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Jan. 4, 2023 - Know More News - Adam Green
12:28
Rabbis Believe Saint Peter & Saint Paul are Secret Agents of the Jews
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Why do some tzaddikim fast on the 9th of Teves?
The Shochonarach says, they didn't want to give you the reason.
Very, very strange.
There is a fast, but we're not telling you why.
Well, one thing that happens for sure, when somebody tells you they're not giving you the reason, people certainly want to look for the reason, right?
That incites your curiosity.
So, the standard reason that's given really makes no sense, because why would this be concealed?
It is said that the 9th of Teves was the yard site, was the anniversary of the death of Ezra Hasophar.
Now, Ezra was the great, great prophet and Kohen, who was the religious leader of the Jewish people at the beginning of the second temple after the 70 years of the Babylonian exile.
And it was Ezra that reconstituted the religious community and the observance of the Torah.
He organized the men of the great assembly, the Anshei Keneset Akdola, and Chazal consider Ezra to be so great and his leadership was so essential that he is compared to Moshe Rabbano.
And it is said that had the Torah not been given to Moshe, Ezra would have been worthy to receive the Torah from God.
And as a result, on the day of his death, we mourn and we grieve to this very day.
Now, that's in the Slichos.
The Slichos this morning mentions that the 9th of Teves was the yard site of Ezra Hasophar.
But the problem is very obvious.
That's not a reason you've got to keep secret.
I mean, the Shokhanar says, we fast and we're not telling you why.
If it's the art site of Ezra Hasophar, so that's the reason.
It's not a secret.
So let me, it's interesting we're talking about the debate with the Christian missionary, there are two Christian reasons why the 9th of Teves became a fast that we didn't want to publicize.
But in our small group, I will publicize it.
One speculation is that the 9th of Teves was the actual birthday of Jesus of Nazareth in the year that he was born.
Now, as you know, December 25th as the date of Jesus' birth is Beklal, not an accurate date.
But Jesus was born towards the end of the solar year, November, December.
And of course, the Russian Orthodox Church has a different date for Christmas.
So according to this tradition, the 9th of Teves was Yashka's birthday.
And since the birth of Yashka heralded so many devastating sorrows that the Jewish people have suffered for centuries and centuries.
So we make a fast, or some righteous people would make a fast on the day of Yashka's birth.
And the Hebrew date was said to be the 9th of Teves.
And they've actually seen some astronomical calculations that try to prove that based on the actual year of his birth and the like.
And you can well understand why we would not want to publicize that reason.
Because if the Christians see that we're fasting because we're grieving the death of Yashka, that looks very bad.
Because that's not like Good Friday where you're fasting because of crucifixion.
This is factly because of his birth.
And that would look very bad.
But there's a second Christological reference that is even more intriguing and fascinating.
And it may be a Baba Meisa, may be totally untrue.
Or it may be true.
We don't have definitive evidence.
But this is, it's not from Chazal.
It's not in the Medrish.
But it comes from sources in Rishonim, like the Makser Vitri, which was written by disciples of Rashi, and in a famous book of anonymous authorship called Toldos Yeshua.
Toldos Yeshua is kind of the Jewish history of Yashka.
And this was a widely circulated work in the Middle Ages, anonymous authorship, and it actually had multiple versions as well.
But here is the story.
The story is that the 9th of Teves is a Yortzeit.
It is the day of the death of a righteous person.
But the righteous person we are commemorating is not Ezra Hasophar, but it's a man called Shimon Kippah.
Shimon Kippah, Kippah in Aramaic is rock.
Shimon Kippah is none other than the man that is known in the Christian Bible as Simon Peter, the Apostle Peter, Yashka's closest disciple, and the one who succeeded him as the leader of the church.
Peter became the first pope, the first bishop of Rome, and his name was Simon, Shimon, and Peter means rock, Petra.
And Yashka gave him the name Peter because he says, upon this rock I will found my church.
And in Aramaic, that's Kippah.
Kippah means rock.
And Shimon Kippah is the Apostle Peter.
So the 9th of Teves, we fast because we're grieving over the death, not the birth, the death of a great tzaddik, the Apostle Peter.
What on earth does that mean?
The Apostle Peter is a tsadiq in the Jewish tradition?
So listen to the story that is recorded in Toldos Yeshua.
Excuse me, what's the name of the book again?
Tovas?
Toldot, the history?
Yeshu.
Yeshu is Jesus, abbreviated.
Toldos Yeshua.
You can look up.
There's a Wikipedia article out of it here.
You can look up.
This is a very well-known book.
But it's like there are 10 different versions of it.
