What was the Kabbalah?

Having rejected the true Messiah, and seen the temple who was his image destroyed by Titus, having seen Messianic hope after Messianic hope fail, being unable to apply all of the Torah in daily life, there were the Jews who wanted to know what the Torah was really about. Living as under King David? Sure, a fine thing. But it was Christians, it was we who whether goy or "goy" (=convert) confessed Jesus as the real and only Christ, who century after century had our king Davids, men like Justinian or Ina, Alfred or Charlemagne, Henry II of Germany or Louis IX of France (both Saints).

Some concluded that Messiah had come and the Christendom was his Messianic empire - rightly so. But what about those who refused this solution?

One approach was searching if the Torah has possibly a secret meaning.

I reveal no wellkept secret if I say part of the method was using anagrams, but more especially perigrams and endograms (keeping surrounding letters or in reverse adding letters within as if extant letters had been perigrams).

It took maybe - I am tempted to mythologise the attempt historically - centuries of boiling this verse or that passage or such a chapter down in exactly the right way, eliminating the wrong solutions as scientifically as possibly, maybe - this is what I think - applying results as rules of life for the proponents, applying them as magic, applying them as stratagems of war and diplomacy in relation to Christians, taking away every solution that failed, one after one.

People have gone mad in these attempts. People have gone to hell and damnation applying evil in this. Trial and error - the rule that Hannah Arendt supplied to Kant's "categoric imperative" but which Michel Onfray did not find in him - weeded out I suppose wrong attempt after wrong attempt to understand the Torah or even a little passage of it.

This or something like it, is what I suppose behind the achievement of a lifetime, the life of Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri. Having distilled down the Torah to fewer and fewer things, shorter and shorter versions, the quintessence of it has been concluded as a Hebrew phrase giving the anagram Yehoshua, at 2:25 of the video where I found it:

Yarim Ha'Am Veyokhiakh Shedvaro Vetorato Omdim

this equals=Yehoshua=Yeshua=Jesus

source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0DTT3u2JZ8

I have not been involved in this, but I admire it. For myself, finding Christ took a much simpler route. I could not be a yunquero, since, giving the "ocho apelidos" - the born family names of greatgrandfathers and greatgrandmothers - it would have included Swedish Jewry. Included, not consisted of entirely, mind you. Some great grand mother of mine was baptised for the love of some great grandfather of mine.

Now, for the translation of that phrase, it ends in: "that his word and his law are valid" or "is valid"

What about the word "and the humble shall possess the land"?

Well, the land that belongs to God, the land that is Jerusalem on high and not the one here below, is reserved, for God of course. And by God for the humble.

Is God following that law himself? Indeed, he is. He humbled himself by becoming man. And of angels, as of men, humble get up there, proud fall down or do not get up.

But has he proven the point in earthly matters too? Indeed, he has.

Monks have time after time, place after place chosen the utmost humility, and they have time after time, place after place ended up landlords. So much, indeed, that Protestant Reformations and diverse ideological Revolutions killed and chased away monks to get their lands. And Israel inhabitants cannot ignore that the vinyeards of Mount Carmel were bought from the Carmelite nuns who thereafter settled into some part or suburb of Cairo.

But that point was already made by Chesterton.

Let us go to History, not of monasteries but of languages.

What peoples did possess the land?

Greeks were not humble when acting under Gorgias and Antiochus Epiphanes. But some others were. And there they lost to the Maccabees and their allies of Rome and Sparta.

Alexander reached the Hindus or Ganges, because against Persians, Greeks had been the humble power, content to defend themselves and their freedoms again and again. Besides, when the Greeks in Ionia revolted against Persia, they did so by the pious act of destroying an idolatrous temple. Wiccans should take heed, Diana Temple burners defeated Diana Temple defenders. Same place where later St Paul attacked the cult of Diana, without even setting torch to her temple himself.

