Volume Two
Zeev Gries The Definitions of Sabbatian Hagiographic
Literature 353
Moshe Fogel The Sabbatian Character of Hemdat
. Yamim:
A Re-Examination 365
Shifra Asulin Another Glance at Sabbatianism, Conversion,
and Hebraism in Seventeenth-Century Europe:
Scr utinizing the Character of Johan Kempper
of Uppsala, or Moshe Son of Aharon of
Krakow 423
Rachel Elior Jacob Frank and His Book The Sayings of the
Lord: Religious Anarchism as a Restoration of
Myth and Metaphor 471
Contributors 549
Bibliography 551
Index 581
English Section
Elisheva Carlebach The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry 1*
Jacob J. Schacter Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism:
The Case of Hakham
. Zevi
. Ashkenazi 31*
Michaeł Galas Sabbatianism in the Seventeenth-
Century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth:
A Review of the Sources 51*
Hillel Levine ‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’:
Politics and Spirituality in Early Modern
Jewish Messianism 65*
David Biale Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish
Orientalism 85*
English Abstracts of the Hebrew Articles 111*
[v]
Most of the articles published in these volumes (Nos. 16 and 17) of
Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought are based on lectures delivered in
connection with an international symposium held in memory of the
late Professor Gershom Scholem on
The Sabbatian Movement and its Aftermath:
Messianism, Sabbatianism and Frankism
which took place on 8–10 December 1997 under the auspices of the
Israel Academy of Sciences, organized by the Department of Jewish
Thought, The Hebrew University of Jer usalem, together with the De-
partment of the History of the Jewish People of Haifa University and
The Gershom Scholem Center for the Study of Jewish Mysticism and
Kabbala at the Jewish National and University Library in Jer usalem
[vi]
The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
Elisheva Carlebach
‘ve-af ’ that opens the passage, with reference to the demonic nature of
these Jewish hopes. One of the earliest mockeries of this passage ap-
pears in sixteenth century convert Antonius Margaritha’s Der gantz
¨
Judisch Glaub (The Entire Jewish Faith).4 Son and grandson of rabbinic
luminaries of fifteenth century Ashkenaz, Margaritha devoted his mag-
num opus to revealing Jewish traditions to the Christian world in the
most derisive and contemptuous light. No belief of the Jews provided
better grist for the mill of Margaritha, his precursors, and emulators,
than the Jewish belief in the messiah yet to come.
For medieval Christians, the messianic prophecies had been fulfilled
long ago in the person of their redeemer. The long duration of Jewish
hopes in a future messiah was explained as the result of innate Jewish
obstinacy, spiritual blindness, and even a sign that the devil had van-
quished their reason. German folk-tradition often represented the devil
or evil spirits in the form of an ape, an accursed and inverse image of
man.5 By referring to their cherished hope in this particular form, ‘the
golden ape’, Christians were taunting a belief that went to the very
heart of the Jewish-Christian divide.6
This interplay between Jewish sustenance and Christian mockery of
Jewish messianic hopes is emblematic of the tension which existed for
Jews living in the Christian world. It was a theme of the great Spanish
disputations, essentially staged polemics with predetermined out-
comes. After Jews were expelled from most of Western Europe, the lit-
[ii]
3] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
I
Classical Jewish scholarship has endowed the two preeminent Jewish
cultural communities, the Ashkenazic (Jews whose predominant
cultural influence in the medieval period was the Franco-German
sphere) and the Sephardic (those whose primary cultural influence was
the Spanish sphere) with distinctive messianic postures. In an essay
written some thirty years ago, and published four times, distinguished
scholar and historian Gerson Cohen mapped out an elegant and
influential set of typologies. In the essay, ‘Messianic Postures of
Ashkenazim and Sephardim’, Cohen characterized Ashkenazim as
messianically quietistic, passive, with a penchant for martyrdom, and
portrayed Sephardim as active, dynamic and revolutionary.7
It should be mentioned at the outset, parenthetically, that while Co-
hen never drew lines to the more contemporary resonances of his cate-
gories, notions of Jewish passivity and military activism as responses
to persecution have taken on new meaning in this century. The pain
filled polemics over Jewish responses during the Holocaust and the val-
ues of Zionism form a silent subtext to any discussion of Jewish activ-
ism and passivity.
Cohen’s thesis was one of those far reaching programmatic state-
ments that influenced all subsequent discussions of Jewish messianism.8
[iii]
Elisheva Carlebach [4
History: The Myth and the Reality’, Jewish History and Jewish Destiny, New York
and Jer usalem 1997, pp. 183-212) was not a scholarly presentation and not nearly
as influential. It presented a sweeping and dismissive re-evaluation of his earlier
essay as well as the entire historical enterprise that has accepted Jewish
messianism as an active reality.
9 The influence of these typologies has penetrated deeply. See most recently: S.
Eidelberg, ‘Gilgulav shel ha-Ra‘ayon ha-Meshihi bein Yehudei Germania’, in: S.
Nash (ed.), Bein Historia le-Sifrut: Sefer Yovel le-Yizhak
. . Barzilai, Tel Aviv 1997, p.
25: ‘It is well known that in the history of Jews in medieval Germany there are
not to be found appearances of redeemers and messiahs’. The controversial
essay by I.J. Yuval, ‘Ha-Nakam ve-ha-Kelalah, ha-Dam ve-ha-=Alilah’, Zion, . 58
(1993), pp. 33-90, took Cohen’s essay as its point of departure, see esp. pp. 33, 59.
A statement concerning a work from the medieval Judeo-Arabic world by
historian M.R. Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages,
Princeton 1994, is another example of how deeply the typology has penetrated:
‘The anecdotes are replete with depictions of classic, Ashkenazic-like responses
to suffering: fasting, prayer, and chronicling of events for posterity’ (p. 188), as
though these ‘passive’ reactions to suffering were not universal human, as well
as Jewish, reactions to suffering. But see the more nuanced approach suggested
by Saperstein, in his introduction to Essential Papers on Messianic Movements
(above note 7).
10 Cohen, ibid., p. 219.
[iv]
5] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
11 Ibid., p. 221.
12 See the excellent discussion of ‘The Jewish Messiahs of Early Islam’, in S.M.
Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis in Early Islam,
Princeton 1995, pp. 47-89. The most active and popular of these Jewish
‘uprisings’ at its most militantly confrontational moment, was described as
follows: ‘They claimed that when he was embattled he made a line around his
followers with a myrtle stick, saying, “Stay behind this line and no enemy will
reach you with weapons”. [...] then Abu Isa went beyond that line, alone and on
horseback, and fought and killed many Muslims [...] When he fought against the
followers of Mansur at Rayy, he and his companions were killed’ (p. 76). Cohen’s
characterization, see above note 8, p. 197.
13 See: G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York 1973, pp. 87-89; J.
Dan, ‘Gershom Scholem and Jewish Messianism’, in: P. Mendes-Flohr (ed.),
Gershom Scholem: The Man and His Work, New York 1994, pp. 75-78. Nineteenth
century Jewish historiography tended to link mysticism and messianism as
forcible er uptions into the generally rational Jewish psyche under extreme catas-
trophic pressure.
14 On typologies of Sephardic martyrdom, see most recently M. Bodian, ‘Ha-=Aliya
al ha-Moked shel Nozerim
. Hadashim
. be-Einei Benei ha-Umah ha-Portugalit’,
Pe5amim, 75 (1998), pp. 47-62.
[v]
Elisheva Carlebach [6
[vi]
7] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
[vii]
Elisheva Carlebach [8
[viii]
9] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
II
A comparison of the way Ashkenazic Jews recorded and remembered
expressions of Jewish messianism within the Christian milieu, with
memories among Sephardic Jews of those same events, demonstrates
that there was a sharp division in the way each cultural cluster
transmitted memories of messianic activism. If we juxtapose the
historiographical treatment of two central messianic movements in the
sixteenth century, a time in which there was both a relatively rich
historiography, and considerable messianic activity, this discrepancy
becomes conspicuous.30 In the discussion which follows, I am not
primarily concerned with sifting the actual historical details of the
[ix]
Elisheva Carlebach [10
[x]
11] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
Several points in Gans’ account are worth noting. First, that Gans
characterized Lemlein as a herald of the messiah, not as the messiah.
Second, that Gans described in personal and poignant terms the very
profound reaction to this messianic tiding within both popular circles –
´
his grandfather the matzah baker – as well as among the scholarly elite
– his rabbi. Clearly, this movement str uck very deep chords among
Ashkenazic Jews who heard the tidings.
An anonymous chronicle from Prague in the early seventeenth cen-
tury contains this entry for 1502: ‘News came of the messianic king,
causing massive repentance among the many communities of Israel’.34
In this report Lemlein was apparently remembered as a messianic fig-
ure. He stimulated a very widespread penitential reaction, although the
entry is so terse that the meaning of the phrase ‘news came’ is obscure.
If we turn to Sephardic chroniclers of this event, a more painful per-
spective emerges. In his Shalshelet ha-Kabbalah (Chain of Tradition), pub-
lished in Italy in the late sixteenth century, Gedaliah ibn Yahia
. reported:
‘When the man [Lemlein] died and the messiah had not come, it caused
many conversions, because when the fools saw that the messiah hadn’t
arrived, they apostatized immediately’.35
Significantly, this incident was not recorded by Ibn Yahia
. as an inher-
ently interesting and important event. Rather, it was related as a high-
light in the life of Daniel Bomberg, the Christian printer of early He-
brew books. Chronicler Yoseph Ha-Kohen similarly had no kind words
to spare for the ‘Ashkenazi, an evil prophet, a confused man of spirit’,
to whom the Jews streamed, saying, ‘God has sent him to r ule over his
people Israel, he will gather in the dispersed of Judah from the four
corners of the earth’.36
34 A. David (ed.), A Hebrew Chronicle from Prague c. 1615, tr. L.J. Weinberger with D.
Ordan, Tuscaloosa 1993, p. 24.
35 Ibn Yahia
. was born to a Portuguese refugee family that had settled in Italy. On
his historiography, see: A. David, ‘R. Gedalya ibn Yahya’s . Shalshelet Hakabbalah
[Chain of Tradition]: A Chapter in Medieval Jewish History’, Immanuel, 12
(1980), pp. 60-75; idem, ‘The Spanish Expulsion and the Portuguese Persecution
through the Eyes of the Historian R. Gedalya ibn Yahya’, . Sefarad, 56 (1996), pp.
45-59. 'exind cin `a `l giyny mi`ztd ze`xa ik zelecb zexnd lblbe giyn `a `le yi`d zenie'
cited in Silver (above note 33), note 144.
36 Joseph ha-Kohen, Sefer Emeq ha-Bakhah, ed. K. Almbladh, Uppsala 1981, pp.
67-68: lie` eny oilnil cg` ifpky` icedi yi` d`ivipie lv` xy` d`ixhqi`a mwie mdd minia idie'
zevetpe l`xyi enr lr cibpl edgly 'd ik `ed `iap j` exn`ie micedid eil` exdpe gexd yi` rbeyn `iapd
drxd ekxcn yi` eaeyie miwy exbgie zenev exfbie eixg` ehp minkgd mbe ux`d zetpk rax`n uawi dcedi
'dpyigi dzra 'de `al epzreyi daexw exn` ik `idd zra
[xi]
Elisheva Carlebach [12
37 Yosef Sambari, Sefer Divrei Yosef, ed. Shimon Shtober, Jer usalem 1994, pp.
266-267; Joseph ha-Kohen, Sefer Divrei ha-Yamim le-Malkhei Zarfat . u-Malkhei beit
Ottoman ha-Tugar, Sabionetta 1554, p. 123b; Gedaliah ibn Yahya, . Shalshelet
ha-Kabbalah, Venice 1587, 45a-b: '`iap envr dyry ifpky`'
38 l` exq `le zewqtde zenev mdilr xefbl eci dbiyde eixg` ehp l`xyi inkge ipivwe iliv`n miaxe'
mina ellv k"g`e mditka xy` qngd one drxd ekxcn yi` eay l`xyi ipa iryetn miax mpn` .ezrnyn
'zepeera dfd onfa rxi`y enk zepeera mcia qxg elrde mixic`. Sambari was referring to
conversions that occurred following the collapse of Sabbatai Zevi’s movement.
39 ‘Och wie iemerliche wir bedrogen sind’. H. M. Kirn, Das Bild vom Juden in
Deutschland des fruhen
¨ 16. Jahrhunderts dargestellt an den Schriften Johannes
¨
Pfefferkorns, Tubingen 1989, p. 30, note 68.
[xii]
13] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
¨
Sebastian Munster, Christian Hebraist and disciple of Elijah Levita, had
the Christians say in ‘Ha-Vikuah’,
. his polemical dialogue:
And it happened in the year 1502 that the Jews did penance in all
their dwelling places and in all the lands of exile in order that the
messiah might come. Almost a whole year, young and old,
children and women did penance in those days, the like of which
had never been seen before. And in spite of it all there appeared
neither sign nor vestige, not to speak of the reality itself.
For how did that repentance of 1502 help you, when all Jews in
their habitations and places in exile […] young and old, infants
and women, repented as never before and nothing was revealed
to you[.] [The result was] You Jews [too] see and understand that
your rabbis are confused and wrong.40
Johannes a Lent, author of the seventeenth century ‘list’ that was to
become the canonical reference work on Jewish false messiahs, devoted
a very substantial section to Lemlein, exceeding all prior descriptions
of the movement in length.41 It consisted of several reports by Jewish
(Ganz and ibn Yahya),
. non Jewish (Genebrardus), and convert (Isaac
Levita) sources, along with Lent’s introduction and translations from
the Hebrew. In both Lent’s introduction to the section, as well as in the
excerpts from Genebrardus and Levita, Lemlein is described as a
40 ‘Potissimum autem id fecer unt anno mundi q-n quies millesimo ducentesimo
sexagesimosecundo, qui fuit annus Christi 1502. quando omnes Iudaei fecer unt
publicam poenitentiam per omnes habitationes suas, in omnibus terris & per
totam captivitatem, [...] fere, per integr um annum, tam pueri quam senes,
per uuli & mulieres, qualis poenitentia nunque retroactis seculis audita est: eam
autem fecer unt pro adventu Meschiae. Sed omnia fr ustra. Nihil enim est eis
revelatum, necque signum ullum aut ullus nutus, (45) ut taceam maius
quippiam. Et certe res istra est miraculum magnum, sibilus oris & complosio
manuum apud cunctos qui id audiunt, quod nihil illis suffragatur, non lex, non
poenitentia, non oratio neque ulla eleemosyna, quae omnia per singulos faciunt
¨
dies’. Sebastian Munster, Messias Christianorum et Iudaeorum Hebraice et Latine
[Messiah of the Christians and Jews], Basel 1539, pp. 44-45. I thank Professor
Stephen Burnett for sending this excerpt, and for sharing with me his article, ‘A
Dialogue of the Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy and Anti-Jewish Polemic, Sebastian
¨
Munster’s Messiahs of the Christians and the Jews (1529/39)’, Archiv fur ¨
Reformationsgeschichte, 91 (2000), pp. 168-190. English translation see in Silver
(above note 33), p. 145, note 141.
41 Johannes a Lent, Schediasma Historico Philologicum de Judaeorum Pseudo-Messias,
Herborna 1697.
[xiii]
Elisheva Carlebach [14
messiah.42 The excerpt from the former Jew turned Christian is the most
polemical, chiding the blind Jews for continuing to await a messiah in
their sinful state.43
Until the publication of Lemlein’s own writings by Ephraim Kupfer,
scholars Tishby, Aescoly, and Cohen44 linked the movement of Lemlein
to the expulsion from Spain, although there was not a shred of evidence
for that assumption, and despite the fact that all the chroniclers empha-
sized that he was Ashkenazic. His own writings show him to have been
something of a champion of Ashkenazic culture and contemptuous of
the Sephardic, apparently in resentment of the newly arrived refugees
from Spain that entered Italy.45 The historiography of the movement
thus differed considerably depending on who was doing the reporting.
