The Great Synagogue of Altona, built in 1684, where Rabbi Jacob Emden was born

I stood near the Wailing Wall, my mind in pensive reflection. Surrounding me was an other-worldly hum of Hebrew prayers ascending towards heaven. Were they prayers of anguish, sorrow, ecstasy, delight or the prayers of a tzadik atoning for the entire world? I could not understand, neither comprehend but only perceive.

The Wailing Wall (photo by Robert Mock)

This ancient ritual of prayer before the only remaining vestige of the ancient temple of the God of Israel in Jerusalem two thousand years ago depicts the power of the divine calling one to his historical and spiritual roots. Here I stood as a Gentile in an alien land. I knew of my meager genetic roots to a noble Jew of the House of David who sat as an Elder in the Great Sanhedrin. I also knew of my meager roots to the Princes of Israel living as exile-Archs in the land of Babylon. They were maintaining the dynastic Davidian lineage in the land of their ancient exile when the temple of Solomon was destroyed. I kept asking myself, why was I here? What was the purpose of my pilgrimage?

Orthodox and Hassidic Jews Praying at the Wall (photo by Robert Mock)

Three times I was approached by what appeared to be a friendly and maybe a righteous Jew who was an emissary for his God. Welcome! Are you a visitor? I nodded my head in affirmation. “Are you a Jew? No, I said. I am a Christian. There was quickly some small talk on the glory of this ancient temple, the beautiful day on the first two conversations. Then quickly the conversation turned to the point of engagement. “I have a friend in need, poor, sick and in need of medication. Can you help with a donation?” The shekels flowed from my wallet but somehow my giving for a “need” never seemed to be enough.

In Hebrew, giving in charity to those in need is called “tzedakah” which literally means “righteousness.” Yet “tzedakah” refers not only to an ethical behavior of kindness to another but also to justice. Yet I pondered. Is “tzedakah” by a Gentile a one-way street? I was here to learn of my Hebrew-Judaic roots and wondering, would a Jewish person even be willing to talk with me about the God they served?

Orthodox and Hassidic Jews at the Northwest corner of the Wailing Wall (photo by Robert Mock)

I continued to watch, pray and wonder. Then there appeared a truly inquisitive Jew. He looked every bit an orthodox with his black suit, hat and demeanor. I heard his voice above the din of hundreds of prayers. “Are you a Jew?” Now I perceived the pathway of conversation and sought a different form of communication. “Yes, a little,” I responded. Tell me how are you a Jew?” he asked with apparent delight. “I am a descendant of a Jewish noble of the House of David. He sat in the Great Sanhedrin as an Elder of Israel.” I continued. I knew now that I had his attention. “As a Davidian, he sat on the honorary chair in the Sanhedrin as a descendant of King David,” the conversation went on. “Who was he,” the Jewish man asked. “Joseph of Arimathea, do you know about him?” His face was blank, puzzling as he searched in the archives of his memory.

I continued, “He was one of the wealthiest men in Jerusalem, a Roman decurio in charge of mining and transporting tin from the Cornwall coast of Britain to the Roman Empire.” His face continued to show a puzzling inquisitiveness so I try harder. “Do you not know of Yosef ben Matthias who lived in the town of Ramathea? He was the uncle to Yahshua ben Yosef and gave him the family tomb for his burial when He died here in Jerusalem. A moment of discernment crossed this orthodox Jewish face, his face paled, his eyes sank as he turned his head. Without saying goodbye, he disappeared into a sea of rocking and praying Hasidic Jews. He did not ask for a donation.

With my billfold empty of several hundred shekels, I turned away with sadness. At this moment of time, there would be no Jewish man here in this maze of orthodox and Hasidic Jews who would acknowledge or speak to me about the pathway of Torah.

There is a great breach or divide in the two great spiritual descendants of the ancient Pharisees: Judaism and Christianity. This breach and the great divide is Yahshua ben Yosef (Jesus son of Joseph) a messiah to thousands of halakha (“Way” or the “Path” of applying Torah law to everyday living) observing Jewish males. They kept the Law of Moses (Torah), brought their sacrifices and gifts to the temple at Jerusalem, celebrated the festivals of the Lord, spend the Shabbat (Seventh-day Sabbath) worshipping in a Jewish synagogue and lived a life of Torah in Judea, Galilee and the great Diaspora of the Jews for the rest of their lives.

Study and Prayer at the Wailing Wall (photo by Robert Mock)

I pondered, with the word “Jesus” and “Yahshua” in both of our lexicons, will we ever be able to talk with each other? As I have studied thousands of hours into the lives, history, religion and spiritual quest of both Jews and Christians and searched for what we as Christians call our Hebrew-Judaic roots, I puzzle over why millions and probably billions of humans have died in the quest. Was it either by power, greed or control, to gain dominion over the religious and spiritual trail for salvation by the God of Israel? Why? I also had to ask with blunt seriousness, is my only purpose for the Jewish people as a Gentile to be a funnel or a pocket for “tzedakah?” (charity)

Here begins our quest. It is not about what the Gentile Christian thinks about the Jews. Is it not about what the Orthodox Jews thinks about the Christians? It will center on two arch-defenders of Orthodox Judaism, rabbinic voices of respect by their peers. One was a Talmudic giant, who lived in an era of crisis of dealing with the most formidable threats to Orthodox Judaism; the heresy of messianic mystical Shabbateanism. This sage valiantly sought to protect the virtual destruction of Orthodox rabbinic Judaism. He was eventually compelled to revisit the greatest orthodox, Hasidic and Essenic messianic revival in Judaism.

The other was an ardent ultra-orthodox rabbi, a student several centuries later of the first rabbinic sage. He also sought to protect the halakha (“Way” or the “Path” of applying Torah law to everyday living) of the Jews from corruption and error. They both visited and revisited the life of the rabbi and Jewish messiah, Jesus the Nazarene.

