Unknown By Gershom Scholem

Gershom Scholem (1897-1982)

There are three ways in which tradition evolves and develops in history. It can be carried forward 
with a retention of continuity; it can he transformed through a natural process of metamorphosis and 
assume a new configuration; and finally, it can be subjected to a break which is associated with the 
rejection of the tradition itself. 

In our time it is the break that stands in the foreground. Our attention is directed to the abandonment 
of tradition, even to the point of its total negation, in the interest of new construction. This break is 
the possibility most emphasized by those to whom we today listen most readily: the impetuous youth. 
But in their case as well the question which will force itself upon us during the course of the 
discussion remains: What persists even after the break? Is the break in a tradition really a break? 
Does the tradition not somehow manage to continue in new formulas and configurations even if 
metamorphosis is seemingly rejected? Is there anything that endures through all of this? And can this 
enduring element be formulated? Before I begin speaking about the specific problematics of the crisis 
of tradition and the radical forms in which it has appeared in Judaism under certain conditions, I 
should like to fill in the background against which my exposition will take place. 

Historical Judaism represents a classical form of religious community, one which is most 
emphatically grounded upon tradi^tion and in which tradition was the vehicle of the vital energies 
which found their expression through it. Six years ago I spoke at length before this same conference 
on the meaning and the significance of the concept of tradition in Judaism. Here I should first like to 
review in brief what at that time I developed in larger 
scope. 

The concepts of revelation and tradition constitute two poles around which Judaism has grouped 
itself during two millennia. In the view that prevailed in the talmudic development of Judaism, 
revelation and tradition were both manifestations of Torah, of "teaching" on the shaping of human 
life. Revelation here comes to be regarded as the "Written Torah," which is represented by the 
Pentateuch, and as the tradition, which as "Oral Torah" serves as its ongoing interpretation, dealing 
with the possibility for application and execution of the revelation in historical time. The word of 
God in revelation, which is crystallized in the demands of the law, needs tradition in order to be 
capable of application. In the course of the history of the Jewish religion these categories of 
revelation and of the tradition in which revelation is refracted in the medium of history have become 
clearly established and have thereby pushed out all other forms. Thus there arose a traditionalism par 
excellence which was, however, accompanied and undergirded by powerful mystical accents. 

Revelation in Judaism is considered the voice which resounds from Sinai throughout the world, a 
voice which, although it can be heard, is not immediately meaningful. Rather it represents simply that 
which is capable of assuming meaning, which needs interpretation in the medium of language in 
order to be understood. Thus tradition in Judaism is taken to be the Oral Torah, the voice of God 
turned into words which only here become capable of interpretation, significant and comprehensible. 


This, then, is the great Hne of tradition in Judaism: an attempt to render the word of God utterable and 
usable in a way of Hfe determined by revelation. 

In juxtaposition to all of this in the history of Judaism stands Messianism in its manifold facets. It 
represents the intrusion of a new dimension of the present— redemption— into history, which enters 
into a problematic relation with tradition. The Messianic idea required a long period of time until it 
could emerge in post-biblical Jewish literature as the product of very diverse impulses, which in the 
Hebrew Bible still exist side by side without connection or unity. Only after the Bible did such 
varying conceptions as that of an idea! state of the world, of a catastrophic collapse of history, of the 
restoration of the Davidic kingdom, and of the "Suffering Servant" merge with the prophetic view of 
the "Day of the Lord" and a "Last Judgment." Initially, Messianism runs counter to the revelation 
idea of the Torah. It does not originate as a continuation or a further development of the idea of a law 
which obligates the living, or of a tradition regarding its applicability, say, in the End of Days. Rather 
it comes from a different source. It has its origins in a historical experience, and above all in the 
counterpart of this experience present in the imagination of the Jews. 

Two elements are combined in the Messianic idea and they determine the historical configurations 
which Messianism has assumed in Judaism. These two elements are the restorative and the Utopian. 
Conceiving the content of redemption as a public occurrence, which takes place at the end of history 
or even beyond it, affecting the collectivity and not the individual, Messianism could be, in the first 
place, the return to a primeval period, to a state of things which in the course of history, or perhaps 
even from the very beginning, became decadent and corrupt and which needs restoration, 
reconstitution, or reintegration. Redemption in this restorative sense means the restoration of a 
pristine state and, as such, contains an obvious conservative element. Here it is a matter of 
reinstituting a connection with something that was lost and that will be regained in the redemption. In 
contrast we find the second element, which was bound to enter into natural conflict with the first. It 
represents the conception of redemption as a phenomenon in which something emerges which has 
never before existed, in which something totally new is unmistakably expressed. These two elements 
appear dearly both in the theology of the Jews and in the historical forms of an at times acute 
Messianism. Of course these restorative and Utopian elements in the Messianic idea could exist side 
by side as long as it was simply a hope that was projected into the distant future, an affirmation of 
faith that corresponded to no real experience. As long as the Messianic hope remained abstract, not 
yet concretized in people's experience or demanding of concrete decisions, it was possible for it to 
embody even what was contradictory, without the latent contradiction being felt. 

In this form the belief in the future redemption itself became a piece of tradition; the state of tension 
it produced with the other segments of the tradition could be silently passed over or rhetorically 
veiled. In the imagination which gave shape to these things the still unrealized restorative and Utopian 
elements could live peacefully side by side or together with each other; for the imagination connects 
images and seeks to create bridges and roads between them. Thus Messianism could take over even a 
conservative attitude and in this way become part of the tradition. Messianic activity, however, could 
hardly do this. The moment that Messianism moved from the realm of affirmation of faith, abstract 
doctrine, and synthesizing imagination into life and took on acute forms, it had to reach a point where 
the energies that lay dormant in these two elements would emerge into conflict with each other-the 
conflict of the tradition of the past versus the presence of redemption. 

It is for this reason that in Jewish theology there has not been the problem of a conflict between 


Messianism and tradition. The Messianic idea, even if it was not developed logically from the idea of 
tradition, was regarded as compatible with it. Only where historical experience stirred people's hearts 
could such experience also find a quasi-theological expression in which the crisis of tradition then 
very quickly erupted within Messianism. 

Thus the obvious question of the status of the Torah in the Messianic world was treated by the early 
Jewish literature (the Talmud, the Midrash, and the apocalypses) in purely imaginative fashion: in 
wishful dreams, in projections of the past upon the future, and in Utopian images which relegated 
everything new to a time yet to come. These images are more the products of hopes and desires than 
of historical experiences. Admittedly, here and there some scholars— Victor Aptowitzer with great 
emphasis —have asserted that certain historical experiences have played a lole in the formation of 
these conceptions; for example, the actions of the Hasmoneans of the second and first pre-Christian 
centuries, which wide circles viewed unsympathetically. Likewise, it has often enough been claimed 
that the polemical disputes with Paulinism and the early Christian conceptions of the redemption 
reactively influenced the development of Messianic ideas in Judaism itself. However, these theories 
seem to me unsubstantiated and dubious, although I naturally would not deny that Paulinism 
represents a genuine crisis of tradition within Jewish Messianism that is analogous to the one we 
must still analyze here more closely in the case of Sabbatianism. But the reactive influence of this 
crisis upon the development of Jewish conceptions is highly hypothetical in view of the early 
Church's exceedingly rapid break with Judaism. 

Therefore a conception of the redemption, which was not the product of Messianic experience (or 
anti-experience), required an essentially conservative notion which did not embody any conflict, let 
alone one that would have insisted upon any such conflict. In the sense of these speculations the 
redemption instead represents a more complete development of everything that previously was only 
partially capable of execution-but not its abrogation. This holds true for the familiar literary 
documents of early Messianism such as the Midrashim. 

