T h e Son of the Messiah : Ishmael

Zevi and the Sabbatian Aqedah

DAVID J. HALPERIN
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

The early Sabbatian exegetical text preserved in MS Budapest,Kaufmann 255,1s a

commentary on Sabbatai Zevi's distinctive liturgy for the midnight vigil ( tiqqun hasot).
The manuscript seems to be, as Gershom Scholem surmised, the writer's autograph.
Irregularities in its handwriting may thus be used as indicators of the stages in which
the author composed his work.
Close examination of this text's allusions to Sabbatai Zevi's son Ishmael, who was
regarded for a time as his father's Messianic successor, will provide a solution to the
long-standing mystery of what became of the boy. (It will be shown that he died as
a child.)
The commentator's Messianic expectations for Ishmael Zevi, moreover, were
bound up with his distinctive reading of the Aqedah story in Genesis, as well as with
his perceptions of Islam. His fantasies about Ishmael Zevi thus reflect the powerful
but ambiguous role of Islam in the imaginings of Sabbatai Zevi's followers. They present us also with a remarkable "Aqedah of Ishmaer Ishmael son of Hagar as well
as Ishmael Zevi - which demands its place within the history of that ancient and
pivotal motif of Jewish thought and experience that we call the Aqedah tradition.
1. I N T R O D U C T I O N

A n d so they [Sabbatai Zevi a n d Sarah] were married. Yet h e never m a d e

love t o h e r until after h e h a d set t h e p u r e turban o n his head, a n d t h e n
she b o r e h i m a son a n d a daughter. But all this we shall relate presendy,
with God s help.

_ Baruch of Arezzo, Memorial to the Children of Israel1

O n e of t h e m o r e intriguing mysteries of t h e early Sabbatian movementsurrounds t h e young son of t h e would-be Messiah. Ishmael Zevi was b o r n in 1667
o r 1668, within two years after his father h a d converted to Islam ("set t h e p u r e
turban o n his head"). H e was raised, at least nominally, as a Muslim. After Sabbatai's death i n 1676, Ishmael became a focus f o r t h e Messianic expectations
of some a t least of Sabbatai's followers, a n d was elevated t o a near-divine

( 1 ) Aharon Freimann, cInyanei Shabbetay Sevi: Sammelbund kleiner Schriften ber Sabbatai Zebi un
dessen Anhnger (Berlin, 1912), p. 46.

H S

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status equal to his father's. Yet, apart from a few obscure allusions, h e disappears entirely from the historical record after about 1680. Why?
Dnme tradition claims that Ishmael died at age six. Taken literally, this is
impossible. All now agree, for reasons we will presently see to b e compelling,
that Ishmael survived his father. Yet his disappearance from the subsequent
history of Sabbatianism has suggested to most historians that the tradition
is essentially correct, that h e indeed died an early death. Gershom Scholem
pointed out that h e played n o role whatever in the sectarian developments
that followed the great apostasy at Salonika in 1683, and inferred from this
that h e was dead by then. An allusion to Ishmael in a text written in 1681 ,which
Scholem interpreted to mean that h e was still alive, allowed Scholem to fixhis
death between 1681 and 1683. But, when Meir Benayahu established that another allusion to Ishmael must b e dated to 1688 o r 1689, Scholem confessed
himself baffled.2 And Benayahu went o n to propound a marvellously ingenious hypothesis according to which Ishmael Zevi did not die in childhood
after all. Rather, h e returned to Judaism in the 1680s, changed his name in
symbolically appropriate fashion to"Isaac Zevi,"and is to b e identified with the
man of that name who served as rabbi of Sarajevo from about 1690 onward.3
This article is a study of the figure of Ishmael Zevi, as h e appears in an early
Sabbatian text which Scholem designated "Commentary o n Psalms"(perush
mizmorei tehillim) and attributed to one Israel Hazzan.In it, I undertake to resolve the mystery of Ishmael Zevi's disappearance. Scholem was right : Ishmael
indeed died as a child,although afewyears earlier than Scholem believed.The
"Commentary o n Psalms," which Scholem recognized as a particularly rich
source for the millenarian expectations that developed around the boy, must
b e understood as also bearing silent witness to his death and to the impact
that event had o n the writer's Messianic faith. To establish that this is so, we
must subject the text, and its allusions to Ishmael Zevi, to a closer analysis
than it has so far received.
Will we know more, when we are finished, about Ishmael Zevi as a human
being? Hardly. This unfortunate child is barely allowed to exist in our
(2) Scholem,"Perush mizmorei tehillim mihugo shel Shabbetai Sevi be-Adrinopol," in Al
Ayin: The Salman Schocken Jubilee Volume... (Jerusalem, 1948-52), pp. 157-211 ; reprinted in Researches in Sabbatianism (Hebrew; Yehuda Liebes [ed.] [Tel Aviv, 1991]), pp. 89-141. The 1991 edition of the article includes marginal notes subsequently added by Scholem, plus important
comments and references contributed by Liebes. In the following notes, I will cite the page numbers of both editions, indicating the 1991 edition as "Liebes!'The discussion o f Ishmael Zevi is o n
pp. 172-73 (Liebes, pp. 105-07); the Dnme tradition is cited in n. 54; Scholem's response to
Benayahu is contained in a marginal note published in Liebes, p. 107.
(3) Benayahu, The Shabbatean Movement in Greece (Hebrew; Sefunot 14; Jerusalem, 1971-77),
pp. 163-78.

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sources, at least other than as a vessel for the desperate and often grotesque
fantasies of the adults who surrounded him. We have access only to these fantasies. We can infer much from them about the needs that brought them into
being, little about the person onto whom they were projected.
Three motifs will emerge from our study. T h e first is the familiar and meiancholy thence of Messianic expectation battered by repeated disappointment, transforming itself again and again, b u t without ever being able to free
itself of its fundamental addiction to illusion. T h e second is the powerful but
ambiguous role of Islam in the imaginings of the Sabbatians, who, o n this
subject, perhaps expressed more or less openly feelings that were latent in
many other Jews of their time.
T h e third is the Aqedah, as envisioned by at least one Sabbatian exegete.
Its victim-hero is now an Ishmael instead of or, as well as an Isaac.Unlike his Biblical prototype, h e indeed perishes in his childhood, and is speedily forgotten by those who once venerated him. T h e story of Ishmael Zevi, as
it emerges from the early Sabbatian sources, thus takes its place within the ancient and perdurable tradition that marks one of the central themes ofJewish
religious thought and experience.
T h e significance of the Aqedah theme for Judaism, for religion, for the
ntire human experience has been the subject of much weighty meditationf In such meditations, the Aqedah of Ishmael Zevi deserves to b e taken
into account. No less than the other, more conventional, manifestations of
the Aqedah tradition, it has its role to play in evoking and defining the meaning of the whole.
O u r procedure will b e as follows: We will begin by examining the evidence
for Ishmael Zevi's life, down to 1680, provided by sources other than the "Commentary o n Psalms'.'We will then turn to the commentary itself and consider
its structure and purpose we will see in this connection that Scholem's title
is not altogether appropriate and establish how the author's plan for his
work changed in the course of writing. These changes of plan, as we will see,
are closely linked to his expectations concerning Ishmael Zevi, and to the
frustration of these expectations.
As we proceed, the author's perceptions of Islam and of the Aqedah will
(4) Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling is of course the classic. Outstanding recent meditations,
of a scholarly character, include Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial ( Philadelphia, 1967 ; with animportant introduction byjudah Goldin); David Shulman, The Hungry God: Hindu Tales of Filidde
and Devotion (Chicago, 1993); Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The
Transformation of Child Sacrifice inJudaism and Christianity (New Haven, 1994). I am grateful to my
old friend, Professor Marc Bregman, for sharing with m e the fruits of his many years of pondering the Aqedah and its implications, and his plans for a teaching book that will represent his
thinking o n the subject.

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come into our view, and will become so tightly bound u p with his fantasy figure of Ishmael Zevi that we will need to consider all of them together. This part
of the argument will oblige us to undertake a particularly close analysis of the
commentary's Aqedah exegesis.
I will then examine certain data that seem to contradict my view that Ishmael Zevi was dead by 1680, and will offer alternative explanations for those
data. We will consider what became of the Messianic faith of the author of the
"Psalms Commentary,"once its focus was gone. And we will take a last look at
the figure who stands at the center of the Sabbatian Aqedah, and reflect o n
what it means to b e hero and victim of so dreadful and pathetic a drama.
2. T H E L I F E OF ISHMAEL ZEVI

O u r data about Ishmael Zevi are sparse and uncertain. Earlier historians of
Sabbatianism Scholem, Benayahu, Yehuda Liebes have gathered and
discussed the key testimonies? Let us examine them once again.
T h e earliest surviving hagiography of Sabbatai Zevi, written in the 1680s
by one Baruch of Arezzof claims that h efirstmade love with his wife Sarah after his conversion to Islam? and that "she bore him a son. H e himself circumcised him o n the eighth day, reciting aloud the blessings over the wine in full
view of the Turks. H e named him Ishmael Mordecai. Afterwards she bore a
daughter, and h e called her name" and, where the daughter^ name ought
to be, the text is unaccountably blank.8
Baruch's account of "Ishmael MordecaiV'circumcision, which is obviously
intended to show that the rite took place according tojewish rather than Muslim practiceos contradicted by the more reliable contemporary narrative of
Jacob Najara? Ishmael was circumcised, according to this account, in Adri( 5 ) Above, sec. 1, nn. 23 ; Scholem, Salata Sevi: The Mystical Messiah ( Princeton, 1973 ), index,
s.v. "Sevi, Ishmael Mordecai"; Liebes,"Yahaso shel Shabbetai Sevi lehamarat dato?Sefunot n.s.
2 (1983) 27374 reprinted in OnSabbateaism audits Kabbalah: CollectedEssays (Hebrew; Jerusalem,
1995). PP 277-78
(6) Zikkaron Uvnei Yisra'el, published in Freimann,c/wyan Shabbetay Sevi, pp. 4 3 - 7 8 .
(7) Ibid., p.46.
(8) Ibid., p. 63. The mysterious lacuna where the daughter's name ought to be is present in
all the manuscripts of Zikkaron livnei Yisra'el I have consulted (in the Institute of Microfilm Hebrew Manuscripts, National and University Libraryjerusalem) :J TS Mie. 3 5 9 0 ;Jerusalem, BenZvi 2264; Cambridge Or. 804; London,British Museum 1061; Warsaw LIVand LV(formerly
MSS Schwartz 141,21 and 141,21a of the Vienna Jewish community). I have n o idea how it might
be explained. Nathan of Gaza, writing early in 1672, mentions the birth of a daughter to Sabbatai in the preceding year : Abraham Amarillo,"Te cudot shabbeta'iyyot miginzei Rabbi Sha'ul
A m a r i l l o ? 5 ( 1 9 6 1 ) 2 6 2 ; cf. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 851.
(9) The "Najara chroniclers published in Amarillo,"Tecudot shabbeta'iyyot," pp. 2 5 4 - 6 2 ;

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anople o n 8 Nisan (9 March) 1671,the day after Sabbatai had gained custody of
him from Sarah, whom h e hadjust divorced. (He remarried her not long afterward.) 10 The boy was now three years old, Sabbatai remarked to Najara, and
therefore must b e circumcised in accord with Leviticus 19:23-24, three years
shall it be uncircumsed to you. . .but in thefourth year all its fruit shall be holiness
of praise. Sabbatai found it significant that h e had gained custody of the child
o n 7 Nisan, the day when Elishama prince of the tribe ofEphraim had made
his offering to the tabernacle (Numbers 7:48-53); Elishama's name being a n
anagram for"Ishmae1rand his status a n allusion to the Messiah b e n Ephraim.
Ishmael was given the Jewish name'TsraeFfor the occasion.11
It is evident from Najara's account that this eccentric ritual was carried out
amid considerable Messianic excitement. We can only imagine its effect o n
the three-year-old child, snatched from his mother and hustled off to a gathering of enthusiasts who pronounced over him prophecies and blessingsunintelligible to him, while they cut his penis.12
It will follow from Najara's chronology that Ishmael was born in Nisan
1668. This date entirely suits Baruch of Arezzo's story.13 There is, however, an
importan t piece ofevidence that can b e taken to suggesth e wasb o r n theprevious year.14 This is a letter written by Nathan of Gaza to Sabbatai Zevi's brothers, evidently early in 1667, which prophesies that "out of this business [the
summarized in Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp.846-51. The account of Ishmael's circumcision is o n
pp. 256-57.
( 10) Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 851.
(11) Najara: ve-niqra shem ha-mahul be-yisraelyisrael.
(12) We may get some idea o f the trauma inflicted by reading accounts of the circumcisions,
in traditional societies, of older boys who have the advantage of being prepared for the operation and knowing why they are being made to endure it: Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java,
Chicago 8c London, i960, pp. 51-53 ; Nelson Mandela, LongWalk to Freedom: The Autobiography of
Nelson Mandela, Boston, 1994, pp. 22 - 2 7. ( I owe the latter reference to my colleague Professor Yaakov Ariel.) It is not clear from Najara's account how many people attended the circumcision.
O n 8 Nisan, h e says, Sabbatai sent invitations to the Muslim notables of Adrianople, knowing
that they would falsely assume that the ritual was scheduled for the next day. (Clearly, pace Baruch of Arezzo, Sabbatai was concerned that the Muslims not know just what was done at the
circumcision.) Najara himself performed the circumcision again contradicting Baruch of
Arezzo and Joseph Karillo acted as sandaq. But there were clearly other Jews, or at least Jewish apostates, present. One of them "had a ten-year-old son who had not yet been circumcised;
h e had vowed, while AMI RAH was in the'tower of strength' [that is, when Sabbatai Zevi was being
held in the fortress Gallipoli, in 1666],to circumcise him only in the presence o f King Messiah.
AM RAH then commanded the afore-mentioned rabbi [Najara] that h e circumcise him with
the afore-mentioned blessings, and h e called his name Ishmael."
( 13) The Dnme tradition similarly recalls that Ishmael was circumcised at age three : Moshe
Attias and Gershom Scholem,Shirot ve-tushbahot shel ha-shabbetaim(Tel Aviv, 1947) P4^
(14) Liebes (above, . 5) summarizes the arguments for 1667 vs. 1668 as the year of Ishmael's
birth. H e inclines to the earlier date.

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apostasy, presumably] a son is to b e born to Sabbatai Zevi, his name Ishmael.

H e will b e born circumcised, and will undergo the rite of hatafat dam at age
thirteen. Of him the Bible says ,Only let Ishmael live before you [Genesis 17:18],
and he will be a wild ass of a manfhis hand in all and the hand of all in him [16:12 ])5
inasmuch as by his hand shall the Gentiles b e sustained and preserved from
annihilation, [God] not wishing the destruction of any creature!'16 It sounds
very much as if Ishmael's birth is imminent. We need n o t assume, however,
that the child Nathan anticipates is necessarily the same as the one who was
actually born and given the name Ishmael. T h e expecting mother who may
or may not have been Sarah17 may have miscarried; the child may have died
in infancy; it may have turned out to b e a girl. Sabbatai's first son will then
have been born the following spring.
Nathan's allusions to the Biblical Ishmael (to which we should add Gen
17:25, according to which Ishmael was circumcised at age thirteen) are echoed in a letter that Sabbatai himself wrote some months after his birth!8 T h e
day of thepidyon ha-ben of "my first-born son Ishmael, who shall bcgreat [Gen
17:20] and shall live [17:18]',' is said to have taken place in the week of the Torah portion containing Lev 25:26, Should a man have no redeemer; his hand shall
yet attain that hefind the wherewithalfor his redemption!9 "Surely this is an allusion
to Job, the man ofsufferings who well knows illness [Isaiah 53:3] I mil concede to
(15) Translated in accord with Nathan's evident understanding of the passage.
(16) Quoted byjacob Sasportas, Sisat navelSevi ; Isaiah Tishby (ed.) ( Jerusalem, 1954),pp. 200-01.
(17) Sasportas, writing to the Moroccan rabbis in the fall of 1668, speaks of Ishmael as the offspring of a Muslim wife or concubine of Sabbatai's (Sisat novel Sevi, p. 314; also p. 349, written in
August 1669; cf. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p.685). How seriously ought we to take this claim? Sasportas was hardly an unbiased observer, and the Genesis typology invoked by Nathan might well
have suggested to him that, like his Biblical model, Ishmael Zevi was the son of a concubine. Najara, moreover, explicitly represents Sarah as Ishmael Zevi's mother. But it is curious that, several years later, Sabbatai refers to Ishmael as the son o f his new wife, Joseph Filosoff's daughter
(see below). If Ishmael was in fact the son of a non-Jewish woman who would have been, from
the Jewish perspective, n o wife at all we can easily imagine that Sabbatai and his followers
might have adopted the convention of describing him as the "son"of whoever Sabbatai's current
Jewish wife happened to be. A Dnme hymn speaks obscurely of Sabbatai having had "three
other women" in addition to his four "official" wives, and says immediately afterward,"Ishmael
came forth from him" (Attias and Scholem, Shirot ve-tushbahot, p. 205). All of this suggests the possibility that Ishmael's mother and, if my reconstruction is correct, the woman whom Nathan
falsely expected to become Ishmael's mother may have been someone other than Sarah. Cf.
Sisat novel Sevi, p. 327, where the Moroccan rabbi Ibn Sa'adun, writing to Sasportas at some time
in 5429(166869), seems disposed to deny the authenticity of Nathan's prophecy of Ishmael's
birth, as though there were something discreditable about it.
(18) Amarillo,"Te c udot shabbeta'iyyot," pp. 2 6 6 - 6 8 ; discussed at length in Liebes,"Yahasor
pp. 267-307. The letter is itself undated, so the date we ascribe to it will depend o n whether we
judge Ishmael to have been born in 1667 or 1668.
(19) Ve-ish hi lo yihyeh lo g'el ve-hissigah yado umasa kedei ge'ullato. I translate in accord with Sab-

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you that your right hand can save you [Job 40:14]." Through this fog of Biblical
allusions, we can discern that Sabbatai(who regularly identified himself with
the suffering job)2 0 expects the first-born son whom h e has recently "redeemed" to b e his"right hand','and t o turn out to b e his own redeemer.
T h e sources quoted so far permit the speculation that Sabbatai and hisfollowers saw Ish1\1ael as embodying in his small person the duality of Sabbatai's
new life as simultaneously Muslim and Jew; and, through his very existence,
as rescuing him and his followers from this insoluble contradiction. His
names, as recorded by Baruch of Arezzo, may b e understood as symbolizing
and defining his intended role. As"Mordecai," h e is the Jew placed more or
less against his will at the center of Gentile power; 21 while, as "Ishmael,"h e is
the collective representation of that power.
It is the tip of Ishmael's penis, above all else, that bears this fantastic burden.
T h e Sabbatians,it seems, could hardly mention him without talking about his
circumcisionf2 which functions to unite Judaism and Islam in his person, b u t
also to symbolize the choice that must b e made between the two (since you
cannot b e circumcised as an infant of eight days and again as a young boy).
Nathan finds an ingenious way to escape this choice: like Moses in the midrash, Ishmael will b e born circumcised. 23 In this respect, as in others, Ishmael
Zevi disappointed his elders.
At the beginning of 1673, Sabbatai Zevi was banished to Dulcigno in Albania.
Sarah and Ishmael went into exile with him; we shall presently see that a remarkable vignette has been preserved of their life together. Sarah died in
their exile.24
batai's evident understanding of the verse, which hinges o n the association oyado mvyeminekha
in Job 40:14.
(20) Cf. the index to Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, s.v. Job.
(21) This will supplement, not exclude, Scholem's view that the child was named after his
grandfather Mordecai Zevi (<Sabbatai Sem, p. 826).
(22) A statement that remains true of the Dnme hymns dedicated to Ishmael (Attias and
Scholem, Shirot ve-tushbahot, pp. 45-47)
(23) Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, III, 468, V, 3 9 9 (cf. V, 273-74). I d o not know if
Nathan might also have been influenced by the Muslim tradition that Antichrist (Dajjal) would
be born circumcised : David J. Halperin ,"The Ibn Sayyad Traditions and the Legend ofal Dajjal,
Journal of the American Oriental Society 96(1976)2 2 4 n. 100. The Sabbatian Abraham Cardozo,who
was born to a Marrano family in Spain and resumed his Judaism upon fleeing to Italy at age 2 2,
claimed to have been born circumcised, which seems to m e tantamount to admitting his enemies'accusations that h e was never circumcised at all: Isaac R.Molho and Abraham Amarillo,
"Autobiographical Letters of Abraham Cardozo" [Hebrew], Sefunot 3-4(1960)220-21; Yosef
Hayim Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto (New York, 1971), p. 202.
(24) Assuming, with Scholem, that the matronita whose death is mentioned in the "Com

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Sabbatai then married (1675) the daughter of the Salonika scholarJoseph

FilosofF. Several months before his death, h e wrote a letter to Filosofi in which
h e promises to visit him in the company of his wife,"and, with her, h e r two
sons Ishmael and Abraham? 25 Let us leave aside the mysterious "Abraham"; let
us leave aside, also, the problem of why Sabbatai should have called Ishmael
the son of his new wife.26 Benayahu's interpretation of the letter, that Sabbatai
was bringing his sons to Salonika to pursue their education with FilosofF, is
thoroughly plausible.27
O n Yom Kippur, 1676, Sabbatai died. His brother, Elijah Zevi,escorted the
widow and children back to Adrianople ; we learn this from a letter of Samuel
Gandoor, as quoted in a subsequent letter of Meir Rofe to Abraham Rovigo
( 2 5 October 1677 )*8T h e widow apparendy returned at some later point to Salonika, and Benayahu thinks it a fair assumption that Ishmael went with her.
But there is n o evidence for this.
T h e widow seems still to have been in Adrianople in 1681. Abraham Cardozo reports h e r to have travelled from there to Rodosto at the e n d of that
year, seeking his hand in marriage. So, she told him, her late husband had diree ted her; and the impending Messianic redemption would depend upon
their union. Cardozo urged h e r to wait until after the redemption, which h e
had predicted for Passover 1682,had taken place; whereupon she went back
to Adrianople.29 Ishmael Zevi is wholly absent from this narrative. Cardozo
mentions, as did Gandoor, that after Sabbatai's death Elijah Zevi "went to
bring the widow to Adrianople!' But unlike Gandoor h e says nothing of any
children having been present.
Why the silence about Ishmael? We must admit that Cardozo was writing
some twenty years after the events, and that h e might well have neglected to
mention any b u t the most important participants. Yet, given the intense Messianic hopes that we shall see to have been attached to Ishmael n o t long
mentary o n Psalms" (below, sec.6) is Sabbatai's wife Sarah, and not the daughter o f Aaron Majar,
whom Sabbatai had planned to marry in 1671 and again in 1674( a n d whose name was also Sarah).
For Scholem's view, see Sabbatai Sevi, p.885;"Perush mizmorei Tehillim? p.170 (Liebes,p.103),cf.
"Peraqim apoqaliptiyyim u-meshihiyyimcal Rabbi Mordekhai me-Eizenshtat"(in Liebes, p.551).
Amarillo ("Te c udot shabbeta'iyyot," pp. 2 4 0 - 4 1 ) proposes the alternative identification o f the
matronita, which h e seems to attribute to Scholem. Cf. Avner Falk,"The Messiah and the Qelippoth: On the Mental Illness o f Sabbatai Sevi," Journal of Psychology andJudaism 7(1982)19-23.
(25) In Baruch of Arezzo; Freimann finyanei Shabbetai Sevi, pp. 6 7 - 6 8 .
(26) But see above, n. 17.
(27) Sabbatean Movement in Greece, p. 167.
(28) IsaiahTishby,"R.Meir Rofe's Letters of 1675-80 to R. AbrahamRovigo" [Hebrew],Sefunot
3-4(1960) 113-14; cf. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 918-19.
(29) Molho and Amarillo,"Autobiographical Letters, pp. 200-01. O n the episode, cf. Benayahu, Shabbatean Movement in Greece, pp.80,250.

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before 1681 ,it is hard to imagine that h e could have been less than a major actor in any scheme of his stepmother's to fulfill h e r own Messianic destiny. T h e
most natural inference is that by the e n d of 1681 Ishmael was n o longer o n
the scene and had been, for all intents and purposes, forgotten - a strange
amnesia which will become familiar to us before our study is ended.The widow
therefore briefly looked to Cardozo as a fresh candidate for Messiah. (Not long
afterward, she turned h e r attentions to her young brother Jacob Querido,
who would prove a more satisfactory Messianic partner than either Ishmael
or Cardozo.)30
We must defer to section 9 our examination of two important post-1680 references to Ishmael Zevi, by Abraham Yakhini and Abraham Cuenque; and,to
an excursus, Benayahu's brilliant (but, in my opinion, mistaken) reconstruction of Ishmael's long and successful post-Sabbatian career. For now, let us
conclude this section with a slightly earlier bit of evidence : a Sabbatian text
dealing with the Messianic role of Mordecai Eisenstadt, written evidently in
1679, which explains the necessity for Sabbatai Zevi and his offspring to b e
"profaned among the Gentiles. H e needed to m e n d [letaqqen] that filth Ishmael that had emerged from Abraham ; that was why h e needed to beget the
son called Ishmael
Ishmael's [that is, Islam's] merit extended only to the
year 5436 [1675-76, at the e n d of which Sabbatai Zevi died], [after which]
they deserved to b e wholly annihilated. That was why h e produced that son
and called his name Ishmael, in order to mix with them and, by Abrahams
merit, preserve that [Muslim] nation from annihilation!' 31
This testimony rounds off the scanty data about Ishmael Zevi that we have
already examined. H e was born (probably) in Nisan 1668, a year and a half after his father's conversion to Islam, and given a name that encapsulated the
Islamic world as seen through Jewish eyes. H e was brought u p nominally as a
Muslim, and was still so regarded in 1679. Sabbatai saw him as his own future
redeemer, and (at least by 1671) as the Messiah b e n Ephraim. H e was expected
to emerge circumcised from the womb ; that anticipation having failed, h e
was abrupdy made to undergo circumcision at age three. When h e was four,
h e was exiled with his parents to remote Albania. T h e woman h e regarded as
his mother died when h e was five or six. His father died when h e was eight.
H e seems still to b e alive, still to be a Muslim, at age ten o r eleven (1679). T h e
letter of Nathan of Gaza, written before his birth, hints that great things were
(30) Ibid., pp. 84-101 ; Scholem "The Crypto-Jewish Sect of the Dnmeh (Sabbatians) in Turkey," in The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York, 1971) PP1 4755*
(31) Scholem,"Peraqim apoqaliptiyyim',' in Liebes, Researches in Sabbateanism, pp. 5 4 5 - 4 6 ; cf.
Liebes's appendix o n pp. 5 6 2 - 6 3 .

52

DAVID J . HALPE RI

[io]

expected of his thirteenth birthday. Yet,n o t long after that birthday, h e seems
to have vanished from the Sabbatian collective memory.
With this background, let us turn to examine the source that most vividly
expresses the greatness expected of the Messiah's small son, a n d that sheds
the most light o n his mysterious slide into oblivion.
3 M S B U D A P E S T , K A U F M A N N 2 5 5 : A C O M M E N T A R Y
O N T H E SABBATIAN L I T U R G Y FOR T H E M I D N I G H TV I G I L

In 1940, Gershom Scholem discovered in the David Kaufmann collection

(Budapest) a hitherto unknown Sabbatian text. It was a commentary o n what
seemed to b e a random assortment of Biblical Psalms, with a few other passages mixed in, e.g., the story of the manna in Exodus 16, the Ten Commandments, the Aqedah.Scholem published a detailed article o n the text some ten
years later, and printed a few extracts from it in an appendix.32 To my knowledge, it has not otherwise been published ; nor have further manuscripts of it
come to light; n o r has it been subjected to independent study, scholars normally having been content to quote o r cite it via Scholem's article. I a m grateful to the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (and particularly to
Dr. Istvn Ormos, Keeper of the Kaufmann Collection) for having supplied
m e with a set of excellent photographic prints of the manuscript.
Scholem found it easy enough to fix the approximate date when the text
was composed. Almost from its beginning, it presupposes Sabbatai Zevi's
death (discreedy called his "disappearance"), a n d represents it as a problem
for the faithful.33 On the other hand.it repeatedly refers to Nathan of Gaza as
one who is still alive. It follows that the text must have been written after Sabbatai's death had become widely known, and before the author might be expected to have learned of Nathan's. It cannot be earlier than 1677, o r later
than 1680.34
T h e author was a loyal disciple and scribe of Nathan's, a n d it appears from
o n e story h e tells (below) that h e lived at least for a time in Nathan's sometime
headquarters of Kastoria in Macedonia. These data, combined with a strong
hint in the text that his name was"Israel"(see below, n.52 ),encouraged Scholem to identify him with one"Israel Hazzan of Kastoria"mentioned by the Italian Sabbatian Benjamin Kohen. Scholars have followed Scholem's lead, and
(32) See above, sec, 1, n. 2.
(33) E.g., fol 16v( they d o not budge from their faith. . . even after the disappearance [hec
lem]n), 20r ("the great objection that our opponents raise to u s . . / h e is dead and buried,what
more can you hope from him?' ").
(34) Meir Rofe s letters to Abraham Rovigo show that Sabbatai, s followers were kept in the
dark about his death until well into 1677 > Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 918ig.

