The Kanai Tradition of Messianic Judaism

Text by Sophia Siedlberg and edited by Adrian Worsfold

It is commonly understood that there were three main groups of early Christians. The earliest and most primitive believers close to Jshua's (pronounced as a sharp Yehoshua; Jesus is the Greek name) stance were the Jewish Christians led by brother James and family; from Paul came the Hellenists; and from them in the same Greek culture came the Gnostics. A common story is that the Jewish Christians were effectively wiped out by the Romans in the Jewish War of 70 CE, allowing the Hellenist Christians to be triumphant and the centre of Christianity move to Rome. The Gnostics were suppressed later.
It is not quite so clear cut. Despite the weakness of the Jewish Christians after 70 CE, and the shift of the centre to Rome, there were still some continuing Jewish Christians. One group was the Kanai, and these still exist, although now in tiny numbers as a result of the Nazis.
Kanai gets its meaning from "Jealous" or "Jealous for Gd" . It may possibly be geographical reference to Canaa and where some Kanai families came from.
The Kanai became some of those Jews who accepted Jshua as Messiah. This, then, is an early, contemporary authentic tradition of Messianic Judaism just after Jshua's death: made different from other Judaism, and not the Christianity of Paul of the Hellenistic strand, and certainly not the later Gnostic.
For the Kanai, Jshua fullfilled, in advance, the Law, enabling others to walk with Gd.
According to European Kanai tradition, the Kanai tradition as a whole began during the time when Judas Maccabees led a Jewish revolt against Antiochus in 164 BCE. Loyalties seem to have changed frequently during the remainer of the Second Temple Era (536 BCE-70 CE), culminating in a radical form of Jewish nationalism. This distanced itself from the Hasmonean dynasty because the Hasmoneans formed alliances with the Herods and Rome. The militant Kanaim appointed their own leaders who went under the genetic title of Eliezar (perhaps a later tradition, however, as historically it seems that significant leaders such as Eliezar ben Ya'ir and Eliezar ben Shimon shared similar qualities, this according to Kanai narratives and those of Josephus). This miltancy developed through these remainder apocalyptic times up until 70 CE when Rome defeated most of the Jewish resistance and took the Temple, and this was when Eliezar ben Ya'ir ordered his followers to commit suicide rather than be captured by the Romans.
The militant origins of the Kanai were evident even when Jshua preached in Galilee. At that time they fought Rome using guerrilla tactics. Jshua then was seen not as a religious messianic figure but rather as some potential leader of a revolt. This is briefly mentioned in the gospels. However, Jshua himself took on a path to martyrdom, reflecting Isaiah's Suffering servant perspective. Jshua's movement was different from the radical sect of Eliezar ben Ya'ir.
It was when Jshua was crucified that allegiances were affected. Before his death some from local villages did follow numerous messiahs of which Jshua was one. In the north there were more confused reactions about Jshua, where he was another Elijah wannabee or liked, disliked or regarded with indifference, than the more divided view of the south, where he was either a messiah or a northern trouble maker. The Christian account of Jshua wondering around the north performing magic tricks and impressing the locals is not part of the response.
After Jshua's death up to 70 CE the militant Kanai tradition seemed to divide into those who were followers of Jshua and followers of the militaristic radicals. According to Kanai narrative a number of refugees who went to Masada included some who were already followers of Jshua but by 70 CE the "Eliezar" era of the Kanai came to an end with the Jewish War, and the story of Masada as told by the historian Josephus is also recounted in the Kanai narratives. Josephus, incidentally, is considered a traitor. It is believed that he started out as a Kanai Radical, a Sicarii and yet was with Titus when the temple fell. He escaped the fate of ben Ya'ir's death. After 70 CE the Kanai started to adopt a form of messianism similar to the Jewish Christian Ebionites. This seemed to include some unusual forms of Jewish belief connecting with the Essenes (of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls: believers in a Teacher of Righteousness).
Saul had asked synagogue leaders to discipline Jews who had claimed Jshua was the Messiah, because it was incompatible with Jewish Law; then he as Paul proclaimed Jshua as the one Lord of Gd and that the Law had come to its end as it was only a container of human sin with a limited life. According to Paul, Christ and the Lord (as he entitled Jshua) became the replacement agent of salvation through his sacrificial death and resurrection, would bring in the Kingdom and, eventually, yield up the Kingdom to Gd. However, Jshua and his death was seen by the Kanai as a final sacrifice and fulfillment of the Law (in advance). In so doing, Jshua gives the Kanai help in walking with Gd. This difference is crucial for understanding Jewish Messianism and how it is different from Pauline views. Whilst, for Paul, Jshua was not divine, his sole agency for salvation now set outside the Jewish Law inevitably took Jshua off into a transition attracting the status of divinity, firstly subordinate to Gd and much later co-equal with Gd the Father.
