Hebrew Catholic friends of mine in Canada, Mark and Sue, sent me a very interesting booklet by an Austrian Catholic deacon called Johannes Fichtenbauer. It is entitled: "The Mystery of the Olive Tree: Uniting Jews and Gentiles for Christ's Return". The deacon had a grandfather who was a very fervent Nazi and he himself before his conversion was a supporter of the Nazi anti-Jewish ideology. He later with Father Peter Hocken and Cardinal Ratzinger met with some Messianic Jewish leaders to begin an informal private dialogue on the question of the Messianic Jewish movement.
He relates an interesting account from the 17th century that occurred 80 years before the Frankists or Zoharists entered the Catholic Church in 1760. It would seem that after the traumatic events in Judaism associated with the false Messiah Shabtai Zvi some Jews turned secretly to accepting Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. Some of them as I have written elsewhere followed Nathan of Gaza in quietly converting by accepting Catholic baptism and some assimilating into the Catholic Church while maintaining secret study groups, however others remained in the Jewish Community secretly believing in Yeshua as the Mashiach. This also happened with the Zoharists of Frank where some with Jacob Frank publicly entered the Catholic Church and others remained in secret in the Jewish community. Fichtenbauer writes:
"The first event that we know about happened in a small town in southern Poland, Pinczow (near Krakow), around the year 1680. Four well-known Rabbis - Rabbi Krokeffer and Rabbi Sender, both from what is now the Czech Republic and Rabbi Chaija Chajon from Turkey met with the Chief Rabbi from Pinczow, interestingly called among his people, "Rabbi Megalleh Amukkoth" (the one who discovers secrets). As it was told in the documents later found in the archives of Herrenhut the three rabbis who lived outside Poland, were individually led by the Holy Spirit to come to this small town of Pinczow, to meet with their colleague. They did not meet on just any day, but on the particular day of "Tisha b'Av," the Jewish day of fasting and mourning over the destruction of the Temple."
Fichtenbauer rather fascinatingly goes onto describe how these four Rabbis led by the Holy Spirit came to accept Jesus as the Messiah and then they baptised each other in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He then states:
"...The four Rabbis shared two convictions. It was clear to them that they should not join any Gentile Christian Church...The other conviction: they wanted to be Jews and remain in their Jewish culture, still going to synagogue and still under the law...Each began to form little secret cells of Jews who believed in the Messiah..."
The well known Israeli scholar of Jewish mysticism Yehuda Liebes also discusses this account in 1988, as does Sid Z. Leiman in an article in an anthology entitled "New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations"edited by Elisheva Carlebach and Jacob J. Schacter. Liebes believed this group were originally followers of Shabtai Zvi who then later re-evaluted their ideas and founded a Jewish Christian sect. It would seem to me that this account coming from Moravian Brethren circles in the 1770's has adjusted these events to suit a Protestant audience.
The Rabbi who met with the other three is called Rabbi Nathan and has been confused with Rabbi Nathan Spira, when in fact this Rabbi is most likely the secretly baptised Catholic Nathan of Gaza who then with the other three former secret Sabbatean Rabbis after much prayer and discussion were baptised by Rabbi Nathan with the intention of remaining among the Jewish people. Thus the story of the gathering of the Rabbis probably didn't occur in Pinczow at all but in Skopje (in modern day Macedonia). It was an old woman who was a follower of this Jewish-Christian secret group that also influenced Jacob Frank. Liebes accepts that this Jewish-Christian group had followers in Holland, Bohemia, Moravia, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Turkey as claimed in these documents from the 18th century. When Liebes wrote his article he did not have access to the original documents and so got some identifications wrong which are cleared up with reading the fuller documents as studied by Leiman.
The Simon who presented the documents about this Jewish-Christian group to the Moravians was a grandson of Rabbi Hayyim b.Jacob Ashkenazi of Prossnitz who was a Rabbi of Deutschkreutz from 1710-1748 and a leader in the group according to these documents. Thus this Rabbi Hayyim was probably the grandson of Rabbi Nathan of Gaza himself whose full name was Nathan Benjamin ben Elisha Hayyim ha'Levi Ashkenazi. It would seem the Simon of Amsterdam (1745-1795) and his brothers Baruch and Meir were the leaders of a group of this Jewish-Christian group in Amsterdam who were more inclined to Protestantism than the wider group which was inclined to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. The Catholic inclined group influenced and then joined Jacob Frank.
It would seem that Simon of Amsterdam may have created an origin story which reflected the origins of his group in the wider post-Sabbatean diaspora. Rabbi Nathan and Rabbi Sender represented those who were crypto-Catholics remaining in the Jewish communities. Reb Sender was a title for the leader of these crypto-Catholic Jews in the Jewish community. They used the name Alexander Brodie or Brody among the Gentiles and were known as Reb Sender among their followers as well as other names. They were masters of disguise similar to the Jesuits who went to England as priests. The first Reb Sender was also known as Rabbi Abraham Brodie (Broida/ Broide) and was the one mentioned in the story of the four Rabbis. The second Reb Sender was his son Rabbi Ephraim of Brody the father-in-law of the Baal Shem Tov. His niece (the daughter of his sister) married Aharon Leibele (son of Rabbi Isaac II Zolkiev whose son Nachman of Hordenker was the grandfather of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov) who took the surname of Broida or Brody when he became the third Reb Sender. His grandson was the fourth Reb Sender who was also known as Reb Sender of Sheklov a father-in-law of Reb Moshe ben Zalman the Catholic son of the alter Rebbe.
Rabbi Chayon was a leader of an antinomian group of former Sabbateans and known as Rabbi Nehemiah Chiya Chayon, that embraced a kind of Judeo-Christian antinomian Trinitarian belief. After the failure of the mission of Shabtai Zvi his group may have accepted a antinomian version of Jesus as the Messiah who was embodied in Rav Chayon. Jonathan Eybenschitz was originally a follower of Chayon and Jonathan was also a descendant of Nathan of Gaza and the Ashkenazi family. Rabbi Krokeffer may have been the leader of a group of Prague Sabbateans who later became followers of Eva Frank the daughter of Jacob Frank the Jewish Catholic Tzadik or Rebbe.
Some of the followers of these groups did not remain Jewish and like the ancestors of Blessed Katarina Anna Emmerich they assimilated totally into the Catholic Church and by the time of Jacob Frank's movement had already been devout Catholics for 2-4 generations.
Thus this gathering of the four Rabbis is said to be around 1680 and that Rabbi Nathan died soon after. Thus I would date this event to Tisha B'Av (18 July) in 1679 (5439) as Rabbi Nathan Ashkenazi of Gaza died on Jan 11 1680. In a future blog post I will share some of Fichtenbauers ideas in regard to Catholics and the Messianic Jewish movement.