At times the Messiah who brings about the redemption is viewed simply as a Moses of the new aeon, 
a Moses redivivus, and the question arises whether the parallel can be pursued any further. Is the 
Messiah as a new Moses who leads his people out of exile into the world of redemption also perhaps 
the giver of a Torah for the time of the redemption? Is the Torah and its radiation outward via the 
tradition the final word of God to Israel or is there in the Messianic or apocalyptic view a new 
revelation, a new form of the word of God? The Bible knows of no crisis of this kind. Isaiah (2:3) 
does know that at the End of Days "from Zion goes forth the Torah and the word of the Lord from 
Jerusalem." But it is simply Torah, not old Torah and not new Torah. It is the untouched Torah, 
which has not yet known any crisis and which in the prophetic vision is seen in its full development. 
Related to this is the notion, widely found in the rabbinic literature, that the Torah of the Messianic 
age will solve the contradictions and difficulties which now exist in regard to several points. On this 
issue the sources of Jewish tradition are nearly all dear. There is progress in the understanding of the 
Torah which in the Messianic age reaches its height. But the idea of a radical change or a questioning 
of the traditional element was eliminated and was not even perceived as a real possibility. "Since the 
Days of the Messiah represent the religious and political consummation of the national history and, 
however idealized, still belong to the world in which we live, it is only natural that in the Messianic 
age the Torah not only retain its validity but be better understood and better fulfilled than ever 
before." W. D. Davies, who has devoted a valuable study to the position of the Torah in the 
Messianic Age and on whom I have drawn to a considerable extent here, has rightly noted that even 


the new covenant, of which Jeremiah is the first to speak (3 1:3 Iff.) and which then plays such a large 
role in the sectarian writings of the Dead Sea Community, was not counterpoised as a contradiction to 
the old tradition but as its final establishment in the hearts of all mankind, as its final interiorization. 

One more factor must be stressed if we would understand why there could not originally he any 
awareness of a possible conflict between tradition and Messianism. As long as the historical process 
in which the Torah became the bedrock and life element of Judaism remained in flux, this positive 
factor of giving shape to life within the realm of the Torah made it possible to draw the productive 
energies inward. This process, which in the course of more than five hundred years had created the 
"tradition" itself, left no room for questions affecting the value or validity of this positive element of 
building a life under the law of the Torah. Only where this process reached its climax did such 
questions gain historical urgency, and even then, as I have already indicated, only when a new 
concrete element intruded as happened in the case of acute and activist Messianism. 

Quite logically, the infinite estimation of the Torah in its two aspects of "written" and "oral" Torah 
produced the conception of its essential immutability, even if the interpretation of this immutability 
could in the course of generations become subject to highly diverse conceptions, especially in the 
case of the Kabbalists. According to Davies, "The fully developed (rabbinic) Judaism revealed to us 
in our sources was not a soil in which the belief in any radical changes in the existing Torah was 
likely to grow nor a soil which would welcome a new kind of Torah.'" This statement, however, holds 
up for the world of tradition only as long as the Messianic idea remains an abstraction. Here the only 
kind of Torah that could be foreseen was a more complete one, but not a radically new form of the 
Torah, For this reason it is frequently emphasized that in the future the precepts of the Torah wilt be 
followed ever more strictly. 

In contrast, as early as the Talmud we find hyperboles which express a Utopian vision and suppose a 
Messianic status of the Torah in which certain demands of the law lose their force. In such cases the 
hyperbolic nature of the statements is evident. "All sacrifices will be abolished except for the offering 
of thanksgiving", "all prayers will be abolished except for the prayer of thanksgiving." "All festivals 
will one day be abolished, except for Purim which will never be abolished. . .Rabbi Eleazar said: 

'Also the Day of Atonement [Yom ha-Kippurim] will never be abolished.'" The contrast between the 
holiest and the relatively least significant of all holidays— which likely also involves a pun — is quite 
characteristic. The pun is both witty and dangerous for it rests on the equivalent sound present in both 
the name of the most holy and thoroughly ascetic holiday of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippurim, and 
Purim, a day of joy. The Day of Atonement, which is now a day of fasting, of the utmost self- 
restraint, and of return to God, will one day be "like Purim," and we have to remember that in 
rabbinic tradition Purim is a kind of Jewish carnival. Thus a Utopian element emerges here which 
splits apart the Day of Atonement and equates it with its opposite. To he sure, these are statements 
that are made almost in passing. 

Though still remaining in the purely speculative exegetical and literary realm, a remark concerning 
Psalm 146: 7 goes much further. It decisively removes the words "The Lord releases the prisoners" 
from the previous undialectical interpretation affording to which the tradition will be completely 
fulfilled in the Messianic age and, in most descriptions of it, shine forth with undiminished radiance. 
The Hebrew words of the Psalm lend themselves as well to a more daring but still faithful translation 
as: "The lord dissolves the commandments" or "The Lord allows the forbidden" (mattir isurim instead 


of mattir assurim). "What does this mean? Some say: 'All animals which were forbidden [to be eaten] 
in this world God will one day again allow, as was the case until the time of Noah. And why, in fact, 
has He forbidden them? In order to see who would accept His words and who would not. In the time 
to come, however. He will allow everything which He has forbidden:" This view is indeed 
immediately followed by another according to which even in the Messianic age the unclean animals 
will not be allowed. Little wonder that such passages, which were quoted gleefully by Christian 
apologists and anti-rabbinic polemicists, always disturbed conservative spirits and brought about 
protests and opposition. It remains unclear from which layer of the Midrash they originate. 

Such cannot be said of a no less disputed interpretation which often appears in the sources. It 
understands Isaiah 51 :4, "For Torah shall go forth from Me," as: "A new Torah shall go forth from 
me." There seem to have been manuscripts of the Bible in which the verse existed in this form. Here 
we find the .conception of a new Torah which some then associated with the Torah that the Messiah 
himself would teach. We are not told whether this new Torah is a reinterpretation of the old without 
its rejection or whether it represents an internal break, a new combination of the elements which 
constitute it. Both conceptions were possible and in fact are expressed in the different readings in 
which the Torah is cited. But as long as such statements could be found only in books and 
corresponded to no situation which could provide their contents with historical actuality, their 
ambiguity and equivocality bothered hardly anyone at all. 

We must make mention of an additional element as well. What I have called the imaginative 
conceptions and portraits of the Messianic age, which were embodied in the literature, represent no 
active promotion of such Messianic strivings. There seems to be hardly any bridge here leading from 
imagination to activity. The historian Gerson D. Cohen has recently stressed the great and totally 
consistent rabbinic opposition to Messianic movements during the 1600 years between the 
destruction of the Temple and the Sabbatian movement. We know of many Messianic movements in 
Judaism during this long span of time. But ever since the collapse of the Messianic resistance to 
Rome led by Bar Kokhba (Kosba) in the first half of the second century, which led to the ruin of the 
Jewish community in many parts of Palestine, they have always been geographically limited and 
remained without historical effect. Generally they were lay movements which emerged in every 
conceivable part of the Diaspora and only in the rarest instances received the support of the local 
rabbinical authorities. In most cases such movements provoked resistance and were eliminated- which 
can to a large extent be explained by the circumstances I have outlined here. The preservers of the 
traditional element-and in the Jewish Middle Ages that meant the bearers of rabbinical authority- 
perceived in these acute Messianic outbreaks an element of nonconformity which endangered the 
continuity of the authoritative tradition. Such apprehensions that acute Messianism would lead to a 
crisis, as also their fear of the anarchic element in Messianic utopianism which they did not 
acknowledge, without question play a large role in this nearly unanimous opposition to the rabbis. 
There were many good reasons for this: concern for the stability of the community, concern for the 
fate of the Jews after a disappointment as suggested by historical experience, combined with a deep- 
rooted aversion to the "Forcers of the End," as those people are called in Hebrew who could not wait 
for the arrival of the Messiah but thought to do something for it themselves. All of these factors 
operate in the direction of removing Messianism into the realm of pure faith and inaction, leaving the 
redemption to God alone and not requiring the activity of men. The bearers of religious authority, no 
less than the heads of the communities who were responsible to the powers reigning in the non- 
Jewish environment, were forced into a position of political quietism on account of the conditions 


necessary for sustaining Jewish life in the exile, and for many of them it then became second nature. 

