Judah ben Shalom

Judah ben Shalom (died ca. 1878) (Hebrew: יהודה בן שלום), also known as Mori (Master) Shooker Kohail II or Shukr Kuhayl II (Hebrew: מרי שכר כחיל), was a Yemenite messianic claimant of the mid-19th century.

Judah ben Shalom was either a potter or a cobbler hailing from San‘a’, Yemen, and was evidently an accomplished kabbalist (Sassoon 1907). He announced to the Jews of Yemen in March 1868 that he was in fact the self-same messianic claimant known as Shukr Kuhayl I, who had been killed and decapitated by Arabs just three years prior, now resurrected by Elijah. The exact manner in which Judah ben Shalom was able to take over the identity of the deceased Shukr Kuhayl, and in so doing to completely erase his own personal history, must remain something of a mystery.

The new (or renewed) Shukr Kuhayl continued to preach the message of repentance that Yemenite Jews were familiar with from prior messiahs, as well as from local religious tradition. To the Jews he proclaimed that he was the Messiah sent to redeem them, while to the Arabs he announced that he was a Muslim sent to proclaim the arrival of the Mahdi. It seems that his repertoire did not include miracle-working, and he addresses this conspicuous failure in some of his letters. The main reason given is that God has not yet permitted him to undertake miracle-working, and that (naturally) God's permission is merely waiting for the moment when the Jews finally unite behind their Messiah (Lenowitz 2000).

Unlike Shukr Kuhayl I, who worked mainly in the capacity of itinerant preacher, Judah ben Shalom developed a significant organizational structure which may have included hundreds of functionaries. From his headquarters, which was successively in Tan'im, al-Ṭawīlah, al-Qaranī, and again Tan'im, he coordinated a vast correspondence with the Jewish leaders in other communities of Yemen, Aden, Alexandria, Bombay, Calcutta, Jerusalem, and Safed (Klorman 1989), mainly for the purposes of acquiring funds. It is from this correspondence that we have our largest source of information about Judah ben Shalom's activities in this period. In contrast to Shukr Kuhayl I, who during his short messianic career pursued an ascetic life of seclusion and poverty, Shukr Kuhayl II presents the appearance of a con-man artfully manipulating individuals and the community at large for his own advantage.

...
Wikipedia