The problem for Kanai regarding how Christianity developed in a Gentile direction is that if Jshua was a man-deity, then being crucified would have been a doddle, because a man-deity can take the pain as if being tickled. These are not the characteristics of a suffering servant. What Jshua suffered was very real and human and therefore Kanai relate to this experience.
Kanai also reject the need for miracles as with the Virgin Birth and (importantly, regarding Paul) the Resurrection. This is also so with the miracles like walking on water, healing and hovering. Mary the Mother of God is irrelevant too. Kanai believe in a Teacher of Righteousness, not a magician. The Parthians said, "This is Jshua, the Teacher of Righeousness, the Messiah." This was enough. The Shekinah said, "It is so."
It is like the priests of the Ba'al (whichever master they followed) finding it impossible to get the fires going. Elijah then said, "OK, Gd, get on with it." The altar and surrounding area went up in flames. It might look like a miracle proof but a prophet like Elijah would just see it as demonstrating that God is larger than the local deity; the flames will just happen anyway. This is the difference. And when miracles do not happen it is like Job asking why Gd sometimes does not intervene and yet, being tested to the limit, he still kept his faith.
This is consistent with Jshua whereas the Christian use of miracles just does not seem to match his character. There is Jshua preaching some pretty profound stuff, and then comes uncharacteristic pulling of rabbits out of hats. Like one moment we are reading a narrative that is full of thought, and suddenly, like in a musical, we get some song sung totally out of context.
The Gospel of Matthew is a good example: it sometimes looks like two people wrote it with lengthy Ebionite-like speeches and then, bang out of context, some Zepherelli special effect happens with the ensuing melodrama. The healing of a blind man (Matthew 20) and then the vipers speech (Matthew 23) offer a good example. Christians notice the healing of the blind, a Kanai view is to notice the reference to vipers straight away. Whilst the miracle may or may not have happened that way, its function is only to set the scene. Concentrating on the miracle loses the meaning of Jshua calling the Pharisees "a nest of vipers". It reads about compassion and lack of compassion; either walking with Gd or being like a Roman - the Vipers.
An interesting footnote would be the "Peter the Liar" narrative and a passage that sort of reads, "For the price of fifty he sold ten, for the price of ten he sold one, and for the price of Gd he sold unseen stones." This means that Peter always sold above a price and spoke in illusions to justify it. Peter would not get a ready audience with Jewish Messianists because the Ebionites (especially) had very very strict rules about honesty and trading.
There are some narratives that parallel Christianity. A star is mentioned in Kanai understanding and this relates to Judas Iscariot coming from the people, who guided the Parthians (Magi, kings whatever) to Jshua when a child. There are "three kings" or "Magi" who are Parthian, so that a three year old Jshua is the rightful heir to the throne. The gifts brought by these people were said to be identifiers of office. Kanai say Jshua was born in Bethlehem, but it was the village in the north, a hotbed of terrorism for the Romans.
Judas was described in most texts as being of the Kanai. This is one example where Kanai narratives see deeper significance in names than simply in the portrayal of characters. "Iscariot" is a Roman epithet referring to the "Sicarii" (Dagger Men) of the more extremist among the Kanai. He is understood as being a direct insult by the Romans to the Kanai leaders. It could be that the city priests - or Pharisees - and the Romans discussed how to annoy the Kanai with propaganda, and so Judas ended up as a traitor disciple in the Christian gospels according to Peter and Paul's traditions. This is also a reference to the Kanaim and specifically Eliezar ben Ya'ir in much later Christian narrative, even though Christians never realized it. Peter and Paul laid the foundation for Roman interference in the Messianic faith (despite being killed by Rome). There was also Barabbas (son of the father) narrative in the gospels that felt like another insult aimed at the Zealots.
So the Kanai developed in tension with other views and groups. The Kanai were the people everyone distanced themselves from: the Gnostics did because of Kanai martyrdom, and later on orthodox Christians did because the Kanai continued to provoke the Romans.
