Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676

by Gershom Scholem, R.J. Zwi Werblowsky (Translator)

A richly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world.

The twentieth century produced a galaxy of extraordinary Jewish historians. Gershom Scholem stands out among them for the richness and power of his historical imagination. Born in Berlin in 1897, Scholem became a Zionist as a young student in a revolt against his family's bourgeois and assimilated life. He learned Hebrew and studied Kabbalah, the world of mystical teachings that had become marginalized--indeed stigmatized--within the mainstream rationalist Jewish tradition. In 1923, Scholem emigrated to Palestine and eventually joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, publishing groundbreaking studies in the field of Jewish mysticism.

In the 1930s, Scholem's scholarship turned to an obscure kabbalist rabbi of seventeenth-century Turkey, Sabbatai ?evi, 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 ?evi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A Bollingen Foundation grant enabled Scholem to complete the original Hebrew edition of his biography in 1957. Bollingen also supported R. J. Zwi Werblowsky's masterful English translation. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, "Sabbatai ?evi" stands out for its combination of philological and empirical authority and for its passion. It is widely esteemed as one of Scholem's masterworks. The author himself always regarded the Princeton/Bollingen edition as a highlight of his scholarship.

Genres: Religion, History, Judaism, Jewish, Nonfiction, Biography, Judaica

1030 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Gerhard Scholem, who, after his immigration from Germany to Israel, changed his name to Gershom Scholem (Hebrew: גרשם שלום), was a German-born Israeli philosopher and historian. He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern, academic study of Kabbalah, becoming the first Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His close friends included Walter Benjamin and Leo Strauss, and selected letters from his correspondence with those philosophers have been published.

Scholem is best known for his collection of lectures, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) and for his biography Sabbatai Zevi, the Mystical Messiah (1973). His collected speeches and essays, published as On Kabbalah and its Symbolism (1965), helped to spread knowledge of Jewish mysticism among non-Jews.

Reviews

[David M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cowardice is an active quality. - Jean Genet

The Sabbatian paradox, however, was not that of a saint who suffers and whose suffering is a mystery hidden with God, but of a saint who sins. A faith based on this destructive paradox has lost its innocence. - Sabbatai Sevi, pp 691

Sabbatai Sevi, the apostate messiah, makes for a bizarre and ridiculous episode in the history of religion; to even lavish this amount of scholarly attention on the subject may seem like a willful act of perversity.

I should say I'm totally unqualified when it comes to evaluating Scholem's scholarship. I have no idea if his interpretation of the kabbalah is correct. Truth be told I know nothing of these matters. However, I do believe that the chief task of literature is to explore the dark and twisted passageways of the human soul; and so it seems fair to call this book a literary masterpiece. Here we find Sabbatai the crazy, cowardly, mediocre messiah and Nathan his devout, brilliant, and principled prophet. The mystery of their relationship reminded me a bit of the one between Sancho Panza and the knight of the sorrowful countenance. Readers of Cervantes, Dostoevsky, and Henry James should find much to admire and marvel at in these pages.

*
Today Scholem is maybe best known for having been Walter Benjamin's closest friend when they were young. Scholem wrote this moving memoir on the subject Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. Jewish mysticism forms a constant current in Benjamin's oeuvre as well. However, in his case it's diluted and complicated by other intellectual sources, chiefly Marxism. Scholem doesn't seem to have shared his friend's restless and ultimately tragic temperament. He knew early on what his life work would be. Whereas the Arcades Project survives as a vast and unruly collection of notes, unlikely to have been completed even under the most hospitable circumstances, Sabbatai Sevi is a finished opus.

One gets the impression Scholem could never quite forgive Marxism for taking his best friend away for him. Certainly he had no sympathy at all with historical materialism as a way of thinking. Here and there Sabbatai Sevi contains subtle digs. At one point he refers dismissively to the 20th century prejudice of reducing everything to social phenomena. Against this, he insists on the dignity and autonomy of religious experience. I think he's entirely right to do so.

