Illuminati Conspiracy Archive

Reactions To The New Book

- by Barry Chamish ©, Oct. 26th, 2004

Today's Israeli Atmosphere

Sabbatai Sevi On Oct. 26, 04, The Knesset will decide the fate of Gaza...it thinks. After withdrawal was voted down twice by his own party, Sharon will keep on looking for a way to make his plan, at least, carry the remotest vestiges of democratic legitimacy. The difference in the vote will be the 14 Arab seats, which means that the country's enemies will determine Gaza's fate.

Sharon is turning down the idea of a national mandate on the withdrawal and I'm glad. This saves us watching the oppression of the Labor Zionist media, as it bombards the public with lurid anti-settler images. And it saves us the Labor Zionists springing violent sting operations aimed at smearing the religious, Right or anyone who would not support the withdrawal. One possible sting would be a repeat of the Rabin murder, only this time the patsy would aim at Sharon.

The change in atmosphere from a facade of liberalism to genuine fascism is nearly complete. One example: I have a marvelous marketing tool. I sell my books at appropriate political demonstrations. It works like a charm every time and the media and Shabak mostly ignore me. This year Channel One news broadcast some of the items from my table, stopping just short of calling the police to arrest this inciter. Then, for the full length of the rally, I had a Shabak agent dressed as a "settler" sit beside me, disrupting my sales until I told him to "shut your mouth."

And the "service" photographed me all evening. Next rally, I'm taking a camera to photograph the agents. Then I'll publicize the shots to help identify the spies in our midsts.


It had been three years since Save Israel!, my last book. I had forgotten the immediate reaction that comes with a new publication. It has only been two weeks since my new book, Shabtai Tzvi, Labor Zionism And The Holocaust, has been in the hands of people, and look at the reader reaction already!

It was a late night call from a woman who finished the book that day. "How did you miss the murder of Samir Nakash?" she demanded to know.

My reaction was yours. "Who?" I asked.

“Nakash exposed the biggest secret of Iraqi Jewry in a film called Forget Baghdad. He claimed that in the late 1940s, Labor Zionists had bribed the Iraqi President to ignite pogroms and force the Jews to flee to Israel. He explained that, at the time, Zionism was marginal amongst Iraqi Jews. In fact, communism was the strongest political force. So almost no one was interested in making aliyah to Israel. That would change with a few trumped up charges against Jews, a few pogroms and a few public hangings. The payoff was great; the Iraqi leadership confiscated all Jewish properties and assets and earned billions of dollars in today's terms.”

“Three months after the film was released, Nakash was dead. And I don't believe it was natural death. Your book finally exposed some of the secret wars being fought against Sephardic communities, but you barely scraped the service.”

“You think taking away the land from Gush Katif is something new? Look what the Labor Zionists did to my people, the Bucharim. We came from Buchara in the 1880s, not out of Zionism, it didn't exist then, but out of pure love of Israel. We acquired land because we were there before the Zionists and in the 1920s, they stole it from us. The British raised municipal taxes so high, that the Bucharim were forced to sell their land. The Labor Zionists didn't want Orthodox Jews owning anything. The land they stole is half the real estate of downtown Jerusalem today, and the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. We should be the aristocrats of Israel, but we were impoverished by the British and the Jewish Agency.”

We discussed an issue many readers of the new book find unsettling. What was the role of Rabbi Avraham Kook in changing the religious status quo of Jerusalem? Kook was tied to Lord Balfour and Chaim Weizmann. During World War 1, he was in London holding meetings with them. After the war, the British Mandate "approved" Ha Rav Kook as the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. Under his watch, the lootings took place. But did he sanction them?

One reader decided to examine the issue and determine if Rabbi Kook was Sabbataian. The following passage is a bit lengthy but it's important. Can you determine HaRav Kook's attitude to Shabtai Tzvi from it?


Rav Kook on Sabbatianism

Post Sabbatian Sabbatianism - (Spring Valley, NY: Orot, 1999) softcover 224 pp ISBN 0-9674512-1-3 19.95 + $5.00 S&H within USA. Available from: Orot, Inc. PO Box 155 Spring Valley, NY 10977 make checks payable to "Orot Inc".

Between the two world wars, there roamed the streets of Jerusalem a man who made a nuisance of himself, pestering the populace that he was the Messiah.

Finally the “Messiah” was brought to the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. Rav Kook asked to meet with the deranged man alone. After a few moments with Rav Kook, the “Messiah” never again boasted his claim.