Orthodox Hassidic Jews Praying at the Wall (photo by Robert Mock)

Here was my quest in part to visit Jerusalem. Here was my quest to understand that Hasidic orthodox rabbi, who was in defense of the halakhic teachings of Beit Hillel, the esteemed rabbinic School of the Nasi, President and Prince of Israel, Hillel the Great. It was this Torah giant who paved the pathway for that Hasidic and Essenic messiah to take Torah observant Judaism to the Gentile nations of the world. It was this rabbinic messiah that provided a pathway of salvation for all mankind to come to the presence of His Father in heaven.

Shall we first introduce Rabbi Jacob Emden the 17^th century Talmudic sage of Judaism as he battled the disciples of Shabbatai Zevi? These Jews in rebellion to their God sought to turn the covenanted religion of Judaism upside down into a religion that was anti-Torah and anti-God of Israel?

Rabbi Jacob Emden and the Shabbatean Controversy

There has been probably no greater controversy in the past two thousand years that has affected Judaism than the failed and destructive messianic revival of Shabbatai Zevi. He declared that the Age of the Messiah would come on June 18, 1666 (06-6+6+6-1000+666).

This would be an era that would introduce all the elements that would herald the final “Act” in the Drama of the Ages when the Messiah of the Jews would bring the Kingdom of God to its full reality. The most catastrophic effect of the Sabbatean heresy was that it would bring a great divide between the Jewish people Sabbatai Zevi themselves.

The Jewish false messiah, Shabbatai Zevi

At this moment of time, many of the Orthodox Jews left the faith of their forefathers, no longer desired to remain in a covenanted relationship with the God of Israel and instead wanted to put their own God under a microscope and seek how they could extract themselves from their covenant with their God first given to them at Sinai.

It was on August, 2004 that BibleSearchers Reflections posted an article titled, “The Sabbatean Jews and their Affect on Global Politics.” In a sub-titled section called, “Shabbatai Zevi, the Messiah of the Jews” and “Nathan of Gaza, Prophet of the Holy Light,” we read:

“Barry Chamish, a Jewish investigative reporter, wrote two insightful investigative reports centering on the writings of Rabbi Antelman, The Deutsch Devils and Kerry, Gaza and the New Sabbatean Holocaust.

BibleSearchers Reflections – “It all began in the 1600’s where a Turkish born Jewish mystic, Shabbatai Zevi (1626-1676) was born in ancient Smyrna, Turkey (modern-day Izmir) on the Shabbat (Jewish Seventh-day Sabbath) on the 9^th of Av, 1626 and whence his name, Shabbatai. This day, 9^th of Av, on its own is a day of infamy and a date of triple tragedies. The destruction of the temple of Solomon, temple of Herod and the Bar Kokhba’s Betar fortress all were destroyed on this day. Yet in some Jewish traditions, the 9^th of Av will be the day of the birth of the coming Maschiach (Messiah)…

On the 15^th day of Sivan, June 18, 1666 (6 / 6+6+6 / 1000 + 666), Shabbatai Zevi formally announced that the Moschiach of Israel would be revealed and named this year (1666) as the year of Redemption or the year of the promised Messiah. His support in the Jewish population spread rapidly across Palestine and the Diaspora when almost the entire Jewry accepted him not as a prophet or teacher but the “promised one” or the “anointed one” and the living incarnation of God. In the history of Judaism, it was the only messianic movement to sweep all Jews from the western isles of Britain to the ancient lands of Persia, from the heartland of Germany to the northern African nation of Morocco, and from the Nation of Poland to the Yemen coast. The date of the “Coming of the Messiah” never came.”

The Age of the Final Deception had finally come. This deception would have appearances that were not. It would appear good when it was actually evil. It would seek to represent itself as the guardian of the Holy Word when it was anti-Torah and against the real historical Jesus who was a Jewish Messiah. It took the Jewish followers of its messianic idealism and transformed them into the influence of apostate Christianity.

Amschel Mayer Rothschild (1773-1855) who started the Finance House of the Rothschild Empire

The followers of Jacob Frank, the disciple of Sabbatai Zevi, who called themselves Frankists, soon joined forces with messianic Islam as found in the Photograph modern Dolmeh Society and allied themselves with the Catholic Jesuits of the German based Illuminati. With the funding of the House of Rothschild out of Frankfurt, Germany, they imbedded themselves into Scottish Masonry.

The Jesuit, Adam Weishaupt, Founder of the Illuminati

As Barry Chamish wrote in the sub-section “Jacob Frank and the Jewish Alliance with the Illuminati and the Rothschilds” we read:

Barry Chamish – “Frankfurt at the time was the headquarters of the Jesuit, Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Illuminati, as well as Rothschild Brothers’ financial empire. This is worth repeating; Frankfurt was the birthplace of both the Illuminati and the Rothschild Empire. When Jacob Frank entered the city, the alliance between the two had already begun. Weishaupt provided the conspiratorial resources of the Jesuit Order, while the Rothschilds contributed the money. What was missing was a means to spread the agenda of the Illuminati and the Frankists added with their network of agents throughout the Christian and Islamic worlds.” (Barry Chamish, Kerry, Gaza and the New Sabbatean Holocaust, pg 2)

Not even the future holocaust in Germany when so many of the rabbinic Jewish sages were massacred in the ovens of the Nazi horror, was as damaging to the Jewish people as the great divide that eventually tore away a vast body of Jewish people. They converted to Catholicism under the watchful eyes of the Jesuit disciples of Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati and disappeared when they went underground, changing their names, their identity and eventually loosing sight of their Hebrew-Jewish heritage.”

Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Ashkenazi (Chacham Zvi) -

Torah and Talmudic Sage confronts the Jewish Shabbatean Crisis

One of the leading Torah authorities of Judaism who became a “giant” in the defense of covenanted role of the Jewish people against the Shabbatean heresy was Rabbi Jacob Emden (1697-1776). He was not only a fiery warrior for the Jewish faith but was one of the leading Talmudic scholars in Judaism.

Today, he is compared by many historians as being on the esteemed level as the Spanish Jewish Talmudic giant, Maimonides. It is said that he shared with Maimonides the vast breadth of historical, legal and theological knowledge yet he retained the pragmatic wisdom of a true sage with innovative ideas on resolving great conflicts.

Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Jacob Ashkenazi known as Chacham Zvi (1660-1718)

Our search into the life of Rabbi Jacob Emden leads us to the archives over three hundred years old to the home of Emden’s father, Chacham Zvi. It was here that a Jewish male baby, born into a family of Talmudic giants in Altona, Germany on June 4, 1697. This small hamlet near Hamburg was first settled by Portuguese Sephardi Jews who first arrived in Hamburg, Germany about 1577. Here the Ashkenazi Jewish community took its roots in this small Jewish village.

The solitude of the Germany countryside was soon swept away when they had to take refuge in Hamburg during the 30 years war (1627-1644). Four years later after the war, they united as the Jewish Union of Altona, Hamburg and Wandsbek (AHW) . The first and oldest synagogue in this union became the Synagogue in Neuen Steinweg in Hamburg (1654-1859). Thirty one years later, in 1685, the main Jewish synagogue in Algona was inaugurated as the Kleine Papagoyenstraße. On the year of Jacob Emden’s birth (1697), the written constitution of the High German Jewish community in Hamburg was completed.

Interior of the Papagoyen Synagogue in Altona, Germany (restored 1711 after a fire)

Exterior of the Synagogue on Kleine Papagoyenstraße in Altona, Germany

Here in the Papagoyen Synagogue, Zvi Hirsch ben Jacob Ashkenazi (c. 1660-1718), called Chacham Zvi and the father of Rabbi Jacob Emden, worshipped the God of Israel. He taught his congregation the ways of the Torah.

Recognized as one of the foremost Torah scholar and Talmudic authority in central Europe, Chacham Zvi arrived in Altona already internationally known as a giant in Torah and legal Judaic studies. He soon became a rabbinic leader of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities.

Zvi Ashkenazi was of Moravian descent, born in what is known today as Czechoslovakia in 1658 to a learned Jewish rabbi, Rabbi Jacob Sack. They moved to the beautiful city of Budapest, the home of his mother’s family and studied the Torah from his father and grandfather, Rabbi Abraham Hakohen, the head of the Often Yeshiva (Torah school).

He was sent by his parents to study then at Saloniki, Greece with the renowned Rabbi Eliah Kobo who taught a circle of Talmudic scholars the vast breadth of the Oral Torah. There at the age of eighteen, Zevi became the youngest student disciple to have the title of “Chacham” (Sephardic for “Rabbi) bestowed upon him by the Rabbinic Council of Constantinople.

Chacham Zvi Ashkenazi returned to his home at Alt Ofen, married and there in the quiet life of Torah study, they raised a young girl. Suddenly the winds of war engulfed surrounded the countryside around Budapest, Austria. The Ottoman Turkish hordes were surrounding the Austrian army while cannonballs were flying overhead. One such cannonball landed in the home of Chacham Zvi and killed his wife and daughter. Surrounded by tragedy, he barely escaped for his life and fled to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia.

Here in this city, he met for the first time the demonic effects of the Shabbatean movement, which was still flourishing after the betrayal, Islamic conversion and death in 1676 of Judaism’s most famous messianic imposter, Shabbatai Zevi. All across the landscape from central Europe to Jerusalem, Jewish believers were still awaiting Shabbatai’s resurrection to return as the Jewish messiah and lead them back to the Holy Land. They forgot that the God of Israel was taking care of their “Land.” Their covenant with God was to keep the Torah. There in Sarajevo, Chacham Zvi met one of the most dangerous imposter disciples of Shabbatai Zevi, Nechemiah Chayun.

The winds of war soon engulfed Sarajevo as the Austro-Turkish war moved into the regions of Bosnia. Once again fleeing, Chacham Zvi, wherever he traveled his reputation as a Torah giant went before him; Mantua and Venice, Italy, across the Alps to Ansbach, Furth, Prague and then Berlin, Germany.

He remarried the daughter of the head rabbi of the Altona, Hamburg and Wandsbeck Ashkenazi communities (Hebrew MAP - Click to center letters “AHU”) near Hamburg, Germany and soon took the rabbinate office upon the death of his father-in-law, Rabbi Meshullam Zalman Neumark in 1707.

Altona, a small suburb neighborhood in Hamburg, Germany

This new “call” soon led Chacham Zvi to a confrontation with the Jewish powerful community leaders. Yet Chacham Zvi was a “man of God”, a student of the Torah and was not up to be bought or sold. The wealthy community leaders withdrew their finances but the Chacham was not fazed. They challenged his leadership as Rabbi and invited another candidate, Rabbi Moshe of Rothenburg to take his place. Instead of controversy, he offered to share the rabbinic chair. Unbowed, in 1709 he withdrew as the Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazi communities of “AHU” and opened his own small synagogue and yeshiva to study the Torah nearby.

First he was confronted by the Jewish anti-Torah followers of the messianic imposter, Shabbatai Zevi in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Now he was confronted by the Jewish elite and community financiers whose quest for power, greed and control overshadowed any urge to follow the God of Israel.

Then in 1710, Chacham Zvi received the call to become the Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazi Jewish community in Amsterdam, Netherlands. There he completed his 12-volume set in 1712 called the “Responsa” to Jewish legal issues. Two years later (1714), the eminent Jewish Torah scholar and Talmudic authority became embroiled in a controversy with a suspected anti-Torah Shabbatean Jew. In the aftermath of the controversy, Chacham Zvi Ashkenazi left Amsterdam and moved to Lemberg (Lvov), Poland where he died at the premature age of 60 (1718).

It was there in Altona, Germany that Zvi’s son, Jacob Emden, was born in 1697. We can only suspect the elation of the eminent stature of his father becoming the Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam at Jacob’s impressionable age of seventeen. There in Amsterdam, Rabbi Zevi Ashkenazi was confronted with the same power and elite who resented his rabbinic ministry to the “learned and the poor” rather than the “influential and rich financiers.” The Jewish elite tried to force him out by withholding his salary, but the Chacham’s lifestyle was depended upon his Lord rather than money. And then there arrived in Amsterdam, the Shabbatean disciple, Nechemiah Chayun, Zvi Ashkenazi had met earlier in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Chayun had been excommunicated from the regions around Bosnia and with his polished speech and new books off the press arrived to a new home in Amsterdam.

