderson, p 124)


​The Rothschilds in America
As the years went on, the Rothschilds became more daring. In 1785 they had plans in the works to start the French Revolution, but when those plans were discovered by the authorities, the Illuminati were kicked out of Bavaria. The country went so far as to send warnings to all the major European states about the Illuminati, but they were ignored, and Rothschild was now safe in Frankfurt.


Their plans for the French Revolution went forward after all, and that allowed them to stop the Catholic Church from issuing taxes as well as create favorable new banking laws through the new nation’s constitution.

By 1791 Rothschild was extending his reach to America, where he convinced Alexander Hamilton to set up the First Bank of the United States with a 20-year charter.


In 1812 Mayer Rothschild died, but his family was large enough to continue – he had five sons and five daughters and an immeasurable quantity of wealth, enough so that he could hold Prince William IX of Hesse-Hanau’s $3 million personal fortune in safekeeping.

Picture
Alexander Hamilton, 1806
More Rothschilds would come and go, but their economic power and vision of a new world order under Satan remained. When the First Bank of the United State’s charter was up in 1811, Congress refused to renew it.


This angered the Rothschilds, who called for America to be brought back to “colonial status.” Using loaned Rothschild money, England declared war on the United States, starting the War of 1812.


The idea was to bankrupt the young nation, which had little money and was looking at costs of $10 million for just 1812 alone, mainly because 10,000 men suddenly had to be raised to fight the invading British armies funded by a group of secretive, debt-hungry bankers.

Picture
The First Bank of the United States in Philadelphia, 1799
Congress was able to provide the funding through increased customs duties but in 1813 revenues were only going to be $17 million for the country, while costs would be $36 million.


Republicans had control of Congress, and they didn’t want to raise taxes so that meant more borrowing, $19 million worth. By 1814 the country was looking at another $30 million budget deficit and by 1815 estimates put that at $56 million.


It was clear the war could not continue and both sides sued for peace, meeting in the Flanders city of Ghent in September 1814, just two months before the Congress of Vienna began meeting to settle the Napoleonic Wars.


They talked for five months, and it was agreed a Second Bank of the United States would be created. The Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve 1814 to cement the deal.

Picture
The Signing of the Treaty of Ghent, Christmas Eve, 1814 by Amédée Forestier

​It was the end of the Napoleon’s reign in Europe and Nathan Rothschild had bought up as many British bonds as he could, selling them about a year later at a 40% profit.


After that his family, centered in the major financial capitals of Europe, did their best to buy up all the various government bonds right when issued, selling them off to their network of brokers at an inflated price while still paying the initial offering price to the governments.


They cornered markets and saw their wealth grow exponentially. So too did the tightness of their family, as historian Niall Ferguson explains in his book The Ascent of Money:

“As their numbers grew from generation to generation, familial unity was maintained by a combination of periodically revised contracts between the five houses and a high level of intermarriage between cousins or between uncles and nieces. Of twenty-one marriages involving descendents of Nathan’s father Mayer Amschel Rothschild that were solemnized between 1824 and 1877, no fewer than fifteen were between direct descendents.” (Ferguson, p 88)

Most critics lamented the Rothschild’s Jewish heritage, and the family used that anti-semitic thought to further their own ends.


In time it became a shield from their critics, those that knew their true power. That lay in their war-making abilities, a pursuit dependent upon finance and debt. “Without wars,” Ferguson writes, “nineteenth-century states would have had little need to issue bonds.”

Picture
The Second Bank of the United States in Philadelphia, c 1827

​America had issued a lot of bonds during the War of 1812, and total costs for the war were $158 million for the young nation, with the army and navy eating up $90 million of that.


The total cost of interest on the money borrowed came to $16 million and long-term veterans costs equaled $50 million. Instead of paying off the modest national debt of $45 million that had existed in 1812, the country now was looking at a national debt of $127 million in 1815.


To the Rothschilds, it didn’t matter if the war was won or lost, or even who was fighting. Either way, there would be debt, and interest on that debt, and they’d profit. Nations would lose, and citizens would suffer, but the bankers would have their way of life.


They had their way with America, for another national bank was created, allowing them unfettered access to the nation’s money supply through their power to control lending and interest rates.


It would take until 1835 for the national debt to be paid off completely, the first and only time that occurred. It was President Andrew Jackson that did it, and he was also the person to kill the second Rothschild bank in the country, the Second Bank of the United States.

Picture
Andrew Jackson, 1824
The Second Bank of the United States had started under another 20-year charter in 1816 and that came to an end in 1836. Before that, Jackson had consolidated the remaining $75 million of debt held by the states and done everything he could to pay it off as fast as he could, depriving the Rothschild’s of the interest they so thought they deserved.


In retaliation for Jackson’s closing of the bank, Rothschild agent Nicholas Biddle “cut off funding to the US government in 1842,” which sent the country into a recession, or panic as they were still called. (Henderson, p 462)

Picture
Nicholas Biddle, c 1830s
Jackson was a military man, one who’d won the Battle of New Orleans in the closing days of the War of 1812. He knew what he was up against, had ran on the 1832 campaign slogan “Jackson and No Bank,” and he prided himself on ‘killing the bank,’ as he was fond of saying of his veto to renew the bank’s charter.


“You are a den of vipers,” Jackson had said of the bankers. “I intend to expose you and by Eternal God I will route you out.”

God may have disproved of the bankers, but the Vatican did not.

In 1831 Pope Gregory XVI borrowed £400,000 from the Rothschilds, or the equivalent of $43 million in 2014 dollars. James de Rothschild "became the official Papal banker," Gerald Posner writes in his book God's Bankers, and this proved "a lifeline to the church."


Back in America, Jackson said there would “be a revolution by morning” if the people knew what the bankers were doing to them. In 1832 he said that “foreign stockholders” controlling our currency were “more formidable and dangerous than the naval and military power of the enemy.” (Henderson, p 461)


This resulted in an assassination attempt on January 30, 1835, though the assassin’s gun misfired. Jackson’s will didn’t, and his desire to see the foreign-owned and controlled bank’s end only intensified. So did the nation’s, and Jackson’s successor, President John Tyler, also refused to sign a new charter for the bank.

Back in Europe the Vatican became more entwined with the Rothschilds. In 1848 Gregory's successor, Pope Pius IX, borrowed 50 million francs from the Rothschilds, or $10 million.

By the end of that year it was determined that the Vatican was 142 million francs in debt to the Rothschilds, or about $30 million. This comprised 40% of the church's total debt.

Unlike the popes, all American presidents were able to keep their financial house in order, even Lincoln when he ordered the printing of Greenbacks during the Civil War instead of borrow from foreign banks or allow another on American soil.


The National Banking Act had been passed in 1863, however, which created yet another private bank, this time under the guise of issuing war bonds. Lincoln said during his second presidential campaign that he’d veto the bill, but an assassin’s bullet took him before he had the chance. (Henderson, p 462)

By 1899 the wealth of the Rothschild family was £41 million, which “exceeded the capital of the five biggest German joint-stock banks put together,” Ferguson tells us. (Ferguson, p 88)


Still, they hungered for more. All the presidents after Lincoln had kept Jackson’s pledge not to have a bank, all that is, until Woodrow Wilson swept into the White House in 1912 on a divided Republican ticket more than a united Democratic ticket.