The Kanai now following Jshua split into two geographically. One group later migrated west to Europe with other Jews of the diaspora. The European tradition never took on Christian orthodoxy. If anything they went ever deeper into an Ebionite theology with Essenic influences. One story states that an earlier group went to India and were led by Thomas. The Mar Thoma tradition is more orthodox in the Christian sense, even in places following a Roman Catholic form. This is alien to the European tradition.
The period up to 500 CE represents a repeating set of arguments between the Kanaim and emerging Christian orthodoxy. In Judaism the Talmud (of 200 CE) refers to the Kanaim as "boorish". They all picked on the Ebionites, especially those Hellenists too scared to pick on the Kanai. The Ebionites and the Kanai were very close; however, the Ebionites were not militants. Kanai messianism did come from both the Ebionites and the earlier Essenes. The Ebionites hated Paul with a passion whereas the Kanai tended to view him with a more pitiful form of contempt. The Ebionites regarded Paul as a threat, the Kanai regarded him as a crank. He is ranked by European Kanai as second only to Josephus for treachery.
European Kanai followed other Jewish migrations until settling in Poland. The European sect assimilated reasonably well into the Jewish diaspora of Europe; they only seemed to become visible when there were arguments between them and other Jews, or when they were facing the same pogroms and oppression faced by the Jews as a whole.
So these Kanai were oppressed by other Jews, the Church of Rome and the Russians. The Kanai do not preach to Orthodox Jews. There was a period of co-operation and shared outlook with the Chassidim, in Poland in the 1700s. However, some writings they kept from from the Chassidim.
The founder of Chassiidim, Ba'al Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name) also known as Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezar (the founder of Chassidim), was an angel of wonderment to the European Kanai. After some time it was pointed out that in Kanai Dialect Ba'al meant (Gd the) harsh master and this was when the Chassidic fixation on legalism became evident. This disagreement never came close to the arguments that started between later factions of Chassidism.
Also arguments existed with Chassidism about learning: for centuries the Kanai had held women to be equal to men (one reason why "Peter the Liar" was unpopular), and learning was an equal process. Even when the Chassidim tried to stop the Kanai practice of teaching women, the women outwitted the male Rabbis of the Chassidim. This equiality argument stretched right back to a similar disagreement with rabbinic Judaism. The Kanai put it: if all the men were killed by Romans, who is left to keep the tradition alive? The women had this role, and Kanai interpretation of the Law reflects strongly with angry opinions about the Hellenic (and Herodian) practice and in the "Ashkelon narratives" about killing of the males in war.
Only with the Muslims was there some sense of agreement, based on Islam giving "the Children of the Kittim" (the Holy Roman Empire) pressure while practising an old school monotheism. It might have been an alliance of interests, however. In 1722 the narrative picks up in terms of internal Kanai confidence and commentaries on the Chockma Mechazeh. The Kanai discussed the preservation of ideas and history, indulged in the telling of stories, developed the deep seated obsession with the Tanakh (minus the book of Esther) and the Nevim in particular, and developed the dialect of Hebrew that was very different from standard Hebrew and Yiddish. This continued up to the Nazi destruction.
The European Kanaim was targeted by the Nazis before they started murdering Jews in general. Perhaps this was due to fear, given the aggressive nature of the European Kanai tradition. The centre of Kanai belief in Europe was Poland and Poland was the first place the Nazi invaded. The Kanai were the first victims and then Himmler employed a certain faction of Muslims in an SS unit known as the Handzar Division (Handzar means sword or dagger), attacking the Kanai first. This is the beginning of the Handzar Blood Feud between the Kanai and the Muslims who joined Himmler's unit.
As a result of the Nazis there are probably 200 or 300 people who are now born into this tradition and know anything of it. It was a minority tradition in the 1700s with the rise of Chassidism, though Chassidism never did anything to eradicate the Kanai tradition of Europe: they just argued.
The Indians continued as before. A history has it that when Peter was called a liar some Kanai moved east. These Kanai are called the Knanaya Christians, in the Mor Thoma tradition, and they exist today in the Kerala region of India. They describe themselves as having migrated to the Malabar coast in 345 CE. Their origins are said to be of the Zealots of the south (Judah), agreeing with the European Kanai narrative which states they were from 72 families of the south whereas European Kanai claim to have come from 72 families of the north (the old Israel). In Kanai tradition they were listed in clan lists and Jshua's family did figure. It is claimed John the Baptist was a cousin on his mother's side to Jshua. It almost reads like a soap opera.