However, I also think that Marxism need not be synonymous with its most doctrinaire and reductionist versions. It can also be taken more broadly as radical critique of what is plus philosophy of what's possible. In this respect, the Sabbatian movement may actually have much to teach us. For it was a mass movement. Scholem depicts a whole people grown well-nigh hysterical in anticipation of redemption. Public acts of repentance taking on the air of a carnival celebration. And even though it was a nonviolent movement, the imperial authorities felt threatened enough by all the ungovernable ecstasy they had to intervene. Students of human emancipation should take note.

*
One more thing. I've known about this book for a long time. Been meaning to read it for a decade or so. However, the immediate impetus that made me go out and buy a copy was seeing the movie Silence last month. Scorcese's latest deals with many similar themes - cowardice, apostasy, the absurdity of faith, and it truly is a great film. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be receiving the recognition it deserve (a lot of times movie critics just aren't that bright, I'm afraid). So I just wanted to try and boost it some more. Go see the movie Silence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iqrgx...

[Dr. Carl Ludwig Dorsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the article "The Greatness of Gershom Scholem" by Hiram Macooby, Commentary, Vol. 76, No. 3, September 1983, pp.37-46

HYAM MACOOBY is librarian and lecturer at the Leo Baeck College in London. He is the author of "Revolution in Judea: Jesus and the Jewish Resistance", "Judaism on Trial", and, most recently, "The Sacred Executioner" (Thames & Hudson).

"SABBATAL SEVI (1626-76) was a strange and tortured personality who came from a milieu saturated with the concepts of the Lurianic Kabbalah. He alternated between moods of deep depression and moods of manic exaltation, when he thought himself the messiah and exuded a self-confidence that carried all before it. In his moods of exaltation he would commit in public “strange acts” involving the breach of important Jewish laws (for example, he would eat forbidden fat). To these acts, shocking to his audience, he attached a mystical significance; but in his ordinary moods he adhered strictly to all rabbinical and biblical laws.

"On his own, Sabbatai Sevi would not have gained widespread adherence. He was dismissed by most people as unbalanced, and he himself believed in his messianic mission only by fits and starts - and even when he believed in it, he was more concerned to provide impressive charismatic exhibitions than to build a movement or engage in the necessities of propaganda. It was only when Nathan of Gaza, a man of great gifts and industry who was widely respected as a scholar and kabbalist, became converted to a belief in Sabbatai that a messianic movement of historical importance became possible. It was Nathan who provided the link with the Lurianic Kabbalah and with the whole previous history of Jewish mysticism, and who brought all the energy of this centuries-old aspect of Jewish religious experience to the exploitation of the compelling contradictions of Sabbatai’s character. At the same time, Nathan, accepted as the prophet who by tradition would accompany the messiah, was able to mobilize non-kabbalistic messianic expectations as well. By the time the movement acquired mass support, it had become a mixture of talmudic, folkloristic, and kabbalistic elements capable of appealing to a wide spectrum of the Jewish people.

"Gershom Scholem’s great work, Sabbatai Sevi:The Mystical Messiah (Hebrew, 1957; English translation, 1973) is the apex of his achievement, combining as it does detailed, patient scholarship with his characteristic originality, cutting through the confusions of all previous writers on the subject and leading to new formulations of wide significance for the history of religion. The work is, however, disconcerting in many ways. The Sabbatian movement ended in utter bathos. The messiah-figure who had aroused such hopes throughout the Jewish world, when given the choice of death or conversion to Islam, accepted conversion. This ignoble collapse, for the vast majority of Jews, meant the end of the movement, and it then became of great concern to conceal the extent to which Sabbatai had received both official and mass support. Part of Scholem’s work consisted in exposing the extent of this cover-up, and here he aroused the anger of other scholars who felt he had gone too far.

