A 1767 edition of Abravanel's Mashmia Yeshua. |
INTROUCTION:
The Portuguese statesman and
commentator R. Don Yitzchak Abravanel (1437-1508) had lived through the harsh
period of the Expulsion of practicing Jews from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and
1497 respectively. He sought to inspire his people by encouraging messianic
hope in order to counter the general feelings of hopelessness and despair.
Between 1496 and 1498 he wrote three messianic works: מעייני הישועה, "The Wellsprings of Salvation", a
commentary on the Book of Daniel; ישועות משיחו,
"The Salvation of His Anointed", an interpretation of rabbinic
literature about the Messiah; משמיע
ישועה,
"Announcing Salvation", a commentary on the messianic
prophecies in the prophetical books. These form part of the larger work
entitled מגדל
ישועות,
"Tower of Salvation". Abravanel counts Daniel - a symbol of
the messianic idea - as one of the prophets, which goes against the Talmudic
and rabbinic tradition which places the book under Ketuvin (Writings)
and not Nevi’im (Prophets)[1].
This article, based extensively
on the research by Professor Eric Lawee[2]
deals with some of these messianic ideas expressed by the so-called ‘father’ of
Jewish messianic movements, Abravanel. After the Expulsion, Abravanel believed
that the messianic arrival was imminent. Most of Abravanel’s messianic writings
took place in the post-Expulsion period.
Generally speaking, scholars have
held that Abravanel’s messianism was influential in shaping future messianic
trends within Judaism, but as we shall see, Lawee points out that that assumption
is not always so clear.
BENZION NETANYAHU:
Lawee introduces us to Benzion
Netanyahu who he describes as the son of a “well-known Zionist propogandist”.
In the 1940s, Netanyahu wrote a doctoral dissertation on the messianic
teachings of Abravanel, which was later published in 1953. Netanyahu later
became a professor of history at Cornell University and was an editor of the
Hebrew Encyclopaedia. He was active in the Revisionist Zionism movement and
lobbied the United States to support the creation of a Jewish state (and he
also had a son called Binyamin). Lawee informs us that this study of Netanyahu
remains the most “preeminent study of Abarbanel written to date”.
Netanyahu strongly expresses the
notion that “messianism represented a unifying principle for all the aspects
of his [ Abravanel's] doctrine."[3]
Netanyahu continues to explain that even as the rest of world society was
beginning to move to more rationalist ideas and rationalist politics, the Jews
- inspired by the messianism of Abravanel – remained in a state of "spiritual
isolationism and mystical messianism". This was occurring at a time when Europe was being
shaken by "a succession of powerful revolutionary movements, religious
and philosophical, and when a new rationalistic mode of thinking was gradually
replacing the dogmatism and mysticism of the Middle Ages."
The Jews, Netanyahu continues,
were driven by a "sustained messianic drive" in its midst
which was "completely apocalyptic, completely divorced from politics or
militarism, and which, unlike all earlier, purely mystical messianic trends,
was not limited to a small circle of dreamers and intellectuals but became a
mass movement in the full sense of the word and affected the historical course
of the Jewish people."
Netanyahu asks a poignant
question: How could it be that "at the very time the Jews banned
Spinoza they accepted Shabbethai Zevi with general enthusiasm?" His
answer is that, although there were other factors which led to the Sabbatian
movement’s great success as to become the "most potent messianic
movement in Jewish history”, nevertheless this was essentially inspired by
the messianic foundations laid by Abravanel.
LAWEE CONTEXTUALISES
NETANYAHU’S STUDY:
Lawee, writing about six decades
later, in around 2001, contextualises the era in which Netanyahu was writing. In
1937, which was the five-hundredth anniversary of Abravanel’s passing, a large
number of writings appeared to mark the occasion, and they reinforced this
mystical and messianic notion. Abravanel was credited with his contribution to
the appearance of false messiahs like David Reuveni and Solomon Molkho [See: Kotzk
Blog: 206) DAVID REUVENI AND SHLOMO MOLCHO - A MESSIANIC DUO:] including
Shabbatai Tzvi [See: Kotzk
Blog: Search results for shabbatai Tzi roots run deep.]
Gershom Scholem similarly writes
about Abravanel’s messianic writings which:
"exerted
a profound influence on later generations and even adherents of the Sabbatian
movement would quote them in support of their contentions."[4]
Gershon Weiler also writes that
messianic expectations took away the will to fight and that Abravanel’s
mysticism drove:
"the
last nail into the coffin of Jewish hopes for political redemption."[5]
Netanyahu’s significant
contribution was that from “the nationalistic point of view” Abravanel
failed to use his great political influence, being the treasurer to King
Alfonso V of Portugal, to help his people gain political independence. Netanyahu
reiterates that while Abarbanel was a:
"realistic
statesman when other nations were concerned… [he was] completely swayed by
imagination when his own people were involved."