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it will b e convenient for us to speak of the author as " Israel Hazzan'.' This identification, however, does not contribute a great deal to our knowledge of the
writer. We have n o other information o n Israel Hazzan at this period of his
life ; although Meir Benayahu and David Tamar have called attention to legal
texts that suggest that from 1692 onward h e was treated by the Jewish community of Kastoria as a respectable and indeed a leading citizen, and that h e
was still alive in 1720?5 If Israel Hazzan was the author of our text, therefore,
h e must have been a fairly young man at the time.
Now, Hazzan's commentary has a great deal to say about Ishmael Zevi and
about his Messianic role. Scholem excerpts some of the relevant statements,
and puts them in the context of what we know about Ishmael's life. H e does
not, however, attempt to evaluate them within the context of the commentary itself, or to trace the development of Hazzan's perceptions of Ishmael as
an aspect of the evolution of his overall project. This seems to m e a crucial
omission. For it must b e understood that the statements about Ishmael are by
n o means evenly distributed through the commentary. O n the contrary, Ishmael first makes his appearance more than two-thirds of the way through the
text, dominates much of the next eleven folio pages, and then disappears as
suddenly as h e came, never to b e heard of again. If we are to make sense of
this curious proceeding - which will b e essential, if we are to understand
what Ishmael Zevi meant to Israel Hazzan it will behoove us to take a closer
look at the structure and development of Hazzan's composition.
To this end, I will proceed to establish at least the probability of three assertions. First, Scholem was mistaken to believe that Hazzan selected his Biblical texts without any predetermined plan, guided only by his inspiration at
each juncture. T h e sequence of texts Hazzan expounds is in fact based o n
the distinctive liturgy for the midnight vigil (tiqqun hasot) that Sabbatai Zevi
formulated n o later than 1665.Where Hazzan diverges from the original sequence as h e does, in significant ways we must seek some particular motivation o n his part. Second, Scholem was right to suspect that MS Kaufmann
2 55 is Hazzan's autograph.Third, the enormous variations in the manuscript's
handwriting, to which Scholem called attention, may b e used as markers of
the stages in which the commentary was composed, and the points at which
the author quite literally laid down Iiis pen. T h e bearing of these assertions
o n our examination of Ishmael Zevi will presently become clear.
In his widely circulated letter to RaphaelJoseph (September 1665),Nathan of
Gaza admonished that"the meditations (kawwanoth) which the great master

(35) Benayahu, Shabbatean Movement in Greece, pp.2 4 1 2 4 5

4 3 n Tamar, Mehqa
ha-Yehudim be-eres Yisraelu-ve-arsot ha-mizrah(Jerusalem, 1981),cited by Liebes, Researches in Sabbatianism, p. 139.1 have not seen Tamar ,s book.

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DAVID J. HALPE RI

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Isaac Luria h a d revealed are n o longer applicable in o u r days, since all the
worlds are now [on a] different [mystical level],and it [that is, the meditation of
the Lurianic devotions today] would b e like performing actions appropriate
to a weekday o n a Sabbath!'36 I n particular, the Lurianic rite of tiqqun hasot
was to b e discarded or, rather, drastically revamped. T h e purpose of the
rite was to raise the divine Female (the Shechinah)from h e r dust a n d to coupie h e r with the divine Male ;37 and, according to Nathan, the Shechinah h a d
by 1665 already begun h e r ascent."Hence,"he wrote in 1666,"one must n o t
perform the tiqqun a n d weep over the exile of the Shechinah as we used to
do, b u t the tiqqun that AM1RAH38ordained, as it is well known t o you!'39
What was"the tiqqun that A M I R A H ordained"? Scholem writes, in a footnote to this passage, that it isn o longer extant. H e does n o t seem t o have observed that it is set forth in detail by the eighteenth-century Salonikan rabbi
a n d preacher Abraham Miranda, in the course of a discussion of the contemporary relevance of the Lurianic kavvanot.40
These kavvanot, says Miranda (echoing Nathan) are by a n d large obsolete,
a n d the Lurianic tiqqun hasot isn o longer suitable."But o n e should recite the
following tiqqun, preferably while standing; 41 a n d should begin by reciting
with a melodious voice, clear enunciation, a n d a sacred melody: Far the sake
of the unity of the Blessed Holy One, etc. Our God and God of ourfathers, reign over
the entire world in your glory,e te." There follows a list of Biblical passages t o b e
recited(see below),concluded by the statement :"Thus ends the tiqqun hasot
arranged by AMIRAH."
T h e liturgies f o r tiqqun laylah, distributed by Nathan of Gaza a n d printed
in numerous editions throughout 1666?2 preserve t h e tiqqun described by
(36) Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 271-72. The glosses are Scholem's, the translation is that of
R.J. Zwi Werblowsky. The original text is in Sasportas, Sisat navelSevi, p. 9.
(37) O n the development of the rite, see Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New
York, 1965), pp. 146-50. The classic statement of its content, theory, and practice is in Hayyim
Vital's Shacar ha-kawanot,Derushei ha-laylah, 4 and 11(Yehudah Zvi Brandwein [ed.] [Jerusalem,
1988], vol.1 [Sidrat kol kitv ha-, vol. 8], pp. 3 4 7 - 5 3 , 3 7 4 - 7 9 ) . A modern edition of the liturgy
is published by Seraiah Dablitzky,Seder Tiqqun Hasot (Bnei Brak, 1972 [1958]).
(38) The standard Sabbatian designation for Sabbatai Zevi, comprised of the initials of the
phrase adonenu meshihenu yarum hodo "our Lord and Messiah, may his majesty be exalted."
(39) Derush ha-tanninim, in Scholem, Be-iqvot mashiah ( Jerusalem, 1944), p. 15 ;cf. Sabbatai Sevi,
p. 250.
(40) Inserted by Miranda into a bulky anthology of Sabbatian documents that he had copied
out (MS Ben-Zvi, Amarillo 2 2 62 ).The relevant passage is published in Benayahu, Sabbatean Movement in Greece, pp. 4 0 5 - 0 8 ; o n Miranda himself, see pp. 2 0 4 - 2 2.
(41 ) In opposition to the standard Lurianic practice of reciting tiqqun hasot while sitting o n
the ground; cf. below, n.48.
(42) Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 2 9 0 - 9 2 , and the annotated bibliography of the editions o n
PP 9 3 6 - 3 9 I have consulted four editions, the first three provided (on microfilm) by the library

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T H E S O N OF T H E MESSIAH

155

Miranda.There are, to b e sure, somevariations.Two of the editions I have consuited, for example, add Psalm 31 (which does n o t appear at all in Miranda's
list) after Psalm 28,with the preface :"Psalm 31 is added here in the Safed text,
and for that reason I have included it as well for the benefit of the reader who
wants to recite it and b e rewarded for it!'43 Miranda notes three additional
psalms (45,15, 4 4 (! i n the margins or between the lines of his manuscrip
n o n e of these three appears in the printed editions. But the rule is that leetions that are missing from Miranda are in some way flagged as uncertain in
the editions, and vi& versai5 There isn o lection listed in the body of Miranda's
text that is n o t found in all of the editions I have consulted; n o r is there any
lection printed without prefatory reservations that fails to appear in Miranda.
T h e order of readings is identical in all sources. O n the essential content of
the Sabbatian liturgy for tiqqun hasot, in other words, Miranda and the 1666
editions are in complete agreement.
This liturgy turns out to b e a very much expanded version of the Lurianic
"rite of Leah" {tiqqun le ah).The Lurianic tiqqun hasot had been divided into
a"rite of Rachel"and a"rite of Leah!' In this division,"Rachel" represents that
aspect of the divine Female that has been exiled and degraded(and therefore
requires rescue) "Leah" the aspect that is about to engage in the sacred coupling with the Male (and therefore requires preparation and assistance)?6
of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the fourth by the Princeton University Library. The
Hebrew Union College editions are those printed 1."at the press and behest of David de Castro
Tartazr Amsterdam (Scholem's no. 30), 2. "at the behest o f . . .Joshua Sarphati at the press of
David de Castro Tartaz,"Amsterdam (Scholem's no. 31), 3. "at the press and behest of Isaac ben
David d e Castro Tartaz," Amsterdam (evidently corresponds to Scholem's no. 32, but, unlike the
book Scholem describes, has n o frontispiece). The volume loaned m e by Princeton University
Library is apparently a relatively recent reprint. It includes n o fewer than six title pages, one of
them in Spanish (Scholem's no. 34, Plate IV), another corresponding to the frontispiece described by Scholem (and reproduced by him as Plate II I).The first two title pages both claim that
the book was published in Amsterdam,"at the press and behest of David de Castro Tartaz"; the
second corresponds to Scholem's no. 30, the first is similar to nos. 31 and 32 but identical with
neither. The liturgy itself, with its variants,closely corresponds to that printed by Isaac ben David
de Castro Tartaz ( Scholem's no. 3 2 ).The pagination (85 leaves) does not correspond to any of the
editions listed by Scholem,but it is fairly close to no. 31.The publication history of Nathan's tiqqun
is clearly more complex even than Scholem's bibliography would suggest, and I d o not have the
library resources to pursue it further.
(43) Ed. Isaac ben David de Castro Tartaz, and the Princeton edition.
(44) Psalm 4 5 after Psalm 40, Psalm 15 after Psalm 112, Psalm 71 after Psalm 51.
(45) Miranda puts Psalm 126 at the very end of his list(after Prov 31:2 8 - 3 1 ),with the note,
"In other manuscripts I did not see this psalm? Two of the editions (cited in note 43, above) inelude Psalm 126 introduced, however, by the words,"Some recite this psalm after the tiqqun:
These editions thus agree with Miranda that Psalm 126 is a doubtful element o f the liturgy. I
have therefore omitted it from the list of tiqqun hasot readings that follows.
(46) The liturgy o tiqqun rahel consists of Psalms 137 and 79, Lamentations 5, Isa 63:15-18,

DAVID J . HALPE RI

156

[141

Once the Female has been raised from the dust as had happened, according to Sabbatian theory, some years prior to Sabbatai Zevi's appearance47
tiqqun rahel loses its point. Tiqqun lah does not. It will n o t surprise us, therefore, to find otherwise conservative people restricting, during the great Messianic excitement, their recitation of tiqqun hasot partly o r wholly to tiqqun
ieahf8 It will surprise us still less to find the Messiah himself fashioning a
new tiqqun hasot of his own, taking six of the seven tiqqunle'ah psalms (all but
Psalm 67) as his starting point?9
Now, when we compare the sequence of Biblical passages in the Sabbatian
tiqqun hasot with the sequence of passages expounded in Israel Hazzan's commentary, we will find their relationship beyond any doubt.
Tiqqun hasot
Psalms 42
43
24
19
20

MS Kaufmann 2 5 5
42
43
24
19
20

Tiqqun hasot MS Kaufmann 2 5 5

Psalms 21
26
27
28

21
26
27
28
88

64:7-11,62:6-9. The liturgy of tiqqun lah consists of Psalms 24,42,43,20,67,111, and 51, plus a
verse from the lamentation az be-hataenu harav miqdash ( Israel Davidson, Thesaurus of Medieval
Hebrew Poetry [ Ktav reprint, 1970] ,vol. 1, p.98 ).The kawanot of all the" Leah"psalms except the last,
according to Vital, relate to"Leah's coupling,her pregnancy, and her childbearing,in accord with
the esoteric meaning of she rises while it is yet night [Prov 31:15 ]"(Shacar ha-kawanot, p. 356). From
this and from other remarks mShacar ha-kawanot,it is clear that the" Leah" liturgy was structured
with an eye toward the Zoharic myth of the hind, in which the Female's nocturnal excursion conveys divine effluence ("food") to those bel0w(Z0har,II,52b,219b-220a,III,249a-b; the last two
passages are translated in Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar [London and Washington, 1989],
vol. 1, pp. 393-96, vol. 2, pp.738-40).It is thus no accident that Israel Hazzan's commentary on
his opening psalm (42) is largely given over to detailed exposition of these Zoharic passages.
(47) Scholem/'Hadashotc al Rabbi David Yishaqi hashabbeta'i," in Liebes, Researches in Sabbateanism, pp. 197-202.
(48) Moses Zacuto, for example,could never bring himself to accept Nathan's theory that the
Lurianic kawanot were outdated. Yet, temporarily persuaded that an era of divine grace was
dawning, he decided in 1666 no longer to perform tiqqun hasot "with lamentations and sitting
on the ground, as I once d i d . . . . I recite at midnight the Psalm of Asaph [Psalm 79], the verses
Look from heaven.. . [Isa 63:15-18], and the rest of the consoling verses and familiar sequence
of psalms" that is to say, tiqqun lah plus a few remnants of tiqqun rahel ( ScholemYahaso shel
Rabbi Mosheh Zakut el ha-shabbeta'ut," in Liebes, Researches in Sabbateanism, pp. 510-29 ; cf. Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 501-04). We will presently see that one of these remnants, Isa 63:15-18, was substantially to influence the thought of Israel Hazzan.
(49) Cf. n.46 with the list below; of thefiveopening psalms of Sabbatai Zevi's tiqqun hasot, four
are from tiqqun Wah.

T H E SON OF THE MESSIAH

[15]
Tiqqun hasot

MS Kaufmann 2 5 5
77, 68

Psalms
34
37
40,
63
111
112
51
72
Aqedah (Gen 22:1-19)
Manna (Exod 16:4-36)

Ten Commandments
(Exod 20:2-14)
Psalms

Psalms 34
37 (Ishmael)
[40]
[63]
[111]
112 (Ishmael)
51
72 (Ishmael)
Aqedah (Ishmael)
Job 28:3-11,Jer 31:6-10
[I Samuel 2:1-10]

Ten Commandments
46
47

7:18-20
118:5-21
21:17ff
Psalms 80
Job 38f, Psalms 69

MS Kaufmann 2 5 5

Isaiah 51:9-11 51:9-11,43

Song of Songs 8:8-10 8:8-10
Proverbs 31:28-31 31:28-29

Manna
SZ's baqqasha50
Job 28:12ff

Deuteronomy 10:12-21 30:lff

30:1-10 10:12-22
Micah 7:18-20
Psalms 118:5-25
Numbers 21:17-20

Tiqqun hasot

57

Psalms 142:1-2, Song 4:8

102
Daniel 2:19-23
Psalms

142:3-8
143
17:1-7
5
17:7-15
86
90

I have based my list of the texts expounded by Hazzan o n that prepared by

Scholemf 1 b u t have altered it slightly o n the basis of my own examination of
the manuscript. Where two passages appear o n the same line, this indicates
that Hazzan has wandered into a n exposition of the second within the framework of his commentary o n the first.Where Ishmael Zevi appears in the commentary to a given passage, I have noted this fact in parentheses.
Four passages in my list are in brackets. Hazzan does n o t actually expound
(50) That is, the liturgical poem beginning le-macanekha ve-lo lanu u-le-shokhevei mecarah (Davidson, Thesaurus,voL$,p.54),which Hazzan(fol 47 V) represents as having been a favorite of Sabbatai
Zevi's, and which he expounds as though it were one of his Biblical texts.(Is there any significance to the fact that two of the sources Davidson gives for the poem are nineteenth-century
editions of tiqqun hasot})
(51) "Perush mizmorei tehillim','pp. 158-60 (Liebes, pp. 90-91).

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DAVID J. HALPE RI

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these texts,b u t only notes that either h e o r Nathan of Gaza has elsewhere com
mented o n them?2 Remarks of this sort are wholly inexplicable unless we assume that Hazzan was working with a fixed lectionary sequence that included
these passages. H e might add commentary o n passages that did n o t figure in
the liturgy, but h e did n o t want to omit comment o n any part of the liturgy
without explaining the omission.
It seems to m e entirely clear that Israel Hazzan had set himself to write a
commentary o n the Sabbatian tiqqun hasot. It is also clear that h e permitted
himself significant liberties with his source. We might account for the addition of one o r two Biblical passages here and there Psalms 88 and 77 after
Psalm 2 8, Psalms 4 6 and 47 after the Ten Commandments as deriving from
a variant text of the tiqqun. But it is very unlikely that this will explain thedisplacement of the entire series of passages from Psalm 34 through the Aqedah to after Proverbs 31; or the introduction of a wholly new series of passages, which have n o counterparts in the tiqqun, after the Aqedah.
Only one hypothesis will seem to m e to make sense of these rearrangements. At some point prior to undertaking the exposition of Psalm 34, Israel
Hazzan conceived the idea ofmaking the Aqedah, and his interpretation of it,
the climax of his composition. His commentaries o n the sequence of lections
preceding the Aqedah were to lead u p to this climax. H e therefore saved this
sequence for last and skipped over it for the time being, going straight from
Psalm 2 8 to the manna story. All of the commentary's allusions tolshmael Zevi occur
within, and dominate, this displaced sequence.
But something went wrong. At some point and we shall presently seek to
define that point Hazzan realized that the Aqedah was not so fitting a
conclusion after all. H e therefore continued his composition beyond the
bounds h e had originally set for it, to cover what appears to b e some other
liturgical sequence that I have n o t yet been able to identify ; 53 and h e ended
(52) Hazzan notes o n fol 98V that the yihudim of Psalms4 0 and 6 3 have been explained by Nathan,"in the book o f his holy writings that I copied from his holy exalted mouth? fols 4V and 2r
respectively; while h e has himself expounded Psalm 111 in his Emunei Yisrael, page 49. Fol 114V
refers the reader to "page 85" for an interpretation o f 1 Sam 2:1-10; I assume that this reference
is also to the otherwise unknown Emunei Yisrael, since it does not correspond to our manuscript.
The very low folio numbers of the lost "book^of Nathan's utterances(cf. Scholem,"Perush mizmorei tehillimrp. 160 and n. 6 ; Liebes, p. 92) tempts m e to suspect that this "book"may have consisted o f what were originally the first six folios o f MS Kaufmann 255 ; which, as we now have it,
begins with fol (see below). But six folio pages seems very short for a"book"(sefer).
(53) Hazzan's cross-reference to his exposition of 1 Sam 2:1-10 (above,n.52)shows that h e is
working with some pre-existing sequence of texts, and not following his own inspiration.This sequence bears n o resemblance whatever to the Sabbatian tiqqun ha-yom,the liturgy to be recited
after the morning service, as this is represented in the 1666 editions. (The tiqqun ha-yom lectionsare Gen 1:1-2:3,Deut 5:6-18,32:1-43,the first twoparashiyyot of Lev [1:1-7 :38]>Isa 2:1-5,

T H E S O N OF T H E MESSIAH

159

o n the melancholy strains of the Ninetieth Psalm?4

Scholem, as I have already remarked, was inclined to think that MS Kaufmann 255 is Israel Hazzan's autograph. Its script, h e says, is seventeenthcentury Sephardic, written"by a single scribe whose handwriting transforms
itself o n many pages from a precise and exacting script to one that is so
rapid and careless that they look like two different scripts." H e attributed
these sudden changes to "the writer's level of weariness and concentration.
It is very possible that the scribe was himself the author, and the manner in
which corrections are made in a number of places will support this view.
Scholem gave n o examples to backu p his last assertion. Let m e provide one.
O n fol l i g r - v Hazzan gives a n interpretation, inspired by Nathan of Gaza's
writings, of the words boded calgag in Ps 102:8. Its essential point is that Sabbatai Zevi has fused the two dalets of boded into the final closed mem, and thus
closed off the structures of holiness against the profaning and destructive
forces of chaos. Having made this point about verse 8, Hazzan proceeds to
verse 9:"Let us return to our passage.The text goes on, All day long have they
mocked me" But h e puts two dots - evidently a mark of erasure - over each
of the lastfivewords (amarcod kol ha-yom her funi \ and continues," We may also
understand in this way another Biblical text, spoken by Micah with regard to
11:1-12:5, Jer 30:1-31:39,33:10-26, Prov 31:10-31.) Is it perhaps linked to the liturgies of the
shommm la-boqer groups,who since the 1570s had made it their practice to gather before dawn for
voluntary prayer rituals? (See Elliott Horowitz,"Coffee,Coffeehouses,and the Nocturnal Rituals
of Early Modern Jewry," AJS Review 14U989] 17-46.) The fact that it begins with Job 28:3, He has
put an end to darkness, might conceivably point in this direction. But I have so far been unable to
consult any edition of these liturgies (e.g., Aaron Berechiah of Modena s Ashmoret ha-boqer),and
must for the present leave this as speculation.
(54) I see n o reason to suspect, as Scholem does, that any pages have been lost at the end of
the manuscript.The last page is in poor condition, but it carries the commentary to the very end
of Psalm 90, and ends amen e-amen. (It is not true that this page "was damaged by cutting," as
Scholem claims.The even lines that appear to mutilate the last page, which d o indeed give the
impression of having been made by knife or scissors, are in fact the edges of tape used to bind,
rather ineptly, the tattered sheet into the volume. The same is true of other pages of the manuscript, which seemed to Scholem to have been cut so that a few of the letters are missing , the
letters were covered with tape, and can often be dimly made out.) Nor would there be any reason to suppose that the beginning of the text is missing, were it not for the odd fact that the Hebrew numeration of the folio pages begins at 7 (It ends at 136 not 137, as Scholem says.) In
n. 52 ,above, I offered one possible explanation for this peculiarity, but I d o not have muchconfidence in it. In citing the manuscript, I follow the Hebrew page numbers (which,of course, I write
using Arabic numerals).There is also a sequence of Arabic numerals written o n the pages (beginning with folio 1, ending with 128), but it is useless : the same number is occasionally used for
two different pages, and the sequence gives rise to a horrendous bit of confusion about twothirds of the way through the manuscript, where a cluster of twelve folios is bound into the volurne upside-down so that the last page comes first.In preparing this article, I have ignored it.
(55) "Perush mizmorei tehillim? p. 158 ; Liebes,. go.

16

DAVID J. HALPE RI

[18]

the true Messiah, namely AMI RAH." T h e text in question isMie 7:14, where
the two dalets of h-vadad may similarly be explained in accord with Nathan's
theory of the closed ram. Hazzan spends about five lines discussing this passage. H e then resumes his quotation of Ps 102:9, kol ha-yom ve-khu\ and goes
o n to explicate it.
It is difficult to imagine a scribal error, o r series of scribal errors, that would
have created this text. Assume that the manuscript is Hazzaris autograph, and
all is clear. Hazzan, having applied Nathan's theory to Ps 102:8, proceeded to
the next verse. Immediately after writing the lemma, however, it occurred to
him that the theory will shed fresh light also o n Mie 7:14. H e left his writing
for a time, presumably while h e thought this through. (The script becomes
slightly smaller and neater after the words amar cod kol ha-yom herfuni, as it
tends to after the writer has taken a break; see below.) Returning to his desk,
h e made his point about the Micah passage, then resumed, in the most coneise manner possible, his interrupted discussion of Ps 102:9.
A scribe, copying a text that originated in the way I have suggested, would
surely either have deleted the words amar cod kol ha-yom herfuni or else omitted to mark them for erasure. T h e text as we have it best makes sense if we
suppose it comes straight from its author's hand.
This assumption will allow us our best explanation of a peculiar feature
of the manuscript. Of the forty-four units of content into which the text can
b e divided (above),no fewer than fifteen that is, slightly over one-third of
the total begin at the very top of the page (more often a verso than a recto)?6
This tendency is particularly strong at the beginning of the manuscript: of
the first ten units, seven begin at the top of the page. There is n o way thisfeature can have come about by chance. A copyist could have created it only by
leaving a blank space at the bottom of the preceding page, o r by writing very
large or very small o n the preceding page; but the writer of the manuscript
has done neither. Only a n author, in full control of his or her prolixity, could
have achieved this effect.57
It follows that Hazzan was not only the author of the text but also the
writer of the manuscript, and that, for one reason or another presumably
aesthetic h e was initially ready to take pains to insure that his units of content corresponded to the tops of his pages. H e eventually grew less inclined
( 5 6 ) P s a l m 4 2 ( f o l 71),Psalm43(241),Psalm 2 4 ( 2 4 v ) , P s a l m 1 9 ( 2 5 v ) , P s a l m 2 6 (311),Psalm 2 7
( 3 3 v ) , P s a l m 8 8 ( 3 7 v ) , E x o d 1 6 : 4 - 3 6 ( 4 1 V ) , P s a l m 4 6 ( 5 4 1 ) , D e u t 3 0 : 1 f f (59V),Psalm 3 0 ( 7 0 v ) , J 0 b
3 8 - 3 9 ( 7 2v), P s a l m 112 (991),Ps 1 4 2 : 3 - 8 (124V), P s a l m 1 4 3 (125V).

(57) This is perhaps what Scholem intended by his cryptic remark that "the manner of writing and the ordering [siddur] of the pages strengthen the impression that we have before us the
author's own autograph" ("Perush mizmorei tehillim',' p. 158 ; Liebes, p. 90).

T H E S O N OF T H E MESSIAH

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to make this effort, which is why the feature fades away as the commentary
progresses.
I d o n o t claim to have presented absolute proof that our manuscript is an
autograph. I intend, however, to have created a presumption in favor of that
view, and thereby to dispose the reader to accept the interpretation I am about
to offer of another feature of the manuscript: the very considerable fluctuations, observed by Scholem, in the quality of its handwriting. This seemingly
trivial detail will prove to have weighty implications for our understanding
of the Sabbatian Aqedah, and of the fate of Ishmael Zevi.
There is a certain regularity in the fluctuations. T h e first page of the manuscript is written in a small, very neat, really beautiful script.The script gradually slides downhill over the next dozen or so folio pages, becoming slightly
larger and considerably more sloppy. And then a new feature begins to assert
itself. T h e writer periodically gets hold of himself, as it were, and begins to
write again with his original neatness. This happens over and over. Unfortunately for the reader, the script again degenerates fairly rapidly. It becomes,
overall, more and more slovenly as the manuscript progresses, so that the con
,,
trasts between the writer's "fresh starts and the scrawl into which they quickly
decline become, in the second half of the manuscript, very striking.58
If we are prepared to grant the probability that Israel Hazzan is himself the
writer of our manuscript, a very natural interpretation of these shifts will suggest itself. They reflect the tension between Hazzan's wish to write legibly, and
his need to get o n paper the ideas that bubbled u p from his mind. H e normally writes rapidly and carelessly because the force of his inspiration will
not allow him to d o otherwise. H e leaves his writing for a time, then returns.
H e begins the new session writing neatly and carefully. (These are the"fresh
starts.") But literary inspiration soon wins out over scribal care ; soon h e is once
again scribbling down his ideas as fast as they come to him.
If this is correct, it has a consequence. The"fresh starts"observable in the
manuscript's handwriting will serve as markers of the stages in which Hazzan's
commentary was composed which d o not necessarily (or even normally)
correspond to its units of content. We can distinguish at least some of the
points at which Hazzan stood u p from his desk, to resume his work at some
later time.
If we were to suppose that the stages of composition followed rapidly upon
o n e another, this might b e a matter of small importance. There is evidence,
however, that they were spaced widely enough that significant events might
( 5 8 ) T h e c l e a r e s t e x a m p l e s o f t h e " f r e s h s t a r t s " a r eo n f o l s 4 1 r - v , 69V, 73V, 78V, 8 6 r , 9 3 V - 9 4 1 ,
1041, l i o v - i i i r , 112r, 1 1 6 v - 1 i 7 r , 123V, 1341.

