Eisav - East and West

30 Adar Aleph 5782

Rosh Chodesh Adar Bet

People like to think of the USA as a wholly unique entity - like its Statue of Liberty - standing alone, apart (and above it all), a beacon of freedom.  Instead, it is simply the outgrowth of colonial Europe, the new home base for the British Empire and Nazi ideology - the "Western" side of Eisav.  They share all the same "values." 

On the other hand, there is Russia - the "Eastern" side of Eisav - which has "values" more compatible with Yishmael.  (This is where the contract between Eisav and Yishmael is made.)  Even among the godless, they are divided into godless communism vs. godless humanism - East and West.  But since Christianity is the religion of Eisav, what is of interest to me today is the schism between Western and Eastern Christianity as represented in the US/EU - Russia divide.

Jul 16, 1054 CE: Great Schism

On July 16, 1054, Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius was excommunicated from the Christian church based in Rome, Italy. Cerularius’s excommunication was a breaking point in long-rising tensions between the Roman church based in Rome and the Byzantine church based in Constantinople (now called Istanbul). The resulting split divided the European Christian church into two major branches: the Western Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. This split is known as the Great Schism, or sometimes the “East-West Schism” or the “Schism of 1054.”

The Great Schism came about due to a complex mix of religious disagreements and political conflicts. One of the many religious disagreements between the western (Roman) and eastern (Byzantine) branches of the church had to do with whether or not it was acceptable to use unleavened bread for the sacrament of communion. (The west supported the practice, while the east did not.) Other objects of religious dispute include the exact wording of the Nicene Creed and the Western belief that clerics should remain celibate.

These religious disagreements were made worse by a variety of political conflicts, particularly regarding the power of Rome. Rome believed that the pope—the religious leader of the western church—should have authority over the patriarch—the religious authority of the eastern church. Constantinople disagreed. Each church recognized their own leaders, and when the western church eventually excommunicated Michael Cerularius and the entire eastern church. The eastern church retaliated by excommunicating the Roman pope Leo III and the Roman church with him.

...Today, the two branches of Christianity remain distinct expressions of a similar faith. Roman Catholicism is the single largest Christian denomination, with more than a billion followers around the world. Eastern Orthodoxy is the second-largest Christian denomination, with more than 260 million followers. Eastern Orthodoxy includes national churches, such as the Greek Orthodox Church and Russian Orthodox Church.

However, if Ukraine was to become more Western oriented, its church had to reflect that new reality, too.  Hence...

Russian Orthodox church splits with Orthodoxy's leader in seismic rift over Ukraine

Russian Orthodox Church leaders have announced that the church is severing relations with the historical seat of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, opening a major rift in the global Orthodox Church.

At a synod in Belarus on Monday, Russian Orthodox Church leaders said the church was cutting ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the seat of the global spiritual leader for 300 million Orthodox worshippers.

The rupture is a response by the Russian Church to the Constantinople Patriarchate’s decision last week to allow Ukraine to establish an independent church, one no longer under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Now, this brings us to Putin's role in all this, because religion is very much a part of what is driving current events. Vladiir Putin, President of Russia is actually a very religious man.

Putin’s spiritual destiny

Threatened by an uprising of his treacherous generals, the Christian Emperor Basil II, based in the glorious city of Byzantium, reached out to his enemies, the pagans over in the land of the Rus. Basil II was a clever deal maker. If Vladimir of the Rus would help him put down the revolt, he would give him the hand of his sister in marriage. This was a status changer for Vladimir: the marriage of a pagan to an imperial princess was unprecedented. But first Vladimir would have to convert to Christianity.

Returning to Kyev in triumph, Vladimir proceeded to summon the whole city to the banks of the river Dnieper for a mass baptism. The year is 988. This is the founding, iconic act of Russian Orthodox Christianity. It was from here that Christianity would spread out and merge with the Russian love of the motherland, to create a powerful brew of nationalism and spirituality. In the mythology of 988, it was as if the whole of the Russian people had been baptised. Vladimir was declared a saint. When the Byzantine empire fell, the Russians saw themselves as its natural successor. They were a “third Rome”.

Soviet Communism tried to crush all this — but failed. And in the post-Soviet period, thousands of churches have been built and re-built. Though the West thinks of Christianity as something enfeebled and declining, in the East it is thriving. Back in 2019, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, boasted that they were building three churches a day. Last year, they opened a Cathedral to the Armed Forces an hour outside Moscow. Religious imagery merges with military glorification. War medals are set in stained glass, reminding visitors of Russian martyrdom. In a large mosaic, more recent victories — including 2014’s “the return of Crimea” — are celebrated. “Blessed are the peacemakers” this is not.

