Millenarianism and Messianism in

Early Modern European Culture

Volume I
JEWISH MESSIANISM IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD
 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

173

Millenarianism and Messianism in

Early Modern European Culture

Volume I

JEWISH MESSIANISM IN THE

EARLY MODERN WORLD

Edited by
MATT D. GOLDISH and RICHARD H. POPKIN

Founding Editors:
P. Dibon (Paris)t and R.H. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis & UCLA)
Director:
Sarah Hutton (Middlesex University, London, United Kingdom)
Associate Directors: J.E. Force (Lexington); J.C. Laursen (Riverside)
Editorial Board: J.F. Battail (Paris); F. Duchesneau (Montreal); A. Gabbey (New York);
T. Gregory (Rome); J.D. North (Groningen); M.J. Petry (Rotterdam); J. Popkin (Lexington);
G.A.J. Rogers (Keele); Th. Verbeek (Utrecht)
Advisory Editorial Board: J. Aubin (Paris); B. Copenhaver (Los Angeles); A. Crombie (Oxford);
H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier (Paris); K. Hanada (Hokkaido University); W. Kirsop
(Melbourne); J. Malarczyk (Lublin); J. Orcibal (Paris); W. Rod (Miinchen); G. Rousseau
(Los Angeles); J.P. Schobinger (Ziirich); J. Tans (Groningen)
Millenarianism and Messianism in
Early Modern European Culture

Volume I

JEWISH MESSIANISM IN THE

EARLY MODERN WORLD
Edited by

MATT D. GOLDISH
The Ohio State University

and

RICHARD H. POPKIN
University of California, Los Angeles, California

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-90-481-5666-5 ISBN 978-94-017-2278-0 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-2278-0

Printed on acid-free paper

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION FROM HEBREW

The styles of transliteration of each author have been left essentially as they are, with no attempt
at uniformity. The editors wish to thank Dr Maja de Keijzer, Mr Phil Johnstone and their
editorial staffs for preparing the proofs of this volume.

All Rights Reserved

© 200 I Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2001
No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction to the Millenarianism and Messianism Series

Richard H Popkin Vll

Introduction
Matt Go/dish XV

1. The Messianism oflsaac Abarbanel, 'Father of the [Jewish]

Messianic Movements of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries'
Eric Lawee
2. Patterns in Converso Messianism
Matt Go/dish 41
3. Syncretism and Millennium in Herrera's Kabbalah
Kenneth Krabbenhoft 65
4. Some Social Aspects of the Polemics between Sabbatians
and their Opponents
Jacob Barnai 77
5. Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi
Richard H Popkin 91
6. Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment
Allison P Coudert 107
7. The Last Deception: Failed Messiahs and Jewish Conversion
in Early Modern German Lands
Elisheva Carlebach 125
8. Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper
Elliot Wolfson 139
9. The Charlatan at the Gottes Haus in Offenbach
Harry Lenowitz 189
10. Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk: A Sabbatian Adventurer in the
Masonic Underground
Marsha Keith Schuchard 203
Index 227

v
 MILLENARIANISM AND MESSIANISM IN
EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN CULTURE

Volume I
Jewish Messianism in the
Early Modern World
Edited by
MATT GOLDISH and RICHARD H. POPKIN

Volume II
Catholic Millenarianism:
From Savonarola to the Abbe Gregoire
Edited by
KARL A. KOTTMAN

Volume III
The Millenarian Turn:
Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics, and Everyday Anglo-
American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Edited by
JAMES E. FORCE and RICHARD H. POPKIN

Volume IV
Continental Millenarians:
Protestants, Catholics, Heretics
Edited by
JOHN CHRISTIAN LAURSEN and RICHARD H. POPKIN

VI
 R.H.POPKIN

INTRODUCTION TO THE MILLENARIANISM

AND MESSIANISM SERIES

Within Judaism and Christianity there has always been a great expectation that
something monumental would happen that would transform human existence
and bring an end to human history as we know it. In the Bible, from the time of
the Babylonian Captivity, there has been the expectation that a messianic figure
would appear who would bring about the culmination of Jewish hopes. In the
subsequent centuries, as Palestine came under Greek, Syrian and then Roman
control, the messianic expectation grew stronger and stronger. The Dead Sea
Scrolls suggest that a great ferment and fervor existed in the period just before
the beginning of Christianity.
And, of course, Christianity as a religion began as a claim that the messianic
expectation of Judaism had been fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
The early Christian texts, especially the four gospels, portray the life and death
of Jesus as historically linked to biblical messianic expectations, especially as
put forth in the book of Isaiah. However, the Crucifixion did not seem to be
attended with the expected political triumph of the Jewish Messiah over all of
the enemies of the Jewish people. In fact, it looked like a complete defeat. But
as St. Paul explained at length, it would come to be fulfilled at the time of the
Second Coming of Jesus into world history. Jesus first came to expatiate the
sins of mankind, and he would return to reign on earth and to inaugurate the
events leading to the Day of Judgment. The most forceful and exciting
statement of when, where, and how the messianic triumph would occur was
that which appears in the last book of the New Testament, The Revelations of
St. John, which played a great role in future discussions within Christendom.
This work, along with sections of the Book of Daniel, provided a blueprint
centuries later for those seeking to determine exactly when the Second Coming
would occur. It named and described many symbolic figures who would appear
as the dramatic climax of human history neared. It also stressed the
importance of the events that would lead up to the Second Coming. These
included the appearance of the Antichrist, who would try to lead the believers

Vll

M Go/dish and R.H Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, vii-xiv.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
viii R.H Popkin

astray, the conversion of the Jews to belief in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, and
the rebuilding of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.
In the first century of the Common Era, Jews were crushed physically and
emotionally by the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. Some had hoped the
Messiah would arrive in time to save the Temple and the holy city. After the
Roman general, Titus, captured and destroyed the city and made captives of the
Jews, survivors sought clues of God's plan for when the long sought Messiah
would arrive. When a rebellion against Roman rule took place in the second
century, some thought its leader, Bar Kochba, was the expected Holy One. In
the centuries thereafter, Jewish leaders studied various malevolent develop-
ments in Jewish history as containing possible evidences of the birth pangs of
the Messiah. They looked for clues about the mighty empires that would have
to be destroyed, as foretold in the Book of Daniel, in order for the Messianic
Age to begin. They tried to calculate from the symbols in the Book of Daniel,
how long it would be after the end of the Roman Empire.
The messianic expectations on the part of both Jews and Christians reached
new heights in the late Middle Ages in Europe. On the Christian side, the
preachings and writings of the Italian monk, Joachim de Fiore, provided a new
and urgent reading of Revelation as foretelling the third and final age of human
history that would soon begin.
Jewish kabbalistic thinkers in southern France and Spain sought clues about
when the Messianic Age would begin in the kabbalistic interpretations of
biblical texts. Numerological readings of Hebrew terms, it was hoped, would
provide significant clues. The Jewish scholars investigating this lived, of course,
in Christian communities in Europe. Although often isolated by medieval anti-
semitic laws and regulations, some interchange of ideas, interpretations,
expectations and documents occurred. In the late Middle Ages, Christians
became concerned about studying the Bible in the original languages and also
about finding out what secret information the Jews might have in their
possession. Jews and Jewish converts were contacted and employed in
Christian research centers to find out when the long awaited return of Jesus,
when he would begin his thousand-year reign on earth, would take place. So,
by the late fifteenth century, Christian millenarians and Jewish scholars seeking
to find out when the Messiah might arrive, knew of some of each other's
findings and ideas. Leading Jewish scholars interacted with important persons
in the Church and State in many places in Europe. In Spain, for example, until
1492, figures like Don Isaac Abarbanel, a leading theorist on messianism, was
a prominent financial court adviser, first in Portugal and then in Spain.
The many turbulent developments in Europe in the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries convinced both Jewish and Christian thinkers that the end
of days was at hand. In the West, the forced conversion of most of Spain's Jews,
the collapse of the Moorish kingdom in Spain, the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain and later Portugal, and the unification of Castille and Aragon were taken
as indications that something monumental was starting. 1492 was seen as the
miracle year, the annis mirabilis. The Voyages of Discovery emanating from
Portugal and Spain, the new worlds they revealed and the riches they brought
 Introduction to the Millenarianism and Messianism Series ix

back to Europe had to be part of the great Divine plan. Christopher Columbus,
in his Book of Prophecies, told Isabella that he would find enough gold in the
Americas to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem!
At the other end of Europe, the Ottoman invasions conquered Constanti-
nople, the seat of Eastern Christianity, in 1453, and spread as far as the
Balkans, Budapest, the outskirts of Vienna, and the waters around Italy. This
also had to be some indication of divine significance. And in Europe, the
corruption of the papacy and of the clergy, railed against by Savonarola and
Erasmus, was taken as a sign of the deteriorating world that would precede the
coming of the Messiah. The resurgence of Greek and Roman learning provided
ammunition for those seeking clues about the ways of God in History. All over
Europe, the eruption of reform movements within the Church, which led to the
establishment of non-Catholic Christian states in England, Germany, Bohe-
mia, and Switzerland, and the emergence of organized Reformed churches as
powerful alternatives to Roman Catholicism, all made various visionaries
think in terms of the dramatic scenarios in both the book of Daniel and
Revelation. Some hardy thinkers saw the Turkish Empire as the last empire
before the divine one. Others saw the pope or the papacy as the Antichrist who
was about to be overthrown as a prelude to the Second Coming of Christ.
Some commentators on Scripture had come to the conclusion, based on
calculations drawn from Daniel, that the Millennium would commence 1260
years after the fall of the once mighty Roman Empire. This made it all
important to figure out exactly when the Roman Empire ended. Much had to
be studied and examined about the last days of the Roman Empire. Sir Isaac
Newton became a super-expert on the late, late Roman Empire after it had
moved out of Rome and even after it had moved out of Italy in the sixth and
seventh centuries. The Scottish mathematician, John Napier, devised the
system of logarithms to help in these difficult calculations.
The Book of Daniel, Chapter 12, verse 4, told that at the time of the end,
people would move to and fro and knowledge would increase. People living in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the voyages of exploration, the
creation of colonies all over the world, the development of international
commerce and the startling increase of knowledge in so many areas, as sure
signs that the Time of the End was fast approaching.
The early modern period saw a wide variety of different and often
incompatible millenarian and messianic scenarios being set forth, some of
which guided the leading players in different parts of European history. A rich
and often wild ferment of ideas, incorporating earlier texts, new Judea-
Christian interpretations, and elements of what was to emerge as the new
science, melded together. Examining developments from 1500 onward in terms
of these ideas throws quite a different light on the course of events and the
motivations behind all sorts of developments, from the theocracy of Savonar-
ola in Florence and the dramatic doings of the early reformers in Germany, to
the plans advocated by early Christian Hebraists, Catholic and Protestant
missionaries, and optimistic Jewish thinkers who were looking for some ray of
hope after the expulsion of the Jews from Iberia. The religious controversies
x R.H Popkin

that dominated English history in the sixteenth century, the religious civil wars
in France, the rise of Calvinism in the Netherlands and the Dutch Rebellion,
along with the religious fragmentation of the German states, and the rise of
Protestant sects in Poland and Hungary, all set forth millenarian interpreta-
tions. And climactic events such as the defeat of the Spanish Armada looked to
many at the time as a most important sign of God's plans for mankind.
Many Jewish scholars had figured out that 1648 would be a most important
year for the Jewish world, the moment of the arrival of the Messiah. Protestants
in England and The Netherlands had calculated that 1655-56 would be
decisive, beginning with the conversion of the Jews. With religious issues
holding such an important part in the conflicts all over Europe, millenarian
and messianic thinking and acting played an exciting role in the history of the
times.
So, from Portugal to Sweden to Poland to Italy to Palestine and Constanti-
nople, there were exciting and excited messianic outpourings. For example, in
Portugal in the late sixteenth century, there was constant expectation that a lost
king, King Sebastian, lost in battle, would return and usher in the Messianic
Age. Then, in the next century, there was a claim that Jesus would come first to
Portugal to rescue the new Christian Marranos and take them with him to
Palestine where they would rebuild the Temple. At the same time, Rabbi
Menasseh ben Israel proclaimed in 1655 that the coming of the Messiah was
imminent because a Portuguese explorer had reported finding some lost tribe
members in the Andes mountains. And Menasseh learned from perusing
Queen Christina's copy of La Peyrere's Du Rappels des Juifs that the King of
France would soon lead the Jews to the Holy Land where they would rebuild
the Temple and where the Messiah would rule with the King of France as his
Regent. Menasseh rushed back to Amsterdam to tell people that the coming of
the Messiah was imminent. To prepare for this he rushed to England to get the
Puritan government to re-admit the Jews as a prelude to the Messianic Age.
Foreign diplomats at the time said it was impossible to talk to Oliver Cromwell
about mundane business because he was only concerned about when the
Messiah would come. We have an account of some Swedish emissaries who
had come to London to discuss some disputes about the Russian fur trade with
Cromwell. They reported that the only thing Cromwell would discuss was if
there were any new reports about when the Messiah was coming.
When Menasseh ben Israel arrived in England to begin his negotiations with
the British government, he was met at the dock by a Welsh millenarian with the
improbable name, Arise Evans, who told him that the son of the recently
beheaded King Charles I would be the Regent of the Messiah and would rule
the world with him. Menasseh is reported to have said that this seemed most
unlikely but that he could believe that either the King of Sweden or the King of
France could play such a role. Poland, at around the same time, was being
invaded by the Swedish army. Just as the Swedes seemed to be over-running the
country, the Polish King held up the statue of the Black Madonna in front of
the Swedish troops who immediately withered away. This was taken as a divine
sign and was followed by an actual marriage of King John Casimir to the
 Introduction to the Millenarianism and Messianism Series XI

statue of the Black Madonna. This was followed by the destruction of the
various Protestant millenarian groups in Poland as a token of Polish love for
the Madonna who had saved them.
The Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies at the University of California
at Los Angeles asked me to organize a series of conferences on Messianism and
Millenarianism in 1997-1998 in view of the growing interest and concern with
the Millennium, and to present these conferences at the William Andrews
Clark Library.
For over twenty years I had been setting forth my own researches into the
subject, and organizing conferences of other scholars at the Clark. In 1975 I
gave a paper at the Clark, in the series, Culture and Politics, organized by Perez
Zagorin. My paper was on "Jewish Messianism and Christian Millenarianism"
and dealt with the amazing interactions between Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel of
Amsterdam and the British and Dutch Christian Millenarians, and with the
French Marrano theologian and courtier, Isaac La Peyrere, who was predicting
that at any moment the King of France would lead the Jews back to the Holy
Land and rule the world with the Messiah! After more research on such matters
I was invited in 1981-82 to be the Clark Professor to organize a lecture series
on the subject. I was able to bring together people working in different
disciplines and in different countries. And I was able to work with an exciting
group of young scholars in the bowels of the Clark, and to imbibe the fruits of
rooting through the rich collection of seventeenth-century religious tracts in
the Clark collection.
So, it seemed fitting that a more comprehensive group of conferences should
be organized at the Clark near the end of century, bringing together people in
many disciplines from Europe, Israel, Canada, Brazil and the United States.
Although the messianic and millenarian movements often were intertwined
and took place in the same geographical space and chronological time, it was
thought best to divide the conferences by the religious groups involved.
Originally I had hoped to have conferences on Jewish messianism, Moslem
millenarianism, Catholic millenarians, British millenarianism, and Continen-
tal millenarianism. For reasons beyond my control, we ended up with just four
conferences, leaving the Moslem side of the story for later discussions.
In the second half of this century, the study of millenarianism has been led in
part by studies such as Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millenium, Gershom
Scholem's studies on Jewish mysticism, by the studies into the forces at work in
the Puritan Revolution in England and North America by Christopher Hill,
Hugh Trevor-Roper and others, by the studies on millenarian religious views in
The Netherlands and in Bohemia, by studies on the influence of Jacob
Boehme's mysticism, by studies on the impact of the early Quakers in England
and all over Europe, and by studies on the millenarian movements and proto-
Jewish ones in Transylvania and Poland. The wealth of material examined in
the last fifty years of religious movements incorporating millenarian and
messianic ideas, and the influences of these groups, needs a lot of cross
fertilization of disciplines, scholars and ideas.
National histories have had difficulty with historical actors who moved
xii R.H Popkin