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happen between them. O n fol 18v, Hazzan cites an alphabetic/numerological

tour d e force,involving Sabbatai Zevi's name,which h e attributes to"the flawless sage, the excellent judge, the rabbi, the divine Kabbalist, our honored
teacher Rabbijacob Ashkenazi, nr-vl,5gHe concludes the citation with :"These
are his words, which I heard from his holy mouth? Hazzan's use of the formula
nr-v (netareh rahmana ufarqeh?the Merciful O n e protect and save him,, o r the
like) shows clearly that h e believes Ashkenazi to be alive.
A second passage of this sort appears o n fol 35v36r. Hazzan introduces it,
"I heard from the holy mouth of the divine rabbi, our honored teacher Rabbi
Jacob Ashkenazi, nr-v" ; but concludes,"These are his holy words, z-l [zikhrono
li-vrakhahl may his memory b e a blessing It is strange that Ashkenazi should
b e spoken of as living (nr-v) at the beginning of the passage, and as dead (z-l)
less than four lines later.
Scholem calls attention to the anomaly, but does not try to explain it. T h e
most reasonable explanation seems to m e that Hazzan received the news of
Ashknazes death between writing fol 18r and fols 35v36r. (At least one"fresh
start" intervenes between the two passages,o n fol 1gr,and there is perhaps another o n fol 21r.) As h e began the second passage, h e wrote nr-v after Ashkenazi's name, out of habit. H e did n o t erase this expression or mark it for erasure, perhaps out of a feeling that a blessing ought n o t to b e effaced. But at the
end of the passage h e corrected it with the more appropriate blessing, z-l.
To b e sure, this peculiarity will n o t by itself prove that MSKaufmann 255 is
Hazzan,s autograph. T h e shift in the blessing after Ashkenazi's name might
well have originated as I have suggested in Hazzan's original composition,and
(59) Ashkenazi is the only Sabbatian ideologue, other than Nathan,whom Hazzan quotes by
name. The obscurity that now surrounds the man is itself something of a mystery, since there is
evidence that h e was regarded in the 1670s as one of the movement's leading intellectuals. Writing shortly after 1701, Cardozo relates a story that h e supposedly heard ( in 1682 ) from a man who
had visited Sabbatai Zevi two weeks before his death. Sabbatai allegedly represented Cardozo
to his visitors as a man of stature comparable to Ashkenazi's, to Nathan's, even to Sabbatai's own
(Molho and Amarillo,"Autobiographical Letters,"pp. 217-18).Obviously,Cardozo had a motive
to invent this story. But what motive would h e have had to introduce Ashkenazi's name in this
context, if he had not at one point been regarded by Sabbatians as a thinker second only to Nathan himself? The story contains another detail that suggests its authenticity. Cardozo mentions
"Mullah cAli"as Sabbatai's messenger from Dulcigno to Adrianople; and "Mullah cAli"appears
also in Israel Hazzan's commentary (fol 107V), again in the role of messenger (see below). It seems
best to assume that Cardozo's story, like Hazzan's commentary, preserves an accurate reflection
of the Sabbatian world o f the 1670s, as seen from the Balkans. Cardozo tells a remarkable story
about his own encounter with Jacob Ashkenazi, which may perhaps provide a clue as to why the
Sabbatians preferred to forget him :"When the rumor arrived that Sabbatai Zevi had died in
Alkum [Dulcigno], I was in Edirne [Adrianople]. I went to the great scholar Rabbi Jacob Ashke
nazi and I said to him, Sabbatai Zevi is dead; what says Your Worship to that? H e replied, If Sabbatai
Zevi is dead to you, go find another God" ("Autobiographical Letters," pp. 203-04).

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then been unthinkingly reproduced by a copyist. But it will make us sensitive

to the possibility that the stages in the creation of the manuscript may at times
mirror the changing events in Hazzan's environment, as well as the developments of his own thought.
In particular, it will prepare us for the possibility that one particular "fresh
start','within the t section of the manuscript that deals with the Aqedah(fol
1 0 8 r ) , marks a major crisis of faith for Israel Hazzan. This crisis, I will suggest,
transformed his expectations for Ishmael Zevi and his understanding of the
Aqedah itself. For, in the interval between Hazzan's leaving his writing desk
and his returning to it, h e learned that his young Messiah was dead.
4 . A MESSIAH ISBORN

We have already seen that all of the text's allusions to Ishmael, without any
exception, occur within its commentary o n what I have called the"displaced
sequence": those nine Biblical passages,beginning with Psalm 34 and ending
with the Aqedah, that Hazzan chose to shift from the middle to the e n d of the
tiqqun hasot liturgy. H e firstappears in the commentary o n the second of these
passages, Psalm 37.
I have been a lad and have grown old, says 37:25;yeti have not seen the nghteous
forsaken or his seed [zarco] seeking bread. T h e righteous, Hazzan interprets, may
have left the Jewish people ; h e may b e among the qelippot. Yet h e is never forsaken by the Shechinah, who has been with him always since his soul was ereated; that is, since before the creation of the world. H e is, needless to say,
Sabbatai Zevi.
Hazzan has made this point,or a similar one,a dozen times over. T h e notion
that Sabbatai Zevi and the Shechinah are inseparable companions, together
doomed to dress in alien garb and enter the "great abyss,,of the qelippot, is one
of the recurrent themes that bind his commentary together from its beginning to its end. (So is the idea of a trinity composed of the Blessed Holy One,
the female Shechinah, and their "beloved son" Sabbatai Zevi.) But this time h e
adds something new."His seed: this is our Lord Ishmael, may his majesty b e
exalted^0 Seeking bread : this means, seeking the T o r a h . . . h e does not seek it,
for it is always with him, and never leaves him o r his holy seed." When the next
verse of the psalm adds that his seed [zarco]is a blessing, Hazzan takes this to
mean that Ishmael willjoin his father in blessing those Jewish souls who had
become ensnared in"the depths of the great abyss"(fol 97V).
Hazzan leaves Ishmael for the time being, and develops his familiar theme
of holy souls being oppressed among the qelippot(fols 9 7 V - 9 8 V ) . But h e evi(60) Yr-h,yarum hodo; the familar Messianic blessing formula of the Sabbatians, normally applied to Sabbatai himself. Hazzan's uses of this formula will engage our attention as we proceed.

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dently wants to get back to him as soon as possible. We have already seen that
h e skips over the next three psalms of the liturgy (40,63,111),briefly noting
that h e or Nathan has already dealt with these texts somewhere else (fol g8v).
This allows him to move straight to Psalm 112, which contains the keyword
zarco in its very second verse; and, in this context, to tell us more about the
Messiah's son.
T h e true man who fears the Lord (Ps 112:1), Hazzan says, is Sabbatai Zevi "His
seed shall be mighty on the earth [verse 2 ] : this is our Lord Ishmael, may his maj esty
b e exalted, who will sit o n his throne on the earth. AMI RAH is to ascend to a
rank that is beyond the comprehension of any created being; b u t t seed shall
be mighty on earth and h e is our lord. AMI RAH called him thus; h e said to us,
This is your lord" (fol ggr-v).
Hazzan seems to imply that, in the presence of him and other people, Sabbatai Zevi had declared Ishmael to b e "your lord." H e indeed seems to have
known Sabbatai, at least from a distance?1 But the claim h e makes here is more
than a litde doubtful. If Sabbatai had in fact formally announced to the believers that his son was to b e their lord (after his death, presumably), it is hard
to believe that Hazzan who has been wrestling throughout the commentary with the problem of the Messiah's death should only now have thought
to mention it. T h e notion of Ishmael as Sabbatai's successor and vicar o n
earth is evidently a novelty, to which Hazzan expects some resistance.
For h e anticipates a complaint :"Have we then labored in vain?. . .Our wish
is to see our king !, , That is, the believer's love and expectation is for Sabbatai
Zevi himself, n o t his son. H e therefore finds in the e n d of Ps 112:2 an assurance that it will b e Sabbatai himself who will give us the perfect blessing. H e
is still superior to his son, but less immediately present to the believer. Even
as h e recedes into incomprehensible exaltation, Ishmael is lord o n earth.
Hazzan finds nothing more about Ishmael in this psalm, or in the psalm
(51) that follows. But, when h e turns to Psalm 72, Ishmael appears throughout.This psalm announces at its beginning that it is "Solomon's!' We may guess
that, as Hazzan understands the"David" who speaks in most of the psalms to
b e a"type"of Sabbatai Zevi, so h e imagines David's son to b e a"type"of Sabbatai's son. T h e subject of Psalm 72 is therefore Ishmael Zevi.
H e does n o t make this point explicidy. In standard Kabbalistic fashion, h e
identifies the"Solomon"of the beginning of the psalm with the sefirah Tif'eret.
We have n o t long to wait, however, before Ishmael makes his appearance.
"Give yourjudgments to the king [verse 1] : this is AMI RAH. And your righteousness
to the king's son : this is our Lord Ishmael, may his majesty b e exalted. He shall
judge your people in righteousness : this refers to the king's son. . . . H e will n o t
(61) Scholem,"Perush mizmorei tehillim^pp. 162-75, especially the story quoted o n p. 165
from fol or (Liebes, pp. 93-110, esp. p. 97).

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need witnesses; for, thanks to his Creator's wisdom that h e possesses, h e is

both witness and judge"(fol 1 0 2 r ) . Acting o n God's behalf, h e will vindicate
the oppressed a n d insulted "poor" (that is, the Sabbatian faithful )against the
community leaders, a n d bring them forth into the light.
H e next appears in connection with the opening words of verse 7."When
the kingdom qf our Lord Ishmael,who is our Messiah, is revealed, in his days
the righteous one AM I RAH, that is will blossom. H e will become visible to us,
out of the concealment [heclem] into which h e disappeared from us. We shall
see him with our own eyes"(fol 102v).Hazzan has previously explained the
phrase dor denim, in verse 5, to mean that three generations will elapse from
the proclamation of Sabbatai's kingdom (that is, 1665) to"the dawning of his
true light','when h e will reappear to reveal the mysteries of God's divinity. Sabbatai will then make peace among the Jewish people; h e will bring effluence
down from the uppersefirot to the lower; h e will rescue the fallen souls; h e
will receive the obeisance of Gentile and demonic powers,"mending them
even as h e dominates them (fols 1 0 2 v - 1 0 3 r ) .
Hazzan evidendy conceives Ishmael's Messianic rule as a transitional phase
toward the final, full Messiahship of his father, which is now pushed several
decades into the future. We are again assured that Sabbatai Zevi will reappear in person."Do n o t say that you have already seen, or heard people saying, that h e is dead. Do n o t b e afraid ; h e himself will live"(fol 1 0 3 V ) .
Yet, even while assuring us that Ishmael will n o t usurp his father's glory,
Hazzan suggests that h e will d o just that in these lower realms, at least. H e
understands the cryptic words pissat bar at the beginning of verse 16 to mean
hand ofthe son? The" son" in question is " the beloved son, his firstbornson These
phrases (from J e r 3 1 : 2 0 , Exod 4:22) are significant. Hazzan has again and
again applied them to Sabbatai Zevi -"beloved son"of the Blessed Holy O n e
and his Shechinah - b u t now transfers them to Sabbatai's own"beloved son"
Ishmael "Thus shall [the power of the h a n d of] 6 8 the son of Zevi b e upon the
earth,r u l i n g the whole world. A M I RAH, through his exaltation,shall b e in the
supernal realms, while his son is in the lower r e a l m s . . . at the head of all the
saints
H e will make all the kingdoms t r e m b l e . . . h e will also resurrect
the dead" (fol 1 0 3 ? / ) .
(62) In support of this interpretation,he calls attention to the phrase nashequ var in Ps 2:12 ;
which, following the Zohar (Racya Mehemna,11,120b; cf. III, 191b),he understands to mean, te
the son.
(63) The bracketed words (koahyad, in the original) are inserted between the lines of the text.
They are obviously based on Hazzan's interpretation ofpissat bar. It is difficult to imagine how a
copyist would have accidentally omitted them; easy to imagine that Hazzan himself, all afire with
thoughts of the future glory of the son of Zevi, might have left them out and later returned to
correct himself.

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And, in expounding 72:17, Hazzan seems to hint that Ishmael is actually

superior to his father.
May his name endure for ever; before the swn.This means, in the lifetime of
his father, and before him. [There follows a complicated gematria equating ha-shemesh," the sun? with Sabbatai Zevi ; and Ishmael Zevi with with y ehi
shemo lecolam,"may his name endure for ever." Hence :] Ishmael Zevi will
b e before his father, Sabbatai Zevi. May his name endure for ever, before the
sun, his name is "yinnonwhich has the meaning "offspring."64 This means,
the son shall b e before the father [fols 103v104r].
What does Hazzan mean by saying that "the son shall b e before the father"
(lifnei ha-av yihyeh ha-ben)? Perhaps that h e is "before" his father in a fairly
modest temporal sense, that his Messianic rule will precede his father's.This
is supported by fol 102b, where ve-lifn yareah dor dorim (72:5) is taken to
mean that the believers "held to their faith before [lifnei] the rising of the
supernal sun [Sabbatai Zevi] ,while [their] light was still that of the moon that
comes before [lifnei] the sun."
But we must n o t forget that Hazzan is likely to have read Ps 72:17 through
the lenses of the well-known Talmudic aggadot inSanhdrin 98b and Pesahim 54a.The former passage infers from yinnon shemo that the Messiah's name
is actually "Yinnon'/ while the latter argues from lifnei shemesh that theMessiah's name existed before the creation. Hazzan has repeatedly claimed that
Sabbatai Zevi's soul existed before the creation. (Cf. the beginning of this section.) Now, by equating yinnon with Sabbatai's offspring and shemesh with Sabbatai himself, h e elevates Ishmael to an even higher rank. If the father preexisted the world, the son pre-existed the father.
To judge from the carelessness of the handwriting, Hazzan was in a state of
high excitement as h e wrote his interpretation of Ps 72:17. Immediately afterward(fol 104r),the script becomes severely neat; that is, as I have suggested above, h e left his composition for some time and then returned to it?5
T h e exposition of Psalm 72 concludes without further reference to Ishmael
(fol 104r-v).
In the mean time, we have seen Ishmael's star, emerging from obscurity, explode into something like supernova proportions. H e is the Messiah. H e is
the divinely appointed and inspiredjudge, to whom the harassed and humiliated community of believers may look for vindication. H e will rule the saints
(64) Deriving yinnon from nin ve-nekhed (Isa 14:22).
(65) The insertion o f koah yad between the lines o f fol 103V (above, n.63) may have been
done upon his return.

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o n earth as his father rules in heaven. H e will terrorize the Gentiles (whom his
father will later "mend"?). H e will resurrect the dead; duplicating, in this respect, his father's prowess (see below). H e has begun to usurp his father's tides of "beloved son','"first-born son'.'And,if I have correcdy interpreted the
e n d of the passage, h e has trumped his father's pre-existence.
How mucl\ of this development did Hazzan have in mind when h e first
made the decision to postpone the Psalm 34 Aqedah sequence to the e n d of
his commentary? It is impossible to say. His absolute silence about Ishmael in
the fifty o r so folio pages that contain his expositions of the passages from
Exodus 16 through Proverbs 31 - which, according to my hypothesis,h e must
have composed afterh e made this decision - suggests that h e initially had n o
idea of the importance that Ishmael was soon to assume. We might perhaps
speculate that rumors from Adrianople, where Ishmael and his stepmother
had apparentiy been living since shortly after Sabbatai's death (above), stimulated Hazzan's hopes and his imagination far beyond what h e had originally anticipated.
These hopes,and the entire Messianic saga of Ishmael Zevi that Hazzan had
constructed, were to reach their climax in the Aqedah.
5 . A Q E D A H , I S H M A E L , I S L A M( I )

What did the Aqedah mean to Israel Hazzan? If we are to see this issue in
perspective, we must first clarify what the Aqedah might have been expected
to mean to any Jew, Sabbatian o r non-Sabbatian, toward the e n d of the seventeenth century. Given the Sabbatians' particular investment in Islam, we
must clarify as well the role played by the Aqedah in the Muslim-Jewish controversy of the preceding thousand years.
O u r answers to both questions must b e provisional. Both topics cover vast
amounts of territory; little systematic research has been devoted to either.
Many scholars, to b e sure, have written about the Aqedah and its traditions.
But their concerns have normally been with aspects of the Aqedah other than
those that now require our attention. Scholars of the Hebrew Bible have
wanted to know about the implications of Genesis 22 for the religion of ancient Israel, particularly with regard to child sacrifice; scholars of New Testament and early Christianity have wanted to know what impactJewish Aqedah
traditions might have had o n Pauline Christology - or the other way round? 6
T h e role of the Aqedah in the Jewish martyrologies of the time of theCru(66) These two topics are the focus of Jon D. Levenson's Death and Resurrection of the Beloved
Son.The literature o n the Aqedah and early Christianity is very extensive; the papers collected
in Frdric Manns, The Sacrifice of Isaac in the Three Monotheistic Religions (Jerusalem, 1995), enlightening in themselves, are also useful bibliographic resources o n this subject. (I am grateful

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sades has attracted some attention ; this was, indeed, the starting point of Shalom Spiegel's classic The Last Trial?1 Students of modern Hebrew literature
have explored the impact of the Aqedah theme o n Israeli novels and poetry.68
But comparative interest in the role of the Aqedah in the Abrahamic tradi
tions has normally been focussed o n the periods in which those traditions diverged from o n e another; that is, the early centuries of the Christian and the
Islamic eras.69And n o one, to my knowledge, has systematically studied the
shape of the Jewish Aqedah tradition in the period that most immediately
concerns us: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Before turning to Israel Hazzan's Aqedah, therefore,we must consider how
the Aqedah figured in Jewish-Islamic polemics in the centuries that preceded
him. We will then examine the Aqedah as it is represented by three early mode r n Jewish authors: Isaac Abarbanel,Isaiah Horowitz,and Hayyim Kohen of
Aleppo. Their portrayals of the Aqedah, as we will see, shade together into a
common, picture. We have reason to suppose, moreover, that these authors
are likely to have exercised direct or indirect influence o n Hazzan. It therefore seems a fair assumption that the common picture that emerges from their
works is likely to have been the starting point of Hazzan's own thinking about
the Aqedah; and that,by contemplating that picture, we will have a context
and perspective in which to view Hazzan's highly original contributions.
T h e Qur'an, as is well known, tells the story of the Aqedah without specifying
which of Abraham's two sons was the intended victim (Surah 37:99-113).
Early Muslim traditionists debated the question of whether the honor belonged to Isaac, as the Jews and the Christians claimed; or to Ishmael,whom
the Arabs were coming to regard as their ancestor. By the ninth or the tenth
century, the "Ishmael" school had won out (although it could never claim
unanimous support)?0Muslims preferred to dismiss the claims o n Isaac's be
to Professor Marc Bregman,who contributed a particularly stimulating paper to this collection,
for providing me with the reference to it.)
(67) Cf. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor:Jewish History andJewish Memory (Seattle and London, 1982), pp. 37-39.
(68) Michael Brown,"Biblical Myth and Contemporary Experience: TheAkedah in Modern
Jewish Literature^Judaism 31 (1982 )99-111; Edna Amir Coffin,"The Binding of Isaac in Modern
Israeli Literature,"Michigan (Quarterly Review 22(1983)429-44; cf. Jo Milgrom, The Binding of
Isaac: The Akedah A Primary Symbol inJewish Thought and Art (Berkeley, CA, 1988).
(69) Above, n.66 ; Reuven Firestone,Journeys in Holy Lands: TheEvolution oftheAbraham-Ishmael
Legends in Islamic Exegesis (Albany, 1990), pp. 105-51; "Merit, Mimesis, and Martydom: Shi'ite
Identification with Abraham's Sacrifice in Light of Jewish, Christian, and Sunni Tradition','paper delivered at the 1995 meeting of the American Academy of Religion. I am grateful to Professor Firestone for having provided me with a copy of his so far unpublished paper.
(70) Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands; cf. William M.Brinner (tr.), The History of al-Tabari: Volurne II, Prophets and Patriarchs (Albany, 198 7 ), pp.82-97; Gordon Darnell Newby, The Making ofthe

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half as a Jewish fabrication, motivated by jealousy. An anonymous Jewish

scholar,converted to Islam,was supposed to have told c Umar b. c Abd alcAziz
(caliph 717-20) : "The Jews know that [Ishmael was the intended victim], but
they are envious of you, O Arabs, because it was your father who was named in
God's command a n d to whom God ascribed such merit for his steadfastness
in obeying God's command. They reject that a n d claim that it was Isaac because Isaac was their father."71
T h e story of c Umar and the Jewish scholar would suggest that that the identity of the Aqedah victim was a fairly significant issue between Jews a n d Muslims in the first century after t h e Hijrah,and that the"Ishmael" identification
may have marked a n important step in the process of Islam's defining itself
over against the older Abrahamic traditions.The issue seems to have retained
some importance for medieval Qur'an commentators a n d tellers of "tales of
the prophets." It perhaps took o n fresh significance in the hands of non-Arab
Shi'ites, who, if Reuven Firestone is right, may have tried to resurrect the
"Isaac"identification as a tool in their controversy with Sunni Islam?2
For Muslim writers engaged in extramural controversy, by contrast, the
question of whether Isaac o r Ishmael belongs in the Aqedah story seems to
have lost whatever interest it once had. I have n o t f o u n d a single Muslim polemicist againstJudaism o r Christianity for that matter, although I cannot
claim to have made any systematic examination of a n ti-Christian polemic
who so much as mentions this issue, even where the context would seem
to invite discussion of it.
Two examples :cAli Tabari's ninth-century treatise against Christianity devotes a n entire chapter to praising Ishmael a n d defending him against his detractors?3 Nowhere does the author think to mention that Ishmael, n o t Isaac,
was the intended sacrifice.(He quotes Gen 2 2:16-18, as" the saying of the Most
High God to Abraham, when h e offered his son for sacrifice!'But h e showsn o
interest in the question of which son was involved.) Similarly, a fourteenthcentury Morisco polemic against Judaism includes a defense of Hagar a n d
Ishmael against, e.g., the charge that Hagar was a mere concubine?4 But (to
ju dge f r o m the summary provided by Miguel Asin Palacios) the writer makes
n o mention in this context of Ishmael's having been intended for sacrifice?5
Last Prophet :AReconstruction oftheEarliest Biography of Muhammad (Columbia,SC,gSg),pp.86-.
(71) Brinner, op. t., p. 88.
(72) Firestone "Merit, Mimesis, and Martydom" (above, n. 69).
(73) Translated in A.Mingana,77^ Book ofRegion and Empire (Lahore, n.d.), pp. 77-84; the
passage quoted below is on p. 80.
(74) Miguel Asin Palacios,"Un Tratado Morisco de Polmica Contra Los Judos," in Obras Escogidas, v o l . I I / I I I ( M a d r i d , 1 9 4 8 ) , p p . 2 4 7 - 7 3 .

(75) He does refer to the Aqedah, but in a very different context : in support of the abrogation

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It is evident that, for most Muslims in the Middle Ages and into modern
times, the Aqedah had nothing at all comparable to its pivotal importance for
Judaism!6 The virtues of Ishmael,as Arab progenitor and Muslim prophet, must
b e maintained. But Ishmael's near-sacrifice was in n o way remarkable among
these virtues.The Aqedah was an interesting prophet-story, nothing more?7
Perhaps reflecting this Muslim indifference, the few medieval Jewish writers who undertook to combat the claims of Islam seem to have been little concerned with the identity of the Aqedah victim. T h e best informed and most
careful of them, Sacd ibn Mansur ibn Kammuna(1280) 78 d0es n o t mention the
question at all?9Simeon b.Semah Duran, in his critique of Islam (142 3),touches
upon it as lightly as might b e imagined. At the e n d of a list of Islamic distortions of Biblical stories,h e notes that the Muslims "claim that the Aqedah was
for Ishmael, that it took place in Mecca, and that [people] have seen there [in
Mecca] the h o r n of the primordial ram !'80He adds,however :"They have divergent opinions o n this matter, some saying that it was Isaac who was bound." 81
of the Torah, he invokes evidence from the Torah itself, including the fact that"Dios manda a
Abraham sacrificar su hijo Isaac,y en seguida desiste de su mandato"(., p. 254).If the writer
saw any significance in the intended victim's being Isaac instead of Ishmael, AsinPalacios does
not convey it.
(76) Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton,
1992),mentions the Aqedah only in connection with the abrogation issue (see the preceding
note), not the identity of the victim. The issue has perhaps regained some importance for Muslims in recent times, possibly sparked by the requirements of dialogue with both Jews and Christians: cAmer Yunis,"The Sacrifice of Abraham in Islam? in Frdric Manns ,The Sacrifice of Isaac
(above, n . 6 6 ) , pp. 1 4 7 - 5 7 .

(77) AlRabghuzi, who wrote a book of prophet-stories in Eastern Turkish about the year
1300, takes for granted that Ishmael is the intended sacrifice. He remarks that the Jews say differently,"because the Jews and Christians are all Isaac's descendants." But he seems quite unexcited about the issue, and at one point suggests that both Ishmael and Isaac were at different times
intended for sacrifice : Al-Rabghuzi: The Stories of the Prophets, H.E.Boeschoten, M.Vandamme, and
S.Tezcan,(ed./tr.) (Leiden, 1995),vol. 2, pp. 121-29.
(78) Moshe Perlmann, Ibn Kammunds Examination of the Three Faiths ( Berkeley, 1971 ).
(79) Nor is there any reference to it in Moritz Steinschneider's exhaustive survey of the sources
and themes of Jewish anti-Islamic polemic : Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer
Sprache (originally published Leipzig, 1877 ; reprinted Hildesheim, 1966), pp. 244-388.
(80) Moshe ( Moritz) Steinschneider,"Setirat emunat hayishmacelim misefer qeshet u-magen
le-rabbi Shimcon ben Semah Duran? Ozar Tob :hebrische Beilage zumMagazinfrdieWissenschaftdes
Judenthums 8(1881)6. The Muslim belief that the horns of Abraham's ram were once visible in the
Kaaba is reflected in Brinner, op. dt., pp. 90,94.
(81) Loc. t.; cf. Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands, p. 241, which reports on Edward Westermarck's authority that some Moroccan Muslims still believed in 1933 that Isaac was the intended
sacrifice. Duran elsewhere makes the interesting remark that, among his borrowings from Judaism, Muhammad"retained the festival of Passover, asserting that it commemorates the Aqedah, and conflating all this with the Day of Memorial [Rosh Hashanah],which [really] commemorates the Aqedah"(in Steinschneider, p. 14).! do not know Duran's basis for this claim, which

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A different tone is perhaps audible in Isaac Abarbanel's commentary o n

Genesis 22,written some eighty years later.82 T h e Bible's designation of Isaac
as thine only son(yehidekha,verse 2 )83is peculiar, h e notes, since Isaac was Sarah's
only son but obviously n o t Abraham's "It was o n this basis that the Ishmaelites
stupidly advanced their claim that the o n e who was bound was Ishmael, since,
before Isaac's birth, h e was the only son both of his father and of his mother."
There is nothing particularly implausible about Abarbanel's claim that
Muslims used Gen 22:2 to prove that Ishmael was the intended sacrifice,
though I have seen n o direct evidence to support it? 4(Medieval Muslim polemicists made plentiful use of Biblical quotations when it served their purpose to d o so.)T h e very fact that h e goes out of his way to mention this point
suggests that, in Jewish if n o t Muslim consciousness, the question of the Aqedah victim had begun to assume new importance as an issue dividing the two
faiths.This is perhaps linked to Abarbanel's subsequent remark defending the
particular care h e has devoted to the exegesis of Genesis 2 2 :"This chapter is
the entire strength [qeren] of Israel, and their merit [zekhutam] before their Father in heaven.That is why we regularly use it in our prayer each day "(p. 265)?*
It is at least thinkable that,for Abarbanel, the Muslim identification of the vietim as Ishmael had come to seem an assault, substantial enough to b e worth
rejecting, o n the qeren and zekhut of the Jewish people.
Let us take Abarbanel's commentary as a starting point for exploring our next
question : how did Jews view the Aqedah, and particularly its intended victim,
during the nearly two hundred years that separate his commentary from that
of Israel Hazzan?86
seems to reflect a remarkable recapitulation, within Islam, of tensions in early Judaism over
whether the Aqedah was to be connected with Passover or with Rosh Hashanah (Levenson, The
Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, pp. 173-83).
(82) Don Isaac Abarbanel, Perushcal ha-torah (Jerusalem,1964),vol,.263. RNetanyahu dates
Abarbanel's commentary on Genesis to the first half of 1505: Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman &
Philosopher (Philadelphia, 1953), p. 288 n. 16.
(83) In quoting passages from Genesis 22,in this and the next section, I use the 1917 translation of the Jewish Publication Society.
(84) Prior, that is, to the twentieth century.cAmer Yunis's paper,cited in n.76 (above),does
indeed invoke Gen 22:2 in support of the Muslim position.
(85) I assume Abarbanel is referring to the recitation of the Aqedah in the daily birkhot hashahar.
(86) We may gauge the impact Abarbanel's exegesis is likely to have had on subsequent generations,not only from its obvious influence on Hayyim Kohen of Aleppo (below),but also from
the substantial presence of his Pentateuch commentary on the bookshelves of Mantuan Jews at
the end of the sixteenth century. Of430 Jewish families living in Mantua in 1595,39 owned copies
of Abarbanel's commentary (Shifra Baruchson, Books and Readers: The Reading Interests of Italian
fews at the Close of the Renaissance [Hebrew; Ramat-G^n, 1993], pp. 12529).This hardly compares

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For Abarbanel, Isaac's sacrifice represents the sacrifice of his bodily, natural aspect. This, despite the impression God initially gave Abraham, was the
only sacrifice that was really intended; and it was successfully carried out.
T h e result ofAdam's sin had been that humans were given over to theirdesires, particularly the sexual. Now, by "coming to the gates of death"at God's
command and thus vanquishing his corporeal being, Isaac has redeemed his
offspring from bondage to this primordial sin, as well as from the astral powers that control natural activity.87The ass that Abraham saddles (literally,
"binds"va-yahavosh) is figuratively to b e understood, not as hamor, but as homer: by that act of "binding," Abraham subdues his materiality.
It is in this sense, says Abarbanel, that we are to understand the midrash88
that claims Abraham's ass to have been the very same beast that Moses rode
(Exod4:20)and that the Messiah will someday ride(Zechariahg:9).In receiving the Torah, Moses took the next step in the process of subduing our materiality ; and the Messiah will bring this process to its completion? 9 T h e equation ofAbraham's ass with the Messianic beast, which Hazzan was later to take
literally, is thus allegorized to make the Aqedah the opening act of a process
of Messianic salvation. Given Isaac's pivotal role in this process, it makes ex
cellent sense that Abarbanel should have perceived his replacement by Ishmael as a threat to b e warded off.
A similar metaphysical exaltation is credited to Isaac in Isaiah Horowitz's
widely influential Shenei luhot ha-berit (completed in 1623, ^ r s t published in
1648)?0Isaac here becomes a second Adam, replicating Adam's state before
the sin and providing a"mending "for his prototype's failing.91 This" mending"
with the Pentateuch commentaries of the ever-popular Rashi (owned by 118 families) or Bahya
ben Asher (owned by 91 ).But, in an age of expensive books, it seems a more than respectable
distribution.
(87) Abarbanel, Perush cal ha-torah, vol. 1, pp. 265-78. To express this liberation from what
Christians would have called "original sin','Abarbanel uses such expressions bo[be-yishaq]yifdehelohim et zarco min yeser lev adam rac mi-necurav, and she-tusar mimmennu zuhamat ha-nahash she-hittil
c
al havvah. . . bacavur tocelet kelal ummatenu (p. 266). The expression "gates of death"occurs on
p. 276,where Abraham is the actor: be-haggico oto cad shcfarei mavet be-misvat ha-elohim.
(88) In Pirqei de-RabbiEliezer, ch. 31.
(89) Abarbanel, pp. 269-70: ve-zakheru [hazaljelleh ha-sheloshah avraham u-mosheh u-mashiah
lihyotam rosh emsafi ve-takhlit -shelemut emunato.
(90) Commentary onparashat vayyera ; in Sefer shenei luhot ha-berit ha-shalem (Jerusalem, 1993),
vol. 4, pp. 73-90. The popularity and influence of Shenei luhot ha-berit is not in dispute. It is most
powerfully attested, for the end of the seventeenth century, by Glckel of Hameln's moving account of her husband's last hours, much of which is spent in perusing "the works of the learned
Rabbi Isaiah Hurwitz": Marvin Lowenthal (tr.),The Memoirs of Glckel ofHameln(New York, 1977),
p .!5 1 .

