Solstice Surprises: Christmas, 9 Tevet & Nittel Nacht By Rabbi Anthony Manning

it's good to see people we'll talk a little bit more about as we get through today's sh it's also course now in the English years 2025 um which seems like it's been a to me anyway a pretty quick 25 years but uh that's I suppose how it goes um we will actually be relating today to the issue of New Year uh the secular new year as a very Central issue and connections with khah Etc and next week we will be turning our attention to inyana of sarit which is coming up next Friday something we've never spoken about in this forum before but but all sorts of very interesting connections connected with also the translation of the Torah into Greek um which of course is not unrelated to Kaneka people don't always make the connection between Kaneka and the Greek Focus and then just a few days lateris and and we'll talk about that next week which is the septu and and how that works and and there's a kind of in between these days between and we'll talk about that next week very interesting stuff but for now we are looking at something a little bit different uh to what we normally talk about which I've called here Solstice surprises Christmas the nth of tavid and little now for those of you who think you already missed n then you might not have it's coming up again next week we'll see how that works um but let's have a look first uh at number one because Kaneka as you know is an 8 day midwinter Festival celebration and the gamorra already Roots its origins in a pagan uh creation story let's see how that works number one says the Mish now the mishna is concerned about the prohibition of trading with pagans in the immediate runup to their Pagan festivals because we do not want them to go to their gods and say oh bashem or whatever the equivalent is that they say um I did a great deal these Jews have helped me I've got now money for my we don't want them to be thanking their gods alternatively maybe even worse we don't want to give them the sacrifices the sheep or whatever they're going to use to actually do the aod zarat with their gods so the the rabbis made a offence if you like not allowed to trade with these pagans three days before their festivals so we need to know what are their festivals I need to know which days to avoid so here are the festivals calendar so calendar of course is the English word calendar comes from calendar um calendar was the Roman name for the first day of the month okay so the first day of the month rashes as it were for them there's a there's a calendar and there's a SATA what's saturna so saturna may be a uh a kind of a a derogatory name satura meaning the light is has gone away the light is on the side for what the Romans used to call saturnalia saturnalia was celebrated exactly now this time of the year uh and it was linked to uh the the S the solstice obviously the winter solstice has just passed the idea that the days are beginning to slightly lighten once again and the Romans had a major festival at this time of the year I've uh list at the bottom how it was described by people at the time a number of days accompanied by drinking buffoonery sexual license crossdressing singing naked in the streets giving gifts and the general relaxing of gen of legal rules so uh not that much different to what we now experience as Christmas and New Year festivals H and you can see these have very very ancient Roots the idea that people are giving gifts to each other people are behaving badly all sorts of things that they would normally do they get up to this was part of the satania celebrations and then it says the day of Ginia Ginia is linked to the Latin word genus or Jus meaning the creation of their kings we'll see what that is in a minute the Y and the birth date of their kings the King's birthday as we see with parro celebrates parro's birthday there are no other birthdays as far as I'm aware in tanak maybe birthdays were a a non-jewish focus on the celebration so the gamor says what are these things calendar so calendar it says is they had a special C festival which is eight days note the eight days Eight Day Festival after the winter solstice so to the end of December sat and sat is an eight Day Festival before the wi of soltice in the runup to the solstice the hint to this is in where it says you have Afflicted me you have blocked me in before and after meaning there are two problematic festivals this whole period is a problem now the goes back to saw he saw the the day is getting smaller shorter and shorter and shorter thear and he said oily this is terrible because I went off I ate from the fruit I ate from the the the world is getting darker and darker because of me and it's all going back into complete chaos because of what I did and when they said that if you eat from this fruit you will die this is it everything is descending Into Darkness and in the end everything will cease to be so he had a an8 Day Festival that ad Adam arish was was experiencing in the dark in of the days some of the an eight Day Festival a special prayer that he shouldn't be uh he shouldn't come to an end in darkness as they as they crossed over the the winter solstice and he saw oh the days are beginning to get longer again he said this is actually obviously the way that the world works it's not because of me him and he made a second 8-day Festival after the solstice as a as a festival of celebration of Thanksgiving now it's very interesting you can already see the parallels why the gamarra is bringing this story this time of year an 8 Day Festival before an 8 Day Festival afterwards and it links them with this Roman Calendar and and then it says note these words we talked about y the very next year they made a decree Adam orish back at the very beginning that both of these Eight Day festivals should be special festivals he fixed them not this he fixed them as as a praise to God but the pagans later took these festivals and they turned them into Pagan festivals okay that says the gamarra is the origins of the midwinter festivals that go on at this time of year now just compare that with the famous quote from number two from Mah in chabas which is quoting from millat tanit now we will have a slightly uh confusing but hopefully we won't be confused there are two things called millat tanit the famous one which we're quoting from here is the second temple list of special feast days um which were instituted because of Victories over the non-jews the Romans the the Greeks etc etc and millat tanet was a list of all the days that you were not allowed to f on it's a little bit misleading the name it's not a scroll of fasts it's a scroll of days that you're not allowed to fast on that was the second temple book and when theban happened all of these festivals were cancelled apart from kanah and P okay so now look at the KH part number two my says we have this