There have been more than fifty messianic movements in Judaism since the messianic movement of Jesus (Yahshua) the Nazarene. The seventeenth century messianic movement of Shabbatai Zevi was fueled by the resurrection of mystical Judaism with the writing of the Zohar, called the “Book of Splendor or Radiance.” This book would become the most influential commentary on the Torah (five books of Moses) relating to Jewish mysticism, called the Jewish Kabbalah.

Here began the foundation of the Jewish ideal of the transcendent ideas of nature of the God of Israel, the origin and creation of this universe, the nature of the souls of man, sin and redemption, good and evil and the hierarchic concepts of the other dimensions in heaven called the Sefirot of God. The impact of Jewish mysticism and especially the writings of the famous thirteenth Safed mystic, Rabbi Yitzhak Luria (1534-1572) became later the fuel of messianic revivals as it was corrupted in the messianic revival of Shabbatai Zevi.

The Sefirot of God

The catastrophic impact of the Shabbatean heresy with Shabbatai Zevi and his prophet and apologist, Nathan of Gaza [Abraham Nathan ben Elisha Hayyim Ashkenazi (1643-1680)] was immediately felt all over Poland and central Germany. When the self-avowed Jewish messiah was captured by the Sultan in Constantinople and imprisoned, he was given an offer he would not refuse, to convert to Islam. The seeds of the corruption of Shabbatai Zevi went underground and were resurrected again as Christian Cabalah, Islamic Qabalah and variations of Jewish Kabbalah that were anti-Torah. These included the promotion of sexual rites, mores (strongly held norms or customs) and values that were against the commands of the God of Israel. The greatest impact today are the international schools of Kabbalah that have affected the lives of Hollywood stars like Madonna, that promote a lifestyle little akin to the life of Torah observant Jews in their covenant relationship with their God.

Nechemiah Chayum first went to Berlin and published several anonymous manuscripts and later a new book on Cabalah (Christian anti-Torah corruption of Jewish mysticism) that promoted “dangerous” theories that appeared learned and pious.

Chacham Zvi had already met Nechemiah Chayum twenty five years earlier and knew its evil affects upon the Jewish people in Bosnia. He also understood the effects of the Shabbatean heresy in south-eastern Europe. The Jewish faithful were intrigued, fascinated and swept along the tide of Shabbatean Judaism. Only experienced scholars with extensive knowledge of the Torah could detect and understand the corruption of Shabbatai Zevi’s and now Nechemiah Chayum’s works.

The Frankists and the Shabbatean Crisis in Europe

Jacob Frank (Yakov ben Judah Leib Frankovich) the protégé of Shabbatai Zevi

It would be another twelve years before a newer a more damaging revival of Shabbatean messianism would come after the birth of Shabbatai Zevi most famous disciple, Jacob Frank (Yakov ben Judah Leib Frankovich). He was born in 1726 in ancient Poland in the region of modern Ukrainia. His career would peak in 1755, when at the age of twenty five, Jacob Frank returned to Europe posing as an orthodox Sephardic Jew. In reality, he began to form a new and more sinister heretical Jewish sect called the Frankist.

With avowed “direct revelations from heaven,” he admonished his Jewish followers to convert to Christianity. The Frankist became an underground Jewish religion that was anti-Torah. Like Shabbatai Zevi and Nathan of Gaza, they seduced their Jewish followers by engaging in sexual activities forbidden by Torah. The Gnostic “higher wisdom or knowledge” was to replace the “halachah of Torah.” Out of the mysticism of Rabbi Luria’s Jewish Kabbalah which was based on the Mosaic Torah, the Frankists claimed a new wisdom, the ‘Torah of emanations’ or the Christian Cabalah which was anti-Torah.

As such the Shabbateans and the Frankists corrupted the Jewish prophetic idea of the emanations of God in the TaNaKh (Old Testament). Instead of subjecting themselves to the emanations of the Almighty by their covenantal relationship with God and obeying His commandments; they reproduced a new “Torah of emanations” which they could control. They took the spirit of the “little horn” of Daniel the prophet and in essence proclaimed that they “were like God.”

The spiritual mentor of the Portuguese Jewish community, Rabbi Solomon Ayllon, was a suspected sympathizer of the Shabbatean movement. He sought to shield the influence and writing’s of Chayun’s manuscripts and books. The combined effort of Rabbi Zevi Ashkenazi and Rabbi Moses Chagiz forced a ban on Nechemiah Chayun’s writings and book.

The Ashkenazi and the Portuguese Jewish communities soon began to split with violent results. Rabbi Ayllon formed a tribunal. Chacham Zevi was called to appear which he refused. The esteemed Rabbi Leon Brielli of Mantua (Italy) on the other hand sent a letter calling Chayun an imposter who had earlier forged his name on an earlier document.

MAP - Click to center The case of Chayun vs. Chacham Zevi soon was sent to the civil courts. After the Portuguese commission approved the book on Cabalah written by Chayun, Rabbi Zvi Ashkenazi was placed under house arrest. In secret, he and his family left Amsterdam and moved to Emden located near the North Sea coastline between Amsterdam and Hamburg in Lower Saxony Germany.

The triangle of Jewish conflict with the Sabbatean Jews – Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Hamburg - Emden near the coastline of the North Sea between Amsterdam and Hamburg

Chacham Zevi was offered the position as the Chief Rabbi of London, where he had a great following. He was received with honor but chose to travel from city to city predominately in Eastern Europe in Poland before accepting the position as the Chief Rabbi of Lemberg (Lvov). This city was known for its community of Torah scholars. Unfortunately, at the peak and the most exciting and happiest months of Chacham Zvi’s life was cut short when he prematurely died four months later at the age of sixty (1718).

