Sabbatian Heresy: Writings on Mysticism, Messianism, and the Origins of Jewish Modernity

Thought

Introduction

Jesus of Nazareth and Sabbatai Tsevi were the two most important Jewish messiahs in history. The former became the founder of the world’s largest religion, whose theological traditions and liturgical practices have been flourishing for the past two thousand years. The truth of his messianic mission has been the central article of faith for millions of believers. His teachings, as recorded in the Gospels, have served as inspiration for countless works of genius and take their place in the treasury of humanity’s moral and religious heritage. The latter, for his part, never became a household name: to the extent that he is known outside the narrow circle of scholars specializing in early modern Judaism, he is generally considered a colossal failure of messianic hopes and aspirations. The spiritual awakening initiated by Sabbatai Tsevi (arguably also a new religion in the making) spectacularly collapsed less than a year after its inception. The creed of his faith, largely forgotten, seems too bizarre to merit a serious discussion. Any lingering traces of belief in his messianic mandate have long since disappeared from living memory. For most of those who do remember him, Sabbatai Tsevi and his messianism constituted a burst of short-lived religious enthusiasm fueled by naïveté and credulity. An inexplicable oddity. A bubble on the current of history. An intriguing anecdote—at best. Yet behind these simplistic images, a more complex reality lurks. Sabbatai’s messianic allure, transitory though it was, calls for serious reflection: aside from Jesus, Tsevi was the only Jewish messiah whose gospel gained sufficient momentum to break through the confines of a particular social group or a specific geographical milieu. The countless would-be saviors of the Jews (or redeemers of the world) who appeared between antiquity and the modern period might have been important in their local settings, but remained practically unknown outside their own communities. Breaking this mold, Sabbatianism, as the movement founded by Tsevi came to be called, for a brief period captured the entire Jewish world and all strata of Jewish society—Jews of the Orient and Occident, rich and poor, learned and illiterate, men and women. Further, Christianity excepted, Sabbatianism was the single messianic upheaval among the Jews that exerted a significant impact on the surrounding societies. The eruption of religious fervor around Sabbatai Tsevi in the 1660s was probably the highest-profile event involving Jewish communities prior to the twentieth century. It echoed in innumerable contemporary letters, memoirs, travelogues, and newspaper reports. Rulers of empires as well as high-ranking Muslim and Christian clergymen were actively involved in shaping the course of events affecting Sabbatai and his followers, and devised strategies of response to the spreading of messianism among the masses. Some—albeit very few—non-Jews became ardent believers in Tsevi. Leading intellectuals of the age creatively engaged with Sabbatianism and wrote passionate rejoinders to its momentous emergence and stunning downfall.

The importance of Sabbatai Tsevi transcends his immediate period. If we consider as Sabbatianism not only the outburst of public messianic ardor that briefly surrounded Tsevi, but also the entire debate triggered by his advent, then the movement was less short lived than often assumed: most of the controversies that took place in the Jewish world between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century were associated in one way or another with Sabbatianism. Sabbatai’s followers developed a set of theological doctrines in which Jewish tradition was reinterpreted in novel and highly unorthodox ways and was merged with Muslim and later Christian elements. These doctrines, as well as the (allegedly or actually) licentious and transgressive behavior of many Sabbatians, provoked intense opposition (and therefore significant polemical literature) from rabbinic authorities. The patterns of polemics that emerged on the occasion of Sabbatianism formed the basis for other disputes. Quarrels between Sabbatians and their detractors had a profound impact on the contours of central controversies of later Judaism, such as debates surrounding the emergence of Hasidism, the Haskalah, and the Reform movement. In the twentieth century, numerous works of art and literature attest to the deep fascination with the figure of Sabbatai Tsevi. For some major Jewish thinkers, his rise and fall constitutes the key to the most crucial phenomena of modern Jewish history: Zionism and the establishment of Jewish political sovereignty and the secularization of traditional Jewish society. In short, any real discussion of the early modern and modern Jewish experience must take into account Sabbatianism. In such reflection, both the internal diversity of Jewish society and a cross-sectional view of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim relations during the past three hundred years can be considered.