The following year saw the third and current Bank of the United States form, the Federal Reserve, which was passed with the Federal Reserve Act on December 23 of that year. Congressman Charles August Lindbergh of Minnesota, the famous aviator’s father, called it the “greatest crime of the ages.”


​The Federal Reserve was a private company, and one that had no reserves of currency. Its origins lay in the banking crisis known as the Panic of 1907.


President Teddy Roosevelt had signed the Aldrich-Vreeland Act in 1908 to study the causes of the Panic of 1907. From it came the National Monetary Commission, which was tasked with investigating what caused these banking panics that were becoming so prevalent in modern society.


The result was a secret meeting with the leading bankers of the day, including Benjamin Strong, adviser to J.P. Morgan and eventual first president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at Jekyll Island in Georgia, the rich conclave many wealthy Montanans knew so well.

Picture
Jekyll Island in 1900
Also called the Millionaires Club, the club was founded in 1886 and included some of the wealthiest families in the country like the Morgans, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts.


Montana’s Marcus Daly was a member, as was railroad tycoon and patriarch of Montana’s Hi-Line, James J. Hill. Railroad financier E.H Harriman was another, and together these men benefited from Rothschild banking money when it came to funding their operations and expansion.

These rich industrialists and bankers came up with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which would become the leading bank of the Federal Reserve System, the institution and framework that was hammered out over those three years following the Panic of 1907. Now they just had to get the president to sign it the idea into law.


​The Untermyer Blackmail
Perhaps Woodrow Wilson didn’t want a new national bank, perhaps he wanted to keep things as they had been since Jackson’s days. There’s a good chance that he couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to, however, and an incident during his very first days in office illustrates this.

Wilson was visited by Samuel Untermyer of the Guggenheim, Untermyer, and Marshall law firm. Untermyer was well-known in the Democratic Party, had advised the government on interpreting and enforcing income tax law, was also involved in anti-trust legislation.


He believed in government ownership and helped prepare the Federal Reserve Bank Law, the Creighton Bill, Federal Trade Commission Bill and other legislation that limited the power of the trusts. That day, however, the man had something else on his agenda.

Picture
Samuel Untermyer, 1932
Untermyer had three letters that Wilson had written to a woman he’d been having an affair with while he was still at Princeton. Untermyer informed Wilson that the woman’s husband wanted $40,000 to keep the affair quiet.


Wilson, however, didn’t have the money. Luckily for him, Untermyer offered to pay the money himself, so long as Wilson agreed to let him pick the first Supreme Court pick that came Wilson’s way. It was agreed, and as a result Louis Brandeis was appointed, someone that was very influential in Wilson’s decision to put America into WWI.

Having world wars was very important to the Illuminati, the secret society that the Rothschild’s had created back in 1776. Nothing created more long-term debt obligations than war, and no form of debt was more secure than that backed by taxpayers.

It’s a lot to swallow, the truth. The Illuminati knew it would be, so that’s why they set up the Anti-Defamation League in 1913, so that anyone speaking out against the Rothschild’s or the Illuminati would be labeled as anti-semitic, anti-Jew. All the while, however, the nation has suffered, and slid ever more into debt.

Picture
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was signed into law by Woodrow Wilson on December 23, 1913. For the first time in 135 years the United States had a national bank. Before Woodrow Wilson had put the nation in war, the country had but $3.6 billion in national debt. By 1918 that was $14 billion and in 1919 it was $27 billion.


Things settled down after that and the debt was actually paid down all through the 1920s, to $16 billion by the time of the Crash.


Interest payments of 2.5% would run to $400 million a year on that level of debt, any bankers’ dream come true. For the Rothschild’s that’s exactly what it was, and the clandestine banking family was fast becoming one of the most powerful players on the world stage, and one that hardly anyone knew about. They controlled the Federal Reserve and Montana began to suffer soon after.


​The House of Morgan
J.P. Morgan died in 1913, the same year both the Federal Reserve and the Rockefeller Foundation were formed. Morgan was the closest America had come to a national bank from the time the Second Bank of the United States closed in 1836 and the Federal Reserve opened in 1913.

The House of Morgan can trace its roots back to 1838 when George Peabody, a business associate of the Rothschilds, founded it. In this regard, the House of Morgan was nothing more than the American wing of the Rothschild’s banking empire. (Henderson, p 450-1)

Picture
J.P. Morgan in 1881
When Morgan got control of the nation’s gold in 1895, he had control of the business climate. Mergers began to pick up pace as businesses started to swallow one another. In 1897 there had been just sixty-nine mergers but by 1899 there were 1,200, an increase of 1700%. All of this allowed the power of the corporations and the banks that funded them to expand, something that created the Eight Families. (Henderson, p 452)


​The Eight Families
The Eight Families are the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans, and Kuhn Loebs of New York, which is the American side. The European side consists of the Rothschilds of Paris and London, the Warburgs of Hamburg, the Lazards of Paris and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome.


Benjamin Strong was the first Governor of the New York Federal Reserve Board, the most powerful of all the Federal Reserve’s banks, and someone closely allied with the Eight Families. What this meant for the country is spelled out very well by Dean Henderson:

“The 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve fused the power of the Eight Families to the military and diplomatic might of the US government. If overseas debt went unpaid, the oligarchs could now deploy US Marines to collect their money. Morgan, Chase and Citibank soon formed an international lending syndicate.” (p 452)

We’ve already discussed the Rothschilds, a family that was very close to the Kuhn Loebs. The family of Kuhn Loeb came about in 1785 when the family teamed up with both leading banker Jacob Schiff and the Rothschilds. The Schiff/Loeb relationship was cemented in 1865 through marriage.


In 1867 Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was founded with Jacob Schiff in charge. The firm had been based in Ohio but moved to New York and did well in the merchandise business. As the 1880s started they, like many first looking for easy investments, got into railroads.


Kuhn Leob had been the banker for Edward Harriman, one of the main moves and shakers in the American railroad industry. After battling J.P Morgan and James J. Hill, Schiff was able to gain control of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1901.


By 1911 they’d joined with the Rockefellers to take over Equitable Trust Company, the precursor to Chase Bank. They also partnered with the Warburgs during this time and married into the Goldman Sachs and Lehman families. (Henderson, p 465)



​The Warburg family was a Venetian banking family of the 1500s, one that came to prominence in 1814 after teaming up with the Rothschilds.

The Rockefeller Family can trace its origins to John Davison Rockefeller, who was born in 1839 in New York. The family eventually moved to Ohio, and it was there that Rockefeller got involved with oil in 1863.


By 1870 Rockefeller had started Standard Oil of Ohio with an initial investment of $1 million, making it the largest corporation in the country. When the Panic of 1873 hit, Rockefeller bought up many smaller oil producers and by 1877 he controlled nearly 90% of oil production in America.


By the 1880s Standard Oil trust was formed and the company began to expand overseas, particularly Europe and Asia.

Picture
John D. Rockefeller in 1885
The Rockefellers made it through the trust busting days of the 1890s, the Panic of 1893, and into the new century. Standard Oil was so large by that point, and had so many offshoots, that it was virtually unstoppable.