If in this connection I have spoken of "lay movements," I use the word "lay" not in opposition to 
priestly, but to learned rabbinic authority to which representation and interpretation of the tradition 
were entrusted. After the destruction of the Temple, Judaism no longer recognized a priesthood 
exercising any real functions and it reserved only a few insignificant liturgical and social privileges to 
the descendants of priestly families in the male line. 

The aggressiveness, the revolutionary element which is part and parcel of the Messianic movements, 
was bound to scare away the bearers of authority. In turning itself against the status quo, such a 
movement also called into question its subjection to the existing structure of traditional forms. Thus 
we find in the reports of the chroniclers no lack of complaints about an attitude of rejection, and even 
an inclination to break with elements of the tradition, as we have it attested for the movement of 
David Alroy in Kurdistan in the twelfth century. The more intensive the outbreak and the larger the 
arena in which such a movement took place, the more clearly was a new situation created in which 
traditional exegeses were no longer as important as the confrontation with historical realities. 

In the history of Jewish Messianism there are two possibilities which determine the content of an 
actually experienced redemption and the manner of dealing with the emotional states it produces. 

A crisis in the tradition which finally leads to its abrogation could receive its direct impulse from the 
outside, i.e., from an element which demanded confrontation with it. This is abundantly true of the 
religious strategy of Paul when, as we know from the Acts of the Apostles, in the interest of Christian 
propaganda he had to forgo demanding of the gentile Christians that they keep the law or accept its 
obligation. This impulse from the outside did not arise out of any immanent logic which might have 
forced Paul himself, after accepting Christ as a Redeemer, to break with the law and its tradition in 
his own life. However, especially in the seventh chapter of Romans, it then received a far-reaching 
dialectical and downright antinomian justification in the logic whereby Christ could be proclaimed 
the "End of the Law" (Rom. 10:4). Here for the first time the crisis of the tradition is explained out of 
the inner dynamic of the redemption itself in which the considerations that led to this theology have 
become unimportant and have receded completely into the background. 

On the other hand, a development could take place on the basis of a Messianic experience which 
opened up new perspectives in the concept of Torah itself. In this instance the Torah as such was not 
abrogated by calling into question the validity of the law on account of the influence of 
propagandistic considerations. Rather the antinomian tendencies, which constitute the eruption of the 
Utopian elements in Messianism, were built into the Torah itself. The boldness and radicality with 
which this was done compares very well with the paradoxes of Pauline theology. The significant 
interest which this development has for the history of religions rests upon the fact that, in contrast to 
the very sparse documentation that exists for the movement accompanying these processes in early 
Christianity, we can here study the relevant processes in the full light of history and with manifold 
documentation. I am speaking of the Sabbatian movement, to which I shall devote the remainder of 
my remarks. It was the movement which, beginning in 1665, first encountered the collective Jewish 
community and later broke into radical and sectarian forms, and into forces smoldering beneath the 
surface-in all of this affecting wide circles of the Jewish people in Europe and the Near East. 

In Sabbatianism as well as in early Christianity the sudden appearance of the redemption, which is 


experienced as real and full of meaning, creates the element that releases the crisis of tradition. The 
Messiah has arrived, in whatever guise he may appear. In the light of such experience, what happens 
to the validity of the tradition which both at the time of Paul and at the time of Sabbatai Zevi had 
reached high points of its development: in the middle of the first century in the complete 
development of Pharisaic Judaism and in the seventeenth century in the complete development of the 
Kabbalistic world of ideas within rabbinism? The differences between Paulinism and Sabbatianism 
are great, but the kinship of the basic structures, their antinomianism and the crisis theologies they 
rapidly developed, should be neither overlooked nor mistaken. 

It will be advisable to review briefly the facts which serve as the foundation for our further 
considerations. By the middle of the seventeenth century Kabbalistic mysticism had become a 
historical force within the rabbinic tradition, and to a large extent influenced and determined not only 
the thinking of those circles most affected by religion but, in its consequences, the entire Jewish 
community as well. This later Kabbalah as it developed in classical forms in Safed in Palestine in the 
sixteenth century, was in its whole design electric with Messianism and pressing for its release; it was 
impelling a Messianic outburst which, as it turned out, came approximately one generation after the 
reception of this Kabbalah by the Judaism of that time. The movement that went forth from Safed 
required about three generations to gain general acceptance. But after that, one generation, fully 
imbued with these Messianic conceptions, was enough to create a situation in which a Messiah who 
seemed to fit these ideas could find a wide-ranging echo. This was true in the case of Sabbatai Zevi 
from -Smyrna who lived from 1626 to 1676 and who, under especially dramatic circumstances, in the 
year 1665 ignited a Messianic movement which began in Palestine and from this center reached out 
to the entire Diaspora. In the history of post-Christian Judaism it represents by far the most 
significant and extensive Messianic movement. Within it impulses that arose out of the historical 
situation of the Jews and out of the dynamics of Messianism itself were entwined with others that 
referred to the personality of the central figure of the Messiah. For the consciousness of the Jewish 
masses the specifically personal element was almost from the beginning covered by a thick web of 
legends which had little or nothing to do with the real figure, but which met their religious needs and 
accommodated traditional and widespread notions. These notions set forth how one should regard the 
signs which would accompany the corning of the Messiah and his activity. The real Sabbatai Zevi, 
however, whose figure we can today draw quite precisely, scarcely fits the scheme. That just such a 
man could become the central figure of this movement is one of the greatest enigmas posed by Jewish 
history. 

Sabbatai Zevi was a strange kind of saint and far removed from the type a conservative Jew would 
have acknowledged or even apperceived as the Messiah. He was not a Messiah who represented the 
consummation of the tradition in the conservative sense and he was certainly not a conqueror who 
could have made the kings of the world tremble. He was a man affected by the most severe mental 
imbalance, who tottered between heights of ecstasy and depths of melancholy in steeply alternating 
manic depressive stages. He was a rabbinically educated Jew, well versed in the talmudic tradition 
and deeply entwined in the world of the Kabbalah. He was highly unusual in only one respect: in 
moments of religious exaltation he tended to commit bizarre acts which violated the law. He enjoyed 
performing deeds which involved a violation of the law, or effecting fantastic demonstrations as if 
they were particularly meaningful religious ceremonies. In such acts he apparently found a certain 
meaning which they were to bear in the mystical process of the reintegration of all things. Carrying 
out such functions, which he dared to do only in ecstatic moments and without later being able to 


explain them, was hardly likely to win him adherents. 