Sometime later Rav Kook revealed what produced such a wondrous effect. “I told him: ‘The truth is, there is a spark of Messiah in every Jew. You obviously have received an especially large endowment. But the quality of the spark is such that it works only as long as one does not speak of it to others.’”

Unlike many Orthodox thinkers, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook did not shy away from the subject of Sabbatianism. His published works reveal a more than fleeting interest in the entire Sabbatian phenomenon, from the initial impetus of Messianic activity surrounding the person of Shabbetai Zevi, to the Hayyon and Emden-Eybeschütz controversies, to that Polish offshoot of Sabbatianism, Frankism. This interest extends to both the external, historical, as well as internal, philosophical and psychological aspects. Rav Kook is even willing to rebut the author of ‘Or la-Yesharim ‘s comparison of Herzlian political Zionism to Sabbatianism.

In one of his earliest published essays, Derekh ha-Tehiyah, which translates into English as, “The Way of Renascence,” Rav Kook casts all human history, and specifically Jewish history, as a tug of war between the forces of learning and intellect on the one hand and the currents of psyche and charisma on the other. In general, Rav Kook views the various pseudomessianic movements that plagued the Jewish People in exile, and Shabbetai Zevi and Jacob Frank in particular, as eruptions of the soulful side of the collective Jewish personality. He refers to Zevi and Frank en passant as he attempts to put Hasidism in perspective:

Hasidism too came out of the demand of the psychic current that lay dormant. After the unsuccessful attempt of the latest false Messiah, Shabbetai Zevi, who lowered the psychic current to the level of insanity and wicked intoxication, and that culminated in all of its apostasy in the semi-official false Messiah Frank and his entourage—after all these, there was great apprehension lest the nation totally revile any vestige remaining to it of the hidden power of the living psychic currents, and revert to repetition of the letters and observance of the deeds, the commandments and the customs with a bent back and broken heart. (If that were the case) eventually the nation would not be able to survive for lack of freshness and upliftment of the soul.

This thing was felt by the great personality of the fathers of Hasidism, in which the godly psychic current was alive. The approach to Sabbatianism is ambivalent. It may best be summed up by the advice of the Talmud regarding renegade Jews: “Push away with the left hand and bring close with the right.” Condemnatory of the excesses of Sabbatianism, the mental instability of its founder, and the self-imposed apostasy (nokhriyut ) of his spiritual grandson Frank, Rav Kook at once acknowledges the kernel of redeeming value in all this lunacy—a hankering for vital, existential, as opposed to rote, religion.

This “ambidexterity” will be Rav Kook’s approach to various chapters in Jewish history, whether it be the Christianity of Jesus of Nazareth, the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza7, or the Zionism of Theodore Herzl. Those who have criticized Chief Rabbi Kook for his support of and involvement in the Zionist movement, have too often failed to notice that the posture vis-`a-vis Zionism is but the most recent application of Rav Kook’s historical method.

Convinced of the essential godliness of the Jewish People, he is forever seeking to glean meaning from the aberrant and absurd. This posture of attempting to uncover hidden good in the ostensibly evil, is itself reminiscent of Sabbatian theology, thus exposing Rav Kook to unfair attack, when in truth, this paradoxical outlook precedes Sabbatianism, having its source in Zoharic and Lurianic Kabbalah.

Rabbi Kook is definitely no Sabbatian9. He points out to his correspondent Samuel Alexandrov the folly of considering the present decrepit world order the future of which it is said, “The commandments will be null in the future10,” citing as an example of this fool’s paradise the experiments of the Sabbatians “sunk into the depth of evil.”

He is not loath to point out to Rabbi Yahia Kafah of San’a that the book he quotes from,’Oz le-Elohim by Nehemiah Hiyya Hayyon, is an heretical work by a Sabbatian.

It is also not beyond Rav Kook to display empathy and understanding for Rabbi Jacob Emden’s disparagements of certain passages in Zohar, motivated as Emden was by the desire to undercut the Sabbatians, who to a large degree based themselves on Zohar.

And while on the subject of Emden’s untiring campaign against crypto-Sabbatians, let us mention that Rav Kook, when pressed by his personal secretary Simon Glitzenstein, revealed what he knew (or thought he knew) of R. Jonathan Eybeschütz’s youthful ensnarement by the Sabbatian heresiarch Löbele Prossnitz.