The Rockefellers had enormous wealth as well, and $100 million of that was funneled into the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913 to “promote the wellbeing of mankind throughout the world.”

The Lazard family came on the scene in 1848 when Alexandre, Lazare, and Simon Lazard started Lazard Frères & Co., a New Orleans firm that specialized in dry goods. They were successful and in just a few years branched out to both New York and San Francisco. The family profited handsomely from the American Civil War and moved into banking before branching out to their native France and then into England. 


By this time the real power behind the business was Alexander Weill, a family cousin. Over time these “Houses of Lazard” had much influence and like the other families, they began to build connections to other powerful businessmen and industrialists. It was in Paris that the Rothschild connection was made, in 1897 when the family joined the Rothschild bank.

Philip Lehman started Lehman Brothers in 1850. The Lehman family can trace their roots back to Bavaria in the early-1800s, and specifically Abraham Lehmann, who was a cattle merchant.


In 1844 Abraham’s son, Henry Lehman, came to America and settled in Alabama. In 1847 his brother Emanuel Lehman came over and then in 1850 brother Mayer Lehman came over. That was the year they changed their name to Lehman Brothers.


The brothers got heavily into cotton and profited handsomely during the Civil War. Following that they moved up to New York, in 1870, to start the New York Cotton Exchange. By 1906 Lehman Brothers had partnered with Goldman, Sachs & Co., beginning a decades-long relationship in stock buying that proved extremely lucrative for both families.

Samuel Sachs was very good friends with Philip Lehman. Goldman Sachs first started as a bank in New York in 1869. Marcus Goldman had been the man behind it, and in 1882 his daughter married Samuel Sachs. By 1885 the firm had changed its name to Goldman Sachs & Co. and started striking it rich with paper products.

Picture
Marcus Goldman in 1900
Israel Moses Seiff was born in 1889 in England. His father had come from Lithuania and done wall at business, giving the younger Seiff a good start. From there the Seiff family got into banking and was heavily active in the Zionist Movement to see a Jewish state started in the Middle East.

There are twelve Federal Reserve branches, named:


N.M. Rothschild of London;
Rothschild Bank of Berlin;
Warburg Bank of Hamburg;
Warburg Bank of Amsterdam;
Lehman Brothers of New York;
Lazard Brothers of Paris;
Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York;
Israel Moses Seif Bank of Italy;
Goldman Sachs of New York;
Rockefellers’s J.P. Morgan Chase Bank of New York.


We know these banks are in control as J.W. McCallister, an oil insider associated with the House of Saud, wrote as much in his book The Grim Reaper. He also revealed that the Saudi Royal Family owns 80% of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the most powerful in the American wing of the international banking system. (Henderson, p 451)


​Federal Reserve Impact on Montana
The Federal Reserve played havoc in Montana. Over six years from 1920 to 1926 there were 214 banks in Montana that went under, half of all in the state, and more than anywhere else in the country.


On top of this there were 20,000 mortgage foreclosures in Montana from 1919 to 1925 and that meant half of the people in the state lost their land, and often homes.

The problem was that Montana had too many banks, plain and simple, and the reason for this was the Federal Reserve, the third Rothschild-controlled bank the country had seen, and the one that would do more damage than the other two combined. In 1917 alone forty-one new national banks came to Montana, often competing with state banks in towns of just a few hundred people.

Those on the East Coast saw the writing on the wall and took their money out fast. About $30 million fled the state as investors back East took what they could before losing it all. Montanans weren’t so lucky, and 11,000 farms failed as mortgage debt soared to $175 million. Montana had more bankruptcies than anywhere else in the country.


The Federal Reserve never forgot its mission to help Americans because that was never its mission. Its mission was to take as much wealth from the American people as possible to benefit the Rothschild family and their cronies.


Moneyed interests back East took a ‘rape-and-pillage’ attitude toward Montana, something they’d developed in the booming mining days of the 1880s and 1890s and one they’d continue to push in the 20th-century and on into the 21st.



Notes


“A History of the Illuminati and Freemasonry.” Advent of Deception. Web. Retrieved 3 June 2015. http://adventofdeception.com/history-illuminati-freemasonry-weishupt-albert-pike/

Buta, W. Bro. Jack. “History of Freemasonry: The Origins.” Pietre-Stones. Web. Retrieved 2 June 2015. http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/buta.html

Chernow, Ron. The Warburgs: The Twentieth-century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family. Random House: New York, 1993.

Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. Warner Books: London, 1998.

Collins, Theresa M. Otto. Khan – Art, Money & Modern Time. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2002.

“First Bank of the United States.” US History. Web. Retrieved 3 June 2015. http://www.ushistory.org/tour/first-bank.htm

“First Bank of the United States (120 South 3rd Street).” Teaching American History. Web. Retrieved 3 June 2015. http://teachingamericanhistory.org/static/convention/map/1stbank.html

Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. The Penguin Press: New York, 2008.

Ferguson, Niall. High Financier: The Lives and Times of Siegmund Warburg. Penguin Press: New York, 2010.

Freedman, Benjamin H. The Hidden Tyranny. Liberty Bell Publications: Reedy, 1981.

Gould, Robert Freke. The History of Freemasonry: The Antiquities, Symbols, Constitutions, Customs, Etc., Volume I. London, 1882.

Graham, Michael. “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” The Traitor Within. June 2006. Web. Retrieved 2 June 2015. http://traitor666.blogspot.com/2006/06/protocols-of-elders-of-zion.html

Griffin, G. Edward. The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve. American Media: Westlake Village, 1994. p 217-33

Henderson, Dean. Big Oil and Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families and Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics and Terror Network. Bridger House Publishers: Carson City, 2007.

Henderson, Dean. “The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families.” Global Research. 1 June 2011. Web. Retrieved 2 June 2015. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-federal-reserve-cartel-the-eight-families/25080

“Historical Debt Outstanding – Annual 1900-1949.” Treasury Direct. 5 May 2013. Web. Retrieved 30 May 2015. https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo3.htm

“History of Lehman Brothers.” Harvard Business School. 2012. Web. Retrieved 3 June 2015. http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/history.html

Hitchcock, Andrew. “The History of the House of Rothschild.” I Am The Witness. Web. Retrieved 2 June 2015. http://www.iamthewitness.com/DarylBradfordSmith_Rothschild.htm

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: the Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids. HarperCollins: New York, 2000.

“Masons (Freemasonry): Christian or Anti-Christian?” Web. Retrieved 2 June 2015. http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Cults/masons.htm

Mayo, Anthony J.; Nohria, Nitin; Singleton, Laura G. Paths to Power: How Insiders and Outsiders Shaped American Business Leadership. Harvard Business Press: Watertown, 2006. p 104–107.

Melanson, Terry. “Illuminati Conspiracy Part Two: Sniffing out Jesuits.” Conspiracy Archive. 12 September 2008. Web. Retrieved 31 May 2015. http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/2015/02/08/illuminati-conspiracy-part-two-sniffing-out-jesuits/

Melanson, Terry. “A Brief Encounter with Adam Weishaupt in 1804.” Bavarian Illuminati. 20 September 2008. Web. Retrieved 31 May 2015. http://www.bavarian-illuminati.info/2008/09/a-brief-encounter-with-adam-weishaupt-in-1804/

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Mullins, Eustace. The Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Bankers Research Institute: Staunton, 1983. p 53, 179.