This makes 144 families and its significance is not lost in the European narrative.
Like Orthodox Judaism Indian Kanai lay stress on keeping themselves as a "pure people" with families intact in order to maintain the descent of the 72 families. The Indian Kanai faced oppression from the Portugese in the 1500s. The Indians do not have a special dialect of Hebrew.
European Kanai put more stress on preserving culture than keeping families intact. Family and race have been reasons to kill them, not preserve them. European Kanai developed their laws, customs and language.
Some Kanai live in Israel and there is a shul in Tel Aviv.
So the remaining Kanai are not the same as modern day forms of Messianic Judaism (such as Jews for Jesus who are evangelical Christians preparing the way for the return of Christ to Jerusalem) and do not follow all Orthodox Jewish traditions. Kanai are different from the Karaites too, who do not recognise Jshua as Messiah.
All this means that the Kanai are still rejected by Jews and to some extent Christians. Kanai do not accept the Nicene Creed, which is regarded as being written by a Roman institution. The Kanai are persecuted for Jshua, and can be seen authentically as his suffering servants.
The central belief of the Kanai is Chalacha, meaning to walk with Gd, whereas for Orthodox Jews Chalacha is about observance of Laws. Jshua is someone who fulfilled the Law and thus enables the walk with Gd because Kanai need his assistance. Walking with Jshua is like walking with an old friend, like when a child recognises someone and is happy to see them. This walk is personal, despite some Second Temple styled rituals.
This walk involves the Shekinah (Gd dwelling), understood as the presence of Gd and thus close to the Christian biblical understanding of Holy Spirit prior to the Trinity. Arguably, in contrast, the modern Jewish understanding of Gd tends to be this rather masculine entity with something like a bad temper. The Talmud sees the Shekinah as more limited, as a feminine facet whereas it is central to Kanai. Whilst, also, Orthodox Judaism does have many names of Gd (Elohim is a plural term which hints at the multi named concept), the Kanai view is not that far removed from the Islamic. Islam has 99 + 1 names and the Kanai have 144; the closeness with Islam is further that Gd is all encompassing or all sufficient (El Shaddai) as embodied in the text itself. In Christianity angels are the nearest to the names.
Gd to be Gd has to be everything, and even contain opposites but not be divided. So Gd is All sufficient: mother, father son, daughter, tree, grass, sky, ground and the occasional lightning bolt. Name it and it is a name of Gd. Gd can be a close friend but also a very remote being.
Still, the Shekinah can be active in a Christian house church; the Shekinah can be present in a masjid, and the Shekinah can be found in a synagogue. The Kanai may follow where the Shekinah leads.
So there is the matter of rituals. Between 164 BCE and 30 BCE Both Kanai and Essenses agreed that the "Hezekian" narratives of the Pharisees were either incomplete or in error and had their own variant of the Torah (Temple Scroll), and the book of Esther was absent. This is why the European Kanai tradition does not observe the festival of Purim, based as it is on the the book of Esther. The Kanai people keep Chanukah sacred and central. They do so despite having distanced themselves from the Maccabeans and Hasmonean dynasty, and sided with the Parthians against the Jewish royal houses, especially when the Herods were installed by the Romans and Herod the Great married a Hasmonean princess.
There are Kanai texts. Kanai have the Chockma Mechazeh (Wisdom Vision). It shares a common root with The Kabbalah from 11th century Spain, a Sephardic Talmudic text about understanding Gd. The Chockma Mechazeh is the Kanai version and relates more to oppression. The Christian equivalent to the Chockma Mechazeh is the Book of Revelation, regarded by Kanai as part 2 of a two part work. The orthodox Christian reading of Revelation views its apocalyptic events as being yet to happen. The Ebionite/ Kanai reading of the same text sees a narrative style as current and deliberately misleading to the Romans. To Kanai it looks like the Desert Maccabees waiting for the final chapter; a huge bust-up between the Jews and the Romans. Reading with the Chockma Mechazeh in mind, the text come across as an account of the events leading up to the fall of the Temple, and then the aspirations of release from Roman rule. The "Beast" or "666" (616) is generally seen within the tradition to refer to Claudius Augustus Germanicus (Nero); using gematria (numbers in cyphered alphabets) 616 equates with Nero's name. This altogether deeper meaning uses earlier patterns of writing where imagery was a linguistic form and, because its opposition to the Romans, has an evasive style. Surreal images (seven headed leopard-bear monsters being the Herod dynasty for example) allegedly date back to the times of the Nevim (books of the prophets) where the practice of using complex imagery to convey meaning emerged in the biblical narrative. It is not so much a secret code as a means of saying things without it being obvious to the wrong people: clues available which the Romans would miss. Much of the Chockma Mechazeh narrative also reads like Gnostic texts but with less mysticism and more politics. The Kanai consider that the Book of Revelation was authored by John of Patmos, who was a witness to the fall of the Temple and was of the Ebionite/ Kanai world view. Christian orthodoxy by tradition and the Mar Thoma Kanai assert that the Book of Revelation was written by John of the gospels.
