Redemption Through Sin
By Gershom Scholem
I
•NO CHAPTER IN the history of the Jewish people during the last several hundred years has been as
shrouded in mystery as that of the Sabbatian movement. On one point, at least, there is no longer any
disagreement: the dramatic events and widespread religious revival that preceded the apostasy of
Sabbatai Zevi in 1666 form an important and integral part of Jewish history and deserve to be studied
objectively, to the exclusion of moralistic condemnations of the historical figures involved. It has
come increasingly to be realized that a true understanding of the rise of Sabbatianism will never be
possible as long as scholars continue to appraise it by inappropriate standards, whether these be the
conventional beliefs of their own age or the values of traditional Judaism itself. Today indeed one
rarely encounters the baseless assumptions of "charlatanry" and "imposture" which occupy so
prominent a place in earlier historical literature on the subject. On the contrary: in these times of
Jewish national rebirth it is only natural that the deep though ultimately tragic yearning for national
redemption to which the initial stages of Sabbatianism gave expression should meet with greater
comprehension than in the past.
In turning to consider the Sabbatian movement after Sabbatai Zevi's conversion to Islam, however,
we are faced with an entirely different situation. Here we find ourselves still standing before a blank
wall, not only of misunderstanding, but often of an actual refusal to understand. Even in recent times
there has been a definite tendency among scholars to minimize at all costs the significance of this
"heretical" Sabbatianism, with the result that no adequate investigation yet exists of its spiritual
foundations, its over-all impact on eighteenth-century Jewry, or its ultimate fate. It is impossible, in
fact, to read any of the studies that have been done in these areas without being astounded by the
amount of invective directed against the leaders and adherents of the various Sabbatian sects. Typical
of this approach is David Kahana's A History of the Kabbalists, Sabbatians, and Hasidim (in
Hebrew), but the angry moralizing that characterizes this volume has not been confined to anyone
historical school; rather, it has been shared by writers of widely differing points of view, secular as
well as religious. The problem itself, meanwhile, remains as recondite as ever.
Two enormous difficulties, therefore, confront the student of the Sabbatian "heresies": on the one
hand, there are the obstacles posed by the sources themselves, and on the other, those created by the
attitude generally taken toward them. To a great extent, moreover, these two sets of difficulties have
always been related.
Why should this be so?
The Sabbatian movement in its various shadings and configurations persisted with remarkable
obstinacy among certain sectors of the Jewish people for approximately 150 years after Sabbatai
Zevi's conversion. In a number of countries it grew to be powerful, but for various reasons, internal as
well as external, its affairs were deliberately hidden from the public eye. In particular, its spokesmen
refrained from committing their beliefs to print, and the few books that they actually published
concealed twice what they revealed. They did, however, produce a rich literature, which circulated
only among groups of "believers" (ma'aminim) - the term by which Sabbatian sectarians generally
chose to refer to themselves down to the last of the Donmeh in Salonika and the last Frankists in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. As long as Sabbatianism remained a vital force within the Jewish ghetto,
threatening to undermine the very existence of rabbinic Judaism, its opponents labored ceaselessly to
root it out and systematically destroyed whatever of its writings came into their possession, including
{even} the sacred names of God {azkarot} which they contain," as the bans upon them read. As a
result many of their writings were lost without a trace, and had it been left solely up to the rabbinical
authorities nothing would have come down to us at all except for certain tendentiously chosen
fragments quoted in anti- Sabbatian polemics. In addition, although an extensive religious literature
was still to be found in the hands of Frankists in Moravia and Bohemia at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the children and grandchildren of these "believers" in Prague and other Jewish
centers themselves attempted to obliterate every shred of evidence bearing on their ancestors' beliefs
and practices. The well-known philosopher and historian of atheism Fritz Mauthner has preserved the
following interesting story in his memoirs: in the declining days of the movement in Bohemia,
Frankist "emissaries" came to his grandfather (and undoubtedly to other members of the sect as well)
and requested that he surrender to them a picture of "the Lady" and "all kinds of writings" which he
had in his possession. The emissaries took them and left. The incident took place sometime during
the 1820's or 1830's. In spite of all this, at least two large manuscripts from these circles have
survived.
One must therefore bear in mind that in dealing with the history of Sabbatianism powerful interests
and emotions have often been at stake. Each for reasons of his own, all those who have written on the
subject in the past shared one belief: the less importance attributed to it, the better.
Authors and historians of the orthodox camp, for their part, have been anxious to belittle and even
distort the over-all role of Sabbatianism in order to safeguard the reputations, as they have conceived
of them, of certain honored religious figures of the past. Such apologetics have had their inevitable
effect upon the writing of history, as has the fundamental outlook of their proponents, tending as it
does to idealize religious life in the ghetto at the expense of completely ignoring the deep inner
conflicts and divisions to which not even the rabbis were necessarily immune. To acknowledge the
Sabbatianism of eminent rabbis in Jerusalem, Adrianople, Constantinople, or Izmir, Prague,
Hamburg, or Berlin, has been in the eyes of such authors to openly impeach the integrity of an entire
body of men who were never supposed to be other than learned and virtuous defenders of Jewish
tradition. Given such an attitude, it is hardly to be wondered at that one should instinctively avoid the
kinds of inquiry that might lead to the discovery of heretical opinion, to say nothing of actual
licentiousness, in the most unlikely places. One might cite endless examples of this kind of mentality
in historical literature dealing with rabbinical and congregational life in the eighteenth century and in
at least one case, A. L. Frumkin's A Historical Account of the Scholars of Jerusalem (in Hebrew), the
author goes so far as to "acquit" some of the most dedicated Sabbatians we know of the "scandal" of
heterodoxy !
Secularist historians, on the other hand, have been at pains to de-emphasize the role of Sabbatianism
for a different reason. Not only did most of the families once associated with the Sabbatian
movement in Western and Central Europe continue to remain afterwards within the Jewish fold, but
many of their descendants, particularly in Austria, rose to positions of importance during the
nineteenth century as prominent intellectuals, great financiers, and men of high political connections.
Such persons, needless to say, could scarcely have been expected to approve of attempts to "expose"
their "tainted" lineage, and in view of their stature in the Jewish community it is not surprising that
their wishes should have carried weight. Furthermore, in an age when Jewish scholarship itself was
considered to be in part an extension of the struggle for political emancipation, the climate for
research in so sensitive an area was by no means generally favorable. In consequence, those Jewish
scholars who had access to the wealth of Sabbatian documents and eyewitness reports that were still
to be found early in the century failed to take advantage of the opportunity, while by the time a later
generation arrived on the scene the sources had been destroyed and were no longer available even to
anyone who might have desired to make use of them.
The survivors of the Frankists in Poland and of the Donmeh or "Apostates" in Salonika formed yet a
third group having a direct interest in disguising the historical facts. These two Sabbatian sects, both
of which formally renounced the Jewish religion (the Donmeh converting to Islam in 1683, the
Frankists to Catholicism in 1759), continued to adhere to their secret identities long after their
defection from their mother faith; the Donmeh, in fact, did not disappear until the present generation,
while in the case of the Frankists, whose history in the course of the nineteenth century is obscure, it
is impossible to determine at exactly what point in time they were finally swallowed up by the rest of
Polish society. There is reason to suspect that until the eve of World War II many original
manuscripts and documents were preserved by both these groups, particularly by a number of
Frankist families in Warsaw; but how much of this material may yet be uncovered, and how much
has been purposely destroyed by its owners in order to conceal forever the secret of their descent, is
in no way ascertainable.
Nevertheless, the total picture is not as dark as it may seem to have been painted: despite the many
efforts at suppression, which supplemented, as it were, the inevitable "selective" process of time
itself, a considerable amount of valuable material has been
saved. Many of the accusations made against the "believers" by their opponents can now be weighed
(and more often than not confirmed!) on the basis of a number of the "believers' " own books which
were not allowed to perish. Little by little our knowledge bas grown, and although many of the
historical details we would like to know will undoubtedly never come to light at all, there is reason to
hope that this important chapter in Jewish history will yet be fully written. In any event, it is dear that
a correct understanding of the Sabbatian movement after the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi will provide a
new due toward understanding the history of the Jews in the eighteenth century as a whole, and in
particular, the beginnings of the Haskalah [Enlightenment} movement in a number of countries.
I do not propose in this article to trace the outward history of Sabbatianism in its several
manifestations over the century and a half in which it retained its vitality, nor (although I can hardly
conceal my opinion that the entire movement was far more widespread than is generally conceded
even today) do I mean to debate the question of whether this or that particular individual was or was
not a Sabbatian himself. Suffice it to say that the sources in our possession, meager as they are, make
it perfectly dear that the number of Sabbatian rabbis was far greater than has been commonly
estimated, greater even than was believed by that anti- Sabbatian zealot Rabbi Jacob Emden, who has
almost always been accused of exaggeration. In the present essay, however, I shall put such questions
aside and limit myself to the area that has been the most sadly neglected in the entire field, namely.
the origins and development of Sabbatian thought per se.
If one accepts what Heinrich Graetz and David Kahana have to say on the subject of Sabbatian
theology, it is impossible to understand what its essential attraction ever was; indeed, if it is true, as
both these writers claim, that the entire movement was a colossal hoax perpetrated by degenerates
and frauds, one might well ask why a serious historian should bother to waste his time on it in the
first place. And if this is the case with Sabbatianism in general, how much more so when one
ventures to consider what is undoubtedly the most tragic episode in the entire drama, that of the
Frankists, the psychological barriers to the understanding of which are incomparably greater. How,
for instance, can one get around the historical fact that in the course of their public disputation with
Jewish rabbis in Lvov in 1759 the members of this sect did not even shrink from resorting to the
notorious blood libel, an accusation far more painful to Jewish sensitivities than any of their actual
beliefs? A great deal has been written about this incident, particularly by the eminent historian Meir
Balaban, in whose book. On the History of the Frankist Movement (in Hebrew), it is exhaustively
dealt with. Balaban, who makes the Lvov libel a starting point for his over- all inquiry, reaches the
significant conclusion that there was no organic connection between it and the Frankist "articles of
faith" presented at the disputation. The members of the sect, in fact, were reluctant to make the
accusation at all, and did so only at the instigation of the Catholic clergy, which was interested in
using them for purposes of its own, having nothing to do with their Sabbatian background. That they
finally agreed to collaborate in the scheme can be explained by their desire to wreak vengeance on
their rabbinical persecutors.
Thus, though the behavior of the Frankists at Lvov must certainly be judged harshly from both a
universal-ethical and a Jewish-national point of view, it is important to keep in mind that the blood
libels against the Jews (the indications are that there was more than one) do not in themselves tell us
anything about the inner spiritual world of the sect, in all of whose literature (written one and two
generations after the Lvov disputation) not a single allusion to such a belief is to be found. The truly
astonishing thing is that although several important texts of Frankist teachings actually do exist, not a
single serious attempt has so far been made to analyze their contents. The reason for this is simple.
Graetz and A. Kraushar, two reputable scholars, one of whom wrote a full-length study of Jacob
Frank and his Polish followers, were both of the opinion that there was no such thing as a Frankist
"creed," and that The Sayings of the Lord (Slowa Paskie) which has come down to us in a Polish
version alone, was incoherent nonsense. According to Kraushar, Frank's sayings are "grotesque,
comical, and incomprehensible," while Graetz, whose attitude toward all forms of mysticism is well
known, could hardly have been expected to show much insight into the religious motivations of the
sect. Balaban, on the other hand, is mainly concerned with the outward history of the Frankists up to
the time of their mass conversion, and his reconstruction of their theology is based solely on the
positions publicly taken by them in their disputations with the rabbis. It is his reliance on these
"articles of faith," in fact, which were actually far from accurate reflections of the Frankists' true
beliefs, that leads him to conclude that after 1759 the history of the sect was "determined more by the
personalities of Jacob Frank and his disciples than by any intrinsic religious relationship to Judaism."
I myself cannot agree with Balaban on this point, and in the following pages I shall attempt to show,
at least summarily, that Sabbatianism must be regarded not only as a single continuous development
which retained its identity in the eyes of its adherents regardless of whether they themselves remained
Jews or not, but also, paradoxical though it may seem, as a specifically Jewish phenomenon to the
end. I shall endeavor to show that the nihilism of the Sabbatian and Frankist movements, with its
doctrine so profoundly shocking to the Jewish conception of things that the violation of the Torah
could become its true fulfillment (bittulah shel torah zehu kiyyumah), was a dialectical outgrowth of
the belief in the Messiahship of Sabbatai Zevi, and that this nihilism, in turn, helped pave the way for
the Haskalah and the reform movement of the nineteenth century, once its original religious impulse
was exhausted. Beyond this, I hope to make the reader see how within the spiritual world of the
Sabbatian sects, within the very sanctum sanctorum of Kabbalistic mysticism, as it were, the crisis of
faith which overtook the Jewish people as a whole upon its emergence from its medieval isolation
was first anticipated, and how groups of Jews within the walls of the ghetto, while still outwardly
adhering to the practices of their forefathers, had begun to embark on a radically new inner life of
their own. Prior to the French Revolution the historical conditions were lacking which might have
caused this upheaval to break forth in the form of an open struggle for social change, with the result
that it turned further inward upon itself to act upon the hidden recesses of the Jewish psyche; but it
would be mistaken to conclude from this that Sabbatianism did not permanently affect the outward
course of Jewish history. The desire for total liberation which played so tragic a role in the
development of Sabbatian nihilism was by no means a purely self-destructive force; on the contrary,
beneath the surface of lawlessness, antinomianism, and catastrophic negation, powerful constructive
impulses were at work, and these, I maintain, it is the duty of the historian to uncover.
Undeniably, the difficulties in the face of this are great, and it is not to be wondered at that Jewish
historians until now have not had the inner freedom to attempt the task. In our own times we owe
much to the experience of Zionism for enabling us to detect in Sabbatianism' s throes those gropings
toward a healthier national existence which must have seemed like an undiluted nightmare to the
peaceable Jewish bourgeois of the nineteenth century. Even today, however, the writing of Jewish
history suffers unduly from the influence of nineteenth-century Jewish historiography. To be sure, as
Jewish historians we have clearly advanced beyond the vantage point of our predecessors, having
learned to insist, and rightly so, that Jewish history is a process that can only be understood when
viewed from within; but in spite of all this, our progress in applying this truth to concrete historical
situations; as opposed to general historiosophical theories has been slow. Up to the present' only two
men, Siegmund Hurwitz in his From Whither to Where (in Hebrew) and Zalman Rubashov [Shazar]
in his essay "Upon the Ruins of Frankism" (in Hebrew), have shown any true appreciation of the
complexities of Sabbatian Psychology, and their work has by and large failed to attract the attention it
deserves..
And now, one last introductory comment. In dismissing the need for objective research on the
Sabbatian and Frankist movements, it has often been asserted that since the phenomena in question
are essentially pathological, they belong more properly to the study of medicine than to the study of
history. Indeed, an article on "Frank and His Sect in the Light of Psychiatry" (Bychowski, Ha-
Tekufah, Vol. XIV) has actually been published, but it only succeeds in demonstrating how incapable
such an approach is of dealing satisfactorily with the problem. From the standpoint of sexual
pathology it can hardly be doubted that Frank himself was a diseased individual, just as there can be
no question that at the center and among the ranks of the Sabbatian movement (as in all radical
movements that spring from certain particular tensions, some of which are not so far removed from
those of "ordinary" life) it would be possible to find cases of marked mental aberrance. But what is
the significance of all this? We are not, after all, so much concerned with this or that prominent
Sabbatian personality as with the question of why such people were able to attract the following that
they did. The diagnosis of a neurologist would be of little value in determining why thousands of
human beings were able to find a spiritual home in the labyrinth of Sabbatian theology, We must
refuse to be deluded by such convenient tags as "hysteria" or "mass psychosis,'- which only confuse
the issue at the same time that they provide an excuse for avoiding it and comfortably reassure one of
one's own comparative "normality." It is undoubtedly true that Jamb Frank was every bit the
depraved and unscrupulous person he is supposed to have been, and yet the moment we seriously
ponder his, "teachings," or attempt to understand why masses of men should have regarded him as
their leader -and prophet, this same individual becomes highly problematic. Even more than the
psychology of the leader, however, it is the psychology of the led that demands to be understood, and
in the case of Sabbatianism, a movement built entirely upon paradoxes, this question is crucial
indeed. Whatever we may think of Sabbatai Zevi and Jacob Frank, the fact is: their followers, while
they were certainly not "innocents "-if there was one thing lacking in the paradoxical religion of the
Sabbatians it was innocence - were sincere in their faith, and it is the nature of this faith, which
penetrated to the hidden depths and abysses of the human spirit, that we wish to understand.