“Origins: A multinational perspective.” Lazard. Web. Retrieved 3 June 2015. http://www.lazard.com/about-lazard/history

“Piermont Morgan: Collector.” The Morgan.org. Web. Retrieved 3 June 2015. http://www.themorgan.org/about/pierpont-morgan-collector/1

Prosner, Gerald. God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican. Simon & Schuster: New York, 2015. p 17-29.

Salerno, Vincenzo. “The Knights Templar in Sicily.” Best of Sicily Magazine. 2010. Web. Retrieved 2 June 2015. http://www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art352.htm

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“Timeline of American Banking.” Oklahoma History Center. Web. Retrieved 3 June 2015. http://www.okhistory.org/historycenter/federalreserve/edutimeline.html

“Timeline: The Rockefellers.” PBS American Experience. Web. Retrieved 3 June 2015. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/rockefellers/

Toma, Mark. “Interest Rate Controls: The United States in the 1940s.” The Journal of Economic History. Vol. 52, No. 3 (Sep., 1992) Web. Retrieved 30 May 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2122888?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

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1666 and the SABBATEAN ROOTS of the NEW WORLD DISORDER
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The False Messiah of 1666
In 1666 Sabbatai Zevi declared himself to be the messiah. More than half of the world’s Jewish population in the 17th Century came to accept and follow him as their messiah. Sabbatai Zevi, who proclaimed salvation through sin, was condemned as a heretic by many contemporary Rabbis.

“Then, if anyone says to you, behold, here is the Christ, or there he is, do not believe him. For false christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.” Matthew 24:23-24

“Take heed that no one deceives you.” Matthew 24:4

“For many will come in My Name, saying, I am the Christ and will mislead many.” Matthew 24:5

Salvation Through Sin
Sabbatai Zevi was born on 1st August 1626, in Anatolia, present day Turkey. He was a Sephardic Jew, ordained a Rabbi in Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). Sabbatai Zevi was active throughout the Ottoman Turkish Empire, teaching from the Talmud and the Kabbalah. Sabbatai Zevi’s message of redemption through sin was enthusiastically received by many. Fast days became days of feasting, sexual promiscuity, adultery, incest and orgies. He taught that every Law was to be broken. Religious taboos such as against eating of pork and every form of sexual immorality was not only permitted but encouraged.

Eccentric Mystic
Sabbatai Zevi (1626 – 1676) was described by his contemporaries as an exceptionally charismatic Rabbi and Kabbalist, an eccentric mystic who attained a massive following of more than a million devotees during his lifetime. The publication of the Lurianic Kabbalah made Zevi extraordinarily popular in the 17th Century amongst Jewish people throughout Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

The Kabbalah
The Lurianic Kabbalah promoted an occultic deeper meaning for Jewish mysticism drawing from ancient Babylonian occultism and numerology.

The Occultic Power of Dates and Numbers
Sabbatai Zevi emphasised the magical supernatural relationship between events and time, through letters and numbers. The numerological value of dates contributed greatly to the widely held expectations and hopes of the Jewish messiah to arrive on the 18th day (6+6+6) of the 6th month, of the year 1666.

Visions and Dreams
One eyewitness, Rabbi Leib Ben Ozer, wrote that Zevi was: handsome, possessed an enchanting presence and singing voice. Many wrote that there was none like Zevi in stature and his face burned with intensity like fire. Many of his contemporaries claimed to have been converted to following Zevi when he appeared to them in dreams by the side of their beds. Many Rabbis of the time publicly testified to having seen visions in which Sabbatai Zevi appeared to them by their beds. They would awake professing belief in him as messiah!

Messianic Expectations
Professor Gersham Sholem, explained that a sincere expectation has arisen in the psyche of many Jews that their messiah would come and lead them back to establishing a Jewish homeland.

Maniac – Depressive Psychosis
According to some critical interpretations of his behaviour, Sabbatai showed signs of what modern scholars call maniac-depressive psychosis. He publicly displayed ecstatic behaviour, often followed by bouts of depression and seclusion.

Sufi Mysticism
However, many of his modern-day followers argue that his behaviour was simply what one should expect from religious mystics such as a Sufi: meditative chanting, trances and ecstatic dancing.

The Sufi Connection
According to Professor Avraham Elqayam, a faculty member of the Jewish Philosophy Department at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, Sabbatai frequently engaged in Bektashi Sufi rituals. In fact, Sabbatai Zevi’s grave site in Albania remains a Sufi shrine to this day.

Expelled
Zevi’s socially immoral and religiously unacceptable behaviour led to him being expelled from Smyrna around 1650. For years he wandered through Greece, Thrace, Egypt and Syria.

Rabbi Nathan of Gaza
However, in 1665 his life changed forever when he met Rabbi Nathan of Gaza, in Palestine, who persuaded whim that he was indeed the messiah to usher in a new age. Rabbi Nathan convinced Sabbatai Zevi that he needed to formally reveal himself in the year 1666 to fulfil messianic prophecy.

Acceptance and Rejection
Zevi soon gained further support from the Diaspora by promising Jews a return to their homeland and a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. Although Zevi received strong support and was very popular amongst Jewish people, the leading Rabbis of Jerusalem rejected Sabbatai’s claims that he was the messiah. The Rabbis of Jerusalem ordered him to leave the city, or be excommunicated.

Phenomenal Growth
Sabbatai returned to Turkey where the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire allowed him free reign to build up a phenomenal following. Jews from all over the world, from as far afield as England to Persia, from Germany to Morocco, from Poland to Yemen, poured into the Ottoman Empire to see, hear and meet their messiah.

“Your Head or The Turban!”
However, after Sabbatai publicly proclaimed that the next year the temple in Jerusalem would be rebuilt, the Sultan was galvanised into action. Fearing a revolt that would lead to this province declaring independence from the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan confronted Sabbatai Zevi with the choice of either publicly converting to Islam, or being beheaded. As the Sultan delicately put in: “Your head or the turban!” The turban was a symbol of converting to Islam.

Apostasy
It came as a shock to many of his supporters that their supposed long-awaited messiah denounced his Jewish faith on the spot and chose to wear the Islamic turban to keep his head! Zevi publicly converted to Islam and adopted a new Muslim name: Aziz Mehmed Effenti – (“Power of Mohammed”). From then on Zevi was on salary as a servant of the Sultan with the cryptic title: “Keeper of the Gate.”

Conversion to Islam
Zevi continued unabated in his messianic activities and also continued to receive the full support of the Islamic authorities and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. While Sabbatai’s formal conversion to Islam dismayed and disillusioned many of his followers, many took it as a sign to also convert to Islam, while maintaining their Jewish identity and mystical Kabbalah Sabbatean practices.

The Dönmeh
One of these Sabbatean cults, primarily located in Anatolia (modern day Turkey) were called the Dönmeh (which translates to religious converts (a derogatory term which they themselves never used).