again quoting from the eight days from the 25th of klave there are eight days of fine the you're not allowed to give on these days you're not allowed to fast on these days because when the Greeks went into sorry when the yeah when the Greeks went into the temple they they um made impure they desecrated all of the oil again they weren't trying to destroy the temple they were just trying to make it tame so we couldn't use it for ritual connection with when one over them they checked for oil they found one little jug of oil one jar of oil which still had the the stle of the co God on it there was only one days worth of oil and there's the cottage industry of working out why is eight days not seven days because they had enough oil for one day so the only miracle was only seven days not for now there was a that occurred they used that one day of oil for eight days and then exactly the same language that we saw in number one the next year they fixed it again the same language so there seems no question that there is a link between these two ideas the aod Zara idea that was a Corruption of adar's original recognition of the the light and the dark and then Kaneka which came much later which was if you like imposed onto that time of year because of the miracle that we experienced with the Greeks okay fine so there already we see a connection between the non-jewish holidays and later the theica holidays as they come at this time of year fine let's go on because there's much more there's a lot a lot further to go number three so says the gamar what are these some of these holidays we identified calenda Andia but number three what is the says the what is that it's the day that they crowned their King it's the anniversary of the coronation so you remember the coronation so every year on the date of the coronation so they make a speciales second yeah second the isn't there the says opposite there's a list that includes them as separate days there's the Yia which is one festival for the Romans and there's the yam which is the anniversary of the coronation so can't be the same day they're listed as two separate things so that can't be what the Y is says the no problem had day one is the coronation of the king himself that's the uh that is the Yia and the other one is not and the other one is his son when the young prince is confirmed as being the Crown Prince that is a day of Celebration and therefore they have these two days the day of the king and the day of the Crown Prince fine says the gamor now and this is key for us but one second do the Romans have a Crown Prince they don't have a hereditary monarchy certainly by the time that kazal were dealing here with the Romans there was an Empire and the emperor the next Emperor was very very rarely the son of the previous Emperor on the contrary there was usually a political coup and the next Emperor was whoever took over killed the last guy and the Senate would confirm the next Emperor so what are you telling me that it's the hereditary monarchy that's not how it worked that can't be what it means and it says about the Romans and here's very interesting quote from Saad Saad of course was written about asaad himself was from originally the G from from asav the h i have made you Edom which associate Edom with Rome I have made you the smallest of Nations what does that mean says theor that they have no continuity they have no hereditary um royal family they are a small nation and and here's the key for us you are extremely um disgraced what does that phrase mean says the they have no writing and they have no language the Romans have no writing and they have no language what what does that mean so ASI says number four the language and the script and the language of the Romans it came from a completely different um race nation and other people established for them all of their books other people gave them a script other people gave them their books sorry this going a little bit wrong I won't touch it too much what does that mean I mean the Latin script was formulated by the Romans okay it was based on the Greek Al alphabet to a significant degree and Alpha became a and beta became B is that what they're saying that the Roman alphabet is not original that it comes from Greek okay I mean there are some letters that come originally within Latin but but that they wrote no books what do you mean they wrote no books think of ID and Cicero and juvenile and plini and Virgil they had an entire Latin um literature what do you mean they wrot no book other people wrote their books other people didn't write their books yeah ah so you want to say that they wrote books but they were derivative that culture was derivative they just adopted right which is very true they adop adopted the Innovations of Greek culture and they if you like moved them into where they they not plagiarized them but they uh you know piggybacked on them and formed a Roman culture but it's strange to say that the other people wrote that book books now it is true that Greek was actually the language that the Romans mostly spoke in even Julius Caesar when he was stabbed in the Forum or wherever he was stabbed he didn't say ET to brute that is what Shakespeare says puts into his mouth he actually said in Greek I forgotten the phrase you too my son in Greek he spoke in Greek which is interesting because when he was stabbed in the back away if he was stabbed the first thing that came out of his mouth was Greek so yes on one level I agree with you 100% that there was a derivative culture but it's a strange Rashi what does it mean that someone else wrote all their books we will see that it's a strange Rashi because it's a censored Rashi and the original Rashi doesn't say that at all it says something else quite different and we'll see what the church took out and why they took it out now let next to page page two let's turn to the the ninth of tavid put all of this in your mind and we'll turn to the ninth of tavid um the the uh the rest of the shear to some degree to a significant degree is based on an amazing Shear that I heard many years ago from R Lyman R Lyman around 30 years ago gave a Shear on this topic you can find it on Wu Torah um and I've expanded on it in different ways but uh his Torah here is very is very remarkable he's a top great top level academic obviously been around for decades and decades and research this topic let's have a look together number five so this is a quote from the tour the tour living in the 14th century he quotes here something called millat tarit now it's not the same tan that we just talked about this millat tanid which sometimes they call Millan batra the later m tanid is indeed a list of fasts not feasts but fasts and we first find it recorded in the bahag in the seventh 8th Century in Babylon it may be older than that it may go back to the and the AR Israel Traditions but they had they had a set of