II
•As a mystical heterodoxy Sabbatianism assumed different and changing forms: it splintered into
many sects, so that even from the polemical writings against it we learn that the "heretics" quarreled
among themselves over practically everything. The word "practically," however, must be stressed, for
on one essential, the underlying ground of their "holy faith," as they called it, the "believers" all
agreed. Let us proceed then to examine this common ground of faith as it manifested itself both
psychologically and dogmatically.
By all accounts, the Messianic revival of 1665-66 spread to every sector of the Jewish people
throughout the Diaspora. Among the believers and penitents a new emotion, which was not restricted
to the traditional expectation of a political deliverance of Israel alone, began to make itself felt. This
is not to say that hope for a divine liberation from the bondage and degradation of exile was not an
important element in the general contagion, but rather that various psychological reactions which
accompanied it soon took on an independent existence of their own. Prior to Sabbatai Zevi's apostasy,
great masses of people were able to believe in perfect simplicity that a new era of history was being
ushered in and that they themselves had already begun to inhabit a new and redeemed world. Such a
belief could not but have a profound effect on those who held it: their innermost feelings, which
assured them of the presence of a Messianic reality, seemed entirely in harmony with the outward
course of events, those climactic developments in a historico-political realm that Sabbatai Zevi was
soon to overthrow by means of his miraculous journey to the Turkish sultan, whom he would depose
from his throne and strip of all his powers.
In the generation preceding Sabbatai Zevi's advent the rapid spread of the teachings of Rabbi Isaac
Luria and his school had resulted in a grafting of the theories of the Kabbalists, the de facto
theologians of the Jewish people in the seventeenth century, onto the traditional Jewish view of the
role and personality of the Messiah. Mystical Lurianic speculations about the nature of the
redemption and "the restored world" (olam ha-tikkun) which was to follow upon its heels added new
contents and dimensions to the popular Messianic folk-myth of a conquering national hero, raising it
to the level of a supreme cosmic drama: the redemptive process was now no longer conceived of as
simply a working-out of Israel's temporal emancipation from the yoke of the Gentiles, but rather as a
fundamental transformation of the entire Creation, affecting material and spiritual worlds alike and
leading to a rectification of the primordial catastrophe of the "breaking of the vessels" (shevirat ha-
kelim), in the course of which the divine worlds would be returned to their original unity and
perfection. By stressing the spiritual side of the redemption far more than its outward aspect the
Kabbalists of the Lurianic school, though by no means overlooking the latter, gradually converted it
into a symbol of purely spiritual processes and ends. As long as the Messianic expectancies they
encouraged were not put to the test in the actual crucible of history, the dangers inherent in this shift
of emphasis went unnoticed, for the Kabbalists themselves never once imagined that a conflict might
arise between the symbol and the reality it was intended to represent. To be sure, Lurianic Kabbalah
had openly educated its followers to prepare themselves more for an inner than for an outer renewal;
but inasmuch as it was commonly assumed that the one could not take place without the other, the
procedure seemed in no way questionable. On the contrary: the spread of Lurianic teachings, so it
was thought, was in itself bound to hasten the coming of the historical Redeemer.
The appearance of Sabbatai Zevi and the growth of popular faith in his mission caused this inner
sense of freedom, of "a world made pure again," to become an immediate reality for thousands. This
did not of course mean that Sabbatai Zevi himself was no longer expected to fulfill the various
Messianic tasks assigned him by Jewish tradition, but in the meantime an irreversible change had
taken place in the souls of the faithful. Who could deny that the Shekhinah, the earthly presence of
God, had risen from the dust?
"Heretical" Sabbatianism was born at the moment of Sabbatai Zevi's totally unexpected conversion,
when for the : first time a contradiction appeared between the two levels of the drama of redemption,
that of the subjective experience of the individual on the one hand, and that of the objective historical
facts on the other. The conflict was no less intense than unforeseen. One had to choose: either one
heard the voice of God in the decree of history, or else one heard it in the newly revealed reality
within. "Heretical" Sabbatianism was the result of the refusal of large sections of the Jewish people to
submit to the sentence of history by admitting that their own personal experience had been false and
untrustworthy.
Thus, the various attempts to construct a Sabbatian theology were all motivated by a similar purpose,
namely, to rationalize the abyss that had suddenly opened between the objective order of things and
that inward certainty which it could no longer serve to symbolize, and to render the tension between
the two more endurable for those who continued to live with it. The sense of contradiction from
which Sabbatianism sprung became a lasting characteristic of the movement: following upon the
initial paradox of an apostate Messiah, paradox engendered paradox. Above all, the "believers," those
who remained loyal to their inward experience, were compelled to find an answer to the simple
question: what could be the value of a historical reality that had proved to be so bitterly
disappointing, and how might it be related to the hopes it had betrayed?
The essence of the Sabbatian' s conviction, in other words, can be summarized in a sentence: it is
inconceivable that all of God's people should inwardly err, and so, if their vital experience is
contradicted by the facts, it is the facts that stand in need of explanation. In the words of a Sabbatian
"moderate"' writing thirty years after Sabbatai Zevi's apostasy: "The Holy One, blessed be He, does
not ensnare even the animals of the righteous, much less the righteous themselves, to say nothing of
so terribly deceiving an entire people .... And how is it possible that all of Israel be deceived unless
this be part of some great divine plan?" This line of argument, which was adopted by many persons
from the very beginning of the Sabbatian movement, is known to have impressed even the
movement's opponents, who were equally disinclined to find fault with the entire Jewish people and
sought instead some other explanation for what had happened.
During the century and a half of its existence Sabbatianism was embraced by those Jewish circles
which desired to prolong the novel sensation of living in a "restored world" by developing attitudes
and institutions that seemed commensurate with a new divine order. Inasmuch as this deliberately
maintained state of consciousness was directly opposed to the outlook of ghetto Jewry as a whole, or
which the "believers" themselves formed a part, the latter of necessity tended to become innovators
and rebels, particularly the radicals among them. Herein lay the psychological basis of that spirit of
revolt which so infuriated the champions of orthodoxy, who, though they may at first have had no
inkling of the lengths to which it would be ultimately carried, rightly suspected it from the outset of
striving to subvert the authority of rabbinic Judaism. Herein, too, lay the basis of all future efforts to
construct a Sabbatian theology, to the consideration of which we must now turn our attention.
In the history of religion we frequently encounter types of individuals known as
"pneumatics" (Pneumatikoi) or "spiritualists" (spirituales). Such persons, who played a major role in
the development of Sabbatianism, were known in Jewish tradition as "spiritual" or "extra- spirited"
men or, in the language of the Zohar, as "masters of a holy soul." These terms did not refer to just
anyone who may have had occasion in the course of his life to be "moved by the spirit"; rather, they
applied only to those few who abode in the "palace of the king" (hekhal ha-melekh), that is, who
lived in continual communion with a spiritual realm through whose gates they had passed, whether
by actually dwelling within it to the point of abandoning their previous existence, or by appropriating
from it a "spark" or "holy soul," as only the elect were privileged to do. One so favored was in certain
respects no longer considered to be subject to, the laws of everyday reality, having realized within
himself the hidden world of divine light. Naturally, spiritualistic types of this sort have always
regarded themselves as forming a group apart, and hence the special sense of their own "superiority"
by which they are characterized: from their lofty perspective the world of material affairs tends to
look lowly indeed. Here, then, we have all the prerequisites for the sectarian disposition, for the sect
serves the illuminati as both a rallying point for their own kind and a refuge from the
incomprehension of the carnal and unenlightened masses. The sectarians regard themselves as the
vanguard of a new world, but they do not therefore need to renounce the parent religion which
inspired them, for they can always reinterpret it in the light of the supreme reality to which they owe
their newly discovered allegiance.
For a number of reasons, which cannot be gone into here, such spiritualists were rarely allowed to
develop within the Jewish community after the period of the Second Temple. In part this was a
consequence of Christianity, to which many of them ultimately passed; but even when they continued
to exist within Judaism itself, it was always as isolated and unorganized individuals. It is a well
"known fact, for instance, that spiritualism particularly abounds in the domain of religious mysticism;
and yet, as the history of Kabbalism amply demonstrates, despite the opposition between
conventional religion and the ecstasy, at times even abandon, of the pneumatic, medieval Judaism
was capable of absorbing the latter into its orbit. Such was not the case, however, with either
Christianity or Islam: here the conflict broke out openly and fiercely on numerous occasions, and the
spiritualist sects which it produced went on to play important roles in the development of new social
and religious institutions, often giving birth, albeit in religious guise, to the most revolutionary ideas.
To take but one example, historical research during the last several decades has clearly shown the
direct connection between Christian sectarianism in Europe and the growth of the Enlightenment and
the ideal of toleration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The existence of similar forces in Jewish history, on the other hand, has been all but neglected by the
historians, an oversight facilitated by the fact that Jewish spiritualism has either long been outwardly
dormant or else, as in the case of Kabbalism, has always preferred to work invisibly and
unsystematically beneath the surface. Indeed, as long as Jewish historiography was dominated by a
spirit of assimilation, no one so much as suspected that positivism and religious reform were the
progeny not only of the rational mind, but of an entirely different sort of psychology as well, that of
the Kabbalah and the Sabbatian crisis-in other words, of that very "lawless heresy" which was so
soundly excoriated in their name!
In the Sabbatian movement, which was the first clear manifestation (one might better say explosion)
of spiritualistic sectarianism in Judaism since the days of the Second Temple, the type of the radical
spiritualist found its perfect expression. To be sure, illuminati of the same class were later prevalent
in Hasidism too, particularly during the golden age of the movement; but Hasidism, rather than allow
itself to be taken over by such types, forced them after a period of initial equivocation to curb their
unruly spirituality, and did so with such success that it was able to overcome the most difficult and
hazardous challenge of all, that of safely incorporating them into its own collective body. Unlike
Sabbatianism, whose followers were determined to carry their doctrine to its ultimate conclusion, it
was the genius of Hasidism that it knew where to set itself limits. But the Sabbatians pressed on to
the end, into the abyss of the mythical "gates of impurity" (sha'are tum'ah), where the pure spiritual
awareness of a world made new became a pitfall fraught with peril for the moral life.
Here, then, were all the materials necessary to cause a true conflagration in the heart of Jewry. A new
type of Jew had appeared for whom the world of exile and Diaspora Judaism was partly or wholly
abolished and who uncompromisingly believed that a "restored world," whose laws and practices he
was commanded to obey, was in the process of coming into being. The great historical
disappointment experienced by the Sabbatian had instilled in him the paradoxical conviction that he
and his like were privy to a secret whose time had not yet come to be generally revealed, and it was
this certainty which, in Hebrew literature of the period, imparted a special meaning to his use of the
terms "believer" and "holy faith," the peculiar shadings of which immediately inform us that we are
dealing with a Sabbatian document even when there is not the slightest allusion therein to Sabbatai
Zevi himself: by virtue of his "holy faith" in the mysterious realignment of the divine worlds and in
the special relationship to them of the Creator during the transitional period of cosmic restitution
(tikkun), the "believer," he who trusted in the mission of Sabbatai Zevi, was exalted above all other
men. Hidden in the "believer's" soul was a precious jewel, the pearl of Messianic freedom, which
shone forth from its chamber of chambers to pierce the opaqueness of evil and materiality; he who
possessed it was a free man by power of his own personal experience, and to this inner sense of
freedom, whether gotten during the mass revival that preceded Sabbatai Zevi's apostasy, or
afterwards, in the ranks of the "holy faith," he would continue to cling no matter how much he knew
it to be contradicted by the outward facts.
All Sabbatian doctrine had as its aim the resolution of this contradiction. The conflict was bitterly
clear. Those who were disillusioned by Sabbatai Zevi's apostasy were able to claim that nothing had
really changed: the world was the same as ever, the exile was no different than before; therefore the
Torah was the same Torah and the familiar Kabbalistic teachings about the nature of the Godhead
and the divine worlds remained in force, A great opportunity had perhaps existed, but it had been
missed; henceforth the one recourse was a return to Israel's traditional faith in its God, The
"believers," on the other hand, could say in paraphrase of Job, "our eyes have beheld and not
another's": the redemption had begun indeed, only its ways were mysterious and its outward aspect
was -still incomplete. Externals might seem the same, but inwardly all was in the process of renewal.
Both the Torah and the exile had been fundamentally altered, as had the nature of the Godhead, but
for the time being all these transformations bore "inward faces" alone.
The Sabbatian movement soon developed all the psychological characteristics of a spiritualist sect,
and before long many of its followers proceeded to organize themselves along such lines. The
persecutions against them on the part of various rabbinical and congregational authorities, their own
special feeling of apartness and of the need to preserve their secret, and the novel practices which
their beliefs eventually compelled them to pursue, were all factors in bringing this about. I do not
propose to dwell at length on the history of any of these groups, but I do wish to emphasize briefly at
this point that large numbers of Jews, especially among the Sephardim, continued to remain faithful
to Sabbatai Zevi after his conversion. Even such opponents or Sabbatianism as Jacob Sasportas, who
claimed that the followers of the movement were now an "insubstantial minority," was forced to
admit on other occasions that the minority in question was considerable indeed, particularly in
Morocco, Palestine, Egypt, and most of Turkey and the Balkans. Most of the Sabbatian groups in
these areas maintained constant contact with each other and kept up a running battle over the correct
interpretation of their "holy faith." From these regions came the first theoreticians of the movement,
men such as Nathan of Gaza, Samuel Primo, Abraham Miguel Cardozo, and Nehemiah Hayon, as
well as the believers in "voluntary Marranism." who went on to form the sect of the Donmeh in
Salonika, in Italy the number of Sabbatians was smaller, though it included some of the country's
most important Kabbalists; within a generation after its appearance there, Sabbatianism had dwindled
into the concern of a few rabbis and scholars (chief among them Rabbi Benjamin Cohen of Reggio
and Rabbi Abraham Rovigo of Modena), in whose hands it remained for a century without ever
penetrating into wider -circles. In Northern Europe Sabbatianism was also restricted at first to small
groups of adherents, devotees of such "prophets" as Heshel Zoref of Vilna and Mordecai of
Eisenstadt in Hungary; but after 1700; following the commencement of a "Palestinian period" during
which organized Sabbatian emigrations to the Holy Land took place from several countries, the
movement spread rapidly through Germany and the Austro- Hungarian Empire. In Lithuania it failed
to take root, but in Podolia and Moravia it became so entrenched that it was soon able to claim the
allegiance of many ordinary Jewish burghers and small businessmen (according to Jacob Emden, the
numerical value of the Hebrew letters in the verse in Psalms 14, 'There is none that doeth good, not
even one," was equivalent to the numerical value of the letters in the Hebrew word for Moravia!) In
Prague and Mannheim Sabbatian-oriented centers of learning came into being. The influence of the
"graduates" of these institutions was great; one of them, in fact, was the author of the heretical
treatise Va-Avo ha-Yom El ha-Ayin ("And I Came This Day Unto the Fountain") which provoked so
much furor at the time of the controversy surrounding Jonathan Eibeschtz (1751) and led to a
polemical "battle of the books" which has enabled us to trace the identities of many Sabbatians of
whom otherwise we would have known nothing at all. In the middle of the eighteenth century many
of the Sabbatians in Podolia converted to Christianity after the example of their leader Jacob Frank,
but still others remained within the Jewish fold. Finally, a Sabbatian stronghold sprang up again in
Prague, where Frankism was propagated in a Jewish form. After 1815, however, the movement fell
apart and its members were absorbed into secular Jewish society, like the Frankist ancestors of Louis
Brandeis.
It is now time to turn our attention to the actual content of the spiritualism of these Sabbatian groups,
for although the details of their theosophical teachings cannot be understood by anyone not already
familiar with the intricacies of Kabbalistic speculation in both the Zohar and the writings of the
Lurianic school, other vital questions which concerned them, as well as their doctrine of the Godhead
in its more general form, can be rendered intelligible even to those who are not fully versed in the
esoteric side of Jewish mystical thought.
Ill
•The question which first confronted the "believers" after the apostasy -of Sabbatai Zevi, and one to
which they never ceased returning, was of the following order: since by all external tokens the
redemption had already been at hand, and since the Messiah, the authenticity of whose mission was
beyond doubt, had actually revealed himself to his people, why had he forsaken them and his
religion, and why had the historical and political deliverance from bondage which was to have
naturally accompanied the cosmic process of tikkun been delayed? To this a paradoxically
compelling answer was quickly offered: the apostasy of the Messiah was itself a religious mystery of
the most crucial importance! No less an authority than Maimonides himself, it was argued, had stated
that the actual details of the redemptive process were not to be known in advance; and although the
truth of the matter was that everything that had happened was fully alluded to in the Holy Scriptures,
these allusions themselves could not he correctly understood until the events they foretold had come
to pass. All might be found to have been predicted in the relevant prophecies and legends, which
Nathan of Gaza, and even more so Abraham Cardozo, now proceeded to expound in the form of a
new doctrine to which Sabbatai Zevi himself apparently subscribed.