It would be even more instr uctive to compare the reports by Ashke-
nazim and Sephardim of a messianically charged event that occurred
within the fuller light of history. David Reubeni appeared in 1522 claim-
ing to represent the Lost Tribes of Israel, with a scheme to liberate the
Jews in the Diaspora.46 Armed with an offer to provide an army against
42 Lent, ibid., p. 70: ‘se pro Messia venditavit Rabbi Lemlem Judaeus Germanus’.
Genebrardus: ‘Quidam Iudaeus nomine Lemlem, imposuit quibusdam (credo in
Germania) se esse ver um Christum, quem exspectabant’.
43 Aescoly, in a brief translation (Ha-Tenu5ot ha-Meshihiyot,
. p. 331), did not convey
the full polemical sting of Levita’s words. Levita translated Maimonides’ epistle
on astrology into Latin, and introduced the epistle with the following paragraph
on Lemlein, probably because the epistle ended with the consideration of a
report of a messianic movement among the Jews of Yemen. The relevant text of
the epistle, see: Iggerot ha-Rambam, II, ed. Y. Shilat, Jer usalem 1988, p. 479:
‘Tandem Lemlem Pseudo-messias, aliis propheta, periit, nusquamque magis
appar uit, cum antea conquestus esset, impoenitentiam Judaeor um adventum
Messiae retardare. In de factum, ut omnes Judaei Anno Christi 1502 in universa
dispersione sua diligentissime poenitentiam agerent, per orationem, jejunium &
Eleemosynas, ut adventum Messiae tam propinqui promover unt, sed nihil
effecer unt. Non enim vider unt coeci homines, Messiam sic nunquam ventur um,
quia peccare nunquam cessabunt. Vah, quam magnifica spe vos fr ustra toties
implestis agnoscite vel tandem o miselli, cum ne ullo seculo non seducti estis,
quod haec expectatio nimis sera sit. Adveniat Messias fatemur & forte in
propinquo est, sed non ea ratione, qua vos persuasi estis. Sed de his plura in
fine’.
44 Idel, Introduction to Aescoly, Ha-Tenu5ot ha-Meshihiyot,. p. 23. According to
Cohen (p. 206): ‘The call of Asher Lemmlein is an obscure and short-lived affair,
which show[s] traces of Sephardic influence on the mind of an Ashkenazic Jew’.
45 See: Idel, ibid.
46 Ironically, the first Jewish historians to analyze the story of Reubeni, Neubauer
and then Aescoly, thought he may have been of Ashkenazic descent. His origins
[xiv]
15] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
the Turks, he met with the Pope and with King John III of Portugal. In
Portugal he attracted the attention of Diego Pires, a Marrano who cir-
cumcised himself and took the name Shlomo Molkho. In 1532 they trav-
elled together to Regensburg to meet Emperor Charles V. Molkho was
ultimately burned at the stake in Mantua; Reubeni met his end in a
Spanish prison.47
In addition to their own writing, or that produced by their camps,
Reubeni and Molkho occupied center stage in several of the chronicles
written by Sephardic Jews in the sixteenth century, particularly Joseph
ha-Kohen and Gedaliah ibn Yahya. . Joseph ha-Kohen reported: ‘And a
shoot went forth from Portugal, his name was Shlomo Molkho’, a dis-
tinctly messianic introduction to Molkho within a lengthy account of
Reubeni and Molkho’s activities.48 The seventeenth century chronicler
Yosef Sambari of Egypt wove their accounts together and created one
unified chronicle.49 His account was far lengthier than any previous re-
port of a failed messianic figure.50 It begins with the story of Shlomo
Molkho ‘who proclaimed himself the messiah’, and David ‘Chief of
staff for the messiah’. Sambari stated unambiguously from the begin-
ning that Molkho was regarded as a messiah. Reubeni introduced holy
names, flags and the shield of ‘king David’ intended for use to fight the
wars of God. Since the Reubeni/Molkho adventure was widely known
and recounted, those contemporaries who passed over it in silence or
with very minimal notice must have chosen that path deliberately.
Molkho’s sojourn in Regensburg in 1532, to request permission to
draft Jews into his battle against the Turks, left a deep and lasting im-
pression on the German Jews. Josel of Rosheim, spokesman for German
Jewry in the first half of the sixteenth century, recorded in his chronicle:
‘There came [to Regensburg] that speaker of a foreign tongue [lo=ez],
the righteous convert called R. Shlomo Molka [sic], may he rest in
peace, with alien doctrines [de=ot hizoniyot]
. . to arouse the emperor by
are still unknown but that possibility seems unlikely. See the bibliography cited
in A. Shohat, ‘Le-Farshat David ha-Reuveni’, Zion,
. 35 (1970), p. 96, note 1.
47 For sources on the messianic careers of Reubeni and Molkho, see: A.Z. Aescoly,
Sippur David ha-Reuveni, Jer usalem 1993; idem, Ha-Tenu5ot ha-Meshihiyot, pp.
357-433.
48 Emeq ha-Bakhah (above note 36), pp. 71-73.
49 Sefer Divrei Yosef (above note 37), pp. 293-302.
50 Sambari’s account of the Sabbatai Zevi period was excised from the manuscript
in all extant copies. A later copyist inserted the Sabbatian section from Tobias
Kohen’s Ma5aseh Tovia, editio princeps Venice 1707, chapter 1, part 6.
[xv]
Elisheva Carlebach [16
saying that he had come to call all Jews to war against the Turks’.51 Josel
then wrote that he had sent a letter imploring Molkho to desist from his
plan; when that failed he left the city so as not to be associated by the
Emperor with the schemes of Molkho.52 He concluded his entry by de-
scribing Molkho as having died the death of a martyr, and having
caused many Jews to repent.53
Josel’s report is remarkable, both for what it contains as well as for
what it omits. The word as well as the concept of messiah are totally
absent from his account. He characterized Molkho as one who es-
poused alien doctrines; his activities consisted solely of his entreaty to
the Emperor for a joint offensive against the Turks. There was no men-
tion in Josel’s account that he was regarded by many Jews as a messiah.
The name David Reubeni, whom Josel surely heard of, even if he had
not met him, was suppressed. Molkho’s image in this source is that of
an heretical fantasist, whose primary virtue resided in his martyrdom.
If no other source had survived, we might never have known the mes-
sianic character of the movement.
Other aspects of Molkho’s legacy, particularly his martyrdom, were
preserved with great fidelity among Ashkenazim. R. Yom Tov Lipman
Heller recalled: ‘Here in the Pinkas synagogue in Prague, which I had
frequented prior to my appointment as head of the Rabbinical court,
there is a pair of zizit
. . [fringed four cornered garments] exactly the color
green as in an egg yolk. It was brought here from Regensburg, and it
[xvi]
17] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
belonged to the martyr Shlomo Molkho, may God avenge his blood.
Also two of his banners, and the caftan called kittel’.54 Once again, there
is no mention of messianic aspirations. David Gans recorded in ‘Zemah
. .
David’:
R. Shlomo Molkho, righteous convert of the conversos of
Portugal, was scribe of the king who converted in secret, and
adhered to David Reubeni of the land of the Ten Tribes […] This
R. Shlomo, although he was lacking in Torah from his youth,
became an expert in Torah. He preached in public in Italy and
Turkey and wrote a kabbalistic work. I, the writer, have seen a
copy of that work in the possession of the Gaon my kinsman, my
cousin R. Nathan Horodna. (His son later became Rosh Yeshiva
and Head of the Rabbinical Court in Worms [143] so the tradition
may have travelled there.) R. Shlomo and his companion Reubeni
had audiences with the King of France and Charles V, and they
tried to direct their hearts to the Jewish faith, for which R. Shlomo
was condemned to the flames in Mantua, 1532/3, and they put a
harness in his mouth so that he was unable to say anything.55
The word messiah or any overt references to a messianic mission are
absent. Molkho had preached a sermon before an audience of both Jews
and Christians in Mantua. References to Molkho’s anti-Christian
polemical words were reported as pro-Jewish proselytization.56
The anonymous Prague chronicler of 1615 referred only to the r u-
mors that were associated with the appearance of David Reubeni in the
entry for 1523: ‘News of saviors from beyond the Sambatyon River
spread among all the lands, in addition to other messianic expecta-
tions’.57 The chronicler did not mention Molkho’s name or messianic
activities either in the entry for 1523 or in any subsequent entries. The
contrast between the laconic descriptions of the Ashkenazic chroniclers
and the expansive versions of the Sephardim chroniclers is striking.
Christian Hebraist Johann Albert Widmanstadt, a contemporary,
[xvii]
Elisheva Carlebach [18
wrote: ‘R. Solomon Molkho who prophesied that he himself was the
messiah of the Jews, and was burned in Mantua in 1532, at the com-
mand of Charles V […] wrote a book on Jewish kabbalah. I saw his ban-
ner in Ratisbon [Regensburg] in 1541, with the letters iakn’.58 In his cat-
alogue of Jewish false messiahs, Johannes a Lent described the move-
ment of Reubeni-Molkho as ‘qui se pro messia constanter venditavit’.59
Several patterns emerge from the examples of the two sixteenth cen-
tury messianic movements of Lemlein and Reubeni-Molkho. Ashke-
nazim tended to be laconic in their record and description of these
movements; they tended to minimize the messianic element within his-
torical events or omit it altogether. It is no coincidence that Abravanel,
a Sephardic Jew, recorded a messianic tradition among German Jews.
‘There is a tradition among the Jews of Ashkenaz, that because the seat
of the emperor is there, the messiah will come there [first]’.60 Sephardic
chroniclers of messianic movements tended to be less interested in Ash-
kenazic figures but they did not detract from the messianic character of
events that came to their attention. For their own polemical reasons,
Christians or converts to Christianity did preserve the messianic char-
acter of some of these same events. Fully aware of the polemical import
of these movements, Christian lenses maximized what Ashkenazic
memory minimized.61 Christian Hebraists included lists of Jewish false
[xviii]
19] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
[xix]
Elisheva Carlebach [20
[xx]
21] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
ing Cr usades sparked a major messianic awakening: the rich gave their
property to the poor, all were immersed in waves of prayer and repent-
ance: ‘They sit in their prayer shawls, they stopped working and we do
not know what they are hoping for. And we are afraid that the thing
might be revealed to the Gentiles and they will kill us’.68 This ferment
was communicated to western European Jewry, and it affected them
deeply. The Cr usade chronicle of Solomon bar Samson opened with a
statement concerning the impending redemption in a year that had
turned into one of affliction.69 It is impossible to know how widespread
such thoughts were in Ashkenaz, and whether or not they influenced
the martyrdom of the Rhine communities.70 The influential compilation
Sefer Hasidim
. already bears traces of a suppression of messianic thought
and activism. The readers are warned to distance themselves from ‘any
person who prophesies concerning the messiah […] for if it will be re-
vealed to the world, in the end it will be an embarrassment and humil-
iation before the world’.71
The mid-thirteenth century was another locus of messianic activism
among Jews in the Christian world. The fifth Jewish millennium was
inaugurated in the Christian year 1240; combined with the news of the
Mongol invasions the atmosphere was ripe for messianism. A Bohe-
mian chronicler reported, ‘In 1235 they [the Jews] were expelled from
the city [Prague] and scattered over the countryside, because they had
prepared to establish an army and showed letters in which they were
notified that their messiah had come’.72 When Ezra of Moncontour
arose in France and prophesied that Elijah would appear in 1226, the
messiah in 1233 and the redemption itself would begin in 1240, the
news spread almost exclusively through Sephardic channels. The news
68 J. Prawer, The History of the Jews in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Oxford 1988,
pp. 10-13. Cohen cited and dismissed without comment, ‘two messianic
incidents in Byzantium, c. 1096, and in Sicily’ (p. 206) and discounted these
movements because these places had ‘cultural affinities with the East and Spain,
respectively’.
69 Cited in A. M. Haberman (ed.), Gezerot Ashkenaz ve-Zarefat,
. Jer usalem 1946, p. 24:
awril e"px `iapd dinxi z`eapk dngple dreyil epieiw f` xy` e"px xefgnl dpy dxyr zg`a [...] idie'
' 'ebe miebd y`xa eldve dgny
70 Baron, ASRHJ, IV, p. 96.
71 Sefer Hasidim,
. ed. Y. Wistinetsky and Y. Freimann, Frankfurt a.M. 1924, pp. 76-77,
parag. 212. Cited in Eidelberg (above note 9), p. 39, note 5, although it tends to
undermine his thesis rather than support it.
72 Aescoly, Ha-Tenu5ot ha-Meshihiyot,
. p. 212. Aescoly notes that all the sources were
non Jewish or hostile.
[xxi]
Elisheva Carlebach [22
[xxii]
23] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
78 Baron, ASRHJ, IX, New York 1967, pp. 153-154, from Monumenta Germaniae
Historica, Constitutiones, III, 368-369: ‘sine nostra sive domini sui speciali licencia
et consensu se ultra mare transtulerint’.
79 Silver (above note 33), pp. 81-101. Abraham Abulafia calculated a date in the
1280s; Tosafot Sens, Isaac ben Judah Halevy, in his `fx gprt, calculated 1290; the
author of the Zohar, 1300. For an interpretion of the fall of the Cr usader kingdom
as a sign that the land would only absorb its own sons, see: B.Z. Dinur, Yisrael
ba-Golah, II, Tel-Aviv 1965, pp. 441-442. A similar interpretation of the loss of
Cr usader ships at sea, see: I. Perles, ‘Die in einer Munchner ¨ Handschrift
aufgefundene erste lateinische Uebersetzung des Maimonidischen Fuhrers’, ¨
Monatsschrift fur¨ Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 24 (1875), pp. 21-22;
J. Prawer, ‘Jewish Resettlement in Cr usader Jer usalem’, Ariel, 19 (1967), pp.
60-66.
80 Perles, ibid., p. 22. Yuval cited a nearly identical passage from a disciple of `"avix
(d. 1210) and dated a series of messianic =aliyot to this time. See: I.J. Yuval, ‘Likrat
1240: Tikvot Yehudiyot, Pehadim . Nozriyim’,
. Proceedings of the Eleventh World
Congress of Jewish Studies, Division B, I, Jer usalem 1994, pp. 114-115. Although
some of the links between Jewish apocalypticism and the blood libel in Yuval’s
thesis have been criticized as tendentious, the suggestions that he makes in this
article concerning Jewish apocalyptic motivation are sound. See also: Yuval
[xxiii]
Elisheva Carlebach [24
visited Israel for a time and appended the name Zion . to his name and
all his writings, acts which bespeak more than a passive messianism.81
Cohen reduced the entire history of migration to the Holy Land to ‘At
best, the rabbis tolerated the yen of some Jews to settle in the Holy
Land, but the extremely restricted extent of such settlement betrays the
´
tr ue nature of the elitist-rabbinic messianic posture’.82 Surely the re-
strictions were more a function of the unbearable conditions imposed
by geography, economics, and hateful overlords than by rabbinic in-
difference.
For example, Cohen dismissed the migration of ‘several hundred
rabbis from France and Germany to the Holy Land in 1210 and 1211’ as
‘betraying little if any messianic activity’.83 He characterized the move-
ment as elitist, because ‘they made no move to carry the masses of Jews
along with them’. In thirteenth century Ashkenaz, hundreds of people
migrating to the Holy Land was a popular movement. Given the de-
mography of north European Jewish communities in the thirteenth cen-
tury, several hundred men are masses. In the very small communities
of western Europe there was not as pronounced a social distance be-
tween rabbis and lay people. Rabbinic scholars were merchants and
everyone was related. The social dynamics were so different from the
vast population and huge distances of class and geography that char-
acterized movements on the fringes of the Geonic world, that a com-
parison of the two on the basis of popular resentment against a rabbinic
´
elite seems to miss the mark entirely.
Cohen’s study was informed by the Jewish historiographical tradi-
tion to which he was heir and its biases which were deeply embedded.
