Abraham ben Abraham () (c. 1700 – 23 May 1749), also known as Count Valentine (Valentin, Walentyn) Potocki (Pototzki or Pototski), was a Polish nobleman (szlachta) of the Potocki family who converted to Judaism and was burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church for apostasy. According to Jewish oral traditions, he was known to the revered Talmudic sage, the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Elijah Ben Shlomo Zalman [1720–1797]), and his ashes were interred in the relocated grave of the Vilna Gaon in Vilna's new Jewish cemetery. Although the Orthodox Jewish community accepts the teachings about Abraham ben Abraham, including the involvement of the Vilna Gaon, secular scholars have so far concluded the story is apocryphal.

Jewish traditions

right|framed|The [[Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) was, according to the Jewish tradition, a mentor to Abraham ben Abraham.]]

There are several versions of this story, especially among the Jews of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, who know and still refer to Potocki as the Ger Tzedek ("righteous proselyte") of Vilna (Vilnius). Virtually all Jewish sources agree that he was a Polish nobleman who converted to Judaism and was burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church at Vilnius on 23 May 1749 (7 Sivan 5509, corresponding to the second day of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot in the Diaspora), because he had renounced Catholicism and had become an observant Jew.

There is also one contemporary written account from 1755, by Rabbi Yaakov Emden. ויקם עדות ביעקב דף כה, ב (Vayakam Edus b'Yaakov, 1755, p.&nbsp;25b). A rough translation:<blockquote>A few years ago, it happened in Vilna the capital of Lithuania that a great prince from the family of Pototska converted. They captured him and imprisoned him for many days thinking they could return him to their religion. He knew that he would not escape harsh tortures and a cruel death if he would not return. They wanted to save him from the death and punishment that would await him if he held out. He paid no attention to them or to the begging of his mother the countess. He was not afraid or worried about dying in all the bitter anguish they had done to him. After waiting for him for a long time, they tried to take it easy on him for the honor of his family. He ridiculed all the temptations of the priests who would speak to him every day because he was an important minister. He scorned them and laughed at them, and chose death of long and cruel agony, to the temporary life of this world. He accepted and suffered all from love, and died sanctifying God's name. May he rest in peace.

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As to why there are few full sources, the Jewish view is reflected in this excerpt from the Shema Yisrael Torah Network website:<blockquote>There are a few reasons why there are so few contemporary sources about the ger tzedek story. It can be assumed that the noble Pototzki family, which was a religious Polish-Catholic family, was not happy that one of their sons defected to Judaism. The Pototzki family was said to have generally dealt kindly with the Jews living on its lands. Mentioning the conversion would have been interpreted as an open provocation of the area's ruler, which would have not resulted in any good. In addition, undoubtedly the conversion of one of the upper-class gentiles aroused great interest among the populace, and his refusal to return to their faith caused them great embarrassment ... Nevertheless, we believe the words of our rabbis, which clearly indicate that there was a connection between the Gra (i.e. the Vilna Gaon) and the Ger Tzedek.</blockquote>

In his lecture on the topic, Prof. Sid Leiman quotes an author from a century ago who related the same reason - heard from a member of the Pototzki family.

The traditional story

Polish author Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, based on the story written in Hebrew from 1766 by Judah Hurwitz, Ammudei Beit Yehuda in Amsterdam relates that young Potocki and his friend Zaremba, who traveled from Poland to study in a seminary in Paris, became interested in an old Jew whom they found poring over a large volume when they entered his wine shop. This Jew might have been their own countryman, Menahem Man ben Aryeh Löb of Visun, who was tortured and executed in Vilna at the age of seventy (3 July 1749). Tradition has brought this Jewish martyr into close connection with the Ger Tzedek, but fear of the censor has prevented writers in Russia from saying anything explicit on the subject. His teachings and explanations of the Old Testament, to which they, as Roman Catholics, were total strangers, so impressed them that they prevailed upon him to instruct them in the Hebrew language. In six months they acquired proficiency in the Biblical language and a strong inclination toward Judaism. They resolved to go to Amsterdam, which was one of the few places in Europe at that time where a Christian could openly embrace Judaism. But Potocki first went to Rome, whence, after convincing himself that he could no longer remain a Catholic, he went to Amsterdam and took upon himself the covenant of Abraham, assuming the name of Avraham ben Avraham ("Abraham the son of Abraham"; "the son of Abraham" is the traditional styling of a convert to Judaism, as Abraham was the first who converted to Judaism from polytheism).