(91) Ve-yishaq hu be-cerekh adam ha-rishon qodem she-hata. . . be-hasarat ha-orlah she-hi ha-qelippa

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92

is bound u p with Isaac's circumcision we think back to the importance

the Sabbatians attached to the circumcision of Ishmael Zevi but more profoundly with his sacrifice at the Aqedah.
Following the venerable Jewish tradition that has Isaac actually die and
come back to life in the course of the Aqedah? 3 Horowitz represents Isaac's
soul as having left him and "the holy spirit from o n high" having taken its
place. Isaac is thus a new creation (beri 'ah hadashah), bearer of a new and holier
life-essence (hayyut he-hadash or ha-sheni), the first being since Adam that was
n o t created from sperm (she-lo nosar mi-tipp ah)9.4 "His soul ascended o n high
and returned to him other than it had been. . . . Thus the bodily life of that
Isaac who had been born of sperm ceased to b e [nitbattel], and h e now had
holy flesh."95In this sacrifice, Isaac had"become holy of holies, a pure burntoffering, a pleasant smell for the Lord"; and had become,in his lifetime,what
other saints could b e only after their deaths a sacrifice offered to God by
the celestial high priest Michael.96
All of this is very redolent of Christianity. So is the further step taken by
Horowitz : of linking the Aqedah with the meal that, according to Genesis 18,
Abraham prepared for his three visitors. Abraham's meal, says Horowitz,foreshadows the eschatological feast that God will prepare for the saints "when
h e restores the world to the pristine state that it would have had if Adam had
n o t sinned, and when materiality [homer] becomes purified. . . . This is why
Isaac's birth was announced at this feast [of Abraham's]: h e [Isaac] is the
cause of this [eschatological feast]."97One can hardly avoid thinking of the
Last Supper, and of the eschatological overtones given it in such passages as
Luke 22:15-18.
Let us follow Horowitz's argument yet one step further. Immediately after
the passage I havejust quoted, Horowitz invokes a marvellous Talmudic mid-

tiqqen le-adam she-hata sWz-l[she-ameru rabbotenu zikhronam U-verakhah]moshekhcorlato hayah (p. 81

Horowitz's reference is to BT Sanhdrin 38b.
(92) See the previous note, and p.82,where Horowitz finds it significant that Abraham begot Isaac after he had himself been circumcised.
(93) Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, pp. 192-99; following Spiegel,
The Last Trial.
(94) Horowitz, pp. 81-82. Horowitz represents Isaac as parallel in this respect to the ram sacrificed in his place, which was a special creation formed in the twilight of the first Sabbath
(Avot 5:6).
(95)/ta., p.87.
(96) Ibid., pp.85-86.The phrase"pure burnt-offering"{colah temimah)is not Biblical; its use as
a designation for Isaac goes back to Gen.R. 64:3, and occurs in Rashi to Gen 25:26, 26:2.Cf.
Martin A.Cohen (tr.), Samuel Usque's Consolations for the Tribulations of Israel ( Philadelphia, 1965),
p. 51 : . . my father Isaac, who was a sacrifice without blemish."
(97) Horowitz, p. 81.

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rash (BT Shabbat 89b) which represents Isaac, a n d n o t his father o r his son,
as the zealous a n d effective defender of the Jewish people against God, s harsh
judgment. We will look at this midrash m o r e closely in section 8, below, when
we consider what Israel Hazzan does with it. Here we may note that Horowitz picks u p o n t h e incongruity, f r o m t h e Kabbalistic viewpoint, of the Talmud's representing the benevolent patriarch as Isaac (Gevurah, the attribute
of strict judgment) a n d n o t Abraham (Hesed, the attribute of grace). T h e explanation, h e says, is that the world's eschatological purification, a n d its ret u r n to the state it was in before Adam's sin, depends o n strictj u d g m e n t
which thus proves to b e the greatest mercy. Hence the paradox that Isaac/
justice is effectively the begetter ofA b r a h a m / mercy, a n d that the son's power
i s t h e r e f o r e g r e a t e r t h a n t h e f a t h e r ' s . Yafeh koah ha-ben mi-koah ha-av ki middat
ha-din ha-zeh gorem be-esem ha-rahimim.

We perhaps hear a n echo of this formulation in Hazzan's claim, which I

discussed at the e n d of section 4, that "the son [Ishmael Zevi] shall b e before
the father"(tifnei ha-av yihyeh ha-ben).When we take u p Hazzan's Aqedah,we
shall find there a parallel to the observation with which Horowitz concludes
his argument: that t h e name"Isaac,"currently indicative ofjudgment, will in
the eschaton manifest its mor e genial overtones of "laughter "and "joy."
T h e third writer we shall consider, the Kabbalist Hayyim Kohen ofAleppo, ineludes his Aqedah exegesis within a homily f o r Rosh Hashanah, published in
1654 as part of his Torat aMra?8 Kohen's homily shows affinities with both
Abarbanel (whom h e occasionally cites explicitly,"and obviously used as a resource) a n d the Shenei luhot ha-beHt.This author seems t o have been regarded
as something ofa n authority in Sabbatian circles : Nathan of Gaza quotes him
in his letter toJoseph Zevi,100and Cardozo claims to have studied with him while
in Egypt01 We may therefore presume, at least as a working hypothesis, that
Israel Hazzan may have b e e n familiar with Kohen's exegesis of t h e Aqedah.
T h e homily is extremely prolix a n d diffuse, a n d it is impossible t o give a
clear summary of its argument. Its overall theme which was a few years later
(98) Venice, 1654; reprinted Brooklyn, 1992. The derush le-rosh ha-shanah is in vol.1, cols.
37c~50b (on parashat vayyera).
(99) In col.42a(with reference,however, to I Sam 3:19).Cf. vol.1,col. 16d,where Kohen criticizes Abarbanel's interpretation of Isaiah 53. Kohen's classification of the three conceivable
beneficiaries of the Aqedah (the one testing, the one being tested, those viewing the testing), at
the top of col. 43c, seems to be drawn directly from Abarbanel (Perushcal ha-torah, pp. 261-62).
(100) In Sasportas,Swaf novel Sem, pp. 261-62.
(101) In his treatise An ha-mekhunneh; Carlo Bernheimer,"Some New Contributions toAbraham Cardoso's Biography,"JQR N.S. 18(1927-28) 114-15.

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to become a favorite of Sabbatian ideologues is the vicarious and redemptive sufferings of the righteous man (saddiq), of which the Aqedah is one example.102 In the tortuous course of developing this theme, Kohen puts forward a host of subordinate propositions,103several ofwhich are relevant to our
study of the Aqedah.
O n e of these is that theM great feast, , mentioned in Gen 21:8 is a foreshadowing of the great eschatological feast (cols. 38c-d).To b e sure, Kohen can invokeTalmudic authority for this claim: BT Pesahim ligb, which interprets
Gen 21:8 to mean that the Lord will make a feast for the righteous o n that
future date when"he shows his kindness to the seed of Isaac'.' But h e carries
the Talmud's hints to extreme lengths. T h e Jews, h e says, are properly called
"the seed of Isaac" inasmuch as Isaac, through his Aqedah, is their savior and
defender. They have survived in this world thanks to the merit of the Aqedah,
"the ashes of Isaac that are heaped u p o n the altar"(col.38d,cf.3gd, 48b)!04
Isaac's name points to their future joy, as represented by the eschatological
feast(col.39d).Isaac even performs a"harrowing of helF'on their behalf : those
Jewish souls whom Abraham could n o t prevent from entering hell, Isaac descends there to rescue.105
Kohen's linking of the Aqedah to a special meal, that takes place in the

(102) He announces the theme by beginning his homily withGen. R. 55:2, apetihah that takes
its starting point from Ps 11:5, adonay saddiq yivhan. In cols. 48a-b, he makes what is perhaps his
most explicit statement that the saddiqim stand ready to offer themselves as atoning sacrifices on
the world's behalf, and that the Aqedah is to be put in this category. (And note his reference to
Metatron offering the souls of the saddiqim on the celestial altar, which echoes a remark I have
earlier quoted from Horowitz.) At the bottom of col. 46b, moreover, Kohen applies Isa 53:5 (a
favorite verse of the Sabbatians) to the atoning sufferings of the righteous: yissurin. .. ha-nimsa'im ba-saddiqim kedei le-khapper cal cadat yisrael.
( 103 ) E .g., that the saddiq often does things that seem bizarre or immoral to outsiders (David
with Bathsheba, cols. 38b, 39c, 46c; Abraham and Sarah, cols. 3gd, 40d~41a). Kohen's formulation in c01.40d is particularly striking: kol macasav shel avraham af calgav she-hayu nirHm lecenei
basar shehem darkhei ish. .. ve-enam mehugganim lifnei ha-qadosh barukh hu be-zeh eno ken afillu darkhei ish zeh avraham left shehu ishcasato hem resuyim lifnei ha-qadosh barukh hu. All of this must have
been music to Sabbatian ears; and we might conjecture that Kohen's repeated invocation of
Hos 8:12, kemo zar nehshavu (cols. 40d,41b), foreshadows Sabbatai Zevi's maFasim zarm.
(104) For the rabbinic sources of this expression, see Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of
the Beloved Son, pp. 194-98 ; Spiegel, The Last Trial, pp. 28-44.
(105) Col. 39a, bottom. Kohen claims to have seen this in "our sages'comments on the verse
Far you are ourfather [Isa 63:16]? but I have not been able to locate any rabbinic source for it. The
opening of Kohen's alleged quotation,ve-yishaq le-hekha azal, is very suggestive of Gen.R.67:7,but
its continuation bears n o resemblance whatever to the midrashic text. The conclusion to Midrash Vayyoshacquotes Isa 63:16 in the context of God's redeeming the Jews from hell (in Adolf
Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash [reprinted Jerusalem, 1967],vol.1, p. 57); but Isaac here plays n o part
whatever. Isa 63:16 is, as we will see, the key text in BT Shabbat 89b.

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[341

distant past but foreshadows the eschatological feast, is very suggestive of

Horowitz (and, of course, of the Last Supper). His shift of the meal, from
Genesis 18 to Genesis 21,n o doubt results from his intent to prepare a homily
for Rosh Hashanah!06 Again like Horowitz, h e quotes BT Shabbat 89b in sup
port of Isaac's role as savior par excellence of the Jewish people (cols.38d,3gd).
Marks of Abarbanel's exegesis are also evident in Kohen's homily. Like
Abarbanel, Kohen quotes Pirqei de-Rabbi Eliezer 's assertion that Abraham's ha
mor was also the one ridden by Moses and the Messiah, and interprets it much
as Abarbanel did. Hamor is to b e understood as homer ; the riding of the ass
represents the subjugation of materiality; the lesson is that"Israel's materiality will in the future b e as pure as in the time of creation. He shall swallow
up death forever?101

But Kohen spells out the eschatological implications of this reading of the
Aqedah,in considerably more detail than did Abarbanel.W h e n d e - R a b b i
Eliezer goes o n to say that Abraham's two young men (whom it identifies as Ishmael and Eliezer) quarreled over Abraham's inheritance, Kohen spells out
what may have been implicit in the original midrash : these are Christendom
and Islam, who quarrel over the land that properly belongs to the Jews and
build their sanctuaries in it. ("The community of Ishmael," Kohen remarks,
"have built the Temple for themselves.") Hence Abraham tells them ,abide ye
here (Gen 22:5), thereby permitting them to remain in the Holy Land till such
time as the Messiah comes riding his ass (Zech 9:9). When that happens,then
we will come back to you (Gen 2 2:5), to execute judgments upon them. Following BT Sanhdrin 98a, Kohen professes uncertainty whether this redemption will take place in a generation that is wholly virtuous or one that is wholly
guilty (col. 47c).
O n e seemingly minor feature of Kohen's Aqedah exegesis will take o n
considerable importance in connection with Israel Hazzan's Aqedah. In that
relatively brief section of the homily that deals specifically with Genesis 22
(cols.47a~48d) and not, as far as I can see, elsewhere in the long homily
Kohen makes very heavy use of the midrashic technique of bbuy 'inclusion.'
What this means is that the word et, which properly functions in Hebrew as
a marker of the accusative,can b e midrashically understood to imply the prsenee of some additional, unstated object of the verb that precedes.108 To give
(106) Genesis 21 is the Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Genesis 22 for the
second.
(107) Col. 47b; quoting Isa 25:8, a favorite catch-phrase of Kabbalistic eschatology.
(108) Gam andflecan function in the same way: etim gamimribbuyim' the words et and gam are
terms indicating inclusion[of that which is unstated]'(Gen.R. 1:14; Theodor-Albeck[ed.]p. 12);
ha-ribbuy be-shalosh leshonot et gam w-a/'there are three terms for inclusion [of the unstated],
gam, and af (Midrash ha-Gadol, preface to Genesis; Margaliot[ed.] p. 23).Cf. H.G.Enelow, The

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o n e example of this technique : t h e phrase et YHVHelohekha tira, in Deut 6:13,

would normally b e understood to mean ,you shallfear the Lord your God. But t h e
Talmud represents Rabbi Akiba,with whom the principle of ribbuy is normally
associated, as expounding the et to mean that scholars are to b e included
along with God as objects of reverence.109
Kohen resorts t o this principle again a n d again in interpreting t h e Aqedah.
I n 22:2, et binekha'[take] thy son; is understood to include (le-rabbot)Isaac's
mother along with Isaac (col. 47a; Kohen's point is neither Isaac n o r Sarah
p u t obstacles in Abraham's way). I n verse4.,et ha-maqom' [he saw] the place,' ineludes n o t only the"place"in a literal sense b u t God as well (col. 47c).110W h e n
Abraham bound Isaac his son (verse 9), t h e et of et yishaq beno comes to include
Abraham himself : "as if Abraham h a d b o u n d himself." (Or, alternatively, it ineludes the heavenly princes, who were bound at the Aqedah along with Isaac ;
col. 48b.) Kohen finds n o fewer than two such inclusions in verse 10, AndAbraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.T h e et t h a t p r e c e d e s

y ado (his hand) is there to convey that Abraham tested the knife's evenness
against his fingernail a n d his finger;111 while the et that precedes beno'his
son'conveys that Abraham saw himself as killing, n o t Isaac alone, b u t all the
future offspring God h a d promised him."For [Isaac] was his single, solitary,
unique son; Ishmael was n o t called his son,inasmuch as h e was the offspring
of a Gentile slave woman. That was why God h a d called [Isaac, in verse 2] thy
son, thine only son" ( c o l . 48b).1 1 2

Of the twenty-seven occurrences of the word et (or ve-et)in Gen 22:119,

Kohen thus interprets fiveas nbbuyim.This seems a n extraordinarily high percentage, a n d suggests that, f o r reasons about which I cannot speculate, Koh e n h a d come t o regard this m o d e of exegesis as peculiarly appropriate f o r
t h e Aqedah!13 We shall see in section 8 that Israel Hazzan followed in Kohen's

Mishnah ofRabbi Eliezer; or, TheMidrash of Thirty-two Hermeneutic Rules (New York, 1933), pp. 11-13
H. L. Strack and G. Sternberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Minneapolis, 1991 ), p. 26.
(109) BT Pesahim 22b; quoted,with two other examples,in Midrash ha-Gadol (preceding note).
(110) Rabbinic texts habitually refer to God as ha-maqom.
(111) In accord with BT Hullini7b.
(112) Abarbanel had given a similar explanation of why Isaac was called yehidekha : "The one
[son],Ishmael,was no longer, since he had been driven from [Abraham's] house and was as though
he had never been. Isaac thus remained his father's only son and his mother's only son"(Perush
c
al ha-torah, p. 268). This is Abarbanel's answer to what he represents (above) as the Muslim argument,from Gen 22:2, that the intended sacrifice was Ishmael.
(113) I am not aware of any precedent. One Zoharic exegesis of nissahet avraham (22:1) appears at first sight to involve a Hbbuy, the et understood to signify that Isaac is being tested along
with Abraham (Zohar, 1,119b). But, as Cordovero points out (in Abraham Azulay, Or ha-hammah
[Jerusalem, 1876; reprinted in Israel, n.d.],vol. 1, col. 99c), an altogether different principle is involved : et, normally used in the Zohar for the sefirah Malkhut, is here applied to Isaac inasmuch as

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footsteps; and, in this connection, the last of Kohen's rbbuyimwill prove of

very special interest.
O n the basis of these authors, I would offer the following sketch of the Aqedah as it was perceived in seventeenth-centuryJudaism.The more important
actor i n t h e A q e d a h is Isaac, n o t A b r a h a m . (Yafeh koah ha-ben mi-koah ha-av,

as Horowitz puts it.) Not only is h e a willing victim in the sacrifice a point
Levenson has made in connection with the Aqedah tradition ofJewish antiquity114 but h e has become a superhuman savior figure who seems in large
measure modelled after the Savior of Christianity. His sacrifice is actually accomplished. In the course of that sacrifice, h e is transformed into a new and
qualitatively different sort of creature. As a n effect of that sacrifice, h e has the
power n o t only to defend his offspring against God's wrath and to redeem
them from the torments of hell, but even to transform his offspring, and indeed the entire creation, into something qualitatively different from what
they had been.
This transformation is bound u p with the eschatological future. These
themes are most obviously linked by Abraham's donkey, which foreshadows
the ass to b e ridden by the Messianic king (Zech 9:9) ; more subtly, by the feast
for which Isaac is the effective cause, and which foreshadows the eschatological feast of the righteous.
We may note,finally, that both Abarbanel and Kohen show some resistance
toward "Ishmael's"encroachments upon their savior's prerogatives. Abarbanel records,and repudiates,Muslim claims that the only son of 22:2 must have
been Ishmael rather than Isaac. Kohen notes that the Ishmaelites have rebuilt
the Jerusalem Temple, but for their own religious use; h e promises that they
will b e judged and ejected ; h e rejects the possibility that Ishmael might properly b e called Abraham's son at all.115
Thus far the legacy that Hazzan received. What does h e himself d o with
the Aqedah? And what role is played in it by Ishmael Zevi?
6 . A Q E D A H , ISHMAEL,ISLAM ( I I )

Let us begin by observing that Hazzan expounds the Aqedah n o t once but
twice. His first exegetical essay o n the subject lies near the beginning of his
work (fol 14V),in the course of a detailed exposition of the Zoharic myth of the
he is currently resident in thatsefirah and not in his own proper sefirah (that is to say, Gevurah).
(114) The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, pp. 187-92.
(115) It seems possible, though by no means certain, that Horowitz's disparaging reference to
the seemingly "insane" Arab practice of prostrating oneself to the dust on one's feet (Shenei luhot
ha-berit, vol. 4, p. 75; following BT Bava Me si3a 86b) is an indirect jab at Islam.Cf. below n. 219.

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hind.116 This initial treatment of t h e topic bears almost n o resemblance t o

what h e was subsequently to write, once h e h a d discovered t h e significance of
Ishmael Zevi.
I n the earlier passage, Hazzan h a d focused his attention o n Gen 2 2 : 3 - 4 :
And Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his ass, and took two of his young
men with him, aqd Isaac his son; and he cleaved the wood for the burnt-offering, and
rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.T h e morning, a s h e u n d e r s t o o d

it, represents the eschaton.(This equation,which recurs throughout his commentary, is practically the only element of his original interpretation t o survive into his subsequent discussion of the Aqedah.)The figure of Abraham
stands f o r t h e Kabbalistic sefirah of Hesed 'Grace.' "Isaac" is the sefirah Gevurah
'stern judgment^ t o b e exercised against t h e Gentiles.The third day alludes t o
the resurrection (in accord with Hos 6:2); the ass, to the beast that theMessiah will ride ( Zech 9:9) ; t h e cleaving of the wood, to the sinners t h e Gentile
nations, t o j u d g e f r o m Hazzan's citation of Isa 33:12 who are destined f o r
burning.
Abraham's two young men (necarav)31c Metatron 117 and Sabbatai Zevi. T h e
latter is indicated, n o t by name, b u t by successive citations of Isa 9:5 (a child
[yeled] is born unto us, a son [ben] is given to us) a n d H o s 11:1 ( when Israel was a lad

[nacar] )!18 What is significant h e r e is that Sabbatai, the center of Hazzan's attention, plays a secondary a n d perhaps even marginal role in the eschatological drama of t h e Aqedah. Hazzan regularly speaks of h i m as'son J o r as 4beloved son' (ben yaqir, fol gv a n d frequently)!19 But, remarkably, h e does n o t
think to equate h i m with t h e beloved son of Gen 22:2, still less with the father who is going t o sacrifice him. H e remains essentially faithful t o the Zohar's reading of the Aqedah (I,119a-120b),in which the sefirotic symbolism
predominates; b u t h e overlays it with eschatology.120
Turning f r o m h e r e t o Hazzan's formal exposition of the Aqedah,which begins o n fol 104V, we at first imagine that h e is resuming the sefirotic line of
interpretation. H e prefaces his Aqedah exegesis with a heavily glossed a n d
(116) In his commentary on Psalm 42 ; see above, n.46.
(117) Whose standing designation is nacar 'youth!
(118) Hazzan marks the word Israel with a double slash, to indicate that he is attributing a special significance to it. He uses Israel and son throughout the commentary to designate Sabbatai
Zevi; e.g., fols gv, 10v-11r.
(119) FollowingJer 31:19.
(120) We recall from Abarbanel and Kohen the association of Abraham's donkey with that of
the Messiah.We recall, also, that the sefirotic symbolism of "Abraham"and "Isaac" was practically
absent from the writers we considered in the preceding section ; only Horowitz made any use of
it at all.

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expanded version of the prayer zokhrenu be-zikkaron tov,m in which h e begs

God to "remember," to the benefit of the Jewish people, various sefirotic entities. God is to remember, also, the Aqedah by which Abraham (whom Hazzan
has just equated with the sefirah Hesed)"bound his son Isaac upon the altar,
the hidden reference being to the dinim [that is, the punitive aspects ofdivinity] that h e is going to sweeten and to mend."
But n o sooner does h e begin to expound the Genesis text itself than h e
takes an altogether different tack. Abraham, h e now declares, is both the 4exalted father'( at ha-ram) and the'bitter father'(; ha-mar).That is,h e is Sabbatai Zevi, most supremely exalted and yet"made bitter through all the bitternesses of the children of Israel." (This is an allusion to Sabbatai's entrance into
the profane realm of Islam.)122And the"Isaac"of the Biblical story is n o n e
other than
our Lord Ishmael. H e is called"Isaac"in that h e was born in a time in
which the dinim had the upper hand over the hasadim)2*in the epoch of
the turban1.24 H e came into the world turban-wearing [that is, a Muslim],
for the dinim were powerful at that time. H e is "Isaac,"moreover, in that
Israel will have all its laughter 125 and joy through him [fols 104v-105r].
This transformation of "Isaac" into "Ishmael" which at once brings to mind
the Muslim reading of the Aqedah is remarkable enough. Its immediate
sequel is yet more remarkable. Hazzan goes o n to make clear that the religion
symbolized for him by the" turban"is near the center of his own understanding of the Aqedah; and n o t merely in the negative sense (which we saw in his
earlier treatment of Genesis 2 2 )that the Muslims are Gentiles to b e punished
(121) Derived originally from the zikkronot of the Rosh Hashanah musaf, but functioning as
liturgical introduction to the reading of the Aqedah in the daily birkhot ha-shahar : Philip Birnbaum, Daily Prayer Book (New York, 1949), pp. 19-20; A.Z. Idelsohn ,Jewish Liturgy and Its Development{New York, i960), p. 78.
(122) She-kol merirut beneiyisra'el nitmarer bahem[\] be-sod ve-hu mehullal mi-peshacenu.Hazzan's
citation of Isa 53:5 guarantees that he is referring to Sabbatai's apostasy, for Sabbatian expositors
from Nathan of Gaza onward regularly understood the Biblical verse to refer to the" profanation"
entailed by that action (see, for example, Nathan as quoted by Sasportas,5wa novel Sevi, pp. 26162). Hayyim Kohen applies the same verse to the suffering saddiq; above, n.102.
(123) That is, the punitive aspects of divinity, represented in Kabbalistic symbolism by the figure of Isaac, had gotten the upper hand over its gracious aspects.
(124) Be-hemshekh zeman ha-misnefet. The use of the word misnefet for'turban'is rare in this text.
Senif, used in the next sentence, is Hazzan's normal designation.
(125) Sehoq, from the same root as the ame "Isaac Cf. Horowitz's reflections on Isaac's name,
summarized in the preceding section.