An outline of the messiah’s biography is in place. Sabbatai Tsevi was born on the 9th of Av, August 1, 1626, in Smyrna (Izmir), on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. He received the preliminaries of traditional Jewish education from the leading scholars of his natal city, Rabbis Isaac de Alba and Joseph Escapa. At the age of fifteen, Tsevi abandoned the yeshivah and embarked on a path of solitary study and meditation, dabbling in Kabbalah and esoteric lore. He also began to experience states of profound depression interspersed with moments of ecstatic euphoria. During the latter, Tsevi performed strange acts and invented bizarre rituals, some of which involved blatant violations of Jewish law. In 1648, in a moment of ecstasy, he pronounced aloud the Ineffable Name of God and proclaimed himself the messiah. Nobody took this claim seriously; most of those who knew him considered him mentally ill. However, the messianic pronouncements and outlandish actions continued, and the Smyrna rabbis eventually expelled Sabbatai from the city. Throughout the 1650s, Tsevi wandered through Greece, Thrace, Turkey, and Egypt, to settle, in 1662, in Jerusalem. Doubting himself and overcome with an intense sense of guilt, he tried to suppress both his messianic visions and his abnormal behavior. Sabbatai became a normative (if possibly slightly strange) member of the Jerusalem Jewish community, on whose behalf he undertook a journey to Cairo. On his way back in April 1665, he met in Gaza the Kabbalistic prodigy Nathan Benjamin Ashkenazi. Several months prior to this meeting, Nathan had experienced a revelation, the centerpiece of which was the image of the messiah Sabbatai Tsevi engraved upon the Throne of Glory. The encounter was a turning point in both their lives; Nathan managed to convince Sabbatai to accept the truth of his messianic destiny, and provided him with conceptual tools allowing for an explanation of his nonnormative conduct. Idiosyncratic acts and rituals (termed by Nathan ma’asim zarim, strange deeds) were signs of Tsevi’s elevated messianic rank and the basis for future rites of his faithful. The cycles of depression and euphoria were external expressions of the messiah’s internal struggle against the powers of darkness. In May 1665, in Gaza, Sabbatai Tsevi again publicly proclaimed himself the messiah. This time, the entire community was swept up with him. Nathan had several other prophetic visions, and he composed theological pronouncements elaborating on them. These were copied and sent to distant Jewish communities as circular epistles, which triggered the spread of the messianic enthusiasm first in Palestine and Egypt and subsequently also in other parts of the Ottoman Empire and most of Christian Europe. By October 1665, Jewish communities from Persia to Morocco and from Yemen to Poland were engulfed in religious frenzy. Ecstatic trances, prophecies, apparitions, and other supernatural phenomena multiplied. Poems and songs in honor of the messiah were composed, enthusiastic sermons were preached, and celebrations of the imminent redemption were held; in most Jewish communities skeptics and opponents of Tsevi were a tiny—and at times persecuted—minority. Diaspora Jews began selling their properties and closing businesses in expectation of the approaching move to the Land of Israel, where the final stage of redemption was to take place. At this point, Sabbatai Tsevi’s predilection for transgressive actions reached its peak: he ate prohibited foods, abolished fasts and established new festivals, instituted new blessings and prayers, called upon women to read the Law, dismissed rabbis and communal leaders, and appointed kings, among whom he divided the world. He also declared that before long he would seize the crown of the Ottoman sultan.

In December 1665, Tsevi sailed to Constantinople. Worried about the spread of religious fervor, the Turkish authorities intercepted his boat on the open sea. Sabbatai was brought in chains to the fortress of Gallipoli, where he remained until the summer of the following year. To the great surprise of his detractors, the Turks treated the prisoner with honor, allowing him to hold court and to send and receive envoys, among them rabbinic and Kabbalistic luminaries. Muslim respect coupled with the continuing spread of the prophetic propaganda among the Jews brought the messianic hopes to an apotheosis: during his imprisonment, Sabbatai issued several pronouncements signed I am the Lord your God Sabbatai Tsevi, and among some of his believers he came to be considered a divine figure. The anticlimax came in September 1666: on the fifteenth of that month Sabbatai was brought before Sultan Mehmed IV in Adrianople. Accounts of this meeting are riddled with contradiction, but one thing is certain: from the meeting with the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, Sabbatai Tsevi emerged a Muslim.