Here in this same community of Lvov, Poland (now Ukrainia) forty one years later (1759) there was witnessed a spectacular and massive baptism. Thousands of Jewish were baptized as they converted to Catholicism. They were known as Frankists to the Catholic Jesuits. Jacob Frank was arrested soon after with charges filed by the Roman Catholic Church for falsifying that the Jewish converts were worshipping the “Trinity” when in fact they were worshipping a man-made “trinity” with Frank as one of the members of the “trinity.” Jacob Frank was imprisoned for thirteen years (1760-1773).

Rabbi Jacob Emden - The Defender of Covenanted Jewish Orthodoxy

Rabbi Jacob Emden (1696 – 1776) was the son of the Talmudist scholar Rabbi Zvi Hirsch ben Jacob Ashkenazi (c. 1660-1718) or Chacham Zvi. His life would parallel the rise and fall of the Frankist’s movement of the Shabbatean heresy. His rabbinic ministry would be embroiled, like his father’s rabbinic career, with the Shabbatean Jews.

Rabbi Jacob Emden (1696-1776)

As we have already noted above, the life of Rabbi Jacob Emden was affected to no small part with the controversies that surrounded his father, Rabbi Zvi Ashkenazi, with the Shabbatean disciple, Nechemiah Chayum. This occurred first in Sarajevo and later in Amsterdam. Trained like most rabbinic scholars under the footsteps of his father, he not only stood on the shoulders of the Torah giant that his father was, he moved beyond.

His first studies were in the city of his birth, Altona near the cosmopolitan city of Hamburg, Germany. Between the ages of thirteen, at his bar mitzvoth, and seventeen he studied in his father’s yeshiva in Amsterdam, Netherlands. These studies included philosophy, Kabbalah, grammar, the acquire knowledge of Latin and Dutch, his native German tongue and his religious Hebrew tongue.

He also like his father was the “rabbi for the rabbinate”, adhering strictly with the Torah and halachic (“Way” or the “Path” of applying Torah law to everyday living) foundations of Jewish learning and life. His life was financed not by rabbinic studies or blessing with amulets, but as a dealer in jewelry and other memorabilia which gave him many years of travel and financial independence.

Rabbi Jacob Emden’s house on Brode Strabe 155 in Altona, Germany

Except for the short tenure when he was compelled in 1728 to become the Rabbi of Emden, he tended to shun the office of Chief Rabbi. He no doubt remembered the struggle his father, Rabbi Zvi, had balancing the rabbinic duties of teaching and ministry and the forces within Judaism to accommodate the wealthy Jewish interests within the synagogue. It was during these years at the town of Emden near the North Sea that Rabbi Jacob took as his name, Jacob Emden.

It was in 1733 that Rabbi Emden moved back to the city of his birth and became the rabbi of a small private synagogue. This hamlet was controlled by two Jewish congregations, the Portuguese and the German communities. Emden’s relationship with Rabbi Ezekiel Katzenellenbogen, the head of the rabbinic court in Hamburg as their German rabbi was strained from the beginning. Rabbi Jacob considered that any other rabbi in the vicinity of his father’s former district to be an intruder. Of course this did not endear him to the resident Rabbi Katzenellenbogen when he wrote in his Megillat Sefer (pg. 121-140) the description that he was a “man of very low moral character, an ignoramus, and a poor preacher.”

On the other hand, Rabbi Moses Hagis the Portuguese Rabbi in the community of Altona was initially friendly but eventually turned against Rabbi Emden. Emden then set up his own printing press and soon triggered the wrath of the other local rabbis for printing his own siddur (prayer book) called the Ammude Shamayim. As such, Emden then obtained a royal permit from the Frederick V (1746-1766), the King of Denmark to have a printing press in Altona plus he received permission to print from the Chief Rabbi for the German communities.

Rabbi Emden, though he was recognized as one of the most eminent Talmudic scholars of his age, his rapport with his rabbinic contemporaries was always rocky. He was a prolific writer and quarreled on the printed page with all of his rabbinic colleagues. Yet in spite of this, his role in the Polish and German rabbinic community would be pivotal in the preservation of the orthodox community from the messianic heresies of the Shabbateans.

The most controversial part of Rabbi Emden’s life was his frontal attack on the adherents and on those he suspected of being secret supporters of Shabbatai Zevi. The most celebrated controversy Emden had was with Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, the Dayan (Judge) of the Rabbinic Court in Prague, today in the Czech Republic. Rabbi Eybeschutz was not a person without controversy himself. He moved in and out of European society where he openly courted the Catholic priests and other social intelligentsia, especially having a close relationship with the Catholic Cardinal Hassebauer. It was this relationship that he was given permission to print the Talmud with one proviso; all passages that were seen as contradictions to Christian theology had to be removed from the printed Talmud. Anger erupted all over Prague.

Rabbi Emden had Rabbi Eybeschutz in his critical sight. It was his contention and suspicion that some of the amulets that were sanctioned by Rabbi Eybeschutz had allusions to the support of the messianic claims of the false messiah Shabbatai Zevi. As such, when Rabbi Eybeschutz moved to Altona in 1751 to the rabbinic post that Emden’s father once held, he began a campaign in his synagogue that Eybeschutz was a Shabbatean heretic and deserved to be excommunicated. The problem was that most of the rabbis in Poland, Bohemia and Moravia plus all of the Jewish leadership in the local region of the Three Communities were supporters of Rabbi Eybeschutz. Their contention was that Rabbi Emden was soured over not receiving the rabbinic nod from the local leaders in Altona plus the conflicts and controversy that his father had in the same region. The rabbinic supporters also noted that it was Rabbi Eybeschutz that in 1725 voted with the other Prague rabbis to excommunicate the Shabbatean sect in their city. Of course others suggested that their vote was only a cover-up to protect the Shabbatean leanings of Rabbi Eybeschutz.