The type of the "holy sinner" did not belong to the stock of the Messianic tradition in Judaism. As a 
matter of fact, from his first appearance in Smyrna in 1648 until his proclamation as the Messiah in 
Gaza in 1665, Sabbatai Zevi had not one adherent who would have regarded him as the Messiah. He 
was laughed at, declared insane, or pitied. No one cared about him until under especially peculiar 
circumstances he found a young rabbi of the Talmud schools in Jerusalem who had settled in Gaza. 
Nathan of Gaza had intensively studied the Talmud and the Kabbalistic mysticism of his time and 
possessed significant powers of imagination. In March 1665 he had had a vision in which this 
peculiar Sabbatai Zevi, who he must often have seen on the streets of Jerusalem, appeared to him as 
the Messiah. For his part, Nathan convinced the much older man, who was plagued by self-doubt and 
was struggling with the demons in his own soul, that his mission was legitimate. As the prophet of 
the Messiah he then embarked upon a wide range of activity and produced that great outburst of 
Messianism which in the eyes of the Diaspora Jews was substantiated precisely by the appearance of 
a true prophet— and Nathan of Gaza was considered such— confirming the mission of the Messiah. 

In a very short time the movement overwhelmed Jewish communities from Yemen and Persia to 
England, Holland, Russia, and Poland. It produced something to which the custodians of the tradition 
had paid all too little attention but which to the historian is quite comprehensible: the experience of 
redemption as a historical event is anticipated in the experience of redemption as an emotional reality 
and appears in broad circles with such force that this anticipation is even capable of surviving the 
conflict. For disappointment in the historical world was ineluctable and was bound to conflict with 
the religious experience which took place on a different level The fantastic wave of enthusiasm which 
swept up Jewish communities for an entire year created a mental reality which had not been 
anticipated by the rabbis or considered in the ancient books. After one year came the catastrophe: in 
September 1666 Sabbatai Zevi was brought before the Sultan in Adrianople and given the choice of 
upholding his Messianic claims and suffering martyrdom, or of converting to Islam. He preferred 
apostasy from Judaism which for him in some strange manner seemed to- confirm the paradoxical 
claim of his Messianic mission, a final step of holy sinfulness, in fact, its apotheosis. From that point 
on a choice between the two levels of outer and inner experience was unavoidable. 

We can estimate how strong the force of this Messianic eruption was if we consider that even this act 
of apostasy from Judaism and conversion to Islam-the most scandalous act imaginable from the 
viewpoint of faithful Jews-did not immediately lead to the total collapse of the high expectations. All 
other movements were destroyed by historical disappointment and left no trace in Jewish 
consciousness; we know about them only through the testimony of chroniclers. But here the 
transforming power of the movement was so strong that significant groups accepted even this totally 
unprecedented step of the Messiah, one of which no one had ever previously read in the ancient 
literature, and indicated they were ready to justify it out of these very writings. Suddenly there 
opened before the eyes of the "believers" -as the followers of Sabbatai Zevi called themselves-a new 
view of the ancient writings and documents of the tradition. Now it appeared to the theologians-or 
one might say ideologues-of the Sabbatian movement that all the pages of the old books really spoke 
of nothing other than the necessary apostasy of the Messiah, who was required to complete his 
mission by passing or descending into the underworld of the nations. For the sparks of the holy which 
are scattered among all peoples must be brought home if everything is to return to its proper place 
and the redemption thereby be completed. Induced by a historical event, the conception of the 
Messiah suffers a dialectical ruin. His mission takes on a destructive and paradoxical quality which 


must come into full effect before the positive part of the redemption can become visible. The figure 
of the Messiah himself takes on a sinister character which calls into question every traditional value. 
One cannot overlook the abyss which yawns between the figure of the Messiah who died for his 
cause upon the Cross and this figure who became an apostate and played his role in this disguise. 
Nonetheless, like the former, this ambiguous and treacherous twilight figure also exercised a 
seductive fascination. 

II 

•We have become acquainted with the situation which posed the question of how the crisis of 
tradition would develop in such an acute Messianic outburst. This crisis emerged especially in the 
circle of the most determined "believers" indirect connection with attempts to understand the 
apostasy of the Messiah as a mission which leads into realms inaccessible to believing Jews; realms 
which the Messiah alone can penetrate and even there complete the mission of redemption. The 
apostasy of the Messiah necessarily produced a division. Those who regarded the verdict of history 
and of the exterior world as decisive-because everything exterior also symbolically expresses the 
inner state-had to turn away from such a Messiah. For some, anticipation of the redemption had 
become so vivid in their experience that they could endure the dialectical split between exterior and 
interior experience. But most could not remain loyal to this Messiah who seemed to have disowned 
himself and betrayed his mission. 

Thus Sabbatianism became a heretical movement within Judaism which in Central and Eastern 
Europe continued to proliferate down to the beginnings of the age of Emancipation in the first part of 
the nineteenth century while in Turkey, though now dying out, it has preserved itself even down to 
the present. It took on the forms of a sect operating in the underground of the ghetto, at first treated 
mainly with silent rejection by the Jewish authorities in the communities, and then in increasing 
measure vehemently persecuted by them. At first the crisis of tradition appears in an implicit 
antinomianism which in the radical wing of the "believers" later turns into an explicit one. This 
process is supported with concepts from the Jewish tradition itself and formulated in a thoroughly 
Jewish way of thinking. With amazing rapidity this crisis of tradition finds significant expression in 
the literature of the "believers." The decisive formulations were crystallized as early as the years 
1667-79. They by no means appear in the very small group which, while Sabbatai Zevi was still 
alive, imitated him by apostatizing to Islam, thinking the actions of the Messiah exemplary and 
obligatory also upon his followers. Rather they appeared just in those circles of "believers" who 
sought to give their new Messianic consciousness expression within the Jewish community and 
without taking symbolic steps of separation from it. Sabbatai Zevi himself, who in the last decade of 
his life led a double life as Muslim and Jew, did indeed possess a very lively imagination and he 
remained very influential in circles that were dose to him personally. But he did not have the ability 
to formulate his concepts with persuasive force. This was left to the prophets, especially to Nathan of 
Gaza, and to the theologians of this group. 

After 1683, the year or the mass conversion of several hundred families in Salonika, there arose in 
that city the sect of the Donmeh (literally Apostates), as they were simply called by the Turks, whose 
members were ostensibly Muslim but in reality crypto- Jewish Sabbatians who felt themselves 
obligated to carry through in their lives that imitation of Sabbatai Zevi which I just mentioned. This 
sect maintained itself for more than 250 years, and several of its most important writings have only 
very recently come into the hands of scholars. They sought to solve the conflict between the exterior 


and their interior worlds, which their faith laid bare, by attaching themselves on the outside to the 
unredeemed world of Islam but on the inside to a mystical. Messianic Judaism which very soon 
assumed orgiastic-anarchic features. The theological capacity for formulating the crisis of tradition 
was, however, already forged earlier, and by men who never left the framework of Judaism. They had 
to justify the same contradiction which loomed in the first Christian generation after the death of 
Jesus between the apparent reality which knew nothing of any Messianic transformation of the world 
and their Messianic faith which daily expected the return of the Messiah in his glory. Just as at that 
time the theology of Christianity emerged from this contradiction, so in this case there arose the 
theology of Sabbatianism which was all too long neglected by Jewish historiography. Thus it is that 
the three most upsetting and astonishing texts which document this transformation and crisis of 
tradition were unable to induce any scholar before my generation to read them. 

