In a 24-minute video released this week, Rabbi Tovia Singer, founder of a counter-missionary organization, completely discredits the claim made by Christian groups that a famous Israeli rabbi and spiritualist left a note, to be read a year after his passing, naming Jesus as the messiah.

Asked why he chose to address the question in 2015 when the claim was first made in 2007, Singer told Breaking Israel News, “I do a show where people can call in with any question about Tanach [the Jewish bible]. This popped up from a caller. I spontaneously addressed it on air. I’m glad I did because curiosity was growing about this topic.”

Missionary groups claim that the note was written by Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri, a man Singer calls the “greatest kabbalist [expert in Judaism’s mystical teachings] in the Land of Israel.” Rabbi Kaduri’s exact birth date is not known, but he was known to have been over 100 years old at the time of his death in 2006.

In the video, Singer makes two major claims. First, he explicitly calls the note a forgery. Second, he clearly states that the note does not say what the missionary groups claim it says.

What does the note actually say? Singer translated the Hebrew words as, “The nation will be raised up and it will become known that His word and His Torah stand.” He confirmed that the first letter of each of the Hebrew words in the cryptic message spells Yehoshua, the Hebrew name of Joshua, the disciple of Moses. It does not spell Yeshua, which is the name messianic groups use for Jesus.

“Although others addressed this, no one made the most important point: The note does not say that Jesus is the messiah,” Singer told Breaking Israel News.

“I laughed off the assertion when I first encountered the claim made by missionary groups that [Rabbi] Kaduri left over a note proclaiming that Jesus was the messiah. The note didn’t say what they purported it to exclaim…I thought it was too ridiculous to gain any traction,” Singer explained.

“I think that the mysterious ‘note from the grave’ feature sparked enormous curiosity. Given that the note said nothing that endorsed Christianity, I asked a number of people who studied under the great sage. I asked family members. Uniformly, no one knew anything about this note”.

Since 2007, the false claim about the misconstrued note has been excessively promoted in an overtly commercial manner approximately 40 times on the right-wing news website, World Net Daily.

Self-serving WND articles on this topic often contain promotions to purchase the book The Rabbi Who Found Messiah, published by WND Books, and a followup movie with the same name by WND Films, via the WND Superstore.