easily from one country into another and interacted in different circumstances.
The career of John Dury in the seventeenth century may be an extreme
example. Of Scottish extraction, he was schooled in The Netherlands, got his
theological training at the French Walloon seminary in Leiden, and became a
pastor in Elbing, Germany where he met Jan Amos Comenius and Samuel
Hartlib. Early on he was a correspondent of Joseph Mede, the Cambridge don
who was the theoretician of how to read Revelation. Dury knew Descartes. He
was very active in organizing new programs at the beginning of the Puritan
Revolution. Later he was appointed by the Westminster Assembly in London
to be their official negotiator to unify the Protestant churches all over Europe in
preparation for Jesus's imminent return. In this capacity he traveled all over
Europe and met many theologians and princes. He was an intelligence agent
for Oliver Cromwell. He was also one of the most active persons in trying to
bring the Jews back to England. His contacts spanned most of Continental
Europe, New England, and of course England. After the Restoration he was
banned from living in Britain as a regicide, and spent most of the rest of his life
in Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. He was the father-in-law of Henry
Oldenburg, a secretary of the new Royal Society of England. He was
continuously rethinking millenarian possibilities as events unfolded in Eur-
opean history. He even became quite concerned about whether Sabbatai Zevi's
claim to be the long awaited Jewish Messiah affected Christian expectations.
Dury may be an extreme case, but his many roles, and his many links to
different religious worlds, mirror the events of the time. Comenius, the leader
of the Moravian Brethren, who was in exile because of events in the Thirty
Years War, lived in Poland, Germany, The Netherlands and England. He
revolutionized the educational system in various parts of Europe, proposed all
sorts of educational reforms from kindergarten to graduate school, held a
summit conference with Descartes in The Netherlands and was offered the first
presidency of Harvard College in the New World. It's hard to fit him into just
one national history.
We hope that by opening up many of the kinds of discussions and activities
that were going on in the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant worlds in many
countries, it will help people see the international character of the phenomen-
on. From Savonarola to the visionaries in the Puritan Revolution, to the
studious Isaac Newton seeking the secrets of nature and Scripture, to the
Catholic millenarians like the Jesuit Immanuel Lacunza and the Abbe Henri
Gregoire at the time of the French Revolution, millenarian and messianic
visions played many great roles.
By dividing up the thinkers by religion, it is hoped that the interconnection
and interaction of these many people does not get lost. We are dividing them up
both creedally and also in separate volumes. At the conferences we discussed
them at different times, with different groups of speakers, and changing
audiences. Nonetheless we hope and trust that the reader will see that there
are significant connections between the ideas in one volume and those in
another, and some of the people being discussed were contemporaries who
knew each other and exchanged ideas. Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel knew Father
 Introduction to the Millenarianism and Messianism Series xm

Antonio Vieira of Portugal and Brazil, and they talked in Amsterdam of their
common eschatological views. Isaac La Peyrere knew Catholic and Protestant
thinkers in France, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain and
England. The English, New England and Dutch millenarians were well aware
of the messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi taking place in Turkey, and tried
to fit it into their own scenarios. The Abbe Gregoire knew Jewish leaders in
France, Germany and Italy, as well as many Protestant thinkers in Europe and
America. Simultaneously with the millenarian interpretation of the American
and French Revolutions by participants, a Jewish messianic movement
centered around Jacob Frank was taking place in central Europe. The many
movements and many interpretations of what was going on spawned a host of
intriguing figures, like Sweden borg and Rabbi Falk, the Baal-Shem of London,
whose influences are still to be worked out. And the ways in which events were
being construed in millenarian and messianic terms spawned a backlash of
critics like Pierre Bayle, who needs to be understood in terms of the millenarian
context in which he lived, especially his opposition to the French Reformed
Millenarian, Pierre Jurieu.
We have tried to give each part of our conferences its due in terms of the
carefully prepared and edited presentations of papers, with an overall introduc-
tion in each volume by its editor. I want to thank Matt Goldish, then of the
University of Arizona and now of Ohio State University, a veteran of many
earlier Clark conferences, both for helping me select the participants in the
Jewish Messianism conference and for his hard work in preparing the articles
for publication. Next I should like to thank Karl Kottman, who did his
doctorate with me a long time ago on Fray Luis de Leon, and with whom I
have discussed Catholic Millenarianism over the years. I selected the partici-
pants in the Clark conference, and Karl willingly took on the task of editing the
results. Thirdly, I should like to thank James E. Force of the University of
Kentucky for both organizing and editing the third conference on British
Protestant Millenarianism. He and I have worked together now for over
twenty-five years on our common interests in millenarianism, most recently
concerning Isaac Newton's views. Jim was working on his dissertation on
Newton's disciple, William Whiston, at the Clark during 1981-1982, when I
first tried my hand at organizing a year of lectures on the subject of
millenarianism in British thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Fourthly, I should like to thank John C. Laursen of the University of California
at Riverside, who has become part of my intellectual circle in the last decade. I
selected the speakers, and Chris did the heavy lifting, collecting the papers,
editing them, and preparing an introduction to the volume. There was also a
fifth conference on Messianism and Revolution organized by my son, Jeremy,
that included papers about the American Revolution, the French Revolution,
as well as the Revolutions in Mexico and Russia, the emergence of the B'hai
movement, and the effect of the translation of the Book of Revelation into
Chinese, among other topics. It was decided that since many of the participants
wanted to publish their papers separately that no volume would be prepared.
However, the conference was an extremely lively finale to the year's program.
x1v R.H. Popkin

Of course, I should like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who
participated in the conferences, coming from as far away as Israel, Brazil,
France, Germany, Canada and Sweden. Not only their presentations, but also
their participation in formal and informal discussions greatly enriched the
proceedings.
Lastly I should like to thank Peter Reill, Director of the Center for 17th and
18th Century Studies for inviting me to prepare these conferences, and for the
hospitality that he and his staff extended through the academic year 1997-98.
Two assistants provided to me by the Center, Anna Suranyi and Tim Corrall,
now married and new parents, played an indispensable role in making my
participation possible. I could no longer drive and needed special medical
equipment and they cheerfully pushed and pulled me from the meetings at the
Clark, to the receptions and dinners. Without their aid and comfort I would not
have been able to participate as fully as I did. And I should make a note of
thanks to Peter and the Clark for putting in ramps to aid in getting me from the
parking lot to the wonderful central room of the Clark Library where we met.
Three assistants did the serious work of transforming the four separate
conference volumes into the completed form. Laura Emerson Tremonte began
the work in the summer of 1999. Then Gabriella Goldstein did heroic work in
getting all of the corrections and changes into the text. And Stephanie Chasin
accomplished the last stage of the process, getting the four separate conference
volumes into uniform shape for publication. Without all of this help the venture
could not have finally gotten from conference to book publication. I am most
grateful to all three of these women for their efforts.
I hope that the finished product, the four volumes, are worthy of our efforts
and will be a serious contribution to further studies of millenarianism and
messmmsm.

Richard H. Popkin
May 19,2000
Pacific Palisades, California
 INTRODUCTION

The earliest scientific studies of Jewish messianism were conducted by the

scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums school, particularly Heinrich
Graetz, the first great Jewish historian of the Jews since Josephus. These
researches were invaluable because they utilized primary sources in print and
manuscript which had been previously unknown or used only in polemics. The
Wissenschaft studies themselves, however, prove to be polemics as well on
closer inspection. Among the goals of this group was to demonstrate that
Judaism is a rational and logical faith whose legitimacy and historical progress
deserve recognition by the nations of Europe. Mystical and messianic beliefs
which might undermine this image were presented as aberrations or the result
of corrosive foreign influences on the Jews.
Gershom Scholem took upon himself the task of returning mysticism and
messianism to their rightful central place in the panorama of Jewish thought.
Jewish messianism was, for Scholem, a central theme in the philosophy and life
of the Jews throughout their history, shaped anew by each generation to fit its
specific hopes and needs. Scholem emphasized that this phenomenon was
essentially independent of messianic or millenarian trends among other
peoples. For example, in discussing messianism in the early modern era
Scholem describes a trunk of influence on the Jewish psyche set off by the
expulsion from Spain in 1492. He explains that the shock of this exile caused a
wave of messianism among the Jews of that era, which, after failing to manifest
any successful messianic program, petered out. The strong feelings concerning
the Spanish expulsion were still very much a part of Jewish consciousness,
however, and after a generation of remaining "underground" they resurfaced
in the later sixteenth century in the form of Rabbi Isaac Luria's Kabbalah, with
its emphasis on the exile and redemption of God together with that of the Jews.
This quietistic reaction again fed the streams of activist messianism, which
erupted anew in 1665-6 in the movement of Sabbatai Zevi, the messiah from
Smyrna to whom Scholem dedicated a monumental monograph.
The current generation of scholars has found much to laud in Scholem's
seminal scholarship on the one hand, and has discovered, on the other hand,
that paths broken by Scholem have not yet been explored to their ends. Thus,
many of Scholem's own ideas have been criticized by those using his methods.

XV

M. Go/dish and R.H Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, xv-xix.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
XVI M Go/dish

One of the recent developments in Jewish studies to which Scholem contributed

immensely has been their integration into the general picture of world history
as a significant element which can not be ignored. Scholars have focused
attention on the increasingly clear lines of mutual influence between Christian,
Muslim and Jewish society, particularly in the early modern period.
Studies of Jewish messianism published in the second half of the twentieth
century have tended to remain fragmented for various reasons. One is that
much essential research has been published only in Hebrew, so that the
majority of scholars in other fields have had no access to it. Another has been
the tendency of messianism to remain the province of Scholem's students, the
scholars of Jewish mysticism, whose interest and training in the analysis of
historical questions is generally limited to that which affects their specific field.
The past few years, however, have witnessed concerted efforts to look at Jewish
messianism in a more cosmopolitan light, attenuating somewhat the internalist
view of Scholem and seeing these phenomena in the context of broader
Western history. David Ruderman, Richard H. Popkin, Stephen Sharot, Jacob
Barnai and Miriam Eliav-Feldon among others have contributed to this
outlook with excellent results.
The present volume, the proceedings of a conference at the UCLA Clark
Library organized by Professor Popkin and myself, emphasizes this cross-
cultural element of early modern Jewish messianism. The fact that this focus
occurred not by design, but because this was the interest of leading scholars in
the field, is further evidence that it is increasingly the way researchers are
coming to study Jewish messianism. The conference was part of a series
organized by Professor Popkin for the Clark Library and UCLA Center for
17th and 18th Century Studies on aspects of messianism and millenarianism in
a variety of Western contexts, further evidence of the cross-cultural views on
the topic coming from many quarters.
The volume opens with Eric Lawee's study of Isaac Abarbanel, a leading
Spanish rabbi and courtier in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Abarbanel is
a long-standing icon in messianic historiography because of his association
with the expelled Spanish Jews and his voluminous discussions of the Jewish
messiah. Lawee dismantles many of the canonic views about Abarbanel. He
argues that Abarbanel's post-expulsion thought was not centered totally
around his messianism, and that Abarbanel's influence on sixteenth century
Jewish messianism was much less pervasive than others have held. Lawee also
ties the issues surrounding Abarbanel to other historiographic discussions,
including the relationship between Jewish messianism at the turn of the
sixteenth century and developments in general European history. Some of
these discussions have serious political significance still today.
If Lawee's study tends to minimize the relationship of Jewish messianism
and events of the Spanish expulsion, contradicting aspects of Scholem's
picture, the following paper by Matt Goldish focuses on a different path by
which the expulsion and Inquisition came to influence messianism: through the
conversos. Goldish attempts to trace certain themes in the messianic views of
converted Iberian Jews and their descendants over many generations. Their
 Introduction xvn

experience in the margins of Christianity and Judaism and their lack of a

strong dogmatic messiah-tradition in either, led them to a messianism which
was often acute and rather more theologically elastic than that of orthodox
Christians or Jews, even featuring a special messianic role for the conversos
themselves. Goldish traces these tendencies and their influence from the period
before the Spanish expulsion to the late seventeenth century.
Kenneth Krabbenhoft's paper examines the case of one influential converso
in depth, the diplomat and kabbalist Abraham Cohen Herrera. Krabbenhoft
addresses the Scholem thesis mentioned above, and offers Herrera, a Lurianic
kabbalist from the school of Rabbi Israel Sarug, as an example to show that
Lurianic Kabbalah can not always be seen as a messianically centered system,
as Scholem taught. While still ostensibly a Christian Herrera was trained in the
academies of Italy, where his worldview became imbued with Neoplatonic
philosophy. Sarug's philosophical Lurianism allowed Herrera to fuse the two
systems, resulting in a Kabbalah which, in accordance with contemporary
Neoplatonism, was distinctly non-messianic. While Herrera almost certainly
did not disbelieve in the coming of the messiah, his understanding of Luria
demanded a firm philosophical understanding of the processes of zimzum,
shevirat ha-kelim and tikkun which disengaged it from contemporary messianic
discourse.
The middle of the seventeenth century saw an increasingly acute expectation
of apocalyptic events among both Christians and Jews, and was marked by an
outpouring of messianic prophecy all over Europe and the Mediterranean. In
the Jewish world this tension erupted spectacularly in the movement of the
messianic pretender Sabbatai Zevi, which swept up much of the Jewish world
in 1665/6. Jacob Barnai, one of the foremost researchers of the Sabbatian
outbreak, treats the movement here in its social aspects, considering various
implications of the ways in which believers and opponents of Sabbatai
interrelated. Barnai stresses the fact that Sabbatianism entered as an additional
if very powerful element in a society already rife with tensions and incipient
change. Relationships between Sabbatians and their detractors, he shows, must
be seen not only on the background of tensions and change in the Jewish
community, but also the larger issues of Jewish standing in the larger European
and Ottoman contexts.
If Barnai's emphasis on Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in Sabbatian
controversies implies a criticism of Scholem's "internalist" causation argu-
ment, Richard H. Popkin makes that criticism explicit in his discussion of
Christian involvement in the Sabbatian movement. This paper is one of a series
in which Popkin has emphasized the close relationship between Jewish
messianism and Christian millenarianism in the seventeenth century. He
explains why many European Christians were at a feverish pitch of acute
apocalypticism at the same time the Jews were in mid-century, and what events
and exchanges preceding the outbreak of Sabbatianism prepared the ground
for mutual interest. Popkin especially illuminates the issue of why Christians
would have any concern with a Jewish messiah at that time, linking this
question with the important changes in the intellectual and religious atmo-
xviii M Go/dish

