INTRODUCTION:
The Sabbatian
movement is the name given to the followers of the false messiah Shabbatai Tzvi
(1626-1676). At the peak of the movement, around half or even more than half of
the Jewish population at that time, including prominent rabbis, believed that
Shabbatai Tzvi was the Messiah.
Historians have not
reached consensus as to the influences which gave rise to the Sabbatian
movement. While Scholem acknowledges the significance of the Khmelnytsky massacres which occurred between 1648
and 1657 - which left between one hundred thousand and five hundred thousand
Polish Jews dead (Dubnow 1916:1:156-157) - as a factor leading up to the
Sabbatian movement, he takes the view that the causes are more nuanced.
Scholem
(1973:1) writes:
The weightiest argument against overestimating the
causative role of the massacres of 1648 follows from a consideration of the
difference between the Sabbatian outbreak and previous messianic movements.
This difference lies in the extension, in space and time, of Sabbatianism. All
other messianic movements...were limited to a certain area....
Never before had there been a movement that swept the
whole House of Israel.
Because, in
Scholem's estimation, “the whole House of Israel”, was swept into the
vortex of Sabbatianism, the reasons for its emergence had to be more
fundamental and theologically underlying.
Scholem argues that
if, as many posit, the massacres were the main cause Sabbatianism, the movement
would have been localized to Poland. However, the movement did not even start
in Poland but in Palestine - and, also, there were notably few Polish leaders
of the Sabbatian movement.
It spread to
wherever Jews were living which included Yemen, Morocco, Persia, Kurdistan,
Holland and Poland. Scholem suggests that the Jews of Morocco would probably
not even have been aware of the massacres.
Historically, with
previous messianic claimants, the movements died out very soon after the
claimant was shown to be false. In the case of Shabbatai Tzvi, however, the
movement did not dissipate but persisted for generations. Its root causes,
therefore, had to lie deeper.
One cannot claim
that economic conditions were the cause, either, because Sabbatianism was
equally embraced by the impoverished communities of Poland as well as the
wealthier communities of Constantinople, Amsterdam and Hamburg.
Furthermore, the
Jews of Persia, Yemen and Morocco were experiencing some manner of persecution,
yet they did not resonate with Sabbatianism any more than the Jews who lived in
relative freedom.
With other
messianic movements, once the messiah was shown to be false, the people
experienced great disappointment and crises of faith, some followers lingered
for a while and then the movement wilted away. This was not the case with
Sabbatianism as the movement continued to survive and even prosper.
One cannot say that
the Sabbatian movement comprised of the rabble and poorer classes because as
Scholem (1973:5) attests:
All the more surprising is the real proportion of believers and
unbelievers within the ruling class. All later statements notwithstanding, the
majority of the ruling class
was in the camp of the believers [in Shabbatai Tzvi],
and the prominent and active part played by many of them is attested by all
reliable documents....
The essential correctness of this picture is not impugned in the least
by the ‘revised version’ of events that was put forward afterward by a kind of
self-imposed censorship.”
The movement knew
no social boundaries because there were millionaire patrons like Amsterdam
based Abraham Pereira who offered all his wealth to Shabbatai Tzvi. There were
also beggars from the poorest regions, who joined together in Sabbatian fellowship.
For all these
reasons, the intriguing roots causes of this movement must, therefore, have
been deeper than any other messianic movement before.
LURIANIC
KABBALAH:
Scholem understands
the deep-seated roots of the Sabbatian movement as originating in something far
more theologically universal than any one particular historical event. That
universal influence was Kabbalah - specifically Lurianic Kabbalah
- as it originated during the sixteenth century, in the mystical town of Safed
in northern Ottoman Syria, now Israel. The Sabbatian movement was to use and
abuse Lurianic Kabbalah as a mainstay for their messianic enterprises.
Mystics and
mystical teachings became so popular that the quiet town of Safed which started
out with just twelve hundred inhabitants, became a bustling centre of Kabbalah
with eighteen thousand Jews, by the end of the sixteenth century (Giller
2001:14).
In contrast to
medieval Kabbalah which remained the domain of a select few, Lurianic
Kabbalah soon to spread from Safed throughout the Diaspora. R. Yitzchak
Luria Ashkenazi, known as the Lion or the Ari, passed away in
1572, just fifty-four years before Shabbatai Tzvi was born. Lurianic
Kabbalah had already created a defacto earlier movement so “highly
charged with messianic tension” that it found its outlet and “discharge”
just decades later in the Sabbatian movement.