fasts on which you had to fast so have a look here number five KAS of so the tour quotes is in writes the these are the days on which the Torah requires you to fast now that's a strange way to begin it because the Torah only requires you to fast on one day which is y says here even though they're from the rabbis we call them here as if to say to you you have to be careful with these fasts just like you're careful with keeping a real tah Mitzvah which is very strange because later on the the Bas yose is going to say I've never heard of anybody keeping these fasts even though the tradition is that they have to be kept with the same level of alacrity as Shelor others disagree the later on the says no no what are you talking about people do take do keep these F let's start this list this is a long long list and it appears also in the we'll see soon number five so so let's count second line number five when you fast on these special days you don't drink from the morning till the evening meaning it's not from the night before it's just the day of the fast fine on the first of Nissan sorry almost all of these days of fast days are days of Y sites famous y sites on which great Jewish personalities died on the on the first of Nissan you have to fast because the sons of Aon died well that's very interesting because you're not meant to fast on rashesh but apparently says rashes on the 10th of nissam oh Miriam's yite it's interesting the yite that everybody not everybody but many people get very excited about who Y is the Y side of R you know which is not actually the Y side of it's y knows what he's talking about on these things talks about this and says it means the wedding of rimai which is a different concept not getting into now it's not his physical wedding it's a spiritual idea um and and a lot of people these days have got very into ralu going to the Kev of ralu in in Maran and I think it's very it's great it's a great thing to to davim if you know what you're daving for and you're not daving to the people who have died Etc but it's actually interesting because Rashi if you look at Rashi when ra dies he makes very clear from Rashid that she died in the springtime so exactly where the tradition is that ra died in inan is is a different question but these fasts everybody seems to have forgotten about so we've had B we've had Miram and I've skipped a lot here it goes all the way through Etc let's skip to on the 28th of that's the day traditionally when when y yakim the king threw onto the fire the the the a the Milla of a that bar had written from dictation from yyu and that's on the 28th of of klave does anyone he fast on the 28th of klave it's the middle of Kaneka you're not allowed to fast interesting and then it gets into what I'm interested in on the eth of Tav coming up next week on Wednesday okay that is what happened with t that was the translation of Torah into Greek which we will talk about next week on okay and then you have on the on the ninth of [Music] tavid the rabbis did not write what that was for is it a secret like why why I mean I have to fast I meant to fast but they never said why I meant to fast and and on the 10th of we know we we know this well the the king of Babylonia came to uh the the walls of yam to besiege the walls okay that we people are going to be fasting on Friday but I don't think anyone's going to be fasting on Wednesday and Thursday next week on the 8th and the 9th in the future God is gonna make these days into feasting days and brings the beautiful that's in the tor the bet on the tour number six the course I have never in my life seen the and I've never even heard of of anyone fasting on these days and I think it's very strange where did this even come from this ancient list of fast days how could you fast on who's going to be how can that be it seems to go against the but nevertheless this list of MRA it it it survived and it survived not just into the T but into the even though he says I never heard of anybody who did these or fasted on them he records them look at number seven I'm not going to go through the whole thing but he says in and you can look it up in in 58 these are the days when terrible things happen to our ancestors you see what he's changed it to it's okay if you fast on them it makes sense to fast on them you don't he's not saying it's an obligation even though some of them nevertheless you have to fast on them or you should you can fast on them it's fitting to fast on them it's good not to fast a whole says the says there fine now skipping to the eighth of on the eth of Torah was written was translated into Greek in the days of and there were three days of darkness in the world again light dark kanah Jews Greeks Greeks make Darkness Jews make light we'll talk about that next week as well and of course three days of darkness where does three days of darkness come from that was a three-day comes in three-day increments increments and on the 10th he doesn't say the rabbis never wrote but he says nether we don't know a he had we don't know exactly what happened on that day that's interesting because that's not what the tour wrote the tour wrote that the rabbis chose not to write what happened on that date why didn't they write it maybe they did know maybe they didn't want you to know or me to know but the but the sh says I don't know about you he says but I don't know I don't know what happened on that date but it's there I'm going to bring it in Hal is very interesting like a Dusty corner of the shul that most people don't get to so of course Once you turn around in the shul and write we don't know what happened who died because someone must have died right all of these are lists of people almost all of them are list of Y sites who died on that date so you if you like you lay down the gauntlet for all future commentators to come along and say yeah well you don't know but I know and this is who died on that dat so let's look at some suggestions so look at number eight so this of course is before the shul this is the riv the first rivid ra abam IB who was living in Spain in the 1100s look at what he writes number eight thead Al Hali so who came after shmuel hanagid shmuel hanagid was the prime minister of Spain during the Golden Age of Muslim Spain where the Jews were basically running the country sh hanagid was aristocracy everybody loved y hanagid his son ruled after him but he wasn't as well loved one second all the good things that his father had he didn't La any of them there was one thing he didn't do as well as his father this again we're talking about medieval Spain and he he didn't he didn't have the same an he didn't have the same humility like his father because he grew up in the palace he grew up with great riches unlike his father who you know Rags to Riches was his father the and he didn't have to struggle as a young man and therefore he grew up with uh you