What is now known, the lone mission of Rabbi Emden finally prevailed. This became one of the most controversial events in Jewish history, a Shabbatean controversy between Rabbis Emden and Eybeschutz called the “Emden- Eybeschutz Shabbatean Controversy.” It also involved the famed authority in Jewish Law (halakha), Rabbi Yechezkel Landau, the Rabbinic judge (dayan) at Brody (1734) and later the Rabbi of Jampol (1745) who mediated between Jacob Emden and Jonathan Eybeschutz. This controversy also sought to involve the Vilna Gaon, one of the most esteemed Talmudic scholars of all times.

On the 20^th of Sivan, 1756, Rabbi Eybeschutz was formally excommunicated by the Committee from the Four Lands on the grounds that he was a seducer of Shabbatean heresy. He was formally called a “Bicur Satan” (first born of Satan) and all his literature was banned. Four years later, several of his students or disciples in Eybeschutz’s yeshivah were discovered to be writing supporting articles of the Shabbateans. His son, Wolf, proclaimed himself to be a Shabbatean prophet and the yeshivah (rabbinic school) was permanently closed.

Yet the costs were high. The controversy was so inflamed that in 1751 the rabbinic council condemned Rabbi Emden. The Jews in the area were forbidden to attend his synagogue under pains of excommunication. He was forbidden to use his press, which he refused as he did have the king’s charter. As such, he was persecuted and fearing for his life, he fled from Altona and sought refuge back in Amsterdam on May, 1751. This move occurred only months before his antagonist, Rabbi Eybeschutz was formally excommunicated.

The controversy spilled over into 1752 when the court of Frederick V of Denmark issued a judgment on June 3, 1752 in favor of Emden. The court censured and fined the Council of the Three Communities one hundred thalers. Rabbi Emden was restored to his synagogue yet his enemies continued to persecute him. One Friday, after the eve of the Shabbat on July 8, 1755, his house was entered by force and papers seized which were turned over to the authorities at the "Ober-Präsident," Von Kwalen. Once again, six months later and three scholars on the commission, they rested their case; there was no evidence to indict Rabbi Emden.

History brings to us greatest insight with hindsight. With the modern mantra of what we call “scientific evidence” we can also place it with “historical evidence.” The fruits of a controversy are better understood as you look back upon them without the passion of the present. What history is now beginning to reveal is that the effects of the Shabbatean heresy are still alive and well today. This Jewish heresy was a pivotal moment of time. In that age the effects of the Shabbatean heresy wove itself into the fabric of their social culture. Yet the social revolutions and sociological upheavals that erupted from the Shabbatean roots affect the religious ideology of Christianity today.

Messianic Shabbatean Heresy and American Messianic Idealism

BibleSearchers Reflections looked at the effects of the Shabbatean heresy on August 2004. What we learned was that in the city of Frankfurt, Germany there occurred an alliance formed between the Catholic Jesuit called Adam Weishaupt who was the father of the “Illuminate” and the emerging financial empire of Amschel Mayor Rothschild. When they linked with the international agents of the Shabbatean disciple, Jacob Frank, a subterranean empire was able to flow through all the lands controlled by the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths.

In the subtitled article called, “Jacob Frank and the Jewish Alliance with the Illuminati and the Rothschilds,” we learned:

BibleSearchers Reflections - “By the time of the entry of Jacob Frank to Frankfurt, Germany, the Illuminati under the leadership of Adam Weishaupt had been exposed for its sinister and politically destructive roots in European geopolitics. The Illuminati immediately went underground.

Weishaupt strategically went global and infiltrated with the Frankists agents into the British and Scottish Masonic Rite Lodges. The initiatory rites all the way to the top, the thirty-third decree, were changed. The messianic message of anti-Torah Judaism was now instilled throughout the world-wide empire of the British through their Masonic Christian lodges.

In 1791, the mantle of authority in the Frankists movement was to pass on to his daughter, Eve Frank, who was the “holy mistress”. She became the leader of the sect. In time the sect began to diminish until on the verge of bankruptcy, she died in 1816.

The Frankists had been agents of Napoleon’s French Revolution. It was Moses Dobruschka, also known as Franz Thomas von Schoenfeld, who moved to Vienna in 1782. There he came under the influence of Jacob Frank and became a founder of the Asiatic Brotherhood, whose members were predominately Jewish. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 6, cols. 143-4)

Under the assumed name of Junius Frey, Moses Dobruschka (aka. Franz Thomas von Schoenfeld) became a member of the Jacobines, and took the mystical teaching of Shabbatai Zevi to the top of the British and Scottish Freemasonry lodges. The Scottish rite, known as the Continental Masonry, origins were in European Masonry practiced in the mid 17^th century. The constitutions of the Scottish Rite were formulated in 1761, 1762 and 1786. The influence of these Masonic rites went global along the trails of British Imperialism. They are practiced today in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.” (Scottish Rite Masons)

Frederick II the Great of Prussia (1712-1786) during the Seven-Years War – Painting by Richard Knötel

It is of interest that historians are now beginning to acknowledge that the Grand Constitution for the Scottish Masonry was actually a forged document. In 1926, Cd. W. Leadbeater wrote in “Glimpses of Masonic History” the following:

C. W. Leadbeater – “It was during this period of obscuration that the curious myth of Frederick the Great arose among the Jews, probably in order to enhance the commercial value of the degrees; and it was apparently really believed that the King of Prussia was the Supreme Head of the Rite, for in the Minutes of the Grand Lodge of Perfection in Albany (New York), founded in 1767, the Lodge is required, on September 3rd, 1770, to prepare its report for transmission to Berlin. We find also in 1785, one year before the king’s death, a letter addressed to Frederick by a certain Solomon Bush, Deputy Grand Inspector of North America, asking for recognition of a Lodge which he had consecrated.* (*Note Historique sur le Rite Ecoss . : Anc . : et Acc . : Par le Souv .: Gr .: (Count Goblet d’Alviella) p. 7.) It was afterwards alleged that Frederick the Great, on his death-bed, ratified the Grand Constitutions of 1786 containing the laws that still bind the Scottish Rite, and that he constituted the 33° in person, delegating his powers as a Sovereign of Masonry to nine Brn. in each country. The original Grand Constitutions were in French, but in 1834 a Latin version of them alleged to have been signed by Frederick himself was accepted as genuine by the Supreme Council of France; but this is now on all sides admitted to be a forgery…