Abutting all this, Rav Kook knows the mysterious light, the pathetic, yet unredeemed sparks that beckon to us from fallen Messiahs.

. . . mysteries of Torah that as a result of their influence on those who delved into them without the proper preparation, have come to be rejected and abused. From this very light of life, from which improper influences produce world catastrophe and peril—precisely from it, will sprout eternal salvation.

Alter B.Z. Metzger, English translator of Orot ha-Teshuvah, correctly caught the veiled reference to Shabbetai Zevi and Frank, who in distorting the teachings of the Kabbalah, caused them to be reviled by a good portion of Jewry. But Rav Kook reassures us that these teachings need not produce the excesses of which Zevi, Frank and their followers were guilty. The potential for turning the elixir of life into poison, exists on every level of Torah understanding. All depends on the spiritual preparation (or lack thereof) of those involved in its study.

Perhaps the most startling of all Rav Kook’s statements concerning the would-be Messiahs, is the one occurring in the ill-fated ‘Arpilei Tohar 18 (and later in the more widely circulated Orot 19):

. . . the fetuses who stood to be Messiahs but fell, were trapped and broken. Their sparks were scattered and seek a living, enduring correction (tikkun) in the foundation of David, King of Israel, “the breath of our nostrils, the anointed (meshiah) of God.”

While it is not at all clear that Rav Kook includes in his list of Messiahs-in-potentia the likes of Shabbetai Zevi, perhaps reserving this distinction for a Bar Kochba revered by Rabbi Akiba, this does not dull the daring of the thought. That the child born after so many miscarriages (bar niflei) will encompass in his soul the souls of his stillborn brothers, is truly remarkable. There is a poetic justice here. None of the unsuccessful Messiahs’ attempts at redemption were in vein; all contribute in some sense to the final Redemption.

Finally, for Rav Kook as for—mutatis mutandis—Sabbatians, “the light of Moses” and “the light of Messiah” are antithetical, being united only at the root of their souls in the “supernal splendor of Adam” (zihara ‘ila’ah de-adam ha-rishon). Though Messiah himself is not portrayed by Rav Kook as abrogating Mosaic law, the entire phenomenon of Messianism is painted in distinctly antinomian tones. Whereas Torah requires an attitude of shamefacedness and humility, Messiah thrives paradoxically on shamelessness, chutzpah. And Rav Kook is quite explicit as to what the chutzpah consists of: Sexuality, fleshliness, and forsaking Torah. As alarming as all this is, it is well within kabbalistic tradition that again, predates Shabbetai Zevi. One may find in MaHaRaL of Prague and SheLaH, and needless to say, in Zohar, similar expressions of the extralegal origins of Messiah, conceived from the less than immaculate unions of Lot and his daughters, Jacob and Tamar, Boaz and Ruth the Moabitess, David and Bathsheba, and Solomon and Na’amah the Amonitess. Yet there is a clarity and profundity of thought in Rav Kook’s pitting the two traditions, Mosaic and Messianic, against one another. What puts Rav Kook decisively beyond the reaches of Sabbatian thought, is his formulation of a future in which, “once again the ‘supernal splendor of Adam’ will shine through the gathering of the two luminaries that are one, Moses and Messiah.” Unlike the Sabbatian who revels in the antinomianism of Messianism, Rav Kook’s ideal is the reunification of two traditions that have grown apart, the legal tradition of Moses and the extralegal tradition of Messiah.

Whatever his view on Shabtai Tzvi, HaRav Kook devoted much thought to the man and the issue. He knew a great deal more about the roots of Labor Zionism than was previously understood. The passage reveals a man too torn between the good of Judaism and the evil of Sabbataianism, and too willing to be understanding of the latter.

Onto another controversial religious issue. A few years back I spoke at the famous 770 headquarters of the Chabad movement in Brooklyn. There were 700 people to hear me and a good ten, maybe twenty of them were provocateurs trying to violently stop the lecture. First they spread rumors throughout the crowd, then unplugged the video projector. In the end, the lecture succeeded because too many fine people wanted to hear me. But I told them, "You had better stay on guard. Your Chabad movement is really infiltrated." Most seemed to know it and many took me aside and told me of suspicious events that took place, even the intended murder of one of their Rav's bodyguards.