The nature of remembering Kanai texts arose from necessity. Christians started burning books (such as the Ebionite texts) so the Kanai adopted short fragmentary narratives by which could be recalled the larger stories. The Johannan texts (including the Book of Revelation) are examples. Such happened with the Chockma Mechazeh. It is sort of oral (predominantly told) but written (into compressed narratives) and then "seen" as in a visual language to give the necessary extra meaning.
The Ebionites made the mistake of keeping all their texts and relying on them. They had their own "canon" comprising of the Tanakh with the gospel of Matthew without miracles and additional texts on the Law. This collection stood in contradiction to what Paul had written. We only know of the Ebionites from what their enemies have written about them. Kanai texts have a more tentative transmission and have a tradition of responses to others like the Ebionites and Gnostics. Matthew has meaning for European Kanai, without discussions on such as the virgin birth. The European tradition regards Christian orthodoxy as Hellenic and of the "Kittim" (the Romans). As well as Matthew, the other relevant books in the New Testament for Kanai are James and, of course, the Book of Revelation.
Kanai teachers do write the "unified" Torah and this reads rather like the Temple Scroll of the Essenes.
Kanai also have their own Ha Shem Elohoy Elohim (The Name of the Gd of Gds). The Ha Shem Elohoy Elohim dates back to the Second Temple Era, and in places describes the period with some accuracy. It consists of a series of prayers and commentaries surrounding each name of Gd. The only fully written copy was either destroyed or locked away by Cardinal Giovanni Pietro Carafa (later Pope Paul IV) along with a lot of Jewish literature in 1553 (this completed an earlier likely Andelucian burning in 1499 under Cisneros, Archbishop of Granada, including both Arabic and Hebrew and Kanai texts). If destroyed, not, all of it survived in alternative form. What remains of it is laid out like the Qur'an, uses similar symbolism, and attributes the 144 names to Gd in Qur'anic fashion. So it reads like the Qur'an and some of the older Hadiths.
The Ha Shem Ha Mephoresh, a Jewish text, does not read like the Ha Shem Elohoy Elohim but similar names appear. The Jewish text invokes and calls various entities, and does not directly attribute the names to Gd, but describes them as "spirits" or "angels". The Islamic coincidence is the greater.
The Kanai tradition warms to Islam even though the two religions did fall out. Islam is revered as the "inspired words of a true prophet" (Mohammed). Mohammed received the Qur'an from Gabriel and therefore from Gd via this (Elohimist) means. The fact that he was unable to read (according to both Islamic and Kanai understanding) meant that he would not have been able to transcribe the Ha Shem Elohoy Elohim supposedly leant to him by a Kanai Teacher of Righteousness. In any case it would have been written in a dialectic script.
Of course the two texts are distinct; the similarities are there but the differences enough for any claims to stand up of one text copying the other.
Some less than polite commentators have also noted the similarities between the two faiths in terms of their apparently aggressive nature. This is perhaps not reflective of either of the two faiths as developed. Still, when the Muslims started attacking the Kanaim, the Kanaim fought back with considerable violence. Even today the Handzar Blood Feud between some of the European Kanai and some Muslims is unresolved. Nevertheless the two traditions are perhaps more friendly toward each other than Islam is with Jews and Christians.
