Though few in this country have heard about it, there is a storm brewing over a message penned by a revered Israeli rabbi mystic and what it implies for both Jewish and Christian believers.

Sephardic Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri died more than a year ago after reaching a ripe old age, reportedly as old as 117. Attending his funeral in Jerusalem were 300,000 admirers, and many awaited the name he promised would be revealed a year after his death, the name of the long-awaited Jewish Messiah whom the rabbi said he’d met in person on Nov. 4, 2003.

Rabbi Kaduri made headlines in 2005 when he predicted worldwide catastrophes and urged Jews to return to Israel. During Yom Kippur, the rabbi said his predictions of natural disasters were related to the redemption process connected to the arrival of the Mashiach, the Messiah. At that time he was quoted as saying, “Jews must come to the land of Israel to receive our righteous Mashiach, who has begun his influence and will reveal himself in the future.”

After that, according to an October 2005 report from Arutz Sheva, the rabbi emerged from a deep trance and announced, “With the help of God, the soul of the Mashiach has attached itself to a person in Israel.”

Apparently predictions of the Mashiach’s arrival tied in with the start of the war in Afghanistan after the attack on the World Trade Center. As Yeranen Yaakov’s Blogspot explains it: “On September 24, 2001, Channel One Israel TV broadcast an item on what Torah and other mystics were saying in the wake of the World Trade Center attack. Arutz Sheva Hebrew radio show host Yehoshua Meiri, a close confidant of the Kabbalist, explained to the cameras Rabbi Kaduri’s understanding of the events based on the calculations of the Vilna Gaon [a Kabbalist rabbi of the 18th Century]: “On Hashanah Rabba, the actual war of Gog and Magog will commence and will last for some seven years,” said Meiri.

Precise to the minute, 13 days later on Oct. 7, as the sun was setting and the Jewish holiday of Hoshana Rabba was ushered in, U.S. and British forces began an aerial bombing campaign targeting Taliban forces and Al-Qaida.

Visions and miracles were apparently nothing new for the rabbi. For example, Kaduri predicted the great tsunami two weeks before it happened. Wikipedia reports, “Over the years, thousands of people would come to seek his advice, blessings and amulets which he would create specifically for the person in need. He had learned the Kabbalistic secrets of the amulets from his teacher, Rabbi Yehudah Petaya. Many people directly attributed personal miracles to receiving a blessing from Rabbi Kaduri. Kaduri reportedly received blessings from the Ben Ish Chai (Rabbi Yosef Chaim) of Baghdad in 1908 and from the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson) in 1990 that he would witness the coming of the Messiah. Rabbi Kaduri lived a life of poverty and simplicity. He ate little, spoke little, and prayed each month at the gravesites of tzaddikim in Israel.”

So what is the controversy surrounding the announcement of Rabbi Kaduri’s name of the Messiah? No less than his claim that the Messiah’s name is Yehoshua, or Yeshua – the name commonly translated as Jesus!

Reportedly, Rabbi Kaduri wrote the name of the Mashiach on a small note and (knowing, no doubt, the controversy that would ensue) requested it remain sealed for one year after his death. As reported in the May 18 edition of World Net Daily, “The note, written in Hebrew and signed in the rabbi’s name, said: ‘Concerning the letter abbreviation of the Messiah’s name, He will lift the people and prove that his word and law are valid. This I have signed in the month of mercy.’ The Hebrew sentence consists of six words. The first letter of each of those words spells out the Hebrew name Yehoshua or Yeshua.”

Far from being an enlightenment for the Jews or a vindication for Christians, however, this naming of the Messiah creates more problems than it solves. For Jews, the very name Yeshua provokes consternation to the extent that even the rabbi’s 80-year-old son, Rabbi David Kaduri, is claiming the note is not in his father’s handwriting. For Christians it’s problematic because this is not the return of Jesus on clouds of glory with the sounding of Gabriel’s horn, as envisioned by believers. The notion that Jesus’ “soul” would enter a living human does not fit with orthodox Christian belief.

However, it would be easy for some end-time Christians to believe that the rabbi’s Jesus is the person anticipated to be the anti-Christ – the man who, it is prophesied, brings peace to the Middle East only to set himself up as God enthroned on the Temple Mount.

One can’t help but note the irony inherent in a Christian rejection of a Jewish Messiah named Yeshua – 2000 years after Jews rejected the first Yeshua as their Messiah.

Lee Witting is a chaplain at Eastern Maine Medical Center, pastor of the Union Street Brick Church in Bangor and a student in the doctoral program at Bangor Theological Seminary. He may be reached at leewitting@midmaine.com. Voices is a weekly commentary by Maine people who explore issues affecting spirituality and religious life.