Page 4 - The Cariadian Jewish News, Thursday, July 21,1983
World-National
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DAVID BERKAN
Shabbatai Zvi was bora in Smyrna on July 23, 1626. His career as tlie longest lived of would-be messiahs was buoyed on the cres^of a miUenium of messianic hopes.- — —
Would-be messiahs arose as early as thi&Sth <6entury, when an attempt was made to lead the Jews of Crete dry-shod over the sea to Jerusalem; hundreds drowned. Attempts at miraculous redemptions intensified after Mohammed brought millions of Arabs and non-Arabs together under a new religion from Asia to Europe to form the dominant world po\yer for hundreds of years.
Jlslam's rapid triumphs suggested that the E,nd of Days was near and proved that spectacular leadership could come from the poorest people and that only a few individuals were needed to launch a widespread movement.
In 720, Serene of Syria stirred the Jewish world as far as Spain, A generation later, Isfahan tailor Abu-Issa prohiised to lead local Jews back across the Tigris and Euphrates to the Holy Land; when the khalif s troops easily scattered the unarmed rag-tag column,' Abu-Issa killed himself. Less than 50 years later and 100 miles away, shepherd Judghan al Rai brought his believers to a similar fate.
Messianic expectations, however, continued to grow. A minority accepted their would-be messiahs' new doctrines of ritual relaxation and the adoption of Mohammed and Jesus as true prophpis; of those, most were ultimately absorbed by Islam.
Expectations sparked
The adoption of Judaism by the Khazars, i |! Slavic-Mongolian warriors who maintained an 1 i| independent and sometimes dominant king- M 11 dom in southern Russia for almost 600 years, |i; :i raised messianic expectations among East ii 11 European Jews. Accounts brought back by i g long-voyaging merchants like Benjamin of i II Xudela, of remote exodc communities, and |; i| legends qflost tribes and reclusive but powerful i| II Jewish kingdoms, helped encburage the more |; :| established Jews of Spain, southern France 1 11 and Italy. By the 14tb centuiy,Jews fiwm East 1 i to West were united by messianic hopes, which ;|
I often competed for aUegiahce with evolving |i
II traditional observances. |i II Catastrophes rained down. Nearly 1,000 |i :| communities were destroyed or disrupted ||
I when Jews were blambd for the continent-wide !i
i outbreak of the Black Death/ 1348-9. Con- | il tinuous warfare between Moslems and Chris- M
II tians in Spain sparked one anti Jewish riot |j i.after another, often with large losses. For |i 11 example/ 12,000 Jews were massacred in || p Toledo in 1355; 50,000 were killed in Palma, i il Majorca, in 1391. Expulsions rose in/^Russia, i II Austria, Hungary, Germany and France/
The expulsions from Spain in 1492, where i II Jews lived for nearly 2,000 years, and from il II Portugal'five years later sent hundreds of |i || thousands to North Africa, Italy, Yugoslavia, 1 II the Balkans and Turkey. Taken along was a || II legacy of refined mysticism and poetic |; II speculation. These were the most notably trans- |:; II planteci and expanded in the dreamy hills of || Ii Safed as Lurianic Kabbalah, and transmitted §. il backlto the west as an aggressive new form of || il messianism." " ; H
II In 1648, Ukrainian leader Bogdan Chmiel- || iiil nickiled a revolt against Polish domination and M M incited pogroms that left nearly 200,000 Jews 1 |: de:ad. Surviving Polish Jewish settlements Jl 11 were destroyed several years later with the ii il outbreak of the Russian-Swedish war.
(^claiming that a '' heavenly voice'' would iil fiiide him in redeeming Israel, young 11 charismatic Shabbatai renounced observance || Ii; for mystical doctrine,,married a young Polish || II survivoFwhoielaimed she would be^the Wife of H g the messiah, and toured Salonika, Rhodes, il II Tripoli and Egypt. In 1665, he was hailed ^s-|| 11 king-messiah by Nathan of Gaza, a wandering iil visionary who became his closest disciple. || ii: Adherents flocked to. him from as far -as MJ
1 Holland.,: V    ;   _ : ;^ 1:
lii    In 1666, he confronted the suftan. Jailed in :;|
Ii Gallipoli, he transformed his birthday, Tisha ||
iiil B'av into a feast and held court. The authorities m
iiiiii were outraged; Zvi accepted Islam rather than 1
iiil death. ■' J
His posthumous following ended with the ii|
iil Holocaust; the last known conuhunity of |i
ii Shabbateans, in Salonika, was destroyed by ii |i the Nazis ui 1943. ■
Named as conviaed war criminal
UBC refuses to dismiss Luitjens
VANCOUVER —
The University of British Columbia has refused to dismiss botany lecturer Jacob Lui^ens, though he has been nam^ as^ a_eonyicted. war" criminal by the Shfaon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles.