In this tradition, medieval Ashkenaz became a metaphor for the ‘rab-
´
binic, elite’ which was identified with fundamentalism and intolerance:
(above note 9); D. Berger, ‘From Cr usades to Blood Libels to Expulsions: Some
new Approaches to Medieval Antisemitism’, Lecture of the Selmanowitz Chair
of Jewish History, Touro College, New York 1997. But cf. E. Kanarfogel, ‘The
‘aliyah of “Three Hundred Rabbis” in 1211: Tosafist Attitudes toward Settling in
the Land of Israel’, JQR, 76 (1986), pp. 191-215, who does not attribute messianic
goals to this ‘aliya.
81 On the messianic doctrines of Menahem Zion, see: I.J. Yuval, Hakhamim .
be-Doram, Jer usalem 1988, pp. 291-310.
82 Cohen, p. 203.
83 Cohen, p. 229, note 14: ‘Certainly the considerations of piety motivating
settlement in the Holy Land were messianically oriented, but they were
“pre-millenarist” in character,very similar to those motivating the move of Judah
ha-Levi’.
[xxiv]
25] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
III
In a recent paper, Professor Shlomo Eidelberg restated some of the
popular conceptions concerning the messianic posture of Ashkenazic
Jews, with specific reference to the Sabbatian posture of German Jews.
‘It is well known that among the Jews of medieval Germany we find no
appearances of redeemers or messiahs’.87
Even with regard to the Sabbatian messianic movement, Eidelberg
dismissed Scholem’s argument concerning ‘the large scale suppression
84 Cohen, p. 212.
85 Ibid., p. 223.
86 It is significant that in one of the few passages in Sefer Hasidim,
. devoted to
messianic prophecizing, the reason cited for its sharp discouragement was that
‘in the end it will cause shame and humiliation before the entire world’.
87 Eidelberg (above note 9), p. 25.
[xxv]
Elisheva Carlebach [26
[xxvi]
27] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
dances” they one and all trooped to the synagogue and they read the letters forth
with joy... Some [yiliih] sold their houses and lands and all their possessions, for
any day they hoped to be redeemed. My good father-in-law ,d"r, left his home
in Hameln, abandoned his house and lands and all his goodly furniture, and
moved to Hildesheim.... For the old man expected [dheytk] to sail any moment
from Hamburg to the Holy Land.... For three years the casks stood ready, and all
this while my father-in-law awaited the signal to depart. But the Most High
pleased otherwise’. I have inserted the relevant Yiddish phrases into the English
text.
92 I. Lorenz and J. Berkemann, Streitfall judischer
¨ Friedhof Ottensen, II, Hamburg
1995, p. 36, parag. 13.
93 Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi,
. p. 590. But as Beshraybung (below note 95) shows, there is
room in the Judeo-German tradition for a more active involvement in
[xxvii]
Elisheva Carlebach [28
[xxviii]
29] The Sabbatian Posture of German Jewry
tive, oppressive, constant live wire, with which they were continually
tormented. By linking Jewish messianic hope to the most negative im-
ages of Jews in polemical as well as popular representation, early mod-
ern German-Christian culture inscribed its very inhibiting imprint
upon the Sabbatian posture of German Jews.
[xxix]
Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism:
The Case of Hakham
. Zevi
. Ashkenazi
Jacob J. Schacter
[xxxiii]
Jacob J. Schacter [4
[xxxiv]
5] Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism
[xxxv]
Jacob J. Schacter [6
[xxxvi]
7] Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism
the movement, it is fair to assume that almost any Jew in the eighteenth
century had some relative who had once been a ‘believer ’ prior to
Shabbetai’s conversion. What is of special significance in the examples
cited here, however, is that Yizhaki,
.. Pinheiro and Galante´ continued to
maintain their belief in Shabbetai Zevi . even after his conversion, at a
time when he had been abandoned by the vast majority of his followers.
That each of these persistent Sabbatians had direct descendants who
were later in the forefront of the movement against Sabbatianism is
what I want to highlight here.
First, a methodological consideration. To be sure, Sabbatianism in
one’s family, in and of itself, is not enough to explain one’s extreme and
rabid opposition to the movement. There were undoubtedly many
moderate anti-Sabbatians (who were opponents of the movement but
in a less extreme and vir ulent fashion) and even non-Sabbatians (who
simply were neither opponents nor followers of the movement) who
also had close family members who were ‘believers’ even after
Shabbetai Zevi’s
. conversion. The presence of a Sabbatian forebear
surely did not insure a vir ulent and extreme anti-Sabbatian descendant.
Conversely, there probably were active anti-Sabbatians in the eight-
eenth century who did not have a Sabbatian skeleton in their family’s
closet and whose motivations stemmed from other considerations en-
tirely. Nevertheless, for some, with a certain type of psychological tem-
perament, having had a Sabbatian in their family might account, to some
extent, for their own unusually strong, active and vehement reaction to
that movement. This was not necessarily the only motivation, or even
the dominant one, but I suggest that it too needs to be taken into account.
There are a number of ways to explain this nexus. For example, one
possibility may be that these later anti-Sabbatians were reacting to the
extreme embarrassment and discomfort they felt over the presence of
this heresy within the confines of their own immediate families. Rather
than feel defensive, they took the initiative and positioned themselves
in the forefront of the str uggle against it, to actively search out and up-
root any vestige of that foulness which had contaminated their own
loved ones. In other words, the best defense was an offense.
Or maybe it was not simply a matter of discomfort or embarrass-
ment. Is it possible that this discomfort or embarrassment led these vir-
ulent anti-Sabbatians to feel a great deal of anger towards their heretical
Sabbatian forebears which, due to their close personal connection, they
found difficult to express? Is it conceivable that, as a result, they trans-
ferred this anger onto the Sabbatian movement as a whole?
[xxxvii]
Jacob J. Schacter [8
[xxxviii]
9] Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism
17 This major figure has not received the scholarly attention he deserves. The best
study to date is still J. Bleich, ‘Hakam
. Zebi as Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazic
Kehillah of Amsterdam (1710–1714)’, unpublished Masters’ thesis, Yeshiva
University, New York 1965.
18 See: Jacob Emden, Megillat Sefer, Warsaw 1896 (=Megillat Sefer), p. 7, where
Emden writes that his father arrived in Buda together with his father, R. Jacob
Zak, and maternal grandfather, R. Ephraim ha-Kohen. For 1666 as the date of
their arrival, see the introduction of R. Judah ha-Kohen to the responsa of his
father, R. Ephraim ha-Kohen, She6elot u-Teshuvot Sha5ar Ephraim, Lemberg 1886
(=Shu"t Sha5ar Ephraim), beginning. It is impossible to determine young Zevi’s .
precise age at that time because his date of birth is unknown, with suggestions
ranging from 1648 to 1661. See: A. H. Wagenaar, Sefer Toledot Yavez, . Lublin 1881,
p. 4; M. Gr unwald, Hamburgs deutsche Juden, Hamburg 1904, p. 66; M. Balaban,
‘Shalshelet ha-Yahas. shel Mishpahat . Orenstein-Broda’, Sefer ha-Yovel li-Khevod
Dr. Mordekhai Ze6ev Broda, Warsaw 1931, p. 21; D. Kahana, Toledot ha-Mekkubalim,
ha-Shabbeta6im ve-ha-Hasidim,
. I, Tel-Aviv 1921 (=Toledot ha-Mekkubalim), p. 130;
Z. Y. Lerer, ‘He=arot ha-Hakham
. Zevi
. ve-ha-Yavez. =al Sefer “ha-Bahur”
. ’, Zefunot,
.
14 (1992), p. 101. See Megillat Sefer, where Emden writes that his father was ‘still
a lad, young in years [mipya jx xrp]’ while living in Buda.
19 See: Sasportas, Sefer Zizat
. . Novel Zevi,
. pp. 129, 131, 209, 215; Scholem, Shabbetai
Zevi,
. index, s.v. ‘Budapest’; Sabbatai Sevi,
. index, s.v. ‘Budapest’ and ‘Ofen
(Buda)’. For other references, see: D. Kaufmann, Die Ersturmung
¨ Ofens und ihre
Vorgeschichte, Trier 1895, p. 19; reprinted in: idem, Gesammelte Schriften, II,
Frankfurt a. Main 1910, p. 301; idem, Die letzte Vertreibung der Juden aus Wien und
Niederosterreich,
¨ Vienna 1889, p. 91; Y. Greenwald, ‘Le-Toledot ha-Mekubbalim
be-Ungaryah’, Sinai, 24 (1949), pp. 193–195.
20 Cf. Deuteronomy 22: 17.
[xxxix]
Jacob J. Schacter [10
her hands outstretched towards the heavens she caught some air
and offered an exceedingly fragrant odor to whoever wanted.21
He also told a story about a young boy in Sarajevo during the days of
Shabbetai Zevi
. who, for a period of time, was suddenly endowed with
the prophetic power of being able to inform people about all the sins
they had ever committed.22
As a young man, Hakham
. Zevi
. traveled to the East to study Torah,23
and there came into contact with former followers of the movement
from whom he undoubtedly heard a great deal about its traditions and
beliefs. In Adrianople, he encountered R. Jacob Straimer who had been
a ‘believer ’ prior to Shabbetai’s conversion.24 On a visit to Belgrade in
1679, he also met R. Joseph Almosnino who had been a follower of
25
Shabbetai Zevi.
. Interestingly, Hakham
. Zevi’s
. first-hand knowledge of
Sabbatian lore is indicated by the fact that a later work quotes him as a
source for the Sabbatian tradition that the messiah died in Arnaut-
Belgrade, Albania.26
21 Jacob Emden, Zot Torat ha-Kena6ot, Altona 1752, p. 5a. Sabbatians claimed that a
fragrant odor exuded from Shabbetai Zevi’s . body which they identified as the
smell of Gan Eden. See: Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, . p. 139.
22 Emden, ibid. See also: Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, . pp. 636–637. Hakham
. Zevi
. served
as rabbi in Sarajevo for a few years beginning around 1686. See: Emden, Megillat
Sefer, p. 9; She6elot u-Teshuvot Hakham
. Zevi,
. Amsterdam 1712 (=Shu"t Hakham
. Zevi),
.
introduction; R. Judah ha-Kohen, introduction to Shu"t Sha5ar Ephraim. See also:
Jewish Encyclopedia, 2 (1903), p. 202; M. Levy, Die Sephardim in Bosnien, Sarajevo
1911, pp. 16–17; A. L. Fr umkin and E. Rivlin, Toledot Hakhmei . Yerushalayim, II,
Tel-Aviv 1969 [1928] (=Hakhmei
. Yerushalayim), p. 82 and n. 1; I. Solomons, ‘David
Nieto and Some of his Contemporaries’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society
of England, 12 (1931), p. 18; Encyclopaedia Judaica, 14 (1971), p. 871.
23 Emden, Megillat Sefer, p. 8; Emden, Zot Torat ha-Kena6ot, p. 27a; Kerem Shelomoh,
vol. 10, no. 7 (1987), p. 10.
24 See: Shu"t Hakham
. Zevi,
. #7,141. J.L. Puhvizer, Divrei Hakhamim,
. Hamburg 1692,
p. 28b, cited by A. Ya=ari, Ta5alumat Sefer, Jer usalem 1954, p. 21. For evidence of
Straimer’s Sabbatianism, see: Emden, ibid.
25 See: Shu"t Hakham
. Zevi,
. #41, 168. For Almosnino’s Sabbatianism, see: Kahana,
Toledot ha-Mekkubalim, p. 89, n. 3; Scholem, Shabbetai Zevi, . pp. 189, 535; Sabbatai
Sevi,
. pp. 232, 636; M. Benayahu, Ha-Tenu5ah ha-Shabbeta6it be-Yavan (Sefunot, 14)
(1971–1978), p. 249, n. 138.
26 See: Leib b. Oyzer, Bashraybung fun Shabsay Tsvi, ed. Z. Shazar, S. Zucker, and R.
Plesser, Jer usalem 1978, pp. 166–167. For this issue and Hakham . Zevi’s
. central
role in it, see: Y. Ben-Zvi, ‘Mekom Kevurato shel S"Z ve-ha-=Edah ha-Shabbeta>it
be-Albaniah’, Zion,. 17 (1952), pp. 75–78, 174; G. Scholem, ‘Heikhan Met
Shabbetai Zevi’,
. Zion,
. 17 (1952), pp. 79–83; idem, Shabbetai Zevi,
. p. 790; Sabbatai
Sevi,
. p. 921; Benayahu, ibid., pp. 247–251.
[xl]
11] Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism
[xli]
Jacob J. Schacter [12
31 For R. Judah, see his introduction to his father’s Shu"t Sha5ar Ephraim; S. J. Fuenn,
Kiryah Ne6emanah, Vilna 1915, pp. 90–91; Fr umkin and Rivlin, Hakhmei .
Yerushalayim, pp. 82–85; Y. Y. Greenwald, ‘Rabbanei Ungariyah she-=Alu le->Erez.
Yisra>el mi-Shnat 5445 =ad 5655’, Sinai, 26 (1949–1950), pp. 222–225; M. Benayahu,
‘Halifat
. Iggerot bein ha-Kehillah ha-Ashkenazit bi-Yer ushalayim ve-R. David
Oppenheim’, Yerushalayim, 3 (1950), pp. 108, 115, 118–122; idem (above note 16),
pp. 62–63, 65; Y. Buksbaum, ‘Ha-Gaon Rabbi Aryeh Yehudah Leib Katz zz"l, .
ha-Rishon mi-Gedolei Hungariyah she-=Alah le->Erez ha-Kodesh’, Moriyah, vol.
14, no. 5–8 (1986), pp. 30–39; M. A. Z. Kinstlicher, ‘Bein Oyvin le-Erez.
ha-Kodesh’, Zefunot,
. vol. 1, no. 3 (1989), pp. 90–99.
32 For R. Jacob, see: Megillat Sefer, pp. 3–7 (the manuscript of Megillat Sefer [A.
Neubauer, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford
1886, p. 590, parag. 1723:2], 117a contains an important passage missing in the
Kahana edition which will appear in my forthcoming edition of this work); Shu"t
Hakham
. Zevi,
. introduction; Encyclopaedia Judaica, 9 (1971), p. 1216, and the
references cited there; Greenwald, ibid., pp. 225–226; Y. D. Feld, ‘Helkei
. Avanim’,
in She6elot u-Teshuvot Nish6al David, Jer usalem 1982, pp. 246–47; idem., ‘Halukei
.
Avanim’, in R. Pinhas. Katzenellenboigen, Sefer Yesh Manhilin,
. Jer usalem 1986,
pp. 416–417; Kinstlicher, ‘Bein Oyvin le-Erez. ha-Kodesh’, Zefunot,
. vol. 1, no. 2
(1989), p. 91 and n. 21; S. Englard, ‘Shibushim Nefozim . bi-Megillot Yohasin’,
.
Zefunot,
. 13 (1991), p. 88.
33 I. Sonne, ‘=Ovrim ve-Shavim be-Veito shel Rabbi Avraham Rovigo’, Sefunot, 5
(1961), pp. 283–284, parag. 18.
[xlii]
13] Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism
34 G. Scholem, Halomotav
. shel ha-Shabbeta6i R. Mordekhai Ashkenazi, Jer usalem 1938
(=Halomotav),
. pp. 34–35.
35 An account of this journey was printed by Jacob Mann in Me6asef Zion, . 6 (1934),
pp. 71–84, and reprinted by A. Ya=ari, Iggerot Erez. Yisrael, Tel-Aviv 1943, pp.
226–242. For R. Judah, see: Mann, ibid., pp. 64, 71, 76, 79, 81; Ya=ari, pp. 226, 231,
236, 238.
36 See: Mann, ibid., pp. 64, 81; Ya=ari, ibid., p. 239.
37 See: Mann, ibid., pp. 64, 68, 84; Ya=ari, ibid., p. 241. For another link between R.
Judah and Rovigo, see: M. Benayahu, ‘Shemu=ot Shabbeta>iyot mi-Pinkeseihem
shel Rabbi Binyamin ha-Kohen ve-Rabbi Avraham Rovigo’, Michael, 1 (1973), p.