"Even more controversial was Scholem’s assessment of the antinomian aspect of the Sabbatian movement. He showed how the Sabbatian movement had put forward doctrines usually regarded as the antithesis of Judaism, and yet these doctrines were not repudiated by the learned and pious scholars who flocked to Sabbatal’s banner. For example, Sabbatai claimed divine status by signing his letters “Shaddai,” one of the biblical names of God. (He also made great play of the fact that the name Sabbatai Sevi and “Shaddai” were equivalent in the system of numerology known as gematria.) One would have thought that, as far as pious Jews were concerned, this would have spelled an end to his claims; and indeed some Jewish leaders were horrified by this blasphemy and withdrew their support. But what is surprising is how ‘many Jewish leaders took this claim to divinity in their stride.

"One could argue that the development of the Kabbalah, especially in its Lurianic form, had prepared the way for this by according the messiah a cosmic status that he did not have in talmudic Judaism, and also by dividing the Godhead into so many layers or departments that it was possible to identify the messiah with one of these aspects without deifying him completely. Nevertheless, the fact is that the, very thing that had been held to make Christianity idolatrous was now accepted without protest by a large portion of the Jewish people amid their leaders. On the basis of this, Gershom Scholern came to the startling conclusion that there is no fixed definition of Judaism; Judaism is simply everything that it has been historically, and must therefore include a doctrine of the deification of the messiah, at least as one of its possible manifestations.

"The Sabbatian movement proved similar to Christianity in another important respect: its abrogation of the Torah and declaration of the advent of a new law. This aspect was not fully developed in the lifetime of Sabbatai Sevi himself; yet he did introduce many innovations of a liturgical character, incorporated new festivals, and by his own performance of “strange acts” signalized that there could be mystical power in the breaking of the law as well as in its observance. This clear tendency to antinomianism was, however, again accepted by the majority as within their understanding of the character and function of a messiah.

"After the apostasy and death of Sabbatai Sevi, these antinomian tendencies were intensified by those who remained faithful to his memory. The whole Torah was regarded as abrogated, or at most as in force only until the expected return of the messiah. Many Sabbatians regarded Sabbatai’s apostasy as itself an act of mystical significance, the last of his “strange acts,” and decided to follow his example. They formed the Donmeh sect, continuing to believe in Sabbatai secretly while outwardly behaving as Muslims - a weird regression to the condition of the Marranos under Christianity. Finally, the Sabbatian sect known as the Frankists turned antinomianism into a regime of sexual license and deliberate ceremonial breaches of Jewish law. Their “sanctification” of sin, together with their gnostic theology, made them them the spiritual heirs of such gnostic libertine sects of the ancient world as the Carpocratians.

"SCHOLEM wrote with a certain sympathy even about the wildest excesses of Sabbatian antinomianism, with its doctrine of salvation through sin. For he saw this development as a logical and understandable outcome of the anarchic forces within the Kabbalah - forces which were invoked for the defense of Judaism against rationalism but which contained their own destructiveness. Moreover, he characteristically considered Sabbatianism a creative as well as a destructive force. By breaking the mold of the Law, it released new energies and new religious and political possibilities. Scholem pointed out the part taken by Sabbatians, or ex-Sabbatians, in the French Revolution; and also what he claimed was a strong Sabbatian influence in the growth of the Reform movement in Judaism - a movement usually regarded as rationalist in the extreme, far removed from mystical fantasies. According to Scholem, the genesis of new ways of thought is more catastrophic and agonized than later beneficiaries suppose; the Enlightenment itself owed more to kabbalistic and neoplatonic occultism than to sober common sense. When one looks at the maelstrom of ideas underlying the discoveries of Kepler and Newton, one is forced to agree."