sphere of seventeenth-century Europe, especially the critique of latter-day

prophecy.
Among the reactions to Sabbatianism discussed by Popkin are those
deprecatory comments made by Christians to Jews mocking the failure of
Sabbatai. This theme is developed in rich detail by Elisheva Carlebach, who
discusses how failed Jewish messianic movements, especially Sabbatianism,
were used as propaganda by Christians in Germany to convert Jews. Carlebach
shows that attitudes toward the Jews shifted in the early modern period from a
view of them as a people in error, unable to cure their own blindness to the
truth, to one of Jews as deliberate deceivers, whose failure to convert and help
bring the apocalypse was prevented by their antagonism toward Christ. The
Jews, like the Antichrist with whom they are allied, deceive Christians into
thinking that they are an innocent people, misled but also mistreated. It is
therefore all the more satisfying for Christians to see the Jews themselves
deceived by their own false messiahs, a theme demonstrated by Carlebach to be
very widespread in German literature of many types in the sixteenth through
eighteenth centuries.
Not all German Christians, however, approached Jews with an antagonistic
and conversionary attitude, as Allison Coudert argues in the next essay. It is in
fact in this post-Sabbatian period that the circle of Christian Knorr von
Rosenroth and Francis Mercury van Helmont, after studying with kabbalists
in Amsterdam, produce the great classic Kabbala denudata, under the auspices
of Christian August of Sulzbach. Like Herrera, whose book they published in
the Kabbala denudata, this group saw Kabbalah as a work of ancient wisdom
similar to those of Plato, Hermes Trismegistus or the Sibylline Oracles. While
they were concerned with Lurianic as well as Zoharic Kabbalah, the editors
had no interest in any particularist or messianic aspects of this system. They
were rather involved in the search for a quietistic "kabbalistic enlightenment,"
a philosophy based on the Kabbalah which would lead toward toleration and
universal wisdom.
While the Knorr/van Helmont circle was heading toward the rendering of a
non-conversionary Christian Kabbalah, an entirely different enterprise was
occurring at Uppsala, where the apostate Jewish kabbalist Johann Kemper (ne
Moses ben Aaron Kohen of Cracow), a true expert in the Jewish sources, was
formulating a highly conversionary Christian Kabbalah. Elliot Wolfson has
illuminated this perplexing personality in his analysis of Kemper's voluminous
Hebrew writings which constitute an attempt to prove the veracity of Christian
doctrine based on the Zohar. Wolfson shows that while Kemper's conver-
sionary intent was similar to that of the Renaissance Christian kabbalists
(though his knowledge was much deeper), it had an additional dimension of
respect for the nomian framework in which Kabbalah was conceived. As
Wolfson says, Kemper's goal was to promote Jewish Christianity among Jews
and Christian Judaism among Christians. Kemper's messianism therefore had
deep roots in both Kabbalah, Christian theology, and the syncretic forms
current then in Sabbatian theology, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.
With Harris Lenowitz we are taken to another strange Jewish-Christian
 Introduction XIX

borderland, that demarcated by Jacob Frank and his eighteenth century

Sabbatian revival. Scholem, among the pioneers in this field as well, is critiqued
for failing to take account of the changes in Frank's views over the course of his
career. This is an especially important issue in Lenowitz's opinion because
Frank constantly absorbed and reworked his doctrine based on surrounding
stimuli. Whereas much has been made of Frank's early relations with Muslim
Sabbatians, the Donmeh, Lenowitz explores the mutual influence between
Frank and the Freemasons during his later life in Brno and Offenbach. He is
particularly concerned with the question of whether the ideologies of either the
Donmeh or the Freemasons, which left such a clear imprint on Frank's
thought, were actually adopted by Frank, or whether he simply used them to
promote his own program. Lenowitz exploits the little-studied Dicta of Frank
to help address these issues.
Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk, the Ba'al Shem of London, was a contemporary of
Frank whose adventures also brought him in close contact with the circles of
Freemasons and various political radicals. While there is scant evidence of
Falk's influence in the Jewish world, his fame as a Jewish kabbalist, magician
and alchemist spread far and wide among Christian occulterati in the eight-
eenth century. Marsha Keith Schuchard presents proof, gathered out of
documents of all types from around Europe, that Falk became a central figure
in masonic myth, and was taken as the Unknown Superior of the revolutionary
Freemasons. Falk's perceived gifts were understood as a true path to wisdom
and peace by his supporters, while later ninteenth-century anti-semites like
Drumond saw him as the creator of a vast Jewish-Masonic conspiracy against
the religion and culture of Europe. Falk was associated by many with the
Frankists and other Sabbatians, helping lend his teachings an association with
radical Jewish messianism.
Together these essays open many new paths toward a more nuanced under-
standing of early modern Jewish messianism in its cultural and historical
contexts. Individual studies of personalities, groups and movements come
together to provide a picture of times when Jewish and Christian apocalyptic
thought met and interacted in unexpected ways. Some of this material has deep
implications not only for historians, but for the understanding of contempor-
ary apocalypticism as well. We hope the collection will provide apt material for
continued investigation in this important field.

Matt Goldish
Columbus, Ohio
 E.LAWEE

1. THE MESSIANISM OF ISAAC ABARBANEL,

'FATHER OF THE [JEWISH] MESSIANIC MOVEMENTS OF
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES'

One can hardly gainsay the accuracy of the recent observation that "though
much has been written on [Isaac] Abravanel's messianic posture, there is no
systematic attempt to reconcile its various aspects into a consistent theory." 1
Yet beneath the question of the contours, character, and consistency of
Abarbanel's messianic stance lie what would seem more basic queries - just
how deep, abiding, and central to his religious outlook and scholarly occupa-
tions were the millennia! expectations which Abarbanel expressed in various
works written after the 1492 expulsion of Spanish Jewry? What motivated his
apparently thoroughgoing investment in Judaism's "messianic idea" during this
period? These are questions which students of Abarbanel and early modern
Jewish messianism have by no means overlooked. What they have offered by
way of answers amounts to a theme and variations. The theme is that
Abarbanel's preoccupation with the imminence of "the end" was definitive in
shaping his religious outlook and scholarly activities throughout his post-
expulsion period (i.e., that period during which he composed the overwhelming
majority of his writings) and that his messianic consciousness and the vast
literary corpus which it spawned mark a direct response to the expulsion of
1492.
There is another question regarding Abarbanel's eschatological voice which
has attracted modern scholarship's attention - or rather an assumption
regarding that voice that has repeatedly informed such scholarship. In charting
the course of Jewish messianic thinkers, figures, and movements in the
centuries after Abarbanel's death, scholars have consistently held that Abarba-
nel's eschatological influence was immense with, on more than a few reckon-
ings, untold significance for the fate of early modern Jews and Judaism.
The following essay seeks to modify or at least complicate nearly all the
major constituents of this time-honored and well-entrenched (indeed, as shall
be seen, nearly reflexive) historiographic conception; that is, it aims to reverse
the perception of eschatology as the Archimedean point of Abarbanel's

M. Go/dish and R.H. Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 1-39.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
2 E. Lawee

religiosity and literary expression after the summer of 1492 (few have argued
for his profound messianic consciousness before then) and to undermine the
proposition that Abarbanel exercised a far-reaching influence on Jewish
messianism, either in the sphere of speculation or the activation of millenial-
messianic beliefs, in early modernity. 2 The accent falls on the depth and
complexion of Abarbanel's own messianic stirrings; underlying exploration of
these is the methodological difficulty of documenting drifts and shifts of
religious feeling. Perspectives on Abarbanel's afterlife within the lively and
crowded world of sixteenth-century Jewish eschatology (and even beyond)
round out the presentation, spotlighting salient features of early modern Jewish
messianism in the process. Brief concluding sections relate specific findings to
several larger issues: the problem of defining premodern political-messianic
"realism," Zionist historiography's attitude towards premodern Jewish mes-
sianism, the relationship of historical-sociological crisis to religious-messianic
awakening, and current trends in the study of post-1492 Judaism. To begin
with, however, a look at the scholarly consensus limned at the outset.

I
In the late 1940s, Benzion Netanyahu, the son of a well-known Zionist
propagandist who himself had long been active in Vladimir Jabotinsky's
Revisionist movement, undertook a doctoral dissertation on Abarbanel's
messianic teaching. Writing in the shadow of the Holocaust and reflecting on
premodern Jewish history's ups and downs in the wake of the founding of a
modern Jewish state, Netanyahu was conscious as never before of the appalling
costs of Jewish powerlessness in the Diaspora and in Palestine. Netanyahu
published an expanded version of his dissertation as a book in 1953, beginning
his last and decidedly longest chapter with the assertion that "[f]or one whose
general world view was spiritual-mystical, whose view of history was determi-
nistic and whose political ideal was theocratic, messianism represented a
unifying principle for all the aspects of his [Abarbanel's] doctrine." 3
While, however, messianism's role as the synthesizing principle of "all the
aspects" of Abarbanel's "doctrine" supplied the organizing principle for his
study, 4 Netanyahu indicated that his initial interest in his topic had been roused
by a larger concern: his perception of Abarbanel as "the father of the [Jewish]
messianic movements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." 5 It was an
ideology "fortified in large measure by the theories which had been expounded
by Abravanel" that inspired what Netanyahu deemed the "spiritual isolation-
ism and mystical messianism" characteristic of European Jewry at the very
time that Europe was being stirred to its foundations by "a succession of
powerful revolutionary movements, religious and philosophical, and when a
new rationalistic mode of thinking was gradually replacing the dogmatism and
mysticism of the Middle Ages." By contrast, during the "three hundred years
between the end of the Middle Ages and the French Revolution," as rationality
allegedly became the hallmark of Christian Europe's politics, world Jewry was
witness to a "sustained messianic drive" in its midst which was "completely
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 3

apocalyptic, completely divorced from politics or militarism, and which, unlike

all earlier, purely mystical messianic trends, was not limited to a small circle of
dreamers and intellectuals but became a mass movement in the full sense of the
word and affected the historical course of the Jewish people." 6 How did it
happen, wondered Netanyahu, that "at the very time the Jews banned Spinoza
they accepted Shabbethai Zevi with general enthusiasm?" One of the causes
"and not the least of them," 7 he concluded, was Abarbanel, whose "main
historic achievement - in Jewry as in Christendom - was linked with his
exposition of the messianic theme." To be sure "the time was certainly
favorable, but it was Abravanel who sowed the seed in the fruitful soil," 8 who
launched this "most potent messianic movement in Jewish history:' 9 Viewed
thus Abarbanel marked the closing phase of the Jewish Middle Ages and
beginning of "the era that followed"; 10 for like his contemporary Savonarola,
forerunner of the "Reformation which stirred Europe during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries," Abarbanel was "forerunner of the messianic movement
which stirred and agitated Jewry during the same period." 11 This, then, is the
matrix of ideas out of which emerged what remains the preeminent study of
Abarbanel written to date, a study whose starting premise is that Abarbanel
was a "mystic and apocalyptist of the highest stature and influence" who threw
a "long shadow on centuries of Jewish history after him." 12
Though here is not the place to discourse on the subject, it will readily be
observed that many of the conceptions which form the perimeter within which
Netanyahu located his study of Abarbanel no longer command the immediate
assent that they might have but a few decades ago. In particular, the notion that
European religio-political history between 1500 and 1800 saw a systematic
replacement of "the 'nuts' who were interpreting obscure texts in Scripture as
predictions of what was going to happen" 13 and their millenarian mentality
with rationalist alternatives has been drastically revamped. 14 What needs
emphasis in the current context, however, is the fact that the twin postulates
of messianism's unsurpassed centrality among Abarbanel's post-1492 preoccu-
pations and of the import of Abarbanel's teachings for later Jewish eschatology
were not simply byproducts of a politically animated Zionist graduate student's
idiosyncratic vision. Indeed, far from claiming a patent on these propositions,
Netanyahu viewed them as givens of the scholarship he inherited 15 and though
he did not name names these are not hard to produce. In fact, a historiographic
survey, by no means exhaustive, highlights how consistently and decisively
these propositions have governed studies of Abarbanel composed both before
and after Netanyahu's, and regularly found their way into narratives of early
modern Jewish messianism as well.
As a starting point one might take the period surrounding the year 1937, the
quincentenary of Abarbanel's birth, which saw production of numerous studies
devoted to Abarbanel that, among other things, assured readers of his close
link to Jewish messianism as thought and actualized. As Abarbanel was
pronounced "the theorist of the Jewish messianic teaching" by some, 16 others
indicated that "the feverish messianic hopes which animated the contempor-
aries of Abravanel and his immediate successors must have been fed by the
4 E. Lawee

passionate expectation of the advent of the messiah and the redemption from
persecution within the next thirty years expressed so forcibly by Abravanel in
his various writings." 17 Abarbanel was credited in particular with a large
contribution to the hopes stirred up by the appearance of David Reuveni and
Solomon Molkho later in the sixteenth century and, through the mid-
seventeenth-century mediation of Menasseh ben Israel, with the preparation
of "fertile soil for many pseudo-messianic movements, culminating in the
appearance of Sabbatai Zebi." 18 In a similar vein, a leading scholarly work
published in Yiddish pronounced Abarbanel a "harbinger of new mystical-
redemptive currents whose influence in the following two centuries grew
constantly greater in the Jewish quarter as life became ever darker." 19 In
expressing themselves thus, historians were, wittingly or otherwise, following
the nineteenth-century lead of Heinrich Graetz who accounted for the
messianic activities of the Ashkenazi enthusiast of Abarbanel's day, Asher
Lemlein, in terms of "the support given to messianic calculations by so
thoughtful and respected a man as Isaac Abravanel," these having, it was
conjectured, spurred Lemlein "to predict the immediate realization of messia-
nic ideals." 20
The idea that the 1492 expulsion and messianism in which it resulted formed
the nexus within which both Abarbanel's religious-intellectual biography and
spiritual-historical legacy should be defined remained current in works
produced during the decades surrounding the appearance of Netanyahu's
study. After indicating that the "prime task" which Abarbanel seems to have
taken for himself in the years after 1492 was an endeavor to revive in the
Spanish exiles a "sense of national pride and a faith in their imminent
redemption," one writer added that Abarbanel achieved his goal by advancing
the "validity of the messianic hope as a major article of faith in Judaism," then
concluded that with "perhaps even more immediate effect on his contempor-
aries and on Jewry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" Abarbanel
promoted his "deep conviction of the imminent realization of that hope." 21
Particular components of this cluster of resolutions were confirmed by others.
No less than Gershom Scholem, Sabbatianism's supreme student and the
leading twentieth-century scholar of Jewish messianism, affirmed that Abarba-
nel's eschatological writings "exerted a profound influence on later generations
and even adherents of the Sabbatian movement would quote them in support of
their contentions." 22 Others spoke more guardedly of Abarbanel's "probable"
direct or indirect influence on later messianic movements and restricted the
chronological range of this influence to the first half of the sixteenth century23
while continuing to depict Abarbanel as Jewish messianic thought's "foremost
theoretician," all of whose works were dominated by the idea of "Israel's
election and imminent deliverance." 24 More recently "great influence" has
again been ascribed to Abarbanel's messianic writings, it being attributed to
their early appearance in print and the outstanding authority of their author. 25
The conviction has even been expressed that Abarbanel did nothing less than
drive "the last nail into the coffin of Jewish hopes for political redemption." 26
Contemporary scholarly images of Abarbanel as writer and homo religiosus
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 5

