Gershom Scholem stands out among modern thinkers for the richness and power of his historical imagination. A work widely esteemed as his magnum opus, Sabbatai Ṣevi offers a vividly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. Sabbatai Ṣevi was an obscure kabbalist rabbi of seventeenth-century Turkey who aroused a fervent following that spread over the Jewish world after he declared himself to be the Messiah. The movement suffered a severe blow when Ṣevi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, Sabbatai Ṣevi details Ṣevi's rise to prominence and stands out for its combination of philological and empirical authority and passion. This edition contains a new introduction by Yaacob Dweck that explains the scholarly importance of Scholem's work to a new generation of readers.
"This is the first comprehensive social, intellectual and religious history of the wide-spread Sabbatean movement from its birth in the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century to the Republic of Turkey in the first half of the twentieth century, claiming that they owed their survival to the internalization of the Kabbalistic "burden of silence"--
Sabbatai Zevi stirred up the Jewish world in the mid-seventeenth century by claiming to be the messiah, then stunned it by suddenly converting to Islam. The story is presented here for the first time through contemporary documents, written by Sabbatai’s followers and by one of his detractors, in translations that brilliantly capture the vividness of this landmark episode in early modern Jewish history.
"Gershom Scholem stands out among modern thinkers for the richness and power of his historical imagination. A work widely esteemed as his magnum opus, Sabbatai Ṣevi offers a vividly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. Sabbatai Ṣevi was an obscure kabbalist rabbi of seventeenth-century Turkey who aroused a fervent following that spread over the Jewish world after he declared himself to be the Messiah. The movement suffered a severe blow when Ṣevi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, Sabbatai Ṣevi details Ṣevi's rise to prominence and stands out for its combination of philological and empirical authority and passion. This edition contains a new introduction by Yaacob Dweck that explains the scholarly importance of Scholem's work to a new generation of readers."--
A timely and fascinating study of an early modern movement that transcended traditional Jewish gender paradigms and allowed women to express their spirituality freely in the public arena.
In 1756, Jacob Frank, an Ottoman Jew who had returned to the Poland of his birth, was discovered leading a group of fellow travelers in a suspect religious service. At the request of the local rabbis, Polish authorities arrested the participants. Jewish authorities contacted the bishop in whose diocese the service had taken place and argued that since the rites of Frank's followers involved the practice of magic and immoral conduct, both Jews and Christians should condemn them and burn them at the stake. The scheme backfired, as the Frankists took the opportunity to ally themselves with the Church, presenting themselves as Contra-Talmudists who believed in a triune God. As a Turkish subject, Frank was released and temporarily expelled to the Ottoman territories, but the others were found guilty of breaking numerous halakhic prohibitions and were subject to a Jewish ban of excommunication. While they professed their adherence to everything that was commanded by God in the Old Testament, they asserted as well that the Rabbis of old had introduced innumerable lies and misconstructions in their interpretations of that holy book. Who were Jacob Frank and his followers? To most Christians, they seemed to be members of a Jewish sect; to Jewish reformers, they formed a group making a valiant if misguided attempt to bring an end to the power of the rabbis; and to more traditional Jews, they were heretics to be suppressed by the rabbinate. What is undeniable is that by the late eighteenth century, the Frankists numbered in the tens of thousands and had a significant political and ideological influence on non-Jewish communities throughout eastern and central Europe. Based on extensive archival research in Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel, Germany, the United States, and the Vatican, The Mixed Multitude is the first comprehensive study of Frank and Frankism in more than a century and offers an important new perspective on Jewish-Christian relations in the Age of Enlightenment.
In 1665-1666 the messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi (also written as Shabbetai Zevi, Shabbetai Tzvi, Shabtai Sevi, etc.) spread like wildfire throughout the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean and northern and western Europe. Some communities were so caught up in the frenzy that they changed their liturgy to reflect what they believed to be in the impending declaration of the messianic age. In September of 1666, Zevi was granted an audience with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, but things did not turn out as Zevi had envisioned. He was given a choice between conversion to Islam or death. Zevi chose the former. Sabbatai Zevi now proclaimed himself as the hidden messiah of Israel. Some of his most devoted followers converted as well, but his conversion ended the legitimacy of his messianic claims for most of his followers.As momentous as the Sabbatean movement was, what most people are unfamiliar with is the fact that many of Zevi's most active supporters were from Spanish and Portuguese Jewish backgrounds. More specifically, they were from Converso backgrounds. Conversos were the descendants of Iberian Jews who had converted to Christianity in the late 14th and through the end of the 15th centuries in the Iberian Peninsula. The Conversos who supported Zevi were often first-generation returnees to Judaism. That is, they had lived in the Iberian Peninsula as Christians and returned to Judaism within their lifetime. This book examines what attracted former Conversos to the movement and the extent of their involvement.
Rabbi Sabbatai Sevi is one of the most controversial religious figures in all history. In The Lost Messiah, acclaimed author John Freely follows Sevi's trail and the traces of the Jewish cult that grew up around him-one that still inspires belief today. Brilliantly evoking the vanished world of the seventeenth-century Jewish diaspora in the Ottoman Empire, the narrative moves from Sevi's birthplace in Izmir on the Aegean coast of Turkey, to the ghettos of Venice and Rome, the bazaars of Cairo, and the rabbinical schools of Jerusalem and Safed, all the while placing the exotic story into magnificent context with details of the state of the current Jewish communities in these areas. As Damian Thompson wrote in The Mail on Sunday, "Everything in this book is astonishing." The result of thirty years of research and travel, The Lost Messiahdeftly interweaves the work of respected scholars-including the pioneering writings of Gershom Scholem-along with Freely's own firsthand knowledge of ancient and contemporary Turkey and its environs. From the theoretical and practical background of Sevi's messianic movement and its emergence from the mysticism of the Kabbalah, Freely describes the many early unorthodoxies that turned many in Sevi's community against him and then goes on to provide explanations for how and why Sevi nevertheless acquired an international following that continued to support and believe in him-even after his shocking apostasy and conversion to Islam in the year 1666.
With the publication of The Origins of the Kabbalah in 1950, one of the most important scholars of our century brought the obscure world of Jewish mysticism to a wider audience for the first time. A crucial work in the oeuvre of Gershom Scholem, this book details the beginnings of the Kabbalah in twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and Spain, showing its rich tradition of repeated attempts to achieve and portray direct experiences of God. The Origins of the Kabbalah is a contribution not only to the history of Jewish medieval mysticism, but also to the study of medieval mysticism in general. Now with a new foreword by David Biale, this book remains essential reading for students of the history of religion.