The truth is that Frederick took no active part in the Rite of Perfection, that he neither ratified the Constitutions nor created the 33°; and indeed to-day the majority even of the Supreme Councils are prepared to waive the claim that they derive their authority from Frederick the Great, whose interest in Masonry (at any rate in later years) was but of the slightest. The grand constitutions nevertheless remain the law of the Rite in all Supreme Councils deriving lawfully from Charleston, and Albert Pike believed them to be genuine. As it is certain that Frederick had nothing to do with the Rite, I fear we must regretfully conclude that both the fourth and the fifth documents in de Grasse-Tilly’s Golden Book - the alleged Constitutions of 1762 and the Grand Constitutions of 1786 - were forgeries. It would seem that they were sent over from Europe, perhaps in response to a demand from the Jewish interest; and the fact that Dr. Dalcho’s father was an officer in the Prussian army who had served with great distinction under Frederick the Great may well have disposed the Doctor the more readily to accept these remarkable documents.”

George Washington (1732-1799) in an Equestrian Pose by Rembrandt Peale much like his contemporary, Frederick II the Great of Prussia

This was the same Frederick the Great who was a great admirer of George Washington, the military genius of the American Revolution and the first President of the United States of America. Frederick the Great was one of the first sovereigns to conclude a commercial treaty with George Washington between the nations of Prussia and America.

President George Washington on his white Mount

Few consider the serious implications of the Shabbatean movement upon the formation of the United States of America. It affected America’s nationalism now perceived as a “Nation under God” and the history of America’s founding fathers who were all Scottish Masons. This religio-political experiment to colonize the new lands in America for the God of Christianity had also a more subterranean meaning. It carried with it the messianic idealism of a new utopia.

This religious freedom gave the nourishment for; the Protestant movements in America, the Great Awakening and the Advent Movement in the 1840s and the rise of Mormonism in the 1840s that usurped the “Golden Tablets” and an ancient prophecy that was to have been given to the Hopi, Navaho and Aztec Indians believed by many to be the tribe of Manasseh During this era, the white colonists eradicated the Native America nations living on their ancient Land of Mogog. Out of the Great Awakening we saw the rise of Messianic Protestantism and the nationalistic idealism that America is the last imperial savior to the world. All of these prophetic streams have their roots in the Shabbatean movement.

This same Shabbatean heresy became also the haven for the subterranean foundation of Jesuit Catholicism through the Illuminate as it became the controlling “force” in both the American and European intelligence services and the military consortiums that they serve. It became the nuclei of Yale’s “Skull and Bones Society” and its giant imprint in the CIA and the global financial empire of America. Messianic Shabbateanism is seen today in the Jewish Neo-Con’s (Jewish New-Conservatives) that control America’s international relations, the State Department and the Presidency of the United States. With the “War on Terror”, America’s drive to bring democracy with freedom and prosperity is now becoming the dynamic engine that will transform this world, rapidly coming under the mantle of a universal government.

BibleSearchers Reflections looked at the global forces of change in August 2004 in the subtitled article, “The Geo-Political and Religious Influence of the Shabbateans and the Frankists.”

BibleSearchers Reflections – “It was Rabbi Antelman in his seminal study (“To Eliminate the Opiate, Volume 1”) who showed that from the loins of the Illuminati Shabbataists, the Reign of Terror, the French Rebellion and the American Masonic Rebellion against Britain sprouted. Yes, all the founders of the young republic of American were members of the Scottish Masonic lodges.

From the loins of the Illuminati and the Shabbateans, the Jews; Karl Marx and Frederick Engel established the roots of communism. From the loins of the Rothschild Frankists Shabbateans, John Jowe Astor and Jacob Schiff went to America, enlisted the support of the robber barons of America; Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, and established the roots of globalism in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The goal of the CFR according to Chamish is “to overthrow the American Constitution and switch the nation’s diplomacy to Illuminates.

The thread of political and moral corruption continued this time in the heart of German Jews in the 1830s. The Jewish Enlightenment was initiated by German Jewish author Moses Mendelssohn, ancestor of the German composer, Felix Mendelssohn.

Jewish “Socrates of Berlin,” Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1986)

The movements of the Reform and Conservative Judaism were to bring ecumenical anti-Torah ideas of Christian Frankists into orthodox Judaism. The goal was to dilute the morality of Torah-observant Jews. The Jews who did not comply were quietly removed and disappeared.

Yet also from the loins of the messianic movement in Judaism in the 1640-1690s became the root of similar movements in the Christian world. The father of Pietism, Philipp Jakob Spener, no doubt of Jewish blood was called to be the senior minister at Frankfurt am Main in 1666, the same year that Shabbatai Zevi announced to be the year of the Moschiach. Spener’s calls for reform and a return to spiritual piety soon earned him the title of ‘spiritual counselor of all Germany’. In 1667 he instituted the Collegia pietatis, called the “pious assembly” to study the application of spiritual truths to everyday life. Here in the same city that the Illuminati, the Frankists and the Rothschilds were formulating their ideals of global dominance, the pietist (holiness) movement also began as a movement of spiritual pietism in the midst of Christian institutionalism. (Pietism)

Dr. Philipp Jakob Spener, the “Father of Piety”

The year that Philipp Jakob Spener left Frankfurt for Dresden in 1686, Jacob Frank moved to the Frankfurt suburb of Offenbach. There in Dresden, Spener met with his successor in the Pietist movement, August Hermann Francke. Together they founded University of Halle where Pietism was put into action as Protestantism’s most active evangelistic center in Europe.

The influences of the pietists were early felt in the Moravian community of German Lutheranism. Spener’s son, Count Nikolas von Zinzendorf became the head of the renewed Moravian Church and the revival of the Bohemian Unity of the Brethren. It was on a trip from Georgia with a company of Bohemian Moravians on a voyage in which his ship was nearing capsizing at sea, John Wesley (1703 – 1791), the 15^th child of a non-conformist minister observed the faith and piety of the Moravians. With his conversion to the spiritual application of the kingdom of God on this earth, Wesley opened the greatest era of revivalism in England, the Wesleyan Movement that became the future Methodist Church.