At the heart of this post-Soviet revival of Christianity is another Vladimir. Vladimir Putin. Many people don’t appreciate the extent to which the invasion of Ukraine is a spiritual quest for him. The Baptism of Rus is the founding event of the formation of the Russian religious psyche, the Russian Orthodox church traces its origins back here. That’s why Putin is not so much interested in a few Russian-leaning districts to the east of Ukraine. His goal, terrifyingly, is Kyev itself.

He was born in Leningrad — a city that has reclaimed its original saint’s name — to a devout Christian mother and atheist father. His mother baptised him in secret, and he still wears his baptismal cross. Since he became President, Putin has cast himself as the true defender of Christians throughout the world, the leader of the Third Rome. His relentless bombing of ISIS, for example, was cast as the defence of the historic homeland of Christianity. And he will typically use faith as a way to knock the West, like he did in this speech in 2013:

“We see many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilisation. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual. They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan.”

Putin regards his spiritual destiny as the rebuilding of Christendom, based in Moscow. When the punk band Pussy Riot wanted to demonstrate against the President, they chose to do so in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, a vast white and gold edifice, demolished by the Soviets and rebuilt in the Nineties. It is a synthesis of Russia’s national and spiritual aspirations. It’s not just Russia, it is “Holy Russia”, part religious project, part extension of Russian foreign policy. Speaking of Vladimir’s mass baptism, Putin explained: “His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilisation and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.” He wants to do the same again. And to do this he needs Kyev back.

“The spiritual choice made by St Vladimir still largely determines our affinity today” Putin wrote only last year. “In the words of Oleg the Prophet about Kyev, “let it be the mother of all Russian cities”.

..Last year, on the anniversary of the baptism of the Rus, Kirill preached to his people, urging them to stay true to Vladimir’s conversion and the blood of the orthodox martyrs. He told them to love “our homeland, our people, our rulers and our army”.

The Western secular imagination doesn’t get this. It looks at Putin’s speech the other evening, and it describes him as mad — which is another way of saying we do not understand what is going on. And we show how little we understand by thinking that a bunch of sanctions is going to make a blind bit of difference. They won’t. “Ukraine is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space” Putin said. That’s what this is all about, “spiritual space” — a terrifying phrase steeped in over a thousand years of Russian religious history.

While the Western "Catholic" Church is forgiving pedophilia and homosexuality, the Eastern "Orthodox" Church is forbidding gay marriage, pride parades, transgenderism, and surprisingly, missionary activity "outside of the church."  Clearly, the West has much more to gain by isolating Russia and destroying Putin's credibility than just a "free" Ukraine.  The entire NWO agenda is at stake here!

Let me tell you why this matters.  Today, a weakened West is more self-destructive, but the strengthening East is becoming more of an existential threat to us.  The Eisavian East is morally superior to the Eisavian West and when HKB"H decides whether "GOG" will be the President of the US or the President of Russia, He will choose the most "worthy" opponent for Yisrael.  That does not bode well for the USA/EU coalition aka the NWO.  They will be the first of our enemies to fall.

U.S. says China and Russia seek 'profoundly illiberal' world order

...Referring to an upgraded "no limits" partnership that China and Russia announced this month in which they pledged to collaborate more against the United States and the West, [U.S. State Department spokesman Ned] Price said the direction of the development of China-Russia relations was of "great concern."

"We think that Russia and the PRC also want a world order," he said. "But this is an order that is and would be profoundly illiberal, an order that stands in contrast to the system that countries around the world ... have built in the last seven decades.

Eisav and Yishmael's interests will align at the End of Days.  In the East, Eisav and Yishmael come together.  But, what would be Putin's interest in Israel?  Again, the clash of East and West - the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church are battling for supremacy in Jerusalem.

Russian Orthodox Church in Israel

1840s up to Russian Revolution

While the first Russian Orthodox archimandrite arrived in Palestine in 1844, Russia's focus on the area began when Napoleon III took over control of France in an 1851 coup d'état and moved to seize control of properties in the Holy Land held by members of the Greek Orthodox Church (GOC). The court of the Czar had long held itself to be the main patron and protector of Orthodoxy, especially after most of the membership of the Greek Orthodox Church from 1460 until 1821 fell under the control of the Islamic Ottoman Empire.... Through diplomacy and a show of force Napoleon III forced the Ottoman Empire to recognize France as the "sovereign authority" in the Holy Land. This moved control of many Christian holy sites and buildings out of Orthodox hands and under Catholicism. These events were one of the main triggers for the Crimean War of 1856. Despite defeat in the war by 1856, Russia continued actively pursuing its interests vis-à-vis the position and influence of the Ottoman Empire and its European allies. Czar Alexander II continually worked to make sure Russia would have a presence in Palestine. Towards these ends a consulate was created in 1858.