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in the eschaton. Rather, h e reads the Biblical command of lekh lekha (4get thee
into the land of Moriah; Gen 22:2) as though it were lekh
indicating a
doubled 4going.'Abraham and Isaac - that is,Sabbatai and Ishmael -"must
go by two paths, the path of Truth [Judaism] and the path of Grace [Islam].126
This is what Scripture means when it says that Grace and Truth have met together
[Ps 85:11]
This last observation leads Hazzan into a long excursus o n Psalm 85 (fols
105r-107r).The central theme of this excursus is the combination ofJudaism
with Islam or, more accurately, the penetration of Islam byJudaism and
justification and praise of those "pious ones" who have undertaken this penetration.(They are called God's'pious ones' hasidav, because they have entered torat hesed, which is Islam; fol 106r.)B0th these Jewish-Muslim pioneers,
and those Jews who have remained within their Judaism, are equally recipients of the divineshalom(Ps 85:g).But, says Hazzan, the psalm must go o n to
assure the"pious"apostates that they shall not return to folly. They shall not remain within Islam, that "path of fools and lunatics"- good only for a provisional act of "mending"that is unfortunately necessary for the establishment
of God's throne (fol 106v, following Isa 16:5).
To understand what this means for Hazzan, we must digress to ask what Islam
has meant for him u p to this point.
Let us make n o mistake. His talk of "Grace"notw1thstanding, Hazzans attitude toward Islam is hardly o n e of ecumenical acceptance. Nearly every
reference to Islam, u p to this point in the text, has been unequivocally
(126) Hazzan, like other Sabbatian writers,regularly uses the expression torat hesed ("Torah of
Grace") to refer to Islam,as opposed to torat emet ("Torahof Truth"),which isJudaism.He explains
(fol. 31V) that "the Ishmaelite religion is called torat hesed. . . inasmuch as the Ishmaelites have
only that which their ancestors transmitted to them . . . they walk after vanity, yet d o not aban
don the practice of their ancestors."He implies that this loyalty of theirs,blind as it is,is nonetheless counted to them as a virtue (fused),which casts particular discredit o n the Jews'corresponding disloyalty to their own sacred tradition.(This interpretation is partly inspired by a midrashic
interpretation of Prov 14;34, hesed le'ummiin hattat, found in Tanhuma Ki Tissa #5.) Given Hazzan's generally contemptuous attitude toward Islam, expressed in this and other passages (below),Scholem seems justified in refusing to infer from the torat hesed terminology that the Sabbatian writers perceive Islam as a"religion of grace? superior to Judaism: Sabbatai Sem, pp.813,
863-64;"Perush mizmorei tehillim;pp. 181-83(Liebes,pp. 115-18) ; cf. the discussion in Liebes,
"Yahaso shel Shabbetai Sevi lehamarat dato;pp. 301-05(OnSabbateaism and its Kabbalah, pp.3 2 33).Yet we shall see that Hazzan evidently felt envy as well as scorn for Islam; and that,in his own
crisis of faith, h e found himself wondering if God and Abraham(the Kabbalistic embodiment of
hesed) did not in fact prefer the Muslims over the Jews. The phrase torat hesed may indeed have
contained within it some implication of Muslim superiority, which Hazzan and other Sabbatian writers normally preferred to keep out of their conscious awareness.

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hostile. Islam is a"twisted"religion1,27a "vain"religion1,28a religion whose essential blackness is belied by the white turban that serves as its symbol.129 It is
prefigured by the unclean reptiles of Lev 11:29-30; especially by the lizard,
whose name {sav) is numerically equal to the name of "that lunatic of theirs
. . . who became a heretic and fell into evil practices?130 Its mad enthusiasts
(ha-mishtaggecim be-datam) spout empty utterances which Samael and Lilith
use to build firmaments of chaos31As Christendom has the demon Samael
for its patron, so Islam has the demon Rahab.132 Muslims are the"wild asses"
of Ps 104:11, who think to quench their spiritual thirst with the "holy spring"
(Sabbatai Zevi) that has gone forth from the house of the Lord, but whose
blood will instead become drink for the birds.133
At first glance, this seems a picture of pure hatred and contempt. But it is
occasionally possible to detect another tone, of envy and longing, in Hazzan's allusions to Islam."W%0 set the wild assfree? [Job 39:5]. Who can bring out
Ishmael, whom Scripture calls a wild ass of a man [Gen 16:12], and set him
free? And who has opened the bonds of the wild ass? [Job 39:5] of those whose
flesh is like asses'flesh [Ezek 23:20] who is able to open and release their
bonds; for they are forbidden to us, and who can make them permitted?
. . . Their entire religion and legislation is like a desert and a wasteland,
and they have n o foundation upon which to ground them!' Yet (following
J o b 3g:7~8)"they mock and ridicule us1?4.. they bear n o yoke, have not
(127) Torah ha-caqummah, fol 48a.
(128) Dai ha-hevel, fol 33V; cf. 31V, quoted in n.126, above.
(129) Dot shehorah, fol 50V.
(130) Fol 50V: ha-meshuggacshellahem. .. she-nehefakh le-minutve-yasa le-tarbutracah.Meshuggac
is a familiar designation for Muhammad among Jewish polemicists(Steinschneider, Polemische
und apologetische Literatur,; pp. 302-03; cf. p. 359 for a medieval antecedent to the polemic use
of Leviticus's list of unclean reptiles). Sav and Muhammad both have the gematria value of 92.( Is
Hazzan aware that Muslim writers often called attention to the numerical value of Muhammad's
name, equating it thereby with bi-me'od me'od in Gen 17:20, which predicts Ishmael's future greatness [ibid., p. 327, cf. p. 364; Perlmann, Ibn Kammunas Examination of the Three Faiths, p. 139] ? It
is impossible to say.) In the same passage, Hazzan explains Leviticus's "mouse" (cakhbar) as "this
Turkish king, for so he is explicitly called among the Jews in all regions of Constantinople."( Perhaps a play on Arabic akbar ?) He was soon to speak more respectfully of the sultan, as we will see.
(131 ) Fol 31 , following Zohar, 1,5a. On Islamic religious practices, including the fast of Ramadan, cf. fols 74r-7 5V.
(132) Fols 94r, 107V (discussed below); cf. fol 21r-v, which gives a partial quotation from the
Zoharic passage that is the source of these identifications (III, 246b, Racya Mehemna).Cf. also
Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische Literatur, p. 318.
(133) Fol 57r-v; Hazzan linksperaHm (Ps 104:11) with the well-known Biblical description of
Ishmael aspereadam (Gen 16:12 ; see below). With Hazzan's representation of Muslims as beasts,
we might compare the tendency of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century polemical writers to apply
to them the phrase of Ps 50:10, behemot be-harerei alef(Steinschneider, pp. 371,382).
( 134) Cf. fol 71a, expounding Ps 80:7 : "our neighbors? who are also "our enemies? ridicule us ;

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gone into exile

With every mouth h e [Job's wild ass, representing the collectivity of the Muslims] devours Israel, and slanders . . . the righteous . . .
to graze upon them and to devour their m o n e y . . . .He seeks after the4 green'
gold . . . [demanding] that it b e measured out and brought!' 135
Even as Hazzan scorns what h e perceives as the aridity and baselessness
of the Muslim religion, h e envies its potency expressed in an image that,
given the context of Ezek 23:20,is blatantly sexual and its worldly good
fortune. It represents to him a world of security and power from which h e
remains banned, n o t so much by the Muslims themselves as by his own religious convictions."They are forbidden to us, and who can make them permitted?"His implied answer seems to b e : Sabbatai Zevi.
A few pages before Ishmael first appeared o n the scene, Hazzan had
sketched a fantasy of how Sabbatai might bridge the worlds of Judaism and
Islam, entirely to Judaism's benefit. Isa 49:2 2-23, which promises that the
Gentile kings and their princes will become nurses to the Jews, refers says
Hazzan to the mighty works of Sabbatai Zevi. Isaiah's "princes" are "the
celestial princes that are in charge of [the Gentiles], like Samael and Rahab;
they will turn to you in great love and will nurse you." This is the hidden significance of the mysterious "man" who, according to Gen 32:24-3 2, wrestled
by night with the patriarch Jacob. The"man" is Samael, here conceived as patron of the Muslims. T h e victorious "Jacob" is Sabbatai Zevi "And he said, Send
me off136 [Gen 32:26] ; meaning, I am your slave and in your power, and I am
your emissary"(fol g4r-v).
This is, of course, fantasy. But n o t absolutely so. We learn from Cardozo,
and from Hazzan himself, that Sabbatai had at least one Muslim devotee, a
certain"MullahcAli," whom h e in fact used as his emissary from town to town.
In his commentary o n the Aqedah, in connection with Abraham's cleaving
the woodfar the burnt-offenng (Gen 2 2:3),Hazzan records a remarkable vignette
of Sabbatai's life in his Albanian exile. In 1674, evidently,137Sabbatai had sent
Mullah c Ali as his messenger to the believers in Kastoria (Hazzan among
them) e n route to his prospective father-in-law (Aaron Majar) in Sofia."He
told us about the passing of the Lady [matronita; that is, Sabbatai's wife
they declare that they are in the right,for (they say)"Surely they have entered into our religion!"
(135) Fol 82a.Hazzan's zahav yeraqraq, based on Ps 68:14, expounds ve-ahar kolyaroq yidrosh
(Job 39:8).Medod ve-have is taken from the exegesis of Isa 14:4 in BT Shabbat 149b-150a. His
overall portrait is somewhat suggestive of the very hostile account of Islam given byjudah del
Bene, Kisse'ot le-vet David published in Verona some thirty years before Hazzan wrote as this
is summarized in Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische Literatur; pp. 38485.(1 have not
had access to Del Bene's book itself.)
(136) ShaUeheni, more usually taken to mean "let me go."
(137) Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 885.

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Sarah],138 and about how h e had brought a dead person back to life. And
among the things h e told us was that h e [Sabbatai] would chop large pieces
of wood, and give the small pieces to our Lord Ishmael to chop"(fol 107V).
T h e details of this sketch, and the interpretation that Hazzan goes o n to offer of Sabbatai's behavior h e was training his son, the future Messiah, to
"shatter and subdue the qelippot" in the form of pieces of wood are (for
now) less important to us than the role ascribed to MullahcAli. A story
transmitted by Cardozo confirms Hazzan's depiction of this role: in 1676,
shortly before his death, Sabbatai sent Mullah cAli from Dulcigno to Edirne
( Adrianople) to summon two of his followers into his presence.139
T h e mythic act that Hazzan attributes to Sabbatai, of turning the oncemighty angelic patron of Islam into his subservient messenger, thus reflects
the actual role of MullahcAli within Sabbatai's inner circle. We cannot b e
sure whether Hazzan built his myth upon his observations of Mullah cAli's
behavior; or whether, as often tended to happen the tragic story of Ishmael Zevi is an obvious example Sabbatai had managed to turn his immediate surroundings into a mirror of his Messianic fantasies. Either way, the
rhetorical question that Hazzan had asked, in connection with J o b 39:5, is
now answered. T h e once"forbidden"Muslims have now become"permitted."
Thanks to Sabbatai, they can b e part of a new (and largely imaginary) "JewishMuslim symbiosis,"140 in which the power relationships of the real JewishMuslim symbiosis have become reversed.
(138) Following Scholem, against Amarillo (above, . 24). The distinguished title matronita,
long hallowed by the Zoharic practice of using it for the divine Female, would be entirely appropriate for Sabbatai's wife of many years. It is far less suitable for Majar's daughter, whom Sabbatai twice planned to marry but who remained"his betrothed''(:>arasai0)at the time of her death
(Tishby,"R. Meir Rofe's Letters," p. 97).
(139) Molho and Amarillo,"Autobiographical Letters','pp. 217-18. Scholem quotes and discusses the text from Hazzan in'Terush mizmorei tehillim',' pp. 169-71 (Liebes, pp. 101-03). Ap
parently, however, h e did not notice that Hazzan gives the Mullah's name. (The initial letter
c
ayin is clearly visible; the lamed and yod, though covered by the tape used to bind the manuscript, can be read with certainty.) H e therefore omits "cAli"from his quotation ; and this is why,
as far as I am aware, subsequent scholars have failed to observe the important correlation be
tween Hazzan's account and Cardozo's.The reference to Sabbatai's having "brought a dead person back to life" is baffling. A letter written in the summer of 1675 quotes Sabbatai as having
promised "soon" to bring his deceased ex-fiancee (Majar's daughter) back to life, and Isaiah
Tishby suggests that the mullah now reports the promise as having been fulfilled : "R. Meir Rofe's
Letters," pp. 9 6 - 9 7 . This hypothesis, which requires us to date the episode a year or two later
than Scholem did and to interpret its significance differently, does not seem to m e compelling.
Sabbatai's followers believed him to have resurrected many dead people (Isaiah Sonne,"New
Material o n Sabbatai Zevi from a Notebook o f R. Abraham Rovigo" [Hebrew], Sefiinot 31960]4[
55), and we have seen that Hazzan expected Ishmael Zevi to d o the same. On the role of the mulIah, cf. also ibid., p. 62.
(140) I use the familiar phrase of S.D.Goitein.

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Jacob/Sabbatai's triumph over his nocturnal antagonist, says Hazzan,represents a stage beyond his earlier achievement of "blessing and birthright."
These latter were won by 'deceit' (mirmah) ; specifically, by the act of donning
the turban. Now, however, Samael proclaims Jacob /Sabbatai's victory of his
own free will, without compulsion.That is why, according to Gen 3 2 : 2 8 , the
victor is n o lopger "Jacob" but "Israel" (fol 94V).
Hazzan reiterates much of this argument when h e comes to expound Psalm
85, and thereby to define and describe the dual Jewish-Islamic path that
Sabbatai and Ishmael have been obliged (by the command of Gen 22:2) to
tread. H e explains that the psalmist speaks of Sabbatai as "Jacob"141 because
of the 4ruse9 (coqvah) and 'deceit' (rammaut ) with which h e has tricked the angelic patrons of the Gentiles, as his Biblical prototype once tricked Esau. As
Prov 25:21-22 instructs us to give our enemy food and drink in order to destroy him; as God once ordered the Israelites to provide a goat for the demon Azazel as a ruse to deceive him ;142so" the Light of Israel was obliged to
enter into this testing," in the profane realms of Islam (fol 105r-v).
We are given one particularly striking example of what this dual path involves. Hazzan quotes Prov 31:26 She opens her mouth in xvisdom, and torat
hesed is on her tongue which h e takes as referring to Sabbatai.143 "He would
often reveal, through his astounding wisdom, the mystery of [God's] divinity, which had not been revealed even to the Prince of the Presence; and,
concurrently, chant torat hesed that is to say, the Qur'an of the Ishmaelite
nation. . . two Torahs together" (fol 107)!44 "Grace" and " T r u t h " - torat hesed
and torat emet, Islam and Judaism have thus met together,; as Ps 85:11 says.
T h e effect is that righteousness and peace have kissed ; which Hazzan understands, in Kabbalistic terms, to mean that the female and male aspects of divinity have coupled. Thereupon "Truth" (Judaism), which has hitherto been
(141) Ps 85:2 reads (according to the Qere) shavtashevityacaqov.Hazzan points out thatshevit
is an anagram for shabbetai, and interprets: she-ha-el be-rahamavyashiv et shabbetai ycfaqot;."Sabbatai"and "Jacob" are thus equated.
(142) So the Zohar's interpretation of the rite of Leviticus 16 (Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the
Zohar: An Anthology of Texts [London and Washington, 1989], vol. 2, pp. 453,521-23). Hazzan
had used this illustration, as well as the citation of Prov 25:21-22, as part of his argument o n
fol 94V. The thought processes underlying fols 94V and 105r-v are plainly very much the same.
(143) Since h e is, as Hazzan often tells us, the inseparable companion of the Shechinah, to
which standard Kabbalistic exegesis applies this verse.
( 144) Najara reports much the same : One Sabbath morning in Adar 1671, Sabbatai preached
a sermon in a synagogue in which h e "made known that many difficulties in our holy Torah and
in the sayings of our sages are entirely unintelligible and insoluble without the preliminaries
that h e set forth
H e extended this sermon for about two hours; and, at its conclusion, read
from the Qur'an, in order to show that the whole ppint of his sermon was to bring them into this
faith [Islam]"(Amarillo,"Tecudot Shabbeta'iyyot,"p.256).

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wan ting,1455x^7/ spring from the earth; and "Righteousness,, in the person of Sabbatai Zevi, mil look forth from heaven (Ps 8 5 : 1 2 ) in a glorious"second coming"
( f o l 107!).

T h e triumphalist quality of Hazzan's expectation is evident. Plainly enough,

the Jewish-Islamic synthesis embodied by Sabbatai is n o experiment in interfaith harmony, but rather a necessary trick used against a repellent and despicable enemy. But here Hazzan finds himself cauglit in a paradox. For the
trick to work for "Jacob"eventually to vanquish the demonic patron of Islam, so that the latter freely confesses his victory Sabbatai must mold his
Judaism in accord with the enemy faith. So must his son : his partner and vietim in the new Aqedah.
So must Hazzan himself In the act of reshaping the Aqedah, h e opens it to
the Islamic encroacher. T h e Jewish ancestor Isaac has practically vanished
from Hazzan's reading of Genesis 22, leaving behind him little more than
the symbolic implications of his name. In his place stands a"turban-wearing"
Muslim Ishmael.
Not, of course, the Muslim Ishmael. T h e Ishmael Zevi of Hazzan's Messianic fantasy is still fundamentally identified with the Jewish people; h e will
emerge, n o less than in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers we
considered in the preceding section,as Israel's advocate and savior; the Muslims will b e targets, rather than beneficiaries, of the salvation h e will bring.
So Hazzan anticipated.
But, midway through the Aqedah, Hazzan must change course. Ishmael
Zevi will himself vanish. H e will be replaced n o t by the Jewish Isaac, n o r
even by the sefirah Gevurah but by the figure that Hazzan and his contemporaries regarded as the embodiment of Islam: Ishmael son of Hagar. Torat
hesed and torat emet will thus have met, o n the former's terms; and the Aqedah 46n o less than Sabbatai Zevi himself ,will have entered the realms of Islam.
We shall examine this impending development in sections 7 and 8. Let us
conclude the present section by comparing the Aqedah exegesis with which
Hazzan began his midnight-vigil commentary (fol 14V; see above) with the
new line of interpretation which, carried away by enthusiasm for the Messiahship of Ishmael Zevi, h e now unfolds.
A few details have remained the same. T h e morning of Gen 22:3 is still the
eschaton; the third day still alludes to the future resurrection. Abraham's ass
is still, as in Abarbanel and Kohen, the beast to b e ridden by the Messiah
(Zech 9:9). But now it is further interpreted as"the prince of the nation"
(145) Following Mishnah Sotah 9:15.
( 146) Which Abarbanel (above) had described as "the entire strength of Israel, and their merit
before their Father in heaven'.'

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187

the Muslim nation, presumably and the Messiah's riding it as representing his triumph!47 T h e wood that Abraham cleaves n o longer represents the
sinners readied for punishment, but (perhaps along the same lines) the qelippot that the Messiah must shatter and subdue.(See above, o n the story of
Mullah cAli.)
But the* most important elements have shifted entirely. "Abraham" and
"Isaac"earlier the sefirot Hesed and Gevurah, now have become Sabbatai and
Ishmael Zevi. Sabbatai has thus changed, as we saw at the beginning of this
section, from"beloved son" to "exalted father" (or, perhaps,"bitter father").
T h e two young men, earlier Metatron and Sabbatai himself, now have become
the"two high princes" who are to serve the Messiah as their Biblical prototypes served Abraham. (They are later explicitly identified as Rahab prince
of Ishmael a n d Samael prince of Esau; that is, the angelic/demonic patrons
of Islam and Christendom.)
There are some new details. Commenting o n 22:2, Hazzan writes :"The
land ofMoriah is the 4Holy Land' [that is, the sefirah Malkhut ],148 with whom you
(147) "And he saddled his ass. This is the ass that he rode upon and triumphed over, in accord
with the hidden meaning of poor;ridingon an ass [Zech 9:9] ; this is the prince of the nation, as
is explained in the Zohar, Kx Tese, in Racya Mehemna, in connection with the hidden meaning of
I have an ox and an ass [Gen 32:5] "(fol 107V). I have not been able to locate the precise Zoharic
passage to which Hazzan refers. Several passages understand the ox and ass to refer to demonic
entities that Jacob had in his power (1,166b, 11,64b); or a slight variation take the ox to be
the divine power of harshjudgment (the sefirah Gevurah) and the ass its demonic counterpart (I I,
6a, III, 86b-87a). Ill, 207a, identifies the ass with the totality of the demonic sefirot, and quotes
Zech 9:9 to show that "King Messiah is destined to rule over it." The tenth of the additional
Uqqunim,printed as an appendix to the Zhitomir edition of Tiqqun Zohar{ 1863, p. 147b; re
printed Jerusalem, 1974), identifies the ox and the ass with "the patrons of Esau and Ishmael,
whom the two Messiahs will ride and dominate . . . that is whyJacob said, I have an ox and an ass,
for he dominated them. . . ."All of these passages are plainly relevant to Hazzan's purpose; the
last particularly so, since it seems to warrant an equation of the ass with the patron of Ishmael.
(This last interpretation of Gen 32:5 is followed by Israel Sarug, Sefer limmudei asilut [Lemberg,
1850; reprinted Jerusalem, 1972], cols. 8c-d: Jacob intended to convey that Esau [ox] and Ishmael [ass] were subject to his power.) None of them, however, occurs in Racya Mehemna on Ki
Tese. (Zech 9:9 is twice quoted in this section III, 276a and 279a but neither of these passages suits Hazzan's allusion here, although the second shows considerable affinity with his Messianic thought in other parts of the commentary.) It is striking that many of the Zoharic texts
that expound Gen 32:5 also expound Deut 2 2:10 (the prohibition of plowing with an ox and an
ass together) in the same context; Racya Mehemna on Ki Tese (Deut 21:10-25:19) would therefore be a logical place to look for a discussion of the ox and the ass. But Racya Mehemna on Ki Tese
is evidently incompletely preserved, for it begins only with Deut 2 2:19. Did Hazzan have a fuller
text at his disposal? Or did he regard the passage in 111,86a-87a as having originally been a part
of Racya Mehemna on Ki Tese, as the printer's note on III, 275b of the Mantua edition might
indicate?
(148) This symbolic use of "Holy Land"occurs throughout Hazzan's commentary. (Indeed,
I have found only one passage where Hazzan! seems to take an interest in the actual land of

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DAVID J . HALPER I

[46]

["Abraham" Sabbatai Zevi] will ascend. And cause him to ascend there:149h e will
cause his son Ishmael, who is our Lord, may his mzyesty b e exalted, to ascend
upon one of the mountains which I mill tell thee of, referring to the lofty rank that
God will give him"(fol 107r-v).
Hazzan's inspiration here is perhaps the Pentateuch commentary of Bahya
ben Asher, which interprets le-olah in 2 2:2 to mean that Abraham was to offer Isaac to"the tenth sefirah, which ascends" {la-middah ha-asint hd-mitcalleh),
to offer him, that is, to Malkhut}00 If so, Hazzan has given the idea a significant new twist. It is n o longer Isaac who is to b e offered (or, perhaps,"raised")
to Malkhut, but Abraham/Sabbatai who will ascend with that sefirah)01 T h e
reference is surely to Sabbatai's "disappearance', and his consequent exaltation. Isaac/Ishmael, by contrast, is to receive an unspecified"lofty rank" {mac
alah ha-celyonah) ; which, in the light of what we have already learned of his
dawning Messianic glory (above, sec. 4), must b e understood as bound u p
with his future as savior,judge, and ruler o n this earth.
Writing these words, Hazzan n o doubt intended the details of Ishmael's
Messianic elevation to unfold, o n paper, as h e brought his commentary o n
the midnight-vigil liturgy to its triumphant conclusion in the Aqedah. H e
expected them, n o doubt, to unfold in reality n o t long afterward.
7. A MESSIAH DISAPPEARS

This denouement was never to arrive, even in the commentary's own fantasyworld. Instead, Ishmael Zevi was to vanish from its pages (and presumably
from its author's hopes), and the commentary was to extend itself well beyond the Aqedah. Why?
A "fresh start" is evident in the handwriting, in the tenth line of fol 108r.
T h e content also changes at this point, more subtly but still perceptibly. HazPalestine : fol 86v.) The goal of raising Malkhut to the higher sefirot first to her "husband? Tiferet, with whom she couples; then with him to realms higher yet is a Kabbalistic commonplace.
(149) This is a thinkable understanding of ve-hacalehu sham le-colah, inspired by such Zoharic
passages as II, 2$8b-239a (Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, vol. 3, pp. 923-27).The more usual translation is of course "offer him there for a burnt-offering."
( 150) Bahya ben Asher, Midrash Rabbenu Bahya (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 108-09. Bahya goes o n
to find allusions to Malkhut in the altar of verse 9 and the ram of verse 13 (yesh bo remez li-keneset
yisra'el she-niqret ayyelet ha-shahar, p. 110). Shifra Baruchson's research suggests that, at the end of
the sixteenth century, Bahya's Pentateuch commentary was second only to Rashi's in popularity
(above, n. 86).It is therefore plausible to imagine that Hazzan is likely to have been acquainted
with it.
(151) Hazzan is emphatic that it is Sabbatai alone who will ascend with Malkhut:eres ha-moriyyah hi eres ha-qedoshah attah titcalleh Hmmah.

T H E S O N O FT H E M E S S I A H

189

zan backtracks, goes over ground h e hasjust finished covering, making slight
but significant alterations. H e is uncharacteristically halting and unsure of
himself. For the first time in his commentary, h e shows respect and deferenee for Islam and the Turkish sultan; not o n the ground that they are worthier of respect than h e once believed, but o n the ground that they are plainly
recipients of Gqd's and Sabbatai's favor. Ishmael Zevi is still present after the
"fresh start!'Indeed, his elevation proceeds apace. But this elevation has the
effect of declaring him equivalent to his dead father, and of dispatching him
to the heights of the Kabbalistic pleroma; in which rarified atmosphere h e
disappears.
My hypothesis is that, during the break in his composition marked by the
"fresh start',' Hazzan learned that Ishmael Zevi was dead. T h e shifts in what
follows are consequences of this unwelcome intelligence.
T h e text itself is the best argument for this hypothesis. I translate the pertin e n t text, before and after the "fresh s tart','calling attention to some particular features; and trusting that the reader will b e struck, as I have been,by how
much more naturally it reads once my hypothesis is granted.
I begin with Hazzan's exegesis of Gen 2 2:5(fol 108a).
T h e n Abraham said unto his young men,who have been mentioned above,152
Abide ye here mth the ass. O u r sages have interpreted this to mean, a peopie resembling the ass;153 which corresponds to what I have said about the
esoteric meaning of [the Messiah's being, according to Zech 9:9]poor,
riding on an ass.154
And I and the lad xvill go yonder [cad 0/&].This is the sefirah Malkhut,
which is called koh.155
(152) And identified as the supernatural patrons of Christendom and Islam.
(153) cAm ha-domim la-hamor; drawing upon a widespread midrash that readscim ha-hamor as
though it were cam ha-hamor, and consequently disparages Abraham's servants as "ass-people"
(e.g., Gen. Rab. 56:2, Levi. Rab. 20:2, BT Yevamot 62a; cf. Yosef Heinemann, Aggadah and Its Development [ Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1974], pp. 122-29). the light of the common aggadic identification of the two "young men" as Eliezer and Ishmael (e.g., Levi. Rab. 20:2 ; Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer
ch. 31, cited by Hayyim Kohen), it is possible to see in Hazzan's commentary a rehabilitation for
Ishmael, which raises him from the company of the "ass-people "to the central role in the Aqedah.
(154) That is to say, the Messiah is to dominate (ride upon) the"asslike"patrons of the Gentiles. The triumphalist quality of Hazzan's exegesis prior to the"fresh start" remains very
marked. Cf. above, n. 147.
(155) Cf. Bahya ben Asher's identification of ha-mizbeah, in verse 9, with Malkhut (above,
n. 150). Both koh and mizbeah are familiar Kabbalistic representations for the tenth sefirah:
Moses Cordovero, Pardesrmmonim(Munkacz, 1906; reprinted Jerusalem, 1962), Shacar cerkhd
ha-kinnuyim; Eliyahu Peretz, Macalot ha-Zohar: mafteah shemot ha-sefirot (Jerusalem, 1987).