[…]

"Scholem’s work on the paradoxically creative power of antinomianism aroused opposition from many quarters. He was accused of glorifying antinomianism, and also of exaggerating its part in the fundamental thought of the Kabbalah. Here there was considerable misunderstanding. Scholem called himself a “religious anarchist,” but he did not mean by this that he sided with the antinomians. He meant that he did not believe that there was a norm or orthodoxy in Judaism in comparison with which all other trends were to be condemned as heresies or as inauthentic. Any trend that made use of Jewish concepts and that did not seek to turn people away from Judaism (as, for example, Christianity did) was part of the whirlpool that formed the historical reality of Judaism, showing its vitality by the ceaseless opposition, conflict, and ebb and flow of ideas. The later forms of Sabbatianism, by their utter rejection of Orthodoxy, made the same error of one-sidedness as did the rigid Orthodox who sought to repudiate the vivifying concepts of Jewish mysticism. The health of Judaism lay in the interplay of opposites, and thus in the acceptance of the whole of Jewish tradition, not just part of it."

Full Macooby article at:
http://members.shaw.ca/competitivenes...#*

[Can · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doğumundan itibaren garip bir çocuk olarak yetişiyor Sabetay. Manik depresif atakları hayatı boyunca eylemlerini etkiliyor. Yahudi şeriatına hakim bir rabbi oluyor yirmilerinde. Belirli dönemlerde müthiş saygı uyandırıyor İzmir Yahudi cemaatinde, Türklerde ve Hristiyanlarda. Uzun boylu, ikna edici, ruhani bir sese sahip, karizmatik. Bazen, ona inananların 'garip hareketler' dediği davranışları da oluyor toplum içinde: Öğle saati bir tepeye çıkıp derhal batması için güneşe bağırmak gibi mesela.

Esasen 40 yaşında Gazzeli Nathan ile tanışıp mesihliğini ilan etmeden önce de mesih olduğunu ima eden dar bir çevreye sahip ancak iddiaları ve söylemleri bu dar çevreden öteye geçemiyor. Asıl mesele 1665'te Filistin'de başlıyor. Durdurulamaz olduğu saikiyle hareket eden sahte mesihin şiddet eylemlerini, değiştirdiği şeriat kurallarını ve sanki sahipmişçesine dağıttığı krallıkların adaylarını görüyoruz.

Meşhur Girit seferi döneminde yaşanmasına rağmen Osmanlı en başından beri ciddi olarak takip ediyor hareketi. Rusya'dan Hollanda'ya, Italya'dan Fas'a, dünyanın her yerinden Yahudiler mallarını mülklerini satıp akın akın Gelibolu'da hapsedilmiş mesihi görmeye gelince, gerçekten Köprülü Fazıl Paşa hükumeti incelikle çözüyor meseleyi. Mesih Sabetay artık fahri kapıcıbaşı Mehmed efendi oluyor. Sonrası malum.

Doğrusu okurken zorlandığım oldu. Üç aşağı beş yukarı tora ve talmud tarihine, kurallarına hakimseniz çok daha rahat okursunuz. İlahiyat çözümlemeleri de bazen ağırlaşabiliyor ama o kadar olacak. Sabetay Sevi'nin tüm yaşamını kapsamına alan, şimdiye dek yazılmış en geniş çalışma. 10/10

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a master work of Jewish history. But its not an easy read. The life and surrounding movement of Shabbtai Sevi is fascinating. The impulses towards real lived messianism brings thousands of questions. I'm awed by the scope of this work.

One of my fascination is with the mass acceptance of messianism as embodied in an actual individual. I think not infrequently about what would happen if a credible Messiah arose in modern times. The phenomenon of Shabbtai Sevi is a great place to investigate. I have sometimes said that had I been alive in 1666 I would likely have been a believer. Reading this book has given me a much more nuanced view of what a believer would mean. Would I have packed my bags? Almost certainly. Would I have delved into the depths of the new kabbalah, almost definitely not. Would I have persisted in belief after the apostasy? Unclear.