know in the lap of luxury and he became arrogant says the rivot about him until he went off and the Lords of the were jealous of him now there were no Pim around I can assure you in Spain he means the Muslim the Muslim political Echelon became very jealous of yagid until they assassinated him and this is historically true and he was living just 100 years later they assassinated him in 1065 okay at sh shabas tiis on the ninth of Tavis schat you know he was assassinated on 10 1065 ah so what's this got to do with anything how do we know he was assassinated on the ninth of tavid and from earlier from the time of the rabbis we saw this was from the bag and from earlier when they wrote this list of fasts for gavis they said we have to fast on the ninth of Tavis Al and they didn't tell us why it was because they prophesied they prophesied in advance that um he that he was going to be assassinated on the they had they knew already hundreds of years earlier that the ninth of tavid was going to be the assassination of ysep an nagid that's interesting I would have thought that ysep an nagid probably wouldn't have wanted to know that beforehand um but he says that's that's what originally happened interesting is that are you convinced by that is that compelling you don't think so I've got some shakes of the head here but he's trying to work out what could it possibly be and it could well be that that yosf an nagid was indeed killed on the ninth of Tavis that happens to be how it came and he says well this is the this is a yard side that I think they may have been talking about okay here's that's one suggestion fine number nine another suggestion Queen Esther number nine was taken to the king tavet Esther was taken in the month of tavid she was captured she was kidnapped by the king B in the seventh year of his King now why do I care this does not figure anywhere else in the book of of the Milla there's no later relevance or reference to this idea that she was captured in tavet comes along the raar the raar wrote a commentary on millat Esther he actually wrot it when he was um they had to leave krackow because there was a plague I think it was an outbreak of uh the Bubonic plague and they had to leave and he was living in the countryside and he wrote to his father who was I think still in craile I always bring you and this year I'm not with you but I'm going to write you instead of M I'm going to write you a commentary on M eser yeah from his son very nice okay so he says like this number 10 why does it reference this day more than any other day of the year because he says look at the that we said has this list of fast days all the days that one is it's fitting to fast the KAS and he writes there test is he doesn't say why we fast there because the rabbis chose not to write the reason and that's why the Feast of Esther when he the king took meaning what are we fasting about we're fasting about the fact that King captured Esther for him it was a big SIM for her it was a terrible tragedy she was brought into the Palace of the king and this is why we fast on the ninth day of table to remember Esther that's his suggestion there's a few problems with this number one it doesn't say anywhere in the verse what day of the month she was captured okay we'll see next week that it might not matter which day of the month you hold these fast days it's the fact that they have to be in the month we'll see that next week it doesn't mention anything in the fast and and last in the in the book of about a fast and why is this a secret why would the rabbis not want to write this down it's not controversial we fast because Esther neb was captured on this day that's his attempt to do it okay the Taz in the 1600s says I don't understand what the problem is why are you telling me you don't know what happened on this day number 11 but he says this is astonishing this is a very astounding question top of Page Three when you get to the 10th of Tavis next Friday and you're saying in the morning look at what you're saying we say in the that we say those on the N died and ra so why is there such a secret everybody knows what happened on the ninth and Tav Ezra died that's the Y side of Ezra okay now okay fine but still why is it a secret why why is that some mysterious in some way and also it's very unlikely to be correct why because look at number 12 in the original wording of migas Tanis of the bahag it says betet on the nth of T they didn't write why they are fasting and what happened on they and also Ezra died died and also something else happened that they didn't want to tell you what it was so they're not the same thing it says something happened I'm not going to tell you what and also Ezra andu died so it seems like that's not a good option okay so what happened on this day yes why we don't we Ah that's a whole different Shear we fast in Adar it's really got nothing to do with Esther at all it's to do with the battle that we fought against them and the day before the battle it's reminisent of har cabal Satur there there's a lot going on much later it was called the fast of Esther when when the Ethiopians fasted the fast of Esther it was in Nissan when Esther fasted and which is a whole different how that became known as the fast of Esther is a good question which is a different sh but it's a good question okay so we haven't got a good candidate we've tried we've tried Ezra we've tried um who are Esther okay we've tried Also ysep hanagid let's do something a little bit out of the box so here is a book called The ra R Ben was a mathematician and astronomer living in Muslim Spain this source is highlighted in the early days of the visen shaft this uden Tums what's the visen Sha UDS the early 19th century there were a group of Jewish Scholars that most of them came from religious backgrounds but they they uh turned to a much more scholarly academic approach to Judaism they founded a school Leopold zun and later gretz and other people who really wanted to look academically at Judaism there's a link obviously with reform as well but it's not a direct link so they uncovered this text but actually they're not the first ones we'll see it was also referred to earlier as well but who is this what do he say ra now this will this will you'll find interesting number 13 who was born on the n of tavid noad it was yesu Jesus was born on the nth of TI and if you want to get into a debate as to whether you're allowed to say the word Jesus or not allowed to say the word Jesus I've given you a uh a link to that in the bottom and you'll conclude from the sheer which way we go on that okay fine um Jesus was born on that day according to them according to the non-jews the nth of Tavis is the day that he was born bnat and he traces it back to the year it comes out as the year 1 BCE 1 BCE on the nth of Tav yesu was born the Bri December orar he calls it dear which is the 10th month