Here are three men and three texts which show what is possible in an atmosphere saturated with the 
tradition and the concepts of Judaism when the situation is felt to be revolutionary. The first name 
that must be mentioned is that of Nathan of Gaza., who died in Skoplje ( Turkish: Uskup), Macedonia 
in 1680, and who appeared in his writings both as prophet and theologian-a very rare combination in 
the history of religions. He elaborated his ideas in numerous open letters and treatises, but especially 
in a manuscript the Hebrew title of which (Zemir Aritzim; cf. Isa. 25:5) implies: "Overthrow of the 
Enemy Forces" or "Overthrow of the Tyrants," i.e., of those who hinder redemption. It was written 
about 1670. The second author is Abraham Miguel Cardozo (1627-1706) who was born into a crypto- 
Jewish Marrano family in Spain, returned to Judaism in Venice in 1648, and whose attachment to the 
Sabbatian movement grew out of Marrano currents of thought. For him the apostasy of the Messiah 
represented a kind of highest justification of the apostasy of the Spanish Marranos in 1391 and 1492. 
Under the influence of the prophet Nathan, with whose writings he was familiar, he composed in 
Tripoli (North Africa) as early as 1668-two years after the conversion of Sabbatai Zevi-a long open 
letter entitled Magen Abraham ("Shield of Abraham") .19 His later writings scarcely exceed the 
sharpness with which his ideas were formulated here. The third author is Israel Hazan from Kastoria 
in Macedonia, a student and for many years the secretary of Nathan of Gaza. We possess from his 
hand a commentary to a large number of psalms which he composed about 1678-79 in Kastoria; it is 
one of the most moving personal documents of Sabbatianism. He interprets every psalm either as a 
lament of the Messiah who has apostatized in fulfillment of his mission and speaks of his destitution 
and his hope, or as a triumphal ode for the redemption which has begun and for the upheavals which 
are associated with it. All of these writings were composed while Sabbatai Zevi was still alive or 
shortly after his death. They prove how quickly the crisis of Jewish tradition manifested itself within 
this acute Messianism, while in the case of Paul this crisis received literary expression only about 
fifteen years after the death of Jesus. 

Of what sort, then, are the currents of thought which are presented here and are repeated and varied in 
manifold ways in the later literature of the Sabbatians, both of those who remained within Judaism 
and of the Donmeh? In this case we are not concerned with the question of how the apostasy of the 
Messiah was explained as a necessary descent into the realm of darkness. Our authors do not doubt 
the legitimacy of Sabbatai Zevi's Messianic mission nor its paradoxical character. The question which 
agitates the "believers" is: What about the Torah and everything associated with it now that the 
Messiah has appeared in the flesh and our hearts are filled with this experience? Something must now 
follow for our lives in the immediate future and even more after his expected return from those 
realms of darkness. In addition, the new eyes with which the "believers" read the old books had 


revealed to them that those books, in fact, spoke throughout of that seeming apostasy of the Messiah 
which no one had noted there until it actually came about. Thus they searched for conceptions and 
symbols in which that unnoticed crisis of tradition, which had come to life in the feelings of the 
Sabbatians, could have manifested itself. The attitude of Sabbatai Zevi, even before his apostasy, had 
made dear to them that the Messiah himself at particular moments stood above the way of life 
prescribed by tradition, violated it in a downright challenging fashion in several of his actions, and 
thus showed himself a figure standing at the boundary between the validity of the old law and the 
coming into view of a new level of the Torah's fulfillment. By his concrete appearance the problem of 
the validity of all previous tradition had become acute. As proof of their faith, Sabbatai Zevi had 
demanded of a few adherents that they transgress certain prohibitions which were in themselves 
incomprehensible and meaningless but were expressed with great emphasis in the Torah, such as 
eating the fat of animals (Lev. 7:23 ff.), a ritual gesture of decidedly symbolic nature since it was not 
connected with any sensual gratification. After his apostasy he had also required a number of the 
"believers" to take this same step. Thus from the beginning the problem was not limited to the figure 
of the Messiah himself but-as some of our authors put it-was posed for all those who came from the 
same "root" as the soul of the Messiah and were designated "the kin of the Messiah." 

As early as 1668 Cardozo expressed this crisis in a radical formulation: "The Torah as it now exists 
[or: as it is now observed] will not exist in the Messianic age." For him the reason is dear: at that time 
the world will be cleansed of every defect and be restored to its original state or tikkun. Since 
fulfillment of the precepts of the Torah serves as the instrument of this reintegration— a fundamental 
teaching of the Lurianic Kabbalah— the status of the Torah must necessarily change in the Messianic 
world where the reasons for this fulfillment lose their force. According to later Kabbalistic lines of 
thought, the Messiah, more than bringing about the redemption, signalizes in symbolic fashion the 
conclusion of a. process which we realize ourselves through our actions. Once we have carried 
through this process of the integration of all things in their original place— and it is a mystical process 
in the interior of the cosmos-then the redemption will appear entirely of itself and conclude this 
process in the exterior realm as well. Once the interior world is put in order, the exterior must 
manifest it also: it is put into effect because everything exterior is nothing more than a symbol of the 
interior. Cardozo says: 

The two Torahs [the Written and the Oral] correspond to the situation of a person who has fallen 
"from a high roof into a deep well." Whoever plunges from a height down to the ground, his body 
becomes bruised all over and he needs various medicaments and cures until all of his 365 blood 
vessels and 248 organs [i.e., his entire physical organism] are healed. The same is true of events in 
the upper [divine] lights which are the mystical figure of the Creator. These lights are the precepts of 
the Torah whose number not by chance corresponds to the number of organs in the human body 
which they are supposed to cure if wounded or broken. Just as someone who has become injured or 
wounded must abstain from foods and beverages which could harm him and must keep to his diet for 
as long a time as an experienced physician prescribes, so it is also with the observance of the 
commandments. When the new era and the time of healing will have come and brought about the 
ascension of the holy sparks [of the divine light] to their original place, the patient will surely no 
longer have need of the prescriptions of the physician nor of the diet affecting foods and beverages 
which previously would have hurt him. And this analogy holds directly for the status of the 
commandments which correspond to the physician's cures. For at that time the lights and all worlds 
will surely arise to their former level, which of course will become possible only in the days of the 


redeemer; he has the power of restoring all worlds because he himself is the first Adam [in his 
Messianic reincarnation]. 

At the end of this exposition Cardozo manifestly casts aside the traditional Lurianic conception of the 
character and the function of the Messiah, which corresponds to his own analogy, in favor of an 
extravagant conception, widely found among the Sabbatians, according to which the mystical 
abundance of power resident in the Messiah himself brings the process of healing salvation to its 
conclusion- According to Cardozo, this gradual advance in the process of salvation manifests itself in 
the giving of the Torah and its commandments in different stages according to the requirements of 
various generations; some commandments had already been given to Adam, others to Noah and his 
sons, still others to Abraham, until finally Israel received the Torah in its entirety "in order to purify 
all the holy sparks, cleanse them from their admixture [with the unholy powers} and raise them up to 
their point of origin, for they possess the ability and power to raise those sparks up into the primeval 
thoughts [of God] since they themselves originate there." 

However, in this exposition of the function of the Torah and the concrete fulfillment of the 
commandments, Cardozo at other points makes a clear distinction between the Written and the Oral 
Torah. Leaning upon the mystical speculations of the Kabbalists, he no longer takes the Written 
Torah to mean what it meant to the Talmudists, i.e., a realm circumscribed by the Bible itself, 
containing concrete commandments and prohibitions to which the oral law added only further, more 
explicit statements. Following the mystics, the Written Torah, the revelation as such, is seen as not 
calling for concrete execution in any realm of application whatever. The Torah becomes applicable 
only through the medium of the Oral Torah in which the word of God is appropriated to the 
contingencies of its fulfillment. The concept of the Oral Torah, identical with that of the tradition, 
encompasses the actual historical tradition of rabbinic Judaism, of the historical form of Judaism 
which the Kabbalists sought to interpret. Thus there could be a differentiation here: the crisis of 
tradition, which the beginning of the redemption was bound to bring about, could conceivably remain 
limited to the realm of the Oral Torah if the Written Torah were understood as an essentially mystical 
realm of pure revelation, of the absolute word of God which by nature is immutable-though it may be 
received in different ways by those who hear it. In this view, the translations of the absolute word 
into humanly intelligible words capable of articulation already belong to the realm of tradition; they 
represent a permutation into something that can be spoken and fulfilled. The written law in the 
normal sense, as a readable book and concrete instruction, thereby becomes itself an initial 
manifestation of the Oral Torah. Only in this sense does a crisis take place even within the written 
law, since in the Messianic age the letters which constitute the Written Torah will become subject to 
different combinations and thus take on new meanings, or at least their old combinations will be 
interpreted in an entirely new way. 