Nazi-huriters at the centre last week sent a
Telex to university {^resident George Pederson, declaring that Luitjens "cannot be allowed to maintain position of honor" arUBC.
The centre said Liiit-jehs should be fired, even if all attempts fail to have him» extradited to the Netherlands to serve a 20-year sentence on a
charge of collaborating with the Nazis during World War H.
Robert Kaplan, federal solicitor-.general, has refused a request to extradite Luitjens toliol-land. He says the charge of collaborating with the Nazis, made by a Dutch court in 1948, is not covered by the Canada-
Netherlands extradition treaty signed hi 1899.
"The university's position is that it is up to the federal government," said UBC!s information officer, -Jim Banham. "The man is innocent until proven guilty." He said the university  only dis-
misses its employees on legal grounds and not because of the demands of outside organizations.
^4t is a moral Issue," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate ^ean
of the centre. "A convicted war criminal is still on the faculty of the university."
MONTREAL ^
" Over 250 members of the Bacher family took part in a reunion held at Grossinger's in the Cats-kills one recent weekend. All were descendants (or married to them) of Ethel Bacher and Ypssel Yussiper of Bu-kbyina, ^ Romania, who died in an 1860s cholera epidemic.
Their six children (who took their mother's surname) survived and were fruitful. The first Bacher came to the New World in 1895, settling in Montreal. Today there are 523 known blood relatives in the Bacher clan, including at least one in the Soviet Union.
The great majority now live in the United States, and correspondingly most of those at the reunion were from there. However, the Montreal and TQronto branches of the family were well rie-represented, with show-ingis as well from Ottawa, Halifax, Puerto Rico and Israel. Four generations were in attendance.
The organizers were Seymour Bellman of Montreal, Aaron Bacher of Toronto, and Mickey Weisenberg of New York. Two years ago, Aaron Bacher organized a reunion in Toronto, which gathered together 160 family members for the first time.
While the Toronto reunion was the scene of many long-lost relatives being met for the first
time with much shedding of tears, this get-together provided a chance for everyone to whoop it up in celebration of their newfound kinship, even ..^though there was some dispute over how Bacher should be pronounced.
They paraded around Grossinger's in their blue Bacher Family Reunion T-shirts, exchanging family photos and watching old home movies, and singing songs like "It's a Long, Long way from Buko-vina" (to the tune of Tipperary) and "My .Kind of Clan", (to the tune of Chicago).
"I met people who live four blocks away from me who I never knew I was related to," said Rona Goldenberg, who attended with her mother, Ruth Star, both of Montreal. Mrs. Star's father's mother was a Bacher.
■ The oldest and youngest at the reunion are believed to be both from Montreal: 81.-year-old Ethel Liebovitch and 6-month-old Jordan Satov, son of Joyce and Norris. However, not able to attend were Rebecca Shapiro, 85, and Daniel Litwin, who was born in
Six branches of Bacher family: firom left, Rath Star, Beatty Yermanok, Dr. Norman Bacher, Gertrude Buller, Ethel LieboVitch, Mickey Weisenberg.
A detailed family tree, going back to Ethel and Yossel, has been published, and plans' are already under way for another even bigger reunion in Montreal in 1985.
"The ultimate in design"
Summer Sale!
0^ x^o^#o!^
neighborhood
bank leumi
_ _ bank leumi le-israel (Canada) -
Israel's largest bankii^ group. ^ 1 assets more than $28.8 billion (as of December 31,1982).
North Toronto Branch: 3055 Bathurst at Stom 789-7981. )owntown Branch & Head Office: Suite 840, No. 2 First Canadian Place. Telephone 365-1930.
Member. Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation
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