dovetail with standard accounts of his lasting historical influence. 27 His

"messianic project" is seen as the "dominant theme of his post-Expulsion
writing" 28 and he himself is held to be a "fervid believer in the messianic
advent." 29 Of the two most recent book-length studies, one develops out of the
perception that the messianic works might open a window on the personal
inner world of the post-1492 Abarbanel- "l'homme Abravanel"- in a way that
Abarbanel's other Italian literary productions do not, 30 while the other, after
uniquely stressing Abarbanel's alleged preoccupation with "la question messia-
nique" from the earliest stage of his literary career, reiterates the conventional
understanding that Abarbanel's messianic writings galvanized "Ia reflexion et
les mouvements messianiques des deux siecles avenir." 31 In an extreme flight of
fancy, Abarbanel's religious mentality, identified with messianically-induced
political passivity, is even matched to the theologically conservative posture of
Moses Sofer, nineteenth-century founder of Hungarian ultra-orthodoxy, both
Abarbanel and Sofer being viewed as incarnations of post-talmudic Jewish
"immobilisme" who, in their battle with the embodiments of Jewish "dyna-
misme" (Spinoza and Rosenzweig), score an "evident victory"! 32
Before deciding how much weight to rest on these varied formulations,
individually and in what they share, a more extended look at Netanyahu's
approach is in order for several reasons: it contends more forcefully than all
others that later Jewish messianism operated within Abarbanelian constraints, it
alone offers a concrete scenario according to which this was so, and, as noted, it
reflects the view of Abarbanel's most definitive synthetic biographer to date.
While extolling what he deemed Abarbanel's many virtues, Netanyahu was
evidently perturbed by what he ajudged a glaring contradiction in Abarbanel
that, from "the nationalistic point ofview," 33 yielded a significant vice: the wily
courtier's failure to apply his indubitable political insights and ambitions as
attested in his service to gentile potentates to his own people's prostrate
political condition. In this Netanyahu followed Yitzhak Baer who, giving
Abarbanel as his only named example, depicted a certain type of schizoid
medieval Jewish leader who, while learned in political theory and practice,
nevertheless divided his life "into two separate compartments, politics in exile
and for the gentiles on one hand and eschatological hopes with respect to the
land of Israel on the other." 34 Similarly, Netanyahu affirmed that while
Abarbanel was a "realistic statesman when other nations were concerned," he
was "completely swayed by imagination when his own people were involved." 35
Despite all of his "experience in politics, his analytical mind, and his vast
knowledge of human affairs" Abarbanel still "saw the world through a veil" 36
due to a mystical messianism which encouraged him and the Jews of his day to
breathe "the atmosphere of dreams rather than reality.'m In the conclusions to
both parts of his book Netanyahu returned to the question of Abarbanel's
"realism" or lack thereof incessantly: "blurring his view of the realistic
conditions of the Jews in the world"; "the political Jewish leader of the age
was agitating against a realistic approach"; "if there was some measure of
realism in Jewish leadership of which Abravanel was the outstanding figure." 38
Underlying this concern was Netanyahu's understanding that "the millennia!
6 E. Lawee

idea in any religious movement" indicates "a secret weakness in that move-
ment, a lack of faith in its inner strength." 39 Yet another related leitmotif
widely scattered throughout Netanyahu's study was an assumed linkage
between mysticism, messianism, and passivity born of political illusion. 40 The
consequences of Abarbanel's embrace of the "falsely optimistic view" generally
held by Spanish Jews were at once grave and profoundly enduring. Abarbanel's
inability to "grasp the developments of his time with a cold and piercing
realistic view" 41 meant that the "political Jewish leader of the age" living at
no less than "the most sensitive moment in Jewish history" had offered Jews
supernatural visions of deliverance when what they really needed was a
"realistic course." 42
To chart connections between Netanyahu's vision of Abarbanel and ideas
expounded elsewhere in Netanyahu's scholarly and more popular expressions
would be a fruitful undertaking that, alas, must be left for another occasion. (A
critique in his recent magnum opus oflate medieval Hispano-Jewish converts to
Christianity for "wishful thinking" 43 and swipe at non-Revisionist strands of
Zionism in terms of secular messianism, as found in a public lecture given to
mark the hundredth anniversary of Jabotinsky's birth, suggest themselves as
two salient starting points for such an enterprise.) 44 For now, it may simply be
observed that Netanyahu's interest in Abarbanel was framed by his concern
with Jewish nationalism, 45 the connection between it and the ongoing vitality
of Abarbanel's messianic teachings being, in Netanyahu's mind, twofold. On
one hand these teachings informed "all the messianic movements that stirred
Jewry down to the end of the seventeenth century. Laemmlein, Molkho,
Reubeni, Shabbethai Zevi - all repeat Abravanelian principles." 46 On the other,
they not only failed to issue in a call to Jews to "gain salvation by their own
efforts" but actually impeded a "realistic" solution to the "Jewish problem"
broached by Don Joseph Nasi some fifty years after Abarbanel's death; for, as
Netanyahu understood it, the effort to rebuild Tiberias in the 1560s foundered
due to Abarbanel's having "accustomed Jews to thinking of redemption in a
supernatural way." The religio-historical causality was straightforward: it was
"the influence of Don Isaac Abravanel that destroyed the influence of Joseph
Nasi." 47
Let the foregoing suffice to suggest variations in emphasis and formulation
on the theme alluded to at the outset whose primary constituents are, to repeat:
(I) that the expulsion occasioned a decisive change in Abarbanel's spiritual and
literary path supplying, especially, the impetus for newly-acquired and pro-
found millennia! expectations which he expressed, elucidated, and buttressed
in his messianic tomes and other works written in Italy and (2) that
Abarbanel's messianic message was widely broadcast and, for various reasons,
affected Jewish eschatological thought and deed in subsequent centuries
profoundly, among other things helping to inspire millennia! excitement as late
as the seventeenth-century Sabbatian movement. But granting the novel
messianic turn in Abarbanel's interest and writings after the expulsion, there
remains many a good reason to revisit the aforementioned accounts of the
apocalyptic turn which the explusion engendered in Abarbanel and indelible
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbane/ 7

imprint which his eschatological teaching supposedly left on later Jewish

messianism. The beginnings of a more balanced picture lie in consideration of
the Ibero-Jewish scene prior to 1492.

II
As early as the 1390s, in the wake of anti-Jewish riots that swept through Spain,
an increase in messianic expectations took hold among parts of Spain's Jewish
and converso populations. These were heightened still further at mid-century
by an event which shook the world: Constantinople's fall to the Turks. Evidence
of augmented fifteenth-century Hispano-Jewish messianic awarenesses among
theologians, preachers, and laypeople alike is abundant in the Hebrew
literature of the period and is buttressed by observations found in Christian
sources as well. 48
To what extent eschatology was a concern of the Portuguese segment of
Iberian Jewry is a critical question that has hitherto gone unasked - critical
because it was in this community that Abarbanel passed all but nine of his fifty-
five Iberian years. The most salient surviving documentation as it relates to
Abarbanel -e.g., 'A!eret zeqenim, his first work written in Lisbon in the late
1460s, letters sent by Abarbanel to Yehiel ofPisa from Portugal, the writings of
Lisbon's chief rabbi and Abarbanel's probable mentor Joseph Hayyun- yields,
by and large, a blank. Abarbanel was not oblivious to the problem of Jewish
exile before the summer of 1492, to be sure. If nothing else, he had the memory
of a renowned grand-father who in, or more likely prior to 1391, had received
baptism49 as well as the ongoing dire predicament of neighboring Spain's
conversos to remind him of one of exile's more calamitous consequences for
the Jewish people. Thus it is hardly surprising to find Abarbanel writing in a
Lisbon letter of the early 1480s of the Jewish people's lowly state "from the day
that our city was laid waste, our temple was destroyed, and Judah was exiled
from his land." 50 Note might also be taken of Abarbanel's pious wish for Jewish
restoration in the Holy Land in a concluding note to 'Aferet zeqenim. But if one
need not doubt the genuineness of this entreaty ("establish us forever upon our
soil and raise up unto us a faithful shepherd") 51 neither can one see in it
anything which extends beyond the boundaries of conventional medieval
Jewish expressions to this effect, nor does the chapter which precedes this
conclusion offer anything near a sufficiently wide foundation to support claims
for Abarbanel's "unceasing" fixation with "the messianic question" from his
earliest writings. 52
One would, then, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, presume as a
matter of course Abarbanel's sensitivity to the problem of exile and theoretical
allegiance to basic Jewish eschatological principles throughout his Portuguese
years. Still, prior to his 1483 flight from the land of his birth to Castile, there is
no evidence of any special engagement with these issues on his part.
The picture changes little after the departure from an environment appar-
ently devoid of intense apocalypticism for a nearly decade-long sojourn in
Spain and the eschatologically charged atmosphere of Jewish and Christian
8 E. Lawee

Castile (Christian messianic fervor there being, it has been surmised, in large
measure indebted to Jewish converts to Christianity). 53 Among some Spanish
Jews in the century prior to 1492, perhaps in consequence of the depths of their
despair in the wake of mass forced conversions and other trials, there was a
profound longing for Israel's imminent redemption. Others relinquished this
hope entirely54 while still others must have careened from one extreme to
another. However this may be, messianism failed to leave any mark on the
pages penned by Abarbanel on Spanish soil, even though the biblical
commentaries on the books of the Former Prophets which Abarbanel wrote
there did provide an opening for discussing such matters, especially given
Abarbanel's highly discursive and associative exegetical style. There is another
spur to apocalyptic expectations which one might have expected to find
engaging Abarbanel more than those of other Jews of his day while still in
Iberia: the great voyages of discovery sponsored by the Portuguese and Spanish
courts where he was so prominent a financier and courtier; but these too seem
not to have left any messianic imprint on Abarbanel, if he at all encountered
messianic ruminations on the new discoveries in the Iberian corridors of power
he so habitually strolled. 55
After 1492 an apparently "new" Isaac Abarbanel emerges for whom the
question of the time when history would be set aright has become central as
never before. Abarbanel's answer to this question as expressed in the first
constituent of his "messianic trilogy" 56 Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, a commentary
on Daniel written in 1496-97, left not even the slightest room for doubt: the
Messiah had been born "before the great expulsion caused death and destruc-
tion for the Jewish diaspora in Spain since in truth already then the great
sufferings accompanying the birthpangs of the Messiah began." 57 While
retreating from this claim elsewhere in the trilogy, 58 Abarbanel remained
constant in his efforts to "reveal the day of redemption in the ears of the sons
of Judah." 59 As in the Daniel commentary he affirmed that the Messiah would
arrive in 1503 or that major events anticipating his arrival no later than 1531
would occur at that time. 60
Signs of the forthcoming upheaval could be found in many places, taught
Abarbanel, not least the stars. Regarding the "great conjunction" of Jupiter
and Saturn, whose vital importance had been stressed by the twelfth-century
Barcelonan Jewish savant Abraham bar Hiyya, he wrote:

Since the effect of the great conjunction is to transfer the nation or subject
that receives its influence from one extreme to the other ... , its activity will
not affect a nation of average standing and size to enhance it. Of necessity,
however, its influence will affect a nation that is at the extreme of
degradation, the extreme of abasement, and enslaved in a foreign land. The
result is that the conjunction is then able to carry them to the [opposite]
extreme ofhigh stature. 61 The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces of
1464 had, then, ushered in an era that, barring divine intercession, would
culminate in the Jewish people's deliverance fifty years later as millennia
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 9

earlier this same astral configuration had inaugurated the redemption of

their ancestors from Egypt. 62
One need, then, hardly belabor the wealth of detailed messianic speculation
and intricate eschatological calculation with which the messianic works brim to
see that the case for Abarbanel's essentially eschatological reaction to 1492 is
far from groundless. After all, beginning in 1496, this scholar and communal
leader who famously claimed descent from the house of David63 devoted his
writing for nearly two years running to the topic of messianism and nothing
else. What exited was three studies of the Jewish messianic idea that together
comprised the largest such inquiry that a Jew had ever composed (and which,
for sheer size, remains unsurpassed in Hebrew literature down to this day), a set
of tomes in which was set forth a powerful message of Israel's salvation and
specific predictions for its imminent realization. 64
There is more. To Netanyahu and others it has seemed patent that many if
not most of Abarbanel's Italian works, and not just the messianic trilogy itself,
emerged out of the same framework of communal dissolution and millennia!
conviction which generated the messianic writings proper. This approach
seems most promising in the case of Abarbanel's theodicy $edeq 'o/amim,
begun in Naples and lost forever in that city's sack in 1494. On a recent
scholar's reckoning - which, with some qualification, should be granted - this
work should be accounted as yet another of Abarbanel's prodigious studies in
Jewish eschatology. 65 Initially Yemot 'o/am, the historical work which Abarba-
nel envisioned in the wake of the expulsion and which he began to write several
years later, lends itself to a similar line of interpretation. For Netanyahu it was
clearly a response to "the great tragedy" that had befallen the Jewish people in
1492, the work's aim ostensibly being to "present and analyze" the people's
powers of endurance in pre-redemptive times. Similarly, Abarbanel's commen-
tary on the Haggadah Zeva~ pesal}, written in Monopoli in 1496, was for
Netanyahu a treatise on the "problem of redemption" which had then became
"uppermost" in Abarbanel's mind. The involved study of the world's creation
Shamayim ~adashim, composed in Monopoli in 1498 shortly after the messia-
nic trilogy's completion, was an effort to "strengthen and expand the theore-
tical foundations of the great miracle of redemption." This work and yet
another which Abarbanel devoted to the problem of creation, Mif'alot 'elohim,
would together then be explained as an attempt to support a theory of "divine,
miraculous redemption" 66 - i.e., in another scholar's formulation, as works
that, despite their surface focus on the problem of creation, nevertheless
"subserve a messianic end" inasmuch as Abarbanel "had to establish the
createdness of the world in order to make possible miracles in general and the
miracle of redemption in particular." 67 The conclusion would be that Abarba-
nel's "emphasis on the fundamental character of creation ... is part and parcel
of his entire messianic project." 68
At first glance, then, the evidence of his writings would seem not only to
allow but virtually to require the conclusion that Abarbanel's religious and
literary response to 1492 was primarily eschatological. And yet there are more
than a few points, some rather basic, that pull in the opposite direction.
10 E. Lawee