Each one version is a little different.
Toldos Yeshua gives us the following story about Shimon Kippah.
The early Christians were, of course, all Jews, as Yashka himself was a Jew.
And as a result, similar to Messianic Jews today, they infiltrated Jewish congregations.
They diwed in synagogues.
They participated in Shabbat and in Yomtev.
And this was a very dangerous thing.
This was like a cancer within Judaism.
Because as a result, your Jewish friends and neighbors might be espousing Christian heretical ideas.
And the Chachamim, the hated Pharisees of the New Testament, so to speak, the Pharisees thought this was a very, very dangerous thing.
Because this was introducing a cancerous influence that could take Jews away from Judaism.
So Shimon Kippah volunteered to do the equivalent of a suicide mission, a spiritual suicide mission.
He basically said, I will create a church.
I will create a new religion.
I will, as it were, take Christians out of Judaism and make them a sect and make them a group that is totally distinct.
And in that way, they will be seen to be a different religion.
In other words, they will no longer be part of Judaism, so to speak.
They will be separate, and although once they're separate, they could oppress us, they could hurt us in various ways, but at least black and white will be clearly demarcated.
We will know Christian Jewish.
So Peter said, in order for me to do this, I have to give up my affiliation with the Jewish community.
I have to go to Yashka and say I embrace him wholeheartedly.
And I know I will never be part of the Jewish community again.
I will live my life as one who repudiated Judaism, but I will continue to keep the commandments privately.
So the first Pope was in fact a religious Jew, not only a Jew, but a religious Jew, according to this legend or this story.
And Shimon Kippa just asked one thing.
He says, I am leaving the Jewish people forever in order that other Jews should not be dragged into apostasy.
But he asked the sages, please remember me.
Remember the anniversary of my death.
And in Toledo Sieshu, it is recorded that the fast of the 9th of Teve is in memory of Peter, who in our tradition actually is a saint, Saint Peter, so to speak, because he sacrificed his own Judaism in order that Claudius real should not be hurt by Christian influence.
Now, to add something even more wild to this, he also composed a prayer, and he asked the sages to include this prayer in the liturgy.
And this prayer is none other than the prayer Nishmas.
Nishmas, Nishmat, is a very beautiful prayer that we recite every Shabbos morning.
And we recite at the Pesach Seder.
And according to at least one Masorah, the author of Nishmas is none other than Shimon Kippa.
And in memory of his great, great sacrifice for the Jewish people, we recite his beautiful prayer as well.
Now, this is quite a wild story, and there are some Rishonim who say this is heretical, and they actually say anyone that says that Nishmas was written by the Apostle Peter is going to have to give an accounting to God after 120 years.
So some authorities were absolutely aghast at that type of reconstruction.
But some opinions say it did happen.
Now, I'll mention another thing.
There was a similar theory in the 19th century among historians that that was the role of Paul, the Apostle Paul.
Now, Paul, again, I don't go over Christian history in too much length.
Paul was not one of Yashka's apostles.
I shouldn't have called him.
He was not the Apostle Paul.
But he didn't know Yashka.
I mean, Jesus was crucified before Paul went on the scene.
But Paul declares himself that he was a student of Robin Gamlio.
And Paul says he was a proud Pharisee, and Paul says he was going to persecute those Christians.
And that was his road to Damascus, to kind of find some Christians and beat them up, whatever Paul was going to do to them.
And then, of course, he had his famous epiphany, the road to Damascus, right?
A very famous expression, the central language.
So in the 19th century, there was a theory among academic historians, and they probably got from Toldos Yeshua, that it was Paul that really broke Christianity off from Judaism.
And that actually makes a lot of sense.
It makes a lot of sense.
In fact, it makes much more sense to locate it in Paul rather than Peter, because Paul created ministry to the Gentiles.
And it was Paul that actually taught the Torah doesn't have to be kept anymore, because all you need is faith.
So it could very well be that in rabbinic literature generally, the apostles are all mixed up, meaning to say they say Peter, where they mean Paul, and the Chachamen were not always Mediak in whom they were talking about.
So it could very well be that the Toldos Yeshua reference to Shimon Kiba should be understood as a reference to Paul.
And then that would validate the academic theory of the 19th century that Paul was a secret agent designed the Shem Shemaim and the Shem Yados to break Christianity away from Judaism, to make it a separate religion so it would no longer infiltrate within.
And of course, the infiltration is a major, major danger that we face, because now you do have that infiltration.
You have the Messianic Jews, people who have situations out, and they may even look Haredi on some level.
And they infiltrate, and that could be a very, very dangerous thing.
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