Following his conversion, Sabbatai Tsevi received instruction in the tenets of Islam, studied the Qur’an, began praying in a mosque, and developed contacts with Muslim mystics, including members of Dervish orders. He also continued to study the Zohar and other Kabbalistic writings, prayed at home in Hebrew, and observed, apparently with the silent consent of the authorities, most ritual commandments of Judaism. During his recurrent states of illumination, he maintained his earlier erratic pattern of behavior, repeatedly proclaiming the continuance of his messianic mission despite his conversion, inventing yet more festivals and rites, and allegedly engaging in numerous immoral practices. It seems that the Turks turned a blind eye to Sabbatai’s enduring adherence to Jewish customs and his excesses because they planned to deploy him as a missionary among the Jews. Indeed, at moments of euphoria, Tsevi made several calls on his followers to embrace Islam, causing a conversion of some two hundred Jewish families. Yet if the Ottoman authorities hoped for a large Jewish apostasy and quick integration of the converts into the dominant society, they miscalculated. Acting on the explicit instruction of the messiah, the converts avoided mingling with born Muslims and preserved close ties with those followers of Sabbatai who remained within the framework of official Judaism. Thus, a tightly knit sectarian group that consisted of nominal Muslims and nominal Jews and whose primary religious identity was neither Jewish nor Muslim but Sabbatian was formed.

In August 1672, Sabbatai was denounced to the authorities for his duplicitous and licentious behavior. In January of the following year he was exiled to Ulcinj (Dulcigno) in Albania. He continued writing letters and dispatching emissaries, and some of his believers, including Nathan of Gaza, managed to visit him there. He died on the Day of Atonement, September 17, 1676.

For a mass messianic movement, Sabbatianism produced scarcely any theology. Precious few Sabbatian texts were composed during its heyday, before Sabbatai’s conversion to Islam. After the conversion, Tsevi came to epitomize for most Jews as well as for many Christians and Muslims the notion of a false messiah. He was subsumed under the familiar categories of religious impostor, charlatan, and sect leader. These labels were taken up—rather uncritically—by early historians of Sabbatianism. Yet they are highly problematic. First and foremost, as a term of scholarly analysis, false messiah is a poorly constructed concept. It is an obvious oxymoron: a messiah who is false is simply not a messiah; a messiah who is a messiah cannot, by definition, be false. Further, benchmarks of falsity invoked (or implicitly presumed) by those who use the term false messiah are in themselves problematic. Even if we argue (and this is a risky proposal) that in the course of the historical development of the Jewish religion, all Jews have accepted some universal standards of messiahship (such as Maimonides’s Laws Pertaining to the Messiah), such standards are not operative categories of scholarship but rather its subjects. Claims that a particular messianic pretender was false according to set criteria should be studied by scholars; they should not be made by them. Finally, the term false messiah implies a value judgment. Scholars of early Christianity are not in the habit of offering disclaimers concerning the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was and indeed is considered a false messiah by some, nor are they accustomed to making declarations concerning their belief or disbelief in the matter. Scholars of Sabbatai Tsevi should, perhaps, exhibit the same restraint.

Even prior to Sabbatai Tsevi’s conversion it was obvious to all that he did not fit any of the existing conceptions of the messiah. He and his followers knew it perfectly well; they never pretended he did. Some of the Sabbatians rejected the very possibility of formulating criteria of messiahship akin to the ones formulated by Maimonides; others proposed their own messianic parameters; yet others turned the argument on its head and contended that the very lack of fulfillment of traditional criteria by Sabbatai signaled the truth of his mission. The significance of Sabbatianism for Jewish messianic speculation is not merely that it was the largest movement of its kind or that it had a profound impact on other religious and political phenomena; most critical is that it was the most important attempt in the history of post–Second Temple Judaism to define (or to redefine) the very category of messianism. Sabbatianism’s singularity was that an act which should have marked the utter failure of the purported redeemer, his conversion, did not put an absolute end to the belief in his messianic vocation. For the vast majority of Sabbatai’s followers, pious Jews that they were, the apostasy did disqualify his claims to a messianic mandate. Their adventure with messianism ended the minute the object of their hopes became a Muslim. For a few, however, the conversion was merely a stage for the unfolding redemption drama. In fact, Sabbatianism as a highly original form of thought began precisely where Sabbatianism as a mass messianic movement ended. Sabbatian thought took off as an attempt to explain the inexplicable: to imbue Tsevi’s apostasy with religious meaning. The conversion of the messiah was a necessary step in his salvific mission.