okay now I'm not getting into why December is called the 10th month September is the 7th October is the 8th it was all to do with the Roman Calendar and January and February being put in later but he said on the 25th of December which turned out it was the ninth of Tav if you do the maths he said he was an astronomer and a mathematician if you do the maths it turns out that the ninth of the 25th of December was the nth of tavid shabas and I tell you something else it was a shabas and it was the ninth day of Tavis and this day was the right day on which such a wicked person could be born he's not going to be uh some this source is not an Interfaith friendly Source just warning you that now he had nothing he was not writing in a Christian mure he didn't have to hold back as to what he felt about Christianity he said that December the 25th was exactly the right day for yesu he calls him the Roser to be born IM if that's even correct now let's just stop for a second first of all how do you know that the 25th of December was the ninth tment well you going to put it into a like on the internet you can go back and work out we didn't have a fixed calendar then nobody would know which day was which day because the Sanhedrin was still deciding on the first day of the month when the moon appeared and deciding when rashes was and when rashes wasn't so it's very hard for anyone to say this was definitely the ninth of tavet and how do you know that Jesus was born on the 25th of December come on really and he says they don't even know this either and I'll tell you something else no one even believes the 25th of December no one even this was in the 12th Century's saying this no one even thinks that's the right date he calls him theal the one that was hanged up hung up okay he this he wasn't even born then how did you know it was on the 35th of December this is not even written in their in their uh writings of of of Aon with an Alf is like abuse what what is ailon this is a derogatory name for the evang ailion is the Evangelion what's the Evangelion what does evangelical mean it means the good news in Greek what do we call that in English if you translate good news into North Viking it's gospel okay that's what that's what he says and it doesn't even say that he says you can look in the New Testament and he doesn't even say anything about the 25th of December it never says anywhere a date so how do they know it's not even written in the in the later books of the talim of the of the students of this m the one who he's calls Jesus all these kind of names the one who made everyone angry and they believe in those books but it's not even there December but this day which is the 25th of December this was a day of disgrace maybe he means their celebration he's just calling it disgrace this was a pagan festival for the pagans and earlier Babylonians even mad has this was the day of the Nativity the 25th of December but not the Nativity of yesu but the Nativity of the Sun and in fact if you go back this is very interesting discussion in the Pagan literature the Festival of the birth The Rebirth of the sun is the Festival of the 25th of December they even used to to call The Rebirth of the son from the Virgin and we're not talking about this is hundreds and hundreds of years before Christianity they talked about the the Virgin Sky giving birth to a newborn son and just translate you know change the word you in son to the word o and then you've got Christianity you know given to you on a plate this was a day that they know it was a mad it was a n Nativity day mad shash because of the calendar nothing to do with yesu others people called it the birth of the son not just the birth of the the the birth of the year and there was a whole uh there was a whole festival natalis s Invictus the birth The Rebirth of the unconquered son that the Romans used to celebrate as a pagan Festival as we were talking about before this is the day these are the days on which you notice the days are getting longer again and the ground is already beginning to kind of turn the grass is beginning to get a new to start coming up later on so the daffodils are going to start coming up soon and the Christians he says took they they stole that day because that was the day of nativity of the the year of the Sun and then when the the the Christian disciples came wanted to mislead the whole world to make them all go wrong they decided to give cover to this day because this was a day of they decided was the birth of their Savior and they said no this was not a bad day this is a good day they said it was this was the day that Jesus was always going to be born and that's why there was a pagan Festival beforehand and they took a pagan day to be to be a Christian day those who worship statues and people who are okay why is why is the nth of tavus a day that we fast what is it the Y side of it's not the Y side of anybody he says it's the birth of Jesus and we fast as Jews on the birth of Jesus because this was a terrible tragedy for the world as Jews because it was the 25th of December D but then he says it wasn't the 25th of December and they don't even think it was the 25th of December and he says and the whole thing was taken from the pagans anyway so does he really believe this that it was the birth of uh of yeshu he said it's it's not even clear at all that this is the case and this is reflected in other people but there's a very different view which we're going to see in a minute I'll WR you here in number 14 this is a commentary on millas Tanis from the 1800s this is not from the V school this is from the Orthodox writings number 14 God I heard from from a great person that that nth of is the birth of is who's is that man that's what he's called when I was at Oxford um so there was a a bit of a craze when I was there in the late 80s that the women would knit kipot with the names of the colleges of the of the boys to give them to the boys so they would knit uh you know keble and BRAC nose and whatever in Hebrew you know to make it a shtick so there was a guy there in the j-o who went to Jesus College so so they didn't know what to write on his kipa so they wrote on his kipa I remember this guy sitting they had it in his K fine so it was the birth of Yu okay but he doesn't seem very convinced let's now explore something quite out of the box number 50 so this these are two sources from classic commentaries the first is from ra Frank who wrote a commentary on the and the other one is from of Aron vers also uh 19th century talmudist but let's look at number 15 and 16 so first of all R Fran he was very famous RAV he was the father-in-law of the SBA he was the great-grandson of theal Muk look at what he says I found a manuscript he says satet Tav Nar who died no it wasn't yoska it wasn't Jesus it wasn't wasn't it shim hpus he saved the Jewish people from terrible problems Bim in the time