I mention this because, the new book inspired still another powerful observation from the late night caller:

“Look how they got to Chabad in Sydney. I was only there three months but it was eerie. I had dinner with a prominent religious family there and on the wall was a picture of a notorious Sabbataian, Yonathan Iveshitz. I'd never seen that in any Jewish home, anywhere. That week, Hanan Ashrawi came to Sydney to be awarded a peace prize. Same week, the principle backer of Chabad's two schools, the Gutnik family, had a sibling battle over money, bills for the Chabad schools were frozen and the police came and shut them down. The community wanted to save at least the girl's school and the condition was that it accept a Reform woman principal. Chabad gave in but the arrangement didn't work, how could it, and the girl's school was shut down too. It looks like Chabad has lots of enemies from within in Sydney.”

On October 1, I gave a speech at a conference in Italy. A fellow lecturer was the distinguished German writer Michael Hesemann. We had a lively dinner discussion and I gave him my new book and the audio CD of the same name. Here was his reaction to the CD:

Dear Barry,

It was a pleasure to see you again in Italy!

Thanks for your CD and book. I could not resist to listen to your lecture on my way back over the Alps, when, after crossing the Swiss border, the radio programme went bad. Your lecture is highly interesting and I think that I might have found a highly interesting correlation.

As I told you, I just published a book called "Hitler's Religion", outlining the occult background of the murderous Nazi ideology. Like Shabtaism, Hitlerism is purely satanic: It denied compassion, love, life and promoted cruelty, hate and murder. It was a religion of death - the sheer evil.

Well, where did it come from? Who discovered Hitler? Who made him the German evil messiah? One man: Rudolf von Sebottendorff, founder of the "Thule Society" which had a political branch, the German Workers Party (DAP), which was later renamed in "National Socialist German Workers (or Labour) Party". It was already in existence when they found Hitler, recruited him because of his rhetoric skills and fanaticism.

Sebottendorff, a born German, went to Turkey as a young man and indeed became a Turkish citizen. He got interested in occultism and was initiated by an old Jew of the Termudi family in Bursa/Turkey. This old Jew knew the Kabbala, collected alchemistic and Rosicrucian writings. When he died, he bequeathed his library to Sebottendorff. Sebottendorff joined the Turkish Freemasonry. His lodge supported the revolution of the "Young Turks" under Kemal Atartuk.

When he returned to Germany, he was an antisemite and co-founder of the "Teutonic Order" ("Germanenorden"), of which the Thule Society was a branch. So in this man we have a link between Turkey, Turkish Jews, Young Turks, German Antisemites and the Nazis. You were right: It all begun in Turkey. May I assume that Sebottendorff's old teacher, Mr. Termudi, was a Sabbataian?

Give me your opinion!

Greetings from Germany,
Shalom, Mike


Michael Hesemann's response inspired me. My two hour CD, also called Shabtai Tzvi, Labor Zionism And The Holocaust, is the natural companion for the book of the same name. Let me try an experiment until the next article. I'll offer both in one package for $30, or 80 shekels to anyone who writes me at chamish@netvision.net.il.

And now the announcement my Israeli readers have all been waiting for: This year's conference, called REINVESTIGATING THE RABIN MURDER will be held at Bet Agron, on Agron St. in Jerusalem on Wed. Nov. 3. The English program will be from 4-6 with presentations by me and Yaacov Verker. Please arrive at 3:30 so we can start on time.

The Hebrew program will include half hour speeches by Adir Zik, Dr. David Chayen and Prof. Hillel Weiss, all moderated by Prof. Aryeh Zaritsky. New will be a presentation by Prof. Uri Milstein on Rabin's character and how it led to his downfall.

At precisely 8:00 I will give my 90 minute lecture in Hebrew. At 9:30, a distinguished panel of objective and Left wing jurists will discuss if they now believe there was a murder conspiracy from within his own party which killed Yitzhak Rabin.

Agreeing to sit on this jury so far are: Yoni Ariel, Editor, Ma'ariv International, Dr. Ephraim Rausch, a physician and expert on hypnosis and mind control, and Prof. Michael Harseger, the historian who first proposed the conspiracy, but speculated that the murderers were from the Right. We'll see if we can't get him to admit they was not.

FINALLY: This year, NO ADMISSION CHARGE. You can show up without booking, but space is limited to 100 people per session. To assure a place, write rb@rb.org.il or call Yaacov Verker at 050 5205591.


Barry Chamish is most recently the author of "Save Israel!", and also "Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin", "Israel Betrayed" and "The Last Days Of Israel." His website is www.barrychamish.com.