24; reprinted in: idem, Ha-Tenu5ah ha-Shabbeta6it be-Yavan (above note 25), p. 464.
38 See: M. Benayahu, ‘Rabbi Ya=akov Vilna u-Veno ve-Yahaseihem . la-Shabbeta>ut’,
Yerushalayim: Mehkarei
. Erez. Yisrael, vol. 1, n. 4 (1953), p. 205; A. Ya=ari, Sheluhei .
Erez. Yisrael, Jer usalem 1951, p. 337.
39 Sonne (above note 33), p. 284. For the text of this work, see: G. Scholem, Be-5Ikevot
Mashiah,. Jer usalem 1944, pp. 9–52. For the particular significance of Nathan of
Gaza’s works in the school of Rovigo, see: G. Scholem, Leket Margaliyot, Tel-Aviv
1941, p. 18.
40 Scholem, Halomotav,
. p. 35 ('i`zay did [... ] odk dcedi 'x mby xryl aexw'). See below, n. 42.
[xliii]
Jacob J. Schacter [14
[xliv]
15] Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism
But what is even more striking is that there is evidence that Hakham
.
Zevi’s
. own father, R. Jacob Zak, may have been, for at least a short pe-
riod of time, a believer in Shabbetai Zevi.
. Indeed this assertion has been
widely accepted as tr ue. Heinrich Graetz, David Kahana, Jecheskiel
Caro, Leopold Greenwald, Sandor Buchler,¨ Salomon Rosanes, Aharon
Fuerst and Gershom Scholem all asserted, with varying degrees of cer-
titude, that he was a Sabbatian.46 The sole evidence for this assertion
comes from an admittedly biased and potentially unreliable source and
needs to be weighed very, very carefully. In responding to the charge
leveled by Hakham
. Zevi
. in Amsterdam, 1713, that he was a Sabbatian,
Nehemiah
. Hayyon
. wrote a number of pamphlets, including one enti-
tled Ha-Zad
. Zevi
. which was printed in that city the following year. In
the course of his remarks in the introduction to this work, Hayyon .
wrote:
Mr. Zevi
. b. Jacob is the son of the firm believer in Shabbetai Zevi
.
who was in the city of Budin (called Ofen in German).47 It was he
who caused a Jew to die for refusing to make a mi she-berakh in the
synagogue for the life of Shabbetai Zevi.
. He r uled that this con-
stituted a rebellion against the kingdom of the house of David
46 See: H. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, X, Leipzig 1868, pp. 238–239; H. Graetz–S. P.
Rabinovitz [SPR], Sefer Divrei Yemei Yisrael, VIII, Warsaw 1899, p. 256, n. 2; D.
Kahana, Even ha-To5im, Vienna 1873, p. 34, n. 4; reprinted in: Ha-Shahar,. 3 (1872),
p. 490, n. 4; idem, Toledot ha-Mekkubalim, p. 90, n. 4; J. Caro, Geschichte der Juden
in Lemberg, Crakow 1894, p. 128; L. Greenwald, ‘Le-Korot ha-Shabbeta>im be-
Ungaryah’, Ha-Zofeh
. me-Erez. Hagar, 2 (1912), p. 149; also printed as a separate
monograph, Weitzen 1912, p. 5; idem., ‘Le-Korot ha-Hasidut . be-Ungaryah’, Ha-
Zofeh
. le-Hokhmat
. Yisrael, 5 (1921), p. 267; Greenwald (above note 31, pp. 225–226;
¨
S. Buchler, A Zsidok ´ Tortenete
¨ ´ Budapesten, Budapest 1901, pp. 154–155; S. Rosanes,
Korot ha-Yehudim be-Turkiyah ve-6Arzot . ha-Kedem, IV, Sofia 1934–1935, p. 14 0; A.
Fuerst, ‘Budapest’, 5Arim ve-6Immahot be-Yisrael, II, Jer usalem 1948, p. 127;
Scholem, Shabbetai Zevi,. p. 467; Sabbatai Sevi,
. p. 565. See too: J. Zsoldos,
Encyclopaedia Judaica, 4 (1971), p. 1449. Cf.: Y. Y., Greenwald, Korot ha-Torah
ve-ha-Emunah be-Hungaryah, Budapest 1921, p. 15; L. Greenwald, Toledot Hakhmei.
Yisrael, Kolel Toledot ha-Gaon R. Ephraim ha-Kohen mi-Vilna, Cluj 1924, p. 9; S. A.
Horodezky, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 11 (1971), p. 1216.
47 The city was known as Budin in Turkish, Ofen in German and Buda in
Hungarian. These names are often interchanged in Hebrew texts. See, for
example, Shu"t Hakham
. Zevi,
. introduction; Emden, Megillat Sefer, p. 4. See also
Freimann (above note 2), p. 65; Rosanes, ibid., p. 135; Y. Margalit, Seder ha-Get,
ed. Y. Satz, Jer usalem 1983, p. 311, n. 8, end; Y. Satz, ‘Seder Get be-Kehillot
Hungaryah’, Moriyah, 14 (1985), p. 9, n. 1.
[xlv]
Jacob J. Schacter [16
and permitted the blood of that Jew [to be shed]. There are wit-
nesses here who can corroborate this fact.48
Clearly, utilizing this text as the sole evidence of R. Jacob’s alleged
Sabbatianism requires an explanation. After all, how can one accept at
face value the testimony of a bitter adversary of Hakham . Zevi
. who
might have been prepared to publish anything in the heat of their con-
troversy in order to promote his position? Indeed, Aryeh Leib Fr umkin
rejects this evidence from Ha-Zad . Zevi
. primarily for this reason.49 Nev-
ertheless, it is reasonable to argue that this source is, indeed, a reliable
one and that, in fact, all the distinguished historians who accepted it as
legitimate may have been correct.
It may be argued that what was at issue for Hayyon
. here was not the
Sabbatianism of R. Jacob, per se. Had he so desired, Hayyon. could have
attempted to blunt the sharpness of Hakham
. Zevi’s
. attack against him,
at least to some extent, by turning around and pointing out to him that
his own father had himself been a Sabbatian. Hayyon . could have
plausibly and effectively responded to Hakham . Zevi
. by arguing that
he (Hakham
. Zevi)
. not be so quick in condemning others for maintain-
ing such a position if his own father had been similarly guilty. If, in fact,
asserting the Sabbatianism of R. Jacob was the essence of Hayyon’s. ar-
gument (your own father was a Sabbatian; what do you want from
me?), then one could plausibly argue that this information would be
suspect. However, this was not the essence of his claim. What he did
stress in R. Jacob’s behavior was not his Sabbatianism but, rather, his
callous disregard for the sanctity of human life which, in this one par-
ticular instance, happened to express itself in a Sabbatian related case.
R. Jacob’s crime, according to the Sabbatian Hayyon,
. was that, by being
prepared to kill an opponent, he was being too fervent in his Sabbatian
belief. It was this violation of the sanctity of human life that Hayyon .
charged was shared by father and son. In the case of the latter, this hap-
48 N. Hayyon,
. Ha-Zad
. Zevi,
. Amsterdam 1714, n.p., pp. 2b-3a.
49 Fr umkin and Rivlin, Hakhmei
. Yerushalayim, II, p. 152. Fr umkin also raises
another, less serious objection. He claims that only somebody with a great deal
of authority in the Ofen Jewish community could have the power to make such
a r uling. Since, according to Fr umkin, R. Jacob became the rabbi there only in
1678 after the death of his father-in-law, this event would have had to have
occurred at that time and it is unlikely that such a blessing on behalf of Shabbetai
Zevi
. would still be recited publicly two years after his death and twelve years
after his apostasy. For my rejection of this argument, see the first chapter of my
forthcoming edition of Megillat Sefer.
[xlvi]
17] Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism
50 Hayyon,
. Ha-Zad
. Zevi
. (above note 48), p. 5a.
51 See, for example, Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, p. 299, n. 33.
52 Indeed, Benayahu does give credence to an allegation made by Hayyon. in this
same text against R. Moses Hagiz,
. another of his major adversaries. See: M.
[xlvii]
Jacob J. Schacter [18
[xlviii]
19] Motivations for Radical Anti-Sabbatianism
56 See above notes 8, 9. This notion of one generation’s point of view strongly
affecting how future generations would deal with a particular issue has far
reaching implications in other areas as well. For example, Professor Ada
Rapoport-Albert suggested to me that it could account for the particular
vir ulence of some opponents of Hasidism whose close relatives were adherents
of that movement. See, for example, Y. Hisdai, ‘Reishito shel ha-Yishuv ha-
‘Mitnagdi’ ve-ha-‘Hasidi’
. be-Erez. Yisrael – =Aliyah shel Mizvah
. ve-=Aliyah shel
Shlihut’, Shalem, 4 (1984), pp. 231–269. Professor Moshe Idel suggested another
example of this phenomenon, but with opposite results. He hypothesized that
the reason Hakham
. Zevi
. and R. Jacob Emden were so adamant in denying any
halakhic validity to a golem was to provide a defense for their ancestor who killed
one, for if a golem could count to a minyan, R. Elijah Ba‘al Shem would have been
guilty of murder. In this case, their unusually strong position supported an
ancestor’s behavior. For their position on this matter, see: M. Idel, Golem: Jewish
Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid, Albany 1990, p. 207ff.
[xlix]
Sabbatianism in the Seventeenth-Century
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth:
A Review of the Sources
Michał Galas
[lii]
3] Sabbatianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
I
Polish sources can be divided into two groups: sources dealing directly
with Poland and sources dealing with Sabbatianism in general.
The first group, consisting of original source materials dealing di-
rectly with Poland, includes an especially interesting book, The True
Messiah,12 written by Orthodox monk Joannicjusz Galatowski (died
1688). A paragraph from Galatowski’s work was cited by Balaban and
Scholem. Unfortunately, Balaban cited an excerpt, given out of context
without even providing a page number.13 In addition, Balaban made
some abridgements in the citation which were not marked. Scholem, in
subsequent translations, introduced additional changes which also
slightly distorted the character of that source.14
Galatowski’s book is one of the most important sources for the his-
the Historical Context, ed. J. Micgil, R. Scott and H.B. Segel, New York 1986, pp.
58-69.
10 Among sources listed by Stanislawski only two were Polish. Stanislawski based
their analysis on Balaban’s and Scholem’s studies.
11 All sources quoted in this article and others will be published in full versions in
my forthcoming book: Sabataizm w Rzeczypospolitej w XVII wieku (Sabbatianism
in the 17th Century Polish-Lituanian Commonwealth). Here I present only
excerpts or summaries in English translation.
12 J. Galatowski, Messiasz prawdziwy, Iezus Chrystus, Syn Bozy, ˙ od poczatku
˛ ´swiata
przez wszystkie wieki ludziom od Boga obiecany i od ludziey oczekiwany, i w ostatnie
czasy; dla Zbawienia ludzkiego; na ´swiat Posłany, po przyjsciu
´ zas´ swym za Błogo-
sławienstwem
´ Wysocy w Bogu, Przewielebnego Jego Mosci ´ Ojca Innocentego Giziela
Archimandryty ´swiatey
˛ Wielkiey Cudotworney Ławry Pieczerskiey, Stauropigji ´s.
Aecumenici Patriarchae Constantinipolitani. Od Grzesznika Joannicjusza Galatow-
skie[go], Archimandryty Czernichowskiego. Z Typographiey z Kijowo.- Pieczerskiey,
zydowi
˙ niewiernemu rozmaitemi znakami, o Messiaszu napisanemi, y na Chrystusie
wypełnionemi, Roku 1672 pokazany (= The True Messiah).
13 Balaban, ‘Sabbatianism in Poland’, pp. 79-81.
14 See: M. Galas, ‘Sabbatianism in Polish Historiography’, Proceedings of the EAJS
Copenhagen Congress 1994, ed. U. Haxen, K. L. Salamon and H. Trauter-Kromann,
Copenhagen 1998, pp. 240-246.
[liii]
Michał Galas [4
[liv]
5] Sabbatianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
[lv]
Michał Galas [6
Balaban writes,21 and after him Scholem,22 that many anti-Jewish in-
cidents subsequently took place. Jews overcome with messianic fervor,
who marched through the streets with portraits of Shabbatai Zevi and
his prophet Nathan of Gaza, prompted a strong reaction from Chris-
tians. In response, King Jan Kazimierz issued a proclamation, dated
May 4, 1666, which forbade Jews to carry pictures of Shabbatai Zevi and
ordered the authorities to stop harassing the Jews. Scholem gives the
text of the proclamation citing Balaban.23 Although it was thought that
the proclamation was lost and only a copy made by Balaban existed,
during my research in the archives in Lvov I found this proclamation
which served as a base for Balaban’s copy. The proclamation is written
in Polish and Latin and is more extensive than the version provided by
Balaban.24 Balaban quoted only a paragraph from the Polish text, a
slightly distorted version was cited later by Scholem.25 In the proclama-
tion the King writes that he heard the news about the escalation in per-
secutions of the Jews due to accounts about ‘a messiah’, propagated to
simple people through printed letters and painted portraits. In re-
sponse, the King ordered to protect the Jews and to treat as false all
information about this so-called Messiah, destroy all prints about him
and his portraits. Again, Weinryb’s objections about the reliability of
the king’s decree are baseless. There is no doubt about misinterpreting
this part of the proclamation which speaks about Sabbatian propa-
ganda in Poland.
The intent of the proclamation is reinforced by a pastoral letter by
bishop Stanisław Sarnowski, 26 dated June 22, 1666, in which Jewish pro-
cessions and distributions of pictures and prints are strictly forbidden.27
[lvi]
7] Sabbatianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
One can assume that this relates to the above mentioned demonstra-
tions despite the fact that there is no specific mention of Shabbatai Zevi
or his followers.
Maybe the King’s proclamation and the susbequent compliance with
it resulted in the situation that only very few documents, pamphlets
and other sources to which the proclamation alluded have survived
until the present. Scholem, however, assumed the existence of such ma-
terials.28 He also thought that the King’s proclamation and the pastoral
letter of bishop Stanislaw Sarnowski served as good examples of the
popular character of the movement in Poland and that processions and
pilgrimages of Shabbatai Zevi’s followers were characteristic only for
Poland.29
Another little known example of interest in Sabbatianism in Polish
historiography is documented in the Chronicle of Joachim Jerlicz from
1620-1673, which includes a paragraph on Sabbatianism.30 This work
is second only after Galatowski’s in terms of information written in Po-
lish about Sabbatianism in Poland. The Jerlicz source is not included in
the works of Balaban, Scholem and contemporary scholars of
Sabbatianism. In the Chronicle, under the date May 10, 1665, one can
read:
This year [1665] news has spread among Jews in all cities, towns
and villages where Jews live in the Polish Kingdom and the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania under the r ule of Jan Kazimierz: that
a Messiah, a new prophet appeared. Born in Egypt, he was raised
by Jewish father and mother and at reaching his 30’s, began to
perform great miracles. […] Showing various abilities and powers
which become only to God, he raised from the dead, cured the
blind and ill, destroyed walls around the cities where they were
not allowing him in and opposed him […].
[…] Jews, men and women, old and young, tormented themselves
and their bodies, by making a hole in the ice of a pond or river
and jumping into the water. At that time they gave alms both to
their own people and to Christians. They sold their houses,
‘Sabbatianism in Poland’, p. 89; idem, History of the Jews in Cracow and Kazimierz,
p. 45; idem, The Year of Salvation and Years of Distress (above note 2), pp. 16-17;
Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi,
. p. 597.
28 Scholem, ‘Le mouvement sabbataiste ¨ en Pologne’ (above note 4), p. 48.
29 Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi,
. p. 598.
30 J. Jerlicz, Latopisiec albo kroniczka [A Chronicle], ed. K. Wł. Wojciecki, I, Warsaw
1853, pp. 99-102.