The writings of the
Ari were first printed in 1630, just four years after Shabbatai Tzvi was born.
Scholem (1973:24) reminds us that the masses considered Lurianism to be
the “final and ultimate revelation of kabbalistic truth,“ and the
distillation of the Zohar appropriate to that generation. Without this
powerful and popular mystical foundation, the Sabbatian movement would never
have been able to take root, develop and – importantly - continue to perpetuate
itself after the demise of its leader.
Scholem (1973:22)
writes that at the time of the genesis of the Sabbatian movement:
“...kabbalistic esotericism and messianic eschatology were intertwined
and acted in combination.”
What the Ari did
that was so appealing to that generation (Scholem 1973:26), was to perfect the
concepts of exile and redemption and elevate them to cosmic and divine levels
thus removing them from a narrow historical interpretation. Scholem put it
succinctly: “Lurianic kabbalism hinges on the idea of redemption.”
Exile and
redemption now existed even within the Godhead, within the fabric of creation
and was no longer just a tenet of faith with a future utopian promise. Because
the interconnectedness of exile and redemption was so primary to God and
creation, it was a short step to translate that, with immediate effect, into
historical reality on the ground.
“In the popular mind, the history
of the world was essentially the drama of God seeking to perfect His true image
and ‘configuration’ and of man seeking to promote this aim by means of good
work.”
Many of these
Lurianic ideas were being perpetuated and popularised amongst the masses by
preachers and moralists, and they would have emphasized the more dramatic,
spectacular and immediate aspects and potential effects of this ideology.
Scholem maintains
that trying to try to find a basis for these concepts within the Zohar,
would be in vain as they are a uniquely Lurianic reworking of broader Zoharic
ideas:
“There is something startlingly novel about this kabbalistic explanation
which regarded exile not merely as a test of our faith or a punishment for our
sins, but first and foremost as a mission. The purpose of this mission was to
raise the scattered, holy sparks...”
These “holy
sparks” are explained by R. Vital as follows:
“[Egypt, or exile, represented the Kelipot, or unclean husks which the
holy sparks had to elevate. M]any sparks got entangled there and Israel too was
enslaved there. Even the Shekhina [God’s Pressence] was exiled with it in order
to raise the sparks that were there....For that reason Israel had been
condemned to bondage among the seventy nations, so that it might extract the
holy sparks that had fallen among them.”
We must also
remember, though, that even what we refer to as Lurianic Kabbalah is not
a monolithic mystical literature. In other words, when we refer to Lurianic
kabbalah which Lurianic Kabbalah are we referring to?
THE BATTLE FOR
THE SOUL OF THE ARIZAL:
1) On the one hand,
R. Chaim Vital (1543-1620) claimed to be the foremost student of the Ari who,
unfortunately for the theologian, never published any of his original
teachings. R. Vital, similarly, did not allow his interpretations of his
master’s teachings to be copied. When the teachings were finally published in
printed form in 1630, a decade after R. Vital’s passing, they were no longer
the original pure Lurianic teachings.
2) Another
important student of the Ari was R. Yosef Ibn Tabul (c.1545-early seventeenth
century) from North Africa, known as Yosef haMa’aravi or Yosef from
the west. He also spent time in the Ari’s kabbalistic circle in
Safed, and like R. Vital, he kept his written notes out of public circulation.
3) Additionally, R.
Yisrael Sarug, from Egypt and Italy, also claimed to be a foremost student of
the Ari, although according to Scholem (1939-40:214-241) he certainly was not.
Unlike the former two students, R. Sarug, due to his “missionary zeal”
did hold back on publicising his interpretations of the Ari. According to some
accounts (Eldridge 2010:9-10), R. Yisrael Sarug obtained stolen copies R.
Vital’s writings and between 1592 and 1598, published them in Italy.
4) Yet another
student, R. Moshe Yonah, published his own manuscripts in Europe, under the
title Kanfey Yonah (the Wings of the Dove).
