Writing by Dr. Dannielle Blumenthal

Adina Sash aka FlatbushGirl, it is still not too late to stop your evil campaign against Raphi Stein, beg for his forgiveness, and repent of your evil exhortations to sexual immorality.

Untold thousands of impressionable Jewish women and girls are influenced by you!

If Rivka Kohn honeypotted you by appealing to your ego, or simply told you a sob story, or whatever — it does not matter. What matters is what you do now, because the excommunication of an intelligent and well-spoken, educated Jewish woman would be spiritually devastating to yourself and the community.

Consider the grief of the holy Besht z”l when the Frankists were excommunicated. He died than a year later.

According to traditional Hasidic narrative and biographical text, the connection between the Frankist mass conversion/excommunication and the physical passing of the Baal Shem Tov (the Besht, 1698–1760) is real.

The Timeline

• Late Summer / Autumn 1759: Following intense theological debates and their subsequent excommunication by orthodox Jewish authorities, Jacob Frank and thousands of his heretical followers (the Frankists) formally apostatized and converted to Roman Catholicism in Lwów (Lviv).
• May 22, 1760 (6 Sivan 5520): Less than a year later, on the first day of Shavuot, the Baal Shem Tov passed away in Medzhybizh.

The account of the Baal Shem Tov dying from the emotional and spiritual agony of this event comes directly from early Hasidic literature, most notably Shivchei ha-Besht (In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov), published in 1815.

While the mainstream rabbinic establishment celebrated the removal of the Frankist sect from the Jewish community, the Baal Shem Tov viewed the mass apostasy as a spiritual tragedy.

The texts record his famous lament regarding the conversion:

“The Divine Presence (Shechinah) wails and says: ‘As long as a limb is attached to the body there is still a hope that it can be cured, but once the limb is cut off there is no cure forever.’ And every Jew is a limb of the Divine Presence.”

Traditional accounts hold that the sheer weight of this spiritual fracture took a severe toll on his health, accelerating his illness and leading directly to his passing just months later.