[lvii]
Michał Galas [8
II
Other very important Polish sources, not related directly to Sabbat-
eanism in Poland mentioned by Balaban, are so-called ‘hand written
newspapers’ that are reports of correspondents kept by wealthy Polish
nobility in European capitals.34 Presently the reports are in the
collection of Czartoryski’s Museum Library in Cracow.35 Unfortunately
suspicions arise that Balaban had not seen those reports himself
because his quotation was full of revisions and errors. He suggests the
31 Ibid.
32 W. Potocki, Ogrod
´ fraszek [A garden of epigrams], I, Lvov 1907, p. 278. Compare:
Balaban, ‘Sabbatianism in Poland’, p. 81; Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi,
. p. 598.
˙ ´ w drugiej połowie XVII wieku
33 A. Kamierczyk, Sejmy i sejmiki szlacheckie wobec Zydow
[Seyms and Diets of nobility towards Jews in the second half of the 17th century],
Warsaw 1994, p. 154.
34 Balaban, ‘Sabbatianism in Poland’, pp. 81-87; Scholem thought that they came
from Amsterdam. Compare: Scholem, ‘Le mouvement sabbataiste ¨ en Pologne’
(above note 4), p. 46; idem, Sabbatai Sevi,
. p. 593.
35 Manuscript no. 1656, fols. 486-501.
[lviii]
9] Sabbatianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
same, writing: ‘I do not give here the origins of those letters as I do not
have adequate sources in Warsaw’.36
The manuscripts include letters and accounts written in Latin and
Polish about Shabbatai Zevi and an interest in his mission in various
countries of Europe and the Middle East. Their content does not con-
cern Poland directly. Some of them were published by Balaban and later
used by Scholem.37 The manuscripts contain the following titles in
Latin: De messia Judeorum falso et Extremo Judicio Pseudoprofeta, Relationes
ex Italia huc transmissae 1666, 20 Martii; Extractum ex Epistula Sabbea
Barbaria, 6 Aug. 1665; Copia Epistulae ab Augusto Jerosolima in Algier
transmissae; Extractum ex Literis ab Urbe Veneta et Livorno, continentibus
descriptionem neonati inter Hebraeos Prophetae, ipsius facinora et miracula;
Extractum ex Literis Roma Religiosi cuiusdam ad Amicum Contin.
Haebreorum aggregationem cum Novo Messia qui in preasenti? plurimos sibi
habet adherantes et magna perpetrat Miracula 26 Nov: 1665.38
The Polish titles include: Opisanie Nowego krola ˙
´ Zyd. Sabetha Sebi,
ktorego
´ poczatek,
˛ starosc,
´´ osoba, uczynki i cuda, jako tez˙ Chrzescijanow,
´ ´
˙ ´ Turkow
Zydow, ´ i inszych zadanie, i cokolwiek z roznycha
´˙ ˛ pism o tym dotad˛
wiadomo jest opisano. Przy tym Proroka Natana Levi, i krola ´ Sabeta Sevi
własnej osoby contrafect,39 Do Obłakanego
˛ ˙
Zydostwa 40
Continuatio o
˙ 41
Messiaszu Zydowskim. Balaban published in his article large fragments
of manuscripts written in Polish but he made many mistakes and the
text contains many inaccuracies. Therefore, these fragments cannot
serve as a base for scholarly research.
In the above mentioned work by Galatowski, in chapter 6, ‘Sixth
Prophecy’, a Christian arguing with a Jew about the tr ue messianism of
Shabbatai Zevi refers to three pamphlets printed in Polish: Opisanie
nowego krola
´ zydowskiego,
˙ Obszerna Continuantia Dziwny poczatek ˛ a
strasny
´ koniec, tak zwanego zydowskiego
˙ Krola:
´ Sabetha Sebi, roku 1666
wydany. A comparison between the titles of Polish fragments of manu-
scripts from the Czartoryski’s Library and the titles of printed pam-
phlets quoted by J. Galatowski42 provokes the search for parallels and
confirms similarities.43
[lix]
Michał Galas [10
During my research I was able to find the three old prints quoted by
Galatowski.44 They are anonymous, anti-Sabbatian pamphlets. Many
scholars doubted their existence, as they were not mentioned by
Balaban nor by Scholem. Zalman Rubashov (Shazar),45 Daniel C.
Waugh46 and Kazimierz Bartoszewicz47 wrote about their probable ex-
istence and origin but they did not have access to them, and Hanna
´Swiderska, who first wrote about their existence, was not able to classify
them correctly.48
The first of the pamphlets, Opisanie nowego krola ˙
´ Zydowskiego… (De-
49
scription of a New Jewish King), was published in 1666. It is probably
a translation from a German pamphlet: Beschreibung des neuen judischen
¨
Konigs
¨ Sabetha Sebi… or its Dutch edition. In the Polish version, however,
pictures of Shabbatai Zevi and Nathan of Gaza were not included.50
The second pamphlet, Obszerna Continuatia… (Extended Continu-
atia),51 was also published in 1666. It consists of two parts, the first is
entitled: Copia listu przez nie jakiegos´ przyjaciela zyczliwego
˙ o powroceniu
´
zydow
˙ ´ do obiecanej Ziemi… (A copy of a letter by some well-wishing
friend about a return of Jews to the Promised Land…).52 The second is
44 The three above mentioned pamphlets are from the British Library collection;
about other copies see: Judaika polskie z XVI-XVIII wieku: Material do
˛´ ´ I: dr uki w jezykach
bibliografii, czesc ˛ ˙
nie-zydowskich, ed., K. Pilarczyk, Cracow
1995, p. 104.
45 Z. Rubashov, Kristori sabbationetva w Polski “Evriejskaia Starina”, 5 (1912), pp.
219-221.
46 Waugh (above note 15), p. 304.
47 Bartoszewicz (above note 15), p. 140.
48 H. ´Swiderska, ‘Three Polish Pamphlets on Pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Sevi’, The
British Library Journal, 15 (1989), pp. 212-216.
49 The title in Polish is: Opisanie nowego krola ´ zydowskiego
˙ Sabetha Sebi, ktorego
´
poczatek,
˛ starosc,
´´ osoba, uczynki […] innych zdanie y cokolwiek z roznych
´˙ pism o nim
dotad
˛ wiadomo jest opisane. Przy czym y prorok tegoz˙ wtasney osobey prawdziwy
contrefect. W roku 1666 dr ukowany.
50 Waugh considers this pamphlet to be a translation of: Beschreibirung Des Newen
Juedischen Koenigs Sabetha Sebi ... (above note 15, p. 304 and note 17).
51 The full title in Polish is: Obszerna continuanta, w ktorej
´ sie˛ znajduje dalszy progress,
tego co sie˛ w orientalnych krajach, mianowicie w Jeruzalem, Szmyrnie, i Alkairu: takze ˙
w inszych roznych
´˙ miejscach w nadzieie zydowskiego
˙ do swoiey Ojczyzny powrocenia,
´
jako y przytomne onychze ˙ do wiary nawrocenia.
´ Z occasie ich pomazania krola
´ i proroka
stato; i co za cuda a dziwny u nich sie˛ dzieja˛ z okolicznoscia
´ ˛ mi opisano iest; jako tez˙ i
proroka Nathana Levi prawdziwy contrafect, dziwny ksztat y odzienie w miedzy ˛
wyrazone,
˙ przytomne sa. ˛ Dr ukowano w roku 1666.
52 Waugh considers it to be a translation of: Umbstaendliche Continuation ... (above
note 15, p. 304 and note 17).
[lx]
11] Sabbatianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Zebranie z roznych
´˙ pisaniow
´ (A collection of various writings), containing
two letters: one letter from Jer usalem and Smyrna to Amsterdam, dated
March 10, and another, dated December 26, year 5426. It seems that it
is a translation of a German pamphlet, Umbstandliche Continuation...,
published in 1666. In the German version there is a poem at the begin-
ning, ‘An die verirrcte Judenschafft’, which is not published in the Po-
lish printed version but which is placed in Polish manuscript from the
Czartoryski’s Library in Cracow.53
The third pamphlet was published in 1666. Its origin is the easiest to
establish because its title and content are in Polish and German. The
Polish title reads: Dziwny poczatek
˛ a straszny koniec…(Strange beginning
and dreadful end) and German title is: Wunderlicher Anfang und
¨
Schmahlicher Aussgang…54 However, the text is longer than the one in-
cluded by Scholem under the same title.55 It also does not contain illus-
trations, although twelve illustration titles are listed at the end. Accord-
ing to Waugh, the Polish version of this pamphlet was later translated
into Russian.56
The first two pamphlets described above are not identical to the man-
uscripts of the same titles, as ´Swiderska suggested.57 The manuscripts
are an independent translation from the German printed version of
pamphlets by a correspondent. Existence of those pamphlets published
in Polish confirms the reliability of Galatowski’s book and direct inter-
est in Sabbatianism in Poland among non-Jews.
News about Shabbatai Zevi sent from Poland to Western Europe, es-
pecially to Germany, can be treated as a supplement to Polish sources.
In 1666, three such incidents were published in German newspapers.58
[lxi]
Michał Galas [12
Gymnasium, 1979, pp. 137-138, 150. I used a copy from the Gershom Scholem
Library.
59 Nordischer Mercurius, 1666, pp. 223-224.
60 Wochentliche Donnerstags, 15 (1666), p. 3.
61 Nordischer Mercurius, 1666, p. 268.
[lxii]
13] Sabbatianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
[lxiii]
‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’:
Politics and Spirituality in Early Modern
Jewish Messianism
Hillel Levine
1 J. Katz, ‘The term “Jewish Emancipation”: Its Origin and Historical Impact’, in:
A. Altman (ed.), Studies in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Intellectual History,
Cambridge, MA 1964, pp. 1–25; P. Birnbaum and I. Katznelson (eds.), Paths of
Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship, Princeton 1995, pp. 3–36.
[lxvi]
3] ‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’
would not be harassed nor wounded. Solomon Maimon asks the obvi-
ous question: Why didn’t his grandfather repair the bridge? Maimon
presents this as evidence for the otherworldliness and backwardness of
his grandfather, his incapacity to plan, his lack of assertiveness and re-
sponsiveness to quotidian reality while waiting for the messiah. Tradi-
tional society, Maimon would lead us to believe, was as precarious as
his grandfather’s bridge.
The bridge was never repaired. What Maimon does not tell us is that
in accordance with the standard form of the late feudal gentry-Jewish
contract, capital improvements and repairs were to be at the expense of
the owners who often tried to pass the responsibility on to their Jewish
agents. What he may not have known is now evidenced by abundant
archival documents. Otherworldly Jews, like his grandfather, often
were busy battling it out in the courts with the Polish gentry, even those,
like the Radziwills, imbued with the spirit of capitalism.2
In fact, if you calculate the interest rates and the rates of return on
investment, you quickly realize: within the autarkic economic and po-
litical system of serfdom, Solomon Maimon’s grandfather was demon-
strating what might be considered higher rational economic thinking
and decision making capacity. His Kantian grandson did not suffi-
ciently appreciate the singularly significant fact: in strictly economic
terms, it did not pay to repair the broken bridge. Foucault, narrative histo-
rians, and post-modernists of various sorts would overlook other types
of movement that bolstered broken bridges. Indeed, there is evidence
that what was really moving was capital; that through the unrivaled,
expanded, international circles of tr ust and accountability that a mem-
ber of Jewish civic society enjoyed, Solomon Maimon’s grandfather
could invest in entrepreneurialism and state building, elsewhere. The
Court Jews of Germany and Central Europe, funding princes in the con-
str uction of consolidated and absolutist states, were at the same time
venture capitalist investing on behalf of Jews in Eastern Europe.3
Maimon directs us to the questions that we must ask when trying to
interpret Shneur Zalman’s choice of the Tsar over Napoleon and his
motivations. What other broken bridges did Jews in the early modern
period confront in relationship to the disintegrating autarky with
[lxviii]
5] ‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’
which they were most familiar and the new forms of autocracy and
totalitarian democracy4 that partitions and wars were bringing to
their doorstep? How did they understand and by what criteria did they
choose among the respective modes of state building and the allowance
of social space for a civic society within which Jews could locate them-
selves and live the collective, associational lives that they desired? How
did the macrostr uctures of modernizing, often somewhat elusive, pre-
sent the background for important shifts in Jewish cognition and
strategizing for their own safety and future?5 How were they moti-
vated by messianism? And, perhaps most important, in the shifting de-
mands of the state and their own desire for security, even for a modi-
cum of participation, how did Jews seek to carve out the social space in
which they could sustain the plausibility of their eschatological beliefs?
In all fairness to Foucault, it must be pointed out that his bon mot is
not too distant from interpretative models of the late Gershom Scholem
and his generalizations about Jewish messianism.6 If it moves, par-
ticularly, if it mobilizes a messianic movement, it is political and some-
what emancipatory. We hear echoes of this in his critique of Martin
Buber who, Scholem claims, presents ‘Hasidism as a spiritual phenom-
enon and not a historical one’.7
Scholem’s own position is now coming under the respectful but
sharp critique of a younger generation of scholars, precipitating vigor-
ous debates in Jer usalem. Yehuda Liebes takes Scholem to task for his
over emphasis of the political side of messianism. Scholem’s magiste-
rial study of the early modern messiah-claimant, Sabbatai Sevi, for ex-
ample, makes Sabbatai Sevi’s plan sound too ‘similar to Herzl’s char-
ter’. Liebes claims that in reviewing thousands of pages of Sabbatean
[lxix]
Hillel Levine [6
8 Y. Liebes, On Sabbateanism and Its Kabbalah: Collected Essays, Jer usalem 1995, pp.
10–18 (Hebrew).
9 For an excellent summary of the debate, see: M. Idel, Messianic Mystics, New
Haven and London 1998, pp. 1–37.
10 M. Idel, Introduction to A.Z. Aeshkoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, I: From the
Bar-Kokhba Revolt until the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain2, Jer usalem 1987, pp.
11–14 (Hebrew).
11 Ha-Khronika – Te‘uda le-Toledot Ya‘akov Frank u-Tenu‘ato, Jer usalem 1984 [=The
Kronika – On Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement ], ed. and tr. H. Levine,
Jer usalem 1984.
12 K. Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion, Boston 1961.
13 N. Frye, Academy of Criticism, Princeton 1957.
14 D. Little, Religion, Order, and Law: A Study in Prerevolutionary England, New York
1969.
[lxx]
7] ‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’
[lxxi]
Hillel Levine [8
response to Napoleon, is all the more intriguing. Why did Shneur Zal-
man choose the Tsar over Napoleon? Do we have a glimpse at any trace,
in the founder of the movement and in the unique manner in which he
reacts to a serious cataclysm that is spurring apocalyptic messianic re-
sponses, of what is so messily exoteric and overt seven generations
later? Notwithstanding the temptations and dangers of the most com-
mon of historical fallacies, the ‘genetic fallacy’, can we discover any
roots to the contemporary and most perplexing Lubavitcher messianic
movement, so powerfully abrogating centuries of Jewish reticence, in
Shneur Zalman’s politics and his impressive cost/benefit analysis?17
Post Modern historians have no monopoly on contextualizing: we
must try to interpret Shneur Zalman’s response to Napoleon within the
range of Hasidic responses to Napoleon; we must relate the Hasidic
leader’s response to his personal experiences, particularly his experi-
ences with tsardom.
The Napoleonic incursions into the large population centers and Ha-
sidic communities of East European Jewry – in 1807 into the Polish ter-
ritories that had been annexed by Pr ussia, in 1809 into Western and a
sliver of Eastern Galicia, and in 1812, into the very heartland of Eastern
Europe – should provide a very special Rorschach Test, a proto ‘clash of
civilizations’, an early 19th century ‘remaking of the world order’.18
Napoleon, for Jews in remote corners, was their first unmediated expe-
rience of the French Revolution. More than two decades after the fall of
the Bastille and after a variety of messianic French Revolution radicals
had turned the message of that revolution inside out and outside in,
slogans about liberty, equality, fraternity were trouncing upon the ves-
tiges of feudal autarky and threatening Russian autocracy.