One other thing that stood out to me was the prominence of fasting in the story. It appears that masses of people fasted as a form of prayer and penitence, but that feels so far from the modern lexicon that it doesnt resonate at all. In my experience fasting is a form of mourning or else an attempt at saintliness or simply following the law. I do wonder how much that would differ in other contemporary contexts (say an Islamic country with mandatory fasting during Ramadan)

I have more thoughts but first on the book itself:
- it starts with a decent introduction to the relevant kabbalah although it definitely requires some prior knowledge
- the book presupposes familiarity with the underlying history, which is fine, but it also also presupposes a familiarity with underlying historiography and contemporary debates within Scholems circle
- the book presupposes (until literally the last page!) familiarity with the major sources of information on the movement.

All that to say that this book is not an easy first dive into sabbatianism.

Luckily I've had a great background provided by the author of the new editions forward Yaacob Dweck.

Anyway, more thoughts in the future

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly academic and exhaustively researched and still readable if you enjoy history. I had heard about Sabbatai Sevi and thought it was one of the most fascinating stories ever. Sabbatai Sevi was a Jewish man born in the area of Croatia and through a long series of events is believed to be the Messiah by a huge amount of Jews from Britain to the Middle East. He (and followers) eventually is brought to the Sultan in Turkey and his followers think he is going to convert the Sultan to Judaism. But the exact opposite happens. The Sultan gives Sabbatai Sevi the choice of death or converting to Islam. Sabbatai Sevi chooses Islam and throws his followers into chaos. Strangely some followers still believe he is the messiah and eventually a small new religion (Donmeh) is formed. I interesting mix of Jewish and Muslim traditions.

[Jon Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The messianic movement of Shabbatai Tzvi is perhaps the most controversial part of Jewish history. Often explained as mass hysteria and delusion or the work of cunning charlatans, it has been swept under the rug by respectable rabbis and Jewish historians. This book, Gershom Scholems magnum opus, is probably the most comprehensive book to date about the movement.

This book is incredibly fascinating and also a very difficult read. It uses a huge array of sources to reconstruct the life of Shabbatai Tzvi. He comes across as an immensely tragic figure who almost certainly suffered from mental illness his entire life. When Nathan of Gaza proclaimed Shabbatai the messiah, the movement spread with astonishing speed until the large majority of the world’s Jews became believers and abandoned reason and normal life.

Scholem is best known as an eminent scholar of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) which played a large part in the Sabbataian movement. This makes him uniquely qualified to sift through the details of Sabbataian belief and theology. Understandably, a large portion of the book contains a sophisticated analysis of Kabbalah and theology at the expense of easy readability. I believe that much of this book would be difficult to understand without a background in studying Judaism. It was originally written in Hebrew for an educated Israeli audience.

Scholems conclusions have been disputed by many, including his belief that Sabbatianism directly inspired Reform Judaism, that there was no class element involved, and that the movement was a popular religious revival based on Kabbalah. If you have time and interest, this book is a terrific way to learn about an oft forgotten part of Jewish history.

[Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholem gives an extremely detailed and lengthy history of Sabbatai Sevi and his religious movement up to his death in 1676 (it still exists). Sevi was a Jew from the Ottoman Empire who declared himself the messiah. At first ridiculed, he started the pick up steam when a Jewish prophet, known to history as Nathan of Gaza, said he had visions that identified Sevi as the messiah. From then things moved quickly. The majority Jewish diaspora from England to Poland and Anatolia to Egypt quickly became devout believers in Sevi. This was mostly done via word of mouth, with letters circulating across the continents filled with rumors and half truths.

Scholem goes region by region and explains the historical, cultural and religious setting that allowed Sevi to gain as many followers as he did. It gets very esoteric with Talmudic prophecies and medieval Kabbalah discussed heavily.

Sevi’s movement climaxed where he marched on Constantinople where we believed the Ottoman Sultan would peaceably give him the crown and convert to Sevi’s new brand of Judaism. Instead, Sevi was arrested and given the choice performing a miracle (be uninjured after being shot full of arrows) or convert to Islam. He converted to Islam.