of those who were pirates who broke down the the fences it's interesting the helist period is is called that as well and the day of his death was preserved and they made a Tanis on the day of his death now by the way if you say it was the day of Jesus's birth then now you understand why they didn't tell us what that day was because he would have got them into serious trouble but who is this shim CPUs you ever come across this fellow shiman CPUs probably unless you heard about lman sheer you wouldn't have come across them so let's see what he says here um look at number 16av the nth of Tavis in books of The Chronicles shim same guy shimi this is the day that he died his yard side that he really fixed Judaism but then he was hidden away is an unknown hero an unsung hero this man shim Aus they it was his yide he was a great savior of the Jewish people but they had to keep it quiet because the whole thing only works if you keep it under wraps he was a hidden hero and that's why he says says number 16 in in the book of the list of the F that's why it says the rabbis never wrote why talking about this they never wrote it because you're not meant to know it's meant to be a secret until now it's not going to be a secret anymore who is shiman hakus or shiman cpon so this is none other than someone called Shimon Simon who became known as Peter or Shimon Kus Kus in Aramaic is from kab which means a rock okay um a rock in Latin in Latin is Petrus as in the word petrified okay uh Simon Peter uh who was Simon Peter before called Simon he was one of the disciples he was one of the 12 apostles okay Simon was called Shimon and he became called Peter and his name was changed according to the New Testament to Peter because Petros and this became what the Christians known as St Peter and where is the Christian tradition for where St Peter is buried in St Peter's in the Vatican right okay if anyone's ever done a tour of the Vatican whether you can go in the churches or not it's a different sh probably not but not for now but in St Peter St Peter's Basilica and he was by Christian tradition the first pope he was the first pope and he says we've got news for you the first pope was really Jewish and he was really from and he was really a an authentic Jewish person who actually masqueraded as a Christian Pope in order to save the Jewish people and it's his y side on the ninth of tavus okay so let's see where where does this come from so I've brought you two sources one is uh from a a collection of midashim called o midashim o midashim was put together by a r in the early 1900s his name was eisenstein put together a lot of the Lesser known midrashim and the other midash I brought you was from a collection called tus yesu which is much much older but maybe from the same sources as he put these midashim together we'll talk about to yesu in a minute just look quickly in number 17 I brought it for you in English here and we're not going to read the whole thing and it was after these events There Rose a great strike between the Christians the jwes a Christian who would see a Jew he would kill him the distress kept increasing for 30 years and the Christians gathered by thousands and 10 thousands and prevented Israel from making the pilgrimage festival and there was great distress in Israel like the day that the golden Cal was made remember that for next week we'll talk about the golden Cal then and 12 men went out he are the apostles and traveled through the TW kingdoms and they prophesied false prophecies in the camp and Israel strayed after them and they were men of renown and they strengthened belief in Jesus and they said they were his emissaries and many of the children of Israel gathered after them meaning there were Christians missionizing Jews in early Christianity and persuading Jews to become Christians so um hang on I can't believe the same thing happened at the same time the same week okay fine on my phone don't worry about my phone um what happened and the sages saw this evil thing and it was very Grievous to them and a man said to his fellow woe to us for we have sinned this evil has come about Israel in our days and we and our fathers have never heard of and they were distressed and they sat and they wept and they lifted their eyes to Heaven they said please God God of heaven give us advice what to do how can we stop you know the Christians were infiltrating Judaism you couldn't even tell who was a Christian the early Christians were Jews they kept kosher they kept shabas and you might organize a sh with one of them for your son or for your daughter and then you find out they're a hidden they're a hidden Christian they're a Christian Jew so how what are they going to do please Hashem help us for innocent blood has been spilled etc etc because of the stumbling block fight next paragraph and it was when they finished speaking an elder of the elders arose and his name was Shimon Kaa this is the same same man shim shimi and he communicated with a Heavenly voice and he said to them hear me my brothers and people if it's good in your eyes I will separate these men from the congregation of the children of Israel they will have no portion or inheritance among Israel but you must take upon yourself the sin meaning he said I will salt it but you the Jewish people have to promise that you'll get me out of geham you have to take it and they all answered and said we'll take upon ourselves the sin but do as you spoke it so what happened shim and Kea went inside the temple he wrote Because the temple was still standing he wrote The Great Name of Hashem and tore his flesh and he placed the writing inside it and he left the temple and he took out the writing and he studied the name of hasem he smuggled it out the real name of Hashem that they heard in the in the B mikdash and he went to the Christian metropolis and he cried out in a loud voice and said all who believe in Jesus come to me for I am his Emissary I'm going I'm one of the Apostles he said and they said to him give us a sign and a miracle and he said what sign do you request for me and they said perform for us the same Miracles that Jesus performed in his lifetime and Simon keer said bring me a leper and they brought him one he placed his hand on him and behold he was healed and they said and he said bring a corpse and they brought one to him and he placed his hand on him and he came to life and stood on his feet and those men saw and fell on their faces to the ground and they said truly you are an emissary of Jesus and he did this thus in his lifetime and he said to them I am an emissary of Jesus last paragraph and this is what he commanded me to go and he commanded me to go to you swear to me that you will do everything I command you and they said yeah we will do it and shim and keer said to them no that Jesus actually hated Israel and their Torah as Isaiah prophesy and further know he