Minimally, on the evidence of the writings, which is mostly what there is to

go on, it must be granted that Abarbanel's post-1492 eschatological conscious-
ness dawned slowly. His first Italian work, a commentary on Kings, was
completed a year after 1492; yet, though its introduction is oft excerpted for
its moving (if at points also likely somewhat tendentious) 69 insider-account of
the events leading up to and immediately following the expulsion, the
commentary itself hardly reveals a scholar consumed by catastrophe or the
messianic potential of the moment but instead one determined to conclude his
long-projected venture to interpret the books of the Former Prophets as
conceived in Portugal and begun in deed in Spain - an aim achieved in the
work in a manner more or less continuous with what had come before. 70
Harder to judge is Yemot 'olam, if only because whatever seemingly little
progress Abarbanel made on this volume has not survived. One obvious
approach is to view it through the lens of the sudden rise in Jewish historio-
graphy in the sixteenth century as attributed to expulsion-related trauma, with
millennia! yearnings giving rise to an apocalyptic interest in history as a
mediating factor. 71 But this explanation is not inevitable. In Abarbanel's case
it is weakened substantially by the existence of clear historical impulses in his
pre-1492 non-messianic Spanish works such that it surely cannot be said of
Abarbanel - as has recently been observed regarding the mid-sixteenth century
Italian preacher Mordechai Dato - that "his historiographic interest is wholly
subjugated to his messianic thought." 72 What is more, various studies now
question the generally alleged medieval Jewish neglect of history and historical
writing73 and the case against such neglect is documented most fully with
respect to a number of late medieval southern French and Iberian scholars
including Abarbanel (and perhaps a circle of ordinary Jewish readers also) who
pursued questions of Jewish history, in part through exploration of what
Christian historical works had to teach about it. 74 The genre of the Hebrew
historical chronicle was not a post-1492 invention; a no-longer extant exemplar
devoted, like Abarbanel's history, to a narration of Jewish suffering was penned
nearly a full century prior to the expulsion by the Catalonian scholar Profet
Duran, and this work was one that Abarbanel knew. 75 If, then, Abarbanel's
vast historical learning is deftly deployed time and again in the messianic
works76 and his decision to write a historical work proper as yet requires an
accounting, these facts alone do not warrant the definitive conclusion that
Yemot 'olam grew primarily out of post-expulsion interest in salvation history.
What of works composed in closer chronological proximity to the messianic
tomes? Some contain messianic materials inevitably, like the commentary on
Isaiah. Others, however, appear to have been forced quite unnaturally into an
eschatological mold. The clearest case is Shamayim ~adashim, where a
dispassionate assessment yields another chapter in Abarbanel's life-long
endeavor to clarify and appraise Maimonidean teachings rather than a prop
to post-expulsion eschatology. Indeed, as in the messianic works, so in
Shamayim ~adashim Abarbanel refers to a living context for his literary activity
but it is neither expulsion nor eschatology nor the relation of these to question
of the world's createdness. Rather, learned friends had asked whether Maimo-
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 11

nides' arguments in favor of creation were "true, right, sound and sturdy" or
"rhetorical" and non-demonstrative and if the latter, whether Maimonides had
advanced such arguments sincerely or "deceitfully ... out of deference to the
Torah." 77 The question as formulated reflected the problem of Maimonidean
esotericism, a problem with which Abarbanel had grappled since his Lisbon
days. 78
As it is representative of many of Abarbanel's other Italian works, two
further points concerning Shamayim f.zadashim should be noted. First, far from
taking the form of a tract for the times, this study is, like Abarbanel's pre-1492
writings, a systematic, abstruse, and decidedly extended discourse. It is hard to
believe that many Spanish exiles could have negotiated the pages and pages of
methodically argued exhaustive commentary on a single chapter in Maimo-
nides' Guide and related issues that is Shamayim f.zadashim. It is harder to see
how those that might have done so would have connected this protracted and
knotty parsing of cosmological intricacies with feelings of millennia! hope or
eschatological despair. Second, this work, like so many of Abarbanel's Italian
works, meshes not only with literary trends and theological concerns attested
in his own pre-1492 curriculum vitae but with religious foci characteristic of
pre-1492 Iberian Jewish scholarship generally. 79 It, like so many of Abarbanel's
Italian works, seems more proof of how little expulsion-related millennia!
concerns affected Abarbanel's religious orientation and "research agenda"
after 1492, not how much.
Finally, when discussing works written by Abarbanel in Italy prior to the
messianic tracts a word is in order about Zevaf.z pesaf.z. Completed but a few
months before work on the messianic trilogy commenced, this Haggadah
commentary does obviously have the Jewish people's future redemption as a
principle theme. Yet, incredibly, it lacks entirely detailed predictions concern-
ing the "when" of the Messiah's arrival and the outpouring of apocalyptic
rhetoric soon to follow in the messianic works (still more amazingly this
striking feature of the work has hitherto gone unremarked). Despite obvious
points of contact as regards their basic themes, then, the Haggadah commen-
tary is by no means easily assimilable to the messianic works begun so soon
after its completion. 80
Turning to works written in the last half-decade of Abarbanel's life -
especially those he considered his most important, his commentaries on the
Torah81 - messianism is still more conspicuous by its absence. Among these
works are the commentary on Maimonides' Guide as well as a study on
prophecy (the latter and perhaps both begun in Lisbon) as well as Abarbanel's
lengthy answers to the questions about Maimonides of a Cretan scholar, Saul
Hakohen. Judging, then, by his actual writings and expressed literary ambi-
tions, Abarbanel's later years saw a return to his core religious concerns as they
had first emerged in his native Portugal: biblical interpretation and Jewish
theology with Maimonides' Guide as a point of departure. Or, as Abarbanel
told Saul Hakohen in describing the foci of his most mature reflections, "I
restricted myself to study of the Guide and commentaries on the Holy
Scriptures for from it [such study] emerges all the topics of the wisdom of the
12 E. Lawee

Torah and many questions regarding it which are allayed by the wisdom of the
Master." 82
While, then, much ink has been spilled now for decades on Abarbanel's
messianism83 no one has explained- or, it would seem, barely even stopped to
notice - the near-total absence of messianic concerns in the works of his last
half-decade of life, including his monumental Torah commentaries. 84 Seen in
terms of the writings of his final years, the apocalyptic propositions and
rhetoric of the messianic works require evaluation anew: either the strong
apocalyptic feelings which this rhetoric implies were later repressed by
Abarbanel (or no longer given written expression) after his messianic predic-
tions failed to materialize or they never really gripped him in a very meaningful
way in the first place.
A brief survey of Abarbanel's non-literary activities in Italy round out the
picture painted thus far. Unlike other apocalyptically oriented pre-and post-
expulsion Iberian writers Abarbanel did not view himself as an agent of the
process of redemption which he forecast. 85 In this respect he stands at a far
remove from his older contemporary, Savonarola, to whom Netanyahu
compared Abarbanel at such great length. Abarbanel's lack of messianic
activism in Italy - if one excludes his writing from this category 86 - is, then,
not unexpected and by no means indicative in and of itself of a lack of
messianic good faith. Still, it does seem salient that as Abarbanel's writings
after 1492 remained in good measure on the pattern of what had come before,
so too did his practical endeavors inasmuch as continuity was possible - a truth
which might reinforce doubts about his existential commitment to his
messianic speculations.
Of Abarbanel's activities in Naples, his first stop in Italy, few specifics are
known, though his swift rise to prominence seems assured. Abarbanel tells of
wealth recouped and fame regained 87 and when Charles VIII converged on
Naples pressing a claim to the Neapolitan crown, king Alfonso II fled with
Abarbanel at his side. 88 If Charles aroused messianic expectations among
many Christians and perhaps even a few Jews, 89 it is well understood why, in
light of his personal circumstances, Abarbanel was not among them. In the
practical activities of his first four post-1492 years, then, Abarbanel the "mystic
and apocalyptist" is hard to find.
The years after his favored messianic date, 1503, leave by and large the same
impression. It was around this year that Abarbanel moved to Venice where his
middle son was then residing, eventually to die there about a half-decade later.
As already noted the change in venue saw a return to scholarly pursuits begun
in Iberia but, more immediately, a return to the world of politics abandoned a
decade earlier, as Abarbanel placed himself at the middle of negotiations
between Venice and Portugal over the international spice trade. By August of
1503 Abarbanel had presented a plan to the Venetian Consiglio dei Deici from
which he received a letter assuring him of the maritime empire's "customary
°
gratitude" should all go well. 9 Contemplation on the messianic advent gave
way to more this-worldly affairs.
If the passage of 1503 without the Messiah's arrival made any deep
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 13

impression on Abarbanel - if he was crushed by the failure of the Messiah to

appear in this year - his experience of "great disappointment" 91 barely left a
mark on his final years of writing or practical activity. Revising up by a couple
of years, in his commentary on Ezekiel, the 1503 date which he had offered as
the time for the redemption in Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah (and by one year the 1504
date which he had proffered in Mashmia' yeshu'ah) Abarbanel expressed the
hope that the Hebrew year 5265, due to end in fall of 1505, might still mark the
conclusion of the forty-year period which had commenced in 1464 at the time
of "the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn" wherein, according to
Ezekiel's prophecy as Abarbanel understood it, the children of Israel were
destined to wander in the "wilderness of the peoples (Ezek. 20:35)." 92 Never
again would Abarbanel write another word on the date of the messianic advent
nor is there any trace of efforts to rethink fundamental eschatological
principles or rework specific messianic scenarios. Instructive is the contrast in
this respect with the Iberian-born messianic prognosticator of decades follow-
ing, Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi; who displayed a "continuing concern with
defending his messianic predictions in the face of apparently contradictory
evidence" and engaged in "painstaking attempts to integrate new data into his
scenario." 93 For Abraham, admission of a complete breach between his
messianic visions and historical reality was a psychological impossibility. In
Abarbanel's case the nearly complete wall of silence makes direct access to his
thoughts impossible but the impression is of one who emerged with few
emotional scars in the wake of his "failed prophecy" for 1503. In years
thereafter, as has been demonstrated, the "mystic and apocalyptist" is still
farther to seek - nay, vanished.
What emerges from a survey of Abarbanel's life in Italy, then, tallies with the
evidence of his Italian works as seen afresh earlier. If apocalypticism "not only
promises release from this world but actually places the believer one step into
the next," 94 Abarbanel's day-to-day activities such as these are known and
post-1492 writings do not for the most part yield an apocalyptist living with a
foot planted in messianic soil.
To clarify, none of the foregoing is to trivialize Abarbanel's post-1492 (or
rather post-1495) "messianic turn"; one would be hard-pressed to dismiss it as
a minor curiosity or mere "flirtation" with messianism devoid of larger
significance. Least of all is the above inventory of data intended to deny the
apparent seriousness of Abarbanel's messianic writings. What these data
should do, however, is dispel any notion that this turn and these writings were
inevitabilities. Even prima facie there was good cause to suspect the standard
depiction of Abarbanel as a practically-engaged and cosmopolitan traditional-
ist gone messianic; yet despite some of the rather obvious problems which
attend it this depiction has, as was seen, been profusely incorporated into a
range of historical narratives. A recent characterization of Mordechai Dato
states that "his vision of the messianic redemption is the sole and exclusive
content of his expressions and meditations." 95 So secondary literature past and
present generally depicts an undifferentiated post-1492 Abarbanel. The truth,
however, is that Abarbanel's messianism is not so easily located on the
14 E. Lawee

trajectory of his personal and practical life or literary production after 1492 all
of which, it has been suggested (and which, as regards the works, has been
demonstrated extensively elsewhere), 96 show considerable continuity with what
had come before. 97

III
Having arrived at this point, a fresh explanation of Abarbanel's messianism
and redescription of the messianic works seems required, focusing not on so
much on details of his "messianic posture" as on the many conundrums, large
and small, which surround Abarbanel's eschatological interests and commit-
ments simply. Intellectual, psychological, and historical "why-questions" 98
abound: why did Abarbanel write works with significant messianic content
when he did, some four years after 1492? Why is his apocalyptic turn so little
signaled in works written immediately prior to this time? Why did he stay silent
about the messianic question during his waning years? Specific questions about
the messianic works arise as well: why they are structured in tripartite fashion,
whether they were addressed primarily to a Hispano-Jewish refugee audience,
and so forth. Though a definitive wider synthesis awaits additional study and
reflection, the following remarks should help to formulate some of the new
questions that such study should encompass and to widen the range of possible
answers considered with respect to uncertainties surrounding the intent with
which Abarbanel set out on the messianic theme and the credence that he gave
to his own messianic prognostications.
It seems well to begin by observing better than has hitherto been done how
much the "messianic works" are not messianic at all. The pervasive tone of
eschatological tension and anticipation found in many other messianic writings
of the period is absent from significant stretches of these works as Abarbanel
engages in his usual practice of lengthy and methodical exegesis. Even
substantively, the characterization of these works as "messianic" is more than
a little misleading. Consider Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, a commentary's whose
relative comprehensiveness contrasts sharply with Abraham ben Eliezer's
Meshare qitrin, which restricts itself to Daniel's "messianic chapters." 99 True,
it was Abarbanel's way to do things thoroughly or not at all, and there is
ultimately no question as to the overall eschatological pitch of the Daniel
commentary (as attested, for instance, in its very opening pages with its
extended apology for undertaking messianic calculations). 100 Nonetheless,
had Abarbanel wished simply to extract messianic content from this biblical
book in order to soothe shattered Spanish souls or refute Christian interpreta-
tions, he could have commented on considerably less of the book than he did,
omitting exegeses of Daniel's companions' refusal to bow to the king's image,
Nebuchadnezzar's derangement, Daniel in the den of lions, and so forth. In
other words, this work is very much a study by a writer whose primary metier
had been and by and large remained biblical interpretation.
In a similar manner, Abarbanel's aggadah commentary Yeshu'ot meshi~o.
despite its focus on messianic materials, is very much a study in aggadic
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 15

interpretation. Its combined eschatological and anti-Christian focus and the

concomitant demand to attend to methodological issues does not sufficiently
explain, for example, this work's involved critical schematization of previous
post-rabbinic approaches to the promising and problematic non-legal rabbinic
patrimony. 101 So one can easily overemphasize the immediacy of the messianic
works' connection to their living context by abstracting from their ample non-
messianic content and overstating their practical intention. Concise (!) refer-
ence manuals for preachers attempting to blunt the Christian offensive these
works are not. 102
Still, it is a truism that, in the form that they found expression in Italy,
Abarbanel's messianic interests were deeply intertwined with events amounting
to a severe crisis on the ground. In the introductions to the messianic works
and other writings produced sooner after 1492, Abarbanel repeatedly ex-
pressed his alarm at the religious aftershocks of Spanish Jewry's expulsion.
The messianic disillusionment experienced by many in Spain prior to 1492 had
deepened. 103 In the opening paragraph of the commentary on rabbinic
messianic dicta, Yeshu'ot meshibo, 104 Abarbanel articulated his coreligionists'
disbelief, having them declare: "our bones are dry, our hope is lost ... the
anointed of the God of Jacob is dead or broken or imprisoned; his sun will not
shine." Abarbanel clearly wished to console and encourage his coreligionists by
reassuring them of the ongoing validity of Jewish messianic hope. In his own
words, he sought to "strengthen feeble hands and weak knees, to try to bring
comfort to those who stumble from the exile and those who remain of the
multitude, to seek out in the book of the Lord His good word as imparted to
His servants, the prophets ... , to inquire 'how long it shall be until the end of the
wonders' [Dan. 12:6] ...." 105
Granting, however, that the motive of "messianic works as consolation"
forms a piece of the puzzle, it can bear only so much of the load as an
"explanation" of the messianic trilogy. First, if the justification of post-
expulsion reassurance might explain some of Abarbanel's recourse to messian-
ism after 1492, it does little to account for his concrete predictions of imminent
eschatological relief; on this, more anon. But apart from this, even if Abarbanel
was indeed "the most important propagator of an imminent millennium
among the Iberian exiles in Italy," 106 one might ask: were these his sole
audience as is often tacitly or explicitly assumed? Ab initio, it seems more than
a little far-fetched to suppose that Abarbanel completely disregarded non-
Iberian Jews as he wrote, as if the Messiah's advent was of no interest to those
who had not participated personally in Spanish Jewry's catastrophe. And how
much were such Jews in need of consoling? It might be recalled that not all
Spanish scholar-refugees writing in Italy after 1492 spoke exclusively to the
refugee community. Some, indeed, deliberately spoke to an Italian audience. 107
What is more, it has become more clear of late just how small the Hispano-
Jewish refugee community living in Italy was. 108 In the case of Abarbanel's
messianic works, one does get the sense that their author is fighting battles of
Spanish origin on Italian soil; 109 yet this fact does not mean that his parries
were prompted solely by fresh memories of pre-1492 missionary initiatives as
16 E. Lawee

harbored by the Spanish exiles. Indeed these same, as well as native Italian
Jews, may have been subjected to missionizing arguments in Italy even after
1492 where a tradition of anti-Jewish disputation also existed even as, by the
end of the fifteenth century, it could hardly match its Spanish counterpart for
virulence. 110 The question of audience for Abarbanel's various writings
generally and for the messianic works in particular must here be left open. Let
these few observations suggest, however, the extent to which the "messianic
works as consolation" paradigm would seem to require revision once one
ponders the (majority?) non-Spanish audience of these works. 111
If, after 1492, Jewish hands were enfeebled and knees badly buckled, the
urgings of Christian controversialists only aggravated the "plague" of despair
afflicting the "house of Israel." 112 These urgings that Jews relinquish their
ancestral religion on the grounds that the messianic age that they awaited
would never come, which had taken so great a toll on Spanish Jewry in the
century prior to the expulsion, as no Spanish refugee needed reminding, could
not have seemed but more compelling after 1492, even to those who had made
the difficult decision to leave Spain rather than convert to Christianity. The
missionary attack is not only inscribed in the contents of Abarbanel's messianic
works but in their very structure. From around the mid-thirteenth century,
Christian polemicists had regularly appealed to two bodies of literature to
bolster their case: the Bible, whose authority they acknowledged along with
Jews, and rabbinic literature. 113 Abarbanel responded to this two-pronged
attack accordingly, explaining the meaning of scriptural testimonia relating to
the messianic age in Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah and Mashmia' yeshu'ah (with the
first of these given over to the Hebrew Bible's main apocalyptic text) and
rebutting cristological interpretations of rabbinic messianic sayings in Yeshu'ot
meshi/Jo.
And yet, the heavily anti-Christian focus of the messianic works should give
pause; for it points to continuities between the pre- and post-1492 worlds
Abarbanel inhabited, and not just as regards Christian-Jewish interreligious
disputation. The anti-Christian animus hardly requires the expulsion in order
to be understood; indeed, it is the notorious spokesperson of Christendom at
the early fifteenth-century Spanish disputation of Tortosa and San Mateo,
Geronimo de Santa Fe, who is Abarbanel's main opponent in Yeshu'ot
meshi1Jo 114 and, in general, the messianic works do not register changes in the
substance and dynamics of earlier Christian-Jewish disputation due to the
expulsion.U 5 And, as already noted, messianic concerns were clearly conse-
quential to Spanish Jews prior to 1492, both ordinary and scholarly. Indeed,
early fifteenth-century Spanish thinkers with whom Abarbanel was regularly in
"dialogue," like Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo, discussed a range of
messianic doctrines that eventually stimulated (positively or negatively) Abar-
banel's discourse in his messianic works. 116 In the event, the messianic works
were written in the wake of a historical disaster that could not but leave its
mark on them but in their many anti-Christian elements and other aspects,
Abarbanel could have written these works in Iberia in much the same way as he
did in Italy.
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 17