Likewise in the writings of the Sabbatians the differentiations in the concept of the Torah play a part 
when its position in the Messianic age is to be defined. Cardozo explicitly states that the crisis of the 
Torah affects the forms of the tradition, of the Oral Torah. For the six orders of the Mishnah and its 
sixty tractates in which the tradition was first codified correspond to its status in a cosmic order, or 
rather disorder, which has its symbolic expression in Israel's exile. He therefore has good reason to 
refer to a passage in the Zohar which gives a mystical interpretation of a verse in the Midrash 
regarding the beginning of the redemption: "The heart does not reveal it to the mouth." Originally this 
meant that the date of the Messianic redemption washidden. One cannot find out anything about the 
redemption until it begins. However, this was interpreted mystically to mean that where the heart, i.e.. 


the heart of the Torah as the secret, absolute word of God, becomes manifest it no longer needs the 
mouth of tradition by which it has hitherto expressed itself. Where the inner mystical essence breaks 
forth undisguised and no longer needs any intermediary, the masking expression which veiled this 
"heart" becomes unnecessary. Whereas the talmudic eschatology expected an infinitely rich 
development of the oral law in the Messianic age, for Cardozo the law will be "no longer necessary"; 
in fact, it undergoes a distinct transvaluation, as we shall see shortly. 

In their endeavor to develop the crisis of tradition out of the concepts of the tradition itself the 
Sabbatians were able to refer back to symbols of the earlier Kabbalistic literature whose implicit 
antinomianism had for more than three hundred years hardly aroused any attention, let alone protests- 
But now, in the excitement of the Messianic uprising and in the hands of the Sabbatians, these 
symbols showed their explosive power in shattering the tradition. There are, above all, three 
typological descriptions which recur here again and again, and which originate in the most recent 
layer of the Zohar. In these sections, especially in the "Faithful Shepherd" (Ra'ya Mehemna), and in 
the Tikkune Zohar, an extensive commentary to the first chapters of Genesis composed as an 
independent volume, these typological figures are used at many points and are varied in the most 
diverse ways. 

They are: 

1. The figure of the two trees of Paradise, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good 
and Evil. 

2. The figure of the two pairs of the tablets of the law which Moses received at Sinai. For when 
Moses came down from the mountain with a pair of tablets and was forced to witness the dance of 
Israel around the golden calf they had made in his absence, he smashed them upon the ground. Only 
later, after Israel had again been humbled by Moses' anger, did he receive a second pair of tablets 
whose content is conveyed in the Torah (Exod. 34). 

3. The figure of the six days of the week and the Sabbath as archetypes of world history which runs 
its course in a great cosmic week and a Sabbath which follows thereafter. 

Let us examine the conceptions lying behind these figures. 

What do the two trees in Paradise represent? 

Already in biblical metaphor wisdom, identified by 
Jewish tradition with Torah, is designated as Tree of Life (Prov. 3:18); thus opens the whole realm of 
typology. The trees in Paradise are not merely physical trees; beyond this they point to a state of 
things which they represent symbolically. In the opinion of the Jewish mystics both trees are in 
essence one. They grow out into two directions from a common trunk. Genesis tells us that the Tree 
of Life stood in the center of Paradise, but it does not indicate the exact position of the Tree of 
Knowledge. The Kabbalists took this to mean that it had no special place of its own but sprouted 
together with the Tree of Life out of the common matrix of the divine world. The two trees are 
different aspects of the Torah, which have their common origin in revelation. The Tree of Life 
represents that aspect which has hitherto been unrealizable because, due to the sin of Adam, it 
remained virtually hidden and inaccessible, and we do not know the taste of its fruits. The law which 
is concealed in the life of this tree is that of a creative force manifesting itself in infinite harmonies, a 
force which knows no limitations or boundaries. The paradisaic life under this law never came into 


being. The sin of Adam was that he isolated the Tree of Life from the Tree of Knowledge to which he 
directed his desire. Once the unity of the two trees in men's lives was destroyed, there began the 
dominion of the Tree of Knowledge. No longer did unitary gushing, unrestrained life prevail, but the 
duality of good and evil in which the Torah appears in this aspect of revelation. Since the expulsion 
from Paradise, in the exile in which we all now find ourselves, we can no longer apperceive the world 
as a unified whole. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil under whose law the world now 
stands corresponds to a condition of this world in which distinctions must be made before the unity of 
life can be regained: the distinctions between good and evil, commandment and prohibition, holy and 
profane, pure and impure. For the author of those sections of the Zohar the two trees were not only, 
as they were for the other Kabbalists, symbols of the sefirot, of the manifestations of God in Creation, 
of which the Tree of Knowledge represented the tenth and last sefirah, but beyond this they were 
models for two possible forms of life in the light of revelation. Of course at the present only the one 
is tangible and capable of fulfillment. Precisely out of those very distinctions and limitations man is 
to restore the lost form and the violated image of the divine in himself and thus bring the Tree of 
Knowledge, with which he is mystically associated, to its full development. This Torah of the Tree of 
Knowledge is, however, nothing other than the world of tradition which represents the law of the 
unredeemed world since the expulsion from Paradise. Only the redemption, breaking the dominion of 
exile, puts an end to the order of the Tree of Knowledge and restores the Utopian order of the Tree of 
Life in which the heart of life beats unconcealed and the isolation in which everything now finds 
itself is overcome. Thus the inner logic of this conception of the dominion of the Tree of the 
Knowledge of Good and Evil as the legitimate form of revelation in an unredeemed world had to 
regard the redemption itself as a return home to Paradise where all things will again be in their true 
place. Although it is not a matter of a physical return to a geographical Paradise, it is in any case life 
in a state of the world which corresponds to that of Paradise or in which Paradise, for its part, 
expands into the world. The Torah of the Messianic age will then be that of the Tree of Life, which 
no longer knows anything of all those separations and limitations. This Torah is still revelation and, 
in Kabbalistic terms, an evolution of the divine name; but it has nothing further to do with the form 
under which we have known it until now. It is a Utopian Torah for a Utopian state of the world. The 
Sabbatians saw in such a vision no contradiction to acknowledging the forms of the tradition, i.e., 
those of historical Judaism, for the period of exile. Without question this thinking of the Jewish 
Messianic heretics is structurally connected closely to that of the spiritualistic sects in Christianity. It 
was not, however, influenced by them in its specific historical appearance and formulation, which 
remained entirely Jewish. 

According to the conception of the Sabbatians, who here again followed the intimations of these 
same sections of the Zohar, such a state of redemption, of liberation from exile, was achieved at the 
time of the revelation on Sinai. It is not surprising that when this typological thinking was applied to 
the exodus from Egypt-the very archetype of exile-revelation should seem the opportunity of 
redemption. But Israel, which was to receive this revelation, was not equal to the opportunity and it 
lapsed into worship of the golden calf. Thereupon the Torah under the aspect of the Tree of Life, 
which would have made up the content of the revelation, reverted to its hidden state, and the 
tradition, the Oral Torah which encompassed the real revelation like a husk enclosing a kernel, began 
its dominion under the aspect of the Tree of Knowledge; only in this form could it be realized in 
history. 