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DAVIDJ . HALPERI

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And we will prostrate ourselves. This alludes to the hidden meaning of

[the Talmudic definition, according to which] "prostration"means the
stretching out of the arms and the legs.156
And we will come back to you. This is the hidden meaning of the passage,
Israel prostrated himself upon the head of the bed [Gen 47:31].157
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his
son[Gen 22:6].Thatis,he gave him some of the pieces ofwood that have
earlier been described,158 and set them u p o n him so that h e might chop
[the qelippot] and subdue them.
And he took in his hand thefire.This refers to the harsh Gevurah [the sefirah of judgment], which h e needed at that time.159 So it is written, The
( 156) BT Berakhot 34b, Megillah 2 2b, Shevu'ot 16b, Horayot 4a. The significance of the comment is very unclear; see the following note. Does Hazzan intend some allusion to theprostrations characteristic of Muslim worship, performed by Sabbatai and Ishmael Zevi? He remarks
on fol 126r, apropos of Ps 143:6, that Muslims typically spread their hands when they pray; but
the verb used is paras, as opposed to pishshut here.
(157) It is very unclear what Hazzan has in mind. We may say with some confidence that, as
often in his commentary, he intends "Israel" to be understood as Sabbatai Zevi. (He marks the
word with two dots, showing he attaches some special significance to it.) It further seems likely
c
c
that he understands the bed (ha-mittah) as Malkhut; see Cordovero, Sha ar erkhei ha-kinnuyim, and
Jacob Jolies, Sefer qehillat yacaqm> (Lemberg, 1870), s.v. This comment, and the two that precede,
therefore belong together and must be interpreted together. Shall we suppose Hazzan is aliuding to the Zohar's exegesis of Gen 47:31 (1,225b, 226b), which understands the bed to be the sefirah Malkhut, the head of the bed to be Yesod, and upon the head of the bed to beTiferei}" IsraelSabbatai Zevi, in Hazzan's reading thus prostrates himself to himself (le-dideh qa saged ), in that
"Israelis a designation for Tiferei ( that is, he worships the sefirah of which he himself is manifestation). But then why is the comment attached to ve-nashuvah calekhem, and not to the preceding
ve-nishtahaveh ? Alternatively, Hayyim Kohen's exegesis of ve-nashuvah ( above, sec. 5) might lead
us to suspect an allusion to an eschatological "return? We might link this to the citation of
Gen 47:31 in BT Megillah 16b, which assumes that Jacob was prostrating himself to Joseph{cf.
Bahya ben Asher, ad 10c.. kedei lahaloq kavod la-malkhut). The "hidden meaning "of the passage
will then be: Sabbatai and Ishmael go to Malkhut, where Sabbatai transfers his authority to Ishmael; and the two of them thus return, in the living person of Ishmael, to redeem the Jews and
execute judgment upon the Gentiles and the qelippot. This makes good sense, but still leaves unexplained Hazzan's allusion to the Talmudic definition of "prostration? I can only speculate,
without any confirming evidence, that Hazzan is covertly alluding to Gen 4Q'<$$,va-ye'esof [yacaqov] raglav el ha-mittah, which seems to describe Jacob's death. The "stretching out of the arms
and the legs"will then mark a reversal of this process, that is, a resurrection.( We recall thatHazzan credits both Sabbatai and Ishmael with the ability to resurrect the dead; MullahcAli has described a feat of this sort on the immediately preceding page.) This posture is rather suggestive
of the position the prophet Elisha assumes while resurrecting a dead child (II Kgs 4:34); and
Elisha was at least once proposed as a "type"of Sabbatai Zevi: Yitshak R.Molkho,"A Sabbatian
Commentary on Lekh-Lekha (Genesis 1217)" [Hebrew],Sefunot 35 453(^ 1 9)4 ^Hazzan s intent presumably lies somewhere within this network of allusions; precisely where, I cannot say.
(158) In MullahcAli's story (above).
(159) Presumably, the time of the destruction of the qelippot.

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T H E SON O F T H E MESSIAH

Lard shall go forth like a mighty man [gibbor], like a man of war; a n d so forth
[Isa43:1 3 ]. 160
And the knife: alluding to the hidden meaning of the passage, My sword
shall devourflesh[T>cuX. 32:42].
And they went both of them together: meaning that h e [Ishmael] too shall
b e elevated t o a rank equal to his father's.161
And Isaac spoke unto Abraham his father [Gen 22:7] . . .
["FRESH S T A R T " :

Hazzan has received the news of IshmaeFs death]

. . . This means that Isaa has now become equivalent in rank t o his father Abraham ;162 these being AM I R AH a n d his son. That is why the text
puts them o n t h e same footing: And Isaac spoke unto Abraham his father.
And he said, My father. This means: I already perceive myself to b e my
father [ani margish be-asmi she-ani avi ]. His father answered the very
same thing : He said, Here am 1, my son my rank is yours, my level of elevation is yours. For it seems to m e that, at t h e time of the revelation^ 63 the
rank of o u r Lord Ishmael will b e equivalent to AMIRAH'S rank at the
time h e was anointed. 164 May the Lord show u s marvellous matters o u t
of his holy Torah! This is what I said in my analysis of the passage, And
they went both of them together.
(But it is n o t precisely what Hazzan h a d said in his analysis of the passage,
A n d they went both of them together. There h e h a d represented IshmaeFs
elevation as a future event. Now it is a n accomplished fact. Why? Because
Ishmael, like his father, is dead. Like his father, h e is marvellously exalted
in the next world; but, also like his father, singularly unhelpful in this one.)
It is also possible to say as follows: And Abraham said unto his young men
[Hazzan backtracks t o 22:5]: these are Rahab prince of Ishmael a n d
Samael prince of Esau, as I have already explained. Abide ye here xvith the
ass: people indeed resembling the ass, as explained above; in accord with
t h e hidden meaning of ox and ass}65And I and the lad, b o t h of us together,
(160) Hazzan presumably understands the conclusion of the verse,"he shall triumph over his
enemies [cal oyvav yitgabbarY, to refer to Sabbatai Zevi's victory over the qelippot.
(161) She-yitcallehgam ken be-macalah ha-shavah le-aviv. Note the tense: the elevation is to take
place in the future.
(162) She-Cattah hay ah shaveh be-macalah yishaq el avraham aviv. The elevation is now aw accompUshed fact.
(163) Ha-gittuy ; presumably the coming revelation of Sabbatai Zevi in his full glory and power.
(164) On the "anointing"of Sabbatai Zevi, which the commentary places in the year 5418
(1657-58),see Scholem,"Perush mizmorei tehillim''p. 163 (Liebes, pp.94-95)
(165) That is, the ox and ass of Gen 32:6 are demonic entities, patrons of Christendom and

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DAVID J . HALPER I

will go yonder [cad koh] : we shall ascend in the mystery of Malkhut, which
is called koh;just as I have explained all this above.
(But this is not quite as h e had explained it above. H e had said that Sabbatai
would ascend with Malkhut, and that h e and Ishmael wouldjourney together
to that sefirah.^ut that the two of them would together ascend along with Maikhut is something new.)
T h e hidden meaning of the passage, And we mil prostrate ourselves and we
mil come back to you, is that we will come back to you a second time. This
means that they will yet again b e obliged to enter their domain1.66 Hence
we will come back to you, until the time and the dominion167 decreed by
God's wisdom has elapsed.
(The point seems to b e that Sabbatai and Ishmael now inseparably paired !
will reappear as Gentiles even at their "second coming." This doleful prediction contrasts sharply with Hazzan's earlier confidence that Sabbatai's Is
lam is merely a temporary expedient, part of the process of "mending.")
For, in my own opinion, the Turkish king o r someone else from the
spark of Ishmael son of Abraham - will have a high rank with AM I RAH
even after the Revelation [that is, the second coming]. Perhaps h e will
attend him and minister to him; blessed is h e who knows! For we have
ourselves heard that AMI RAH did n o t like for anyone to curse [the sultan] ; and, at all events, it appears that the Ishmaelites [Muslims] will have
some measure of rank with AMI RAH. . . . [fol 108r]
For the time being, at least, Hazzan has forgotten that h e had once represented Islam as organized lunacy, that h e had gleefully repeated the Con,,
stan tinople Jews' derogation of the sultan as the unclean" mouse of Leviticus
(above, n . 130). H e now seems disposed to regard Islam as a divinely favored
religion; favored, indeed, above Judaism. For h e goes o n to expound Deut
21:17 to mean that Ishmael, Abraham's first-born son by the hatedHagar, deserves the double portion - n o t only in this world, b u t even "at the revelation ofA M I RAH'S kingdom, inasmuch as the Light of Israel and its Holy O n e
Islam, of whom Jacob/Sabbatai has made himself master. See above, n. 147.
(166) "They" is presumably Sabbatai and Ishmael, while "their" must refer back to the "young
men" the patrons of Christendom and Islam.
(167) Ha-zeman ve-ha-memshalah; which I take to mean the appointed duration of Muslim (or
Gentile) dominion.

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93

entered and abided by his religion, honoring its prohibitions and its permissions. . . . This is the meaning of and we will come back to you, as I have explained above: h e is going to exalt their power even after the Occultation
II ha-hitcallemut\, in accord with that which the Lord of the World wishes to
grant them"(fol 1 0 8 v ) .
T h e reference to "Occultation" the normal Sabbatian euphemism for
Sabbatai's death is strange. Surely Hazzan meant to write gilluy "Revelation',' as h e did earlier. His Freudian slip reflects his painful new awareness
that Ishmael Zevi, too, has"disappeared."
Only now is Hazzan able to return to the point from which h e backtracked
after his "fresh start,"and to take u p the rest of Gen 22:7. Behold thefireand the
wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering? T h e fire,in Hazzan's reading, is
still the sefirah Gevurah. But the wood is n o longer the qelippot that little Ishmael had been learning to chop up, but the Gentiles. It appears that, Ishmael
now disappearing from the picture, Hazzan is beginning to revert to the interpretation of 22:3 h e had given near the beginning of his commentary
(fol 14V; above, sec. 6). As in his earlier exegesis, h e calls the victims of the
burning"dried-up trees"{cesim yeveshim), and quotes Isa 33:12 in reference
to them.
As for the lambfor a burnt-offering (colah, the root meaning of which implies
"ascent"), it is the Jewish people, who d o n o t seem to have any visible merit
by which they might b e raised to the appropriate rank. God, therefore, will
provide for it (Gen 2 2 : 8 ) . T h e sefirah Binah, now appropriately "mended" by
Sabbatai Zevi's powers, will b e willing to redeem Israel o n account of the
Messiah's deeds and n o t their own.
This is the meaning of the lamb for colah my son [22:8]. T h e lamb, which is
Israel, will b e raised o n my account and yours; this is the meaning of my
son. (Similarly, Rabbi Simeon b e n Yohai said [to his son Eleazar] : You and
I are sufficient to maintain the world.)168 So they went both of them together; meaning that Israel will b e redeemed by the merits of both.
And they came to the place [2 2:9] : the two of them, fused together [yahad
be-yihudam],czme to that place that is covertly indicated in the passage
Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place [Ezek 3 : 1 2 ] . [fol 1 0 8 v ]
Hazzan expounds the rest of verse 9 to refer to Binah's crowning of Sabbatai
Zevi, his building u p the structure of Malkhut {altar), his deciding which of
the Gentiles {wood) deserve to b e burnt u p and which may survive as Israel's
servants (fols 1 0 8 v - 1 0 g r ) .
(168) BT Shabbat 33b.

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DAVID J. HALPE RI

[52]

And he bound [va-yacaqod] Isaac his son, in order that h e might rise to the
inexpressible heights of the well-known World of cAqudim\mAnd he placed
him upon the altar; meaning that h e was exalted yet higher, above the wood
[fol ogr].
These words are Hazzan's valediction to Ishmael Zevi. Equal to his father in
merit, inseparably fused with him which is to say, dead like him Ishmael
is honorably dismissed to the inexpressible heights of the sefirotic domain.
H e still exists as a supernatural entity, and if h e could b e in some way distinguished from his father (which h e cannot) h e might still b e of some interest.
As a human being, h e is of n o interest whatever. Even while describing Ishmael's last and loftiest exaltation, Hazzan does n o t call him by name. H e will
not mention him again.
8 . T H E R E D E M P T I O N OF ISHMAEL

Who, then, is the little boy o n Abraham's altar? Hazzan proceeds to explain.
And Abraham stretchedforth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son[et beno;
Gen 22:10]. [The word] et designates a Hbbuy of beno [that is, that something else is intended, along with beno, as object of the verb lishhot]; the
reference being to Ishmael, who is Isaac's ribbuy [which we might render,
freely, as "Isaac's double"or "Isaac's shadow"].170
His [Abraham's] intention was to say, [Ishmael] has already completely
consumed his world, now let him perish from the world. And the angel of
the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham [22:11],
twice; meaning, You are father to both of them!. . . And he said, Lay not
thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing [me'umah] unto him [22:12].
Do n o t inflict a blemish [mum]171o n the kingdom of the house of David,
which must rule over all the nations and all seventy of their princes,172
(169) Isaiah Tishby provides a concise discussion of thecolam ha-aqudim and its place within
the complexities of Lurianic Kabbalah : Torat ha-rac ve-ha-qelippah be-qabbalat ha-Ari (2d ed. ; Jerusalem,1984),pp.28-2g.These details d o not affect Hazzan's essential point, that the"binding of
Isaac"really signifies the dispatch of Ishmael Zevi to the heights o f the sefirotic realm.
( 170) Et leshonribbuyshel beno ha-kavvanah calyishmac:>elshe-huribbuyo shelyishaq. On the principie of ribbuy,see sec. 5, above. (BT Pesahim 2 2b,which I offered as an example of ribbuyin sec. 5,
n. 109, is actally quoted by Hazzan o n fol 63a.) In Gen 22:10, according to Hazzan, the unstated
object of lishhot is Ishmael, Isaac'sribbuy; that is to say, the one whose inclusion along with Isaac
is signaled by the word et.
(171) Based on Gen.R. 56:7 (The0d0rAlbeck[ed.],p.603).
(172) And which would therefore be blemished if Ishmael (the Muslims) were n o longer in
existence.

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in order that all may acknowledge the supernal unification and the God
of [Sabbatai Zevi's] faith b e made ruler over all creation.
For now I know that thou art a God-fearing man ,seeing thou hast not withheld
thy son Ishmael, thine only son (for h e is Isaac's ribbuy)from me, for h e has
now been perfectly mended by Isaac, who is AMI RAH. Both of them are
to b e called your sons, and your name is to b e united173 with them . . .
[fol ioga].
O n e stands in awe at the extraordinary boldness of this exegetical move. Hayyim Kohen, as we have seen, had made heavy use of the ribbuy technique in
interpreting Genesis 22. Like Hazzan, h e had included lishhot et beno among
the chapter's ribbuyim. But Kohen had turned this"inclusion"into an indirect
exclusion of the encroacher Ishmael [Isaac] was [Abraham's] single, solitary,
unique son ; Ishmael was not called his son, inasmuch as h e was the offspring
of a Gentile slave woman!'Any Muslim claim o n the Aqedah was thereby repelled. Now, in what can b e read only as a stunning and unprecedented capitulation to Islam, Hazzan draws precisely the opposite inference from this
ribbuy :"You are father to both of them !. . . Both of them are to b e called your
sons, and your name is to b e united with them'.'
We may presume that "Abraham's" initial intent, to annihilate the Muslims
once they had completed their enjoyment of their worldly prosperity (kevar
hishlim le'ekhol colamo), corresponds roughly to Kohen's expectations of the finaljudgment. It corresponds fairly exactly to the more extreme revenge fantasies of Hazzan's own triumphalist eschatology.174Now this intent is repudiated. Ishmael son of Hagar, in whom the world of Islam is represented, has
become the hero and focus of Hazzan's Aqedah.
The"Isaac"of Genesis 22 thus undergoes a series of dazzling transformations. U p to this point, h e has been understood to stand for Ishmael Zevi. H e
very briefly (in the passage just quoted) represents Sabbatai Zevi, by whom
Ishmael / Islam is"perfectly mended"(nitqan tiqqun shalem) 1.75 Later on, h e will
come to stand for the Jewish people, an equation that seems natural and appropriate for a Jewish commentator. And, in several crucial passages of Hazzan's Aqedah commentary, he is transformed into his brother Ishmael.
(173) Yityahed, a play on the text's yehidekha.
(174) Fol 57r-v; above, n. 133. Hazzan subsequently comments that Sabbatai Zevi became
like the Gentile desert and its qelippot that he had wanted to destroy (fol 118v, apropos of
Ps 102:7); t h i s confirms that Hazzan assumed Sabbatai's original purpose was to destroy "Ishmael."(The comparison of the Gentiles to dry trees links Hazzan's exegesis of Psalm 102 [fol 118v
top] to that of the Aqedah [fols 14V, 108v].)
(175) The equation of Sabbatai with Abraham, however, remains in place throughoutHazzan's Aqedah commentary.

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We recall that, in Isaiah Horowitz's reading of the Aqedah, Isaac "ceased to

be"(nitbattel ) in the course of the sacrifice, and was in effect replaced by a new
and holier creature from o n high. We may set Hazzan's Aqedah parallel to
this. Ishmael Zevi similarly "ceases to be" so we may regard his unexplained
and permanent disappearance and is replaced by the prototypicalMuslim Ishmael.
It is clear, in any case, that the climax of Hazzan's Aqedah is the redemp
tion of Ishmael ; who is normally (though n o t always)176p u t o n terms of equality with Isaac. Abraham/Sabbatai, who had initially planned to annihilate
him, instead slaughters and burns u p a harsh and persecuting people (the
Ukrainian Cossacks, evidently) who are represented by the"ram!,17? By this
act, Ishmael is redeemed (padah bo etyishmac'el).
Because thou hast done (meaning, you have mended . . . )178this thing, and
hast not withheld (meaning, you have not allowed to walk in darkness)179
thy son, thine only son (the ribbuy of your son, the ribbuy of your only son, this
being Ishmael) as reward for this, with a blessing I will bless thee: two
blessings, one for the o n e [Isaac, the Jews], one for the other [Ishmael,
the Muslims]. And in multiplying I will multiply two times thy seed,
whichever seed of yours it may happen to be, both of them being equally
good. As the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is upon the seashore :
the holy seed will b e as the stars of the heaven ; and the second, which has
entered beneath the Shechinah's wings, will b e as the sand which is upon
(176) In the passage quoted above, Hazzan represents Ishmael as one of the seventy nations
to be ruled by the house of David.
(177) Hazzan does not name this"harsh nation? although he later refers to it symbolically as
"Amalek"(fol ogv). His allusions to the Bible ( Dan 8:5-8) and the midrash{Gen. R. 2:4 and parallels, especially Pesiqt. R. 33:11) suggest that he equates it with the Greeks. He cannot thereby
intend Christendom as a whole ; since both Edom and Ishmael (represented by Abraham's two
"young men") later find their redemption. Contemporary sources, however, use yevanim to designate Greek Orthodox Christians; that is to say, the Ukrainians who perpetrated the horrors
of 1648 (Jacob Katz,"Beyn tatnu le-tah-tat," in Halakhah and Kabbalah: Studies in the History of Jewish Religion, its Various Faces and Social Relevance [Jerusalem, 1984], pp. 311-30, esp. pp. 322-24).
This would suit Hazzan's description of the "harsh nation" as persecuting and indeed proscribingJudaism; as well as Nathan of Gaza's influential prophecy that, at Sabbatai's glorious advent,
"there will be no slaughter among the uncircumcised" except in "the lands of Ashkenaz,"by
which Poland and Russia are evidently meant (Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 273,287-88, quoting
Nathan's 1665 letter to Raphael Joseph; cf. Joseph Halevi's reference [February 1667; in Sasportas, Sisat nobel Sem, p. 248] to nevuat satan ashkenazi she-be-azzah she-amar she-huyinqom niqmat
harugei polonya).
(178) Hazzan supports his interpretation of casita by citing Gen 12:5, ha-nefesh asher casu,
which the midrash had explained as referring to the"souls"converted to Judaism by Abraham
and Sarah (e.g., Gen. Rab. 39:14).
(179) Playing on hasakhta 'withheld' and hoshekh 'darkness.'

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the seashore. . . . And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed :
this is what I said earlier, that all the rest of the nations, the cursed Amalek [Ukrainians] excepted, shall b e mended and shall enter in [to the
true faith] o n account of A M I R A H and his acts of mending. . . .It was
then that Abraham returned unto his young men, meaning that h e restored
his young men, who have earlier been discussed [and identified as the
patrons of Christendom and Islam] to their Father in heaven. And they
rose up and went together; all of them as one, to Beersheba... [fol ogv, expounding Gen 22:16-19].
T h e modern reader can hardly fail to b e moved by this glowing vision of
near-universal salvation and harmony, with Isaac and Ishmael full partners
in the divine blessing. For Hazzan himself, however, the vision seems to have
brought little but pain and grief. Never had h e wished for o r expected so marvellous a prospect for Islam that "twisted," "vain? mad, unclean religion,
whose adherents "mock and ridicule us . . . devour Israel" and its wealth.180
He expresses his bitterness in an intense prayer, an appeal to the divine mercy,
with which h e closes his commentary o n the Aqedah (fols ogv-iior).
T h e prayer in question is a glossed and expanded version of two texts combined : the nbbono shel colam prayer, recited in the daily liturgy immediately after the Aqedah!81 and Isa 63:15-16. It will b e recalled that the latter passage
was a part of the Lurianic tiqqun rahely and o n e which the more conservative
Sabbatian believers continued to recite even at the height of the Messianic
enthusiasm of 1666.182 In his more somber moments, it would appear, Israel
Hazzan might turn for inspiration to the sorrowful liturgy of the supposedly outmoded tiqqun rahel.
As the prayer unfolds, Hazzan reminds the deity that h e has justly punished the Jews by making them jealous with a non-people ... a vile nation (Deut
32:21 ),whom h e has brought near to himself and into whose religion h e has
compelled the Jews to enter. ( They deserve to b e destroyed for this apostasy,
Hazzan says divinely appointed though it is, tiqqun though it is.) This goy
naval 4vile nation' is the goy lavan'white nation so named for the white turban that is its marker.183 Now, h e implores, let the divine attribute of Mercy
(180) Above, sec. 6.
(181) Birnbaum, Daily Prayer Book, pp. 21-24. Hazzan's Aqedah commentary is thus introduced and concluded by the two prayers (zokhrenu be-zikkaron tov and ribbono shel colam) that
frame the liturgical recitation of the Genesis passage; see above, n. 121.
(182) Above, n n . 4 6 , 4 8 .

( 183) Interpreting this passage in accord withfol 50V (above, sec. 6). Lavan is of course naval
spelled backwards.
.

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launch a n attack upon that turban! 84 God surely cannot have lost his zeal for
his great name; which, with the Messiah's conversion, has become profaned
among the nations? 185 H e surely cannot have reined in his yearning love for
his people?
For God says Hazzan, quoting Isa 63:16 is the only merciful father
left to the Jews."Abraham does not know us: h e offered prayer after prayer o n
Ishmael's behalf, till [or, perhaps,"while"] our spirits had sunk to the dust 186
through the painful trials inflicted o n us by all Deuteronomy's curses.The Biblical text of course does not mention Isaac, h e being the sefirah of Gevurah
but even Abraham the merciful does not know us. And Israel, who knows the
pain of bringing u p children, does not recognize us." Only God remains.
"Israel," as often in Hazzan's commentary, n o doubt represents Sabbatai
Zevi.187 "Abraham" is perhaps also Sabbatai (as throughout the Aqedah); perhaps the sefirah Hesed (which is the focus of Hazzan's prayer) ; perhaps the Biblical patriarch himself. Most likely, h e is an amalgam of the three. As Hazzan
realizes to his sorrow as many Jewish observers about the year 1680 may
have realized to their sorrow this "Abraham" seems oblivious to the anguish of his faithful. His thoughts and prayers are for Ishmael alone.188
( 184) Ve-attah yagollu pe[rush] ha-senif ha-megulgal ke-galgal yitgolelcalav middat ha-rahamim vezehuyagollu rahamekha cal middotekha a brilliant and nearly untranslatable series of plays on the
root gli.(Hazzan's starting point, the words yagollu rahamekha cal middotekha, are quoted from the
rbbono shel colam prayer.) I understand yitgolel cal in accord with Gen 43:18; cf. Eliezer Ben Yehuda, A Complete Dictionary ofAndent and Modern Hebrew ( Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1948 ),vol. 2, p.783.
( 185) Following Isa 63:15, and indicating Sabbatai's conversion with abrief allusion to Isa 53:5.
(186) Following Ps 44:26.
(187) The remark that "he knows the pain of bringing up children" (yadac be-sacar giddul
banim), though taken almost verbatim from the Talmudic passage that plainly served as Hazzan's
inspiration (BT Shabbat 89b; see below), may be an oblique allusion to Ishmael Zevi. Cf. Gen.R.
55:1, which commends Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his son ahar hoi ha-sacar ha-zeh;
that is, the pain of begetting a child at age one hundred.(I quote the text of the standard edition, which is the text Hazzan is likely to have known, in preference to that of Theodor and Albeck.) But it is worth remembering that, according to Jacob Najara, Ishmael Zevi was given the
name"Israerat his circumcision (above,sec. 2).
(188) There is perhaps an anticipation of this point in Hayyim Kohen's Torat hakham (vol.1,
col. 39b), which seems to maintain that it is Abraham's prayers that bear the responsibility for
Islam's triumphs. Kohen starts from BT Pesahim 119b, which represents Abraham as refusing to
say the blessing at the eschatological feast, on the ground that "Ishmael came forth from me." He
explains this by misquoting BT Shabbat 89b, to the effect that the Jews do not want to turn to
Abraham "who prayed O that Ishmael might live before you! [Gen 17:18]. . . .You told God that I
should not say the blessing because I prayed for Ishmael... it was [thus] on account of me that
the nature of Ishmael [tivco shelyishmac:>el\ the Muslim religion, presumably] went forth into the
world: on account of that prayer of mine . . . it was written, I have blessed him and multiplied him
very greatly [bi-meod meod; 17:20]. So how can I say the blessing now [at the eschatological feast] ?"
(All this is original with Kohen; the passage he invokes from Shabbat 89b represents the Jews
as avoiding Abraham for entirely different reasons.) We may note in this connection that Sab-

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And what of Isaac? Isa 63:16 speaks only of "Abraham" and "Israel," leaving
Isaac out. If we are to appreciate Hazzan's treatment of this peculiarity, we
must read it against the midrash o n this verse in BT Shabbat 89b:
Rabbi Samuel bar Nahmani said in the name of RabbiJohanan : What is
the meaning of the text ,For you are our father. For Abraham does not know
us and Israel doeh not recognize us. You, Lord, are ourfather and redeemer; your
name has existed eternally.
God is going to say to Abraham,"Your children have sinned against
me." And [Abraham] answers him,"Master of the universe, let them b e
wiped out for the sake of your name's holiness."
[God] says,"Let m e speak to Jacob, who has had the pain of bringing
u p children. Perhaps h e will seek mercy for them'.'And h e says to Jacob,
"Your children have sinned."And [Jacob] answers him,"Master of the uni
verse, let them b e wiped out for the sake of your name's holiness."
[God] says,"Old m e n have n o sense ; little ones have n o wisdom'.' So h e
says to Isaac,"Your children have sinned against me."
"Master of the universe!" [Isaac] answers."Are they my children and
n o t yours? When they gave precedence to we will obey over we will hear
[Exod 24:7], you called them myfirstbornson [Exod4:22]. And now they
are my children and n o t yours ? How much sinning have they done, more
over? How long does a person live ? Seventy years. Subtract the first twenty
years, for which one is n o t punished, and fifty remain. Subtract twenty
five years for night-times, and twenty-five remain. Subtract twelve and a
half years for time spent praying and eating and sitting o n the toilet, and
twelve and a half remain. Will you yourself bear all [those years of sin] ?
Splendid! If not, then give m e half and you take half. And if you want
m e to bear all of them I sacrificed my very life to you."
[The Jews] burst out, You [Isaac] are our father! Isaac says to them,"Instead of praising me, praise God."And Isaac indicates God to them with
his eyes.189 Whereupon they lift their eyes to heaven and say, You, Lord}
are our father and redeemer;your name has existed eternally.
batai Zevi's followers attached particular significance to the blessing of Ishmael in Gen 17:20.
Jacob Najara represents Sabbatai as twice quoting it in the sultan's presence, in the context of in
ducingjews to convert to Islam ( Amarillo,"Tecudot shabbeta' iyyot mi-ginzei Rabbi Sha'ul Amarilio," pp. 255,259-60). Abraham Cuenque, writing about 1690, tells a fantastic story of how the
sultan puts his finger on that verse in Sabbatai's copy of the Bible, and begs Sabbatai to explain
it to him."That','says Sabbatai,"represents your power of survival. It is on the strength of that verse
that you [plural] have obtained dominion'' Sabbatai explains the verse at length, whereat the
sultan bursts into tears (Jacob Emden, Torat ha-qenaot [Amsterdam, 1752; reprinted Jerusalem,
1971], p. 20a). Muslim controversialists had in fact made substantial use of Gen 17:20, pointing
out that its words bi-me'od me'od have the gematria value of Muhammad; see above, n. 130.
(189) Translating beceneh in place of becenayho; cf. the reading of ms Munich 95.