5) Additionally,
most of the writings of the Ari were edited by R. Natan Nata Shapira
(1585-1633), the Chief Rabbi of Kracow who later settled in Palestine. Besides
a kabbalist, he seems to have been a social activist in terms of
criticising the wealthy (of the Diaspora) and championing the poor (of
Jerusalem). He never took a salary during his tenure as Chief Rabbi. He wrote:’
[When the Messiah comes, the
dead Jews of the Holy Land will arise and] fly in the air like eagles – all
this in the sight of the returning exiles. When the returning exiles see that
their [Palestinian] brethren have become a new creation and are flying in the
air toward the lower Paradise where they will study the Law from the mouth of
God, then their heart will fill with sorrow and dismay and they will complain
to the messianic king, saying, “Are we not Jews like the others? And why have
they become spiritual beings and we not?” Then the messiah will answer them,
“It is known to all that God dispenses justice measure for measure. Those of
the Diaspora who endeavored to come to Palestine to receive a pure soul, who
spared neither money nor efforts and came by sea and by land and were not
afraid of being drowned in the sea or captured by cruel masters [pirates]:
because they were concerned primarily for their spirits and their souls and not
for their bodies and money, therefore they were turned into spirits—measure for
measure. You, however, who could have come to Palestine like them, but failed
to come because of your cupidity, having made a principal concern of your
wealth and your bodies, while considering your souls and spirits a lesser
concern: you shall remain corporeal—measure for measure. As for the money that
you coveted, behold God shall give you riches…. However they that were not
concerned with their bodies and their possessions but only with their spirits,
God shall make of them a new creation and lead them into Paradise.
Perhaps the
writings of the Ari were edited through this filter of ‘spiritual activism’ of
R. Natan Nata Shapira, and this may have had some bearing on its widespread
acceptance by the common masses. Scholem may have alluded to this when he wrote
that R. Natan Nata Shapira edited most of the “so-called Lurianic writings”, indicating that we do not have the
authentic Lurianic traditions.
R. Natan Nata
Shapira’s student, R. Berachya Berach wrote:
I have seen a scandalous thing
in the matter of kabbalistic studies …,
[T]here have appeared
presumptuous men who abuse the crown [of heavenly wisdom], turning it into a
spade with which to feed themselves. They write books on kabbalistic subjects,
obtain permission to print them, and then hawk them around to “divide [that is,
distribute] them in Jacob.” … They reveal hidden and secret things to great and
small, and even mingle the inventions of their hearts with [authentic]
kabbalistic teachings, until it becomes impossible to distinguish between the
words of the kabbalist masters and their own additions….
But even if they contented
themselves with merely copying faithfully the words of the kabbalist masters,
their sin would be too great to bear, for they make public this wisdom and turn
it into common talk....
I know that the rabbis of old
kept aloof from this science because they feared it might have been adulterated
by unqualified persons, as indeed we now see it has been….
May the sages of our
generation forgive me if I say that they are responsible for this abuse,
because they grant approbations and licenses for printing [these books],
commending, justifying, and extolling them to heaven, whereby they make
themselves like false witnesses on behalf of liars.
In effect, there
was a veritable battle for the soul of the Ari because all his students and
editors brought different interpretations of their master’s Kabbalah and
claimed to most accurately represent his teachings. By 1650, Lurianic
Kabbalah had become a well-known and well-accepted composite and blend
essentially of Vitalian and Sarugian Kabbalah (Scholem 1973:25).
In R. Vital’s
autobiographical notes (known as the Book of Visions) from between
1610-12, he describes his teacher, the Ari, as a potential messiah and doesn’t
exclude himself from such a role either. R. Vital also saw himself as a
reincarnation of some earlier figures in Jewish history (Faierstein 1990:156)
and he wrote of himself that ‘half the world exists through my merits”
and that he was told by “a woman who was an expert in divining by dropping
oil into water...[that] – you will undoubtedly rule over all of Israel in the
future.” R. Vital records that the woman said that she “never saw
anyone, in my practice of oil divination, on such a high level in this whole
generation.” (Faierstein 1990:44).
The Lurianic
doctrine was according to Scholem (1973:26) “more likely than any other to
increase messianic tension among the people.” This doctrine was based on
the assumption that the process of Tikkun, or restoration of the
fallen sparks had almost been fully accomplished and achieved, and messianic
redemption was at hand. Everything now was dependant on the holy mystic who
alone knew how to effect the final rectifications.
Against this
backdrop, Lurianic Kabbalah emerged as the mystical literature of “almost
unchallenged supremacy” (Scholem 1973:25). Its widespread acceptance set
the stage for the inevitable emergence of not just a ‘potential’ messianic
figure, but the ‘real’ Messiah, in the form of Shabbatai Tzvi who, as Yehuda
Liebes (1993:93) puts it, created:
“the largest, most important, and most sweeping messianic movement that
arose in Jewish history.”
Significantly, and
perhaps ironically, Scholem considers the Lurianic doctrine in general to have
presuppositions that are “essentially gnostic.”