Napoleon himself seems to have had messianic fantasies. There are
reports, even documents, not wholly authenticated, that Napoleon was
trying hard to arouse messianic responses as well as political sup-
port.19 Rumors were spread about his conquests in Palestine and his
recr uitment of Jewish soldiers from exotic communities of the East. Na-
17 D.H. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought, New York
1970, p. 155. The genetic fallacy ‘mistakes the becoming of a thing for the thing
which it has become’. Historicism, ‘the most hateful forms of the genetic fallacy,
converts a temporal sequence into an ethical system, history into morality’.
18 B. Mevorakh, Ha-Yehudim Tahat . Shilton Napoleon, Jer usalem 1970; idem (ed.),
Napoleon u-Tekufato: Reshumot ve-5Eduyot Ivriyot Shel Benei ha-Dor, Jer usalem 1968,
pp. 171-189.
19 F. Kobler, Napoleon and the Jews, New York 1976.
[lxxii]
9] ‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’
poleon, in his first round, so demonstrably opened the ghetto gates. The
same Napoleon in 1806 convened nothing less than a Sanhedrin, remi-
niscent of the Great Assembly of Rabbis, a legislative body not con-
vened since the Talmudic period. Did Napoleon know that according
to some rabbinic opinions, the reconvening of the Sanhedrin was one of
the precursors to the coming of the Jewish messiah? Yet the early mod-
ern emancipator used this Sanhedrin to pry into the inner life of Jews
with forcefulness from which ancient, classical, and medieval enemies
of the Jews, politically and spiritually motivated, would have had
much to learn from Napoleon. Dangling the promise of full citizenship,
he tested Jewish loyalties. In inquisitorial tones, he elicited the position
of rabbis in Paris and elsewhere under his control, pressuring them to
make politically correct statements by the standards of his Enlighten-
ment, tragic choices for them as rabbinic leaders.
The Napoleon who opened the ghetto gates is the same Napoleon
who tried to control Jewish communal life. The messianic fervor was
confused and confusing as he made his incursion into Eastern Europe.
What of his equivocal reputation was salient and where, what reality
factors, what range of concerns might have been encoded in mythic
language and how might these illuminate the junction of large scale
social processes, motives, and the personal decisions of historical ac-
tors; what insights into early modern messianism can we derive from
the diverse responses to Napoleon from Jews in different regions – all
of these questions require much research, particularly, if we are to as-
sess relationships between the political and spiritual and make any
evaluations of what is emancipatory.
Martin Buber’s novel, For the Sake of Heaven, presents a fictionalized
version of responses, across the Hasidic world, to Napoleon and the
messianic interpretations engendered by the French liberator, far away
from home.20 In other sources we find, for example:
During the first Napoleonic War, Rabbi Menahem Mendel of
Rymanov wanted to make of him Gog and Magog. He
supplicated through his prayer that he should win in order that
there should be redemption and he said that in his opinion it
would be beneficial for Jewish blood to be spilled, from Frystak
to Rymanov. They should go up to their knees in Jewish blood in
order that there should be an end to our exile. But the masters of
20 M. Buber, For the Sake of Heaven, tr. from the German by L. Lewinson,
Philadelphia 1945.
[lxxiii]
Hillel Levine [10
Koznitz and Lublin did not agree with this and they prayed that
he should fall in the war because they saw through their vision
that the end had not yet arrived […] And the Holy Rabbi Naftali
of Ropczyce, then young of years, lived in the town of Dokle. He
sided with the rabbis of Koznitz and Lublin and visited the Rabbi
of Rymanov to try to dissuade him. He arrived on the eve of
Passover, a day of particularly fierce fighting. Rabbi Mendele was
standing there, placing Matzahs into the oven. Each time he
would say: ‘Another five hundred Russians have fallen’. And so
it was in the war.21
Another tale about Hasidic responses to ‘the fall of the King Napoleon’,
describing reactions to his downfall, provides the dramatic background
for Buber’s treatment:
After 1813, when the mightiness of God was apparent in the fall
of the King Napoleon who was taken into exile, many prophesied
that God’s name would become exalted. And the Rabbi of Lublin
always anticipated God’s redemption that the redemption would
be made by the King the Messiah soon in our days, Amen. And
this is what Levi Isaac of Berditchev said before he died that he
would not give any rest to the masters because the Son of Jesse
has not arrived.22
What do these point to in regard to ways in which Napoleon might
have been perceived? To be sure, these Hasidic masters were not
systematic thinkers. Nevertheless, can we try to identify patterns in
their cosmological thinking that correspond with phenomenological
categories in the history of religion such as pantheism, theism, theurgic
magic and explore their sociological correspondances with social
boundaries and internal organization?
Buber tries to present the responses as an intra-Hasidic debate on
magic versus non-theurgic religious action, more spiritual in its orien-
tation. The legends that he uses, we note, were transmitted and pre-
served as oral traditions; they were transcribed during and after the
first decade of the 20th century. For Buber, Shneur Zalman’s response
to Napoleon and the elaborate explanations that Shneur Zalman and
[lxxiv]
11] ‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’
others provide for this response were of scant interest even though
Shneur Zalman’s 1812 letter provides what is most likely the earliest
written record.
Most of the responses seem to have been prompted by a very practi-
cal consideration: ‘Why waste a good war! Let’s make something of it
in terms of the churning of the messianic gears’. The Hasidic Masters
and presumably their growing number of disciples interiorized Napo-
leon’s sojourn across the lands of East European Jewry and gave it
meaning within their Jewish framework of life and the Jewish spiritual
world. Bracketing Buber’s glosses and insofar as the anthologies of Ha-
sidic tales transcribed a century later preserve any reliable reportage,
Napoleon was experienced largely as an external event, not someone
introducing radical differences into the governance of their lives. Even
those Jews who had lived since 1772 under Russian autocracy pre-
served the political thinking of Jewish experiences under Polish au-
tarky. The political and economic orders were considered to be based
on decrees and capriciousness which Jews could negotiate, not on prin-
ciple.
The hand of a later generation of transcribers of Hasidic tales is rec-
ognizable in a pious spin given to these reports: Perhaps because of
their inappropriate zeal in hastening the end and for their applied
messianism, the major Rebbes involved in this experiment died within
the same year. But those native ethnographers and pious oral historians
were not oblivious to those internal Hasidic politics. The Napoleonic
incursion was used to demonstrate the power of the Hasidic master or
the competition between the different courts.23
All this makes Shneur Zalman’s response, within the context of his
own life, all the more interesting. Another monopoly not possessed by
narrative historians involves the joys of unpacking an exemplary
tale.24 The Alte Rebbe, as he is lovingly called by his disciples, to this
day, lived in the northwest sector of the Hasidic world, in that area of
the Polish Commonwealth that had been annexed by Catherine the
Great and that is now in Belar us and Lithuania. He wrote profound
theological tracts that point to a deep spiritual life. At the same time,
his communal ordinances would be a proud piece of work for a
McKinsey consultant. And anyone who has observed Congressional
[lxxv]
Hillel Levine [12
[lxxvi]
13] ‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’
who was concerned with the economic pursuits of his followers, whose
administrative ordinances included detailed considerations of matters
of livelihood and finance, would this type of leader welcome persecu-
tion and summarily dismiss opportunities for stability?
His son and successor made proposals to the government for voca-
tional schools and agricultural colonies saying, ‘No Jew need be
ashamed of engaging in farm work, for our ancestors in Palestine were
farmers. If we will purchase or rent the land for long periods, we shall
obtain a livelihood…’.27 That son, better than the Maskilim, the Jewish
modernist savants who accepted French physiocratic notions of what
in later years would be called pruduktivizatsya, productive contribu-
tions to the wealth of the state – that son of Shneur Zalman, and likely
Shneur Zalman himself, understood that Enlightenment inspired ‘re-
form’ in Eastern Europe was little more than a fraud and that agricul-
ture was a code word for ‘serfdom’.
There is little else in Shneur Zalman’s Hasidism that suggests that he
accorded such religious significance to tsuris. He was not particularly
on the ascetic side of Hasidism. Furthermore, his rejection of Napoleon
was so vehement as to suggest some other motives.
The opening of the archives in the former Soviet Union, for now, at
least, holds limited promise for a solution to these problems. A new
cottage industry among underpaid academics and librarians has gen-
erated custom made forgeries. Moreover, the demonstrated alacrity
and competence of contemporary Lubavitcher Hasidim in moving doc-
uments from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Crown Heights makes ac-
cess even a greater problem than in the days of the former Soviet Union.
An examination of the original epistle seems to be impossible for the
moment.
We do have a cache of documents that round out the reports of
Shneur Zalman of Lyadi’s imprisonment in St. Petersburg, fourteen and
twelve years before Napoleon’s arrival on Hasidic turf. Indeed, Shneur
Zalman was incarcerated by Tsar Paul and Tsar Alexander I which
should make him no great fan of tsardom. Could his enthusiasm be
little more than an early and undiagnosed symptom of the Stockholm
Syndrome?
[lxxvii]
Hillel Levine [14
[lxxviii]
15] ‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’
Palestine. The irony should not be lost; Shneur Zalman’s efforts to es-
tablish a well r un Hasidic court, to protect his followers from Russian
autocracy and its administrators involved political maneuvering about
which those officials said little. The accusation against him for political
activity is based on Shneur Zalman’s most messianic act – organizing
financial support for pious Jews residing in the Holy Land who were
praying for the redemption. This was seen as a political act of support-
ing the French Revolution.
There is good reason to believe that the accuser, Hirsch the son of
David of Vilna, did not exist and that a clumsy effort was being made
to attribute this particular attack to Jews. The accuser recommends to
the Tsar that the Hasidim be sent into exile ‘and there they will have
their promised land for which they have been hoping and also the mes-
sianic wild ox and leviathan’. Though Jewish attacks on Hasidim in no
way lacked vir ulence, this frighteningly cynical taunt does not sound
like it comes from a Jewish voice. The Prosecutor General Lopukhin
reports these accusations in a letter to the Tsar. Paul who was having
enough problems consolidating power during his short-lived reign
seems to have had the time and concern to review this case himself. On
August 14th, 1798 he writes, ‘…should it turn out that they indeed did
participate in any type of rebellion, of these do send them to me imme-
diately’.
We are still left with the question as to who organized this initiative.
Whatever the case may be, it is evident that Russian autocratic leaders
could hardly be characterized as interested only in the surfaces of Jew-
ish life. Napoleon, however, was certainly more the interventionist and
generally a lot more efficient. In view of the serious charges leveled
against him by the tsarist administration and – what he likely did not
know – Paul himself, Shneur Zalman had reason to be grateful, perhaps,
even loyal.
If archival material up to this point has been suggestive but not con-
clusive as to Shneur Zalman’s tr uest motives for his enthusiastic sup-
port of the Russian autocrats, perhaps we should take a more careful
look at the epistle itself. In comparing some of the printed versions of
this letter, it is clear that there have been deletions. Some of the histori-
ans who wanted to like Shneur Zalman as one of the more reasonable
of Hasidic masters, did not pay attention, even took liberties with some
phrases that they did not understand or that did not lend support to
their image of this Rebbe. The recipient, we should note, is Moses
Meizeles, who was also a friend of Shneur Zalman’s most important
[lxxix]
Hillel Levine [16
and vitriolic enemy, the Gaon of Vilna. Meizeles was himself, like his
Vilna friend, a man who combined traditional study, even mysticism,
with scientific er udition. Meizeles seemed to be under some suspicion
of organizing a spy ring on behalf of Napoleon. He escaped to Palestine
and years later made a most positive impression on the secretary of the
visiting magnate and philanthropist, Moses Montefiore. From our per-
spective, his singularly great contribution to Jewish history is that he
did not follow Shneur Zalman’s instr uctions to burn the letter. Shneur
Zalman makes two predictions that will serve as a validation for his
position. ‘The delight of your eyes will be taken from you’,29 he tells
Meizeles, sharing an intuition about his own numbered days, and also
that some other precious ones will be taken away, perhaps with less
permanence. Shneur Zalman alludes to the conscription of young Jew-
ish men, even children, which had been instituted in another part of the
lands of former Poland. This reminds us that Napoleonic influences
were closer to the heartland of East European Jewry a few years before
the War of 1812. The Duchy of Warsaw, which Napoleon had much to
do with the assemblage of its parcels, was also governed by the Napo-
leonic Code. There, as well as in the lands of Joseph II, going back to the
early 1780s – conscription was imposed upon the Jewish community.
Shneur Zalman was reminding his friend that Napoleon’s political and
emancipatory program may not only weaken Jews’ ties to their celestial
father but also to their terrestrial children.
But there seems to have been a heading to the letter – in fact, an en-
coded secret heading – ignored by most historians. ‘It is the way of the
world to leave behind the hides and empty jugs’. In and of itself, this
statement is seemingly meaningless. But it refers to a discussion in the
Babylonian Talmud, Yoma, 12a. How should the pilgrims to Jer usalem
during the three major festivals handle their fiscal affairs, the Talmud
asks. Insofar as the holy city belongs to the entire Jewish people, it
would violate that principle for pilgrims to pay their hotel bills. On the
other hand, as much as the rabbis, like medieval scholastics, were con-
cerned to ‘save the appearance’ not allowing reality to interfere with
theory and principle, their economic savvy encouraged them to predict
a desolate future for Jer usalem’s tourist industry if pilgrims did not pay
for their accommodations and hotel keepers had no economic incen-
tives to provide public services. The solution to the dilemma? ‘It is the
way of the world to leave behind the hides and empty wine jugs’.
[lxxx]
17] ‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’
by his son, notes with appreciation the manner in which the Tsar in-
cludes in his soldiers’ preparedness for battle the blessings and sprin-
kling of holy water administered by Russian Orthodox priests. Each
Napoleonic victory is accorded hidden blessing in the transvaluated
world of messianism. He succumbed to the difficulties of the journey
and the anguish of choosing between ‘paths of emancipation’, before
witnessing the fulfillment of one of his predictions – ‘ nafol tipol Napo-
leon’, verily will Napoleon fall.
With all of his messianism, Shneur Zalman was not opposed to
long-range strategic planning. With his characteristic deliberation, he
examined the redefinition of the relationship of Jews to the state,
change that was taking place across Europe and in America. He real-
ized that the future welfare of Jews as individuals, the viability of their
collective lives, and the plausibility of their faith could not depend on
charters here or concessions there as had been the case in feudal societ-
ies and in societies organized by estates and with corporate str uctures.
He confronted a tragic choice envisioning greater opportunities for
civic society and associational life in the interstices of tsarist autocracy
than in Napoleonic totalitarian mass society. He was prescient about
Napoleon and his heirs; less so in regard to the Tsar and tsardom in its
metamorphoses.
The Hasidic movement that Shneur Zalman of Lyadi founded and
inspired endured under the unique duress of the autocratic repressive-
ness of the Tsar and the totalitarian democracy of Napoleon, as their
commissar disciples institutionalized both legacies in the Soviet Union.
The stories of the survival of Lubavitcher Hasidism under the most re-
pressive conditions of Communism and the reconstr uction of East Eu-
ropean Jewish life in the corners of liberal democracies on our planet,
such as Brooklyn and Bnai Brak, following Nazi mass murder of Jews
and massive delegitimation of Jewish faith are stories yet to be told.
That social space, the intermediary str uctures of civic society, were of-
fered neither by Napoleon nor by the Tsar. How did the delayed reac-
tion to the Holocaust as it was expressed in that cognitively and socially
well protected civic society of liberal democracies catalyze shifts in the
delicate balances of the spiritual and political dimensions of Shneur
Zalman’s messianism and worldly preoccupations that contribute to a
messiansim that was by no means ‘sublimated’, that addressed the po-
litical as well as the spiritual domain, and that was as thisworldly in its
orientation as the messianism of early Christians and Sabbateans?
Whatever may be learned from Shneur Zalman of Lyadi’s deliberations
[lxxxii]
19] ‘Should Napoleon Be Victorious…’
that might reflect on the means or how questions – the political and spir-
itual dimensions of Sabbateanism and other earlier forms of
messianism – the where questions, of the social location of messianism
and how to retain their plausibility, which confronted Shneur Zalman
were quite different than those facing Sabbateanism and other earlier
messianic movements.