By 1860 the Russian Palestine Society was founded. The society guided pilgrims to the Holy Land and bought property in Jerusalem and Nazareth. In addition it ran a theological seminary that also focused on teaching politics.[3] The Russian Palestine Society built hospices for Russian pilgrims and churches (where the liturgy was in Slavonic) all over the country "to the great annoyance of the Greek patriarchal element."[1] The ROC soon attracted more Arab Christians as it championed the idea that local Arab clergy should be promoted to bishops and hierarchs instead of having clergy from Greece imported and put in authority over them.[1] Also in the 1860s the Russians began building an extensive group of buildings outside the city of Jerusalem on Jaffa road, known as the Russian Compound.

These consisted of a large and elaborate church where the Russian archimandrite officiated, massive hostels for the pilgrims, a hospital and several other buildings capable of housing 1000 pilgrims, all within walking distance of the Russian consulate headquarters at the time. The ROC also built an ornate church at Gethsemane, and another at the site where their tradition holds that Jesus made his Ascension at the Mount of Olives. Another Russian hospice was built in the Muristan, along with an asylum for the insane, and schools. Russian pilgrimages were not only encouraged, but even subsidized by the Czar's government. At the time both Russia's political enemies and many within the GOC saw these projects as an intrigue of the Czar to make himself "a center of the Greek faith [i.e. Orthodoxy] which should rival Rome itself." This would all change with the fall of the Russian monarchy.

After the Russian Revolution

With the rise of the communists most of the church properties in Palestine remained in the hands of those at odds with the Bolsheviks, and the majority of these joined with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). Some properties of the ROC remained completely closed until 1941, when the Politburo ordered the churches reopened. An invitation was extended by the Soviets for all Orthodox prelates in the Middle East to come to Moscow to witness the installation of Patriarch Alexei I.

After Israeli Independence

When Israel became a state in 1948, all of the property under the control of the ROCOR within its borders was handed over to the Soviet dominated ROC in appreciation for Moscow's support of the Jewish state (this support was short-lived). The ROCOR maintained control over churches and properties in the Jordanian-ruled West Bank unmolested until the late 1980s.

In 1952 the Soviets reopened the Russian Palestine Society under the direction of Communist Party agents from Moscow, replaced Archimandrite Vladimir with communist trained Ignaty Polikarp, and won over many Christian Arabs with communist sympathies to the ROC. The members of other branches of Orthodoxy refused to associate with the Soviet led ROC in Palestine.

Russia to get disputed J'lem property

The government plans to transfer ownership of the land on which the capital's St. Sergius Church stands to Russia in the coming weeks, a Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday. The issue, which has been under negotiation since then-Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed the site in Jerusalem's Russian Compound and others nearby as property of the Russian Orthodox Church four years ago, is extremely delicate as Israel is concerned over the precedent that might be set for other churches' properties in the capital.

...Negotiations continue over the handover of a second property that is already listed as Russian-owned and houses the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, Margalit said. The decision to transfer ownership of the St. Sergius site comes after a Jerusalem court approved transferring ownership of the property from the Custodian General to the government, the last legal move required ahead of the transfer to the Russians, officials said. A few more properties are reportedly being claimed by Russia as well.

Putin’s Religious Soft Power Hits Jerusalem

In January 2020, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin struck a deal that rescued Israeli backpacker Naama Issachar from a Russian prison and brought her safely home in exchange for Russian sovereignty over the Alexander Courtyard in Jerusalem, which is near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This deal was a major win for Vladimir Putin as he pursues his aim of Russian global imperialism.

Since 2000, Putin has worked hard to return Russia to the status of global superpower, and the Russian Orthodox Church has been a cardinal component of this plan. Putin’s object is not only to preserve Russian culture but to turn it into a dominant force in the Middle East.

...The dispute over the Alexander Courtyard began in 1917. In May 1948, the Soviet Union appointed a “Russian Property Affairs Commissioner” who “did everything possible to transfer this property [the Alexander Courtyard] to the Soviet Union.” This was desired not only because the Russian Orthodox Church wanted the property, but because it had value in terms of foreign policy and national security.

Putin has dramatically upgraded the status of the Russian Orthodox Church during his tenure as national leader. In almost every major speech, he has made sure not only to mention the Church but to support its faith narratives. Powerful pro-Putin oligarchs have sponsored the Church and funded Church charities he has touted. He has regularly used the language of the Church and quoted from the Russian Christian bible, sometimes even using it to justify his foreign policy steps. He has used such language to hold onto the hearts and minds of pro-Russian Ukrainians, for instance.

Now you should understand why I say we can't pick a side as BOTH "world orders" are "bad for the Jews." That's why HKB"H is sending our righteous redeemer to deliver us!

The "V'Nahafoch Hu" this Purim may very well see the US/EU turned on its head and Russia in ascendance instead.  Hashem yerachem and save us from all of our enemies - both East and West!