The foregoing significant refinements and reservations withstanding, the

conventional teaching obviously still holds in some measure. In his all-
encompassing treatment of Jewish messianism Abarbanel sought to reaffirm
the Jewish messianic idea in the face of despair occasioned by the expulsion as
exacerbated by Christian claims regarding the futility of ongoing Jewish
eschatological hopes. Having arrived at this point, however, one can introduce
further complicating perspectives, even taking the crisis occasioned by the
expulsion as an explanatory given. 117
Seen in terms of post-expulsion reassurance and anti-Christian critique,
Abarbanel's messianism appears solely as an expediency, as a sop to Spanish
exiles' faltering faith. But a purely political-rhetorical understanding of
Abarbanel's messianism, reducing it to various "social functions," is hard to
accept in light of Abarbanel's strong distaste for esotericism of all sorts 118 and
the vast intellectual energies which Abarbanel poured into the messianic works.
Most vitally, there is the problem of the clear dangers that Abarbanel courted
when he predicted Israel's redemption for the immediate short-term. In light of
these factors it seems unimaginable that Abarbanel could have made these
predictions on the basis of no real conviction. 119 Clearly other factors must be
introduced in tandem with the need to assure despairing refugees and refute
Christian claims if a plausible account of Abarbanel's post-1492 messianism is
to be achieved.
One obvious possibility that suggests itself is some notion of the expulsion
itself as a messianic turning point. For some, the expulsion and subsequent
events, like the mass forced conversion of Portuguese Jewry in 1497, far from
leading to thoroughgoing despair, encouraged their belief in the final messianic
drama's imminence. An anonymous writer of Portuguese provenance speaking
in the early years of the sixteenth century opined that the reason that all things
depended on "the exile of Jerusalem in Spain" and "all suffering began for the
Jews in this country" was that it was at the end of the earth and hence it was
fitting that through it "all the world will proclaim that '[God] is one and His
name is one."d 20 In espousing an "acute apocalyptic messianism" 121 in which
the expulsion played a central role, this author was anticipated by Abarbanel
and other refugee-scholars who expressed the view that Iberian Jewry's
disintegration marked a stage in (either step towards or part of) 122 the
divinely-ordained plan for final redemption. Abarbanel was most explicit on
this score in his commentary on Isaiah, completed soon after the messianic
works, where he observed that the various expulsions of Jews culminating in
the Spanish expulsion had had the effect of moving Jews and conversos "such
that all of them left from all parts of the West ... and in this manner do they
assemble in the vicinity of the Land of Israel." 123
Beyond the effort to see in the disaster of expulsion some providential hand,
one might posit a special reason why Abarbanel might have been drawn to an
interpretation of this event as a necessary stage in the messianic unfolding. All
knew, if only because Abarbanel had told them in the introduction to his
commentary on Kings, 124 of his and others' intercessory efforts to secure the
expulsion edict's withdrawal - efforts which had failed with devastating effect.
18 E. Lawee

By casting the expulsion as a step in a larger eschatological plan Abarbanel

could ward off any criticism of his political failure. To put this interpretation on
a firmer foundation, one would want to know more than is known presently (or
perhaps can be known) about the extent to which Abarbanel blamed himself
for any perceived missteps in his efforts to have the expulsion edict withdrawn
or whether, in the wake of the expulsion, others blamed him in this way. 125 In
general, however, one can say that one would expect the messianic import of
the expulsion to be emphasized far more than it is in the messianic works if this
opinion lay at the heart of this literary enterprise or if Abarbanel was striving
for personal exculpation through the works' execution.
In sum, the need to comfort Spanish exiles and bolster Jewish messianic
claims in the light of the Christian critique as well as the desire to explain the
expulsion in providential terms and, perhaps, tacitly absolve himself of
responsibility for his and Spain's Jewish leadership's failure to stave off the
expulsion all present themselves as likely or possible parts of the puzzle that is
Abarbanel's messianism. Outstanding is the question of the degree to which
Abarbanel believed in his own messianic visions and dates.
Justifying, somewhat circularly, his sensitive venture to "calculate" such
dates, he argued that this time, though concealed from previous great
authorities, was destined to be revealed to a select few in the period
immediately preceding the Messiah's arrival. Since the general period of
redemption was "near," he was permitted to calculate its precise time. 126 As,
however, Abarbanel was well aware, many earlier authorities had offered
predictions of the time of "the end" - no less than the likes of Saadya Gaon,
Rashi, and Nahmanides as well as Abraham bar Hiyya - and several of these
predictions had not materialized (bar Hiyya's was still pending and, as shall be
noted presently, served as a major inspiration for Abarbanel and others in his
day). The precedent established by these earlier scholars showed that one
apparently absolute rabbinic condemnation of "calculation of the end" 127 must
have been intended only qualifiedly - to astrologically-based calculations as
Abarbanel understands it. Aware, however, that at the end of Ma'ayenei ha-
yeshu'ah he would, basing himself on bar Hiyya, engage in just this sort of
calculation, Abarbanel restricted the purport of the rabbinic interdiction still
further: even astrological calculations were permitted so long as the calculator
granted that his results could be altered by God and, further, that all
eschatological predictions, whether biblically- or star-based, were products of
fallible human reason. 128 Knowing the failure of earlier Jewish messianic
prognosticators and granting the possibility of error, at least in theory, for his
own messianic calculations, and having 1531 as a backup date, Abarbanel
could not have been completely surprised by 1503's passing without any
obvious sign of messianic tumult.
But did Abarbanel concede the possibility of error only in theory? Just how
whole-heartedly did he embrace his messianic dates? Apart from evidence
already adduced to suggest that Abarbanel was hardly "certain beyond a
shadow of a doubt about the date of the Messiah's coming," 129 a passage in
the messianic works seems potentially revelatory of a very different psycholo-
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 19

gical reality. In the epilogue to Yeshu'ot meshi~o, Abarbanel, after venturing

that his foregoing study could mark a turning-point in the history of aggadic
interpretation inasmuch as he has "carved out an opening for those who come
after me," adds: "it would also be of solace to me if men 'skillful in knowledge
and discerning in wisdom [Dan. 1:4]' would arise to explicate the aggadot of the
Talmud and Midrashim in a good way, following straight paths, in a manner
consistent with that which is intelligible - not according to the philosophy of
the Greeks, but in keeping with traditional truth ...." 130 Is this how one who
believed that the era of pre-messianic aggadic interpretation was soon to close
should be expected to write? Should we not expect loud declamations against
philosophically oriented aggadic interpreters, Maimonides at their head, whose
eschatological naturalism would soon be exposed in all its wrongheadedness by
events on the ground? At the end of his second "messianic work," however, we
find a writer preoccupied by the need for a cadre of scholars able to confront
rationalist distortions of aggadic texts in an unredeemed world, not one who,
possessed by "fervid" messianic sentiments or out of a "deep conviction of the
imminent realization" of the messianic hope, eagerly anticipates the prospect of
a definitive conclusion to the debate over uncertainties surrounding the
messianic era, as grounded in part on ambiguous messianic aggadot, six years
hence. However this may be, little disturbs the impression that as Abarbanel
wrote the concluding lines to his second "messianic work," the Messiah's
imminent advent was far from his mind.

IV
In addressing the question of Abarbanel's influence on subsequent Jewish
messianism two general points are noteworthy at the outset: first, despite
frequent assertions of its vast dimensions, this impact has scarcely been
documented; and second, it is important to distinguish more carefully than
some have hitherto between Abarbanel's influence on subsequent Jewish
messianic thought and on later Jewish messianic movements ("la reflexion" and
"les mouvements messianiques" in one above-cited formulation). To trace
Abarbanel's imprint in both of these areas it seems advisable to begin by
noticing where, when, and in what formats his messianic ideas were dissemi-
nated, with the obvious point of departure for this exercise being a quick look
at the messianic works' mechanical reproduction.
Though Abarbanel was one of the earliest Hebrew authors to have books of
his printed in his lifetime, his messianic tomes were not among his earliest
works to be mechanically reproduced. They were preceded by the Haggadah
and Avot commentaries, Rosh 'amanah, the commentaries on the Former
Prophets, and the commentaries on the Later Prophets. 131 Mashmia' yeshu'ah
was first printed in Solonika in 1526 and was then not reprinted until the mid-
seventeenth century in Amsterdam and thereafter not until the second half of
the nineteenth century. Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah first appeared in Ferrara in 1551
as the first volume of this city's Hebrew press. 132 This fact might alone impress
until one learns that Abarbanel's middle son Joseph was a preeminent Ferrara
20 E. Lawee

community leader at the time, which, more than any sudden upsurge in interest
in this work's eschatological complexities, presumably decided the issue of
inaugural selection in favor of his father's work. 133 Whatever Joseph's involve-
ment, one clearly cannot speak of the tract's continuing influence on Jewish
thought due to "frequent Hebrew printings for three hundred years" 134 since
the work was reprinted but twice prior to 1900. 135 That it was "a common topic
of millenarian controversy" among Christians may be, 136 but this truth would
only suggest what further research may yet confirm - that Abarbanel's
messianic writings were read as much or more by Christians than Jews during
parts of early modernity. 137 Most remarkably, Yeshu'ot meshi~o was not printed
until the third decade of the nineteenth century. 138 Given this late date and the
fact that the work has come down in only one manuscript, 139 itself almost as
late as the editio princeps, one wonders how widely studied this commentary on
messianic aggadot could have been in the centuries after Abarbanel's death.
Of course, Abarbanel's messianic message was undoubtedly diffused through
conduits other than the printed messianic works. Aspects of it could be found
in writings printed sooner after Abarbanel's death than these works, especially
the commentaries on the Later Prophets first published in Pesaro in 1520. 140
One might also assume the early appeal of Abarbanel's Haggadah commentary
which has gone on to become his most oft-reproduced work. Yet as already
noted, though written only shortly before work on the messianic tomes
commenced, it strikingly lacks the apocalyptic rhetoric and explicit messianic
computations of the three works soon to follow. Undoubtedly there was some
oral transmission of Abarbanel's messianic teachings and circulation of these
in no-longer extant manuscripts: how else, otherwise, could the Iberian
refugee-kabbalist Joseph ibn Shraga have criticized Yeshu'ot meshi~o's first part
in his "discourse on the End," a work completed no more than two years after
Abarbanel's study? 141 At the same time ibn Shraga's example serves as a
reminder that not all who heard the eschatological views of the "man great
among the giants" was influenced by them. As regards Abarbanel's specific
messianic dates at least, ibn Shraga denies the possibility of their accuracy in
consequence of their reckoner's ignorance of Kabbalah. 142
Even assuming some distribution through media other than the printed
word, however, our hurried bibliographic survey leaves two points beyond
cavil: the assumed early influence and abiding popularity of Abarbanel's
messianic ideas is not well-attested by the frequency of the messianic works'
printings and the lateness of these printings made it such that Abarbanel's
messianic dates were advertised most widely long after they had become
obsolete. Indeed as soon as the years surrounding 1503 came and went- that
is, already in his lifetime - Abarbanel's principal messianic prognostication
was, or so one would suppose, discredited.
This second point merits some elaboration. Far from being idiosyncratic,
1503 was shared by numerous Jewish and Christian writers, some of them
inspired, as was Abarbanel, by the aforementioned astrological messianism of
Abraham bar Hiyya. 143 Given its prevalence, and the eminence of the autho-
rities who backed it, one cannot assume too hastily that the passing of this date
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 21

discredited it in the minds of contemporaries. Indeed such "failed prophecies"

can even be reinterpreted such that contrary evidence will only "serve to increase
the conviction and enthusiasm of a believer." 144 An example of this sort of
mentality is even at hand in the realm of Jewish eschatological prognositication
from a few decades after Abarbanel's death. Like Abarbanel, Abraham ben
Eliezer Halevi held out 1531 as a date of eschatological import. When this year
came and went, an anonymous author writing a generation after Abraham's
death and seeking to salvage one of the messianic tomes in which Abraham
advanced this as a date of messianic import rewrote the work, stressing a later
date also mentioned by Abraham and deleting all references to 1531. 145
To get a measure of the more likely fortune of Abarbanel's messianic dates
among generations of Jews, however, it is instructive to consider the very same
Abraham ben Eliezer's relationship to them. Abraham's messianic writings
span the interval beginning from around the time of Abarbanel's death and
ending in 1528. As chronologically proximate writers who used similar literary
media and shared eschatological cruxes as well as much in common personally
(both were products oflberia and experienced exile), it does not occasion great
surprise that Abarbanel and Abraham shared the period around 1530 as a
possible time for "the end" as well. Yet nowhere in his works does Abraham
mention Abarbanel directly. The most plausible explanation for this absence
seems to be that while Abraham shared a messianic date with Abarbanel he
was "wary of associating his calculations, which he believed to be true, with the
calculations of a person whose predictions had so recently been proven false,
even though those predictions in part tended to support his own." 146 Absent
reinterpretation, Abarbanel's most specific messianic forecasts were quickly
outdated. They could hardly have served Jews in the early modern period for
long, especially ones living in the second half of the sixteenth through mid-
seventeenth centuries. Did nobody think twice about the reliability of Abarba-
nel's other messianic teachings once his messianic dates had come and gone?
That later Jewish thinkers of a millenarian bent could draw inspiration from
Abarbanel is attested by the messianic works of the aforementioned Mordechai
Dato, for whom, as Dato's definitive biographer avers, Abarbanel was a "very
important" source of messianic insight and interpretation. 147 Among the many
commonplaces from Abarbanel's messianic writings which populate Dato's
eschatological tracts are the fall of eastern Christianity's capital to the Turks as
a key exegetical-eschatological crux; the return of the ten tribes and of those
more recently lost to the Jewish people, the 'anusim, in the messianic era; the
redemptive process as, in keeping with the laws of nature, one necessarily
preceded by some sort of "decay" leading to the ultimate purification of the
Jewish people, and the beginnings of the Jewish people's return to the Land of
Israel prior to the advent of the messianic era. 148 Dato, not well-versed in
astrology, relied heavily on astral-messianic determinations set forth by
Abarbanel as well. 149
Abarbanel's profound presence in Dato might seem suggestive in another
respect. As a rather average figure who preached not to the religious elite but
"broad public," 150 Dato might be assumed to refract popular Jewish messianic
22 E. Lawee