To Build Back Better
Sabbatean followers explained his apparent apostasy as a “descent into the grossest reality, or husks, of creation” in order to “reclaim the lost sparks of divine light” to repair the world! These Kabbalist concepts were used to justify his heretical, apostate and degenerate behaviour.

Redemption Through Deception
According to Reb Yakov Leib Hakohain, the current director of Dönmeh West, a Californian Sabbat organisation founded in 1972: Sabbatai’s conversion to Islam was not an act of cowardice, or apostasy, that betrayed the Jewish people because his conversion was one of the mystical Ma’asin Zarim that the messiah was destined to perform based upon their reading of the Kabbalah.

False Conversions to Subvert Religions
In keeping with Isaac Luria’s prophecies in the Lurian Kabbalah, these actions of breaking laws, being a false convert, deception and degeneracy, were essential to bring about conditions that would set the stage, initiate, or directly expedite the fulfilment of Jewish messianic prophecy. Jews were to play an active role in bringing about and bringing forth god’s kingdom on earth by infiltrating, subverting and destroying every other religion and kingdom on earth.

To Harness Evil for Good
The Kabbalah teaches a mystical synthesis between pagan teachings which preceded the Torah and gnostic elements of Judaism. The task is not to destroy evil but “to return it to its source.” To “include the left within the right, to uplift the fallen sparks.” The Chaldean, or Babylonian, mysticism and occultism provided “the most authentic version of the Kabbalah.”

To Undermine and Replace Every State and Religion
This new “philosophic paradigm provided a spiritual justification for proactive Zionism to bring about the formation of a Jewish state” which would undermine and replace all other states worldwide. The mystical Lurianic Kabbalah transformed the messiah from a popular conquering national hero to a supreme cosmic conqueror.

Build Back Better
The goal was not merely the emancipation of Jews from the yoke of the Gentiles, but of fundamental transformation of the entirety of creation affecting material and spiritual worlds alike. This was to lead to, in the words of Gersham Scholem: “A ratification of the primordial catastrophe of the breaking of the vessels (Shevirat Hakelim).” Or repairing the world. The goal was to break everything down so that it can be “built back better.”

Deliberate Degeneracy
According to Sabbatai Zevi, the acts that God’s people must take include deliberate forays into the world of sin, where “the illusory nature of evil could be more readily exposed and the sparks elevated to their source.”

Infiltration and Subversion
With the declaration of Sabbatia Zevi as the messiah in 1666, the Zionist goal of infiltrating, subverting and ultimately replacing every other religion and kingdom and transforming every government on earth into a new world order became a central focus.

The New Age
Rabbi Nathan of Gaza declared that they were entering into a new age where all religious laws prior to Sabbatai Zevi were essentially “obsolete.” Now traditional religious taboos such as eating of pork, which was forbidden by Jewish dietary law, was abolished. Former fast days were now to be feast days.

Making the Forbidden Permissible
One of the oft quoted prayers of Zevi was: “Blessed art Thou Lord our God, King of the Universe, who makes the forbidden things permissible.”

Strange Acts to Rescue Divine Sparks
Sabbatai Zevi declared that his duty was to descend through the gates of impurity into the impure realm of Kelipot and to “rescue the divine sparks” still imprisoned there. The messiah was constrained to commit strange acts (Ma’asim Zarim) which included apostasy, adultery, theft, idolatry, deception and covetousness. All of these breaking of every Law of God was “necessary” for the fulfilment of messiah’s mission.

Paradoxical Psychology
The psychology of the Sabbateans was utterly paradoxical. Essentially its guiding principle was: whoever is as he appears cannot be a true believer. In practice, this meant that true faith could not be faith which men publicly profess. On the contrary, true faith must always be concealed. For a Sabbatean it is their duty to deny their true faith outwardly, because it is a seed planted in the bed of the soul and it cannot grow unless it has first been covered over.

Through Concealment and Deception
This theme of a secret, hidden, or occultic, identity, became part of this Sabbatean religious philosophy. In essence, a true act cannot be committed publicly, to be seen by the world. Like true faith, a true act must be concealed. Because only through concealment could it negate the falsehood of what is explicit.

A Revolution of Values
So, through a revolution of values, what was formally sacred became profane and what was formally profane, became sacred. The Sabbatean Sect which flourished during the lifetime of Sabbatai Zevi and afterwards continued to indulge in wife sharing, religious sex orgies, adultery and incest.

Comparisons and Connections
It is thought by some scholars that Zevi had some deep connections with the Bektashi Sufi order of Islam. Some similarities through the Sabbatean Dönmeh and the Bektashi Sufi practices include the deliberate violation of Kashrut/Halaal, ritualistic group sex and wife-swapping, ecstatic singing, or chanting, mystical Kabbalah and belief in the hidden occultic reading of the Torah and the Koran.

The Festival of the Lamb
The Sabbateans in Salonika regularly held a celebration on the 22nd Day of the Hebrew month of Adar, known as The Festival of the Lamb. This festival included getting drunk and extinguishing the lights. In the total darkness there was religious sexual sharing of wives and daughters.

Regeneration Through Degeneration
Their teaching was that as a grain of wheat must rot in the earth, before it can sprout, so the deeds of believers must become fully rotten before they can germinate in salvation. This conveys the Sabbatean theology in a nutshell: Salvation comes through sin. Redemption is achieved through deception.

The Sabbatean Roots of Freemasonry and Marxism
According to Gershom Scholem: Sabbateanism is the matrix of every significant movement to have emerged in the 18th and 19th Century, from Hasidism, to Reformed Judaism, to Freemasonry and Marxist Revolutionary Communism.

To Establish a New World Order
Sabbatean believers teach that they are the champions of a new world order which will be established by overthrowing the values of all other religions and kingdoms. They teach the “holiness of sin.”

Jacob Frank – The False Prophet of Sabbatai Zevi
Fifty years after the death of Sabbatai Zevi, Jacob Frank was born. Jerry Rabow in his book The Untold Story of 50 Jewish Messiahs, reported that Jacob Frank believed that he was the reincarnation of Sabbatai Zevi.

What Was once Forbidden is Now Commanded
Jacob Frank continued and extended the paradoxical teachings of Sabbatai Zevi declaring that with the coming of the messianic age, Zevi had transformed sexual prohibitions of the Bible into permissions and obligations. The only way to purify the soul is through sexual immorality and orgies. Debauchery is therapy.

The Therapy of Debauchery
Jacob Frank asserted that the God of the Bible is evil and Jews need to reject every moral law and commandment. The only way to a new world order was through the total destruction of Christian civilisation. Jacob Frank insisted that child sacrifice, rape, incest and the drinking of blood were perfectly acceptable and necessary religious rituals. Salvation is through sin. Redemption is achieved through deception.

Domination Through Infiltration
Jacob Frank also convinced his followers that the only way for their special form of Judaism to survive was for them to outwardly become Christians just as the Dönmeh had descended into the world of Islam.

Purification Through Transgression
Jewish authorities in Poland excommunicated Frank and his followers and rejected his concepts of purification through transgression.