As long as the last divine sparks (nitzotzot) of holiness and good which fell at the time of Adam's
primordial sin into the impure realm of the kelipot (the hylic forces of evil whose hold in the world is
particularly strong among the Gentiles) have not been gathered back again to their source-so the
explanation ran -the process of redemption is incomplete. It is therefore left to the Redeemer, the
holiest of men, to accomplish what not even the most righteous souls in the past have been able to do:
to descend through the gates of impurity into the realm of the kelipot and to rescue the divine sparks
still imprisoned there. As soon as this task is performed the Kingdom of Evil will collapse of itself,
for its existence is made possible only by the divine sparks in its midst. The Messiah is constrained to
commit "strange acts" (ma'asim zarim; a concept hereafter to occupy a central place in Sabbatian
theology), of which his apostasy is the most startling; all of these, however, are necessary for the
fulfillment of his mission. In the formulation of Cardozo; "It is ordained that the King Messiah don
the garments of a Marrano and so go unrecognized by his fellow Jews. In a word, it is ordained that
he become a Marrano like me."
Before proceeding to take a closer look at this bold and heretical doctrine, one might well dwell for a
moment on Cardozo's own words, which provide in my opinion an invaluable clue to the motivation
behind it, as they do in fact to nearly every other feature of the Sabbatian movement as well.
Underlying the novelty of Sabbatian thought more than anything else was the deeply paradoxical
religious sensibility of the Marranos and their descendants, who constituted a large portion of
Sephardic Jewry. Had it not been for the unique psychology of these reconverts to Judaism, the new
theology would never have found the fertile ground to flourish in that it did. Regardless of what the
actual backgrounds of its first disseminators may have been, the Sabbatian doctrine of the Messiah
was perfectly tailored to the needs of the Marranic mentality. Indeed, we know for a fact that
Abraham Cardozo, one of the movement's most successful proselytizers, was of definite Marrano
origin-he was born in Spain in 1627-a particular which goes far to explain the remarkable zeal and
sincerity with which he defended the new doctrine. Historians in our own day have pointed out at
length the degree of contradiction, of duplicity and duality, which was involved in the religious
consciousness of the Marranos. For these undercover Jews "to don the garments of a Marrano" was
by no means an unjustifiable act; in its defense they were fond of citing the story of Queen Esther, as
well as various other biblical fragments and verses. Formal apostasy had never been considered by
them to represent an irreconcilable break with their mother faith. And now along came a religious
metaphysic which exalted just such a form of life to the highest possible level by attributing it to the
person of the Redeemer himself! Certainly all kinds of implications, which we shall deal with later
on, were contained in this original idea. Let us examine it more closely.
To begin with, the new doctrine could no longer be harmonized with the traditional Messianic folk-
myth held to by the Jewish masses unless room could be found in the latter for such a "contradiction
in terms" as the apostasy of the Redeemer. At first it was no doubt believed that the Messiah's descent
into the realm of the kelipot was but an incidental aspect of his mission, "as happened to King David
[when he sojourned] with Achish King of Gath," but it soon came to be realized that such an
extraordinary event must occupy the center of any Messianic schema, which if necessary would have
to be rebuilt around it: if the Messiah's task indeed contained a tragic element, as was now being
proposed, support for this belief would have to be found in the sources and attitudes of Jewish
tradition. What now took place in Sabbatianism was similar to what happened in Christianity at the
time of the apostles, the chief difference being the shifting of the tragic moment in the Messiah's
destiny from his crucifixion to his apostasy, a change which rendered the paradox in question even
more severe. And to this novel conception another was soon added, one which indeed had a basis in
aggadic literature, but whose hidden implications had gone unnoticed as long as no pressing reality
had existed to force its application outside of the domain of pure theory and imagination; this was the
notion that the King Messiah was to give "a new Torah" and that the commandments of the Law
( mitzvah) were to be abrogated in Messianic times. Speculations of this nature could be found in
various Midrashim and Aggadot, but possessed no particular authority -and were easily challenged by
means of other exegetical passages to the opposite effect, with the consequence that, in Jewish
tradition, the entire question had hitherto been allowed to remain in abeyance. Even those visionaries
who dreamt through the ages of a new Word of God in a redeemed world did not, in fact, particularly
connect this idea with the activities of the Messiah himself, and it was not until it was seized upon by
the new "Marranic" doctrine that its latent explosive power was revealed.
The doctrine of the necessary apostasy of the Messiah did not originate in the realm of literature, but
was rather rooted in new religious feelings that had come to exist. It was only after the initial
manifestation of these that the effort to justify them on the basis of authoritative sources began, and
with truly remarkable results, for practically overnight a new religious language was born. From bits
and pieces of Scripture, from scattered paradoxes and sayings in the writings of the Kabbalah, from
all the remotest corners of Jewish religious literature, an unprecedented theology of Judaism was
brought into being. The cynicism of most Jewish historians toward these "inanities" does not reveal
any great understanding of what actually took place. Suddenly we find ourselves confronted by an
original Jewish terminology, far removed from that of Christianity, yet equally determined to express
the contradictions inherent in the Hfe of the Redeemer and in redemption itself Striking as it did a
hidden wellspring of deep rehgious emotion, one can hardly deny that this gospel must have
possessed a powerful attraction, nor that it often managed to inject new meanings into familiar
phrases and figures of speech with a fascinating profundity. Such a dialectical eruption of new forces
in the midst of old concepts is rare indeed. Because Graetz and other historians insisted on regarding
its articulation as being nothing more than a pretext for a monstrous debauchment of moral and
spiritual values, they completely overlooked its true significance. To be sure, the doctrine of an
apostate Messiah did serve as a pretext too, but it was also a great deal more; and had it not appealed
(and by virtue of its very paradoxicality !) to vital components in the spiritual make-up of the Jew, and
above all to his sense of spiritual mission, it would never have succeeded in attracting a following in
the first place. This missionary ideology reached a peak in the writings of the Lurianic Kabbalah,
which strove to inculcate in every Jew a sense of duty to "elevate the sparks'" and so help bring about
the ultimate tikkun of the Creation.
Here the 53rd chapter of Isaiah played a key role, for as it was now reinterpreted the verse "But he
was wounded because of our transgressions" was taken to be an allusion not only to the Messiah ben
Joseph, the legendary forerunner of the Redeemer who according to tradition was to suffer death at
the hands of the Gentiles, but to the Messiah ben David as well, who "would be forceably prevented
from observing the Torah." By a play on words, the Hebrew ve-hu meholal, "but he was wounded,"
was interpreted as meaning "from sacred he [the Messiah] will be made profane [hoi].'- Thus,
all Gentiles are referred to as profane [hoi] and kelipah, and whereas Israel alone is called sacred, all
the other nations are profane. And even though a Jew commit a transgression, as long as he remains a
Jew among Jews he is called sacred and an Israelite, for as the rabbis have said, "Even though he has
sinned, he is still an Israelite." It follows that there is no way for the King Messiah to be made
profane except he be removed from the Community of Israel into another domain.
Many similar homilies were written on the rest of the chapter, especially on the verse, "And he made
his grave with the wicked," Yet another favorite verse was Deuteronomy 33:7 ("And this for Judah,
and he said: Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people"), which was assumed to
allude to the Davidic Messiah of the House of Judah, whose destiny it was to be taken from his
people (hence Moses" prayer that Gad bring him back to them),6 Endless biblical verses were cited to
prove that the Messiah was fated to be contemned as an outcast and criminal by his own people.
Clothed in Messianic radiance, all the typical arguments of the Marranos were applied to Sabbatai
Zevi:
•And similar to this [the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi} is what happened to Esther, who was the cause of
great salvation to Israel; for although most of the people, being ignorant, most certainly despised her
for having given herself to an idol-worshiper and a Gentile in dear violation of the bidding of the
Torah, the sages of old, who knew the secret [of her action), did not regard her as a sinner, for it is
said of her in the Talmud: "Esther was the ground of the entire world."
•In the same vein, the familiar aggadic saying that "the last Redeemer will be as the first" was taken
to mean that just as Moses lived for many years at the court of Pharaoh, so the Messiah must live
with "the Turk," for as the exile draws to a close the Messiah himself must be exiled to atone for
Israel's sins.
Next came the turn of the Zohar, and here too, with the help of major or minor distortions, a world of
new symbols was made to emerge, such as the figure of "the king who is good within but clothed in
evil garments." In vain it was argued against this interpretation that the passage does not refer in this
context to a king at all, much less to the Messiah; the image, so expressive in its obscurity, penetrated
deep into the Sabbatian consciousness where it remained for generations to come. Two other writers
whose works were mined in this fashion were Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague and Rabbi
Joseph Taitatsak of Salonika, one of the emigrs from Spain in 1492: the former was found to have
cryptically predicted that the Messiah would be bound to the world of Islam, while the latter was
supposed to have stated, "when the rabbis said that the Son of David would not come until the
kingdom was entirely given over to unbelief [Sanhedrin 97a], they were thinking of the Kingdom of
Heaven, for the Shekhinah is destined to don the garments of Ishmael." In a word, the attempt to
justify the belief that the fall and apostasy of the Messiah were necessary actions was carried out
assiduously and successfully and led to the composition of many homilies, treatises, and books, some
of which have not yet been recovered from their resting places. Endless vindications and defenses of
the new doctrine were brought from practically every corner of Jewish literature. At first the tendency
was to assert that although the Messiah's conversion had been forced upon him, it was qualitatively to
be considered as a deliberate act; gradually, however, this motif disappeared, and the emphasis came
to be placed squarely on the paradox that the Messiah should convert of his own free will. The
descent into the kelipot was, indeed had to be, a voluntary one.
It was at this point that a radically new content was bestowed upon the old rabbinic concept of
mitzvah ha-ba'ah ba-averah, literally, "a commandment which is fulfilled by means of a
transgression ." Once it could be claimed that the Messiah's apostasy was in no way a transgression,
but was rather a fulfillment of the commandment of God, "for it is known throughout Israel that the
prophets can do and command things which are not in accord with the Torah and its laws; the entire
question of the continued validity of the Law had reached a critical stage. We know that even before
his apostasy Sabbatai Zevi violated several of the commandments by eating the fat of animals and
administering it to others, directing that the paschal sacrifice be performed outside of the Land of
Israel, and canceling the fast days. His followers soon began to seek explanations for these acts, and
here began a division which was to lead eventually to an open split in the movement.
IV
•The new doctrine of the necessary apostasy of the Messiah was accepted by all the "believers." In
fact, it proved to be symbolically richer than was at first assumed, for it expertly expressed the
contradiction between the outward reality of history and the inward reality of the "believers' " lives. It
was now no longer to be wondered at that the outward deliverance had been delayed, for this could be
explained by the mystic principle of "good within but clothed in evil garments." In turn, however,
other questions arose which the doctrine of necessary apostasy was in itself insufficient to answer.
•First of all, it was asked, what was the nature of the Messiah's act? Was it intended to be an
exemplar for others? Were all Jews enjoined to follow suit or was it essentially inimitable and to be
looked upon as a theoretical model only?
Second, what was the nature of the transitional period during which the Messiah was in the clutches
of the kelipot? Could it properly be called the redemption or not? Since it was agreed by all that the
Shekhinah had "risen from the dust," where was the Shekhinah now? Did it still make sense to speak
of her "exile" and to mourn for her? What exactly was the relationship of inwardness to outwardness
in the present age?
Third, what was the status of the Torah during this period? Had a new aspect of it been revealed?
How was the principle of mitzvah ha-ba'ah ba-avel-ah to be understood? Could it not be argued that
the change which had taken place in the relationship of the divine worlds necessitated a
corresponding change in the performance of the commandments, the purpose of which had been to
restore the harmony of the old, unredeemed cosmos that had been shattered by the primordial sin?
Was not the Lurianic Kabbalah in its traditional form now outdated?
These were the principal dilemmas which were to shape the development of Sabbatianism in the
course of the following hundred years, and in several countries to transform it from a Messianic
movement into a nihilistic movement operating within a religious framework. And just as these
questions were themselves mutually related, so the nihilism which resulted from them was to be
characterized by its internal unity and consistency.
Here, then, it is necessary to distinguish between two opposing Sabbatian factions which emerged
from the dashes or opinion surrounding these disputed points, as well as from differing interpretations
of the theosophical "mystery of the Godhead" (sod ha-elohut) revealed by Sabbatai Zevi to his
disciples: a moderate and rather piously inclined wing of the movement on the one hand, and a
radical: antinomian, and nihilistic wing on the other. (Both of these factions, in turn, contained many
subdivisions, but here we are concerned only with the more general features of each.) In the case of
some Sabbatians, who have left us no completely candid record of their feelings, it is difficult to
determine to which of these two camps they belonged. As might naturally be expected, in face of the
persecutions against them the "believers" were not often in a position to expound their beliefs
undisguisedly, and certainly not to permit them to appear in print. This was particularly true of the
nihilists, who had good and compelling reasons for concealing their doctrines.
Moderate Sabbatianism, which we shall consider first, was a view shared by many rabbis and was
represented by men like Nathan of Gaza, Abraham Cardozo, and Abraham Rovigo. Of these three,
Cardozo and Rovigo are the more valuable sources, especially the former, a large number of whose
many treatises have survived thanks to the refusal of his disciples in London, Turkey, and Morocco to
bum them in compliance with the injunctions of the rabbinical courts.
According to the "moderates,'- the apostasy of the Messiah was not intended to serve as an example
for others. To be sure, Sabbatai Zevi had done what was necessary, but to attempt to follow in his
footsteps was to belie the significance of his act, which was performed in behalf of everybody. In the
words of Isaiah 53: "The Lord hath made to light on him the iniquity of us all. "Strictly speaking, all
were [originally] under the obligation to convert," but God in His mercy permitted the apostasy of the
Messiah to atone for the sins of his people. Besides being strange and scandalous in its nature,
Sabbatai Zevi's conversion was in a class by itself and was not an object of imitation. The Jew was
expected to remain a Jew. True, a new world-era had undoubtedly been ushered in, the spiritual
worlds had undergone tikkun, and their structure was now permanently altered; nonetheless, as long
as the redemption did not manifest itself outwardly in the realm of objective events in history, as long
as the external bondage continued and the phenomenal world remained unchanged, no aspect or
commandment of the Torah was to be openly tampered with except for the small number of
innovations, such as the cancellation of the fast of Tish'ah be'Av (the day of the destruction of the
Temple), which had been proclaimed by the Messiah and his prophets as symbolic tokens of the
redemption's commencement. Even on this point, however, there was disagreement, for several
Sabbatians, including Abraham Rovigo himself, decided to reinstate the fast after a period of
hesitation lasting a number of years during which they disregarded it-not because they had "gone
back" on their beliefs, but because of the questionable nature of the practice itself, as witnessed by the
fact that Rovigo's disciple Mordecai Ashkenazi had been bidden by a maggid or "spiritual
intelligence" to desist from it. On the whole, it was the view of the "moderates" that during the
transitional period under way the kelipot still retained a good deal of their power, which could only
be eliminated by continued performance of the mitzvot: the "faade" of rabbinic Judaism must be
allowed to remain temporarily standing, although great changes had already taken place within the
edifice. One unmistakable testimony to this inner transformation was the abandonment by many of
the "moderates" of the mystical meditations (kavvanot) of Isaac Luria. The first to discontinue their
use was Nathan of Gaza, whose reasons for doing so were as follows:
The kavvanot of the Lurianic Kabbalists were inward actions of thought designed to relate the
performance of given commandments or prayers to specific stages in the dynamic chain of the divine
worlds and thereby to reintegrate the latter by helping to restore them to the places they had occupied
before their catastrophic fall. Thus, each kavvanah was a spiritual act demonstrating that the outward
undertaking which occasioned it harmonized invisibly with the over-all structure of the cosmos. Now,
however, with the advent of the Messiah, this structure had changed. The sense of inner freedom
possessed by the "believers" was not a subjective illusion, but was caused by a real reorganization of
the worlds illuminating the soul, as a result of which the Lurianic kavvanot had become obsolete.
This in turn led to a re-evaluation of the entire Lurianic Kabbalah, and on occasion both Nathan of
Gaza and Abraham Cardozo went so far as to direct veiled criticisms at Isaac Luria himself. Nathan,
for example, writes: "In the present age it is no longer in order to read the tikkunim composed by
Isaac Luria of blessed memory and his disciples, nor to meditate according to their kavvanot, for the
times have changed. The kavvanot of Rabbi Isaac Luria were meant for his own age, which was [like]
an ordinary day of the week, whereas now it is the eve of the Sabbath, and it is not proper to treat the
Sabbath as though it were a weekday." Elsewhere he writes: "My meaning is that the kavvanot
discovered by our teacher Rabbi Isaac Luria, may his saintly and righteous memory be blessed, are
no longer appropriate to our own time) because the raising up [of the divine worlds] has entered a
new phase, so that it would be like employing kavvanot intended for a weekday on the Sabbath.
