RABBI YITZHAK KADURI
RABBI YITZHAK KADURI
(The following information has been condensed from an article by Pastor Bob Bonnell in COMMUNIONFIRE – 11/24/2014)
Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri was known for his photographic memory and his memorization of the Bible, the Talmud, Rashi and other Jewish writings. He knew Jewish sages and celebrities of the last century and rabbis who lived in the Holy Land and kept the faith alive before the State of Israel was born.
Kaduri was not only highly esteemed because of his age of 108. He was charismatic and wise, and chief rabbis looked up to him as a Tsadik, a righteous man or saint. He would give advice and blessings to everyone who asked. - Thousands visited him to ask for counsel or healing. His followers speak of many miracles and his students say that he predicted many disasters.
When he died, more than 200,000 people joined the funeral procession on the streets of Jerusalem to pay their respects as he was taken to his final resting place. “When he comes, the Messiah will rescue Jerusalem from foreign religions that want to rule the city,” Kaduri once said. “They will not succeed for they will fight against one another.”
A few months before he died Rabbi Kaduri was supposed to have written a note with instructions that it be sealed and not read until one year after his death. The secret note said: “Concerning the letter abbreviation of the Messiah’s name, He will lift the people and prove that his word and law are valid. This I have signed in the month of mercy, Yitzhak Kaduri”.
The Hebrew sentence (translated above in bold) with the hidden name of the Messiah reads: Yarim Ha’Am Veyokhiakh Shedvaro Vetorato Omdim. The initials spell the Hebrew name of Jesus, Yehoshua. Yehoshua and Yeshua are e-ectively the same name, derived from the same Hebrew root of the word “salvation” as documented in Zechariah 6:11 and Ezra 3:2. - The same priest writes in Ezra, “Yeshua son of Yozadak” while writing in Zechariah “Yehoshua son of Yohozadak.” -The priest adds the holy abbreviation of God’s name, ho, in the father’s name Yozadak and in the name Yeshua.
In an interview with Israel Today, Rabbi David Kaduri, the 80-year-old son of the late Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, denied that his father left a note with the name Yeshua just before he died. “It’s not his writing,” he said when we showed him a copy of the note. During a nighttime meeting in the Nahalat Yitzhak Yeshiva in Jerusalem, books with the elder Kaduri’s handwriting from 80 years ago were presented to us in an attempt to prove that the Messiah note was not authentic.
When we told Rabbi Kaduri that his father’s official website (www.kaduri.net) had mentioned the Messiah note, he was shocked. “Oh no! That’s blasphemy. The people could understand that my father pointed to him [the Messiah of the Christians].” David Kaduri confirmed, however, that in his last year, his father had talked and dreamed almost exclusively about the Messiah and his coming. “My father has met the Messiah in a vision,” he said, “and told us that he would come soon.”
Israel Today was given access to many of the rabbi's manuscripts, written in his own hand for the exclusive use of his students. Most striking were the cross-like symbols painted by Kaduri all over the pages. In the Jewish tradition, one does not use crosses. In fact, even the use of a plus sign is discouraged because it might be mistaken for a cross. But there they were, scribbled in the rabbi's own hand. When we asked what those symbols meant, Rabbi David Kaduri said they were “signs of the angel." Pressed further about the meaning of the “signs of the angel," he said he had no idea. Rabbi David Kaduri went on to explain that only his father had had a spiritual relationship with God and had met the Messiah in his dreams.
Orthodox Jews around the Nahalat Yitzhak Yeshiva told Israel Today a few weeks later that the story about the secret note of Rabbi Kaduri should never have come out, and that it had damaged the name the revered old sage.
Israel Today spoke to two of Kaduri’s followers in Jerusalem who admitted that the note was authentic, but confusing for his followers as well. “We have no idea how the Rabbi got to this name of the Messiah,” one of them said.