Apostacy and Debauchery
Jacob Frank then converted to both Islam and Catholicism. He held annual spring time Lamb Festivals which consisted of drug use, sacrifice, nudity and the exchanges of spouses and daughters for immoral religious sex. Frank preached that true Jewish believers were to cross every boundary, transgress every taboo and to mix the sacred with the profane. Eve Frank (1754 – 1816) his daughter, was called the holy matron of the Sabbatean movement. She served as a central figure in the sex rituals of the sect in Poland.

Influential Recruits
Jacob Frank had approximately 50,000 disciples. But, although his following was smaller than that of Sabbatai Zevi, Jacob Frank’s cult would grow to become far more influential as it recruited some of Europe’s most influential royalty, nobility and the richest bankers on earth.

Most Corrupt and Terrifying
Gershom Scholem describes Jacob Frank as: “One of the most frightening phenomena in the whole of Jewish history, a religious leader, who for whether purely selfish motives, or otherwise, was, in all his actions a truly corrupt and degenerate individual.”

Follow Their Messiah into the Abyss
Jacob Frank taught that one has to free oneself from all laws, conventions and religions, to adopt every conceivable attitude and to reject it, to follow their messiah step by step into the abyss. The annihilation of every religion was the true way.

Cast Down to The Bottom of The Abyss
In order to ascend one must first descend. No man can climb a mountain until he has first descended to its foot. Therefore, we must descend and be cast down to the bottom rung, for only then can we climb to the infinite. This is the principle of “Jacob’s Ladder”, which is “shaped like a V.” “I did not come into this world to lift you up, but rather to cast you down to the bottom of the abyss.”

Rejecting All Law and Authority
Jacob Frank taught antinomianism, the rejection of all law and Libertinism, the rejection of all authority. He demanded from his followers voluntary abasement and utter shamelessness. A Sabbatean needs to be able to commit every sin without any sense of shame, remorse, or guilt.

Nihilism and Deception to Destroy Christian Europe
Jacob Frank’s Kabbalist interpretations led to Nihilism. He taught that one conquered through deception. Frank taught that Israel’s exile was not a consequence of its sins at all, but part of a plan to bring about the destruction of all Gentiles throughout the world. To establish a Jewish state back in Palestine was not sufficient. The whole order of the world, especially Christian Europe, must be subverted and destroyed.

The Illuminati and Rothschild Connections
In his classic book, To Eliminate the Opiate, Rabbi Marvin Antelman revealed that Jacob Frank got his financing from the Rothschild financial empire based in Frankfurt and worldwide influence by his alliance with Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Illuminati.

Rothschild and Weishaupt Form the illuminati with Frank
When Jacob Frank entered Frankfurt, an alliance had already begun between Mayer Amshel Rothschild, the immensely wealthy banker of Frankfurt and Adam Weishaupt who was the son of a Jewish Kabbalist Rabbi in Bavaria. Educated by Jesuits, Weishaupt became a Roman Catholic priest and then formed an alliance with Mayer Rothschild.

The Launch of The Illuminati New Age
On 1st May 1776. Weishaupt chose the timing of the launching of the Illuminati in accordance with Sabbatean Kabbalist teachings. He chose the 1st May because May, the 5-month added to the first day equals 6. He chose 1776 because the 4 numbers of this year add up to 21 (1+7+7+6 = 21). Also, the sacred number 6 + 21 = 27, another number with occultic Kabbalist powers. They believe this because it is formed by multiplying three by nine. Weishaupt carefully chose this date because he believed that even the greatest plans would be doomed to failure if not carried out at the most numerical advantageous time.

Revolutionary Goals
Adam Weishaupt, Mayer Rothschild and Jacob Frank launched the Illuminati on 1st May 1776 in Frankfurt with the long-term political goals of:

Abolition of all monarchies and all governments.
Abolition of private property and inheritances.
Abolition of nationalism.
Abolition of the family and the institution of marriage.
Abolition of all religion.
Establishment of compulsory communal education for all children.

Communist Agenda
Anyone who has read Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto of 1848 will immediately recognise the Illuminati agenda clearly articulated.

Understanding the Times and The Threat
It is impossible to understand the present Cancel Culture, BLM, Gender Confusion, Lockdown Lunacy, Masquerade Madness, Covid Cult, Salvation by Vaccination, Christphobia, Hollywood Degeneracy, Indoctrination through Education, Mainstream Media, United Nations and European Union pronouncements and activities without understanding the Sabbatean roots of the New World Disorder.

The Jeffrey Epstein Connection
In many ways Jeffrey Epstein epitomises the Sabbatean religion. The weird cubic temple with Islamic type dome on Jeffrey Epstein’s Island which reportedly led down to an underground chamber has been described as a sex-dungeon and Luciferian temple. The building is painted with blue and white stripes, the same colours as the flag of the State of Israel. Jeffrey Epstein certainly seemed to epitomise the Sabbatean philosophy of unrestrained sexual debauchery and deception.

The Harvey Weinstein Hollywood Connection
So too did Hollywood producer, sexual predator and rapist Harvey Weinstein and many of his highly influential friends, which include world leaders. Understanding Sabbateanism helps one understand the times and the threat that confronts us. “While they promise them freedom, they themselves are slaves of depravity.” 2 Peter 2:19

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Sabbatean Research
Rhattibha
1775 - Chabad Established
1776 - Jacob Frank, Adam Weishaupt, Mayer
Amschel Rothschild; Illuminati
“The Hasidim were accused of espousing doctrines
tinged with pantheism and were severely criticized for
establishing independent synagogues with Sefardic
(Spanish-rite) liturgy.”
- - -
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mitnagg
ed https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/survey
jh/files/2016/08/Oct.-27-148-9-162-3.pdf
A Genealogical Review of Evidence Supplied by the
Jewish Community of Porto in Support of their
Certifying the Sephardic Ancestry of Mr Roman
Abramovich
https://www.sephardic.world/news/evidenc
e-for-abramovich
“Eastern Europe had formerly been the home of many
thousands of Jews with Sephardic ancestry.
Sephardic immigrants in 1588 founded the Jewish
community of Zamosc in eastern Poland, among other
places.”
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/roman-abram
ovichs-use-of-portuguese-law-for-sephard
ic-jews-draws-scrutiny/

“These Jews, who can be traced back to their
ancestors in Spain before the Jewish expulsion in
1492, lived happily in southeastern Europe for
centuries, with their own cultures and traditions.”
https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/gener
al/sephardic-jews-in-yugoslavia.html

“All the Sephardic Jews mentioned above were either
eminent physicians or prosperous tradesmen; thus,
they represented the wealthiest class of Polish Jewry.”
https://www.avotaynu.com/sephardim.htm

Fireside Chat with Michael Kadoorie — 2008/12/16
https://youtu.be/vz0P7XcXDho
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/164
2275390281449472/pu/vid/486x270/hPTmzxei
FSiOl_Er.mp4?tag=12
London’s Portuguese Jewish Community
- - -
“It was founded by Portuguese refugees from religious
persecution in Spain… By 1695, there were 500
Portuguese and 200 German Jews, mostly from
Hamburg, in London, each with their own synagogue.”
https://avotaynuonline.com/2020/03/londo
ns-portuguese-jewish-community/