doesn't want Israel as H prophets for you're not my people and even though he has the power to upro them from the the world in any in any case he doesn't want to destroy them entirely meaning the Jews will continue this is classic Christian theology the Jews continue to exist in order to show how disgraced they are that they rejected the Christian Messiah rather he wants to leave them to bring to in order that his hanging and his stoning will be remembered for all generations of most of the great afflictions he suffered Etc over the page and now he says this is what Jesus wants me to tell you he warns you and commands you not to do any more evil to any Jew leave the Jews alone meaning we need Jews don't kill them anymore and if a Jew says to a Christian come with me a mile he'll say go with him two miles and if a Jew strikes him on his left cheek he'll turn with him the right cheek you've heard that before right so that he will receive his reward in this world Etc and if you do this you'll Merit to dwell with him in his portion and behold He commands you not to celebrate the Festival of matsas rather celebrate the Day of his death what we call Easter and instead of shabat celebrate 40 days from when he was stoned and ascended to Heaven Pentecost and instead of sukat celebrate his birthday and on the 8 day of his birth celebrate the Day on which he was circumcised meaning this guy Shimon this sadic shim who is posing as an apostle says to the Christians stop keeping Hal stop keeping Mitzvah we don't want you to keep I've been told to stop you keeping Mitzvah you have to from now on reject mitzvas and they all answered him we will do everything you've spoken if only you'll stay with us and he says I will dwell with you and except the following I will not eat any food except for dry bread measured water and you must build me a tower in a City and I will dwell in it until the day of my death that's Peter's Basilica and they said to him as you speak so we shall do and he built a tower for him and he dwelt in his Tower as a home and they provided his daily ration bread and water until the day of his death and what did he do there in his Tower he composed many lurgical poems and he sent through all the borders of Israel so he would serve as a memorial for all generations and all the lurgical poems he composed he sent to his rabbis he smuggled out these uh ptim that he composed and he sent them to the eyes to show them that he was still an underground converso he was a secret Jew he was a hidden Jew and afterwards they built on it a magnificent building and this Tower still stands in Rome and they call it Peter which is the name Stone because he dwelt there Etc interesting this man he died on the ninth of Tavis and it doesn't say here explicitly he died on the ninth we'll see that in a minute and he was the secret underground Jew the first pope so if anyone says has there ever been a Jewish Pope according to this midash there has and this appears in forms in tus yeshu what's tus yesu tus yesu is a book which circulated in the Middle Ages it's actually older than the Middle Ages they trace it back all the way to the to the Gonic period and maybe even earlier so it's very very old as old as many of the other midashim and it's it's a very negative account of Jesus of all things how he was born how he lived how he died and of course this book was banned by Christians for most of History because if Jews were found with this book told us yeshu this was a they considered a li against Christianity there is even a theory that it was based on an early um gospel that was never allowed into the Canon the Jewish gospel it's actually very interesting Academia on this but not for now the only people who really were allowed to have told this yesu ironically were Christians and they were the ones who printed it originally so I brought you a few things here I'm just it's mostly the same story if you look at the end it says uh the last paragraph after some days he wrote poetry in the tower cros yotus zto by his name as as did Al Ben KH you've heard of one of the greatest authors of puim so now you know he said according to this it was elazar and also shiman CPUs and he sent and gathered the Elders of Israel and gave them everything da and he sent these all around the world and they and he taught them to all of the caners all around Israel all of the Kim learned the Pim and the uh the songs in the daving of shim cpos they learned these songs everywhere they went interesting so it says in tus yesu now do we trust Tes yesu uh is it authoritative how does it work good question you can you can look at that elsewhere but there are a lot of different things that come out of Tois Y A lot of the things that the folklore that you know all about the birth Yosi Panda and all this you'll be familiar with all come straight out of tus yesu now there was a 175 version of yesu which was printed by a Christian and and translated into Latin you can go online you can get it I gave you a link for it you can get it in Latin if you like reading in Latin there are people who read in Latin I met I was recruiting just now for my Mida I bumped into a I was introduced to a young woman in Manhattan fluent in Latin and ancient Greek you know could come in handy one day so he says like this number 19 the shim Pony this is from told us yesu number 19 and Shimon died theim and the Jewish people mourned for him and they fix the day to mourn for him in every single year [Music] Onis on the T on the ninth of Tavis so the ninth of Tavis actually originally appears in toasu which is very very old as old as the bag so now maybe you know why we don't know who died on this day we do know who died but we don't want to let the can out of the bag look in number 20 another this is in English have Lon translated this Simon resided in the tower of Rome where he ordained and codified the Christian laws and customs as he was commanded to do by the King of Judea and the sages he transformed the alphabet Oh the alphabet giving the letters new names thereby intimating to those in the secr in on the secret that what he ordained was false this was the alphabet A B C D E interesting he says that Latin and again this I don't know if you'll necessarily find historically this is exactly where Latin comes from but he said Latin the letters that we know were formed by shim says told us yesu by shim Calon by the way there's even a tradition that some of them are plays on Words and you might not believe this but it's true some of the are sh and bring down l m n is the words L God a m is a mother a a God who had no mother l m a interesting that meaning he gets the whole the whole the whole thing here A B CDE e f and he also composed for them books of Lies which he called the a ailon but they called they thought he said the evangelium and Simon also authored books in the name of jesus' disciple including John