Clarification on Misuse of My Writings

I do not believe in active evangelisation of Jewish people as a group. I would like to see a return to Torah and mitzvot of those "lost" Jews in the Catholic Church in order for them to fulfill their election in a corporate manner which is one of the reasons why I am a member of the Association of Hebrew Catholics. My outreach is to my fellow Catholics who have Jewish background or ancestry.

This is the statement on this blog for many years. I updated it after 2013 when Pope Francis became Pope.

I am a Hebrew Catholic or Catholic Jew. I adhere totally with the infallible teachings on faith and morals of the Catholic Church and I believe that Pope Francis is the Messiah's chief representative on earth. I do not write to proselytize religious Jews but to share my ideas with my fellow Catholic Jews and also with Gentile Catholics who are interested in the Jewish roots of the Catholic faith. These are my personal thoughts and do not represent those of any group I may belong to.

I have great respect for orthodox Judaism and Hasidic Judaism especially Chabad and Breslov. I will repeat here what I posted on another blog of mine. 

 A couple of people today pointed me to a website that said I claimed to be descended from Yankel Baron the son of Rebbe Nachman. This is false I have never claimed to be descended from Yankel Baron. Nor do I claim that Chabad or Breslov are Frankists or Sabbateans today. These movements died out years ago. While some of my ancestors were Frankists on my father's paternal side they ceased being Frankists after a couple of generations. My grandfather was a lapsed Catholic and not interested in religion. Neither of my parents were Catholic and I became a Catholic when I was 24 years old.

It was a Jewish lady who wrote to me who claimed that her ancestor was Yankel Baron and she said Yankel was the son of Rebbe Nachman and that the surname Baron was an acronym for Ben Rabbi Nachman. Here is the message from the Jewish lady (she is not a Jewish Christian):

Ms. K. Kirshner, MBA, MS has left a new comment on your post "Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's Christian Descendants": 

 
"What is a Catholic Jew? A person is whatever their mother is, according to Jewish law.

This is factual as well as the fact that I am a direct descendant of Ben Rab Nachman, via my father's mother Rachel (Baron) Kirsner/Kirshner who was the daughter of the famous Talmudic scholar and commentator on the Talmud and teacher of rabbis in yeshiva, Chana Zesa (Frank) Baron, daughter of a Talmudic rabbi and she was married to Meyer Baron, a rabbi who had a school with her in Vilkiji, Kaunus pre WW2, and they had my grandmother Rachel and her sister Gitel. My grandmother was very proud of her heritage and descent via her father directly from Rabbi Nachman. They were khans. My father was her one son, Samuel Joseph Kirshner and my aunt Miriam Eve Ann (Kirshner) Koenig was my father's older sister. She had no children. My father had three, my brother Mark Geoffrey Kirshner and my me Karen Lynne Kirshner (named in honor of my great grandmother's memory) and Abby Joy Rothschild Kaplan who is my younger sister. She had two children Rachel Alexandra Rothschild and Jonathan Charles Rothschild.

We are direct descendants and fully Jewish. My grandmother's sister had four children and was married to a Segal. They had two older boys who were gifted swimmers and athletes and linguists. They worked underground in the resistance during WW2, helping Germans and others escape. They were each caught, tortured and shot, and only the parents Gital and her husband and my father's two first cousins, Rabbi Shimon Segal and Zena (Segal) Niznik survived the concentration camps. The parents were murdered there. Shimon is the only survivor and lives in Borough Park and Muncie, NY and Israel. He is in his latter 80's and like his sister who married the head of the Bet Din in Canada, he did not have any biological, nor any other children at all. She had adopted a son Chaim Niznik, a psychiatrist, who died young- around age 40. We are the direct descendants. We are fully Jewish. I never heard of a Jewish Catholic, but Jesus was Jewish, so Catholics who believe in him are essentially Jews once removed."

 I descend from the sister of Yankel Baron's wife not from Yankel Baron. These sisters are granddaughters of Rebbe Nachman's youngest daughter Chaya from her second marriage to Aharon Zaslavsky. My ancestress Miriam Chaya Zaslavski (Mary) married Michael Brennan who was a great grandson of Rebbe Nachman through his daughter Adil. My grandfather was also descended from Rebbe Nachman on his father's mother's side through the Brody (Broide/ Brady) family where another of Adil's daughters married a son of Rav Moshe ben Zalman. So my grandfather is descended from Rebbe Nachman through the Brennan and Brody families not the Baron family.

There seems to be among some Jewish people a reluctance to accept that people who convert out of Judaism don't just disappear and not have any descendants in the Christian community. 

This same website also claims that I have neglected the story of Rav Moshe the son of the Alter Rebbe becoming Catholic when in fact I have written articles on this very topic that I published on the internet beginning in 2006. It seems they think I am some kind of Chabad secret agent discrediting Breslov. I appreciate both Chabad and Breslov but I am more inclined to Breslov teaching. I am happy for them to critique what I write as long as they get it right what I am saying and not make claims that I never made.

I have no desire that what I write would be used to challenge the faith of religious Jews in any way. I also wish that those trouble-makers who do this with my articles cease doing it. I apologise to any one who has been "harassed" by mentally unbalanced people by having my article sent to them. I do not send articles of mine to non-Christian Jewish people and I do not approve of others doing that either as a form of proselytising or demonising other people.

I will re-iterate that I believe in the value of Torah and mitzvot for people of Jewish background or ancestry. I think the outreach by both Chabad and Breslov Hasidim is fantastic and I support them both in their endeavours to do so. I support the Association of Hebrew Catholics and their apostolate as well as Catholics For Israel and I am involved with Yachad beYeshua which is a group for the voice of Messianic Jews and Jews in the different Churches to come together as a collective voice to express and discuss issues of concern for them. I am the administrator of some small facebook groups called "Torah Observant Catholic Jews" and the "Lost Tribes of Israel and Genetics".

I am not a supersessionist and do not believe that the Mosaic or any of the other covenants in the Bible are abolished nor am I antinomian but adhere to the moral teachings of Scripture as interpreted by the magisterium of the Catholic Church. I am also a Zionist that supports the right of the Jewish people to Israel and the right of the Israeli state to defend itself. 

I support the right of Jews, Christians and Muslims to live in peace in the Holy Land. That does not mean I agree with the form of government in Israel as I would much have preferred that when Israel became a nation that it remained under George VI and the monarchy as a dominion within the Commonwealth of Nations like Australia, New Zealand and Canada. I would support a transition of Israel into a constitutional monarchy.

I am not part of any conspiracies to either "Judaise" the Gentiles in the Church nor undermine any form of  Jewish faith.  As one who supports the idea of allowing Torah observance for Catholic Jews I have with other Hebrew Catholic leaders come under attack or slander (lashon hora) from all sorts of anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish and anti -Judaism people and groups. I am also attacked by those who hold to anti-Talmudic and anti-Kabbalistic viewpoints. If one posts their ideas on today's internet in the form of blogs or facebook groups one has to develop a thick skin.