By COLlive reporter
A Chabad historian is claiming that the gravesite of the great 15th century commentator known as The Bartenura and the day some mark as his yahrzeit is a result of “a well-oiled system.”
Rabbi Yehoshua Mondshein, an author and researcher of Jerusalem, says there was no oral or written evidence that Siven 3 has any connection to Rabbi Obadiah ben Abraham of Bertinoro, Italy.
Organizers of the hilula cite Mekubal Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri, Belzer Rebbe Aharon Rokeach and renowned posek Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, all of blessed memory, as verifying that the kever is located on the east side of Ir David, on the foot of Har HaZeitim.
But Mondshein says the organizers “are using the names and identities of great rabbis, whose common denominator is that they are not alive and cannot dispute what is said.”
No family or students of these three rabbis offered any verification of what is claimed by these anonymous organizers, Mondshein wrote on haredi website bhol.co.il.
Otzar Hagdolim Alufei Yaakov, a trusted 9 book series of biographies of rabbis during the period of Geonim and Rishonim, says: “We do not know the day, the month and nor the year of his passing.”
Mondshein estimates that the date was chosen in recent years out of convenience.
“The organizers might have thought that in this season, when the nice weather welcomes tourists, a few days before Matan Torah and in continuation to the hilulas of the Rashbi and Shmuel Hanavi, would be an appropriate occasion for setting a hilula.”
He added that money from charities were behind this Hilula scheme “which is based on fake sources and make up traditions of the past.”
according to wikipedia the RA’AV was niftar around 1500 in Yerushalayim.no more information is presented about his yahrtzeit or gravesite.this is strange as he had great influence on the new yishuv in Eretz Yisrael and changed the ways that the goyim treated them. apparently there must have been traumatic events in Yerushalayim that caused them to lose the records. this would be evidenced by the ascent of Tzfas 60 years later to prominence over Yerushalayim. that said the case can be made that a tradition has merit even if it cannot be verified,for even the Mekomos HaKedoshim such as Kever… Read more »
so what is the truth?
Rabbi moonshine is a gevaldiker mensch. Keep up the good work —- a true chossid!
Mondschein is claiming that the yartzeit date is a fraud. That may be so, or not. But your headline title implies that the new found kever is a fraud. For one thing, the kever is not new found. I first visited this kever more than 30 years ago, when you needed an armed guard to go down to Ir David. And the kever has been visited by Yidden for at least 150 years, when there was a Moghrabi-Jewish community living down there. So it is not “new-found”. And if it is a fraud, it is a very old fraud, and… Read more »