thinking in his day. One might posit, then, a basic concord between the many
Abarbanelian notes which he hits and the eschatological sensibilities of
ordinary Italian Jews in the second half of the sixteenth century.
Yet even as Dato's writings draw on a complex of messianic themes familiar
from Abarbanel's messianic corpus, they militate against easy assumptions
about the filiation of eschatological ideas. Already from the early Middle Ages
the belief that the ten tribes were living in a far-off land and would rejoin their
brethren in the Holy Land at the time of redemption was a matter of faith and
source of hope for many Jews and such notions had gained currency in Spain
well before Abarbanel's day. 151 As, in the third quarter of the sixteenth century,
Mordechai Dato could see Constantinople's fall as an eschatological pivot, so
had Jews in the decades immediately following this event and scholars writing
both before and after this notion appeared in Abarbanel's messianic works
(e.g., the anonymous authors of Sefer ha-meshiv, of the "Geniza Fragments," of
Kaf ha-qetoret, and Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi). 152 As noted, bar Hiyya had
taught that the second occurrence in history of the astral configuration of
Saturn "conjoined with Jupiter in Pisces" in 1464 would set the stage for the
final redemption as, millennia earlier, this same conjunction's occurrence had
urged the Israelites' redemption from Egypt. 153 So Dato's reliance on Abarba-
nel's astrological determinations is essentially reliance, witting or otherwise, on
bar Hiyya, with Abarbanel (and perhaps others) mediating. 154
The recurrence in Dato of themes found in Abarbanel, then, points less to
the profound impact of Abarbanel's eschatological ideas and writings on later
Jewish messianic thinkers than to the recycling of a common stock of messianic
teachings in Jewish messianic thought and literature produced in the century
around 1500. This literature was composed by writers whose diverse biogra-
phical and historical settings and differentiated intellectual profiles ought to
have yielded more disparate and evolving results. This continuity, coupled with
the marked ecumenism of turn of the sixteenth-century millenarianism, 155
make ascriptions of specific influence to one or another writer of the early
modern period extremely difficult. 156 The shared reservoir of eschatological
ideas was large and frequently drawn upon, at times by Christian and Jew alike.
In the case of the one outstanding sixteenth-century Jewish thinker who
invented a wholly unique idiom for discussing the intricacies of Jewish exile
and redemption, Judah Loewe of Prague, evidence of concrete indebtedness to
Abarbanel is lacking. 157

v
Like those for his lasting influence on centuries of Jewish messianic thought,
claims for Abarbanel's impress on the foremost Jewish messianic movements of
the early modern period have scarcely been documented. As problems already
noted apply equally to both sets of claims and as notions of Abarbanel's single-
handed suppression of "realistic alternatives" to the "Jewish problem" and
stimulation of early modern Jewish messianic activity are, on the surface, more
implausible, the latter claims will be treated in more cursory fashion.
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 23

To begin with the specific charge that a collective mentality shaped by

Abarbanel's passive messianism stymied the project of Don Joseph Nasi, 158
one might, without belaboring the issue, consider the following: (l) in spite of
Netanyahu's proto-Zionist depiction of Don Joseph ("the great Jewish states-
man with a realistic approach to the Jewish problem") 159 - in which he was
preceded by others 160 - the motives for the rebuilding of Tiberias during the
1560s remain obscure; they could have been purely economic, for instance. 161
(There is, however, evidence that some who heard of the undertaking viewed it,
"realistically" or otherwise, in messianic terms and emigrated to the Land of
Israel in response.) 162 (2) Don Joesph's "call," as Netanyahu styles it, 163 for a
Jewish return to the Holy Land was evidently a low priority for the great
statesman himself. Very much in the manner of Abarbanel, he did not opt for
emigration to the Land of Israel though this was by far more feasible in the
period after the Turkish conquest of Palestine than in Abarbanel's day. (3) It is
true that the project of settling Tiberias was far from a complete success 164 but
even if one assigns some of its failure to the power of Judaism's traditional
messianic mentality, it makes little sense to blame this mentality on "deaf ears"
of Jews "infatuated with the predictions of Abravanel and the miraculous
messianic powers which could effect their deliverance at one fell swoop." 165
Minimally, the assertion of blame requires some proof.
Upon first blush, Netanyahu's assertions of a linkage between Abarbanel's
messianic teaching and later Jewish messianic movements borders on the
paradoxical since, while blaming Abarbanel for passivity, Netanyahu (in
contrast to Baer) also contends that his political-messianic teaching helped to
activate "all the messianic movements that stirred Jewry down to the end of the
seventeenth century." Judging by the one example he gives, however, what
Netanyahu meant by this was that specific messianic teachings which Abarba-
nel propagated shaped the eschatological expectations and deeds of partici-
pants in such movements. Thus, after affirming that "Laemmlein, Molkho,
Reubeni, Shabbethai Zevi - all repeat Abravanelian principles," Netanyahu
adds: "the basic idea of the clash between Christianity and Islam is ever
present." 166 Elsewhere he summarizes Abarbanel's detailed visions of the
Christian-Muslim military conflict to precede the Messiah advent. 167 Yet in
this, his one illustration of Abarbanel's alleged influence of later Jewish
messianism in practice, one finds a fault alluded to already and apparent
elsewhere in Netanyahu's and others' accounts of Abarbanel's messianism: a
failure to place the evidence in broader context. Netanyahu himself supplies
one such context when he observes that "since the fall of Constantinople in
1453, the struggle between Islam and Christendom was ever present in the
minds of most European peoples." 168 Not surprisingly, Turkish victories over
Venice in Abarbanel's day were placed in a messianic framework by eschatol-
ogists of the period as well. 169 Indeed Christian-Muslim military confrontation
had long served as a "nurturing ground" for medieval apocalyptic. 170 So
Netanyahu's concrete example of Abarbanel's alleged impact on later Jewish
messianic movements does not pass muster.
24 E. Lawee

The same goes for Scholem and others who have underscored Sabbatian
invocations of the notion of Israel's redemption under Pisces and referred to
Abarbanel as a precursor. 171 To do this is to distort the history of the
establishment and dissemination of an idea. True, Abarbanel had explained,
in a characteristically expansive manner, the nature of the connection between
Israel's redemption and Pisces 172 but in light of this theme's ubiquity the
association between this fact and Sabbatian invocations remains extremely
tenuous. The percolation of ideas within the world of early modern Jewish
millenarianism and the road from idea to messianic activation was far more
complex than such footnotes suggest.
Consolidating the findings concerning Abarbanel's eschatological stimulus,
then, it seems safe to assume that such was more theoretical than practical and
likely that the theoretical impact was not large. Abarbanel's model may well
have served as an increment in the legitimization by some of ongoing efforts to
"calculate the end." His messianic corpus clearly did serve as a storehouse of
classical Jewish eschatological ideas for others, and Abarbanel undoubtedly
stimulated individual Jewish thinkers to ponder certain specific eschatological
scenarios. In the sphere of method, or even style, Abarbanel's imprint may have
been most great, but it is hard to measure. One can only speculate as to whether
his detailed and almost casually exoteric discussions of this segment of the
classical Jewish heritage~ one mostly relegated to the margins or treated using
veiled modes of communication in earlier times ~ did not encourage the more
public eschatological speculation so evident in many a sixteenth-century
messianic writer (though even one such as Mordechai Dato, as he aimed his
messianic message at ordinary Jews, cautioned against the promulgation of
specific millennia! dates to all but the religious elite). 173 Then, too, the all-
encompassing, systematic, exegetically-driven techniques which he brought to
the fragmented classical messianic "corpus" may have served as a model for
later writers, not least the aforementioned Judah Loewe. 174 Even in the realm
of messianic discourse however, not to speak of messianic movements, the
record at present displays far more by way of possible and at times indirect
influences than it does great shifts evidently triggered by Abarbanel. As for
Abarbanel's impact upon Jewish messianic deed, it seems clear that for all of
the grand generalizations this impact was, at the very best, extremely
limited. 175 That enduring roles in the spheres of Jewish messianic thought and
deed have regularly been ascribed to Abarbanel despite the almost non-existent
evidence of his genuinely potent and original contributions in these areas
serves as a cautionary tale of the power of unsupported but intuitively
appealing historiographic precepts to become uncritically accepted and, once
unleashed, take on a life of their own.

VI
Like Baer, Netanyahu read Abarbanel's messianic teaching as a classic
embodiment of medieval Jewish political passivity born of an apocalyptically
informed disregard for "realistic" (i.e., natural) causation in history. Nowadays
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 25

much might be found wrongheaded in the basic presuppositions which

generated these readings. Revisions regarding medieval Jewry's allegedly total
apolitical character come to mind, 176 some of which attend to the distiction
between political and messianic passivity more than earlier approaches 177 and
others of which perceive tactically prudent "political quietism" where earlier
approaches saw only reprehensible "passivity." 178 Still, the basic claim of a
strong passive element in Abarbanel's response to the condition of Jewish exile
cannot be denied, although to isolate this political teaching from the larger
theological aim of preserving a sphere wherein divine providence can operate
uniquely in Jewish history is to do it less thanjustice. 179 Such quietism is clearly
on display in Abarbanel's invocation of the famous "three oaths" of rabbinic
literature denying Jews the right to take responsibility for redemption into their
own hands 180 - oaths which seemingly exercised a greater historical impact "in
their accumulated weight over time" than has hitherto been understood. 181
Not all the facts, it should be noted, sustain the picture of Abarbanel as an
exemplary representative of a premodern Judaism in which political "reality
and ideal constituted two distinct worlds." 182 Baer already called attention to
"realistic features" 183 in Abarbanel's eschatology despite his general finding
that Abarbanel's messianic notions left "little room for a realistic examination"
of Jewish life in preredemptive times. 184 And even Netanyahu praised
Abarbanel's delineation of exile's negative consequences (loss of courage,
honor, and government) 185 in essentially political terms. 186 It is not impossible
to expand the catalogue of "realistic" elements in Abarbanel's understanding of
the preredemptive Jewish political situation and even of the redemptive process
itself in more specific ways. One scholar has discerned in Abarbanel's account
of medieval Jewish historical ups and downs in Yeshu'ot meshibo an astute
awareness of the vastly different political implications of persecutions of Jews
from below and expulsions of Jews as initiated by late medieval western
European political leadership's upper echelons. 187 In addition, there are
instances where Abarbanel's eschatological teaching coincides or at least
intersects with Maimonidean "realistic messianism." For instance, both
Maimonides and Abarbanel envision the Messiah's need to establish his rule
over the nations by force. 188 Even when Abarbanel sought to undermine the
rabbinic lynchpin of Maimonidean naturalistic messianism ("the only differ-
ence between this world and the days of the Messiah is subjugation to [foreign]
powers") 189 he did so not by denying outright Maimonides' essentially political
conceptualization of the transition to the messianic era but by arguing for the
eventual supersession of this initial phrase of the messianic era by a cosmic
transformation involving the full range of prophetically vouchsafed miraculous
occurences. 190 Minimally, the variously ambivalent and overtly hostile critics
of Abarbanel's political-messianic teachings 191 might at least have credited
these for their eschewal of any apology for or valorization of the Jewish exilic
condition (such as had been expressed by some of Abarbanel's most notable
medieval predecessors, for example Judah Halevi) 192 and for the absence in the
messianic works of any argument on behalf of exile's "dialectical" aptness as a
prologue to redemption such as would be made near sixteenth century's end in
26 E. Lawee

the eschatological reflections of Judah Loewe of Prague, with whose messianic

corpus Abarbanel's has oft been associated. 193
The main point, however, is that any effort to discuss Abarbanel's "realism"
yea or nay on the factual plane quickly leads to questions on the interpretive
one. As a student of Maimonides "realistic messianism" has aptly noted,
realism is a notoriously "vague term," especially as an attribute of political
theory. 194 Indeed, since one person's excess of political "passivity" may be
another's sagacious political quietism and one historian's messianic fantasy
another's "realistic course," it will not occasion surprise that while one scholar
of turn of the sixteenth-century Jewish messianism regards the urging by the
anonymous Portuguese contemporary of Abarbanel who authored the "Geniza
Fragments" that Jews living in Christian lands immediately move to the Land
of Israel as "needless to say," that of "an imaginary enterprise totally
disconnected from reality," 195 Netanyahu views Abarbanel's failure to issue
such a call as the measure of his lack of realism. And on yet another reading,
qua messianist, Abarbanel was engaging in realistic political leadership; for he
was thereby "preparing his community for the new world." 196 In short, whether
premodern Jewish messianism will be praised for its desire to escape the
predominant premodern Jewish unwillingness to "come forward onto the plane
of world history" 197 or be blamed for its "mystical" lack of realism depends
mostly on the historian adjudicating the case. 198 If Zionist historiography has
typically "intensified and glorified" such messianism for its activism, 199
Netanyahu's misgivings about Abarbanel clearly diverge from this trend.
Though no ready explanation for this divergence lies at hand one might explore
its possible roots in Netanyahu's particularly Revisionist-Zionist starting
point.2oo
A final word about Netanyahu's assessment of Abarbanel's messianism in
terms of its supposed lack of realism is in order. Though Netanyahu sees
Abarbanel's mystical-messianic fantasies as an important source of inspiration
for all contemporary and subsequent early modern Jewish messianic move-
ments, one might argue that Abarbanel's frankly miraculous and lavishly
apocalyptic teachings set a high eschatological bar which no actual Jewish
messianic movement was able to surmount. Ironically, it was Maimonides' far
more sober, skeptical, and naturalistic messianism201 (for which Abarbanel
had taken his revered medieval predecessor to task) that, at least in the case of
the Sabbatian movement, permitted eschatologically excited adherents to fend
off attempts to delegitimize their messianic candidate by arguing that the
millenia! period need not be the miracle-studded affair that classical rabbinic
and kabbalist texts envisioned. 202

VII
A recent revised reading of the impact of the Spanish expulsion on Jewish
"religion, thought and attitudes" in the post-expulsion period begins with the
reminder that "it is never easy to define the long-term effects of any event upon
the course of cultural history." 203 Defining the interplay of history and mind in
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 27

the spiritual development of a complex religious-intellectual personality may

be only a little easier. The tendency to ascribe to the phenomenon of "crisis" all
manner of dramatic shifts in early modern Jewish thought and Hebrew
literature including the rise of historical writing, new directions in Kabbalah,
and the prevalence of messianic discourse and activity is receding. 204 Once
seemingly patent causal connections - expulsion to intensely felt messianic
stirrings among Hispano-Jewish exiles like Abarbanel to Spanish stimulus of
the messianic awakening of one such as the Ashkenazic-Italian Asher Lemlein
- turn out to be ill-founded or worse (i.e., highly improbable)? 05 In a time of
crossing-points for evaluation of the expulsion's significance for diverse trends
on the wide canvas of Jewish life during the transition from medieval to early
modern times, it has seemed wise to revisit the dominant accounts of
Abarbanel's life and later impact with suspicion inasmuch as these view the
historical crisis occasioned by expulsion as the spur for a dramatic shift in
Abarbanel's thought, religious orientation, and writings and, in particular, for
a near thorough-going messianism in Abarbanel which in turn changed in
various consequential ways the course of Jewish history. While stopping well
short of a full rearticulation of Abarbanel's religious orientation after 1492 and
discussing only in relatively general terms the nature of his impact on later
Jewish messianism, this essay has, it is hoped, been persuasive on at least two
fundamental counts. First, the notion of Abarbanel's sudden conversion to a
thoroughgoing messianism in the wake of the 1492 expulsion is more legend
than fact. One might add that, to the considerable extent that it has become the
main point of reference in framing Abarbanel's intellectual biography, tacitly
relegating his Iberian years to religious-literary prologue and inhibiting a
variegated and chronologically differentiated portrait of his Italian years which
draws meaningful connections between this massively productive but relatively
short period in his life and and the five and half decades spent in Iberia, this
legend stands as the prime obstacle to be overcome in offering a fresh richly
evoked, discriminating, and balanced assessment of the diverse complexity
embodied in Abarbanel's writings and the "perverse and perplexing figure"
behind them? 06 The second point can be stated more succinctly. When future
narratives tell the story of the Jews in early modernity they will no longer be
able to assign pride of place to Abarbanel among sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century Jewish messianism's founding fathers.