So much for reductionism, post-modernist or otherwise. There was a
lot that moved that was demographic and economic, spiritual, cer-
tainly, but even political in a fashion that Foucault would not quite rec-
ognize. Whether or not modernity for Jews and for others ultimately
will be emancipatory, for those of us who possess neither Shneur Zal-
man of Lyadi’s messianic optimism nor planning skills, we might ever
so cautiously state – not all of the data is in.
[lxxxiii]
Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
David Biale
In one of his earliest diary entries, dated just before the outbreak of
World War I, Gershom Scholem describes a trip to the Swiss Alps.1
There he engaged in a series of romantic meditations which include a
reference to Shabbtai Zvi who, he says, astonished the people by going
into the marketplace in Izmir and pronouncing the four-letter name of
God. Despite the popular belief that he should have been str uck by
lightning, nothing happened. Scholem uses this historical anecdote as
a rather surprising way of demonstrating the deluded nature of the
Jewish people, who cannot recognize the metaphysical meaning of the
grandeur and beauty of the high mountains. Whatever this obscure text
may have actually meant to him, one has the distinct feeling that
Scholem is comparing himself to Shabbtai Zvi, a comparison that gains
some support from his later claim in the diary to be the Messiah.2
How and what did Scholem know about Shabbtai Zvi in 1914? He
certainly might have encountered him in Graetz’s History, which, as he
tells us in his memoirs, he already read in 1911.3 What I wish to argue
in this paper, however, is that Shabbtai Zvi was in the air in many dif-
ferent forms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the
first sentence of his great essay, ‘Redemption Through Sin’, Scholem
says that ‘no chapter in the history of the Jewish people during the last
several hundred years has been as shrouded in mystery as that of the
Sabbatian movement’.4 Despite the common belief today, cultivated in
[lxxxvi]
3] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
Jewish Orientalism
One issue that I want to address in particular is Sabbatianism as a
vehicle for constr ucting a kind of Jewish Orientalism at a time when the
Orient was exerting a particularly complex fascination on Jews. As I
shall try to show, ambivalence about the Jewish Orient captured many
of the other ambivalences of these writers about contemporary Jewish
culture. It is in the context of this Jewish Orientalism that I also want to
situate the young Scholem’s fascination with Sabbatianism, a context
quite different from where he is usually located.
In his now classic work, Orientalism, Edward Said suggests that the
range of European associations with the Orient, such as ‘the Oriental
character, Oriental despotism, Oriental sensuality and the like’, are re-
ally projections or constr uctions by Westerners, primarily during the
age of Imperialism.6 The power to constr uct the Orient as a field of
knowledge in certain stereotyped ways was part and parcel of the pro-
jection of Western power into the area of the Near East. Yet, because
Orientalism had little to do with the actual Orient, it tells us much more
about those doing the constr ucting than those being constr ucted:
‘Orientalism is – and does not simply represent – a considerable dimen-
sion of modern political-intellectual culture, and, as such, has less to do
with the Orient than it does with “our” world’.7
The history of Jewish Orientalism remains to be written,8 and I can
[lxxxvii]
David Biale [4
only offer the barest outlines here, insofar as they connect to the theme
of this paper. Paul Mendes-Flohr has suggested that Jewish views of the
Orient shifted with Jewish attitudes towards assimilation. In the mid-
dle of the nineteenth-century, Jews sought to distance themselves from
their ostensibly ‘Oriental’ behaviors; with the rise of Zionism and other
forms of Jewish self-affirmation at the fin de siecle,
` many Jews, following
Martin Buber,9 enthusiastically embraced their Oriental heritage in re-
bellion against the bourgeois West.10
Without disputing this overall picture, I believe that even those Jews
who affirmed the Oriental in themselves did so in ways that were often
quite ambivalent, an ambivalence typical of the way the Western imag-
ination generally depicted the Orient. Although Jewish attitudes often
resembled those of other Europeans, Jewish treatments of the Orient
were complicated by several factors. Jewish Orientalism, as opposed to
non-Jewish, involved constr ucting an object which was also in some
sense ostensibly one’s self, the subject which was doing the constr uct-
ing: those who imagined a Jewish Orient were always conscious of the
fact that they themselves were being imagined by non-Jews as Orien-
tals. If the Orient became the classic site of the Other, Jewish Oriental-
ism involved a complex dialectic of projection and displacement of one-
self onto an object that was never really other. The fact that the Jewish
people originated in the Orient as well as the presence of real Jews in
the contemporary Orient aroused contradictory feelings among Euro-
pean Jews of identification and alienation.11 These Oriental Jews might
represent the vestiges of biblical Jews or, alternatively, primitive Jews
still mired in medieval obscurantism and irrationality. If one imagined
Jewish identity to be primarily European, the Oriental Jews were an
inconvenient embarrassment; on the other hand, if one wished to see in
Judaism the ‘spirit of the Orient’, one might represent both the Orient
and the Orientals in far more positive terms. What has not been suffi-
ciently noticed is the way these contradictory attitudes might exist si-
multaneously even in those eager to affirm their Oriental ‘otherness’.
When Zionism emerged as both a political and settlement move-
[lxxxviii]
5] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
ment, the question of the Orient took on great urgency.12 Zionist Orien-
talism, undoubtedly indebted to both European and Jewish Oriental-
ism of the nineteenth-century, developed its own peculiar dynamic, es-
pecially once European Zionists confronted real Oriental Jews, such as
the Yemenites, who came to settle in the Land of Israel. Since the Zion-
ists proposed to take the Jews out of Europe and back to the Middle
East, ambivalence about becoming once again ‘Levantine’ turned into
a touchstone for the tension in early Zionism between Eurocentric mod-
ernism and anti-European anti-modernism. Was Zionism to be part of
the Orient or was it to be a movement of European modernity projected
into the Middle East?
European Orientalism itself can be divided between those who had
actual contact with the Orient and those whose images were con-
str ucted much more out of sheer imagination. The French and the Eng-
lish fit loosely into the first category and the Germans into the second.
Similarly, Jewish Orientalism divides between those who had direct
contact with the Jews of the Middle East and those who did not. Be-
cause of the French involvement in the region, French Jews were among
the first to develop complex direct relationships with Jews in North
Africa, Turkey and other areas of the Ottoman Empire. This new inter-
est in the Orient was awakened by the Damascus Blood Libel in 1840
and, as Aron Rodrigue has shown in recent work, was expressed in the
educational network of the Alliance Israelite ´ Universelle.13 The Alli-
ance’s project of bringing French Enlightenment to the backward Jews
of the Ottoman Empire was the product of Orientalist images of these
Jews, but it also contributed towards the production and dissemination
of these images.
German and East European Jews had less direct contact with Jews of
the East, but the images were often similar. Much, although not all, of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century literature on
Sabbatianism was produced in German. As we will see, these German
Jewish authors often conflated images of the Orient with images of the
Ostjuden, who, as Steven Aschheim has shown, functioned for German
[lxxxix]
David Biale [6
[xc]
7] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
[xci]
David Biale [8
begabte Empfanglichkeit],
¨ and in the West the allure of the alien [der
Reiz der Entfernung] and respect for the written word.17
If the movement’s attraction in the East had to do with Oriental
irrationalism, the Western Jews were drawn in by two contradictory
impulses: a kind of rationalism connected with respect for written
reports, and the enchantment of the exotic. Kastein is describing a kind
of seventeenth-century Jewish Orientalism as the source for Western
Sabbatianism. But he also captures the reasons for contemporary
fascination with Sabbatianism. In the twentieth century, the Orient still
represented the exotic, as it did in the seventeenth, but knowledge of
the Orient, mediated through the written word (that is, Kastein’s own
book), gives this exoticism a veneer of scientific respectability. This is
exactly the combination that Said describes in his analysis of
nineteenth-century European accounts of the Orient.
Despite the impression a passage like this might leave, Kastein was
not at all hostile to Sabbatianism. In fact, his attitude was generally
quite sympathetic since he saw Sabbatianism as a legitimate response
to Jewish homelessness, a theme that he repeats almost like a litany in
his introductory chapter. As a Central European Jew, Kastein needed to
account for how the more ‘rational’ and ‘skeptical’ Jews who were his
ancestors were attracted to the movement in a way different from the
alien Oriental Jews. For example, in Venice, the news was received with
skepticism: ‘here is intelligent soil, where much is investigated and
much is doubted. Here is no more of the fantastic Oriental imagina-
tion’.18 Similarly, in Hamburg and Amsterdam, the descendants of the
Marranos were more fully equipped with spiritual or intellectual
(Geistigen) qualities than the Polish Jews, because their suffering was
‘sublimated’. These Jews, who are clearly Kastein’s heroes,
regarded [Sabbatianism] from a more worldly, concrete and
political point of view than the Oriental and Polish Jews. To the
other Jews it was a fresh beginning; to them it was a continuation
on a higher and clearer plane. And in their response they showed
passionate joy and unfettered exuberance rather than dark and
painful penitential practices.19
[xcii]
9] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
The East – whether Eastern Europe or the Middle East – is dark and
ascetical, while the West is joyful and worldly, a theme to which I will
return.
Among the political responses to Sabbatianism, Kastein includes
Spinoza’s famous ‘Zionist’ passage in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus:
Jewish sovereignty might in fact be restored under the proper political
constellation.20 In connecting Spinoza with Sabbatianism in this posi-
tive sense, Kastein turned Graetz’s association of the two on its head:
where Graetz had seen Spinoza as the mirror image of Shabbtai Zvi –
rationalism versus irrationalism – Kastein brought them together un-
der the category of politics.21 Spinoza understood the import of
Sabbatianism politically. While it is unlikely that Spinoza was in fact
commenting on Sabbatianism in this passage, Kastein may well have
been on to something interesting. Following Scholem, much of the
work on Sabbatianism has focused primarily on mystical ideas and less
on the overtly political side of the movement, such as the persistent use
of royal titles for Shabbtai Zvi and the way the movement unfolded
within the political relations between the Ottoman Jewish communities
and the Turkish state. Interestingly, this fr uitful direction for research
was anticipated by some of the literature that Scholem dismissed, such
as Kastein’s work, which typically focuses much more on the political
than on the mystical.22
Despite his identification with the ostensibly reasoned position of the
Amsterdam and Hamburg Jews, Kastein was by no means a dogmatic
rationalist. In language reminiscent of Martin Buber, he notes that ‘an
Age is ripe for a great experience [Erlebnis], when it has the courage
momentarily to abandon the lamentable control of the brain and sur-
renders oneself to necessities of the heart’.23 This distinction between
brain and heart corresponds to Kastein’s dichotomy in his introductory
chapter between the Bible, which stirs the emotions, and the rational-
ism of the Talmud. He saw the Talmud as a legal system of ‘endless
interpretations, reflections, speculations and theories’ that weaned the
Jews from the emotional sustenance of the Bible. He even claims that
[xciii]
David Biale [10
the rabbis forbade Jews from reading the Bible before age twenty!24 The
Kabbalah attempted a synthesis between the Bible and the Talmud, and
Shabbtai Zvi represented the great experience in which the dictates of
reason were suspended in favor of a higher law. For a secular Jew like
Kastein (and Scholem), Sabbatianism was a precursor of the modern
revolt against rabbinic legalism.
As for Carlebach, the failure of Sabbatianism was a failure of its
leader, who was not himself transformed by this great experience. Here
Kastein becomes rather obscure: Shabbtai Zvi ‘emulated an historical
form of leadership without any adequate spiritual equipment’. He
never tr uly transcended the religion against which he rebelled. In a
sense, Kastein holds that Sabbatianism was not radical enough: it did
not address the universal desire for redemption, ‘the fundamental fact
that a whole world wished to be reconciled with its God and its own
existence’. This desire for redemption continued to echo weakly in
movements like Hasidism and Zionism, but it succeeded in neither;
writing in 1930, Kastein, who was himself sympathetic to Zionism and
ended up emigrating to Palestine, declared that ‘in Zionism, which was
an attempt at a partial solution on the plane of reality, it [redemption]
met with defeat’.25
Interestingly enough, it was only in the philosophy of Martin Buber
that Kastein found the tr ue realization of the idea of redemption and,
as we have just seen, there are several places in his book where such
Buberian terms as Erlebnis and Zwiesprache appear. Arguing that ‘noth-
ing can so disfigure God’s countenance as religion’,26 he seems to have
believed that Shabbtai Zvi was not able to translate his antinomianism
into a tr ue spirituality of dialogue. Might it be that, for Kastein,
Shabbtai Zvi’s Oriental origins precluded the possibility of such philo-
sophical messianism? Only the spiritual equipment of the Central Eu-
ropean Jews, and not the fantastic imaginations of the Oriental or East
European Jews, could provide the necessary synthesis between emo-
tion and reason.
If Kastein saw in Shabbtai Zvi’s Orientalism the fatal flaw of the
movement, the same perhaps was tr ue for Theodor Herzl. A number of
early Zionist writers, such as Shai Ish-Hurwitz, drew explicit compari-
[xciv]
11] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
[xcv]
David Biale [12
[xcvi]
13] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
[xcvii]
David Biale [14
teenth century about Shabbtai Zvi’s marriages, the first two unconsum-
mated and the third to the mysterious Sarah, who some accounts claim
was a Polish orphan of the Chmielnitski pogroms and who had pur-
sued an adventurous and promiscuous life before marrying Shabbtai
Zvi in Egypt. The figure of Sarah allowed authors to conflate East Eu-
rope with the Near East. Thus, for example, Kastein calls this ‘eccentric,
erotic and uncommonly vital creature’ a ‘child of the East’.34 Kastein
claims that the rabbinical response to Sarah’s eroticism was similar to
that of the Christian witch trials, but it never reached quite the same
extreme: the Christians ‘hated Eros and stifled the weird sensations
provoked by witches by putting them to death. The Jewish rabbis and
scholars were also afraid of Eros, but they tried to circumvent it by sub-
limating its influence’.35 In any event, Shabbtai himself was never
tempted by Sarah’s seductions and Kastein argues, quite implausibly,
that he no more consummated this third marriage than he had the pre-
vious two. We recall that for Kastein the spirit of the Orient was ascetic,
and in his account Shabbtai Zvi never gives in personally to the erotic.
However, Sarah instigates orgies and has relations with Shabbtai’s
young followers. She also agitates for equality of women at Shabbtai’s
table and in the reading of the Torah. At her instigation and as a tactic
for gaining power, Shabbtai adopted a proto-feminist position, freeing
women from the curse of Eve. As a result, says Kastein, women took an
active part in the movement, ‘as sometimes happens in the case of rev-
olutions when feminine instinct, added to the deliberations and mo-
tives of men, acts as a liberating and inciting factor’.36 Whether or not
one wants to accept Kastein’s dubious claim for the liberatory nature of
‘feminine instinct’, his observation of the importance of women in the
movement deserves further investigation.37
Other authors exploited the erotic possibilities of Shabbtai’s mar-
riages to the hilt. Israel Zangwill’s 1898 anthology, Dreamers of the
Ghetto, contains a chapter on ‘The Turkish Messiah’ among other fic-
tional and factual tales of marginal Jews. Zangwill revels in Orientalist
imagery throughout his tale:
[xcviii]
15] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
[xcix]
David Biale [16
[c]
17] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
ism on the one hand, and erotic worldliness and apostasy on the other
was a projection of Zangwill’s own inner str uggles. In this light, it is no
surprise that he invested his account of Shabbtai Zvi with such melo-
dramatic sensuality and romance, a tale of the passionate Orient far
removed from the straitlaced Jews of late nineteenth century England.
