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.
Would you say that Reform Judaism is like Unitarianism? Actually Unitarians do not reject anything :)
The Samaritans are called Cutheans. They were brought into the area by Sennacherib after the Assyrians scattered the 10 Tribes of the Israelites. The Samaritans accepted the five books of the Torah and the book of Joshua as sacred, because the rebellious Israelites rejected the later biblical books that were written for the Davidian kings. The Samaritans never claimed to be Jews or Israelites.
Would you say that Reform Judaism is like Unitarianism? Actually Unitarians do not reject anything :)
That sounds like a pretty fair comparison to me.
That's the Rabbis version. The Samaritans don't accept it. The Samaritans claim (and secular history supports their claims) that the Assyrians only exiled the Israelite nobility, but that the commoners were left behind. They claim to be descended from that Israelite population that got left behind.
The Samaritans never claimed to be Jews or Israelites.
They don't claim to be Jews [because they believe they descend from the 9 northern tribes, excluding Judah, Benyamin and Shimon, and parts of Levi]. But they do claim to be Israelites.
Yes, Reform Judaism is a lot like Unitarianism, except that it affirmatively denies the divinity of Jesus, and affirmatively denies divine authorship of the Bible.
Kabbacrap is an ancient cult...it just happens to also be a "new age" cult among those that have no moral compass.
Rabbi Kaduri sharply criticized Madonna and the new-age Kabbalists for desecrating Kabbalah. He was NOT a fan of them.
Can you cite me a single example? Surely there must be something out there on the Net you can link me too... what I have seen is either: i) explicit endorsement of this Rebbe is Mashiach nonsense; ii) silence; or iii) at best, questioning "maybe he is, maybe he isn't" -- no Chabad rabbi I know has ever affirmatively said "The Rebbe was a great guy, but Mashiach doesn't come from the dead." Does this allegedly strong anti-Rebbe as Messiah movement have a website or an organization?
Also, I've never liked how Chabad blatantly violates Halacha by trying to get (otherwise religious) Jews to adopt Chabad minhagim. Reaching out to hilonim is admirable, and I respect them for it. But why was Chabad's first outreach center in Morrocco, which had a strong Torah-observant community? And why have more than few Chabad Rabbis given me dirty looks (or worse) when I tell them that I don't want to go to Chabad institutions because I am Sephardi and prefer to go to Sephardi beit knesset? And why has Chabad affirmatively refused to recognize Ethiopian Jews as Jewish, and scornfully refused to give them any aid?
"The State of Israel considers them Jews, and Karaites are eligible under the law of return, but they are listed as Karaites on their ID cards."
I would think this statement by ChicagoHebrew is either true or not true, and could somewhat easily be researched to find out, Cinnamon Girl. Chicago's point is that the Karaites have a direct lineage to the ancient Israelites, and therefore aren't some group that just out of the clear blue sky to call themselves Karaites and consider themselves Jews. Their beliefs come from a distinct history that like the Orthodox Eastern Christians as vs. the Western Roman Christians, ended up in schism with other of their religious heritage at some point in history. However, both consider themselves either as Jews or as Christians.
Whether Orthodox Jews consider Karaites to be Jews or not is somewhat beside the point. How does the State of Israel treat them and consider them as to being Jewish? How do they consider themselves? Do they have a direct historical basis for their beliefs that, as far as I can see from what I've read here, pre-dates the need for belief in the oral tradition (Talmud) part of Judaism which ended up being the predominant belief system of most Jews. That doesn't negate what was the belief of those that came before the split between Jewish sects.
There are a lot of Christians that want to make a direct split between Judaism and Christianity, basically denying there is any connection between the two, even though there is a direct lineage of one flowing out of the other. I've been in quite a few verbal debates about this recently, with some friends who are basically pre-Vatican II types, and who believe that Paul took Christianity in an entirely different direction from Judaism, and therefore there was a split of such magnitude between the two, that they are now totally unrelated. Also usually thrown into the mix is the Jews killed Christ line of thought.
My own beliefs are that there is a direct flow from Judaism to Christianity, and from reading here, that there is a direct flow from the Karaites' beliefs to the current Judaic beliefs. Each religion chose different stopping points though in their beliefs. Karaites chose as their stopping point the validity of only the 5 books of the Old Testament. Jews add the oral tradition but chose as their stopping point the denial that Christ is the Messiah, so Judaism stops and Christianity starts. Christians use Christ's martyrdom (and, among some say his murder by Jews) as their same stopping point for the end of Judaism and the beginning of Christianity as a separate and distinct religion. Muslims take a bit from both, mix it up and bastardize it to make it their own, and say their stopping point is when all Christians and Jews are either dead or dhimmi's. It's all pretty interesting and is a good example of why religion has been argued over from whenever it was man was capable of doing so. And we haven't even touched other world religions and their beliefs, have we? So many religions, so little time.
The divisions and arguing does not mean that there is no Truth. And that none of the arguing sides is right.
The divisions and arguing does not mean that there is no Truth. And that none of the arguing sides is right.
Yes, but whose side it truth and whose side is right? How do you differentiate?
Or rather who is on the side of truth.
How do you differentiate?
You asked a big question :)
Yes, I can imagine.
Oh, I thought it was the 700 club with a 10% markup.
unsubscribe me please
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.