But Rome eclipsed Greece. She traces her remote origins back to Aeneas the Pious. A man content to follow the voice of whatever appeared to him as divine powers. Maybe he was even led by God, and the Pagan divinites that appear in the Aeneid are just other people, more idolatrous than he, who interpreted his gestures wrongly. He left a woman - even to commit suicide, God preserve me from being cruel even unwillingly or unwittingly to that point - and he who had carried his father on his back also left him behind for the sake of obeying paternal orders.

Rome was humbled by Etruscans. Rome was humbled by Brennus. Rome was humbled, and militarily speaking on her knees, when Hannibal was Ante Portas. And she won the world.

Caesar was a Popular, not an Optimate, he was humbly content to depend on support from humble people. And Caesar means emperor, but Cicero only means tourist guide, even though that splendid speaker once was Pater Patrie.

Latin and Greek no longer quite divide the Mediterranean, do they?

I was going to look into the list where English is today the largest language. But by native speakers, Mandarin, Spanish and English are the top three, and English is only third. Do Chinese sons obey their fathers humbly? I think they do (or did up to the one child policy). Do Spaniards and Hispanics content themselves with depending on priests, rather than read for themselves, as the Children of Israel did back when the Torah was read once every seven years to the people by the High Priests? I think they do. And are Anglophones content to trust the Bible rather than the scientists? Believe me, a Creationist in Paris is sometimes mistaken for being an English Only Speaker, even if he is a Swedish Polyglot.

But let us return to the other list, total number of speakers. Imposing ones language on others as a lingua franca is also an inheriting of the land.

Interestingly, according to this source, adding Native and Secondary speakers still leaves Mandarin on top. So, here goes a site, where the list I expected is not very immediately available:

http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm

After weighing six factors (number of primary speakers, number of secondary speakers, number and population of countries where used, number of major fields using the language internationally, economic power of countries using the languages, and socio-literary prestige), Weber compiled the following list of the world's ten most influential languages (number of points given in parentheses):

English (37)
French (23)
Spanish (20)
Russian (16)
Arabic (14)
Chinese (13)
German (12)
Japanese (10)
Portuguese (10)
Hindi/Urdu (9)

And I will deal with top three, mainly. How have the humble inherited the land in the case of English, French and Spanish speakers?

When were the English humble?

When the English landlords, dispossessed by the Normans, forgave them. See History of the English People by John Richard Green. (Looking for reference in the longer work, online - http://o-x.fr/4o2p0 - maybe should have consulted the shorter one.)

If Belloc is right, they were humble also when becoming English instead of British, most of them, adopting the language of the conqueror as soon as conquering monarch was a Christian.

Even if he was not right, heritages occurred that let the English inherit some of the merits of the Britons: including King Arthur's humility. The one where he pardoned his adulterous wife.

Also, they were humble when accepting the rule, if not quite the language of Danes, under the exact same condition: as soon as Knut was a Christian.

Also, King John humbled himself to the Pope to get rid of Magna Charta, which succeeded, and similarily a Danish King humbled himself to the Pope to get rid of one Holy Roman Emperor (a Stauffer at that time).

Also, the humble classes rose to replace the more posh speakers of French - a process which was not at all foreseen by the English who forgave the Norman. It happened between the Black Death and getting Beaten by St Joan of Arc. That way English was founded. Nobles speaking Anglonorman left their places to heirs or newcomers able to speak only English and add some Anglonorman words for the occasions that English dialect did not provide words for. Secretaries speaking Anglonorman were replaced with lowlier men who spoke English plus added some French vocabulary. Once England no longer had a claim on France, or no longer tried to make it happen, this victory of St Joan of Arc (delayed by some twenty years) made English the language of its own country.

So true, as the French right has been saying: once they were off French ground, she probably even prayed for them.

Just as the Irish did when centuries of English occupation ended.

But was St Joan of Arc humble? Did she not claim to hear voices from Heaven?

Yes, but apart from believing them, she depended totally on the Church for her religion.

And - we are considering French now - were the French humble to resist the English?