Mystical thinking
changed dramatically from the traditional mystical experience to a focus on a
cosmic “drawing down” of the messiah, particularly after the emergence of Lurianic Kabbalah. Consider the following text from the
seventeenth century kabbalist Moshe
Prager who wrote:
Since the year 335 [1575] the
souls from the world of tiqqun shone forth, and the Emanator [God] granted him
[Isaac Luria] permission to open the supernal sources and channels with the
mysteries of Torah; and he [Luria] expressly told us that at the present time
esoteric knowledge has become like that which was formerly exoteric knowledge.
Although Luria’s disciples discretely concealed his teaching from the years
335–390 [1575–1630], which is the mystery of pure oil.…
The year 390 contains the
mystery of drawing the pure oil down on the head of the kingdom of the House of
David which is the perpetual union of Ze’ir Anpin with his consort, the mystery
of redemption and freedom, the shining forth of the souls from the world of
tiqqun according to the degree attained by these souls in the year 390, as is
known to us [kabbalists]. From 390 onward we are in duty bound, every one of
us, to achieve the tiqqun of our souls in their aspects of nefesh, ruaḥ, and
neshamah, and to accomplish, together with our own tiqqun, that of the whole
world … [and] to refine and purify the holy sparks by the study of the Zohar
and the Tiqquney Zohar according to their Lurianic interpretation.
Scholem points out that
Moshe Prager was no Sabbatian, yet clearly the world was seen to have pivoted
spiritually since the Ari - and particularly from 1630 when Lurianic teachings
were publicised, there was to be a renewed emphasis on redemption.
ANALYSIS:
We must draw
attention to the fact that not all scholars agree with Scholem’s well-argued
and convincing thesis that Lurianic
Kabbalah was the great catalyst that prepared the way for an inevitable
messianic outbreak. His former student, Moshe Idel, challenges Scholem on the
assumption that Lurianic Kabalah was
all that widespread because of the inherent difficulty in understanding its contents.
He encourages scholars to seek out wider-ranging explanations for the rise of
Sabbatianism (Idel, Fall 1993:79-104).
My analysis of this
challenge that Lurinic Kabbalah was
difficult and therefore not as widespread as Scholem suggests, is based on
contemporary observation of much of modern Jewish mystical approaches. Today,
popular groups such as, Chabad and Breslover Chassidism which are largely based
on Lurianic Kabbalah, are easily
teaching and understanding these concepts of spiritual exile and redemption.
Not everyone might understand the intricate depths of the Kabbalah of the Ari, but
everyone is conscious of the basic structures and promises of modern
messianism.
Furthermore, even before the popularisation of Lurianic Kabbalah
in 1630, the printing presses of Cracow and Lublin were producing large amounts
of general kabbalistic material and
had been doing so since the sixteenth century. This shows a real demand for
mystical teachings, so much so, that even as early as 1570 R. Moses Isserles,
known as the Ramah, criticised the “ignorant
crowd” for dabbling so enthusiastically in such matters:
Many of the unlettered crowd
jump at kabbalistic studies, for they are a lust to the eyes, especially the
teachings of the later masters who expounded their doctrines clearly and in
detail. And especially now that kabbalistic books such as the Zohar, Recanati,
and [Gikatila’s] Sha’arey Orah are available in print every reader can indulge
in their study believing that he has penetrated their meaning; whereas in
reality it is impossible to understand these things unless they are expounded
orally by a master. Not only scholars try to study it, but even ordinary
householders, who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand
and who walk in darkness unable to explain [even] a portion of the Pentateuch
or a chapter of the same with Rashi’s commentary, rush to the study of
kabbalah.… A single coin in a box causes a noisy rattle, and anyone who has
merely sniffed a little [kabbalah] preens himself on it and discourses on it in
public—but he will have to render account [at the day of judgment].
A short while later
R. Shmuel Edeles (1555-1631), known as the Maharsha,
expressed a similar sentiment:
[I]t behooves us to protest
against those who discourse on it [kabbalah] in public.
If general Kabbalah was in such demand by the “ignorant crowd”, then after 1630 when Lurianic Kabbalah became available, it
is most likely that it similarly enjoyed widespread and popular attention.
In 1660, R. Yakov
ben Moshe Temerles, a kabbalist who
had been actively teaching in Volhynia for many decades, wrote the following
about the spread of Lurianic Kabbalah:
They [the kabbalistic mysteries]
have spread to all sides, … they are known in the gates, … and the earth is
full of knowledge. Verily, all, great and small, are knowledgeable in the
mysteries of the Lord. This is my comfort in my affliction: to behold the great
desire and longing of our contemporaries for this hidden wisdom, and all—people
and priests, small and great—desire to be admitted to the mystery of the Lord
and live by it. Surely this signifies that our salvation is soon to come.”