The Montefiores were a family of Sephardi Jews who
were European diplomats and bankers. The family
originated from Morocco and Italy.
https://guide-to-the-archive.rothschilda
rchive.org/rothschild-family-collection/
depts/related-family-papers/related-fami
ly-papers-montefiore-family



“Other Rothschild projects in the capital have included
the renovation of the Yemin Moshe neighborhood,
development of the Valley of the Cross… Following
Jerusalem's reunification in 1967, the family also
helped rebuild four ancient Sephardi synagogues.”

helped rebuild four ancient Sephardi synagogues.”
https://jweekly.com/1997/03/21/the-roths
childs-generations-of-nurturing-zionism/


“Dorothy (Dolly) Mathilde de Rothschild (born Pinto)
arranged meetings for Weizmann… The family name
Pinto is often traced to Sephardi Jews, descendants of
the Jews expelled from Portugal during the Inquisition,
some of whom moved to the Arab world.”
https://www.balfour100.com/biography/dor
othy-de-rothschild-pending-approval-from
-yh/


Vienna Gets a Sephardic Synagogue to Serve
Immigrants of Former USSR
- - -
“It was made possible by the help of contributions of
$250,000 each by the Austrian Education Ministry and
the city of Vienna, and $150,000 from the Ronald S.
Lauder Foundation.”
https://www.jta.org/archive/vienna-getsa-sephardic-synagogue-to-serve-immigrant
s-of-former-ussr

“Her [Estée Lauder] parents were Hungarian Jewish
immigrants; on the mother's side her grandmother was
from Sátoraljaújhely and her grandfather from Gelle
(now Holice, Slovakia), while her father had CzechJewish ancestry.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estée_La
uder_(businesswoman)

“The beginnings of Hamburg’s Jewish community are
linked to the Jews’ expulsion from the Iberian
Peninsula at the end of the 15th century. Until the 18th
century Sephardic migrants and their descendants
shaped the Jewish community in Hamburg.”
https://jewish-history-online.net/topic/
migration

“Sephardi ben Israel persuaded Cromwell to allow the
Jews to return to England. That allowed Benjamin
Disraeli, a Sephardi, to become Prime Minister of
England and Sir Philip Sassoon, also a Sephardi, to
become the rich crony of the Prince of Wales.”
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber
/article/0,33009,739484,00.html

“There are many parallels with the Sephardic
Camondo family of Venice and Istanbul. Both the
Ephrussi and the Camondo families, similar to the
Rothschilds, came to inhabit some key European
banking capitals.”
https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/art
s-culture/ottoman-jew-in-paris-moise-decamondo/



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Why I Study Sabbateanism
Zeek
Jay Michaelson


The story I tell people is this: I went to Israel in 2005 to become a rabbi and study Hasidism. I left in 2006, a rabbinical dropout studying Jacob Frank, the greatest heretic who ever lived. The implied joke is that living in Israel - Jerusalem, at least - can wash the love of Judaism right out of a person, just as it can dye it in.

And, to some extent, the joke is true. Every American who spends a year or more in Israel can date their time according to which historical convulsions the country was undergoing - in 1993, I was there for Oslo; in 1998, it was the calm before the Camp David storm; and in 2005 the hitnatkut, the Israeli "Disengagement" from Gaza. The last year was the most powerful for me personally. I saw that Jewish religion and Jewish nationalism aligned almost perfectly; that for me to have any pretensions to an Orthodox, or even Ortho-practic, lifestyle was increasingly absurd on a sociological but also intellectual level; and that the Jewishness I wanted to create for myself - and I did still want to create that - would have to be a Jewishness outside the conventional boundaries of Jewish religious belief and community.

While all of this quite-typical, American-in-Jerusalem soul searching was going on, I was trying to pin down my doctoral dissertation topic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I did, indeed, go to Jerusalem to study Hasidism - in particular, the remarkable and little-known writings of R. Aaron of Staroselse, the leading disciple of R. Schneur Zalman of Liady, the first rebbe of Chabad and author of that sect's masterpiece, the Tanya. R. Aaron, who lost a succession battle to R. Schneur Zalman's son, R. Dov Ber of Lubavitch, took his master's ideas to their logical conclusion, which was a nondual, Vedanta-like theology in which the world we experience through our sense-perceptions has only relative reality; actually, R. Aaron taught, it's all a dream in the mind of God - the same mind processing these words right now. It's brilliant stuff, and I was fascinated by it.

But while R. Aaron’s questions were just what I was most interested in at the time (and my own book on "Nondual Judaism" is well underway), his answers felt predetermined. I knew that somehow, some way, this hasidic rabbi would end up justifying the Torah-and-mitzvot lifestyle to which he was committed, as, of course, he did. The same was true of the wrestling-with-texts crowd at the American yeshivas in Jerusalem, my this-is-just-my-lifestyle dati leumi non-Anglo friends, and the rest of the observant community. Of course, there are countless sincere seekers within and beyond traditional Judaism. But in my work, as in my life, I kept being drawn to the religious margins, to the people for whom the answers are not set in advance.

If R. Aaron was a saintly, brilliant theologian, then Jacob Frank, who lived from 1726-1790, was the polar opposite: a manipulative, vulgar cult leader who converted both to Islam and Catholicism, may have had a long-term incestuous relationship with his daughter, and was regarded by thousands of 18th-century Jews as a messianic figure. Not a nice guy - but, to me, a fascinating one, precisely because his was a theology of transgression in which no answers were assured. Indeed, in which answers were the enemy. If you see a boundary, cross it - that's the view, because it's what God did, mixing Godself with the impurity of the material world. Where does that end up? Some scholars call it nihilism - but it's a nihilism that greatly influenced Frank's contemporary, R. Israel Baal Shem Tov, and which, astonishingly, paved the way for the Haskalah in some communities, assimilation in others.

Frank was part of a Sabbatean family, and received his education in present-day Turkey. (he was born in Podolia, the same region where the Baal Shem Tov was active). Turkey was a hotbed of secret (and not-so-secret) sects of Jews who maintained that Sabbatai Zevi, who in 1666 had convinced almost one third of European Jews to be his followers until he converted to Islam under the threat of death, was the messiah. Frank was not, strictly speaking, a Sabbatean; he had his own ideas, and saw himself, not Sabbetai, as the central heroic figure. But he and his followers were called Sabbateans (the fine points being a bit too-fine to the rabbis trying to stamp out heresy), and his ideas are close enough that Frankism, as it came to be called, is generally called an "outgrowth" of Sabbateanism.

Of course, to believe that a dead man who didn't accomplish his mission is actually the messiah requires a fair amount of cognitive dissonance - but, well, let's just say the idea isn't without precedent. In the Sabbateans' case, the belief system that emerged was that the redemption is already here, but not on the gross, material plane. (Students of Hasidism can see the parallels to the Baal Shem Tov's identical teaching.) The purpose of religious ritual - normative and new - was to break through the walls of illusion, maintain faith in the redeemer, and find a way to live in the material world.

In the 18th century, some Sabbateans were Jews, including some well-known rabbis like (probably) R. Jonathan Eybeschutz, who kept their heretical faith hidden but maintained secret circles of believers (ma'aminim is what they called themselves). Others were Dönmeh, crypto-Jews who were outwardly Muslim but who maintained their faith in secret. Astonishingly, there are still Dönmeh in Turkey today, some of whom are now struggling to save Sabbatai Zevi's childhood home from demolition.