Therefore, let everyone beware of using them, and likewise let none of the kavvanot or homilies or
writings of Rabbi Isaac Luria be read henceforward, for they are abstruse and no living man has
understood them except Rabbi Hayyim Vital, who was a disciple of the master [Isaac Luria] for
several years, at the end of which he surpassed him in knowledge." In a similar vein: "It is no longer
in order to perform the midnight vigil, that is, to weep and mourn for the exile of the Shekhinah, for
she has already begun to rise from the earth, so that whoever mourns for her is a blunderer and
attracts the company of that guilty [demon] Lilith, since it is she who now weeps and wails." Many
other passages like these could be cited. As a matter of Course Cardozo hastened to compose a new
series of updated kavvanot, but these were never to prove popular with his fellow Sabbatians, who
either gave up the practice of mystical meditations entirely, or else, like many of the Hasidim who
came after them, took to composing their own as they individually saw fit.
It was generally held by all the Sabbatians that now, on the "eve of the Sabbath," the mystery of the
Godhead (sod ha-elohut) that had eluded the rabbis, philosophers, and Kabbalists throughout the ages
was finally to be revealed. This was not to say that the secret had not been hinted at by the last of the
Gnostics living in the Tannaitic period, who cryptically concealed it in the pages of the Zohar and in
several Aggadot, particularly those known as the aggadot shel dofi or "offensive Aggadot," which
had served as milestones for the contemplation of the mystics and as obscure hints at the mysteries
during the dark night of exile. But the true meaning of these had been overlooked; nor could it be
fully comprehended until the End of Days. On the other hand, although the "mystery of the Godhead"
was yet to be revealed in its entirety, a part of it had now been made known. Here again a rejection of
Lurianism and the substitution of a new Sabbatian Kabbalah in its place were involved! The first
written exposition of the new system, which was to be subject to a great many differing inferences
and interpretations, was the small tract Raza de-Mehemanuta ("The Secret of the Faith") which was
orally dictated by Sabbatai Zevi to a disciple after his apostasy. Its effect was to prefix yet another
stage to the theogonic speculations of the Kabbalists, for it treated (and quite remarkably) of the
mysterious inner life of the Godhead before its tzimtzum or primordial contraction, whereas Lurianic
Kabbalah had dealt only with the counter-expansion of the deity once the tzimtzum had taken place.
We have already seen in regard to their doctrine of the apostate Messiah that the Sabbatians were not
in the least bit chary of paradoxes, and indeed, their theological reflections on the true nature of "the
Faith" and its history in Israel reveal a dialectical daring that cannot but be respected. Here we are
given our deepest glimpse yet into the souls of these revolutionaries who regarded themselves as
loyal Jews while at the same time completely overturning the traditional religious categories of
Judaism- 1 am not of course speaking of a feeling of "loyalty" to the Jewish religion as it was defined
by rabbinical authority. For many, if not for most Sabbatians, the Judaism of the rabbis, which they
identified with the Judaism of the exile, had come to assume an entirely dubious character. Even
when they continued to live within its jurisdiction it was not out of any sense of positive
commitment; no doubt it had been suited to its time, but in the light of the soul-shaking truth of the
redemption that time had passed. Taking into account all that has been said here, it is hardly
surprising that this attitude should have existed. What is surprising, however, indeed astoundingly so,
is the nature of the spiritual world that the Sabbatians should have stumbled upon in the course of
their search through the Bible for "the mystery of the Godhead" which exilic Judaism had allowed to
perish, for here we are confronted with nothing less than the totally unexpected revival of the
religious beliefs of the ancient Gnostics, albeit in a transvalued form.
The Gnostics, who were the contemporaries of the Jewish Tannaim of the second century, believed
that it was necessary to distinguish between a good but hidden God who alone was worthy of being
worshiped by the elect, and a Demiurge or creator of the physical universe, whom they identified
with the "just" God of the Old Testament. In effect they did not so much reject the Jewish Scriptures,
whose account of events they conceded to be at least partly true, as they denied the superiority of the
Jewish God, for whom they reserved the most pejorative terms. Salvation was brought to mankind by
messengers sent by the hidden God to rescue the soul from the cruel law or "justice" of the Demiurge,
whose dominion over the evil material world, as testified to by the Bible, was but an indication of his
lowly status. The hidden God Himself was unknown, but he had entrusted Jesus and the gnostic
faithful with the task of overthrowing the "God of the Jews". As for the claim of both Jews and
orthodox Christians that the God of Israel who created the world and the transcendent God of
goodness were one and the same, this was a great falsehood which stood in the way of true gnosis.
This kind of "metaphysical anti-Semitism," as is well known, did not vanish from history with the
disappearance of the gnostic sects, but continued to reassert itself within the Catholic Church and its
heretical offshoots throughout the Middle Ages.
"The mystery of the Godhead" which Sabbatianism now "discovered" and which it believed to be
identical with "the mystery of the God of Israel" and "the faith of Father Abraham," was founded
entirely on a new formulation of this ancient gnostic paradox. In the version made current by Cardozo
it was expounded as follows:
All nations and philosophers have been led by irrefutable laws of the intellect to acknowledge the
existence of a First Cause responsible for setting all else in motion. Given the fact, therefore, that
anyone capable of logical reasoning can demonstrate to his own satisfaction that such a Cause exists,
what need is there for it to be specially revealed to mankind? What possible religious difference can
such a revelation make when we are no less the wiser without it? The answer is, none at all. The First
Cause, which was worshiped by Pharaoh and Nimrod and the wise men of India alike, is not the
concern of religion at all, for it has nothing to do with the affairs of this world or its creation and
exerts no influence on it for good or for bad. The purpose of a divine revelation must be to make
something known which cannot be grasped by the intellect on its own, something which has
specifically religious value and content. And indeed, this is precisely the case with the Jewish Torah,
which does not dwell at all on that Hidden Principle whose existence can be adequately proven by the
intellect, but speaks only of the God of Israel, Elohei Yisrael, who is the creator of the world and the
first emanation to proceed from the First Cause. This God, in turn, has two aspects, or
"countenances" (partzufim), one male and one female, the latter being known as the Shekhinah; He
alone it is who creates and reveals Himself and redeems, and to Him alone are prayer and worship to
be rendered. It is this paradox of a God of religion who is distinct from the First Cause that is the
essence of true Judaism, that "faith of our fathers" which is concealed in the books of the Bible and in
the dark sayings of the Aggadot and the Kabbalah. In the course of the confusion and demoralization
brought on by the exile this mystery (of which even Christianity was nothing but a distorted
expression) was forgotten and the Jewish People was mistakenly led to identify the impersonal First
Cause with the personal God of the Bible, a spiritual disaster for which Saadia Gaon, Maimonides,
and the other philosophers will yet be held accountable. It was thus that the words of the prophet
Hosea, "For the Children of Israel shall sit solitary many days without a king" (3:4), came to be
fulfilled. At the exile's end, however, Israel's God will reveal Himself once more, and this secret is a
source of precious comfort to the "believers."
Here we have a typically gnostic scheme, only inverted: the good God is no longer the deus
absconditus, who has now become the deity of the philosophers for whom there is no room in
religion proper, but rather the God of Israel who created the world and presented it with His Torah.
What daring labyrinths of the spirit are revealed in this new creed! What yearnings for a regeneration
of faith and what disdainful negation of the exile! Like true spiritual revolutionaries, with an
unfeigned enthusiasm which even today cannot fail to impress the reader of Cardozo's books, the
"believers" unflinchingly proclaimed their belief that all during the exile the Jewish People had
worshiped a powerless divinity and had clung to a way of life that was fundamentally in need of
reform. When one considers how wildly extravagant all this may appear even now, it is easy enough
to appreciate the wrath and indignation with which such a theology was greeted by the orthodox
camp in its own day. Determined to avoid a full-scale revolution within the heart of Jewry, the
rabbinical traditionalists and their supporters did all they could to drive the "believers" beyond the
pale. And yet in spite of all this, one can hardly deny that a great deal that is authentically Jewish was
embodied in these paradoxical individuals too, in their desire to start afresh and in their realization of
the fact that negating the exile meant negating its religious and institutional forms as well and
returning to the original fountainheads of the Jewish faith. This last practice-a tendency to rely in
matters of belief upon the Bible and the Aggadah-grew to be particularly strong among the nihilists
in the movement. Here too, faith in paradox reigned supreme: the stranger the Aggadah, the more
offensive to reason and common sense, the more likely it was to be seized upon as a symbol of that
"mystery of faith" which naturally tended to conceal itself in the most frightful and fanciful tales.
I have alluded to the fierce discussions that broke out among the Sabbatians over the issue of how
"the mystery of the Godhead" was to be interpreted. Several of the elucidations of the doctrine that
are known to us differ substantially from the version given by Cardozo, who devoted his very best
speculative powers to the question. All of these treatises employ the terminology of the Zohar and the
Lurianic Kabbalah, but proceed to attribute to it meanings that are entirely their own. Among the
speculations on the subject that have come down to us in detail are those of Nehemiah Hay on,
Samuel Primo, and Jonathan Eibeschtz. Despite their division of the Godhead into three hypostases
(partzufim), the First Cause or "Holy Ancient One" (atika kadisha), the God of Israel or "Holy
King" (malka kadisha), and the Shekhinah, all of these writers sought to uphold the essential dynamic
unity of the divinity. The central problems as they saw them problems, be it said, which did not exist
for non-Sabbatian Kabbalah at all- were first of all to determine the nature of the relationship, the
"three knots of faith" as they called it, between the First Cause, the God of Israel; and the Shekhinah,
and secondly to establish the exact content of the new revelation concerning the essence of the God
of Israel. Characteristic of the approach of these Sabbatian "moderates" was their stubborn refusal to
leave any room in their gnostic theories for a doctrine of divine incarnation. Indeed, the literature of
"moderate" Sabbatianism is in general filled with violent denunciations of Christianity and of the
Christian dogma of the Trinity.
According to several of the "moderates," "the mystery of the Godhead" had not yet been fully
revealed: during the original Messianic revival of 1665-66, they argued, there had been an initial
revelation which it was permitted to freely make known, but now, during the period of transition,
eclipse, and uncertainty the situation was no longer the same. The Shekhinah had indeed "begun to
rise," but "she has still not returned to her place entirely, for had she returned we would no longer be
in exile," These words were written by Abraham Rovigo more than thirty years after Sabbatai Zevi's
apostasy, of the mystic meaning of which he had absolutely no doubt, and they illustrate in a nutshell
the psychology of "moderate" Sabbatianism while at the same time solving the riddle of how so many
rabbis who were confirmed "believers" nevertheless managed to remain in their rabbinical posts. The
redemption had truly begun, but it was a gradual process: "[It proceeds] step by step. In the end the
Holy One, blessed be He, will raise her from the dust." This was not to say that the Shekhinah had not
already begun to rise of her own accord, but "as long as He does not lift her up Himself it is said that
she is still in exile." It goes without saying that those who subscribed to this view were obliged to
keep up all the traditional practices of exilic, i.e., historic, Judaism. Even the midnight vigil for the
Shekhinah was ultimately reintroduced.
In a word, at the same time that it was completely transforming the historic inner world of Judaism in
its own unique manner, "moderate" Sabbatianism continued to adhere to traditional Jewish
observance not for the sake of mere camouflage, but as a matter of principle. The inward crisis which
every "moderate" underwent was permitted little or no outward expression, and inasmuch as such an
objectification of his feelings was barred by either the exigencies of the situation or the compunctions
of his own religious consciousness, he was forced to retreat even further into himself. But although
the new sense of inner freedom bore purely inner consequences, we can nevertheless rely on the
judgment of those anti-Sabbatian polemicists who saw perfectly dearly that the inward devastation of
old values was no less dangerous or far-reaching than its outward manifestation. Whoever reads such
a volume as Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschtz The Book of the Eternal Name, a treatise on "the mystery of
the Godhead" composed in the traditional style of talmudic dialectics, will readily see what abysses
had opened up in the very heart of Judaism. From these were to come the deluge: pure founts of
salvation and spiritual rebirth to the one camp, gross waters of corruption and shameless sacrilege to
the other.
V
•We have seen how the principal feature of "moderate" Sabbatian doctrine was the belief that the
apostasy of the Messiah was sui generis. The Messiah must go his lonely way into the kingdom of
impurity and "the other side" (sitra ahra) and dwell there in the realm of a "strange god" whom he
would yet refuse to worship. The enormous tension between the subjective and the objective which
had developed in the ranks of his followers had so far found a legitimate expression in this one act
alone. Whereas Sabbatai Zevi had actually done strange and objectionable things in the name of the
holy, the celebration of this paradox among the "believers" was restricted to the domain of faith.
"Moderate" Sabbatianism drew a circle around the concept of "strange holiness" and forbade itself to
enter: it was indeed the Messiah's fate to scandalize Israel by his deeds, hut it was decidedly his fate
alone.
Once drawn, however, the line was clearly difficult to maintain. The more ardent "'believer"' found
himself becoming increasingly restive. Was he to abandon the Messiah entirely just when the latter
was engaged in the most bitter phase of his struggle with the power of evil? If the spark of the
redemption had been experienced by all, why should not all do as the Redeemer? How could one
refuse to go to his aid? And soon the cry was heard:
Let us surrender ourselves as he did! Let us descend together to the abyss before it shuts again! Let us
cram the maw of impurity with the power of holiness until it bursts from within.
Feelings such as these formed the psychological background for the great nihilistic conflagration that
was to break out in the "radical" wing of the Sabbatian movement. The fire was fed by powerful
religious emotions, but in the crucial moment these were to join forces with passions of an entirely
different sort, namely, with the instincts of anarchy and lawlessness that lie deeply buried in every
human soul. Traditionally Judaism had always sought to suppress such impulses, but now that they
were allowed to emerge in the revolutionary exhilaration brought on by the experience of redemption
and its freedom, they burst forth more violently than ever. An aura of holiness seemed to surround
them. They too would be granted their tikkun, if only in the "'hindparts of holiness,"
Ultimately, too, the disappointing course of external events had a telling effect. Though he possessed
the heroic soul of the warrior Bar Kokhba, Sabbatai Zevi had not gone forth to do battle on the Day
of the Lard. A yawning chasm had appeared between inner and outer realities, and once it was
decided that the former was the truer of the two, it was only to be expected that the value of the latter
would increasingly come to be rejected. It was precisely at this point that Messianism was
transformed into nihilism. Having been denied the poHtical and historical outlets it had originally
anticipated, the new sense of freedom now sought to express itself in the sphere of human morality.
The psychology of the '"radical" Sabbatians was utterly paradoxical and "Marranic," Essentially its
guiding principle was: Whoever is as he appears to be cannot be a true '"believer."' In practice this
meant the following:
The "true faith" cannot be a faith which men publicly profess. On the contrary, the '"true faith'" must
always be concealed. In fact, it is one's duty to deny it outwardly, for it is like a seed that has been
planted in the bed of the soul and it cannot grow unless it is first covered over. For this reason every
Jew is obliged to become a Marrano.
Again: a "true act" cannot be an act committed publicly, before the eyes of the world. Like the "true
faith," the "true act" is concealed, for only through concealment can it negate the falsehood of what is
explicit. Through a revolution of values, what was formerly sacred has become profane and what was
formerly profane has become sacred. It is no longer enough to invent new mystical meditations
(kavvanot) to suit the changed times. New forms of action are needed. Prior to the advent of the
Redeemer the inward and the outward were in harmony, and this is why it was possible to effect great
tikkunim by means of outwardly performing the commandments. Now that the Redeemer has arrived,
however, the two spheres are in opposition: the inward commandment, which alone can effect a
tikkun, has become synonymous with the outward transgression. Bittulah shel torah zehu kiyyumah:
the violation of the Torah is now its true fulfillment.
More than anything else, it was this insistence of the "radicals" on the potential holiness of sin-a
belief which they attempted to justify by citing ant of context the talmudic dictum (Nazir 23b) "A
transgression committed for its own sake is greater than a commandment not committed for its own
sake" -which alienated and offended the average Jew and caused even the "believers" themselves to
undergo the severest of conflicts.