Potocki's parents got word of his leave from the seminary in Paris and the rumors that he had converted to Judaism and began searching for him. Potocki then fled from France and hid in a synagogue in Vilna, wearing a long beard and peyot like the Perushim (devout Jews who separated themselves from the community to learn and pray). When the Vilna Gaon heard of his whereabouts, he advised him to hide instead in the small town of Ilye (Vilna Governorate). There a Jewish tailor who sewed uniforms for Polish bureaucrats overheard some clients talking about the fugitive divinity student and suspected that the stranger in the synagogue might be he. Later this tailor's son, who liked to disturb the men studying in the synagogue, was sharply rebuked by Potocki; some say Potocki grabbed the boy by the ear and pulled him out the door. The tailor reported him to the Bishop of Vilna, and Potocki was arrested. His parents visited him in prison and begged him to renounce his Judaism publicly, promising to build him a castle where he could practice the religion privately. According to Rabbi Ben-Zion Alfes, the Maggid of Vilna, Potocki refused his mother, saying, "I love you dearly, but I love the truth even more". Potocki walked proudly to the execution site, singing a song that was later sung in the Volozhin yeshiva and that was also sung by Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer after Yom Kippur.

Lack of historical evidence

Many secondary sources &ndash; encyclopaedias of Jewish culture, history and religion &ndash; include an entry on Potocki, a Polish magnate and member of the powerful Potocki family, who converted to Orthodox Judaism in 18th-century Netherlands and who, after his return to Vilna, was tried by an Inquisition court which sentenced him to burning at the stake. Historians (ex. Janusz Tazbir, Jacek Moskwa,) who have studied the story of Potocki, however, believe it to be invented,

Tazbir stated that the tragic fate of Potocki, passed through Jewish oral tradition, remains unconfirmed by 18th-century Polish or Jewish primary sources and that there is no evidence in any archives or genealogy tree that Potocki existed.

Similar story of Abraham Isacowicz

Some have suggested that the Potocki legend is an embellishment of a different story. A report published in the July 1753 edition of The London Magazine describes the story of a very similar execution. The correspondent dated his report 11 June, two days after the end of the Shavuot holiday. It describes "an apostate named Raphael Sentimany, a native of Croatia", who converted to Judaism at the age of 12 and adopted the name Abraham Isacowicz. The report describes his imprisonment and execution in Wilno as the Potocki legend describes. The report also states that he was executed on 9 June, which was the second day of Shavuot, just as in the Potocki story. The only important differences between the Sentimany execution and the Potocki legend are that the martyr's Jewish surname was Isacowicz, called Rafael Sentimany rather than Valenty Potocki, was killed in 1753 rather than 1749, and that he was a Croatian immigrant rather than a Polish noble. Raphael Sentimany is also mentioned in the anonymous British work "Admonitions from the Dead, in Epistles to the Living", published in 1754, in a manner suggestive of the wide exposure of the original report of Abraham ben Abraham's execution.

References

Sources

Jewish

  • The Incredible Story of the Righteous Convert of Vilna by Rabbi Menachem Levine
  • "Al Kiddush Hashem: R' Avrohom Ben Avrohom" by Rabbi Dov Eliach)
  • "Who is buried in the Vilna Gaon's tomb?" by Professor Sidney Z. Leiman
  • "The Haskalah Movement in Russia", by Jacob S. Raisin, 1913 (2005 Project Gutenberg eBook)
  • "The Ger Tzedek of Wilno (5509)" by Nissan Mindel

Modern

  • Janusz Tazbir, The Mystery of Walentyn Potocki, Kwartalnik Historyczny, 3/2003, online abstracts from that issue
  • Jacek Moskwa, Legenda Sprawiedliwie Nawróconego: Historia zatajona czy zmyslona?, Zwoje 3/31, 2002, online original in Polish
  • Magda Teter, "The Legend of Ger Zedek of Wilno as Polemic and Reasurance," AJS Review 29 no. 2(2005), 237-263 full text article at www.COJS.org
  • The Ger Tzedek of Vilna - Fact or Fiction (8 June 2005) by Professor Sidney Z. Leiman

Historic

  • Fuenn, Kiryah Ne'emanah, p.&nbsp;120, Wilna. 1860
  • Gersoni, The Converted Nobleman, in Sketches of Jewish, Life and History, pp.&nbsp;187–224, New York, 1873
  • Judah ben Mordecai Ha-Levi Hurwitz, 'Ammude bet Yehudah, p.&nbsp;46a, Amsterdam, 1766 <!--1765 according to Jewish encyclopedia-->
  • Kraszewski, Józef Ignacy, 'Wilno od poczatkow jego do roku 1750', 1841 (Russian translation: Yevreyskaya Biblioteka, iii., pages 228-236')hy
  • B. Mandelstamm, Chazon la-Mo'ed, p.&nbsp;15, Vienna, 1877

Fiction

  • Sabaliauskaite, Kristina, Silva rerum III. A novel, Vilnius, Baltos Lankos, 2014.