This is why I study Sabbateanism: not because of the specific doctrines of the movement, or because of the personality of Sabbatai Zevi, but because these were sects of Jews who remained attached to some kind of Judaism, but who created a form of Judaism well beyond the pale of normative religious figures. Yes, there are some aspects of Sabbatean ideology that are fascinating, even titillating. The Dönmeh and the Frankists each had sexual-religious rituals, ranging from wife-swapping to kissing the naked breasts of a girl as the embodiment of the Torah/Shechinah. I'm intrigued by Frank's innovation, in exact parallel to the Baal Shem Tov's, that the miracle of pantheism is precisely that God is present in the illusory, material world. But above all, I'm captivated by that vertiginous moment in which there are suddenly no rules, no guides - and yet there is also a pull to faith. True nihilism bores me; I can't think of anything less interesting than the same hipster angst that has caused people to be cool, ironic and unhappy for two hundred years. But religious anarchy - where things matter, but they're not how the authorities say - that is the world which I actually inhabit.

Earlier scholars of Sabbateanism were attracted for similar reasons. Gershom Scholem, who invented the modern study of Jewish mysticism, wrote his longest single work on Sabbatai Zevi, and regarded him both as a religious revolutionary and a precursor to Zionism. Scholem was not alone in this characterization; when Herzl published The Jewish State, he was accused of being a new Sabbatai Zevi, because like Sabbatai, he was trying to take history into his own hands, to hasten the redemption, to act in a way that the pious reserved for God. Many of Israel's founding generation, such as President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (a name he chose), were likewise fascinated by Sabbateanism, and devoted considerable resources to researching and preserving its legacy. Some of the fruits of that research are reprinted in this issue of Zeek.

Other scholars see in Sabbateanism the first stirrings of reform. Few still subscribe to Scholem's claim that the movement basically enabled the Jewish Enlightenment to happen by weakening rabbinic power structures and, for the first time, suggesting that there were serious alternatives to mainstream Jewish authority and belief. But it did play some role. And Sabbatai was the first Jewish leader to - in the 17th century - openly decry the oppression of women in Judaism, and place women in positions of power (notwithstanding his own tortured relationship with his wife, whom he essentially abandoned). This may have been a charismatically-driven mystical movement, but it did get some things right.

And then there is the mystical charge. It's clear, from reading the documents, that Sabbateanism was the mystical movement of the day. These were the Jews who preferred the Zohar to the Talmud, who loved ecstatic prayer and dance, and who believed the world to be charged with magic. Sound familiar? Some of it was just superstition, of course, and a lot of it was providing some sense of meaning to a people persecuted and oppressed. But just imagine what it must have been like, to be part of a secret society of ecstatic Jews, convening in hidden locations to engage in ecstatic rites. I know which party I'd like to crash. Not to mention the sexual antinomianism, and the overt homoeroticism surrounding Sabbatai and one of his successors, Beruchiah Russo - a subject upon which, if I live long enough, I hope to write at some length.

Of course, there is always the tendency to project onto an object of study the characteristics of the hero one wishes to invent. Sabbatai Zevi's prophet, Nathan of Gaza, was a complex and brilliant theologian, but Sabbatai himself can hardly be called a "religious revolutionary" in his own right, any more than the many messianic pretenders one sees walking around Jerusalem at odd hours of the night. He knew his Kabbalah, and he wasn't a fool, but he was an erratic figure who's hard to pin down exactly. And Jacob Frank is certainly no hero, despite my own wish that he be one; reading the assemblage of his oral teachings is sometimes like poring through the ramblings of a lunatic. So I try not to let my enthusiasm blind me to the reality of these flawed human beings and the complicated religious movements they headed, and I am fortunate to be held in check by the requirements of academic discipline.

The truth is, there is much we may never know about the Sabbateans. Were they antinomians, or pietists, or both? Were Frank's followers dupes, or mystics, or both? Who was ascetic and who hedonistic? Who revolutionary and who merely a crank? We do know, however, that they were heretics, someone who actively chooses his or her own belief system (heretic comes from the Greek aireo, to choose) without looking for guidance to authority figures. Of course, the heretic is rare today precisely because she is ubiquitous; in our day, thank God, everyone chooses to believe what they want, which makes the notion of a heretic a rather empty one. It's a gesture, more than anything else.

But beneath that gesture is, for me at least, a kind of reassurance, and a courage as well. Yes, the heretics tell me, there are those of us in love with God, but not in love with religion. We even cherish our particular religious path, albeit not in the way our teachers tell us. It would be easier to give it up, smoke more cigarettes, and brush off the calls of the heart. But you don't have to do that, and we didn't. I've long since given up thinking that religion will save the world, and have, like many people, begun to wonder if it will destroy it. Heresy, however - freely thinking, sincerely feeling, personally embodied, and spiritually awake - may have a shot.


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Sabbatean-Frankism as the Paradigm of the Modern Left
THE REBBE BLOG — [Introduction] What do all these influential intellectuals all have in common?
winterwatch
Communism (Marx)
Sexual depravity (Freud)
Corporate Leftism (Bernays)
Multiculturalism (Horace Kallen)
Deconstructivism/Critical Theory (Walter Benjamin)
Frankfurt School (Adorno)
Radical jurisprudence (Brandeis, Frankfurter, and Cardozo)
Large-scale, non-selective immigration (Israel Zangwill, Emma Lazarus)
They are all linked to Sabbatean-Frankism, a distinct quasi-Satanic schism within Jewry. The extraordinary prevalence of Sabbatean-Frankist influence among top Jewish intellectuals from 1850-1950 makes it statistically impossible to deny its role because of the impossible coincidences.

The Sabbatean-Frankists sought to invert traditional Jewish-Christian values, including the 10 Commandments, restrictions on debauched sexuality, man’s dominion over the environment, etc. Further, given Sabbatean-Frankism’s apocalyptic nature, the modern Left is riven with irrational destructive impulses.

This general thesis has been explored by historians Paul Johnson and Gershom Scholem, but never in such detail. There are several implications of this thesis:

The failures of the contemporary Left do not represent “good faith” secular humanist efforts gone wrong. It is very possible that Freud, Marx, and other Sabbatean-Frankist intellectuals purpose-built their ideas to destroy the West.
The US Supreme Court was heavily influenced by Sabbatean-Frankists. Their impact help cause a revolution via court fiat in the 50s-70s that undemocratically imposed decadent/anti-Judeo-Christian (i.e. Frankist) values on the country.
Since the Left is fundamentally a quasi-Satanic movement devoted to destroying traditional Judeo-Christian civilization, it is a natural ally with like-minded Islam, despite superficial differences (feminism, gay rights). Islam and the Left will seamlessly cooperate to destroy the West as they cooperated to topple the Shah in the Iranian Revolution.
Any civilization will eventually grow contemptuous of its stern founding virtues. Sabbatean-Frankism’s resonance is part of a cycle where civilizations grow complacent and ultimately self-destructive. […]


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