"lamed-vav"

[Lily]

Just finished a book called " The righteous men ".

The Righteous Men - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The basic gist of the story is, a young reporter from the New York times gets given what he thinks are dead end jobs by reporting on deaths in different parts of the globe. They are all men who " appear " to have led very sinful lives but one strange thing he notices is, although they have been murdered, they didn't suffer violent deaths. They had been anesthetized beforehand and he keeps hearing the same phrase from people who knew them,,, " People can say what they like about him, but what he did for me, was the act of " a truely righteous man ".
Without giving the main ending away, he comes to learn that this is the work of a Christian breakaway group called " The Church of the reborn Jesus " who have taken Jewish belief as their own, basically, replacement theology.


A work of fiction but nonetheless, a very real Hebrew belief from the Babylonian Talmud, mentioned in kabbalah or Jewish mysticism.
They are called "Tzadikim nistarim" or "lamed-vav" which is Hebrew for 30+6. ( Hebrew letters have a corresponding number ).

In a nutshell, Jewish belief has it, that these "36 " righteous men ( or tzaddikim if we use the Yiddish terminology ) exist in every generation and they are basically the very foundation of the world, like Atlas who held up the heavens. If you take away these 36 righteous men, the world is no more.
When one dies, he is replaced but most aren't even aware of their heightened humanity.
If anyone of them is aware of who they are, they stay hidden from view, anonymous from the masses, as if to cover the tracks of their good deeds, even to the extent of being steeped in sin.
One just example is recorded in " The messianic idea in Judaism " by Gershom Scholem, 1971, especially in the chapter, " The tradition of the thirty-six just men ", of a man known as Pentakaka, who works in a brothel ( a story about 1700 yrs old ). Yet when women come to offer themselves, he does all he can to stop them from doing so, even selling his own belongings to give them the money they need rather than see them suffer this indignity. The first victim in the novel was, to all in the community, a pimp, who, when a woman came to offer herself after her husband died and she needed money to feed her children, sold all his belongings and gave her the money and made her swear that as long as he was alive, she was to tell no-one what he had done.
Thats just one example of how they do their best to hide who they are ( if they indeed know ).

Then, as belief has it, there are those who have no idea of who they are and it is as if it were a natural part of their being, and of normal behavior.

Interestingly, tradition has it, the "Tzadikim nistarim" don't necessarly need to be Jewish.
There is no doubt in many Jewish minds that the "Tzadikim nistarim" or "lamed-vav" are at work in the world right now.

Anything in Scripture to dispute that these 36 righteous men exist ?

[Chuckt]

Anything in Scripture to dispute that these 36 righteous men exist ?

Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

Yes, I know I'm being smart and this isn't what you wanted but this is the truth.

[smellycat]

stories are just stories,truth comes from Gods Word.

[eddybear]

Not a direct refutation, I know, but Paul warns Titus about "Jewish myths" (Tit 1:13-14), and I believe this falls into that category.

[Lily]

Thankyou everyone