In the history of religion, whenever we come across the doctrine of the holiness of sin it is always in
conjunction with one or another spiritualistic sect. The type of the pneumatic which I have previously
discussed, is particularly susceptible to such a teaching and it is hardly necessary to point out the
connections that exist between the theories of nihilism and those of the more extravagant forms of
spiritualism. To the pneumatic, the spiritual universe which he inhabits is of an entirely different
order from the world of ordinary flesh and blood, whose opinion of the new laws he has chosen to
live by is therefore irrelevant; insofar as he is above sin (an idea, common to many sectarian groups,
which occasionally occurs in the literature of Hasidism as well) he may do as the spirit dictates
without needing to take into account the moral standards of the society around him. Indeed he is, if
anything, duty-bound to violate and subvert this "ordinary" morality in the name of the higher
principles that have been revealed to him.
Although individuals with inclinations in this direction existed in Judaism also, particularly among
the Kabbalists, up to the time of the Sabbatians their activities were confined entirely to the level of
pure theory_ The most outstanding example of such speculative or virtual "spiritualism" to be found
in Kabbalistic literature is the Sefer ha-Temunah ("The Book of the Image"), a mystical treatise
written in early thirteenth-century Spain, in which it is stated that the Torah consists of a body of
spiritual letters which, though they remain essentially unchanged, present different appearances to the
reader in different cosmic aeons (shemitot). In effect, therefore, each aeon, or shemitah, possesses a
Torah of its own. In the current shemitah, which is ruled by the divine quahty of din, stern judgment
or rigor, the Torah is read in terms of prohibitions and commandments and even its most mystic
allusions must be interpreted in this light. In the coming aeon, however, which will be that of
rahamim, divine mercy, the Torah will be read differently, so that in all probability "what is
prohibited now will be permitted then." Everything depends on the particular aeon and the divine
quality (or attribute) presiding over it. Sensing the dangers inherent in such a doctrine, certain
Kabbalists, such as Moses Cordovero, attempted to dismiss it as entirely unworthy of consideration.
But it was precisely those works that propounded it, such as the Sefer ha-Temunah and the Sefer ha-
Kanah, which influenced the Sabbatians tremendously.
To the theory of the cosmic aeons the Sabbatians assimilated a second, originally unrelated concept.
The Zohar itself does not recognize Of, more exactly, does not utilize the idea of the shemitot at all (a
fact that was instrumental in making it suspect in the eyes of later Kabbalists), but in two later
additions to the Zoharic corpus, the Tikkunei ha-Zohar and the Ra'ya Mehemna, a great deal is said
on the subject of four emanated worlds, the World of atzilut or "Emanation," the World of beriah or
"Creation," the World of yetzirah or "Formation," and the World of asiyah or "Making," which
together comprise the different levels of spiritual reality. In connection with these we also
occasionally hear of a "Torah of atzilut" and a "Torah of beriah," the meanings of which are not
entirely clear. By the time of the Kabbalists of the School of Safed, however, we find these latter
terms employed in a definite sense to indicate that there are two aspects of the one essential Torah, i.
e., the Torah as it is understood in the supernal World of atzilut and the Torah as it is understood in
the lower World of beriah. What the Sabbatians now did was to seize this idea and expound it in the
light of the theory of cosmic aeons. The Torah of beriah they argued, borrowing a metaphor from the
Zohar (I, 23), is the Torah of the unredeemed world of exile, whose purpose it was to serve as a
garment for the Shekhinah in her exile, so that whoever observed its commandments and prohibitions
was like one who helped clothe the Shekhinah in her state of distress. The Torah of atzilut, on the
other hand, is the "true" Torah which, like "the mystery of the Godhead" it makes manifest, has been
in a state of concealment for the entire period of the exile. Now that the redemption has commenced
it is about to be revealed, and although in essence it is identical with the Torah of beriah, its way of
being read will be different, thus, all the commandments and prohibitions of the Torah of beriah will
now be reinterpreted by the light of the World of atzilut, in which (to take but one example), as is
stated in several Kabbalistic sources, there is no such thing as forbidden sexual practices. It was in
this manner that assertions made in a completely different spirit and in terms of a wholly different
understanding of the concepts "World of atzilut" and "Torah of atzilut" were pressed into service by
the "radical" Sabbatians as slogans for their new morality."
The concept of the two Torahs was an extremely important one for Sabbatian nihilism, not least
because it corresponded so perfectly to the "Marranic" mentality. In accordance with its purely
mystical nature the Torah of atzilut was to be observed strictly in secret; the Torah of beriah, on the
other hand, was to be actively and deliberately violated. As to how this was to be done, however, the
"radicals" could not agree and differing schools of thought evolved among them. It is important to
keep in mind that we are dealing here with an eruption of the most diverse sorts of emotion. The
Gordian knot binding the soul of the exilic Jew had been cut and a vertigo that ultimately was to be
his undoing seized the newly liberated individual: genuine desires for a reconsecration of life mingled
indiscriminately with all kinds of destructive and libidinal forces tossed up from the depths by an
irrepressible ground swell that undulated wildly between the earthly and the divine.
The psychological factors at work were particularly various in regard to the doctrine of the holiness
of sin, which though restricted at first by some of the "believers" to the performance of certain
specified acts alone, tended by virtue of its own inner logic to embrace more and more of the Mosaic
Law, especially the biblical prohibitions. Among the leaders of the Donmeh the antinomian blessing
composed by Sabbatai Zevi, "Blessed art Thou O Lord our God, King of the universe, who permittest
the forbidden [mattir isurim]," ** became a byword. {** A pun on the blessing in the morning
prayer, "Blessed art Thou O Lord our God, King of the universe, who freest those who are in
bondage [matter asurim]." [Translator's note.} In fact, two somewhat contradictory rationalizations of
antinomian behavior existed side by side. On the one hand there were those who said: in the world of
redemption there can be no such thing as sin, therefore all is holy and everything is permitted. To this
it was retorted: not at all!' what is needed rather is to totally deny the beriah, "Creation" (a word that
had by now come to denote every aspect of the old life and its institutions), to trample its values
underfoot, for only by casting off the last vestiges of these can we truly become free. To state the
matter in Kabbalistic terms, the one side proposed to withhold the sparks of holiness from the kelipot
until they perished from lack of nourishment, whereas the other insisted that the kelipot be positively
filled with holiness until they disintegrated from the pressure. But in either case, and despite the
many psychological nuances which entered into the "transgression committed for its own sake" and
the sacred sin, all the "radicals" were united in their belief in the sanctifying power of sin itself "that
dwelleth with them in the midst of their uncleannesses," as they were fond of interpreting the phrase
in Leviticus 16:16.
It would be pointless to deny that the sexual element in this outburst was very strong: a primitive
abandon such as the Jewish people would scarcely have thought itself capable of after so many
centuries of discipline in the Law joined hands with perversely pathological drives to seek a common
ideological rehabilitation. In the light of what happened there is little to wonder at when we read in
the texts of rabbinical excommunications dating from the eighteenth century that the children of the
"believers" were to be automatically considered bastards, just as it is perfectly understandable that
these children and grandchildren themselves should have done everything in their power to obscure
the history of their descent. One may readily grant, of course, as Zalman Rubashov justly observes in
his study of the Frankists, that "every sectarian movement is suspected by the church against which it
rebels of the most infamous misconduct and immorality," a conclusion which has led to the
hypothesis that such accusations invariably tell us more about the depraved fantasies of the accusers
than they do about the actual behavior of the accused.
It is Rubashov's opinion, indeed, that although the conduct of the Frankists was "in itself adequate
cause for indignation and amazement," there is also "every reason to assume that as a matter of
course it was greatly exaggerated-" As valid as the general rule may be, however, the plain facts of
the matter are that in the case of the "radical" Sabbatians there was hardly any need for exaggeration.
As Nahum Sokolow has pointed out in a note to Kraushar's history of Frankism," no matter how
thoroughly fantastic and partisan the allegations of the anti- Sabbatians may seem to us, we have not
the slightest justification for doubting their accuracy, inasmuch as in every case we can rely for
evidence on the "confessions" of the "believers" themselves, as well as on a number of their apologias
which have come down to us in both theoretical and homiletical form.
All this has recently been confirmed by an unexpected discovery. For many years well into the
present age, in fact the Sabbatians in Salonika, the Donmeh, regularly held a celebration on the
twenty- second day of the Hebrew month of Adar known as "the Festival of the Lamb," the exact
nature of which was kept a carefully guarded secret until some of the younger members of the sect
were finally prevailed upon to reveal it to outsiders. According to their account the festival included
an orgiastic rite called "the extinguishing of the lights." From what we know of this rite it probably
came to Salonika from Izmir, for both its name and its contents were evidently borrowed from the
pagan cult of "the Great Mother" which flourished in antiquity and continued to be practiced after its
general demise by a small sect of "Light Extinguishers" in Asia Minor under the cover of Islam.
There can be no question that the Donmeh took over this ancient bacchanalia based on immemorial
myths and adapted it to conform to their mystical belief in the sacramental value of exchanging
wives," a custom that was undoubtedly observed by other "radicals." in the movement as well.
The history of Sabbatian nihilism as a mass movement rather than as the concern of a few isolated
Jewish scholars who "donned the fez" like Sabbatai Zevi, began in 1683, when several hundred
Jewish families in Salonika converted to Islam "so as to conquer the kelipah from within." From this
point on organized Sabbatian nihilism appeared in four main forms:
1. That of the "believers" who chose "voluntary Marranism" in the form of Islam. The research that
has been done on the subject of the Donmeh, particularly the studies of Abraham Danon and
Solomon Rosanes, definitely establishes that the sect was purely Jewish in its internal character, not,
of course, in the accepted rabbinical sense, but rather in the sense of a mystical heresy. The apostasy
of the Donmeh aroused violent opposition among the "moderates," for reasons which I have already
made clear.
2. That of the "believers" who remained traditional Jews in outward life while inwardly adhering to
the "Torah of atzilut" Several groups of such individuals existed in the Balkans and Palestine
(beginning with the arrival there of Hayyim Malakh), and afterwards, in the eighteenth century, in
Northern and Eastern Europe, where they were concentrated particularly in Podolia and in such
nearby towns as Buczacz, Busk, Gliniany, Horodenka, Zhlkiew, Zloczow, Tysmenieca, Nadworna,
Podhaice, Rohatyn and Satanow, but also in other countries, especially Rumania, Hungary, and
Moravia.
3. That of the Frankists who "Marranized themselves" by converting to Catholicism.
4. That of the Frankists in Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, and Rumania, who chose to remain Jewish.
Despite the differences between these groups, all of them were part of a single larger entity.
Inasmuch as it was believed by all the "radicals' that externals were no indication of true faith,
apostasy was not a factor to come between them. A Jew in the ghetto of Prague, for example, who
went on publicly observing the commandments of the "Torah of beriah" while at the same time
violating them in private, knew perfectly well that the "believer" in Warsaw or Offenbach who had
recently been baptized "for mystical reasons" was still his brother, just as fifty years earlier
Sabbatians in Northern Europe had continued to remain in close touch with the Donmeh in Salonika
even after their conversion to Islam. Essentially, the "radicals" all inhabited the same intellectual
world, their attitudes toward the Torah, the Messiah, and "the mystery of the Godhead" were
identical, for all that they assumed new and unusual forms among the Frankists.
VI
•The systematic violation of the Torah of beriah was considered by the "radical" Sabbatians to be the
principal attestation of the new epoch ushered in by Sabbatai Zevi. But exactly how was one to
distinguish between what belonged to the lower World of beriah and its Torah, and what belonged to
the higher World of atzilut and its Torah? Here opinion was divided. Baruchya Russo, better known
as Berahya or Berochia, the leader of the radical wing of the Donmeh in the beginning of the
eighteenth century, preached to his followers that even the thirty-six transgressions deemed worthy
by the Torah of the ultimate punishment of karet, i.e., being "cut off" from Israel and from God (a
category that included all the forbidden sexual practices), were aspects of the Torah of beriah only."
By the same token it was decreed permissible to eat of the sinew of the thigh-vein, for with the
advent of the Messiah "Jacob's thigh has been restored." ++
[++The prohibition against eating the sinew of the thigh-vein is to be found in Genesis 32, which tells
of Jacob's wrestling with the angel: "Therefore the children of Israel eat not the sinew of the thigh-
vein which is upon the hollow of the thigh unto this day; because he touched the hollow of Jacob's
thigh, even in the sinew of the thigh-vein" (32:33). [Tf . Note]]
In the opinion of some, who based their argument on a passage from the Zohar, refraining from the
sinew of the thigh- vein and fasting on Tish'ah be-Av were mutually connected observances: "As long
as it is forbidden to eat on Tish'ah be-Av it is forbidden to eat the sinew of the thigh-vein, and when it
is permitted to eat on Tish'ah be-Av it is permitted to eat the sinew of the thigh- vein:' Others went
still further: "It is widely known that belonging to these sects are those who believe that [with the
advent of the Messiah} the Torah has been nullified [betelah] and that in the future it will be [read}
without [reference to} the commandments, for they say that the violation of the Torah has become its
fulfillment, which they illustrate by the example of a grain of wheat that rots in the earth." In other
words, just as a grain of wheat must rot in the earth before it can sprout, so the deeds or the
"believers" must be truly "rotten" before they can germinate the redemption. This metaphor, which
appears to have been extremely popular, conveys the whole of sectarian Sabbatian psychology in a
nutshell: in the period of transition, while the redemption is still in a state of concealment, the Torah
in its explicit form must be denied, for only thus can it too become "concealed" and ultimately
renewed.
There were, however, even more extreme cases than these. Jacob Emden relates how he was told by a
rabbinical associate of great learning, the Rabbi of the Amsterdam Ashkenazim, that when he was in
Zhlkiew he became involved with one of these heretics, a man named Fishl Zloczow, who was
expertly versed in the entire Talmud, which he knew practically by heart, for he was in the habit of
shutting himself up in his room in order to pore over it, never ceasing from his studies (for he was a
wealthy man) nor engaging in idle conversation. He would linger over his prayers twice as long as
the Hasidim of olden times and was considered by all to be a most pious and ascetic individual. Once
he came to him [i.e., to Emden's informant] in order to confess his sins and revealed that he belonged
to the sect of Sabbatai Zevi, that he had eaten leavened bread on the Passover, and so forth, carrying
on contritely all the while as though he had truly repented of his deeds. Soon afterwards, however, he
was caught in the act of committing grave transgressions of the Law and was excommunicated by the
rabbis of Lithuania and Volhynia. When asked why he had not continued his hidden sins in private
instead of [committing acts that led to his exposal] in public he replied that on the contrary, the more
shame he was forced to suffer for his faith, the better it was.
•Here we are confronted with the type of the "believer" in its most paradoxical form, and,
significantly, the individual in question was no ordinary Jew, but was rather conceded to be an
excellent rabbinic scholar by an eminent authority who was in a position to know. One could hardly
wish for a more perfect example of the nihilistic rejection of the Torah of beriah, which in this case
was studied for the sale purpose that it might be better violated in spirit! The Jewish world was
indeed showing signs of inner decay if types such as these were able to make themselves so easily at
home in its midst. And yet underneath all these vagaries there was obviously a deep-seated desire for
something positive which for lack of suitable conditions under which to function had come to nought.
Illustrative parables and homilies were also brought to bear on the doctrine of the sacred sin itself,
and the reader cannot fail to notice that they are more than just paradoxical and highly offensive
sayings. They breathe an entirely new spirit. "The patriarchs came into the world to restore [le-
takken] the senses and this they did to four of them. Then came Sabbatai Zevi and restored the fifth,
the sense of touch, which according to Aristotle and Maimonides is a source of shame to us, but
which now has been raised by him to a place of honor and glory." As late as the beginning of the
nineteenth century we find a fervent "believer" in Prague commenting in connection with the verse in
Psalms 68, "Thou hast ascended on high. Thou hast led captivity captive," that the captive in question
is the spiritual Torah of atzilut, which is called a "prisoner" because it was captured by Moses and
forced to dwell in the prison cell of the material Torah of beriah:
•Such is the case with the inner Torah, for the outer is in opposition to the inner. . . and must be
annihilated before the inner can be freed. And just as a woman from Ishmael [i.e., from a Moslem
country] feels as though she has been freed from her confinement when she comes to Edam [i.e., a
Christian country] ... so continuing [to live] in Israel under the Torah of beriah is called captivity, nor
can she be given in marriage under the Torah of beriah but only in Edam, whereas in Israel one must
remain a virgin-and [he who is able to, let him] understand.
