Still Running Off at the Keyboard

"HEBREW CHRISTIAN AND CRYPTO JEWISH CONNECTIONS"

You will find an essay with that title here This is the weblog of Aharon Yosef who appears to go by the name Athol Bloomer as well if the first comment in the comments block is any indication. Ahron Yosef (hereinafter referred to as "AY") styles his weblog "A Catholic Jew Pontificates" and cites Father Elias Friedman, founder of the Association of Hebrew Catholics.

This is quite a Pontification. One blog is not going to cover it, but it's a beginning. From the website:

This blog is to vent my opinions on life, the universe and everything. Which is 42 which in gematria is "My Heart". The Divine Heart is the centre of
everything.

Hmmm.

The heart is the seat of the evil inclination; from it stems desire and gravitation to sin. (Steinsaltz, OPENING THE TANYA, p. 55)

First the Pontification speaks of the "Apostasy of the Gentiles". No argument there. We are, indeed, in the midst of apostasy. It speaks of the need to pay attention to the "signs of the times":

Another of the 'Signs of the Times' was to be the conversion or 'Ingrafting" of the Jews. The 18th and 19th centuries saw thousands of Jews becoming Christians and the Frankist Jews also entered the Church as a group under their leader Jacob Leibowitz Frank.

Let's stop right there since he is speaking of the Frankists. They were followers of the Jewish heretic Sabbatai Zevi. Gershom Scholem, a recognized authority on Jewish mysticism, speaks of them. In the chapter titled "Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy" he writes:

We must all descend into the realm of evil in order to vanquish it from within. In varying theoretical guises the apostles of nihilism preached the doctrine of the existence of spheres in which the process of Tikkun can no longer be advanced by pious acts; Evil must be fought with evil. We are thus gradually led to a position which, as the history of religion shows, occurs with a kind of tragic necessity in every great crisis of the religious mind. I am referring to the fatal, yet at the same time deeply fascinating doctrine of the holiness of sin, that doctrine which in a remarkable way reflects a combination of two widely different elements: the world of moral decadence and another, more primitive, region of the soul in which long-slumbering forces are capable of sudden resurrection. That in the religious nihilism of Sabbatianism, which during the eighteenth century proved so dangerous to the most precious possession of Judaism, its moral substance, both these elements had a share, cannot be proved better than by the tragic history of its last phase, the Frankist movement. (Scholem, MAJOR TRANDS IN JEWISH MYSTICISM, p. 315)

Those are the Frankists.

Returning to AY's Pontification:

The Jewish adorers of the Divine Heart were known as the Kabbalah mystics or Chaverim....In Eastern and Central Europe a secret society of these Jewish Chaverim formed the Society of the Nistarim.

Today's Nistarim are not secret. They are very much out in the open and presumably making money in the process of doing their thing. But I digress.

Apparently Joseph Wolff was an early Nistarim, though the Pontification doesn't actually say that. It does say that he was "a famous Jewish convert to Christianity." It also says:

The story of Joseph Wolff and Sir Henry Drummond is a very interesting one connected with the Irvingites and the Catholic Apostolic Church. This story is also connected to the Frankists and Cardinal Henry Stuart (York) and the Jacobites.

Joseph Wolff was the son of a Rabbi according to the Pontification. He played a role in the genesis of the Hebrew Christian movement. He became a Hebrew Catholic after being raised an Orthodox Jew and subsequently became a Hebrew Christian evangelist and an Anglican priest. His mother was a granddaughter of Jacob Frank, and his education was financed by Frankist Jews who were supported by a group of Jesuits and Cardinal York. He was a "Jewish wonder child" descended from Sabbatai Zevi through his father, according to AY.

Irvingites:

Although the Pentecostal movement had its beginnings in the United States, much of its basic theology was rooted in earlier British perfectionistic and charismatic movements. At least three of these--the Methodist holiness movement, the Catholic Apostolic movement of Edward Irving, and the British Keswick "Higher Life" movement--prepared the way for what appeared to be a spontaneous outpouring of the Holy Spirit in America. (Synan, THE CENTURY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: 100 YEARS OF PENTECOSTAL AND CHARISMATIC RENEWAL, p. 2)

Synan is the foremost authority on the history of Pentecostalism.

The Nistarim were founded by Rabbi Elijah Baal Shem for the purpose of preserving the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Abulafia and the Zohar. These teachings were brought to Krakow, Poland by Rabbi Joseph Jospa, another Jewish wonder child. He appeared openly as a healer and miracle worker in Worms, according to the Pontification.

The booklet "Toledot Adam" ("The Generations of Adam") contains Nistarim mystical beliefs including healing remedies, and describes, according to the Pontification,

a Kabbalistic practice involving mystical squares and the seven seals of God. In a tradition coming from Rabbi Abraham Abulafia he attained the level or experience of Rauch ha Kodesh (the Holy Spirit) and through this experience he received the healing power through the name of Mashiach ben Joseph (Messiah son of Joseph)....Abulafia had taught that this experience of the Holy Spirit could be received by Jew or Gentile, man or woman.

Adam Baal Shem Tov was according to Hasidic tradition the third leader of the Society of the Nistarim in Eastern Europe....He was a secret son of Sabbatai Tzvi (1626-1676)....Sabbatai Tzvi's mother was the daughter or granddaughter of Rabbi Elijah Baal Shem the founder of the Nistarim.

I plugged "nistarim" into the Jewish Encyclopedia search window and got a response of "There are no search results."

I plugged "Nistarim" into My Jewish Learning search window and got "Your search - Nistarim - did not match any documents. No pages were found containing "Nistarim".

I plugged "nistarim" into Google and found Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab where you can read:

TZADIKIM NISTARIM

Also called the Lamed Vev, two letters in the Hebrew alphabet that translate to the number thirty-six. In this violent, ugly, strife-riddled world of ours there are thirty-six men, the Hidden Just Men or Hidden Saints, who bear on their shoulders the burden of all our pain, sorrows and sins. The Tzadikim Nistarim move in obscurity, and are usually found among the poor, the downtrodden and the meekest among us, and are chosen for this task because of their righteousness, stalwart sense of genuine justice, and the true goodness of their souls. When one of these men dies, God chooses another to take his place. It is for their sake and for love of them that God does not destroy His imperfect creation. As long as the Lamed Vav serves humanity, the world will continue to plod on, but once one of them dies and God cannot find another worthy to take his place, the world will be destroyed. In Qabala, the thirty-six men of the Tzadikim Nistarim together combine to symbolize the seventy-two bridges, corresponding to the seventy-two names of God, that connect the concealed and revealed worlds of our universe. The scent is one of unadulterated spiritual purity, with a taste of the world's eternal pathos, and the joy of suffering with grace: frankincense, olive, spikenard, hyssop and galangal.
.purchase 5ml.

If you click over there check out the scents for "gluttony", "greed", "lust", "pride", "sloth"...

To be continued.