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Hazzan was certainly familiar with the Talmudic midrash. His reference tojacob's "pain of bringing u p children'all but guarantees his awareness of it.190
His predecessors, Isaiah Horowitz and Hayyim Kohen,had drawn u p o n it for
their own homiletics (above, sec. 5). They had been prepared to accept the
Talmud's assurance that Isaac is not indifferent to his children's fate; that,
when the Jews are threatened by God'sjust anger, h e will shield them with an
audacious and witty defense that rests ultimately u p o n his own self-sacrifice
attheAqedah.
But Hazzan will have n o n e of this. T h e contrast between the sprightly optimism of the Talmudic aggadah,and the forlorn melancholy of his own midrash, could n o t b e sharper. For Hazzan, Isaac is absent from the Biblical text
because there is not even a shadow of hope that this representative of harsh
Gevurah might show mercy.
We recall that an earlier "Isaac"of Hazzan's imagination, Ishmael Zevi,was
said to have been called "Isaac" because"he was born in a time in which the
dinim had the upper hand over the hasadim" and therefore "came into the
world turban-wearing." Is it too much to imagine that Hazzan's reflection, o n
the disappearance of Isaac from the Isaiah verse, may b e his last look back
at his vanished child-Messiah the unredeemed and now forgotten victim
of the Sabbatian Aqedah?
9 . T H E E V I D E N C E OFY A K H I N I A N D C U E N Q U E

I am aware that my interpretation of the"fresh start "onfol 108a, as I have laid

it out in the past two sections, has involved considerable speculation. Some
readers may therefore hesitate to accept it. But I would remind those readers
that it is not speculation that Ishmael Zevi appears unexpectedly in Hazzan's
commentary, rapidly swells in importance until h e becomes a Messianic figure overshadowing Sabbatai Zevi himself, and then abruptly vanishes, never
to b e mentioned again. (Approximately one-fifth of the commentary remains
after the Aqedah is finished.) To account for this phenomenon, we have n o
choice but to posit that Ishmael disappointed Hazzan's expectations in some
manner so drastic and terrible that Hazzan could find n o way to speak of it,
and therefore chose silence.191An adult, perhaps, might have accomplished
(190) He may also,of course,have been aware of Gen.R.6j( ^Theodor-Albeck[ed.],pp.7 6 2 73); which,unlike the Talmud,represents Isaac's absence from ^sa 63:16 in a very unsympathetic
light. The fact that h e preferred a negative understanding of Isaac's absence, over the positive
interpretation with which h e was certainly familiar, continues to demand explanation.
(191) We may compare the Sabbatians' initial reaction to the news of Sabbatai's death:
Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 918-19.

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this by publicly and vehemently repudiating the role that had been thrust
upon him. But what could a ten- or eleven-year-old boy have done that would
have had such an effect, other than to die?
Once o n e grants that Hazzan must have learned of Ishmael's death in the
course of writing his commentary, one can hardly balk at the idea that even
slight irregularities in Hazzan's writing by which I mean his handwriting as
well as his discourse may b e clues to the momentous impact this discovery must have had o n his thinking.
This proposition, of course, can b e easily disconfirmed. If anyone should
discover a single unambiguousand reliable reference to Ishmael's being alive
after 1680, my entire reconstruction will collapse; and we will b e left racking our brains for some other solution to the puzzle presented by Hazzan's
commentary.
If Meir Benayahu is right that Ishmael Zevi and the Sarajevan rabbi Isaac
Zevi are one and the same, my view at once stands refuted; since Benayahu
has shown that Isaac Zevi lived at least until 1716. But Benayahu could find
n o direct evidence for his identification; and, alluring as it unquestionably
is, it suffers from a number of implausibili ties that make it nearly impossible
to accept. (See the Excursus.) T h e longevity of Isaac Zevi is therefore of n o
relevance to us.
There remain two pieces of post-1680 evidence: an allusion to Ishmael
Zevi in Abraham Yakhini's Vavd ha-amudim{ 1681 )]92which Scholem and Benayahu understood to mean that Ishmael was still alive; and the references to
Ishmael at the e n d of Abraham Cuenque's hagiography of Sabbatai Zevi.
These data now demand our attention.
Vavei ha-amudim survives in only one manuscript: the author's autograph,
MS Oxford Bodley Heb. c.2 (no. 2761 in Neubauer's catalog)?93 It has never
been published, little studied. I cannot claim to have read more than a fraction of this sprawling text, and therefore must b e somewhat tentative in my
interpretation of the passage that concerns us. I think it clear, however, that
the passage does not imply that Ishmael Zevi is still alive. It suggests, if anything, the opposite.
(192) Scholem argues for the date of the text as follows: On fol lir, col. 2, Yakhini gives the
current year as [5J44-1 (be-shatta da de-saleq hushban purqanah [ ;) ]and, on fol , col. 2, records a dream which he dates to 25 Nisan. Hence the terminus a quo. The terminus ad quern is the
beginning of 5442 (autumn 1681),when Yakhini died. See Scholem,"Perush mizmorei tehillim,"
p. 208, n.58 (Liebes, p. 106, misrepresents Scholem's citation of the manuscript); cf. Scholem,
"Two New Theological Texts by Abraham Cardozo" [Hebrew],Sefunot 3-4(1960)248.
(193) I am grateful to the Bodleian Library (and particularly to Ms. Doris Nicholson, Senior
Library Assistant) for providing me with an electrostatic copy of the manuscript.
i

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T h e central theme of Yakhini's book is the peculiarity that Exod 35:8-9,

which seems at first glance a verbatim repetition of 25:6-7, in fact contains
three occurrences of the letter vav that are absent from the earlier passage.194
This slight variation takes o n weighty significance when o n e recalls a rabbinic
midrash o n Exod 25 : 3 - 6 ( Yakhini attributes it to marei de-aggadta), according
to which the oilfor the lighto verse 6 is a prophetic reference to the Messiah!95
Yakhini infers that, following the sin of the golden calf, Moses chose to add
three vavs to this text foreshadowing the true Messiah; and h e proceeds to
explore every conceivable Biblical and Kabbalistic association that might
shed light o n the mystery of the triple vav.
Among his myriads of possible associations, Yakhini proposes a linking with
the three vavs of Gen 16:15: And Hagar bore a son to Abram, and Abram called
the name of his son, whom Hagar had borne to him, Ishmael.196
There is a precious mystery here. For it is written, And Abraham gave all
he had [et kol asher 10] to Isaac [Gen 25:5].The hidden referent ofIsaac is the
Messiah, inasmuch as laughter for all the world is [to b e found] there. H e
gave to him [that is, to Sabbatai Zevi] et kol (the numerical value of Ishmael ) asher 10 (536, [the numerical value of ]Zevi [obtained by the technique] of milluy)197 [That is, et kol asher 10=Ishmael Zevi. ] T h e Messiah was
thus given a son whose name was Ishmael ; and h e [Sabbatai] wished that
h e [Ishmael] b e mended through a supernal mystery, as we saw with our
own eyes the mystery of the Mending of the son of our master Sabbatai
Zevi through the light of Supernal Wisdom.
This is the mystery of those three vav s in the vers e,And oilfor the light
[Exod 35:8], mystery of the true Messiah. For anyone who has the eyes
of the lofty faith of our master, the mystery of the three avs of the verse,
And Hagar bore [Gen 16:15], will b e well illumined by the verse of the
Messiah [that is,Exod 35:8].
This is why the years of the life of Ishmael [Gen 25:17] are written in the
Torah. And in the aggadah h e is called his fruit mil he yield in its time}98
while Isaac is called his leaf[ Ps 1:3] ; for h e [Ishmael? or Isaac?] is the mys( 194) Ve-shemen in place of shemen, u-vesamim in place of besamim, ve-avnei shoham in place of avnei shoham{ fol 31, col. 2 ).La-ma'or and la-efod are spelled defectively in 25:6-7,p iene in 35:8-9,
but Yakhini apparently does not count these vav s as significant.
( 195) Tanhuma, Terumah #7 ; Tanh. Buber, Terumah #6.
( 196) The three vavs are the opening letters of va-teled and va-yiqra, and the final letter of beno.
(197) That is, counting the total numerical value of the names of the three Hebrew letters
(saddei, bet,yod) that make up the name Zevi. Yakhini's gematra is imperfect: asher 10 has the value
537, not 536.
(198) That is, Ishmael is Abraham's timely fruit; following Gen. R. 61:1.

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tery of light from the flame [s?] of Gevurah But this is not the place to
speak at length [fol 551, col. 1].
Scholem quotes most of the first paragraph of this passage (from the Biblical
verse on), and provides a reading of it very different from the one I have assumed in my translation? 00T h e last sentence of that paragraph reads, as I voc a l i z e i t : ha la-mashiah ityehiv bar shemehyishmcfe[ive-hu
be-raza cilia ah ki-de-hazinan

le-aynin raza de-tiqquna

savei [ ] de-yittaqqan

di-bereh de-maran sh[abbe-

tai] s [evi] bi-nehiru de-hokhmeta Hlla'ah.T h e key word here is . Scholem reads
it, naturally enough, asm, andglosses it to mean that "his full name is Ishmael
Zevi."H e would presumably have translated the passage into English : "The
Messiah was thus given a son whose name was Ishmael, and h e was Zevi."
Scholem's reading has the obvious advantage that it is natural to assume
that, in an explicidy Sabbatian text, the word is apt to b e Zevi. But it has
some formidable disadvantages. Bar shemeh yishmacel ve-ihu sevi seems a needlessly verbose and awkward way of making the point that Ishmael's name was
Zevi. Why n o t just say,"a son whose name was Ishmael Zevi"? And why would
Yakhini, writing when Ishmael either was alive o r had been dead for only a
year o r two, need to make this point at all? T h e de of de-yittaqan is, o n Scholem's reading of the text, very difficult to understand. Surely we would expect
ve-yittaqan o r ve-ihu yittaqan.

All of these problems disappear if we vocalize savei, and understand this

as the masculine singular participle of the verb meaning "to wish!'201T h e
"mending" o r perhaps we should understand,"perfection" of Ishmael
( 199) De-ihu raza de-or me-reshef [ ]gevurah. I am not certain whether the fourth word is to
be read as singular or plural.The use of the medial/ra does not exclude the reading me-reshefy since
Yakhini often (though not uniformly) uses medial/rc at the end of words. On the other hand, he
often writesfinal yod as an unobtrusive hook attached to the preceding letter, so me-nshpei is also
possible, although I confess that in this case the yod is so unobtrusive as to be undetectable. The
plural reading better suits the content of the passage, since the phrase is best understood as
alluding to Song 8:6 (reshafeha rishpei esh) and the Zoharic passages that expound it (1,244b245a; 11,114a; Tiqqunei Zohar 1 [Zhitomir, [ed.] p. 18a] ). Assume the familiar Kabbalistic identification of esh with the sefirah Gevurah, and the equation rishpei esh=reshef/rishpei gevurah yields itself naturally.
(200) "Perush mizmorei tehillim" p. 173(Liebes, p. 106); followed by Benayahu, Shabbatean
Movement in Greece, p. 167.
(201) As in the Zoharic phrase savei ie-memar (used several times in 1,213a-215b),and saveileishtaddela be-khulla (11,75b). On the use of the participle to convey a past-tense meaning, in savei
and in the following ki-de-hazinan, cf. Menahem Zevi Kaddari, The Grammar of the Aramaic of the
"Zoar" (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1957), pp. 85-86.(Note that, as in the example Kaddari quotes
from II, 109a, Yakhini begins his sentence with perfect ityehiv) On the use of ve-ihu to resume an
earlier subject,cf.fol 8r,col. 2:. . . de-olef mosheh le-gaUa'ah razin temirin. .. ve-khuUa dehila[!]deqfudsha] b[erikh] h[u] de-galle leh razin illen ve-ihu oleflon le-yisra'el. ...

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Zevi will then n o longer b e a future event anticipated by Yakhini(as Scholem

seems to have understood the passage ),but something that Sabbatai Zevi had
wishedfar during his lifetime. H e had perhaps performed some sort of tiqqun ritual, witnessed by Yakhini and others, in order to "mend" o r "perfect" his son
"through the light of Supernal Wisdom!' (By this,Yakhini presumably means
the light that shines into this world through the holy "oil" that, in accord with
his understanding of Exod 35:8,1s Sabbatai himself.)202
What shall we make of the allusions in Yakhini's last paragraph? Without a
clear understanding of Yakhini's Kabbalistic system, which I d o not at present possess, any interpretation is bound to b e uncertain. Yet it is striking that
Gen 25:17, with which the paragraph begins, speaks of the death of the Biblical Ishmael ; and that Song 8:6, to which to which Yakhini surely alludes when
h e speaks of "the flame[s?]of <^wra"(above,n.199),is saturated with death
imagery. This will permit the conjecture that, when Yakhini cites the midrashic exegesis of piryo yitten be-itto as referring to Ishmael, h e is reflecting
that the Messiah yielded up the fruit of his body to death, in its proper time?05
What prompted Yakhini to introduce this reference to the deceased Ishmael Zeyi? Recall that, according to our best evidence, Ishmael was b o r n in
Nisan 1668 (above, sec. 2) ; recall that the Biblical Ishmael was circumcised at
age thirteen (Gen 17:25) ; recall that this typological precedent was important
enough to Nathan of Gaza that h e prophesied Sabbatai's son Ishmael would
undergo a symbolic blood-drawing at that age. We may guess that some at least
of the Sabbatian faithful had great expectations bound u p with the everfascinating subject of Ishmael's penis of what would happen when the son
of their Messiah turned thirteen. That momentous birthday will have fallen in
Nisan 1681,perhaps n o more than a month o r so before Yakhini wrote the passage we have been considering. 204 Only, the hero of the occasion was dead.
T h e calendar's reminder, of how the believers' hopes had once again met
with ironic frustration, may well have evoked sad reflections in Yakhini. His
thoughts may well have turned to the o n e whom Sabbatai Zevi had wished to
b e perfected through the sefirotic light that streamed through him ; b u t who,
like the fruit of Ps 1:3, had to b e yielded u p in his season.

(202) Cf. fol $r, col. 1 : Ve-shemen la-maor da mashiah ben david shemen nehiru de-hokhmah Hlla'
It seems reasonably clear from the context of fol 3r that Yakhini uses hokhmahcilia ah in the tech
nical Kabbalistic sense of the sefirah Hokhmah.l am unable to say whether he makes any distinc
tion between hokhmah cilia ah and hokhmeta Hila'ah. Scholem's gloss on the passage referring to
Ishmael, (she-hayah mehunnan) be-or ha-hokhmah ha-celyonah, seems unwarranted.
(203) Cf. the use of be-itto in Job 5:26.
(204) Above, n. 192.1 see no reason why Yakhini could not have written the forty-five folio pages
that separate the date "2 5 Nisan" from the Ishmael passage in two or three weeks. The writing
has a hasty, ill-planned, stream-ofconsciousness quality that suggests it was done very rapidly.

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This leaves the testimony of Abraham Cuenque. T h e crucial passage occurs

at the very e n d of his account of the life of Sabbatai Zevi.205After a string of
fanciful stories about Sabbatai's death, and about the wonders and the wondrous death of Nathan of Gaza, Cuenque reverts to Sarah (sic) and Ishmael :
Sarah,Sabbatai Zevi's wife,dwelt in the king's palace,bringing u p her son
Ishmael. T h e lad grew, and took his father's place, associating with all
the dignitaries of the kingdom, a young man like a cedar-tree.2061 have
heard from reliable sources that Ishmael is expert, beyond belief, in all
wisdom and knowledge. If the scholars are in doubt about any matter,
they seek out his opinion a n d h e responds to everyone who asks [yidreshu
etpiv u-meshiv le-khol sho'el].

I saw with my very own eyes, while I was in the city of Ostrog and visiting the gaon Rabbi Naphtali, nr-v (who currently holds the rabbinic
position in Posen)f 07 that there was a n important scholar there named
Rabbi Ephraim who h ad been born in Ostrog b u t had gone to study Torah in the Jewish metropolis of Salonika; a n d h e showed m e a query of
Ishmael Zevi's and his lofty reply, matters exceedingly deep. This I saw
with my own eyes; and there are many similar things.
There seems n o doubt that Cuenque, writing about 1690,represents Ishmael
Zevi as still alive, hobnobbing with Ottoman dignitaries in the sultan's palace,
and answering scholars' inquiries o n the basis of his incredible erudition.
(The verbs yidreshu and meshiv might conceivably describe habitual action
in the past, but they are far more naturally rendered in the present tense.)
Apropos of Ishmael's erudition, Cuenque describes an encounter with one
"Rabbi Ephraim"; who produced a document,evidently emanating from Salonika, which purported to b e a"query "of Ishmael's a n d his own reply to it
(sheelah mi-yishmac:>el sevi u-teshuvato

ha-ramah). B e n a y a h u h a s d a t e d t h i s e n -

counter to 1688 o r 1689,and has identified the man Cuenque met as Ephraim
Kohen of Ostrog, whose biography Benayahu describes in some detail.208
What are we to make of this? It will n o t d o to suppose,as Scholem does, that
Ishmael had died years before but that Cuenque was unaware of this because
(205) Preserved in Emden, Torat ha-qenaot, pp. 16a-21b. The passage quoted is on p. 21b.
(206) Using the language of Song 5:15.
(207) That is,Naphtali b. Isaac Katz( 1645-1719),who served as rabbi in Ostrog from 1680 to
1689,in Posen from 1690 to i704(Yeh0shua Horowitz, in EncyclopediaJudaica [Jerusalem, 1972],
vol. 10, col. 826).
(208) Shabbatean Movement in Greece, pp.117-36.On the context of the encounter Cuenque's
ten years of travel through Europe, raising money for his community in Hebron see Benayahu,"Iggerot Rabbi Avraham Cuenque leRabbi Yehudah Briel Sinai 32(1953)300-19.

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DAVID J. H A L P E R I

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h e had never visited the Balkan regions?09 Surely it cannot have taken ten
years for momentous news like Ishmael's death to circulate through the Sabbatian grapevines.
Now, the reader will have already noted one glaring inaccuracy in Cuenque's account. Sarah, who in reality died years before Sabbatai,210is represen ted as having oudived him. This is only o n e of a string of distortions. Writing only a few years earlier, Baruch of Arezzo had been perfectly well aware
that Sabbatai's journey to Albania at the beginning of 1673 was a n exile imposed by the sultan; although, naturally, h e tried to p u t the best face o n it
h e could.211 Not so Cuenque. It was Sabbatai, h e assures us, who demanded to
strike out o n his own,far away from the great cities of Islam; and h e sternly
held to this purpose, despite the grovelling pleas of his royal devotee.212 H e
insists, moreover, that Sabbatai left Sarah and Ishmael behind in the sultan's
palace, where they rmained after his death.
Yet h e must have known better. Meir Rofe had learned in 1677 (from Gandoor) that Elijah Zevi had brought Sabbatai's widow and his children from Albania to Adrianople after Sabbatai's death? 13 Rofe and Cuenque were colleagues in Hebron at the beginning of 1682?14 Surely it would have been easy

(209) "Barukhyah rosh hashabbeta'im be-Saloniqi," in Liebes, Researches in Sabbateanism,

p. 364 . 144.
(210) Whether one accepts Scholem's or Amarillo's reconstruction of the chronology of Sabbatai's marriages ( above, . 24).
(211) Freimannflnyanei Shabbetai Sevi, p. 66. Baruch is also aware that Sarah died and that Sabbatai remarried; although he seems to date her death to the last months before Sabbatai's exile,
and to connect it with Sabbatai's suit of Aaron Majar's daughter and with the death of the latter
woman.(He reports the event immediately after quoting a letter dated 18 Av 5432 = 11 August
1672.) Since I follow Scholem's identification of Hazzan's matronita with Sarah (above, n. 138), I
am obliged to see this as an error on Baruch's part, and I believe the error arose as follows:
Baruch knew, 1. that Sabbatai had originally sought to marry Majar's daughter while he was in
Adrianople; 2. that he was not married to Sarah at the time; and 3. that Sarah had died not
only before Sabbatai, but also before any subsequent marriage of his and before the death of
Majar's daughter. What Baruch did not know was that Sabbatai and Sarah had briefly been divorced in 1671, and that this was when Sabbatai had made hisfirstadvances to Majar (following
Jacob Najara). He therefore conflated Sabbatai's original suit of Majar's daughter (1671) with
his resumption of it (1674), and drew the conclusion that Sarah and Majar's daughter had both
died while Sabbatai was still in Adrianople. This very natural and reasonable error is of an entirely different order of magnitude from the gross distortions perpetrated by Cuenque.
(212) "He said to the king, I want to leave this place. The king was very upset, and said to him,
Won't you tell me what you are lacking in my palace? Whatever you wish mil be done for you. Sabbata
Zevi replied :Ido not lack anything, but I must tell you in aU truth that I can no longer endure this irksome inactivity. Let me be on my own!"etc. {Torat ha-Qena'ot, p. 20b).
(213) Above, n.28.
(214) When they appear together as signatories on a document authorizing one Jacob haLevi to act as emissary collecting funds for the support of the Hebron community: Tishby,

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enough for Cuenque to have obtained from Rofe if from n o one else
some account of Sabbatai's last years that was closer to the truth than the absurd tales of his hagiography. In retailing these stories, h e cannot have been
acting in good faith?15
We may assume, therefore, that h e was writing deliberately to mislead when
h e wrote of Ishmael Zevi. H e never says unambiguously that Ishmael is alive ;
h e does not add after his name any formula like nr-v (as h e does for Naphtali Katz, his host in Ostrog) or yr-h; h e expresses n o hope or prophecy that
Ishmael will step into his father ,s place as savior. H e is trying to have it both
ways. T h e less well-informed among his readers, who have not heard of Ishmael's death, will naturally assume that the Messianic line is still thriving in
the Turkish court, and will take heart from that. Yet Cuenque's language is
vague enough that those who know Ishmael is dead will n o t b e able to convict him of a lie.
What of the document h e allegedly saw in Ostrog? Even if we assume h e is
telling the truth, it is striking that h e says nothing about the contents of this
"query of Ishmael Zevi's and his lofty reply, matters exceedingly deep!'He evidently cannot remember what the query and reply were about, or else does
not think it is worth communicating. Whatever it was perhaps some schoolboy exercise, dating from Ishmael's brief stay in Salonika as a pupil ofJoseph
Filosofi, which Ephraim Kohen had kept as a memento? it does not seem
to have made any great impression o n Cuenque at the time h e saw it. In retrospect,of course, h e is eager to play u p its importance. We are not obliged to
follow him. Nor are we obliged to take this supposed document as proof that
Ishmael had become a great talmid hakhamim, o r that h e lived much past his
eleventh birthday.
We have thus weighed the two bits of evidence that have been adduced to
show that Ishmael Zevi lived into the 1680s, and have found both of them
wanting.The first has been misinterpreted by modern scholars; the second is
a deliberate falsehood.
T h e Sabbatians had remained silent about Sabbatai's death for as long as
they possibly could? 16 When Ishmael died, their silence remained unbroken.
We find his death explicitly mentioned more than seventy years after the
event, in one of a long series of hostile glosses that Jacob Emden attached to
Cuenque's hagiography when h e published it in his Torat ha-qena'ot (175 2 ).217
"R. Meir Rofe's Letters of 1675-80 to R.Abraham Rovigo" [Hebrew], Sefunot 3-4(1960) 127-28.
(215) Even if we suppose that Cuenque innocently misidentified Sabbatai's widow as Sarah,
he cannot possibly have stated without duplicity that she had never left the sultan's court.
(216) Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 918-19.
(217) Scholem (ibid., p. 935) attributes these glosses to Moses Hagiz. But I believe this rests on a
misreading of Emden's statement,in his preface to Cuenque's narrative, that Hagiz had"noted a

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Emden cannot let stand Cuenque's glowing portrait of young Ishmael Zevi.
N o t s o ,h e t e l l s u s ; r a t h e r , S a b b a t a i ' s offspring turned out just like himself; theimpure birth died an Ishmaelite; and Sabbatai Zevi and his worthless lineage were cut off

without any survivor (p. 21 b ). Emden extends this observation with a malicious
jingle, patched together from several Biblical verses (e.g.,J o b 18:19),its point
the utter and exemplary extermination of all Sabbatai Zevi's offspring.
This is, as far as I know, the earliest specific reference to Ishmael Zevi's
death. T h e child-savior's enthusiasts having left him wordlessly to slide into
oblivion, it remained for his enemies to write his epitaph.
10. A F T E R T H E AQEDAH

And what will become of Israel Hazzan, now that Ishmael Zevi is gone?Immediately after the e n d of the prayer that concludes Hazzan's Aqedah (above,
sec. 8),the handwriting marks a"fresh start"(fol 110r).The Aqedah,which Hazzan had evidently planned to b e the climactic ending of his commentary o n
the Sabbatian tiqqun hasot, is past; Hazzan has been cheated of whatever salvation h e had anticipated. After a hiatus of unknown length, h e returns to his
composition, taking u p a fresh series of Biblical passages that did not form
p a r t o f t h e tiqqun hasot.

Were it not for the fact that this portion of the commentary contains a
cross-reference to an interpretation of 1 Sam 2:1-10 (fol 114V) which shows
that Hazzan felt obliged to say something about this text, but excused himself o n the ground that it had already been expounded elsewhere I would
have assumed that these additional passages were of his own choosing. As it
is, I can only suppose that they are drawn from some other liturgical sequence
which I cannot now identify (above, n . 53). T h e series certainly begins appropriately enough with J o b 28:3, the context of which Hazzan takes as referring to Israel's times of exile : He has put an end to darkness.
Hazzan's Messianic hope revives,though Ishmael Zevi is of course n o longer
any part of it. Islam gradually slides from the amazing grace that, in the depth
of his despair, Hazzan had attributed to it. Not long after beginning this section of the commentary, h e sets forth a remarkable theory, based o n what
seems to b e a misinterpretation of Nathan of Gaza, to the effect that the Muslims' purpose in washing their hands nd feet before prayer is to use the water to knead the dust of their feet into a golem. They use this golem" to make a
few items" in the margins of the text,"and we have presented his statements, in his name, each
in its proper place" (Torat ha-Qenaot, p. 16a).Sure enough, a few of the glosses are introduced by
Hagiz's initials (e.g., p. 18a, where Emden quotes a suggestion of Hagiz's and then offers a long
response to it, introduced by the words amar ha-rrieqanne) .Where these initials are absent, as is
normally the case, we must assume that the gloss is Emden's own.