•The cryptic Frankist allusions at the end of this passage to Christianity and to "remaining a virgin"
are rather obscure, but it is evident from the whole how strongly the rejection of the lower, or
material, Torah of beriah continued to be upheld by Sabbatian Jews right down to the movement's last
years. Elsewhere the author of the above," a thoughtful and deeply religious individual, explains that
the commonly expressed belief that "no mischief can befall the righteous man [Provo 12:21] nor can
he be a cause of sin" must be understood in the light of the Torah of atzilut to mean that no matter
how sinful the acts of the righteous may appear to others they are in fact always fully justified in
themselves. He then adduces a number of astute mystical reasons for the necessity of certain
transgressions, such as eating on the fast days, which he defends by arguing that fasting is a kind of
spiritual "bribe" given to the kelipot and as such is not in keeping with the pure spiritual nature of the
Torah of atzilut.
As to the ultimate step of apostasy, the arguments presented by the "radicals" in its behalf closely
resemble those brought forward by the "moderates" to vindicate the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi
himself. We happen to have in our possession an illuminating document bearing on the disputes that
arose over this question among the "believers" in the form of a homily by the well-known Sabbatian
Nehemiah Hayan on the verse (Deut. 29:17), "Lest there be among you man, or woman, or family, or
tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God, to go serve the gods of those nations;
lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood."" The paradoxical solution
arrived at by Hayon toward the close of his long discourse, which I quote here in abbreviated form, is
an invaluable reflection of the perplexity and deep inner conflict experienced by those Sabbatians
who were unable to choose between the "radical" and "moderate" positions:
•It is supposed among those versed .in esoteric lore that the redemption can be brought about in either
one of two ways: either Israel will have the power to withdraw all the sparks of holiness from (the
realm of] the kelipah so that the kelipah will wither into nothing or else the kelipah will become so
filled with holiness that because of this repletion it must be spewn forth .... And this [fact), that the
coming of the redemption can be prompted in one of two ways, was what the rabbis of blessed
memory had in mind when they said that the Son of David would come either in a generation that
was entirely guiltless (meaning when Israel by virtue of its good deeds had withdrawn all the sparks
of holiness from the kelipah), or else: in a generation that was entirely guilty (meaning when the
kelipah had become so filled with holiness that it split its maw and perished) .... And it is in
consequence of this thesis that many, though their intentions are good, have mistakenly said, "Let us
go worship other gods that we may fill the kelipah to bursting that it die:' ... Nay, do not reason with
yourself. "Since it is impossible for all to become guiltless so as to withdraw the holiness from the
kelipah, it is better that I become a sinner and so hasten the doom of the kelipah in that way that it
might die and salvation might come;" but rather "Wait for the Lord and keep His way" [Ps. 37:34]: it
is better that you endure the length of the exile and look to salvation than that you sin by worshipping
other gods in order to bring on the redemption. This brings us to the meaning of the verse, "Lest there
be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood [29:17], and it come to pass when he heareth
the words of this curse [etc.; 29:18]. In other words, when he hears the words of the curse that is
threatened ... he turns away his heart from God and blesses himself in his heart [29:18], saying:
"What Moses has written is true" ... but [he thinks that] if he does not turn away his heart from God
and if his intentions are good, that is, if he means to quench the kelipah by giving it holiness to drink,
then certainly no evil will befall him, but on the contrary, God will turn the curse iota a blessing. And
this is the meaning of the words '.'and he blesses himself in his heart," for he says to himself, "I -am
sure that no harm will befall me ... because I did not turn my heart [from God} ... and because my
intentions are good ... [namely} to water the kelipah, the thirsty one, with the holiness that I extend to
her that she may partake of it and die. It is of such a one that Moses said, "The Lord will not be
willing to pardon him" [29:19]. ... Even though his intentions were good and he only desired to
hasten the redemption, he cannot be forgiven.... Nor does (the principle of] "A transgression
committed for its own sake" [is greater than a commandment not committed for its own sake] apply
here, since there [in its original context] it refers to an ordinary sin, as in the case of Jael [in killing
Sisera.; Judg. 4}, whereas here, where it is a question of worshiping other gods, the Lord will not be
willing to pardon him.... They [who act on this mistaken assumption] are powerless to destroy the
kelipah; on the contrary, he [who attempts to fill the kelipah with holiness] will remain stuck in its
midst, and this is why it is said that the Lord will not be willing to pardon him.... There is also
another possible explanation [of the verse}, namely, that when Moses said that the Lord would not be
willing to pardon him he was not pronouncing a curse ... but was thinking the following: since he [the
deliberate sinner} believes in his heart that God will not account his actions as sins, but will rather
reward them ... it is inconceivable that he should ever repent for he does not believe he has done
wrong ... How then can the Holy One, blessed be He, forgive him? On the contrary, each time [he
sins} he only angers Him the more... by thinking that he has done good instead of evil ... and by
saying that the greater a sinner he is the more he hastens the coming of the redemption. Such a one
undoubtedly incurs the full power of the curse, since he deliberately violates all its injunctions ...
"And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel" [29:20]. .. But perhaps one
can interpret the meaning of the text as follows: since such a person intends his deeds to redound to
the benefit of all Israel ... if after sinning and passing through the kelipah he reconsiders and repents
completely, he undoubtedly succeeds in raising up many sparks from the kelipah, just as in the case
of the human body when one is administered an emetic he does not simply vomit up the drug itself,
but rather haying opened his mouth proceeds to spew forth both the drug and everything that was
near it. And so it is with the kelipah: sometimes it gains power over man whose soul is great and does
him harm, but as soon as he repents he spews forth all that was within him. And this is what Solomon
meant when he said (Ecel. 8:9] there is a time when one man rules another to do him harm.39 [But
since] There is a time [for such things} and miracles do not happen every hour, therefore Moses
warns that one should not place himself in this peril ... "And the Lord shall separate him unto evil"; in
other words, if he [the deliberate sinner] has been a cause of evil he is singled out [for judgment]
from the tribes of Israel, for [it is a halakhic principle that] one cannot commit a transgression for
another by proxy even if one has been authorized to do so, much less if one has not been, so that
having gone [and committed evil} of his own accord, there is no doubt that the evil which results
[from his actions} will not be imputed to Israel as a whole- But if he does good-that is, if he repents
wholeheartedly and raises up sparks from Israel by virtue of his repentance-then all the tribes of
Israel have a part in this good; it is only in the evil that they do not have a part.
Likely as not, this entire passage has an autobiographical basis. In any event, it is clear that the
attitude of its author toward the "voluntary Marranos" whose conversion he decries yet understands
so well is far from being hostile or vindictive.
One of the strongest factors in the development of a nihilistic mentality among the "radicals" was
their desire to negate an objective historical order in which the exile continued in full force and the
beginnings of the redemption went unnoticed by all but the "believers" themselves. Understandably,
during the period now in question this antipathy toward outward reality remained confined to the area
of religion alone, the world of ghetto Jewry still being sufficiently stable to preclude its active
politicalization. Prior to the French Revolution, indeed, there was no connection between the ideas or
Sabbatianism and the growing undercurrent of discontent with the ancien rgime in Europe. It was
only when changing times had widened the "believers'" horizons and revealed to them the existence
of more tangible ways affecting the course of history than the violation of the Torah of beriah that
they too began to dream of revolutionizing the structure of society itself. In a sense this was to mean
the restoration to Jewish Messianism of its traditional political content, which, as I have shown, the
Sabbatian movement transformed beyond recognition. As long as external conditions were not
conducive to this, even the "radicals" remained politically unaware, nor were they able to conceive of
any other method of revitalizing Jewish life than the subversion of its most sacred values; but it is not
surprising that once the opportune moment arose the essentially this worldly emphasis of Jewish
Messianism which Sabbatianism had striven to suppress should have come to be stressed again. I
shall have more to say on this important subject; first, however, I would like to comment on a related
matter, one which will serve as yet another example of the uniquely paradoxical dialectic of
Sabbatian thought: its attitude toward Palestine.
Immediately after the collapse of the initial Messianic expectations aroused by Sabbatai Zevi,
scattered groups of Sabbatians began to express their opposition to the idea of emigration to the Holy
Land. As has now been established, Nathan of Gaza himself was of the opinion that "for the time
being it is best not to go to the Land of Israel." But this point of view did not go unchallenged. A
number of "believers," especially after 1700, attempted to demonstrate by mystical reasons that in the
light of Sabbatian doctrine emigration was indeed desirable after all. Individuals from both the circle
of Abraham Rovigo and the whole band of "Hasidim" centered around Rabbi Judah Hasid actually
settled in Palestine as a result of specifically Sabbatian aspirations. One belief that was current at the
time was that on the occasion of Sabbatai Zevi's second advent, which would take place forty years
after his "concealment," a true mystical knowledge of his nature would be revealed to those of his
followers, and only to those, who were living in the Holy Land. Sabbatian nihilists like Hayyim
Malakh, who were contemporaries of such groups, also were in favor of going to the Land of Israel,
from which they too undoubtedly expected special revelations to come; in addition, they may have
felt that there was an advantage to violating the Torah of beriah on the most consecrated ground of
all, on the analogy of "conquering the queen in her own home." As late as the middle of the
eighteenth century Sabbatian nihilists in Podolia still had contacts and acquaintances in Palestine,
while a number of the emissaries sent by the Palestinian Jewish community to raise funds in the
Diaspora were Sabbatian scholars who acted on the side both as secret propagators of the faith and as
contacts between "believers" in different localities. Many of these, such as the author of The Book of
the Adornment of Days, a beautiful and detailed description (in Hebrew) of the life of a Kabbalist
devotee all through the year, were undoubtedly "moderates," but regarding many others we will
probably never know exactly where they stood. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century,
however, a reaction took place, so that we find a distinct anti-Palestinian bias setting in throughout
the movement. Whether or not the anti-Palestinian sermon cited by Jacob Emden in his Edut ben-
Ya'akov ( 44b) is really the handiwork of Jonathan Eibeschtz is uncertain, but in any case there
can be no question of its being a total fabrication, inasmuch as similar ideas to those expressed in it
can be found in other Sabbatian documents which Emden could not possibly have seen.4' Among the
Frankists an astonishing and clear-cut ideology of Jewish territorialism (as distinct from Palestine
centered tendencies) developed at about this time, apparently as a result of Frank's own personal
ambitions. In a word, on the very eve of its absorption of new political ideas Sabbatian nihilism
completely reversed its previously positive evaluation of the role of the Land of Israel, so that when
shortly afterward it began to speak the language of a revived political Messianism and to prophesy
the rebirth of the Jewish nation as one outcome of an impending world revolution, there was no
longer any real interest on its part in the idea of the land of Israel as a national center. As stated by the
Frankist writer in Prague whom we have already had occasion to quote, Israel's exile is not a
consequence of its sins at all, but is rather part of a plan designed to bring about the destruction of the
kelipot all over the world, so that "even if several thousands or tens-of-thousands or Jews are enabled
to return to the Land of Israel, nothing has been completed." According to the same author this new
doctrine of the exile is "a secret mystical principle which was hidden from all the sages until it was
[recently] revealed in Poland." And thus we see how in the final stages of Sabbatianism the intrinsic
nature of the exile came to be reconsidered in an entirely new light.
The figure of Sabbatai Zevi himself was also recast by the passage of time, becoming entirely
mythical: gradually the element of historical truth was diminished until nothing was left but a
legendary hero who had inaugurated a new epoch of world history. Even in Sabbatai Zevi's lifetime
one of his first disciples, Abraham Yakhini, could write of him (in his book Vavei ha-Amudim) "Just
as one of the seventy faces of the Torah is concerned entirely with the resurrection of the dead, as is
to be seen in [the commentaries of] the Zohar on several chapters [of the Pentateuch], [the allusions
to the resurrection in] the other chapters being inaccessible to us because of the limitations of our
intellects, so one of the seventy faces of the Torah is concerned entirely with the Messiah, our lord
and master, may his majesty increase, and shortly, when he reveals himself to us [completely], we
shall be privileged to understand the entire Torah in this way." it is little wonder that the concrete
historical figure of Sabbatai Zevi came to be transformed by his followers in much the same manner
as Jesus' was by his, if not more so, since his conversion into a mythological figure was even more
complete. Like the early Christians, in fact, the "radicals" eventually came to believe that the Messiah
had not been a mere superior human being, but an incarnation of God Himself in human form. This
new interpretation of "the mystery of the Godhead" was accepted by all the "radical" groups down to
the last of the Frankists and was considered by them to be the most profound mystic truth in their
entire body of doctrine. Whence it came cannot yet be determined: perhaps from the collective
memory of thousands of Marranos, perhaps from Christian books or anti-Christian polemics, or
perhaps from the "believers' " own inner conflict, the paradoxical cause of which an apostate Messiah-
may have led them to adopt the same paradoxical solution that a like contradiction- a crucified
Messiah produced in yet another group of Jews caught in the toils of religious turmoil. And perhaps,
too, all of these factors combined to work together.
The doctrine of an incarnate God, which immediately became a bone of contention between the
"radicals" and the "moderates" in the Sabbatian camp, was limited at first to the figure of Sabbatai
Zevi himself. According to one view I when the redemption began, "the Holy One, blessed be He,
removed Himself upward and Sabbatai Zevi ascended to be God in His place." Since in the Sabbatian
faith "the Holy One, blessed be He" was synonymous, as we have seen, with "the God of Israel," this
meant that Sabbatai Zevi had now assumed the latter's title and become "the Holy King." Before
long, however, the "believers" in Salonika replaced this teaching with another: "the Holy King" had
Himself been incarnated in the person of the Messiah in order to restore the world and nullify the
Torah of beriah. It was in this form that the doctrine was accepted by the Sabbatian nihilists in
Podolia. A prayer of theirs that has come into our possession reads, "May it be Thy will that we
prosper in Thy Torah and cling to Thy commandments, and mayst Thou purify my thoughts to
worship Thee in truth ... and may all our deeds in the Torah of atzilut [meaning: transgressions!] be
only for the sake of Thy great name, O Senor Santo," that we may recognize Thy greatness, for Thou
art the true God and King of the universe, our living Messiah who wast in this earthly world and didst
nullify the Torah of beriah and didst reascend to Thy place to conduct all the worlds."
But this doctrine of a single .incarnation did not long remain unaltered in turn. Apparently among the
Sephardic converts to Islam the belief developed that the leaders of the "believers" in every age were
reincarnations of Sabbatai Zevi. Whether this actually meant that these leaders-particularly Baruchya,
who was one of the foremost promulgators of the new belief were thought to be, or considered
themselves, divine incarnations no less than the Messiah himself is not entirely clear, but there are
good reasons for believing that the gospel preached by Jacob Frank at the beginning of his career was
nothing but this Sephardic teaching with a number of modifications to suit his own personality, and
Frank himself, though he never said so in so many words, was correctly understood by his disciples
to imply that he personally was the living God once again incarnated on earth. Not without a certain
"consistency" the Frankists held that each of the three hypostases of the Godhead had its individual
incarnation in a separate Messiah: Sabbatai Zevi, whom Frank was in the habit of referring to simply
as "The First One," had been the embodiment of "the Ancient Holy One," Frank himself was the
personification of "the Holy King," and the third hypostasis, the Shekhinah, variously known in the
writings of the Kabbalah as "the Kingdom" (malkhut), "the Lady" (matronita), "the Maiden" and "the
Doe," was to appear in the form of a woman. It is hard not to associate this last novelty-a female
Messiah, referred to by Frank as "the Virgin," who was yet to be revealed and whose task it would be
to complete the work of the redemption with the influence of certain mystical Christian sects
prevalent at about this time in Eastern Europe that believed in a triad of saviors corresponding to the
threefold nature of God and in a feminine incarnation of the Sophia, the Divine Wisdom Of Holy
Spirit. With one of these groups, in fact, the "Philipovicites" in Rumania and the Ukraine, the
Frankists were in such close contact that one of its former leaders publicly defended them before the
Catholic authorities of Poland.
Interpreted in this manner the redemption was a process filled with incarnations of the divinity. Even
the "radicals" in Prague who clung to their Jewish identity and strove to defend their beliefs by means
of Jewish concepts and sources were won over to this view, and although their hostility to
Christianity as an institution knew no bounds, references to "the mystery of the incarnation" can be
found throughout their literature. The anti-Sabbatian polemicists who accused the "believers" of
corporealizing the idea of God were perfectly right in their assertions, but this fact, which seemed to
them a damning admission of weakness, was in reality their opponents' greatest source of pride I
"Because the Godhead has a body the sting of death is gone," wrote one "believer." On the surface it
would seem that the exaggerated spirituality of the World of atzilut and the yearning to see God in
the flesh that was evidenced by the doctrine of a Messianic incarnation were two mutually opposed
tendencies, and yet, after all that has been said here, it should not be difficult to see that underlying
both was the struggle of a new sensibility toward life to express itself by means of a religious
vocabulary inherited from the old. In such cases the paradox is always the only solution.
In summary, the five distinguishing beliefs of "radical" Sabbatianism are:
1. The belief in the necessary apostasy of the Messiah and in the sacramental nature of the descent
into the realm of the kelipot.