THE KABBALISTIC
WORK ‘GALI RAZAYA’ AS ANOTHER INFLUENCE ON SABBATIANISM:
Other mystical
works may also have contributed theological influences that gave rise to
Sabbatian eschatology. One such work was the Gali Razaya or Revealed
Mysteries, attributed to the Moroccon born R. Avraham haLevi Beruchim who
became an important part of the circle of Safed Kabbalists. It was he
who introduced many of ascetic and devotional practices which became the
hallmark of the mystical Safed circle (Scholem 1973:61).
The Gali Razaya
became popular and was widely disseminated in written form as well as in oral
teaching in the era just prior to the appearance of the Sabbatian movement.
It must be borne in
mind, while reading the following text, that the Sabbatians were intentionally
promiscuous as part of their theology was to sin in order to repent and
thereby, they claimed, become more elevated.
The text deals with
the ‘reason’ why so many biblical personalities had relationships with “strange
women” who would normally have been considered out of bounds. These include
the relationships such as Judah and Tamar, Josef and Potiphar’s wife, Joshua and
Rahab, and Boaz and Ruth.
According to Gali
Razaya:
Whenever God wants to raise a king or hero to wreak vengeance on the
heathen, it is necessary that there be some kind of relationship or rapport
between the gentile nations and the Jewish king, so that Scripture should be
fulfilled [Isa. 49:17]: ‘Thy destroyers and they that make thee waste shall go
forth from thee’..., for whoever is born in order to humble the foes of Israel
must have some measure of communion with the ‘left side’.
The ‘left side’
refers to the ‘feminine’ side (that ‘receives’ emanation from the ‘male’ side)
of the Kabbalistic model of the cosmic Tree of Life, and it is the
source of Kelipah:
All offspring of the ‘pure side’ have a part in the ‘impure side,’
through the females...
Then we read an
articulation of this mystical idea that leaves room for much
(mis)interpretation:
Know for sure that the ‘other side’ has been permitted to contract
marriages between some of its women and the heroes and saints of Israel. The
souls of these women are descended from pious gentiles, and the pious gentile
thereby acquire a share in the world to come because [in this way] they mingle
with Israel. Therefore, whenever the ‘other side’ sends its impure forces to
oppress Israel by destroying its religion, it is necessary that an Israelite
king or hero, who has some contact with the ‘impure side’ through the daughter
of a strange god [a gentile woman], step out against them.
Scholem (1973:62)
sums this up as follows:
More than a hundred years before the Sabbatian movement we find a
philosophy of history based on a mystical psychology exhibiting striking
similarities to some of the doctrines of later Sabbatians...
This theology is
related to the doctrine known as “holy deceit” which is paralleled in Lurianic
Kabbalah, and which the Sabbatians were very familiar with.
R. Vital wrote
that:
[W]hen a soul is exceedingly great [holy], it is impossible to save it
from qelippah
except by ruse and cunning....
Then R. Vital adds
in a personal note:
In my case too, the evil powers did not mind the matter [of my soul
coming into this world] because they thought that I was already lost, but God
snatched me from them....
They thought it would be to their advantage [to use me for their
purposes], but I became their enemy.
Thus, sometimes the
birth of a ‘great soul’ has to come about as a result of deceit or even a
sinful union and a Tikkun or rectification is thereby allowed to occur.
This notion of ‘holy
deceit’ was later to be seized upon by the Sabbatians and even used in the
first instance, to bring about a state of redemption.
SOURCES:
Dubnow, S 1916. History
of the Jews in Russia and Poland, trans.
Israel Friedlander, 3 vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
Faierstein, MM 1990. Jewish Mystical Autobiographies:
Book of Visions and Book of Secrets (Classics of Western Spirituality). New
Jersey: Paulist Press.
Scholem, G 1973. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676. Princeton University Press.
Idel, M Fall 1993. One from a Town, Two from a
Clan: The Diffusion of Lurianic Kabbala and Sabbateanism: A Re-Examination.
Jewish History 7;2, 79-104. Springer.
Liebes, Y 1993. Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism (trans. A.
Schwarz, S. Nakache and P. Peli). Albany NY: State University of New York
Press.
Giller, P 2001. Reading the Zohar: the sacred text of
the Kabbalah. New York: Oxford University Press.
