Rabbi Eli Cohen has published a review of Shapira's "Kosher Pig" entitled "The Return of Justinas Pranaitis"

The explosive debate surrounding the belief in a divine Messiah has engaged many great minds across the spectrum of religious beliefs.  The most recent contender for a seat at this debate is Christian evangelist[2] “Rabbi”[3] Itzhak Shapira, author of The Return of the Kosher Pig.

In their endorsements of this book, respected Christian leaders have labeled Shapira “a Jewish insider”[4] with “encyclopedic knowledge of rabbinic sources”[5] and described this book as a product of “careful study.”[6]  With these recommendations, Shapira has been promoting himself in Christian and Jewish circles as a “scholar” in rabbinic studies.

After reading The Return of the Kosher Pig and examining the sources, I feel a responsibility to present my findings.  It would require several volumes to discuss the broad spectrum of blunders in Shapira’s book.[7]  For the purpose of this review, I have selected a mere sampling of distortions found in the pages of The Return of the Kosher Pig (TROTKP), as well as errors that can only serve to disqualify Shapira from this debate.

When engaging in the difficult study of rabbinic literature, as Shapira purports to do, background knowledge and textual competence are a basic requirement, not a luxury.  My hope is that by the end of this review, irrespective of your religious background or persuasion, it will be crystal clear that Shapira’s supporters were totally duped, and that his proficiency in the study of rabbinic writings is a sham.

Introduction                                                                                                                          

Shapira and his book bring to mind the famous “Beillis trial” that took place in Kiev in 1913.  In this trial, Mendel Beillis, a Russian Jew, was accused of murdering a Christian child to take his blood for alleged Jewish rituals.  During the trial, a Lithuanian Catholic priest named Justinas Pranaitis was called upon as a religious “expert” in Judaism for the prosecution.

In his book Blood Accusation, Maurice Samuel describes how Ben-Tzion Katz, an advisor to the Beillis defense team, exposed Pranaitis as a sham to the non-Jewish jury.  “After listening to Pranaitis for a few minutes he [Katz] perceived that the man was a quack with the merest smattering of Hebrew and no knowledge of Aramaic, the language of the Zohar and most of the Talmud.  Any Jewish boy with a cheder (elementary Hebrew school) education would have perceived it, but the jury of course had not even that.”[8]

Katz recommended that Pranaitis be asked the meaning of words such as Hulin, Yebamot and Erubin without letting him know that these were titles of volumes of the Talmud.  Katz was positive that Pranaitis would not know the answers.  It was obvious to Katz from the way Pranaitis had pronounced the words that he had picked up his “erudition” from scurrilous pamphlets with which Katz was familiar.  Following this advice, the attorneys took turns asking these questions, with Pranaitis answering each question “Ne znayu” (I don’t know).

The exchange climaxed when one of the attorneys asked Pranaitis, “When did Baba Batra live and what was her activity?”  Baba Batra is the name of a tractate of the Talmud.  The word baba is also a common Russian term for grandma.  Thus, when Pranaitas answered “Ne znayu”, he demonstrated that he was completely unfamiliar with even the names of the volumes of the Talmud, not just their content.

Samuel then quotes from a telegram sent to Moscow by one of the Tzarist agents, “[The] questioning of Pranaitis reduced the convincing power of his testimony, revealing ignorance of texts and insufficient acquaintance with Jewish literature.  In view of the superficiality of his knowledge and his helplessness, Pranaitis’s testimony has very little significance.”[9]

continued at  "The Return of Justinas Pranaitis"


סופי

And everything that Sarah tells you, listen to her voice. Bereshit (Genesis) 21:12