oh now John's in on it as well okay claiming that Jesus has provided with him all the material wow this is becoming quite a widespread conspiracy it's not Simon it's John as well that's in on this too interesting does this have any other traditional Jewish Source yes in number 21 this is a very classic Source written by in the 12th 13th century says a JW that goes off and becomes a Christian we give him a nickname we quot from we read this morning we have to name them negative names like we name those God's negative names he gives you some examples in Shay Abraham if this Jew was called Abraham and he becomes a Christian yra we should call him Ephraim interesting I know actually very lots of very kosha yosa Jews called Ephraim I wonder if they know the saer or if there's any other origin of the name even if the non-jew was actually a hidden sadic it's sadic that became a Christian is there such a thing and other people then go after him he refers to him exactly in the in the like this hidden sad shim they call him Peter what did they call him in Hebrew petore Peter the donkey because of petore pamor as in the Redemption of the donkey the firstborn donkey yeah so now you know why Peter is called pamore because it's the nickname even though he says he was a sadic now remember Rashi right at the very beginning it says that Rome is is is a disgraced because they have no writing and they have no language they have no scripts and they have and we saw a strange Rashi all their books were written by other people that Rashi that we have in our garar is a sensed Rashi the original Rashi and you can find it now easily online reads as follows number 22 other people wrote the books that cause other people to go off and here's what they are y The Book of John powerless the book of Paul Petrus the book of Peter these were all Jews and these books were all forged by these Jews in on the conspiracy what does lashan mean they have no lashan who grammatica grammatica is the word rash uses for Latin okay and this is the language that the priest use the Shu they changed it the the they made nonsense of it to think that they themselves wrot it to to distance the Jews from the Christians it was all to try and get the Christians to stay away from the Jews the and they didn't do anything wrong here it was actually a good thing they did they were doing it in order to help the Jews they show the Jews in such terrible problems because of early Christianity because of the deceptions of yes they they they they made out that they were with him the cacious and one of their Saints theil but they made the whole thing up and he calls it not but the hanging of Jesus rashi rashi says it quotes explicitly this is the man that we're talking about he's there uh in rash okay good where does this affects us today apart from knowing why you might fast on the ninth of Ted If you planning to fast on the ninth of Ted now at least you know at least way what it might be all about so there's two things one of them is NL which I just mentioned it's really a whole of itself NL so if you look on page seven I brought you some of the uh the traditions on NL that they don't learn Torah which night is NL so you should just know that there were two traditions in the early churches to when yesu was born one was the 25th of December and one was the 6th of January and that's got nothing to do do with the Gregorian and the Julian calendar that was a thousand years before Pope Gregory changed the calendar to the Gregorian calendar so they were Christians that celebrated the birth of yeshu on the 6th of December and and therefore they the bring down if you live in a country where n act to the 6th of December then you have to not learn Torah on the 6th of December and I brought you some of them in Haim why did they not learn Torah so as they not to give us to to yesu who was born on that day why did they why did they uh learn Torah only after midnight so there's a there's a physical issue here as well that the Jews used to be attacked uh and killed on the night of Christmas people used to go out they used to get drunk they used to attack Jews they used to attack the women it was a very dangerous night for a Jew to be out by midnight they all managed to roll into church to hear midnight mess so at midnight it was safe for the Jews to come out to learn Torah so that's one of the reasons why they learned Torah at midnight and I brought you other things brought down as well the mitnagdim never accepted n and theim didn't even know you know anything about it they they had nothing to do with it the custom on N KN was to play chess with kabad not just Stam chess but uh you know to to broaden to deepen your analytical skills Etc there there were other people who had yeshivas who had a Minag to tear all the bathroom toilet paper for the whole year they were te it on little KN that's you know Gates head did that you heard it here Gates head did that what's what's more what's more um astounding and I brought you the last page just look very briefly in the last minute the Mak V the Mak V student of Rashi bring down that we said that this man this hidden sadic this Jew who who said he was the first pope he composed Pim he composed special liturgy for the Jewish s there is a view says the max ofri that he composed the poem nishat K Peter Simon Peter because inish K is a is a backwards of cross of shin now there were those that said it was shim it was a different shim it was shim but there were those that said no and he brings this down the there were those who said that it's actually shim he composed Nish but he doesn't like that at all he says God forbid God forbid God forbid used to say the Nish that we say on shabas morning was composed by the first pope if anyone who says this he has to bring a Corbin for saying such a thing and not just a corbon but a big fat one too you can't say that however there are those that said that the shadal talks about itav he says it was a mistake it wasn't him ever didn't do that but I found you and here for the Yas amongst you you'll appreciate this in the footnotes in the rodheim Sid okay that the yaka still use uh to DAV from in number 26 he brings down on the nishmat prayer if you look there in the I brought it to you you can read it to you later he says some say was shim and Ben that wrote it and some people say was shimoni the first Jewish Pope Peter himself that wrote nishat Kai now uh it's a very interesting debate very interesting analysis um and uh maybe brings to light this very unusual Jewish figure uh again you can decide research it yourself decide if you agree with it but it it pops up in many of the traditional sources that we've seen today um and uh now you maybe have a bit of an insight into what might have happened on the ninth Tav next week the writing of the translation of the Tor into Greek and the 10th of Tav we'll see how that works okay