Netanyahu has many such
expressions painting Abravanel as:
"the
political Jewish leader of the age [who][6] was
agitating against a realistic approach."
Thus, Netanyahu suggest that
instead of Abravanel offering his people real and practical solutions, he
simply peddled false hope and mystical visions.
Netanyahu cites the example of Don
Joseph Nasi some fifty years after Abarbanel's passing, who attempted to rebuild
Tiberias in the 1560s. The idea was a failure because Abravanel had:
"accustomed Jews to thinking of
redemption in a supernatural way."
And it was:
"the
influence of Don Isaac Abravanel that destroyed the influence of Joseph
Nasi."
A “MORE BALANCED” PERSPECTIVE:
Lawee suggests we revisit these
ideas in a “more balanced” manner than that presented by Netanyahu, a
staunch Zionist rallying for the creation of a Jewish state and writing just
prior to 1948. Lawee explains that the roots of Spanish Jewish messianism
actually can be traced back a century before the Expulsion, to the anti-Jewish
riots of the 1390s. Abravanel would have known about his own grandfather who
received baptism in around 1391. Yet there is very little Abravanel writes
about messianism in the years prior to the Expulsion.
It is correct that after 1492
things begin to change. In Abravanel’s Ma'ayenei haYeshuah, a commentary
on Daniel written in 1496-97, he writes that the Messiah had been born:
"before
the great expulsion caused death and destruction for the Jewish diaspora in
Spain since in truth already then the great sufferings accompanying the
birthpangs of the Messiah began."
Abravanel also predicted that the
Messiah would arrive by 1503. He wrote:
“The
conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces of 1464 had, then, ushered in an
era that, barring divine intercession, would culminate in the Jewish people's
deliverance fifty years later as millennia earlier this same astral
configuration had inaugurated the redemption of their ancestors from Egypt.”[7]
For nearly two years, Abravanel,
who claimed to come from the house of David about messianic ideas such as
these.
Lawee stresses that Abravanel (2001:9)
authored:
“studies of
the Jewish messianic idea that together comprised the largest such inquiry that
a Jew had ever composed (and which, for sheer size, remains unsurpassed in
Hebrew literature down to this day) …”
Based on these facts, it does
seem that after 1492 Abravanel was solely occupied with messianism and
eschatology.
Yet, as Lawee describes it
“there are
more than a few points, some rather basic, that pull in the opposite direction.”
Abravanel settled in Italy after
the Expulsion, and a year later in 1493 he completed his commentary on Kings.
This work does not reflect the sentiment of a who was consumed and changed by a
catastrophe. Instead it seems to reflect the same stable determination of a
writer who wanted to conclude what he had started earlier before the Expulsion.
In fact, Lawee stresses that most
of Abravanel’s Italian writings, besides for the three messianic works, show
more of the lack of influence of the catastrophe and point to a man focussed
firmly on what he had always been doing before.
And even his messianic works,
such as his commentary on Daniel, show that he was still a commentator at
heart. He included much material that was not messianic at all and which also
related to his previous style of exegesis.
Furthermore, in his writings
after the three messianic works, during the last five years of his life when he
wrote what he considered his most important work, including his Torah
commentaries, messianism is even more conspicuous by its absence. It was during
this later period that Abravanel also wrote his commentary on Maimonides' Guide
of the Perplexed.
Abravanel writes:
"I restricted myself to study of the
Guide and commentaries on the Holy Scriptures for from it [such study] emerges
all the topics of the wisdom of the Torah and many questions regarding it which
are allayed by the wisdom of the Master."[8]
These observations are not lost
to Lawee (2001:12) who writes incredulously that:
“While,
then, much ink has been spilled now for decades on Abarbanel's messianism no
one has explained - or, it would seem, barely even stopped to notice - the
near-total absence of messianic concerns in the works of his last half-decade
of life …”
This is exactly why Lawee believes
that the mysterious turn to messianic writing during a short window after 1496,
must be reappraised. It is possible, Lawee continues, that after Abravanel’s
messianic predictions concerning 1503 did not come to fruition, he either
repressed those ideas or perhaps he never internalised them in the first
instance. Perhaps, as Lawee (2001:18) further suggests, the need to explain the
Expulsion in messianic terms would:
“tacitly
absolve himself of responsibility for his and Spain's Jewish leadership's
failure to stave off the expulsion …”
I would suggest another possibility and that is that he may have adopted a similar style to his ‘master’ Maimonides, in that he too sometimes wrote for the masses and offered the people what they need to hear at the time.
Lawee emphasis just how things
were ‘back to normal’ with Abravanel, in that in his later years, he went back
into his political persona and seemed to abandon his messianic activism when he
negotiated a deal between Venice and Portugal concerning the international
spice trade.