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connection" with supernal entities, evidently.218 This, Hazzan quotes Nathan as saying, was Abraham's purpose in wanting to wash the dust from the
feet of his Arab visitors :"so that they could recline under the tree [Gen 18:4],
the Tree of Life, our holy Torah"( fols. 110v111v).219In this passage, the Mus-

(218) Fol 11ir: ke-he-hem rohasim yedehem ve-raglehem le-sorekh ha-namaz shellahem histakkel v
tir'eh she-adayinyedehem sheruyim be-mayim ve-hem mcfavirim otam calgabbei mincalehem kedei U-gabb
ka-avaq she-al raglehem she-ha-nir'eh be-vadday ha-gamur she-kavvanatam ligbol et ha-avaq ha-hu
kedei lacasoto golem le-hitqassher bo. (On the use of namaz for Muslim prayer, see Amarillo,"Tecudot
shabbeta'iyyot,"p. 255.) He goes on to quote Nathan as follows: gam pere hu efer ha-metammeah et
ha-tehorim kavvanatah hi lihyot golem resonah le-hitqassher cim neshamot aherot she-yesh bahem mi-qa
hayosher aharshe-modiaclahem koah celyon[koah ketercelyon, i.e. Sabbatai Zevi?]elohuto shelha-melekh
shelomoh u-gedullat cillat ha-ilht lihyot hitcorerut le-taqqen ha-shevarm u-le-hacalotam mi-shamkikol cod
she-hem sham has ve-shalom en tequmah le-yisra'el ligga'el. Nathan seems to use golem as he usually
does, for the chaotic and formless materials that dominate the lower half of the tehiru (the space
left by the contraction of the En Sof), where the light ray (qav ha-yosher) emitted by the 72 Sof has
not penetrated.(See Scholem,Saaa Sevi, pp.299-312 ; Chaim Wirszubski,"Hate'ologiyah hashabbeta'it shel Natan ha-cAzati,"Keneset 8[1944] 2 27-30.) It is this golem itself,which Nathan appears here to equate with Islam, that seeks connection with souls (in the upper part of the tehiru?)
that have been illuminated by the qav ha-yosher. Hazzan, by contrast,seems to use golem in its more
familiar sense of an artificial anthropoid. The verb gaval or gibbel (which, admittedly, occurs in
another of Hazzan's quotations from Nathan)is significant in this connection : for it derives from
a midrash that describes the creation of Adam as a golem (Lev.R. 29:1) and recurs in medieval
texts that speak of the making of an artificial man (Moshe Idei, Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions On the Artificial Anthropoid [Albany, 1990], pp. 34-38). The Muslims construct this
golem for the purpose of making a connection (le-hitqasher); unlike Nathan, Hazzan does not
make clear with whom or what the connection is to be made. (It may be necessary to modify,
on the basis of this passage, Idel's tentative judgment that "the anthropomorphic aspect of the
Golem and the relation between the combination of letters and the emergence of the Supernal
anthropos is not central in this [Sabbatian] version of Kabbalistic theosophy"; ibid.f p. 154. The
passage may also suggest a direction in which one might develop Yehuda Liebes's intriguing
remarks on Islam as golem, in Sabbatian thought :"Golem begematria hokhmah" Kiryat Sefer

(219) U-mi-zeh tedacsodniflamahhayetahkawanatha-araviyyimshe-hayumishtahavimle-avaqraglehem ve-avraham avinu hay ah mekhawen lirhos otam ha-raglayim le-hasir oto ha-avaq kedei she-yukhelu
le-hisshacen tahat ha-es ces ha-hayyim toratenu ha-qedoshah.The belief that underlies all this, that the
Arabs prostrate themselves to the dust of their feet, is taken from BT Bava Mesia 86b. Isaiah
Horowitz, interpreting this seemingly "mad" practice (shigga con the word regularly used in
connection with Islam), makes a suggestion that eerily foreshadows Nathan's theology of the
apostasy. Water, like Abraham himself, represents the sefirah Hesed ; the mecat mayim of Gen 18:4
is that aspect of the sefirah that seeks to destroy the qelippot. Hesed is properly mayim rabbim (Song
8:7); yet at times mecat mayim needs to be taken from it,"in order to clothe itself in the qelippah
and [thus] to subdue [it]" (avalpecamim be-hekhreah yuqqah na mecat mayim le-hitlabbesh ba-qelippah
u-le-hakhniac. . . casmut ha-middah hi sod mayim rabbim umecat mayim hu sod hitlabbeshut ba-qelippah
le-hakhnicah).See Horowitz,Sefer shenei luhot ha-bert, vol.4,pp.75,77. From here to Nathan's exegesis of Gen 18:4, and his explanation of the need for the apostasy, seems only a step
particularly if we recall the Sabbatian use of torat hesed or Islam.

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lims are still t h e objects of benevolent concern. So they are again o n fol 114r,
where we are told that Sabbatai Zevi "entered their religion in order t o restore t h e m a n d m e n d t h e m a n d bring t h e m into holiness u n d e r t h e Shechinaos wings!'220
But,by fol 126v,Hazzan's tone has changed. Islam is back to its pre-Aqedah
status as organized lunacy, rooted in"that madman" Muhammad, whose ad
herents"bring into themselves a n evil spiritwhen they go mad."Fol 12gr:"Because I did your will, a n d entered into this testing . . . let n o t t h e fools think
that you are favorably disposed toward [Islam]. For thou art not a God who desires wickedness, the bad shall not dwell with thee; a n d this e n t i r e n a t i o n o f l u n a -

tics [and] boasters shall not stand before thine eyes [Ps 5 : 5 - 6 ] . " I n a passage near
the very e n d of t h e commentary which is b o u n d to seem, in the context
of o u r discussion, sadly ironic Hazzan represents Sabbatai as praying with
the words of Ps 8 6 : 1 6 : "Rescue the son of thy maid-servant ; f o r I a m now called,
God forbid, as though [I were] son of t h e maid-servantp1 Ishmael" (fol 1 3 3 V ) .
Did h e manage to find a substitute Messiah? His final reference to Nathan of Gaza,o n fol 12 8v, suggests that h e did. Citing a bit of exegesis by Nathan, h e attaches t o his n a m e t h e Messianic formulayr-h?may his majesty b e
(220) Hazzan's remarks on the preceding page(fol 113V) are extremely strange, and suggest
that he is hinting at something he does not want to talk about. If the kingdom of Ishmael is a clay
vessel, as Hazzan has already said on the authority of Nathan of Gaza (fol liir), then Sabbatai's
entering into it is comparable to the ritual of the sotah, which involves putting holy water into an
earthenware vessel (Num 5:17).This,says Hazzan,is"the cruelest testing that the Light and Holy
One of Israel entered into.. . .The Supernal King decreed this testing of the sotah, of the bit
ter waters; to bring the mystery of King Messiah, who is the husband of Torah . . . into the
daughter of Ishmael [!] who [masc.] is an earthenware vessel." Hazzan then cites "Zohar, Naso,
page 12 5," as applying Num 5:17 to "the mystery of the qelippotand concludes, mysteriously:
"This is the King's decree, and one cannot criticize his ways, and let this be enoughrin at least
two other passages (fols 31r and ogr-v, cf. 48V) Hazzan alludes darkly to the Zohar's interpretation (III, 124b-125a) of the sotah ritual. The context of the Zoharic passage, and Hazzan's referenee to the Messiah as "the husband of Torah," suggest that the reading bevat yishmac,el (for the
more usual bedat yishmac,el) is correct, and that Hazzan is hinting at a particularly scandalous
aspect of Sabbatai's apostasy: his having made love with one or more Muslim women. (Cf. above,
n.17.1 must acknowledge that Hazzan sometimes writes dalet so that it looks very much like bet,
e.g., datant on fol 126r, line 3.) Joseph haLevi presumably also refers to this when he dates the
letter in which he reports Sabbatai's apostasy to"the year 5427, week of the Torah portion Esau
went to Ishmael, and took Mahalath to xmfe [Gerr 28:9]"; that is, November 21-27 1666 (Sasportas,
Sisat navel Sevi, p. 174).Gen 28:9 describes Mahalath as bat yishmac'el the phrase occurs elsewhere only in Gen 36:3 and it seems possible that Hazzan, like haLevi, alludes to this passage. Cf. the remarks of Rivkah Shatz-Uffenheimer,"Portrait of a Sabbatian Sect" [Hebrew],Seflinot 3 - 4 ( 1 9 6 0 ) 4 1 0 .

(221) From Gen 16:10 {ben ha-amah) ; but, in place of ben, Hazzan writes afinalnun followed by
a slash, which is presumably to be read ibn. He surely thinks it a mark of additional degradation
that Sabbatai is not merely called "son of the maid-servant," but is called thus in Arabic.

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exalted." (We have already seen that Hazzan used this formula for Ishmael,
the very first time h e mentioned him.) Scholem assures us that this is "doubtless a slip of the p e n for nr-v"222 But I think we need to take it with full seriousness. Hazzan needed a present Messiah, here o n earth. If it could n o t b e
Sabbatai Zevi, if it could not b e the now-discarded Ishmael then perhaps
Nathan might suit? But Nathan also was mortal. H e died in January 1680; as
Hazzan perhaps learned shordy after h e had promoted him to Messiahship,
for h e never mentions him again.
This conjecture, that Hazzan's hopes had begun to explode nearly as soon
as h e constructed them,will explain the extraordinary melancholy of his final
section.This is his exposition of Psalm go,which seems to have been written
when h e was literally as well as figuratively running out of ink.
H e b e g i n s boldly e n o u g h : "A prayer of Moses the man of God. Lord, thou art a

. . . ,, (Ps 9 0 : 1 ) . But then h e stops; and resumes again, in the last "fresh
start" of the manuscript (fol 1341). H e begins, as usual, writing more neatly
than h e did before the hiatus. But the ink is fainter than before, and progressively grows so faint that by the e n d of the manuscript it is all but impossible to read.
This last section of the commentary is the only o n e that is n o t dominated
by the figure of Sabbatai Zevi. H e is, in fact, mentioned explicitly only at the
beginning, where Hazzan manages to find a numerical equivalence of tashev
(verse 3) with "Sabbatai."223 H e explains that the Messiah Sabbatai is to be"returned"at"the crushing of the soulf 24 at the e n d of all souls . . . when all humans return to their dust and the earth returns to b e renewed."
T h e earth then shall b e made new and comforting. In it,we shall ourselves
b e renewed. Each day there will b e a thousand years; all will b e day; night will
turn into dawn. Sinless saints will enjoy this; also those whose souls have been
perfecdy mended and built anew. Their death will b e a sleep,from which they
will awaken with renewed strength (fol 134V). At the e n d of each millenium
will come their "evening," from which they will b e renewed again and again
like the phoenix. But they will n o t die, for God has swallowed u p death for
ever (fol 135r).
(It is here that we have what may b e one last reference to Sabbatai Zevi.
"These are the ones who believed in the Primordial Unique O n e [yahid haqadmon], whose faith in him was like a powerful love, who gave u p their lives
refuge

(222) "Perush mizmorei tehillim,"p.i74; Liebes,p. 108.

(223) The three letters of tashev,when spelled out,have nine letters among them. Add this to
the numerical value of tashev itself, then add 1 for the word itself, and you get the value of "Sabbatai(g+702 +1 = 712).
(224) Following the midrash of dakkain PT Hagigah 2:1,Ruth R.6.4, Eccl.R. 7:16.

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DAVID J. HALPE RI

for him!' God will reward them accordingly, turning the torments they suf
fpred into pleasures in the next world. It is possible that, by the "Primordial
Unique One','Hazzan intends Sabbatai. Yet n o one died in torment for Sabbatai; and it is at least as likely that Hazzan is speaking of God, and perhaps
has in mind the martyrs of 1648.)
Hazzan continues to develop these ideas over the next page and a half, as
his writing declines into illegible faintness. His essential theme is that our present life is brief and toilsome, our present world an abode of sadness and pain.
"All our hope must b e for those future days, when the Lord will make wings
for us,, and we will fly (fol 13 5V).In this world, we who are God's beloved friends
are the targets of his rage. In the next, we will have our reward: when we see
God ( ?) face to face, when the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord,
when the Lord is king over all the earth.
Writing with a melancholy lyricism that is profoundly affecting, Hazzan
uses his last psalm commentary to develop a wistful fantasy of a future world
in which all dreams come true and all pains are healed.The vindictiveness that
has marked Hazzan's Messianic expectations, throughout his commentary,
fades entirely away into the rosy glow of this final dream. The Messiah himself
fades away. After the first ten lines, with the exception of o n e doubtful passage (above), h e is n o t mentioned at all. And the hope of a Messianic kingdom o n this earth, which has animated the commentary until now, has been
allowed to vanish.
Was this the swan song of Hazzan's Sabbatian faith? Perhaps. It certainly was
not the swan song of Hazzan himself.225 Benayahu and Tamar have shown that
h e lived for at least forty years more (at least until 17 20) ; and that, at least from
1692 onward, h e played a respectable and indeed prominent role in the life
of the Jewish community of Kastoria (above, sec. 3).
We need n o t infer from this last datum that Hazzan had given u p hisallegiance to Sabbatai Zevi. A person's holding Sabbatian beliefs, at the e n d of
the seventeenth century,did n o t in the least exclude that person's having considerable respect and influence among supposedly "normative"Jews; the examples of Samuel Primo and Judah Hasid sufficiently demonstrate this. Yet
there is some tension between the commentary's recurrent complaints of ridicule and harassment at the hands of the "opponents,"and the respectability
its author seems to have enjoyed a dozen o r so years later. Something seems
to have changed for Hazzan between 1680 and 1692. Perhaps h e abandoned
(225)1 continue to assume, as I have throughout this article, that Scholem was right in identifying Israel Hazzan as the commentary's author. If we should ever discover that he was wrong,
this paragraph and the next will turn out to be baseless. Everything else I have written about
the author will be unaffected, other than that we must stop calling him "Hazzan."

T H E SON OF T H E MESSIAH

213

his Sabbatian commitments; perhaps h e modified them; perhaps h e only

learned to b e discreet about them.
In some such way Hazzan may have risen, like the phoenix of his eschatological fantasy, from the disillusionment and despair evident in his commentary's closing pages.
11. C O N C L U D I N G R E F L E C T I O N S

T h e beloved son is marked for both exaltation and for humiliation.

In his life the two are seldom far apart.
^ Levenson226
T h e story of Ishmael Zevi,as I have reconstructed it in the preceding sections,
is overwhelmingly tragic. Its tragedy does n o t lie in his having died, or even
in his having died young. We all must die ; and,in the world of the seventeenth
century, the death of a young child was an event hardly to b e remarked. But
we hope that while we live others will at least in some measure recognize our
presence ; we hope that they will at least for a little while preserve our memory after we die. Ishmael Zevi was deprived of both.
H e was, to b e sure, a celebrity. From his birth, and perhaps even before his
conception^ 27 h e had been anointed savior of his elders. H e would redeem the
humiliation and betrayal of his father's apostasy. H e would integrate and resolve the contradictory identities Jewish and Muslim, of his father and his father's believers.H e would heal the dreadful incongruity that Jews everywhere
could see all around them : that God had given his promise to Isaac, yet had
given to Ishmael (and to Esau) the fulfillment of every promise worth having.
All these wondrous and impossible acts of resolution and integration would
b e done by and through the small person of Ishmael Mordecai Zevi.Who that
person might happen t o b e in reality was a matter of n o importance.
If we are to grasp the full impossibility of the task laid u p o n this child, we
must recognize a curious and paradoxical fact. T h e Muslim identity of Sabbatai Zevi, and of those Jews who followed him into apostasy, was (as far as we can
tell) almost entirely devoid of Islamic content. T h e contrast between Christianity and Islam is in this respect very striking. Christianity actually left a substantial imprint o n Sabbatian doctrine, in such tenets as the necessity of faith
in a suffering and rejected Messiah. Islam, considered as a religious system,
had n o comparable impact o n Sabbatian thought;228 indeed, seems to have
(226) The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, p. 59.
(227) Nathan's letter of early 1667; above, n. 16.
(228) We may point to a few possible traces of Shi'ite influence on Sabbatianism.The Sabbatians'insistence o n speaking of his death as a"disappearance" is reminiscent of the "occultation'of the Shi'ite imam, and the religious duplicity practiced by Sabbatian converts to Islam

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DAVID J. H A L P E R I N

[2]

held for the Sabbatians only the smallest and most incidental interest. Yet it
was Islam that was the significant"Other"to Judaism, as far as the Sabbatians
were concerned.
Israel Hazzan, as we have seen, writes movingly of the Messianic task of
bringing the "path of Truth" and the "path of Grace" into consonance. But
what does h e actually know of the Muslim path? H e knows that they have a
"Qur'an','which Sabbatai Zevi is capable of chanting (fol 107r).He knows that
they wash their hands and feet before prayer, and proposes a highly eccentrie explanation for this practice (fol liov-iiiv; see the preceding section).
H e knows that they spread their hands when they pray (fol 126r). H e knows
"the well-known fast" (obviously Ramadan ),and the Sufi practices of wearing
wool and repeating God's name a fixed number of times during prayer (fol
74v75r).He knows, above all, the ever-fascinating symbolic turban. That is
all h e seems to know; all, apparently, that h e cares to know.
This indifference cannot mean that the Islamic path was unimportant to
Hazzan and to like-minded individuals.lt was plainly very important indeed.
But its significance lay, n o t in what it actually was, b u t in the fact of its being
the path that was not theirs. It was most especially significant in that it was a
path that dominated much of the world, whereas their own Jewish way was
everywhere subservient.
It will follow that Ishmael Zevi was n o t expected to champion some rapprochement between Judaism and Islam the faith, that is, that Muslims actually believed and practiced n o r yet to invent a new religious system that
might incorporate both. Such a n expectation h e might conceivably have satisfied.His task was to make it possible for a Jew such as Hazzan simultaneously to b e himself and the "Other"; himself and someone who was n o t himself.229Obviously,n o human being could accomplish such a task. Ishmael Zevi
must therefore cease to exist as a human being (not to mention, as a ten-yearold boy !)and become a mythic figure, acting out a n archetypal drama that
Hazzan found scripted in the Bible.
In this sense, Ishmael Zevi does indeed perish in the Sabbatian Aqedah.By
this, I d o n o t mean that the fantasies that Hazzan (and others, presumably)
suggests the radical Shi'ite doctrine of takiye (Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi,p.314; "The Crypto-Jewish
Sect of the Dnmeh [Sabbatians] in Turkey," in The Messianic Idea in Judaism And Other Essays on
Jewish Spirituality [New York, 1971], pp. 150-51,154). Both of these features may, as Scholem is inclined to believe, represent independent developments within Sabbatianism.
(229) I have elsewhere made the case that the essential appeal of Sabbatai Zevi's Messianic
claims lay in his ability to offer an emotionally satisfying mythic resolution to the insoluble historical dilemma that confronted seventeenthcenturyJews,of how they might be themselves and
at the same time something other than themselves :"Sabbatai Zevi, Metatron, and Mehmed: Myth
and History in Seventeenth-Century Judaism? in S.Daniel Breslauer (ed.), The Seductiveness of
Jewish Myth: Challenge or Response 3 (Albany, 1997) pp. 271-308.

[73]

T H E SON OF T H E MESSIAH

2!5

projected u p o n the child actually caused his death. We have 110 reason to believe this was so, although it is easy enough to imagine ways his life might
have been shortened by the fantastic expectations heaped upon him. But the
refusal to recognize the reality of one's human existence, and still more so
the obliteration of the memory that one ever existed, is in its own way a n act
of killing.
4
While Hazzan believed that Ishmael Zevi was still alive,h e turned him into
an impossible synthesis of Isaac and Ishmael. In order to achieve the impos
sible merger of the paths of "Truth"and of "Grace," h e bound this wonderchild to his imagination's altar. When h e learned the child was dead, h e made
a whole-offering of his memory, and let the mythical figures of Isaac and Ishmael join in imaginary partnership in the empty space where the child had
been. H e later returned to Messianic-fantasy-as-usual, seemingly forgetting
there ever had been a n Ishmael Zevi.
". . . the ancient, protean, and strangely resilient story of the death and resurrection of the beloved son!' So J o n Levenson calls it, in the very last sentence of his study of the Aqedah? 30 A theme so protean and so resilient must
reflect some enduring feature, normally latent and unconscious, of the cuiture that creates and transmits it. Any manifestation of the theme is likely to
shed light o n some aspect of the theme's essential meaning.
Levenson, working from the manifestations that surface in the Hebrew Bible itself, stresses that the beloved son is marked both by "his exalted status
and the precariousness of his very life . . . marked for both exaltation and
humiliation'.'231 H e may b e betrayed to death by the parent who professes to
love himf 3 2 and who at bottom prefers the blessing of faceless"progeny"over
the real child h e is in the process of sacrificing.233 His sufferings may turn out
to b e very much like those of the un-beloved child. Levenson argues persuasively that the Hebrew Bible gives Ishmael an Aqedah of his own, whose features r u n parallel to those of Isaac's Aqedah?34 The children of the beloved
Isaac, too, re-enact the sufferings of Hagar and Ishmael."The exaltation of the
(230) Death and Resurrection, p. 232.
(231) Ibid., p. 59. Levenson returns repeatedly to the themeof humiliation: pp.87,96,128,152.
(232) Ibid., pp. 148-50.
(233) Ibid., p. 161.1 am not sure that Levenson would be prepared to state the implication of
his observations as bluntly as I do.Cf. pp. 201-02 :"The application to Jesus of the two not dissimilarJewish traditions of Isaac and the suffering servant sounds an ominous note,easily missed
by those who interpret God's love in sentimental fashion : like Isaac, the paschal lamb, and the
suffering servant, Jesus will provide his father in heaven complete pleasure only when he has
endured a brutal confrontation with nothing short of death itself." I do not think one has to be
a sentimentalist to regard this as a perverse and dreadful mode of parental "love."
(234) Ibid., pp. 82-110,124,132.

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DAVID J. HALPE RI

[74]

chosen brother. . . has its costs: it entails the chosen's experience of the bitter reality of the unchosen's life. Such is the humiliation that attends the exaltation of the beloved son!'235
If an "Aqedah of Ishmael"is latent in the Bible, as Levenson supposes, it is
made manifest in the pages of Israel Hazzan. In Hazzan's hopes and disillusionments, as recorded in his commentary, something of the dark unconscious of the ancient Aqedah complex acts itself out. Its victim, seemingly exalted, is worse than humiliated: h e is abandoned and consumed. His voice is
ignored, his reality unseen, his existence forgotten. No parent or angel o r deity intervenes to save him. T h e cruelty and delusional folly that are the Aqedah's worst and most archaic elements are re-enacted, late in the seventeenth
century, upon the forlorn person of the Messiah^ child.
Adored for what h e was not, unknown for what h e was, Ishmael Zevi was
made into a vessel for elaborate illusions that h e may never have begun to
understand. T h e illusions endured, as illusions will.T h e vessel shattered, and
was abandoned to silence.
E X C U R S U S : ISHMAEL Z E V IA N D ISAAC Z E V I

In his collection of studies, The Shabbatean Movement in Greece (pp. 163-78),

Meir Benayahu proposed an ingenious and original solution to the mystery
of Ishmael Zevi's disappearance.Emden and the Dnme were wrong : h e did
not die in childhood, nor was h e a Muslim at the time of his death. Rather,
h e returned from Adrianople to Salonika after 1 6 7 7t o pursue his Jewish education, and there returned to Judaism at some time in the 1680s. Upon his
reconversion, h e changed his name from Ishmael to Isaac. H e is to b e identified with Isaac Zevi, who served as rabbi of Sarajevo from about 1690 at least
until 1716.
What we know about Ishmael Zevi before 1690, and what we know about
Isaac Zevi after that year, fits together well enough. Their ages seem at least
roughly to correspond. So d o their names. Even if the Sabbatians had n o t
identified Ishmael Zevi with the Biblical Isaac (as Hazzan, at least, did), one
could hardly imagine anything more suitable than the Muslim Ishmael's
taking the name Isaac upon his return to Judaism. What we know about
Isaac Zevi, moreover, suggests a close link with Salonika and its scholars, and
it seems a n inescapable conclusion that h e studied there. T h e document
that Cuenque claims to have seen in Ostrog in 1688 or 1689 presumably derived from Salonika, and Cuenque's enthusiastic description of it which
(235) Ibid., p. 96.

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T H E SON OF THE MESSIAH

217

Benayahu endorses as reliable beyond the smallest suspicion ofdoubt (p. 166)
suggests that Ishmael Zevi had become by age twenty a Jewish scholar of
some stature.236
As for the Dnme tradition that Ishmael died as a child, this can be explained easily enough o n Benayahu's hypothesis. By returning to Judaism,
their youthful Messiah turned his back o n his father's example, and so betrayed the expectations of his most devoted followers. He"died" to them, and
they got their revenge by declaring him literally to have died. (One is tempted
to imagine them"sitting shiva"for him.) T h e vindictive anti-Sabbatians, Emd e n among them, were only too happy to believe them.
T h e circumstantial evidence, combined with Benayahu's having provided
a neat solution to what otherwise might seem a n intractable problem, constitute the strengths of his hypothesis. But it has very substantial weaknesses
as well.
To begin with, Benayahu offers practically n o evidence that is not circumstantial. H e points out that Isaac Zevi's son, Shem Zevi (who died some
time before 1748),"invariably includes his father's name in his signature,
while his father invariably signs with his name only. Surely this is indicative!"
(p. 178). It is indeed interesting. But it is the only datum about Isaac Zevi, in
voked by Benayahu, that even begins to make better sense if we assume h e
was Sabbatai Zevi's son than if we assume h e was not.
This assumption, moreover, creates very formidable problems of its own.
It would not seem, o n Benayahu^ hypothesis, that Isaac Zevi was particularly
concerned to hide his original identity. If h e were, surely h e would have
changed his name more drastically, to efface all trace of his link with the most
infamousjewish figure of his time.But,without some serious effort o n his part
to conceal his origins, how could they have failed to become widely known?
It cannot possibly have been a matter of indifference to his Jewishcontemporaries that the son of the false Messiah,who had spent at least the firstten years
of his life as a Muslim, was now functioning as a leader and teacher in Israel.
Even if the now-Jewish Ishmael/Isaac had tried to hide his background, it
is n o t clear h e could have succeeded. T h e Dnme could easily have revenged
themselves o n their "apostate" Messiah, making his life miserable by trailing
him and denouncing him to Jewish communities wherever h e went much
as some Sabbatian radicals, posing as orthodox heresy-hunters, took advan(236) We must remember, however, that Benayahu could produce n o direct evidence for
his assumption that Ishmael returned to Salonika sifter 1677. Nor does he observe that, if he is
right, then Cuenque must be wrong about Ishmael having grown up in the sultan's court after
Sabbatai's death. If Cuenque is unreliable on this point, why should we trust (as Benayahu does)
his account of the Ostrog document?

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[76]

tage of their status within their communities to persecute such "moderates

as Cardozo.237But it seems that Isaac Zevi did n o t even try to conceal who h e
was. T h e Jewish world cannot possibly have remained unaware that the son
of the great deceiver was now Sarajevo's rabbi. Can we imagine that his parentage, Muslim upbringing, and former Messianic status never became issues of
controversy in his rabbinic career?
For Isaac Zevi, as Benayahu depicts him, was n o stranger to controversy or
criticism. His contract as marbis torah in Sarajevo came u p for renewal every
three years; and, some time early in 1714, the community leaders refused to
renew it.O n 17 Iyyar 5474(2 May 1714) his former teacher, Solomon Amarillo
of Salonika,wrote o n his behalf. T h e rank andfileof Sarejevanjewry, Amarillo
claimed, had wanted to reappoint Isaac Zevi. But the moneyed elite,"without
any grounds whatsoever beyond malice and hatred," had tried to dismiss an
upright rabbi "in whom there was n o t the smallest blemish!'This was, moreover, not the first time Amarillo had had to intervene in the quarrel.238
What was the quarrel about? Beyond the class tensions involved (if we are
to trust Amarillo), we have n o clue. T h e date, however, is important. T h e
controversy surrounding Nehemiah Hiya Hayon had erupted the preceding
summer. By 1714, crypto-Sabbatianism had become a hot issue in Jewish communities throughout Europe.239 This might at first sight seem to support Benayahu's hypothesis. Perhaps the opposition to Isaac Zevi was really directed
against his notorious father, and the supposedly groundless "malice and hatred"denounced by Amarillo was in fact motivated by the suspicion that h e
had continued to nourish heretical beliefs behind an orthodox mask?
Given the anxieties about covert heresy that prevailed in 1714,1t is quite inconceivable that any attack o n Sabbatai Zevi's son, whatever its original motivation, should not have transformed itself into accusations that h e was his
father's true heir. Yet (at least as far as Benayahu was able to discover) we hear
nothing of this. Amarillos letter suggests an effort to unseat a preacher who
has made himself a bit too popular with the ordinary folk; nothing more.
An argument from silence, indeed. But we can make it even sharper. Sarajevo was very much in the background of the Hayon controversy. Hayon's family came from Sarajevo; his enemies claimed h e had been born there; h e was
married there in the 1670s. Of his two archenemies in the controversy, Moses
Hagiz and Hakham Zevi Ashkenazi, the latter had been a predecessor of Isaac
Zevi in the Sarajevo rabbinate. Hakham Zevi was forced to leave Sarajevo in
1688, as the result of a quarrel with two m e n closely linked toHayon (one of
(237) Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit ofHeresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and theSabbatian Controversies ( New York, 1990), p. 77.
(238) Shabbatean Movement in Greece, pp. 176-77.
(239) Carlebach, pp. 75-159.

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