2. The belief that the "believer" must not appear to be as he really is.
3. The belief that the Torah of atzilut must be observed through the violation of the Torah of beriah.
4. The belief that the First Cause and the God of Israel are not the same, the former being the God of
rational philosophy, the latter the God of religion.
5. The belief in three hypostases of the Godhead, all of which have been or will be incarnated in
human form.
These theses amply demonstrate, in my opinion, that in the onward course of the Sabbatian
movement the world of traditional Judaism was shattered beyond repair. In the minds of those who
took part in this revolutionary destruction of old values a special susceptibility to new ideas
inevitably came to exist. Well might the "believers" have asked how long their newly released
energies and emotions were to go on being aimlessly squandered. Were their lives required to be
dominated by paradoxes forever?
But just as the character of the Sabbatian movement was dictated by the circumstances of the
movement's birth, so, in turn, it was to dictate the circumstances of the movement's disintegration and
death. For as the "believers" had meant to fire the sparks of holiness with the kelipot, so they were to
wander in the blackest side," the dark side of Hfe, so they were to dance in the devil's own arms. And
last and most ironically of all: as they had hastened to come to the aid of the Redeemer- "to do as he
did for strange are his deeds, to worship as he worships for his worship is alien" (Isa. 28:21 )~so they
were to be induced in the end to play into the hands of a man like Jacob Frank.
VII
•Jacob Frank (1726-91) will always be remembered as one of the most frightening phenomena in the
whole of Jewish history: a religious leader who, whether for purely self-interested motives or
otherwise, was in all his actions a truly corrupt and degenerate individual. Indeed, it might be
plausibly argued that in order to completely exhaust its seemingly endless potential for the
contradictory and the unexpected the Sabbatian movement was in need of just such a strongman, a
man who could snuff out its last inner lights and pervert whatever will to truth and goodness was still
to be found in the maze-like ruins of the "believers" souls. Even if one is willing to concede that the
doctrine of the sacred sin, the mitzvah ha-ba' ah ba-averah, was not lacking in certain insights, there
can be no question but that these were thoroughly debased upon coming in contact with the person of
Frank. But just as the "believers" had deliberately chosen to follow that dangerous path along which
nothing is impossible, so it was perhaps precisely this that attracted them to Frank, for here was a
man who was not afraid to push on to the very end, to take the final step into the abyss, to drain the
cup of desolation and destruction to the lees until the last bit of holiness had been made into a
mockery. His admirers, who themselves fell far short of him in respect of this ability, were won over
by his intrepidness, which neither the fear of God nor the terrors of the bottomless pit were able to
daunt, and saw in him the type of the true saint, a new Sabbatai Zevi and an incarnate God.
If the full truth be told, however, even after one has taken into account Frank's unscrupulous
opportunism, his calculated deceits, and his personal ambitions, none of which really concerns us
here, he remains a figure of tremendous if satanic power. True, neither the promises and pledges with
which he allured his disciples, nor his visionary schemes for the future that was to follow the general
cataclysm of the times seem particularly impressive today, although of his territorialist program it
may at least be said that besides revealing his own lust for power it expressed in a bizarre yet
unmistakable manner the desire of his followers for a reconstruction of Jewish national and even
economic existence; and yet for all the negativism of his teachings, they nonetheless contained a
genuine creed of life.
Frank was a nihilist and his nihilism possessed a rare authenticity. Certainly, its primitive ferocity is
frightening to behold. Certainly too, Frank himself was not only an unlettered man, but boasted
continually of his own lack of culture. But in spite of all this, and here is the significant point, we are
confronted in his person with the extraordinary spectacle of a powerful and tyrannical soul living in
the middle of the eighteenth century and yet immersed entirely in a mythological world of its own
making. Out of the ideas of Sabbatianism, a movement in which he was apparently raised and
educated, Frank was able to weave a complete myth of religious nihilism. This, surely, is worthy of
attention.
Frank was not an original speculative thinker, but he did have a decided talent for the pithy, the
strikingly illustrative, and the concretely symbolic expression. Despite their nihilistic content his
sayings in The Sayings of the Lord (Slowa Panskie) are not very different in form from those of
many famous Hasidic Zaddikim, and for all his despotic nature he possessed a hidden poetic impulse
which appears all the more surprising in the light of his customary savagery. Even Kraushar, who like
his predecessors, was intent on emphasizing everything that seemed incoherent or grotesque in
Frank's recorded sayings, was forced to admit that on occasion they show vigor and imagination. For
my own part, I fail to see how any sensitive individual who reads the many excerpts published by
Kraushar from The Sayings of the Lord with a degree of understanding- something which it is far
from impossible to do-can contemplate them without emotion. But how many have even troubled to
make the effort?
Frank was particularly gifted at the creation of new images and symbols, and in spite of its popular
coloration his language is full of mystical overtones. Of the terminology of the Kabbalah he rarely
made use, at times even criticizing the Sabbatian sectarians in Podolia for their continuing absorption
in Kabbalistic ideas which he called "madness." Anyone familiar with "radical" Sabbatian thought,
however, can readily detect its continued presence beneath the new verbal facade. Thus, in place of
the familiar Sabbatian "three knots of the faith" we now have "the Good God," "the Big Brother who
stands before the Lord," and "the Virgin," terms which are highly suggestive for all their earthy
quality. The kelipah, the Torahs of beriah and atzilut, the sparks of holiness, indeed all the conceptual
usages that are basic to Sabbatian theological discourse, have disappeared entirely, to be replaced by
a completely exoteric vocabulary. Even the figure of Sabbatai Zevi has greatly declined in
importance. The world of Sabbatianism itself, on the other hand, remains intact, or rather, has
reached that ultimate stage of its development where it verges on self-annihilation.
In the following pages I will attempt to present an overall view of Frank's religious teachings, to the
extent, that is, that they can be fully reconstructed from his many sayings, and in a form that they
apparently did not completely attain until after his conversion to Catholicism. Although they will
occasionally seem to contradict one another, they are for the most part mutually consistent. The
somberness of their world or, more accurately, world ruin, did not in fact encourage a great deal of
variety, although this did not prevent the "believers," including even the traditionalists among them in
Prague, from finding a dark fascination in its tidings, which Frank himself brutally summed up in a
single brusk remark: "It is one thing to worship God and quite another to follow the path that I have
taken."
According to Frank, the "cosmos" (tevel), or "earthly world" (tevel ha- gashmi) as it was called by the
sectarians in Salonika, is not the creation of the Good or Living God, for if it were it would be eternal
and man would be immortal, whereas as we see from the presence of death in the world this is not at
all the case" To be sure, there are "worlds" which belong to "the Good God" too, but these are hidden
from all but the "believers." In them are divine powers, one of whom is "the King of Kings," who is
also known as "the Big Brother" and "He who stands before the Lord." The evil power that created
the cosmos and introduced death into the world, on the other hand, is connected with the feminine,
and is most probably composed of three "gods" or "Rulers of the World," one of whom is the Angel
of Death. In any case, it is these "Rulers," all of whom have been incarnated on earth in human form,
who block the path leading to "the Good God," who is unknown to men, for mystic knowledge of
Him has as yet been revealed to no one, nor has the holy soul (nishmata) that emanates from Him
been in any creature, not even in Sabbatai Zevi.58In the current aeon there are three "Rulers of the
World": "Life," "Wealth," and "Death," the last of which must be replaced by "Wisdom" a task,
however, that is not easily accomplished, for although "Wisdom" is in some mysterious manner
connected to "the Good God," the latter is still not able to reveal Himself to mankind, "for the world
is in the thrall of laws that are no good."
Hence, it is necessary to cast off the domination of these laws, which are laws of death and harmful to
mankind. To bring this about, the Good God has sent messengers such as the patriarchs "who dug
wells," Moses, Jesus, and others, into the world. Moses pointed out the true way, but it was found to
be too difficult, whereupon he resorted to "another religion" and presented men with "the Law of
Moses)" whose commandments are injurious and useless. "The Law of the Lord." on the other hand-
the spiritual Torah of the Sabbatians-"is perfect" (Ps. 19:8), only no man has yet been able to attain
it'2 Finally, the Good God sent Sabbatai Zevi into the world, but he too was powerless to achieve
anything," because he was unable to find the true way" "But my desire is to lead you towards Life."
Nevertheless, the way to Life is not easy, for it is the way of nihilism and it means to free oneself of
all laws, conventions, and religions, to adopt every conceivable attitude and to reject it, and to follow
one's leader step for step into the abyss'6 Baptism is a necessity, as Frank said prior to his conversion,
"because Christianity has paved the way for us." Thirty years afterwards this same "Christian"
observed: "This much I tell you: Christ, as you know, said that he had come to redeem the world from
the hands of the devil, but I have come to redeem it from all the laws and customs that have ever
existed. It is my task to annihilate all this so that the Good God can reveal Himself."
The annihilation of every religion and positive system of belief— this was the "true way" the
"believers" were expected to follow. Concerning the redemptive powers of havoc and destruction
Frank's imagination knew no limits. "Wherever Adam trod a city was built, but wherever I set foot all
will be destroyed, for I came into this world only to destroy and to annihilate. But what I build, will
last forever." Mankind is engaged in a war without quarter with the "no good" laws that are in
power- "and I say to you, all who would be warriors must be without religion, which means that they
must reach freedom under their own power and seize hold of the Tree of Life." . No region of the
human soul can remain untouched by this struggle. In order to ascend one must first descend. "No
man can climb a mountain until he has first descended to its foot. Therefore we must descend and be
cast down to the bottom rung, for only then can we climb to the infinite. This is the mystic principle
of Jacob's Ladder, which I have seen and which is shaped like a V." Again, "I did not come into this
world to lift you up but rather to cast you down to the bottom of the abyss. Further than this it is
impossible to descend, nor can one ascend again by virtue of one's own strength, for only the Lord
can raise one up from the depths by the power of His hand." The descent into the abyss requires not
only the rejection of all religions and conventions, but also the commission of "strange acts," and this
in turn demands the voluntary abasement of one's own sense of self, so that libertinism and the
achievement of that state of utter shamelessness which leads to a tikkun of the soul are one and the
same thing.
"We are all now under the obligation to enter the abyss" in which all laws and religions are
annihilated." But the way is perilous, for there are powers and "gods" —these being none other than
the three "Rulers of the World"— that do not let one pass. It is necessary to elude them and continue
onward, and this none of the ancients were able to do, neither Solomon nor Jesus, nor even Sabbatai
Zevi. To accomplish this, that is, to overcome the opposing powers, which are the gods of other
religions, it is imperative that one be "perfectly silent," even deceitful. This is the mystic principle of
"the burden of silence" (masa' dumah; Isa. 21 : 11 ), i.e., of maintaining the great reserve that is
becoming to the "believer" (a new version of the original Sabbatian injunction against appearing as
one really is!). Indeed, this is the principle of the "true way" itself:
"Just as a man who wishes to conquer a fortress does not do it by means of making a speech, but
must go there himself with all his forces, so we too must go our way in silence." "It is better to see
than to speak, for the heart must not reveal what it knows to the mouth," "Here there is no need for
scholars because here belongs the burden of silence." "When I was baptized in Lvov I said to you: so
far, so good! But from here on: a burden of silence! Muzzle your mouths!" "Our forefathers were
always talking, only what good did it do them and what did they accomplish? But we are under the
burden of silence: here we must be quiet and bear what is needful, and that is why it is a burden."
"When a man goes from one place to another he should hold his tongue. It is the same as with a man
drawing a bow: the longer he can hold his breath, the further the arrow will fly. And so here too: the
longer one holds his breath and keeps silent, the further the arrow will fly."
From the abyss, if only the "burden of silence" is borne, "holy knowledge" will emerge. The task,
then, is "to acquire knowledge," "and the passageway to knowledge is to combine with the nations"
but not, of course, to intermingle with them. He who reaches the destination will lead a life of
anarchic liberty as a free man. "The place that we are going to tolerates no laws, for all that comes
from the side of Death, whereas we are bound for Life." The name of this place is "Edom" or "Esau,"
and the way to it, which must be followed by the light of "knowledge" (gnosis) and under the "burden
of silence" through the depths of the abyss, is called "the way to Esau:' This was the road taken by
Jacob the patriarch, "the first Jacob," all of whose deeds prefigured those of "the last Jacob"-Jacob
Frank."Esau" too was foreshadowed by the Esau of the Bible, though only in a veiled way: "Esau the
son of Jacob was but the curtain that hangs before the entrance to the king's inner chambers." Herein
lies the mystical principle of the wells dug by the patriarchs, as well as the mystic content of the story
(Gen. 29) of how Jacob came to a well that had already been dug, rolled the stone from its mouth, and
encountered Rachel and her father Laban. Another who found the passage to "Esau" was the sorcerer
Balaam." "Esau" belongs to the realm of the Good God where the power of death is made nought,
and it is also the dwelling place of "the Virgin," she who is called Rachel in the biblical stories about
Jacob and is elsewhere known as "the beautiful maiden who has no eyes." She it is who is the real
Messiah (who cannot, contrary to traditional opinion, be a man) and to her "all the king's weapons are
surrendered," for she is also the much sought-after "Divine Wisdom" or Sophia who is destined to
take "Death's" place as one of the three "Rulers of the World." For the present, however, she is
hidden in a castle and kept from the sight of all living creatures; all the "strange acts," in comparison
with which the "strange fire" offered before the Lord by Aaron's two sons (Lev. 10) was but a trifle,
are committed for the sale purpose of reaching her. Again, she is the "holy serpent" who guard the
garden, and he who asked what the serpent was doing in Paradise was simply betraying his
ignorance. As of yet, the place of "Esau," the home of "the Virgin" and or true salvation, has not been
attained by anyone, but its hidden light will first be revealed to the "believers," who will have the
distinction of being its soldiers and fighting on its behalf.
These are some of the main features of Frank's teaching. It is a veritable myth of religious nihilism,
the work of a man who did not live at all in the world of rational argument and discussion, but
inhabited a realm entirely made up of mythological entities. Indeed, to anyone familiar with the
history of religion it might seem far more likely that he was dealing here with an antinomian myth
from the second century composed by such nihilistic Gnostics as Carpocrates and his followers than
that all this was actually taught and believed by Polish Jews living on the eve of the French
Revolution, among whom neither the "master" nor his "disciples" had the slightest inkling that they
were engaged in resuscitating an ancient tradition! Not only the general train of thought, but even
some of the symbols and terms are the same! And yet, none of this seems as surprising as it may
appear to be at first glance when we reflect that no less than the Frankists, the Gnostics of antiquity
developed their thought within a biblical framework, for all that they completely inverted the biblical
values. They too believed that Esau and Balaam were worshipers of "the Good God." they too
converted the serpent in the Garden of Eden into a symbol of gnosis, salvation, and the true "Divine
Wisdom" that guided men to freedom from the evil rule of the Demiurge by teaching them to disobey
his laws and institutions, and they too held that the Law of the good and "alien" God, which enjoined
the commission of "strange acts," was directly opposed to the Law of Moses, which was largely the
promulgation of the irascible Creator.
Frank's ultimate vision of the future was based upon the still unrevealed laws of the Torah of atzilut
which he promised his disciples would take effect once they had "come to Esau," that is, when the
passage through the "abyss" with its unmitigated destruction and negation was finally accomplished.
In seeking to elucidate this gospel of libertinism I can do no better than to quote a passage from the
excellent book on Gnosticism by the philosopher Hans Jonas in which he discusses the development
of a libertinist ethic among the nihilistically minded pneumatics of the second century:
The spiritualist morality of these pneumatics possessed a revolutionary character that did not stop
short of actively implementing its beliefs. In this doctrine of immoralism we are confronted both with
a total and overt rejection of all traditional norms of behavior, and with an exaggerated feeling of
freedom that regards the license to do as it pleases as a proof of its own authenticity and as, a favor
bestowed upon it from above .... The entire doctrine rests on the concept of an "extra spirit" as a
privilege conferred upon a new type of human being who from here on is no longer to be subject to
the standards and obligations that have hitherto always been the rule. Unlike the ordinary, purely
"psychic" individual, the pneumatic is a free man, free from the demands of the Law and, inasmuch
as it implies a positive realization of this freedom, his uninhibited behavior is far from being a purely
negative reaction. Such moral nihilism fully reveals the crisis of a world in transition: by arbitrarily
asserting its own complete freedom and pluming itself on its abandonment to the sacredness of sin,
the self seeks to fill the vacuum created by the "interregnum" between two different and opposing
periods of law. Especially characteristic of this over-all mood of anarchy are its hostility towards all
established conventions, its need to define itself in terms that are clearly exclusive of the great
majority of the human race, and its desire to flout the authority of the "divine" powers, that is, of the
World-rulers who are the custodians of the old standards of morality. Over and above the rejection of
the past for its own sake, therefore, we are faced here with an additional motive, namely, the desire to
heap insult on its guardians and to revolt openly against them. Here we have revolution without the
slightest speculative dissemblance and this is why the gospel of libertinism stands at the center of the
gnostic revolution in religious thought. No doubt, too, there was in addition to all this an element of
pure "daredeviltry" which the Gnostic could proudly point to as an indication of his reliance on his
own "spiritual" nature. Indeed, in all periods of revolution human beings have been fond of the
intoxicating power of big words.