Lawee (2001:13) writes:
“Never
again would Abarbanel write another word on the date of the messianic advent
nor is there any trace of efforts to rethink fundamental eschatological
principles or rework specific messianic scenarios.”
History shows that the many who
have wrongly predicted the date for the arrival of the Messiah, have always
gone back to somehow defend their initial position. Abravanel never did this.
After 1503, Abravanel the "mystic and apocalyptist" has
vanished.
At the same time, Lawee makes it
clear that one should not minimise or try to deny Abravanel’s mystical and
messianic period which began some four years after 1492 and lasted for some
years. Nevertheless, recent scholarship has shown just how small the exile
community was in Italy at that time. So, who was Abravanel writing for if most
of his audience was non-Spanish?
Along these lines, it is important
to note that Abravanel’s messianic books were not his first books to be
printed. Mashmia Yeshua was only printed in Salonika in 1526 and then
only reprinted much later in the mid-seventeenth century in Amsterdam, and then
again towards the end of the nineteenth century. Ma’ayenei haYeshua was
first printed in Ferrara in 1551, but that was not so much because of the
popularity of the work. Abravanel’s middle son, Yosef, was a prominent leader
in that community and that probably accounts for his father’s book being
published there. This book was only reprinted twice before 1900. Yeshu’ot
Meshicho was not printed until well into the nineteenth century. Thus, the
immediate and allegedly widespread impact these works would have had is highly
questionable. Also, by the time these works did get distributed, it was way
after his messianic prediction of 1503 and surely, he would have been discredited
as a champion of messianism (although contemporary observations of similar
phenomena show the opposite effect).
Regarding the general assertion
that Abravanel is responsible for the rise of all the future messianic
movements, Lawee (2001:24) notes that while there is much literature about this
in secondary sources, there is very little documentary evidence that this is
the case. He writes:
“That
enduring roles in the spheres of Jewish messianic thought and deed have
regularly been ascribed to Abarbanel despite the almost non-existent evidence
of his genuinely potent and original contributions in these areas servers as a
cautionary tale of the power of unsupported but intuitively appealing historiographic
precepts to become uncritically accepted and, once unleashed, take on a life of
their own.”
However, Lawee (2001:25) does
concede that:
“the basic
claim of a strong passive element in Abarbanel’s response to the condition of
Jewish exile cannot be denied…”
Yet there are instances where
Abravanel’s messianism intercepts with Maimonides’ “realistic messianism”
(Lawee 2001:25). [See: Kotzk
Blog: 226) MASHIACH - A NATURAL OR SUPERNATURAL EVENT?]
It is important, I believe, to
take cognisance of the difference between ascribing the influence of modern messianism
and passivity on the Jewish mindset to Abravanel, and the fact that Jews were
indeed messianic and passive in the relatively recent past. The idea that this
may not have been entirely a result of the teachings of Abravanel does not take
away that very attitude which was prevalent in our messianic history with long
lines of false messiahs and messianic movements. Jews did live, as Netanyahu described
in a state of “spiritual isolationism and mystical messianism”.
[See: Kotzk
Blog: 283) ‘MASHIACH NOW’ - OVER THE LAST 500 YEARS: and for more on the
Jewish change from pragmaticism to passivity see Kotzk
Blog: 210) HOW REALITY ON THE GROUND INFORMS PERCEPTIONS OF HEAVEN:
Lawee (2001:3), however, does say
that more recent studies have shown that the perceptions that the religio-political
thinking between the period of 1500 to 1800 was largely mystical if not
somewhat superstitious have been revised.
It is also important to remember that the few ‘messianic years’ that Abravanel seemed to experience post 1496 still remains somewhat of a mystery and appears difficult to contextualise. Although in his "Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Toward Tradition" (2001 State University of New York, p 52-3), Lawee suggests that "Abravanel's messianic writings aimed to rebut Christian polemics".
Nevertheless, ultimately, Lawee (2001:27)
makes the point that:
“When
future narratives tell the story of the Jews in modernity they will no longer be
able to assign pride of place to Abarbanel among sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Jewish messianism’s founding fathers.”
[1] The
Roman Catholic and Protestant Bibles both include Daniel under the category of
Prophets. The Talmud (Bava Batra 15a) writes that Ezra’s Anshei Kenesset
haGedolah wrote Ezekiel, the Twelve Prophets, Daniel and the Ester.
[2] Eric
Lawee, “The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel, ‘Father of the [Jewish] Messianic
Movements of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Matt D. Goldish and
Richard H. Popkin, eds., Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture, vol. 1 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2001), 1-39.
[3] B.
Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher, 3rd ed.
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1972), 195.
[4] Gershom
Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, trans. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 14-15.
[7] Ma'ayenei haYeshuah, 412.
[8] See
Abravanel’s She'elot, 8r.
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