The intersection of eroticism, interfaith relations and the Orient ap-
pears as well in Sholem Ash’s 1908 Yiddish play Shabbtai Zvi. Ash’s
admittedly mediocre melodrama cannot be divorced from its author’s
preoccupation with Christianity, which, several decades later, would
result in such controversial works as Der Man fun Natseres. Ash’s
Shabbtai Zvi is announced in phrases reminiscent of the Christian ap-
propriation of the prophecy of Isaiah (7:14): ‘The voice of God came to
me thus: “A son is born to Mordecai in the city of Izmir in the East, near
the sea. And I have called him Shabbtai Zevi”’.45 The several references
to Izmir as ‘the East’ in Act 1 are revealing because the setting is sup-
posed to be Jer usalem, relative to which Izmir would be in the West. It
is, of course, the author and his audience who are in the West and for
whom Izmir, Jer usalem and, indeed, the whole drama of Sabbatianism,
all lie in the Orient.
But, of course, the Orient is also important for Ash as the site of Jesus’
origins. His comparison of Shabbtai to Jesus in the opening Act is rein-
forced later in the play by Shabbtai’s claim that ‘I have torn the human
from my heart and have become God’, and Sarah’s statement that
Shabbtai is a ‘Man-God’, formulations that have no basis in Sabbatian
theology, although they do appear in other ninteenth-century imagina-
tive literature about Shabbtai Zvi.46 For Ash, it seems, Sabbatianism
was a seventeenth-century version of Jewish Christianity, an episode in
Jewish history that might perhaps make Jews more understanding of
the Christian heresy. For if, as he suggests in his monumental novel of
the life of Jesus, Judaism and Christianity differ only in whether one
believes that the Messiah has already come, then the Sabbatian experi-
ence means that many Jews also once believed in an historical Messiah.
[ci]
David Biale [18
[cii]
19] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
[ciii]
David Biale [20
leads Shabbtai to the river and forces him to bathe her in a remarkably
erotic scene. She then takes him into a garden where she binds a crown
of thorns around his head until he bleeds and proceeds to flagellate him
with a thorn branch. After this sadomasochistic scene, Miriam tells him:
‘I have made you a man, you saint. […] Shabbtai Zewy, you are not the
savior of Israel, you are not the Messiah’. Shabbtai then converts to Is-
lam and lives out his days as a Moslem practicing the Jewish religion
in secret.
Sacher-Masoch mixes his own sexual proclivities here with religious
allegory. He regards Shabbtai Zvi as deluded because of his sexual as-
ceticism. He must be transformed from an ascetic saint into a man and
this can only be accomplished by a domineering woman. The release of
Shabbtai’s sexuality, which symbolizes his return to humanity, is con-
nected with sin: conversion to Islam. Yet, as in Ash’s drama, Shabbtai’s
treatment also conjures up associations of Christianity, particularly in
the crown of thorns and, perhaps, with the name Miriam, not as mother
of the Messiah, but as his wife. For Sacher-Masoch, Christ seems to have
represented the incarnation of God in an inverted sense: the turning of
religion into worldliness. From other writings, it appears that Sacher-
Masoch tried to constr uct a kind of secularized Christianity in which
redemption consists in accepting and even rejoicing in the cr uelties of
this world. It is possible that Sacher-Masoch intended the Shabbtai Zvi
story as an allegory of the modern Jewish problem: Jews must give up
their ostensibly ascetic separatism in favor of his vision of worldliness,
represented by women. In fact, in many of Sacher-Masoch’s Ghetto-
geschichten, it is powerful Jewish women who are the forces of modern-
ization and enlightenment.
The figure of Sarah, as a Jewish woman who, according to some ac-
counts, was converted temporarily to Christianity, allowed writers to
explore the relationship between Judaism and its Christian offspring.
Some writers, such as Kastein, went so far as to claim that Christian
millenarianism actually inspired the Sabbatian movement. For all the
writers I have discussed, the Sabbatian episode could be exploited as a
site for working out problems of Jewish identity in the modern world,
and particularly the boundaries between Judaism and Christianity.
And, women repeatedly played a critical role in their works as the cat-
alysts for transgressing those boundaries.
A final example of this complex of ideas which I should like to treat
is Jacob Wassermann’s Die Juden von Zirndorf, first published in 1897.
Wassermann is often considered an assimilationist, a contention that
[civ]
21] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
[cv]
David Biale [22
tain dramatic tension is set up between Zirle and Rachel’s child. As the
Jews travel towards the East in response to Shabbtai’s call, Rachel gives
birth, but to a boy, which causes her opportunistic father to go insane.
Wassermann seems to be suggesting in this episode that the Jews are
incapable of realizing their deepest desires, whether it be for sexual re-
lations with Christians or for the coming of the Messiah: ‘The dark God
of the Jews was not to be jested with; he stretched out his cr uel hand till
it stood like a wall cutting them off from the sweet and seductive pros-
pects conjured up by an oriental imagination’.55 The messianic libera-
tion of the European Jews, originating out of the Orient, fell victim to
the cr uel dictates of (Western?) Judaism, which had irrevocably dis-
torted the character of the Jews.
Yet, anticipating Scholem, Wassermann suggests that Sabbatianism,
the abortive movement of liberation from the East, formed the great
watershed between the Middle Ages and modernity, serving, as in
¨
Carlebach’s tale of the Donmeh sect, as a model for the modern Jew:
And what came was always greater, freer and more perfect than
what had gone before and the Jew, at first only a bondsman, fit to
suffer the kicks of his angry lord, opened his eyes, discovered the
weaknesses and guessed the secrets of his master. […] Shabbtai
became a Moslem, though some say but outwardly. The Jew
became a civilized man, and again some say but outwardly. […]
This is certain: an actor or a tr ue man, capable of beauty, yet ugly,
lustful and ascetic, a charlatan or a gambler, a fanatic or a
cowardly slave – the Jew is all these things. […] the nature of a
people is like the nature of an individual: its character is its fate.56
In his autobiography, Mein Leben als Deutscher und Jude, Wassermann,
torn between his Jewish and German identities, describes his need to
see the Jews as neither totally saintly nor totally materialistic, but rather
a human synthesis of all extremes. As the above passage suggests,
underneath the modern Jew’s ‘civilized’ exterior lurked all the
complexities of the Jew’s real identity. Sabbatianism itself was the first
movement of liberation that created this modern bifurcated identity.
For Wassermann, writing Die Juden von Zirndorf was also an act of
personal liberation,57 an attempt to reconcile his Jewish and German
[cvi]
23] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
[cvii]
David Biale [24
[cviii]
25] Shabbtai Zvi and the Seductions of Jewish Orientalism
[cix]
David Biale [26
[cx]
ENGLISH ABSTRACTS OF THE HEBREW ARTICLES
Yehuda Liebes
Joseph Dan
[cxii]
English Abstracts of the Hebrew Articles
Boaz Huss
SEFER GEHALEI
. ESH
Michal Oron
Joseph Sadan
Yosef Tobi
The Episode began with the emissaries and letters of the followers of
Sabbatai Sevi,
. which arrived at various localities in the Yemen from
Egypt and the Land of Israel. This probably happened in 1665, the year
before Sabbatai Sevi
. was supposed to reveal himself as Messiah. Yet,
already during the years preceding the Sabbatian activity in Yemen, a
strong messianic tension had developed among the Jews there. These
Sabbatian stirrings occurred as a result of the enhancing of nationalistic
emotions among the local Muslims and the expulsion of the Ottoman
Turks who had controlled the country for a hundred years. The messi-
anic activity reached its climax on Passover 1667, when R. Shelomo
Jamal, one of the Jewish scholars of Sanaa, addressed the governor of
that city ordering him to relinquish his throne as it was the time of the
deliverance of the Jewish nation.
The present article aims to prove that the events of 1667 which had
spread through most of the Jewish centers, though undoubtedly af-
[cxv]
English Abstracts of the Hebrew Articles
fected by the great Sabbatian movement, were not actually a part of it.
They were rather a local variant, the result of mounting messianic ten-
sions that culminated at certain times with the appearance of would-be
Messiahs. Moreover, even after the failure of the expected redemption
of Passover 1667 and its grave aftermath, the Jews of the Yemen re-
tained their messianic beliefs.
Jaacov Barnai
str uggle between Sabbatians and their opponents, but show deeper
roots in Jewish society as a whole, coping as it had to with changes in
the surrounding world during the period under discussion.
Ada Rapoport-Albert
Women played an unusually prominent role in all the stages and di-
verse manifestations of the Sabbatian movement. Many women – some
of them young girls, ‘maidens’, ‘virgins’ or ‘spinsters’ – were among the
earliest prophets of the movement who, by the very extraordinary na-
ture of their prophetic revelations, served as highly effective propagan-
dists of the Sabbatian message. Other women, including some married
prophetesses, played leading roles in the rituals of transgression insti-
tuted by the movement as redemptive cosmic ‘restorations’. It would
appear that virginity and celibacy co-existed with sexual licentiousness
within marriage, both functioning as modes of female empowerment
among the Sabbatians. This empowerment may have been facilitated
by the substitution – fundamental to Sabbatianism from the outset – of
the traditional doctrine of salvation by merit, which depended on com-
pliance with the halakhic framework of Judaism, with a new doctrine
of faith in the person of the Messiah, which alone secured salvation for
the ‘believers’. Gender differentiation – a built-in feature of the halakhic
framework – had traditionally resulted in the relegation of women to a
marginal position in cultic life. By contrast, the Sabbatian women were
able to occupy center stage, since their messianic faith, which tran-
scended the domain of Halakhah, and which now came to define their
religious experience, was free from regulation by any halakhic mech-
anism of gender differentiation. Moreover, the Sabbatian principle of
‘redemption through sin’ – particularly by means of sexual transgres-
sion – allowed much scope for women, traditionally perceived to be
marked by their sexuality and physical nature.
The paper assembles the admittedly fragmentary but incontroverti-
ble evidence for the activities of the Sabbatian prophetesses. It places
them in the context of such precedents as exist for this phenomenon in
the Jewish sources, while at the same time drawing attention to parallel
phenomena in both the Christian and Islamic spheres of Sabbatianism,
both of which may have contributed to the surprising readiness of the
[cxvii]
English Abstracts of the Hebrew Articles
Sabbatians to grant women parity with men. The origins of their ‘egal-
itarian’ eschatology are traced back to Sabbatai Sevi’s. own vision of
redemption for women, which may have been inspired by classical
kabbalistic sources. This vision found expression in such extraordinary
practices as the inclusion of women, in either exclusively female or
mixed company, in the ceremonial and ritual obligations of men, in the
instr uction of women in Zohar and Kabbalah, as well as in the initiation
of women in their own right as equal members of the sectarian
Sabbatian fraternities. These tendencies culminated in the perfect sym-
metry between ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ in Jacob Frank’s court, main-
tained alternately by the strict segregation of the sexes or by the eradi-
cation of all traditional boundaries between them.
Finally, Jacob Frank’s revolutionary doctrine of the redeeming
‘Maiden’ is shown to have been inspired by the Catholic cult of the
‘Black Madonna’ at Chestochova, where Frank had been imprisoned by
the Polish authorities for some thirteen years. The Mother of Christ was
constr ued in his mind as the outer ‘shell’ concealing the ‘fr uit’ – the
female Messiah who was the physical manifestation of the kabbalistic
sefirah, Malkhut. This sefirah, as he came to realize, was embodied in his
own daughter, Eva, who became, alongside him, and ultimately on her
own, the center of the messianic cult at his court until her death in 1816.
It is suggested that this radical development of Sabbatian ‘feminism’,
which envisaged the inauguration of redemption by a messianic cou-
ple – J acob Frank and his daughter Eva – was anchored in some authen-
tic kabbalistic traditions. Yet its most immediate and powerful inspira-
tion derived from Frank’s well-attested contacts with the Russian schis-
matic sectarians, some peculiar elements of whose eschatology and so-
cial organization closely resemble his own.
Paul B. Fenton
served in the Harvard College Library, Ms. Heb. 80. Containing nearly
700 items, this is by far the largest known dıwan
ˆ ˆ of Sabbatian songs.
Their profoundly mystical mood provides a further source for knowl-
edge of the forms of Sabbatian worship and their doctrinal content, es-
pecially the section containing songs for festive occasions. While most
of the hymns are in Judaeo-Spanish, a small number are in Hebrew or
Turkish, one particular song combining all three. The small number of
Turkish songs must not minimize the influence of Ottoman culture. In-
deed, the dıwan
ˆ ˆ is laid out according to the Turkish maqamat
ˆ ˆ and many
of the hymns bear Turkish titles indicating the tunes to which they are
to be sung. These constitute a wealth of information for the musicolo-
gist, pointing, as they do, to the musical sources upon which the sectar-
ians drew. Some of these obviously derive from Derwish and Bektashi
religious melodies. Furthermore, many of the items are memorial
hymns bearing the invariably Muslim names of the deceased. These too
are a precious source for knowledge of Sabbatian nomenclature.
Zeev Gries
[cxix]
English Abstracts of the Hebrew Articles
Moshe Fogel
Hemdat
. Yamim is an anonymous work r unning to hundreds of pages,
and essentially constituting a discussion of the purpose of the com-
mandments from the perspective of the Lurianic Kabbalah. The book
was widely disseminated, with six editions published over the period
1731–1763 in Turkey, Galicia and Italy. Several years after the first
printed edition appeared, Hemdat. Yamim came under suspicion of
Sabbatianism and its circulation in Eastern Europe was restricted, al-
though customs and liturgies originating in the work became wide-
spread even in these communities. In the Eastern countries, the book
has been widely accepted since its first publication and up to modern
times.
Several reasons lay behind the claim by halakhic authorities that
Hemdat
. Yamim is a Sabbatian book: The initial letters of the verses of the
piyyutim included in Hemdat
. Yamim form an acrostic of the name ‘Na-
than of Gaza’; the Gematria relates to the name and character of Sabbatai
Sevi;
. and the fact that the book ignores the customs of mourning for the
destr uction of the Temple, as did the Sabbatians. However, other hala-
khic authorities did not share this position, particularly since the name
Sabbatai Sevi
. does not appear in the book. Modern research has re-
vealed additional indications of the Sabbatian character of Hemdat .
Yamim.
The article suggests several angles from which one may examine the
question of the Sabbatian character of Hemdat
. Yamim according to the
criteria established by scholars: (a) belief that Sabbatai Sevi
. was the
Messiah; (b) use of Sabbatian liturgies and customs as an indication of
the belief that Sabbatai Sevi
. was the Messiah; (c) belief in a double-
edged world in which the messianic age has already begun – a hidden
world already in the process of redemption, as opposed to the overt
world still in exile. The attitude of the book toward individuals known
to have been either Sabbatian or anti-Sabbatian is also examined, as is
the question of whether or not the book does indeed ignore the customs
of mourning for the destr uction of the Temple. The question is posed
whether the author’s view of redemption may be characterized by the
expectation of a personal Messiah who will redeem Klal Israel in the
immediate term.
[cxx]
English Abstracts of the Hebrew Articles
Shifra Asulin
[cxxi]
English Abstracts of the Hebrew Articles
Rachel Elior
The subject of the present study is Jacob Frank and his book, The Sayings
of the Lord. This book, written in the second half of the eighteenth cen-
tury beyond the confines of the Jewish community, reflects the liminal
position of the founder of the Frankist movement and his followers.
The text, published recently in Polish and translated into Hebrew by
Fania Scholem some forty years ago (and due to be published in the
near future), is the exceptional autobiography of a person who felt nei-
ther shame nor fear nor any cultural or religious restriction. Frank’s
sayings reveal the acute transformation of the mystical-mythical tradi-
tion of the Zohar and the extreme opposition to traditional Judaism that
was evident in Sabbatian circles. Messianic and mystical ideas inspired
¨
by the circles of the Donmeh were amalgamated with his own idiosyn-
cratic world-view.
The discussion focuses on the passage from the written kabbalistic
myth of the heavenly world and its abstract symbols to the concrete
ritual-mystical experience of the anarchic Frankist community that ex-
pressed the new messianic era. Frank demanded that his followers par-
ticipate in a mythological reality that operated within a carnivalesque
framework transcending all norms and boundaries. Under Frank’s
messianic leadership and charismatic inspiration, the new mythologi-
cal reality was associated with omnipotence and eternal life, liberty and
redemption, new messianic figures and other expressions of the new
world as revealed to Jacob Frank.
[cxxii]