At this point the figure of the two trees in Paradise is brought into relation with that of the two pairs 


of tablets of the law. The first tablets, which were given to Moses before the people lapsed into the 
heathen cult of the golden calf, were the laws for a redeemed world and represented a revelation of 
the Tree of Life. They were the law of freedom. To this the spiritualistic exegesis of the Tikkune 
Zohar applied the famous passage of the Mishnah regarding these first tablets of which the Torah 
says (Exod. 32:16) : "And the tablets were God's work, and the writing was God's writing, incised, 
harut, upon the tablets." The word harut, however, can also be read as herut, which means freedom. 
While the talmudic exegesis still understood this reading to mean that it was precisely the study of the 
Torah which lent true freedom, a freedom under the law, the mystical interpretation of the Zohar saw 
it as the freedom of the redemption expressed through the Torah on the first set of tablets. This idea is 
taken up and stressed by both Nathan of Gaza and Cardozo. No one has yet read the Torah of the 
Tree of Life which was inscribed on the first tablets. Israel was entrusted only with that second set of 
tablets, and they render the Torah as it is read under the dominion of the Tree of Knowledge and 
Differentiation, which is also called the Tree of Death. But with the redemption the first tablets will 
again be raised up; they will be a Torah in which the restoration of the state of Paradise is associated 
with a Utopia that as yet has never been, that as yet has never been capable of realization. In this 
exegesis of the Zohar we can already notice the unconcern with a passage of the Torah such as 
Exodus 34:1 which says explicitly that the second set of tablets contained the same words as the first. 
It did not matter. The parallel between the trees in the primeval history of man and the tablets in the 
story of the revelation was simply too seductive for the radicals of mysticism. 

The third typology is that which saw a parallel between the course of world history and the history of 
the Creation. A day for God, according to one interpretation of a verse in Psalms, is a thousand years. 
Thus the six thousand years of world history correspond to the six workdays leading up to the great 
cosmic Sabbath, to redemption on the seventh day of the universe. Like a good Jewish exegete, 
Cardozo argues-even though he carries this exegesis over into heresy-that other laws hold on the 
Sabbath than on a workday. The activities of the workday are to a large extent prohibited on the 
Sabbath and other activities take their place. Whoever performs the actions of a workday on the 
Sabbath violates the law. But on the cosmic Sabbath the Tree of Life reigns, and not the Tree of 
Knowledge. "Thus there dearly follows from all of this that, with the onset of the order of the Tree of 
Life on the great cosmic Sabbath, not only shall we no longer need to observe the order of the six 
weekdays, which corresponds to the mode of life prescribed in the six orders of the Mishnah. But 
beyond this, everyone who wants to serve God as he does now [i.e., by the traditional way of life} 
will in those days [of the Messiah} be called a desecrator of the Sabbath and a destroyer of the 
plantings [i.e., a downright heretic]." The Mishnah is the first codification of the oral Torah and the 
six orders into which it is divided by subject constitute the framework of halakhic Judaism. The 
author of the above-mentioned parts of the Zohar indulged abundantly in remarks regarding the 
inferiority of the Mishnah; he opposes it to the mystical order of life of the Kabbalah and to the 
Messianic abrogation of those aspects of the Torah which it contains. Cardozo, who was very much 
attracted by these seditious passages, in his above-mentioned formulation simply drew the 
consequences. He presents us with the palpable intrusion of implicit antinomianism into the world of 
tradition. What was commandment becomes downright prohibition. And from here it was only a 
short step to a further consequence, of which we have yet to speak: acts that had previously been 
prohibited now become not only permissible but are even considered holy. 

However Cardozo, who remained loyal to the tradition in his personal observance, established a 
safeguard within these channels of thought which put off any explicit antinomianism, at least for a 


transitional period. As long as the Messiah has not returned from his mission into those realms where 
Cardozo does not dare to follow him, believing that they can be entered only by the Messiah-he 
decisively rejected mystical apostasy for anyone other than the Messiah himself-so long does the 
tradition retain its undiminished validity. The restoration of the true figure of man, Adam, is not 
complete as long as the Redeemer himself remains in the world of the "husks," of the powers of the 
"other side," where he gathers up the holy sparks. With his return, which corresponds to the New 
Testament conception of the parousia, the law of the renewed world-the Torah of the Tree of Life- 
will come into effect. Thus the world of the tradition is liable to collapse at any time, and for the 
Sabbatians the reasons for this collapse have been given long before it actually takes place. 
According to the immanent logic of their conceptions, its crisis cannot be averted. 

The real Adam is restored in the figure of the Messiah and now begins his career in a renewed world 
which stands under the law of freedom. In the writings of the Sabbatians hidden conflicts come to 
light on this issue and are expressed, for example, in the differences between the positions of Cardozo 
and Nathan of Gaza. The Messiah could be conceived as one who has completely mastered the Tree 
of Knowledge and its Torah, and from this experience, which is that of the Jew in exile as well as that 
of suffering mankind, pushes forward into the new realms of the Tree of Life. He could appear as the 
heir of the millennia who thereby gives the redemption a plenitude which it might have never had if 
Adam had not succumbed to temptation. For according to the Lurianic Kabbalah the first opportunity 
for redemption presented itself to Adam on the day of his creation. Had Adam decided otherwise on 
the proposition of the serpent, the redemption of all worlds would already have begun then and the 
first Sabbath would also have been the last-the final cosmic Sabbath. •But whether the Adam who 
would never have tasted the fruit of •the Tree of Knowledge would have been richer than the one who 
went through this experience could remain doubtful. In fact we find, especially in the writings of 
Nathan of Gaza, a very different conception of the Messiah which stands in opposition to this one. 
According to Nathan's view, the soul of the Messiah was from the first and since the beginning of the 
world inextricably bound up with the Tree of Life and was never subjected to the law of the Tree of 
Knowledge. Thus he always stood beyond good and evil, commandment and prohibition, because he 
never left the state of Paradise. Only from our perspective do his actions often seem reprehensible, 
illicit, and scandalous, when in truth they conform to the laws of his origin. He must be measured by 
other criteria. But this is not to say that passage through the world of tradition, which is incumbent 
upon all other holy souls and soul sparks, does not exist at all for the Messiah. In the pre-natal history 
of his soul— about which Nathan of Gaza relates astonishing things— as well as in his earthly career, 
he represents the rebellious dement which sterns from his root and is bound by no tradition, the "holy 
serpent"' which from the very beginning struggles against its rival. Motifs which the Zohar carries 
through in a variety of ways the Sabbatians combine into a coherent imagery of antinomianism. It is 
by no means disobedience or apostasy which appears in this abrogation of the Torah, but rather a 
changed situation of the world." When Adam was driven from Paradise and came under the law of 
the Tree of Knowledge, he had need of clothing and raiment in his exile into the world because in his 
present situation he could no longer reveal his naked essence. The same is true of the Godhead, the 
Shekhinah, who manifests herself in the Torah and who accompanies Israel on their way through 
exile. She too needs clothing that must cover her real nature. In exile the Shekhinah wears the somber 
dress of mourning. The pure spirituality of the Torah requires the physical garments of the 
commandments and prohibitions. An unveiled Torah would be the Torah of the Tree of Life. But the 
Torah of the Tree of Knowledge is a veiled Torah and its garments are identical with the tradition, 
with the Judaism of the commandments and the Halakhah, with Judaism as it is known by history. At 


the time of redemption it will no longer need these garments since that redemption will signify a 
restoration of the state of Paradise in which Adam and Eve stood naked within the context of the 
pristine life. In exile the inner Torah was unrecognizable, or rather recognizable only by great 
initiates. But in the redemption it will be visible to every man. Cardozo says: "When the dross of the 
husks is removed [i.e., after the reintegration of all things}, the world will no longer need to keep 
those garments in good condition." This keeping in good order, however, is nothing other than the 
fulfillment of the commandments and prohibitions; in their stead "the Torah will youthfully renew 
itself." 