The Kanai's own monotheistic design rules extend to just about every single masjid ever built. This closeness to Islam includes the Kanai view that the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Haram Al-Sharif, is regarded as legitimately the Temple, because it is built according to the rules in the Ha Shem Elohoy Elohim, and better so than Herod's Temple. The Kanai maintain that this masjid looks more like New Jerusalem than even the mystical temples in the Tanakh. However, the barring of a certain gate to stop "Messiahs entering Jerusalem" is considered an insult. It is a love hate relationship with Islam. Incidentally the location of the Jerusalem of David in Kanai tradition differs from the Orthodox view. The Orthodox and other Jews would hardly agree that Al-Haram Al-Sharif is the Temple, more Kosher than the Herodian Temple was, and the Muslims hardly agree that the masjid, as they understand it, is a Kanai design. The Temple has a very specific design (which appears in the Christian Book of Revelation as the new Jerusalem), and has only appeared in Kanai and Chassidic synagogues in Poland. The design of many Polish wooden synagogues and also the stone built Lancut Synagogue shows that the two sects were then talking. This has deep origins in the Ezekiel Scroll at Masada and Kanai believe that Gd spoke to Eliezar ben Ya'ir when he buried the Ezekiel Scroll.
There is a huge gap between Kanai and the outcome of Christianity. In the early days it was the Rabbinic Jews who pushed the Christians away; the Kanai were more accommodating of the Galilean sects because they came from the same place. However, the "Peter the Liar" narratives reflect at first disagreements between the Ebionites and the followers of Peter's tradition. Then it became worse. In the Gospel of Matthew Jshua is scathing about people with robes in palaces controlling people, judgmentalism, and greed. Yet the orthodoxy of 400 years later produced pretty much everything condemned in Matthew. The Church forgot the oppression carried out at the hands of people like Nero, and instead moved into big palaces, controlled laws, wrote unassailable creeds and gained vast amounts of wealth.
The important matter is to preserve the history of the Jewish messinaic sects' points of view emerging out of the Second Temple Era. However, when the Kanai speak of these times, quoting oral and narrative traditions, it is like being a participant in its events due to the very immediate way the narratives were handed down. While it is impossible to verify the accuracy of anything so transmitted over a 2000 year period, there is a very lucid feel to such narratives.
The narratives come with their own script. The Kanai have employed an older form of Hebrew for sacred words, called Palaeo-Hebrew. This involved rendering some letters meaningless when used phonetically. Sophia Siedlberg has decided otherwise, when reading texts, to give priority to understanding Kanai history over purity of tradition. Kanai dialectic script shows this subtle merging of Palaeo-Hebrew and later "Ezra" Hebrew (as the Kanai term it) where the name of Gd is kept sacred and special in the text. Most intriguing is that the pottery shards at Masada that appear to have had the owners' names written in what appears to be dialectic script. This is around 100 years after the writing in the majority of the scrolls. There could be an Essene connection here.
Kanai regarded Coptic as being the "language of the Pharaohs". European Kanai refused to use any Hellenic language or writing (such as Greek), and were not keen on formal Hebrew in their own texts: they didn't want Pharisees and Sadducees to read their work. So to read this text is to take the Kanai back in time as if still participating.
This raises the matter of the Kanai now, and being meaningful now. The ability as if to participate through the dialectic text is one reason against reform. Another is priority to the historical record given the tiny size of the sect. A Netzari sect in Israel attempts to validate everything with the Beth Din in Israel. It has a website, its own little village, and all the trappings of a modern religion, and so claims to be the one and only Netzarim. They might resurrect something with dogmas and traditions, but they cannot recreate the day to day lives of the people. The Jewish Chassidim and the Christian Armish find that lives change. So it is better just to record the past. So there does not need to be some formal reform or some great movement, just room given for the voices of the Second Temple Era to speak, because those voices are speaking of the Shekinah.
In conclusion, the European Kanai tradition with its militant origins and distinctive use of tradition is probably now an historical oddity. It seems as if it has moved from one disaster to another, if doggedly just surviving. In today's climate of finding secret codes, conspiracy theories and strange tales of obscure religious sects, the Kanai might get a mention. However, there has been no conspiracy about it: it just has faced many oppressors. The history of antisemitism is perhaps the real story, made worse by a people considered non-Jewish but Christian by Jewish Orthodoxy and non-Christian but Jewish by Christian orthodoxy. The Kanai are just faithful monotheists.

 

Sophia Siedlberg and Adrian Worsfold

 

Some Sophia Siedlberg Web Links:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/kanai.htm

http://www.faithspace.co.uk/forums/

Sophia Siedlberg is also known as Sophie the Questioner posting on Faithspace

 

Pluralist - Liberal and Thoughtful