All of this is fully applicable to both "radical" Sabbatianism in general and to the Frankist movement
in particular; the mentality that Jonas describes could not possibly, indeed, assume a more radical
form than Frank's nihilistic myth. It goes without saying, of course, that in a given age myth and
reality do not always coincide, and in the case of the Frankists the former was undoubtedly the
extremer of the two, even if Frank himself was not far from living up to it in actual practice, as
emerged from the manuscript of The Chronicles of the Life of the Lord which one of the Frankist
families permitted Kraushar to use and which afterwards vanished. But in any event the significant
point is the fact that the myth should have been born at all and that a considerable number of ghetto
Jews should have come to regard it as a way to "political and spiritual liberation," to quote the words
used by the educated Frankist Gabriel Porges in Prague to describe the movement's aims to his son
after Frank himself was no longer alive. Clearly, for the Jew who saw in Frankism the solution to his
personal problems and queries, the world of Judaism had been utterly dashed to pieces, although he
himself may not have traveled the "true way" at all, may even, in fad, have continued to remain
outwardly the most orthodox of observers.
VIII
•We will apparently never know with any certainty why most of the Sabbatians in Podolia followed
Frank's lead and became Catholics while their counterparts in Western Europe, who for the most part
also regarded Frank as their spiritual leader, chose to remain Jews. Our knowledge in this area, which
is of such crucial importance to an understanding of Jewish history in the countries in question, is
practically nil and we must content ourselves with mere speculation. Possibly the decisive factor was
the differing social structures of the two groups. The majority of the Sabbatians in Podolia were
members of the lower class and few (which is not to say none at all) of those who converted were
educated individuals. The Sabbatians in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on the other
hand, were largely from a more wealthy background and many of them were men of considerable
rabbinical learning. As is frequently the case with religious sects, Sabbatianism was transmitted by
entire families and not just by isolated individuals. Even today records exist to prove that a number of
families, some of them quite prominent, which were known for their Sabbatian allegiances about
1740, were still clinging to "the holy faith" over sixty years later! For such groups traditional Judaism
had become a permanent outer cloak for their true beliefs, although there were undoubtedly different
viewpoints among them as to the exact nature of the relationship. Not all were followers of Frank,
albeit the Frankists in Prague were spiritually the strongest among them and were extremely active in
disseminating their views. Most probably those Sabbatians who had once been disciples of Rabbi
Jonathan Eibeschtz were also to be found in this category. In any case, the fact remains that among
these groups the number of conversions was very small. Many of their adherents may have desired to
reach "the holy gnosis of Edom," but few were willing to pass through the gates of Christianity in
order to do so.
On the whole, however, in the years following Frank's death the various Sabbatian groups still in
existence continued to develop along more or less parallel lines. Four principal documents bearing on
this final phase of Sabbatianism have come down to us: The Book of the Prophecy of Isaiah written
by an apostate "believer" in Offenbach; a long sermon on the alenu prayer published by Wessely
from a lengthy Frankist manuscript; several Frankist epistles as presented in substance by Peter Beer;
and a commentary on the book En Ya' akov that came into the possession of Dr. H. Brody, when he
was Chief Rabbi of Prague. All of these sources share the same world, differing only in that the first
speaks in praise of baptism and heaps "prophetic" imprecations on the Jewish people, its rabbis and
officials, whereas the others, written by Jews, preserve silence on these topics. Also found in the
volume containing the commentary on the En Ya' akov was a Frankist commentary on the hallel
prayer, the joyous faith and emotion of which are genuinely moving. The man who wrote these few
pages was a pure and immaculate spirit and his jubilant profession of "the redemption and
deliverance of his soul" is obviously deeply felt. Like most of the Sabbatians in the West, he may
never have met Frank face to face, but on the other hand, the author of The Prophecy of Isaiah, who
did, also believed him to be the incarnation of the Living God, "the true Jacob who never dies," and
clung to this feeling of salvation throughout his life.
In all of these documents the Frankist myth has lost much of its radical wildness. Most of its
component parts are still recognizable in the form of "profound mysteries" that are to be revealed
only to the prudent, but these too have undergone considerable modification. In many places, for
instance, Frank's insistence that the "believers" were literally to become soldiers is so completely
allegorized that it loses both its logic and its paradoxicality. The most striking change, however, is
that while the doctrine of "strange acts" remains, and continues to be associated with the appearance
of "the Virgin" or "the Lady," there is no longer the slightest reference to any ethic of libertinism.
Here radicalism has retraced its steps and returned from the moral sphere to the historical. Even if we
suppose that the authors of these documents were careful not to reveal themselves entirely in their
writings— an assumption that many of their cryptic allusions would indeed seem to bear out-it is
nonetheless apparent that libertine behavior is no longer considered by them to be a binding religious
obligation. Instead there is an increased effort to understand the "strange acts" of the religious heroes
of the past, particularly of the characters in the Bible, a book which the "believers" no less than the
orthodox regarded as the ultimate authority; here too, however, the emphasis falls on vindicating such
cases in theory rather than on imitating them in practice. In Offenbach, it is true, certain scandalous
acts continued to be performed on no less than the Day of Atonement itself, but this had degenerated
into a mere semblance, whereas "in good faith" among themselves the "believers" were no longer in
the habit of carrying on such practices. As for the mystic principle of the "conjugation" of masculine
and feminine elements in the divine worlds that had played so large a role in the unorthodox
Kabbalistic theories of the nihilists and the "radicals," this too, to judge by the sources in our
possession, was now "toned down." All in all, while the idea of violating the Torah of beriah
remained a cardinal principle of "the holy faith," its application was transferred to other areas,
particularly to dreams of a general revolution that would sweep away the past in a single stroke so
that the world might be rebuilt.
Toward the end of Frank's life the hopes he had entertained of abolishing all laws and conventions
took on a very real historical significance. As a result of the French Revolution the Sabbatian and
Frankist subversion of the old morality and religion was suddenly placed in a new and relevant
context, and perhaps not only in the abstract, for we know that Frank's nephews, whether as
"believers" or out of some other motive, were active in high revolutionary circles in Paris and
Strasbourg. Seemingly, the Revolution had come to corroborate the fact that the nihilist outlook had
been correct all along: now the pillars of the world were indeed being shaken, and all the old ways
seemed about to be overturned. For the "believers" all this had a double significance. On the one
hand, with the characteristic self-centeredness of a spiritualist sect, they saw in it a sign of special
divine intervention in their favor, since in the general upheaval the inner renewal and their
clandestine activities based on it would be more likely to go unnoticed. This opinion was expressed
by Frank himself and was commonly repeated by his followers in Prague. At the same time that the
Revolution served as a screen for the world of inwardness, however, it was also recognized as having
a practical value in itself, namely, the undermining of all spiritual and secular authorities, the power
of the priesthood most of all. The "believers" in the ghettos of Austria, whose admiration for certain
doctrines of the Christian Church (such as Incarnation) went hand in hand with a deep hatred of its
priests and institutions, were particularly alive to this last possibility. Here the fashionable anti-
clericalism of the times found a ready reception. In great and enthusiastic detail the Frankist author of
The Prophecy of Isaiah describes the coming apocalypse which is destined to take place solely that
the Jewish people might be reborn, repudiate its rabbis and other false leaders, and embrace the faith
of "the true Jacob" as befits "the People of the God of Jacob." To the commentator on the ballet
prayer writing in Prague, the verse in Psalms 118, "The right hand of the Lord is exalted," meant that
"if the right hand of the Lord begins to emerge, the deceitful left hand of Esau and his priests and the
deceitful sword will retire", an allusion, of course, to the combined rule of the secular and
ecclesiastical powers. Throughout this literature apocalyptic ideas mingle freely with the political
theories of the Revolution, which were also intended, after all, to lead to a "political and spiritual
liberation," to cite that illuminating and undeservedly neglected phrase with which the Frankists in
Prague, as we have seen, defined the aims of their movement.
All this culminated in the remarkable case of "the Red Epistle," of 1799, a circular letter written in
red ink and addressed by the Frankists in Offenbach, the last Mecca of the sect, to a large number of
Jewish congregations, exhorting them to embrace "the holy religion of Edom." The theoretical part of
this document— approximately the last third of it— is highly interesting. Here, in a single page, the
epistlers summarize their beliefs without a single overt reference to Christianity, the word "Edom," as
we have seen, possessing a more specialized meaning in their vocabulary. Besides bearing all the
markings of the Frankist myth, the epistle contains the familiar ingredients of the Sabbatian homily as
well, particularly in its audacious exegeses of biblical stories, Midrashim and Aggadot, passages from
the Zohar, and Kabbalistic texts. In sum, an entire mystical theory of revolution. The passage that I
am going to quote exemplifies perfectly the thinking, style, and cryptic manner of expression of this
type of Frankist literature:
•Know that "it is time for the Lord to work, [for] they have made void Thy law" [Ps. 1 19:226] and in
this connection the rabbis of blessed memory have said [Sanhedrin 97a] [that the Messiah will not
come] "until the kingdom is entirely given over to heresy," [this being the mystical meaning of the
words in Leviticus 13:13] "it is all turned white and then he is clean," and as is explained in the book
Zror ha-Mor his servants are clean too. For the time has come that Jacob [was referring to when he]
promised "I will come unto my Lord unto Seir" [Gen. 33 :14], for we know that until now he has not
yet gone thither; and he [who will fulfill the verse} is our Holy Lord Jacob, "the most perfect of
all" [Zohar, II, 23a] and the most excellent of the patriarchs, for he grasps both sides [Zohar, I, 147a],
binding one extreme to the other until the last extreme of all. But although last, he who will rise upon
earth and say, "Arise O Virgin of Israel," is not least [i.e., he is more important and favored than the
first Jacob]. Nay, he is certainly not dead, and it is he who leads us on the true way in the holy
religion of Edom, so that whoever is of the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob must follow in their
path, for they have shown the way that their sons are to take at the End of Days, Abraham by
descending to Egypt [Gen. 12], Isaac [by journeying] to Abimelech [Gen. 26), and Jacob, the most
excellent of the patriarchs, by leaving Beersheba and going to Haran [Gen. 28) [that is], by leaving
the faith [of his fathers] and the Land of Israel for another realm of impurity, as is explained in the
Zohar; for the Zohar explains that the redemption must be sought in the most evil place of all. Then
he came to the mouth of the well [Gen. 29J and found Rachel and rolled the stone from the month of
the well and came to Laban and worked for him [in the realm of evil) and brought out his own
portion. And afterwards he went to Esau [Gen. 32J. but he was still not done [with his task], for
although he rolled the stone [from the well] they rolled it back again [Gen. 29:3], and therefore he
could not go to Seir [the place where there are no laws] and all this was but to prepare the way for the
last Jacob [Frank], the most perfect of all, at the End of Days. For as the Zohar explains the first
Jacob is perfect, but the last Jacob is perfect in everything, and he will complete [Jacob's mission in
everything. And it is said [in allusion to this] in the Zohar: "Until a man comes in the form of Adam
and a woman in the form of Eve and they circumvent him [i.e., the serpent] and outwit him," and so
forth. Therefore, we must follow in his path, for "the ways of the Lord are right, and the just do walk
in them" [Hos. 14:10), and though there is a burden of silence [about this] and the heart must not
reveal [what it knows] to the mouth, it is nonetheless written [Isa. 42:16), "And I will bring the blind
by a way that they know not, in paths that they know not I will lead them, I will make darkness light
before them and rugged places plain." And here it was that Jacob "honored his Master," and so forth
[namely, by standing in the realm of evil) and look in the Zohar [I, 161b, where these words are to be
found]. And herein will be [found the mystical meaning of the verses) "Lord, when Thou didst go
forth out of Seir, When Thou didst march out of the field of Edom" [Judg. 5:14] and "Who is this that
Cometh from Edom?" [Isa. 63:1], for as is [stated] in the Tanna debe Eliyahu, there will come a day
when the angels will seek the Lord and the sea will say "He is not in me" and the abyss will say "He
is not in me." Where then will they find him? In Edom, for it is said, "Who is this that cometh from
Edom?" And they who follow him into this holy religion and ding to the House of Jacob [Frank} and
take shelter in its shadow-for it is said [Lam. 4:20). "Under his shadow we shall live among the
nations" and [Mic. 4:2] "Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and the House of the
God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths" —to them it will be
granted to cling to the Lord, for they [the ways of the Lord] are a way of life to those who find them.
And it is written [Deut. 4:29], "From thence ye will seek the Lord thy God and thou shalt find him."
Why does the text emphasize "from thence"? Because light will be made known from darkness
[Zohar, III, 47b], as it is written [Mic. 7:8}, "Though I sit in darkness, the Lord is a light unto me."
The government officials who intercepted copies of this epistle rightly suspected its authors of being
hidden revolutionaries, but for the wrong reason: The many obscure references to an individual called
"Jacob" led them to surmise that they were in reality dealing with-the Jacobins, who in this manner
were sup' posed to spread their radical propaganda among the Jews of the ghetto. An investigation
was ordered on the spot. The authorities who conducted it in Frankfurt and Offenbach, however, did
not delve beneath the surface of the affair and were quickly satisfied that it involved nothing more
than an intrigue to swindle and extort money from ignorant Jews. In our own day, a historian who has
published their official report, rather naively concludes by remarking, "and so the ridiculous theories
of a Frankist plot which had proved so alarming to these imperial bureaucrats were at last laid to
rest," thereby failing to realize himself that on a deeper level the authorities' suspicions were fully if
unwittingly justified! Had they bothered to read and understand not just the debtors' notes of Frank's
children in Offenbach which were in the possession of the town's bankers and moneylenders, but also
The Prophecy of Isaiah that had been composed within the four walls of the "court" itself, they would
have been amazed to discover how ardently these Frankist "Jacobins', yearned for the overthrow of
the existing regime.
The hopes and beliefs of these last Sabbatians caused them to be particularly susceptible to the
"millennial" winds of the times. Even while still "believers" -in fact, precisely because they were
"believers "-they bad been drawing closer to the spirit of the Haskalah all along, so that when the
flame of their faith finally flickered out they soon reappeared as leaders of Reform Judaism, secular
intellectuals, or simply complete and indifferent skeptics. We have already noted how deeply rooted
the Sabbatian apathy toward orthodox observance and Jewish tradition in general was. Even the
"moderates" tended to believe that the commandments were for the most part meant to be observed
Duly in the Land of Israel and that "in the exile there is no punishment [for not observing them], even
though there is still as always a reward [if they are kept]" a doctrine that was ultimately to have a
catastrophic effect on all traditional ties and to help prepare the way for the philosophy or
assimilation. A man such as Jonas Wehle, for example, the spiritual leader and educator of the
Sabbatians in Prague after 1790, was equally appreciative of both Moses Mendelssohn and Sabbatai
Zevi, and the fragments of his writings that have survived amply bear out the assertion of one of his
opponents that "he took the teachings of the philosopher Kant and dressed them up in the costume of
the Zohar and the Lurianic Kabbalah." It is evident from the commentary on the En Ya'akov and
from the letters that were in Peter Beer's possession that men like Wehle intended to use the Haskalah
for their own Sabbatian ends, but in the meanwhile the Haskalah went its way and proceeded to make
use of them.
Indeed, even for those "believers"' who remained faithful to their own religious world and did not
share the enthusiasm of the Prague Frankists for the school of Mendelssohn," the way to the Haskalah
was easily traveled. It was surely no accident that a city like Prossnitz, which served as a center for
the Haskalah in Moravia upon the movement' s spread there one generation earlier, was also a bastion
of Sabbatianism in that country. The leaders of the "School of Mendelssohn," who were neither
Sabbatians themselves, of course, nor under the influence of mysticism at all, to say nothing of
mystical heresy, found ready recruits for their cause in Sabbatian circles, where the world of rabbinic
Judaism had already been completely destroyed from within, quite independently of the efforts of
secularist criticism. Those who had survived the ruin were now open to any alternative or wind of
change; and so, their "mad visions" behind them, they turned their energies and hidden desires for a
more positive life to assimilation and the Haskalah, two forces that accomplished without paradoxes,
indeed without religion at all, what they, the members of "the accursed sect," had earnestly striven for
in a stormy contention with truth, carried on in the half-light of a faith pregnant with paradoxes.