Following upon these trains of thought we find as early as Nathan of Gaza and Cardozo the 
appearance of an additional motif which in the Sabbatian heresy of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries proves to be very effective, but also especially offensive and objectionable: the abrogation 
of sexual taboos, and of the incest prohibition in particular, as indices of the Messianic Torah. Here 
the crisis of tradition achieves a symbolically very visible, if also scandalous, expression. The 
restrictions which originate in the curse of woman after the Fall lose their force in the Messianic 
world. These restrictions, however, according to a talmudic interpretation, are above all of a sexual 
character. In Cardozo's view. Eve might, at least in principle, have belonged to several men while she 
was still in Paradise. In the redemption this promiscuity, be it animal or paradisaic, will be restored, 
as it were, on a new and hitherto unattained level. The restorative and Utopian elements interpenetrate 
here in a most characteristic fashion. The abrogation of the sexual taboos finds its expression in 
heretical rituals. When fulfilling each commandment, the pious Jew says a blessing. But according to 
the new Messianic formulation, introduced by Sabbatai Zevi himself, he says: "Praised be He who 
permits the forbidden," a formula which the defenders of Jewish tradition rightly regarded as the 
epitome of this revolutionary heresy. As so often in the history of spiritualistic sects, the sexual 
taboos provided a point of application at which Messianic freedom-through libertinism— could find its 
confirmation and concrete content. Orgiastic rituals were preserved for a long time among Sabbatian 
groups, and in the circles of the Donmeh until about 1900. As late as the seventeenth century a 
festival was introduced called Purim that was celebrated at the beginning of spring. It reached its 
climax in the "extinguishing of the lights" and in an orgiastic exchange of wives. That such rituals, 
which anticipated the Messianic Utopia, struck at the heart of the strict sexual morality of the Jewish 
tradition is obvious. And in fact the bitter struggle against the Sabbatians began in earnest only when 
the performance of such rituals, about which the Sabbatian texts could leave no doubt, became known 
to wider circles. Here was an obvious reversal of values that could destroy the moral structure of the 
Jewish communities. 

Especially embittering in this regard was the behavior of a certain Baruchya Russo who about the 
year 1700 was the leader of the most radical wing of the Sabbatians in Salonika. The Torah knows of 
thirty-six prohibitions that are punishable by "extirpation of the soul" Varying speculations existed as 
to the meaning of this punishment, but one thing was clear: it involved particularly heinous sins. Half 
of them are the prohibitions against incest mentioned in the Torah (Lev. 18). Baruchya not only 
declared these prohibitions abrogated but went so far as to transform their contents into 
commandments of the new Messianic Torah. 

The new Torah is designated the Torah of atzilut, the Torah of the highest condition of the world, as 
opposed to the Torah of beriah, the Torah of the sensual creaturely world which exists before the 
redemption. This pair of concepts also originates in the Tikkune Zohar. There, however, the meaning 
is somewhat different. The "Torah of Creation" represents the aspect of the one absolute Torah in 


which it exoterically presents itself to us in the circumstances of our world; the "Torah of the World 
of Emanation" represents the Torah on the mystical level, the Torah read with the eyes of the 
Kabbalist. The creaturely Torah with its explicit commandments and prohibitions is the shell 
enfolding a mystical kernel which the Kabbalist can reveal. But as early as the Kabbalah of Safed 
there is a shift in the meaning of this mystical Torah. It contains not only the mysteries of the 
Kabbalah, but also the law of pure spirituality which win one day be revealed, a kind of Evangelium 
Eternum as the Franciscan spiritualists understood this concept. As the word of God, this Torah of 
atzilut existed even in the earliest aeons in the form of combinations and permutations of the name of 
God and of lights which shine forth with this name. But even before the Creation of the lower, visible 
world, it was woven into the world of divine emanation as its determining power. It had not yet, 
however, become-one could say: flowed into-that applicable Torah as which it appears in our world 
of Creation. 

The higher form of the Torah could also easily take on a Messianic dimension in which at the final 
redemption it could appear as a higher revelation replacing the existing Torah. In such fashion this 
pair of concepts was closely identified with the two trees discussed earlier. To be sure, this Torah is 
still not accessible since it can become visible only in a world transformed in every respect, even 
externally. Such was the opinion of Nathan of Gaza and his circle. His disciple Israel Kazan of 
Kastoria says: 

"Only at the second and final appearance of the Messiah [the parousia} shall we who have the true 
faith [in the mission of the Messiah Sabbatai Zevi] apprehend the mystery of our holy Torah, the 
Torah of atzilut, from the mouth of the Most High." For whereas the previous forms of the Torah 
come from the tenth sefirah, malkhut, or the central sefirah, tiferet, this final form of revelation win 
originate in the first sefirah, the highest manifestation of the Godhead which in the Zohar is called 
"the Holy Ancient One," atika kadisha. This Torah will be the gift of God to the redeemed world and 
will replace that Torah which was given in the desert under the conditions of a desolate, unredeemed 
world. Instead of reading the word of God in the form of the Torah of Moses as it has come down to 
us, we shall receive the gift of reading it as the Torah of atzilut which the Messiah one day will teach 
us. In other words: as yet he has not taught it, even though he has already-before his apostasy- made 
his first appearance. We stand in an in-between realm, in transition between the two phases of the 
Messiah's mission. The Torah of atzilut is thus not identical with the teaching of the historical 
Sabbatai Zevi, either before or after his apostasy. At that moment it could not even have been 
described or conceived and therefore could be transmitted only in the most general terms. Only after 
the passage of thirty years, long after the death of Sabbatai Zevi, was that further step taken whereby 
Baruchya set up his nihilistic Torah as the content of the teachings propounded by Sabbatai Zevi. 
From that point on the Torah of atzilut becomes the symbol of a Messianic, anarchic Judaism, even in 
the circles of those sectarians who remain in the confines of Judaism. This new Judaism has in 
principle already completed the inner break with the Jewish tradition even where it continues to draw 
sustenance from it, and it has confirmed that break by symbolic acts and rituals. 

The Sabbatian "believers" felt that they were champions of a new world which was to be established 
by overthrowing the values of all positive religions. And so, from the pen of their last significant 
leader, Jacob Frank, who appeared as a successor to Baruchya in Poland in 1756, we have a 
watchword which matchlessly expresses the situation of these mystical "soldiers" in the army of the 
Messiah: "Soldiers are not allowed to have a religion." In its positive valuation of both the situation 
of the soldier and the lack of religion in the service of a mystically understood world revolution, this 


statement represents the extreme consequence to which a Messianic crisis of tradition, erupting in the 
very heart of Judaism, could lead. The old mystical Kabbalistic symbols in which this crisis was 
formulated disappeared. What remained was a wild revolt against all traditions, a movement that 
found anew, popular content in the biblical books and translated them into a totally untheological, 
even vulgar language. And all this was happening in the generation directly preceding the outbreak of 
the French Revolution, the event which left in its wake an intense crisis of a totally different sort, one 
that shook the very foundations of the realm of Jewish tradition.