In the 1600s, the New England Puritan Cotton Mather (1663-1728), a correspondent of August Franke, sought to bring spiritual piety to the worship of New Englanders before the Revolution. After Mather’s death, the first of two American Great Awakenings began in the 1730’s to the 1740’s. The ministry of Baal Shem Tov (1700-1760) brought Hasidic revivalism into Judaism and moved outside of orthodox ritual to a pietistic communion with God.

On the heels of the French and the American Revolution, the piety movements began to lay their historical roots in literal scriptural interpretation. Out of the first American Great Awakening, Methodist revivalism, the Piety and Moravian Movement of the 18^th century, the foundation was laid for the beginning of the era of anticipation of the literal and physical return of the Maschiach (Messiah). The Jews were looking for the return of the Maschiach ben David and the return to the Land as foretold by their ancient prophets. The Protestants in the Great Awakening were looking for the return of the Jewish messiah, Yahshua ben Yosef ben David (Jesus son of Joseph son of David) who claimed the He was the son of His Father, the Eternal One of Israel.”

It was the Jewish world that felt the greatest threat to their religio-social culture. The Polish Shabbateans under the leadership of Jacob Frank twisted and distorted the various formulas of Kabbalah, revoked the dictates of the 613 commandments of the Torah given by God on Sinai and produced a contorted moral culture where sexual immorality was good.

When excommunicated the Shabbateans protested to the Catholic authorities, provoked the burning of the Talmudic libraries in Poland and resurrected the ancient blood libel against the Jews. The Jewish people no longer needed any external enemies, their worse enemies were their own blood brothers.

Only eighty years later, the world would be in a geo-political revolution. The French and the American Revolutions were now over. The Great American Awakening on the Eastern Seaboard of America left its messianic impact upon modern Protestant religions.

Some Protest-ants like the Seventh-day Adventists kept the fervor for the “advent” of the Messiah alive. They went further in the Protest-ant movement turning away from apostate Roman Christianity and towards Judaism by accepting the Jewish Seventh-day Sabbath day of worship. Adventists also accepted the Mosaic restrictions of “clean meats” eventual moving beyond not towards kosher meats but towards the vegetarianism of Eden and later practiced by some of the Essenes and the ancient Hasidims. The beginnings and the yearnings for a new messianic revival awakened in the 1840s when after the Damascus Affair of 1840, the crescendo of the call went out to Jewry around the world that the time had come to return to the land of their forefathers, the day of the Maschiach of Yisra’el had come.

The stubborn resilience and persistence of Rabbi Jacob Emden had a lasting effect upon Orthodox Judaism. Orthodoxy was preserved and the covenant of the Jews to protect the Oracles of the God of Israel was also preserved. Emden was well known to never deviate from any Jewish tradition. He had the critical skills of the memory the written Torah with the breadth of knowing and comprehending the oral Torah as preserved in the Talmud. There were no peers his equal. In the great sea of change that was sweeping Europe and America, this fact will become critical in our study in what he learned from the messianic movement of Shabbatai Zevi. For Emden would later apply these same critical skills to his study of the messianic movement of Jesus the Nazarene in first century Judaism.

And now begins our study of Rabbi Jacob Emden and his critical study of Jesus the Nazarene and Yahshua’s conflicts with the “Scribes and the Pharisees.”

Index for Jesus the Pharisee from the School of Hillel

Go to Part One - “Jesus the Pharisee from the School of (Beit) Hillel” in the Eyes of Talmudic Scholar Rabbi Jacob Emden”

Go to Part Two - “Rabbi Harvey Falk studies a Talmudic scholar’s opinion on “Jesus the Nazarene the defender of Beit Hillel (School of Hillel)”

Go to Part Three - “The Essenes, the Hasidim and the Righteous Gentile of the Nations”

Go to Part Four - “Jesus the Nazarene and the Pharisees of Beit Shammai”

Links

Chronology of Jewish Life in Altona, Hamburg and Wandsbek* by the Hamburg Jewish Union

Rabbi Zevi Ashkenazi called Chacham Zvi (1658-1718) by the Chabad Organization

Obscure Polish Book Sheds Light on Elusive Rothschild Financial Link to the Militant Messiah, Jacob Frank

The Council of the Four Lands by Gates to Jewish Heritage

Judah haChassid the Jerusalem Émigré by Gates to Jewish Heritage

Selected Saying from the Book of the Words of the Lord Jacob Frank

Jacob Frank and the Frankist Hebrew Zoharist Letters by Dohmeh West

Sabbatai Zevi by Dohmeh West

A Critical Re-assessment of Sabbatai Zevi by Dohmeh West

From Jesus to Christ, the first Christians by WGBS Educational Foundation

The Fortress of Masada by WGBS Educational Foundation

The War Scroll by WGBS Educational Foundation

Message from BibleSearchers

BibleSearchers scans the world for information that has relevance on the time of the end. It is our prayer that this will allow the believers in the Almighty One of Israel to “watch and be ready”. Our readiness has nothing to do trying to halt the progression of evil on our planet earth. In our readiness, we seek to be prepared for the coming of the Messiah of Israel so that goodness and evil will be manifested in its fullest. Our preparation is a pathway of spiritual readiness for a world of peace. Our defender is the Lord of hosts. The time of the end suggests that the Eternal One of Israel’s intent is to close out this chapter of earth’s history so that the perpetrators of evil, those that seek power, greed and control, will be eliminated from this planet earth. The wars of the heavens are being played out on this planet earth and humans will live through it to testify of the might, power, justice and the love of the God of Israel. In a world of corruption and disinformation, we cannot always know what the historical truth is and who is promoting evil or mis-information. We cannot guarantee our sources but we will always seek to portray trends that can be validated in the Torah and the testimony of the prophets of the Old and the New Testament.

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