Lies the Rabbis Told and Tell Us

 

The following was written on another list in response to an inquiry, or rather a criticism, placed to me.

 

I've recopied it here with a few additions.

 

He thought the Tanya was written by the Baal Shem Tov. This is my answer.

 

The Tanya was written in 1797 by Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of CHaBa"D, not the Baal Shem Tov. To the best of our knowledge, there are no extant writings by the Baal Shem Tov. 

 

I see no reason to criticize the Baal Shem Tov. I believe he was an honest man of great integrity and genuine love for the Jewish People. He wanted the simple people to have access to HaShem, as in those days Judaism had gotten out of balance by learning to excess and putting too much emphasis on book learning. I also know that cagey individuals understood that they could turn a lot of Chassidim into dupes by manipulating the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov. And they did. One of those sophisticated manipulators was the author of the Tanya. There used to be a joke told: What is the religion closest to Judaism? The answer: CHaBa"D. I say it is the religion closest to Christianity, missionizing zeal to take over the world and all. Politicians the world over snuggle up to CHaBa"D. That should tell you something.

 

There is nothing, but *nothing* in Torah about beinoniim. There are no teachings in Torah that discourage Jews from striving to be Tzaddikim. Quite the opposite. Moshe Rebbenu wanted every Jew to be a Prophet. Telling people that they can never attain a level beyond beinoni is hobbling and crippling to a Soul. It is a sin and it is a lie to say such things.

 

What the pseudo-Breslov movement (as distinct from the old families of Breslov) have done to the poor young Jewish Souls who come to their door looking for the way to HaShem is a crying shame. They are hustled into a cult. Many of them have been profoundly traumatized in their childhood. That is manipulated callously. There are interests paying a lot of money to keep so many Jews away from Judaism. That Jewish children in Israel go undernourished because their fathers are told that it is a mitzvah (!) to have a Woodstock-like festival in a graveyard in the Ukraine (among the most anti-Semitic places in the world) is a sin. And the trance music they play is still trance music, which was designed to do just that - put people into trances, even if they put Hebrew words to it. There is also a lot of drug use and drinking among the pseudo-Breslovers.

 

There is a great deal of confusion about the nature of Prophecy in Judaism. That confusion was planted and cultivated.

 

We were all systematically made to think that everyone who quotes the Prophets and tries to walk in their ways and criticizes the distortions in Judaism is setting themselves up as a prophet. That is a lie we were told over and over again, brainwashed to believe, so that if and when anyone did manage to see the distortions, deceptions, manipulations and efforts to keep Jews away from true Torah and told what they understand, that person would be considered someone setting themselves up as a prophet and treated like a prophet of lies.

 

The RaMBa"M is responsible for a great deal of distortion and trickery concerning the nature of Prophets and angels - all to the purpose of controlling the Jews politically.

 

Our Tradition is w-a-y too precious to be allowed to be manipulated this way and any Jew who really loves HaShem and other Jews is obligated to return to the right path.

 

And be very, very careful about what you accept from Talmud. There is a great deal of wheat in it. There is also a great deal of chaff in it. Know how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Let your heart guide you. And, since you might be confused by these words too, this is not a Christian, but a Jewish, allegory.

 

Another one of the tricks of keeping us away from Judaism is having our Teachings arrogated by other religions and then when someone quotes true Torah the brainwashed think they are quoting from other religions, which they interpret as a sign that the person is lying.

 

Did you really think that after the geirushim from Spain and Portugal around the turn of the 16th C. that the Catholic Church allowed the Jews to live peacefully in the Holy Land? What would Jews in the Holy Land left in peace do? They would return to Torah is what they'd do! The Church wouldn't have any of that. So, they sent a spy to the Holy Land, a spy who would as though teach Kabbalah, but who was in fact teaching avodah zara. That man was Isaac Luria. It is very strange, very strange indeed, that Rabbi Moshe Cordevero, a true Mekkubal and a just man, died just one year after he arrived in Tzfat. Then Luria took over and taught what Rabbi Cordevero would know was lies - if he was alive to tell. Luria taught invocation and conjuration, which are repeatedly and explicitly forbidden in Torah, to a closed circle of "students". Knowing that most Jews would understand that what he was doing was wrong, he taught a more benign form of mysticism in public. Today we are taught that he was teaching the "deep secrets" to a chosen inner circle of great Rabbis. In fact, he was teaching witchcraft to those he knew were interested in the dark arts.  Shortly afterward, Luria died at a very young age and Caro and Vital took over. The result was the Shulchan Arukh with teachings about evil spirits under the bed, and Dead Sea Salt in the food that might make one go blind and how to cut one's fingernails. For his part, Vital told people he could fly. The Ga'on Hai said there is no such thing in Judaism, that it is nonsense. But no one listened.

 

The word Luciferian always looked strange to me. Then one day I saw it. It is Lurianic + fe, as in auto de fe. I doubt that it is a coincidence.

 

Rabbi Avraham Abualafia, who learned the purest form of Kabbalah that was available at the time and taught it to a few students, also died under mysterious circumstances. One day he just "disappeared". For eight hundred years his writings were kept scattered in libraries and archives in Europe, including in the Vatican. No one was allowed access to those writings until recently. Even then, the originals are still held on to by the Christians. Evidently, the Catholic Church is convinced that their Jesuit spy, Luria, did such a good job that even the writings of Abualafia won't make the Jews understand that something is radically wrong with Lurianic Kabbalah and will even be seen in the "light" of Lurianism. Unfortunately, they are right in the vast majority of cases.

 

The lies and distortions in Judaism run deep – very, very deep and some are very subtle. We have been worked on systematically over a period of millenia by manipulators. The Prophets were aware of that and they possessed the clarity to see it for what it was and tell the truth. Their words are as true today as they were then. Listen to what they have to say. Learn Navi instead of Moreh Nevukhim, Tanya, Likutei Moharan, Zohar and the "Shulchan Arukh" of Caro or even the Talmud.

 

Pray, pray and pray some more to HaShem to be shown the right way, the true way, the Torah way.

 

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Same'ach.

 

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel

[email protected]