This left most of his followers crushed, but some hung on. Some of those thought this was a trick or a tactic to convert Muslims to Judaism while many others followed his lead and also became Muslims. Sevi never denounced that he was both the Messiah and seems to have followed a blend of Islam and Judaism that he was the messiah of. Eventually the Turks were angered at his behavior and exiled. He died a few years later.

Scholem leaves no stone unturned and it is a long and, at times, tedious read. He gives first hand accounts across all regions that received news of Sevi through all phases of the movement.

[Charles Meadows · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very long... A detailed description of a European Jewish Kabbalistic movement that won an astounding number of adherents. Could Torah become obsolete or change with the coming of Messiah? Scholem's discussions of messianism are enlightening.

[Merve Candemir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sabetay Sevi ve Sabetaycılık hakkında söylenenlerin doğru olduğunu kanıtlayan kitap.

[Kelvin Yu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true scholarly masterpiece in research depth, historical breadth, and theological richness on one of the most underrated religious figures of all time.

[Steve Cran]

In the Years 1665 a a man was announced to be the long awaited messiah of the Jewish people. Communities were divided betweeen those who believed in this man and those who di not. In 1666 Sabbatai went to take the crown from the Sultan, unfortuatley things went the other way around and the messiah was forced to convert to Islam. Even after becoming a muslim his followers still remained loyal. What lead to the the belief in Sabbatai Sevi as the Messiah to become so widespread and so persisten even after his apostacy and his death? Sabbaatai Sevi was born in then Smyrna, Turkey in 1626 to Romaniote Jewish Parents. He had three other brothers who grew up to become famous merchant and traders. Sabbatai himself had shown a predilection towards locking himself in a room, studying torah and taking upon himself brutal fasts and mortifications. Sabbaati himself Focused on Torah, Mishna,and Talmud. The onlly Kabballah he realy studied was the Zohar and the Kana. Iteresting to note is thaat it was Lurianic Kabballah that was so widespread thaat laid the groundwork for someone like him to appear and have everyone belive him to bee the messiah. Funny thing is that the rich and poor amongst the Jews believed in him. While Sabbataai was very pious at times he would engage in strange behaviors like marrying a toah scroll, saying G-d's forbiddin name and deciding that certain religious practices should be abandoned. THe most famous would be abolishing the fasst of Tish B av. Sabbatai thanks to his strange behavior woulld bee forced to leave Smyrna and he would end up travelling to Salonika, Constantinople, back to Smyrna, the Holyland Egypt and back to the Holyland. It was in the Holyland that Sabbatia would meet Nathan the propet. It was Nathan who coulld read the root of someone's soul and tell them what tikun or fixing needed to be done. Sabbatai had a history of being super happy and super sad in short he was manic depressive.When he met Nathan it was Nathaan who declared him tom bee th Messiah. It was from there that the movement was born. At first the Rabbis did not know what to do about this. They chose silence. Sabatai then went to Dmascus and from Damascu to Smyrna. At first he laid low in Smyrna and theen announced his messiahship. Frromthere it spread like wildfire in the jewish communities worl wide. Often time there were physical confrontation between those who believed in Sabbatia Sevi and those who did not. When Sabbati went to Constantinople to seize the Sultans crownhe was arrested and place in the Migdal Oz in Adrianople. While in the prison Sevi revieved vistor and lived like royalty. Eventually the Sulltan gave him a chooice of death or onversion to ISlam.Sevi chose Islam. THis devastated the movement and many explanation were proffered s to why he chose to convert. He lived in Adrianople for a while recieving floowers inflenucing people to convert ot Islam and alos to his faith. Eventually the Turks found out he was proselytizing to his new faith and sent him to Dulcigno where he remained to death. In 1676 on Yom Kippur

[Frankcel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's more important as a history book than as an account of shabbatean doctrine. Most of what we know of Amira”h is gathered into this book, and if you want to become familiar with his character, read it.

[Erik Wirfs-Brock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost too scholarly to be readable to a generalist like me, but still a staggering amount of research into an interesting historical figure.

[Ariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great but so long and so turgid, I just got stuck.