Posted on 01/29/2006 10:16:44 AM PST by ChicagoHebrew
Famed Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri was laid to rest at Har Hamenuhot in Givat Shaul late Sunday afternoon.
Over 300,000 people, including rabbis and public figures, took part in the funeral procession. The eulogies and procession began from the Nahalat Yitzhak Yeshiva in Jerusalem's Bukharian Quarter at 12:00 p.m.
Among those who eulogized Kaduri were Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and President Moshe Katsav. Former foreign minister Silvan Shalom and his wife Judy were also in attendance.
Magen David Adom provided 10 ambulances and 22 motorbikes to secure the funeral procession, and had also positioned a number of ambulances throughout the city to minimize response time in light of the heavy traffic congestion caused by the procession.
Kaduri passed away Saturday evening due to complications caused by pneumonia.
Nobody knows precisely how old Kaduri was at the time of his death at Bikur Holim Hospital in Jerusalem. Estimates range between 106 and 115.
Legend has it that when Kaduri was 16 years old, Rabbi Yosef Haim, known as the Ben Ish Chai, one of the most influential Sephardi rabbis of the 19th century, blessed Kaduri with a long life.
Kaduri came to Israel from Baghdad at age 17 and studied under several legendary kabbalists, including Rabbi Yehuda Petaya, author of Beit Lechem Yehuda, and Rabbi Efraim Cohen, head of a group of kabbalists who studied at Porat Yosef Yeshiva. Other rabbis included in that study group were Rabbi Ezra Atia, head of Porat Yosef, Rabbi Mansour Ben-Shimon and Rabbi Salman Eliyahu, father of former Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu.
Kaduri later studied at Rabbi Yehuda Hadaya's Yeshivat Beit El in Jerusalem's Makor Baruch neighborhood. Rabbi Shmuel Darzi, one of Kaduri's last students and study partners passed away in January. Darzi was in his eighties.
Kaduri, known as "the senior kabbalist," is the last of a generation of Sephardi Jewish mystics. His close circle of friends and family say he was one of the few known living kabbalists who used "practical kabbalah," a type of Jewish magic aimed at affecting a change in the world.
They say Kaduri learned from the great kabbalists of previous generations the practice of writing amulets which heal, enhance fertility and bring success.
Also, according to his son David, Kaduri was involved in the removal of at least 20 dybbuks, lost souls that stray into the hapless bodies of living people to torment them.
However, according to sources close to the ancient mystic, even Kaduri never dabbled in the most dangerous types of Kabbalah that included forcing oaths on demons and evil spirits. Kabbalists believe that it is possible, in theory, to use holy names to trap demons and harness their powers. But those who do risk heavenly retribution.
More rational schools of Judaism are skeptical about Kaduri's powers. In contrast, in certain Sephardi circles Kaduri is considered a miracle worker. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of testimonials by Kaduri's faithful back up this claim to supernatural power. But even in the Sephardi yeshiva world, rabbis such as Rabbi Ovadia Yosef discounted Kaduri's ability to work miracles.
Nevertheless, few doubted Kaduri's righteousness and vast knowledge of both conventional and more esoteric Jewish thought and law. For most of his life Kaduri was unknown to the general public. He led a modest life of study and prayer and worked as a bookbinder. During the past decade and a half he served as the head of Nahalat Yitzhak Yeshiva in Jerusalem's Bukharan quarter.
Kaduri's reputation as supernatural mystic began during and after the Yom Kippur War. Families of soldiers missing in action came to Kaduri to ask him to use his powers to determine whether their loved ones were dead or alive.
Kaduri's popularity reached an all-time high in the 1996 elections when the centenarian kabbalist's amulets helped Shas achieve an amazing electoral success. At the time, Shas was at an electoral low point. Shas managed to distribute 100,000 amulets before chairman of the Elections Committee Theodore Or prohibited their use. Soon after Ophir Paz-Pines drafted a bill ratified by the Knesset that anchored Or's prohibition in legislation. But the amulets did the trick: Shas mustered 10 mandates.
In the 2003 elections Kaduri's grandson Yossi, who had demanded and been refused a realistic spot on the Shas list, attempted to use his grandfather to rekindle the electoral success of 1996 with his own political party called Ahavat Yisrael. But the party failed to gain the minimum votes needed to enter the Knesset.
Kaduri's son David claims his father passed on to him the secrets of amulet-writing. However, others claim that Kaduri's metaphysical powers cannot be inherited.
"He is the last of a lost generation," said one source close to the Kaduri family.
Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef and the Shas council of Torah sages issued a statement mourning the loss of Rabbi Kaduri. "All of the people of Israel today are one family in mourning that the man who all of Israel was praying for went heavenward," Shas chairman Eli Yishai said on their behalf.
Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger called Kaduri a great tzaddik, and said that he was the last survivor of the great Kabbalah giants.
Kaduri is survived by two children, Rachel and David, and his second wife Dorit, in her fifties, who married Kaduri 12 years ago. Sarah, Kaduri's first wife, passed away 17 years ago.
Yes, and that was before Chabad began believing a dead guy was the Messiah.
The meshichistnicks have been denounced by the mainstream Chabad leaders. They have even taken out a court order to evict the meshichistnicks from 770.
As I understand it, the big battle isn't really over whether or not the Rebbe was the Messiah, but rather over whether or not to PUBLICIZE that the Rebbe was the Messiah. I have yet to see any mainstream Chabad leaders actually denounce the Messianishm, and acknowledge that the Rebbe is: A) dead; and B) not the Messiah.
Well,
I was never into deep-minded religious discussions.
Yet I concider Judaism and Christianiti, one the same and most of all only true religion.
Being Serb Ortodox, Judaism is much closer tome than to Catholics. I have allways concidered Judaism to be older-brother to christianity, and my full respect to actual religion of Christ.
As for diference with Serb Ortodoxy, lets just say that Serbs actualy pray to God, than to Jesuss Christ. Ortodoxy teaches that God is elder than Jesuss, for Jesuss being SON, and God being the Father.
Well, priests could explain it better.
sipmly, judaism is something like a fundament of Christianity, most important standard for actual Christianity.
<< .... the Koran is but a syncretistic amalgam, clearly bogus. >>
No disagreement from me and I have studied it through nine different translations - and have, during around 70 visits to Iraq and with the willing assistance of devout Iraqi friends, struggled through it in Arabic.
The Koran gives itself away as being "but a syncretistic amalgam [And] clearly bogus" in scores of ways. But no more efficaciously that when it first says it is "given to prove the veracity of 'all that was given before' but was misunderstood by the sects" and then -- by reducing the Immaculate Conception to "and ['God'] said 'Be' and it was" and Jesus to "the first prophet after Muhummid" -- contradicts itself, repudiates the veracity of all that was given before -- and denies the Son of God.
Yep!
But a syncretistic amalgam [And] clearly bogus!
<< Put simply, Judaism is something like a fundament of Christianity, most important standard for actual Christianity. >>
There are some who believe Christians to be but Completed Jews.
I'm very fond of that idea.
Blessings - Brian
what the heck is 770
I find this stuff fascinating. I never knew there was a Jewish sect that eschewed the Talmud.
As for the Rabbi, I'm sure he was a fine fella....dang, he sure lived a long time.
How long did the Rebbe live? ...he was old as the hills too I think
The Torah is really just the books of Moses is it not?
The rest of the Old Covenant and Maccabees is called the Prophets and the Writings and that by Moses is The Law or Torah.
That was always what I was told.
and I was told there are two Talmuds. (Hebrew and Babylonian (aramaic))
do the Karaites reject the Hebrew Talmud too?
They have done so on many occasions.
770 Eastern Parkway
Chabad International headquarters in Brooklyn, NY
Perhaps she should have met him while he was alive:
Kaduri was involved in the removal of at least 20 dybbuks, lost souls that stray into the hapless bodies of living people to torment them.
Hmmmm. That might explain a lot about Madonna.
"The Torah is really just the books of Moses is it not?"
Technically, yes, but if you read the works of Gershom Sholem, deceased professor at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, you'll see it used in a broader application, applying it sometimes to include Talmud and Kabbalah. I strongly reject such usage, but I'm just giving this as an example.
Karaites reject both Talmuds, Jerusalem and Babylonian. They believe in the Bible only.
RIP, Rabbi Kaduri.
by all means
In the time of Jesus, there was a split between the Talmudic Israelites (whose religious leaders where the Pharisees) and Israelites who did not concede legitimacy to the Talmud. The latter included the Sadducees, the Zealots, and the Essenes
The Pharisees became dominant, and defined "Jewish" to mean Israelites who grant validity to the Talmud
Also there are Israelites who reject books later than five books of Moses, they are called Samaritans and there are two villages still surviving. They are the actual Israelites, the others are Judeans.
Catholics are not considered Christian by many Evangelical Christians. By the Evangelical's standards, that it correct. When you go by the Evangelicals' definition of what is Christianity, that is.
Similarly, of course a Rabbinic Jew would not define a non-Talmudic Jew is being Jewish
The Orthodox rabbis will keep company with a Reform rabbi, because the Reform rabbi does not deny the Talmud, he simply does not think it is as applicable to the modern world as it used to be. This does not undermine the authority of the Orthodox rabbi
The Karaites, in rejecting the Talmud, reject the authority of the rabbis
Karaism, which rejects only the Oral Law and rabbinic halacha, is much closer to Orthodox Judaism than Reform is.
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