A little less, of course, than the English to the Normans. But then again, St Joan of Arc was, it seems, also defending the Catholic faith and the Christian society - since at her time, there were already Lollards and anticlericals among the English.

"But we will fight for our lives and our laws" - as Judas Maccabeus said. Norman invaders settled for ruling the land after the laws of King Edward. English invaders in France did not quite settle for any really legal and loyal arrangement.

But before that, France was humle enough to take Latin lessons from an Englishman. That was how she started writing French.

Here is the story.

Ausonius would have said a thing like "the son made five steps to our slave and then stopped" like: "filius fecit quinque passus ad nostru(m) servu(m), et post quievit."

Some a bit less posh would have said: "ille filios fechet chinque passos a nostro servo e post se adrestavet".

A Frankish invader would have pronounced the accented syllables a bit heavier than his subjects: "ELL-e FIL-ios FECH-et CHINK-e PASS-os a NOST-ro SERV-o, e POST se ar-re-STA-vet" or even "se ar-re-STAAT".

A bit before they were about to reduce it completely to "el fils fist cinq pas a nostre serf, e pos s'arrestaa" they were realising they had become lousy at pronouncing Latin.

But in neighbouring England, they pronounced Latin after the letter: "filius fecit quinque passus ad nostrum servum, et post quievit" (pronouncing final m's, as separate consonants, since English did not nasalise vowels, only difference from Ausonius). So an English monk, Alcuin, was introduced to teach French priests how to pronounce Latin. He did.

After that, when the priests no longer pronounced Latin as it was spoken in France, the people no longer understood them, and they had to translate the Latin to what the people spoke. That is how they started writing according to the pronunciation of what was now no longer acknowledged as Latin but as Rustic Romance Tongue. French was born.

I know Greeks who are loth to admit that Katharevousa pronounced as Dhimotokee but preserving older spellings, forms and words, is not quite the Koinee Dialectos it used to be.

But I think this suffices about how English and French linguistically are proof he gave that his word is valid as to "the humble shall possess the earth". I even forgot about the Spanish and being humbled by both Visigoth before their conversion and Arab before their expulsion.

He also said, after taking bread in his hands, this is my flesh. Not only is there a perfect conformity between the Eucharist as Sacrifice of the New Covenant, making His Name Holy among the Gentiles, and His Sacrifice on the Cross as fulfilling all Aaronitic sacrifices that went before it.

But also, he has proven it by giving Ezechiel, the witness of bones getting flesh and bodies resurrecting, a scroll to eat. The Word made flesh, who makes bread unto himself for us to eat, if we do it in fear and remembrance of him, judging first ourselves, for our salvation, and if we do it otherwise, for our judgement, is the same Word of which the Torah is an extract.

How is the Torah most valid? If the scroll is eaten by the faithful, as Ezechiel ate it? Or if learned men invent and learned men apply Replacement Mitzvoth, doing this thing because that other thing was made impossible in year 70?

Tablets of Stone, and Scrolls of Vellum
Flesh and Blood, Bread and Wine,
For the sake of man's salvation
Hold the same text, the Word Divine.

So, if Jews would please respect the conclusion of the one they called Rabbi, the conclusion of Yitzshak Kaduri, that the Messiah corresponds to a text, the Hebrew acronym of which is transcribed in our language as Jesus, and respect the fact that I had better reasons than the Kabbalah to believe this, since I was raised by my faithful and pious mother, maybe I could start once again living as a Christian, which has all this time been my faith and belief. Now it has been years since I was unmolested by diverse hindrances, some of which were put in place by men, on living according to my Christian conscience. It has been years, I have had the right, once again, after relinquishing it temporarily by a pledge, to desire marriage. But men of the Church have acted as if I had no such right or were not capable of living marriage or some other excuse for trampling on my rights. And, sorry, I cannot but suspect, Jews were involved in such intrigues behind my back. Jews who wanted me to marry no Catholic, but a Jewess, or at least one whose Catholicism was to be judged by some Jewish standard which I do not acknowledge.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BpI, Georges Pompidou
16-I-2012