The notion of the necessary apostasy of the messiah constituted the inner kernel of Sabbatianism. The social profile and theological tenets of the Sabbatian religion were determined not so much by Tsevi’s claims to be the messiah, but by his conversion to Islam and the novel way the conversion was conceptualized in the writings of his prophets and disciples. The foundations of this conceptualization have been reconstructed in the seminal works of Gershom Scholem. While Scholem was by no means the first scholar to tackle Sabbatianism (important contributions to the reconstruction of the history of the movement had been made by David Kahana, Majer Bałaban, Heinrich Graetz, and Simon Dubnow, among others), he was the first historian to move beyond the false messiah paradigm. Rather than a priori dismissing Tsevi as an impostor or madman and his followers as delusional fanatics, Scholem sought to unearth the social and intellectual substructure of the movement. Undeterred by the ostensible absurdity of the doctrines of the messiah’s strange actions and his necessary apostasy, he took the ideas of the Sabbatians with utmost seriousness and proposed to understand them on their own terms. His was the first—and in many ways unsurpassed—attempt to tease out the inner workings of Sabbatianism.

According to Scholem, Sabbatian theology in all its infinite varieties had its common root in efforts to resolve the contradiction between the inner and the outer reality of redemption.¹ For the believers, redemption became an unmediated reality, an overwhelming experience,² whose inner certainty had to be reconciled with the empirical reality of historical events. Since the majority of the Jews accepted—if only for a brief period of time—Sabbatai as the true messiah, the sheer quantitative magnitude of the revival had become a qualitative factor.³ Faced with Sabbatai’s apostasy, a number of his adherents refused to submit to the sentence of history,⁴ and continued to follow him despite the fact that he had become a Muslim. Accordingly, they sought in classical Jewish texts allusions to the notion that the messiah would perforce apostatize.⁵ This search promptly yielded fruit, and a number of theological ideologizations⁶ of this deed were developed. First, the conversion was interpreted as a descent of the powers of righteousness embodied in the messiah into the world of evil and impurity (kelippot, husks, in the terminology of Kabbalah). The purpose of this descent was further expounded as an endeavor to bring about the total destruction of the kelippot or, conversely, as an attempt to save the sparks of holiness trapped among them. While all those who continued to adhere to Sabbatai Tsevi after the apostasy accepted one of the variants of this basic theological paradigm, Scholem distinguished at this point two major wings within the movement: moderate Sabbatians held that the messiah’s conversion was a sui generis act, one that was not intended to serve as an example for others, whereas radical Sabbatians maintained that he should be followed all the way into apostasy.⁷ The most important representatives of the latter wing were, according to Scholem, the Dönmeh of Salonika, who converted to Islam in 1683, and the 1759 Frankist converts to Catholicism in Poland. These radicals among radicals drew ultimate conclusions from Sabbatai’s constitutive act; they turned conversion into a positive commandment and argued that the true faith cannot be a faith which men publicly profess.⁸ Thus, in its most extreme expressions Sabbatianism led to a fundamental impasse: the impossibility of reconciling one’s true religious identity with one’s social role.⁹ In the final analysis, Sabbatianism was for Scholem religious nihilism, wherein values and spiritual tenets of normative Judaism were shattered beyond repair, while seemingly orthodox practices of moderate Sabbatians—and even more so, new religions adopted by their radical brethren—were mere disguises lacking any deeper meaning or significance.

The notion of religious nihilism did not imply simply a rejection of values or mores associated with normative religion. Rather, as Scholem put it: By this concept I do not mean nihilism with regard to religion but rather a nihilism that appears in the name of religious assertions and follows from religious tenets. It adopts religious discourse but it completely denies the authority, which this discourse claims to possess. It does not attempt to replace the old structures with new ones, but tries only to destroy them.¹⁰ Sabbatian conversionary theology was nihilistic, for it simultaneously repudiated vulgar or unenlightened religious experience, and recommended the conscious and systematic desecration of the values of traditional religion as the way of the elect to true redemption. Although Scholem qualified his analyses by saying that many Sabbatians combined their belief in the messiah with perfectly orthodox Jewish observance, he also affirmed clearly that the antinomianism that stemmed from Tsevi’s strange deeds was not found on the accidental fringe of the Sabbatian movement, but rather constituted its very core. All Sabbatianism, from its very foundations, was nihilistic: antinomian practices logically followed from the Sabbatian worldview, regardless of whether or not a particular believer actualized them in practice. Scholem’s most famous statement on the subject (perhaps his most famous publication of all) is titled Mitsvah ha-Ba’ah be-Avera (literally: a commandment that is fulfilled by the breaking of another commandment). The phrase, especially after its mistranslation into English as Redemption through Sin, came to be regarded as the catchword of