York University

NOTES
[Editor's note: Professor La wee has used the spelling "Abarbanel" for the name of this study's
subject. When variant spellings occur they are being cited from the works of others.]

1. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, "The Ultimate End of Human Life in Postexpulsion Philosophic

Literature," in Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World 1391 1648, ed. Benjamin R.
Gampel (New York: Columbia University Press. 1997), 354-55 n. 10 - though it remains
28 E. Lawee

unclear why the concluding chapter of the most definitive work on Abarbanel written to date
by Benzion Netanyahu (on which see below) is not just such a systematic attempt, if in some
ways a flawed one. See now also the systematic exposition and analysis of the apocalyptic
element in Abarbanel's messianic thought in Dov Schwartz, Ha-re'ayon ha-meshi~i be-hagut
ha-yehudit bi-yemei ha-benayim (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1997), 230-42.
2. Omitted here is consideration of the apparently considerable extent to which Abarbanel
served as an interlocutor of choice for Christian millenia! thinkers, especially of the Protestant
"Hebraist" variety, over centuries. See below, nn. 136~137.
3. B. Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1972), 195.
4. Netanyahu showed little interest in the predominantly non-doctrinal, exegetical side of
Abarbanel's writing or dynamics of the commentatorial mode typically favored by Abarbanel
even when dealing with doctrinal matters.
5. Preface to the first edition as in ibid.,viii.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 254.
9. Ibid., 251.
10. Ibid., viii.
II. Ibid., 249. The comparison, amply elaborated by Netanyahu slightly earlier (245-47), may
have been suggested by Heinrich Graetz's passing depiction of a Jewish messianic figure of the
1530s, Solomon Molkho, as "the Jewish Savonarola." See History of the Jews, 6 vols.
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1894-98), 4:504. On Savonarola see Donald
Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).
12. Netanyahu, Abravanel, viii.
13. In a student's words, as relayed by Richard H. Popkin in his introduction to idem, ed.,
Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought 1650~1800 (Leiden: E.J.
Brill, 1988), 4.
14. For a case study with ample references to secondary literature see Richard Popkin, "Jewish-
Christian Relations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Conception of the
Messiah," in The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume, ed. Barry Walfish (= Jewish History 6,
vol. 2), 163~77. For the "pursuit of the millennium" in the period of the French Revolution
itself see Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly: Millenarians and the French Revolution in France
and England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975). For centuries prior see Dale
K. van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1996).
15. Abravanel, viii: "that Abravanel was the father of the messianic movements ... was already
sensed and pointed out by a number of scholars."
16. Abraham Joshua Hesche!, Don Jizchak Abravanel (Berlin: E. Reiss, 1937), 23.
17. M. Gaster, "Abravanel's Literary Work," in Isaac Abravanel: Six Lectures, ed. J.B. Trend and
H. Loewe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937), 69.
18. Ibid., 69~70. The "many pseudo-Messianic movements" of the period other than Sabbatian-
ism are not identified.
19. Israel Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, trans. Bernard Martin, 12 vols. (Cleveland:
Case Western Reserve University, 1973), 3:288. The various volumes of Zinberg's history were
published in the years leading up to the quincentenary of Abarbanel's birth, with the final
volume being published in that year.
20. History of the Jews, 4:482.
21. Isaac Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith: Anti-rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1250~
1650 (The Hague-Paris: Mouton, 1967), 119~20.
22. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai [ievi: The Mystical Messiah, trans. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 14-15.
23. Benjamin Gross, Le messianismejuif: "l'eternite d'lsrael" du Maharal de Prague ( 1512~1609),
Etudes Maharaliennes 2 (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1969), 37 n. 56.
24. Ibid., 27.
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 29

25. Moshe Ide!, introduction to Ha-tenu'ot ha-meshihiyyot be-yisra'el, by Aaron Ze'ev Aescoly, 2nd
ed. (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1987), 21.
26. Gershon Weiler, Jewish Theocracy (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988), 72.
27. By contrast popular images of the man stress different aspects of Abarbanel's life and legacy.
See Jean-Christophe Attias, "Isaac Abravanel: Between Ethnic Memory and National
Memory," Jewish Social Studies (New Series) 2 (1996), 137-45.
28. Menachem Kellner, Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought: From Maimonides to Abravanel
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 193.
29. Frank E. Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1992), !55.
30. See Jean-Christophe Attias, Isaac Abravanel: La memo ire et !'esperance (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 17-
18.
31. Roland Goetschel, Isaac Abravanel: conseiller des princes et philosophe (Paris: Albin Michel,
1996), 147, 170.
32. Yehoshua Rash, "Immobilisme et dynamisme dans Ia culture d'Israel," Reserches de Science
Religieuse 77 (1989), 323-46. (Given this choice Abarbanel might well have opted for the
pairing with Sofer but, one suspects, might not have felt too much more comfortable in his
company than in that of the putative representatives of post-rabbinic Jewish dynamism.)
33. Netanyahu, Abravanel, 91.
34. "'Ere~ yisra'el ve-galut be-'enei ha-dorot she! yemei ha-benayim," Me'assef Siyyon 10 (1934),
166. Elsewhere Baer portrayed the polarities of the "evident contradiction in Abarbanel's life"
without reference to Abarbanel's "non-Jewish" political activities: "strengthening of messianic
hopes in his works more than all Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages" on the one hand,
abstinence from "any and all deeds in preparation for the redemption" on the other. See "Don
Yi~haq 'Abarbanel ve-yeJ:laso 'el be'ayot ha-historiyah ve-ha-medinah," Tarbiz 8 (I937), 259.
For the same perspective on Abarbanel expressed more obliquely see idem, Galut (New York:
Schocken, 1947), 64-65. For Baer as striker of "an historiographic image that was to prove
lasting ... the incarnation par excellence of the Jew in the Exile," see Attias, "Isaac Abravanel,"
145.
35. Abravanel, 255.
36. Ibid., 90.
37. Ibid., 255, though contrary to Baer, Netanyahu imagined Abarbanel's activities at court
serving as a counterweight to the worst excesses of the messianic politics he entertained for his
own people (ibid., 90, where Netanyahu suggests that the influence of the "mystical views"
which so affected Abarbanel's "general position on the Jewish question" and "dealings with
current problems" of Jewish concern must have been especially strong when not given any
brake by Abarbanel's "management of state affairs" at non-Jewish courts).
38. Ibid., 91, 256.
39. Ibid., 244.
40. This linkage had appeared in pre-Netanyahu treatments of Abarbanel as well; see the citation
from Israel Zinberg as per n. 19 above. It is dispiriting to see it reappear, again without
explanation, in the most recent layer of Abarbanel scholarship. See Elias Lipiner, Two
Portuguese Exiles in Castile: Dom David Negro and Dam Isaac Abravanel, Hispania Judaica
10 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 73-74. For a critique of Abarbanel's messianic
predictions by a contemporary on the grounds that their author was not among the mystically
initiated (in a more narrow understanding of this concept) see the text cited below at n. 142.
41. Netanyahu, Abravanel, 89-90.
42. Ibid., 256.
43. The Origin of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain (New York: Random House, 1995),
726.
44. The porousness of the borders between medieval historiography and twentieth-century intra-
Zionist polemic becomes clear upon inspection ofthis speech delivered by Netanyahu at Haifa
University in 1981 ("Meqomo she! Jabotinsky be-toldot yisra'el," Sidrat har~a'ot be-limmudei
ha-yahadut 7) in which he emphasized that Jabotinsky's views were then more "realistic than
they ever were in the past" (14) and that when Jabotinsky first stressed the need for Jewish
30 E. Lawee

appreciation of military values "many believed that the days of the Messiah were drawing
nigh, that the world was progressing toward general disarmament, international peace and
universal brotherhood" (13). For the Revisionist, messianism in secularized form- namely, a
world-view rooted too little in how the world is and too much in how one would wish it to be -
had seduced its fair share of Zionists as well, despite Zionism's ostensible break with
traditional messianic beliefs. For the charge of retaining elements of a "galut mentality" as
"one of the mightiest stones that different Zionist groups ... can throw at one another," see
Simon Rawidowicz, "On the Concept of Galut," in Israel the Ever-Dying People and Other
Essays, ed. Benjamin C.I. Ravid (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986),
104-5.
45. For earlier passing notation of Netanyahu's anachronistic terms of reference in his treatment
of Abarbanel at points due to his nationalist orientation, see Richard G. Marks, The Image of
Bar Kokhba in Traditional Jewish Literature: False Messiah and National Hero (University
Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 102-3 n. 6.
46. Abravanel, 254.
47. Ibid., 256.
48. For primary and secondary sources see, e.g., Yitzhak Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian
Spain, trans. Louis Schoffman et. al., 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1961),
2:159--62; Joseph Hacker, "Links between Spanish Jewry and Palestine, 1391-1492," in Vision
and Coriflict in the Holy Land, ed. Richard I. Cohen (Jerusalem: St. Martin's, 1985), 119-29;
Eric Lawee, "'Israel Has No Messiah' in Late Medieval Spain," Journal of Jewish Thought and
Philosophy 5 (1996), 256--67.
49. For the likelihood that this conversion was partially coerced see Netanyahu, Abravanel, 5.
50. The letter, in which Abarbanel stresses also that in exile the honor of the "noble children of
Zion" is "disparaged and disdained," is published in "Mikhtavei 'Abarbanel" at the back of
Abraham ibn Ezra, Sefer ha-'a~amim, ed. M. Grossberg (London, A.Z. Rabinovitsh, 1901),
36--39.
51. (1894; photo-offset Jerusalem, 1968), 53v. Note that the version of the plea which appears in
the editio princeps ([Sabbioneta, 1557], 40v) sounds more actual than this version since in it
Abarbanel asks the Deity to "bring us up from amongst the nations (goyyim)" as opposed to
''idol-worshipers."
52. Goetschel, Isaac Abravanel, 147. For evidence of Abarbanel thinking about the book of Daniel
while in Portugal, see Ma'ayanei ha-yeshu'ah (as per no. 57 below), 338.
53. J.N. Hillgarth, "Spanish Historiography and Iberian Reality," History and Theory 24 (1985),
28.
54. Idel, "Introduction," 16.
55. For Abarbanel's presence at Iberian courts that promoted the expeditions and his awareness
of the maritime discoveries as reflected in post-1492 works, see my "On the Threshold of the
Renaissance: New Methods and Sensibilities in the Biblical Commentaries of Isaac Abarba-
nel," Viator 26 (1995), 285-86, 299-300. Abarbanel's Spanish works are obviously too early
for the apocalypticism associated with the voyages of Columbus, on which see Alain Milhou,
ColOn y su mentalidad mesiimica en el ambiente franciscanista espaiiol (Valladolid: Seminario
americanista de Ia Universidad de Valladolid, 1983); Pauline Moffitt Watts, "Prophecy and
Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of Christopher Columbus's 'Enterprise of the Indies,'"
American Historical Review 90 (1985), 73-102. I was unable to determine how far back
discovery-related messianic expectations can be traced but even if they stretch back to the time
of Abarbanel's pre-1492 involvement at Iberian courts a considerable distance would need to
be traversed before linking Abarbanel to these with any certainty.
56. For Abarbanel's description of his three messianic works as parts of a larger whole entitled
Migdol yeshu'ot see She'elot le-he-hakham Sha'ul ha-Kohen sha'al me-'et ... Yishaq 'Abarbanel
(Venice, 1574), 8r (actual pagination). As far as I know he nowhere depicted these works as
such during the period of their composition. Modern scholars now typically speak of a
"messianic trilogy" employing the coinage of Simon Bernstein, Shomerei ha-~omot (Tel Aviv:
Ha-Mitspeh, 1938), 15.
57. As in Perush 'al nevi'im u-khetuvim (Tel Aviv: Hoza'at Sefarim Abarbanel, 1961), 414-15.
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 31

58. Yeshu'ot meshil}o (Konigsberg, 1861),1Sa, 23b, Sla.

59. Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, 247.
60. For a full account of Abarbanel's messianic calculations see Abba Hillel Silver, A History of
Messianic Speculation in Israel, reprint with a new preface by the author (New York: Beacon
Press, 1959), 119-25.
61. Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, 409.
62. Ibid., 412.
63. For the relevant sources see Netanyahu, Abravane/, 266 n. 6.
64. Cp. the emphatic formulation in Gross, Le messianisme juif, 27: "[a]ucun auteur, aucune a
epoque, n'a mis en evidence avec une telle insistance et un tel luxe de details, les fondements de
Ia doctrine messianique du judaisme."
65. Schwartz, Ha-re'ayon ha-meshi~i, 231. The qualification is that in one of its three parts this
work examined this-worldly justice including the judgments of Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur and not just the themes of afterlife and resurrection of the dead as in its other two
parts. For these as the work's three main topics see She'elot, 8r.
66. Abravanel, 75, 78, 80.
67. Kellner, Dogma, 193.
68. Ibid.
69. For recent valid if wildly overstated concerns on this point, see Norman Roth, Conversos,
Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1995), 299.
70. For more involved treatment of continuities between Abarbanel's pre- and post-1492 writings
see my "Isaac Abarbanel's Intellectual Biography in Light of His Portuguese Writings."
Forthcoming.
71. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, "Messianic Impulses in Joseph ha-Kohen," in Jewish Thought in the
Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1983), 483-84, wherein Abarbanel's work is apparently viewed as a case in point.
72. Yoram Yacobson, Bi-netivei galuyot u-ge'u/ot: tarat ha-ge'ulah she! R. Mordekhai Data
(Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1996), 69.
73. See most recently Robert Bonfil, "Jewish Attitudes Toward History and Historical Writing in
Pre-Modern Times," Jewish History 11 (1997), 7-40.
74. Ram Ben-Shalom, "Dimmui ha-tarbut ha-no~rit be-toda'ah ha-historit she! yehudei sefarad
u-provens (ha-me'ot ha-shtem-'esrei 'ad ha-l_lamesh-'esrei)," (Ph. D. diss., Tel Aviv University,
1996).
75. On Duran's Ma'amar zikhron ha-shemadot see Frank Ephraim Talmage, introduction to Kitvei
pulmos le-Profet Duran (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1981), 11; cp. Abarbanel's
description of Yemot 'olam (Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, 288). For Abarbanel's reference to Duran's
work see Yeshu'ot meshi~o, 46r-v.
76. For samples see my "On the Threshold," 315-18.
77. (Riidelheim, 1828), introduction.
78. See my "Isaac Abarbanel's 'Stance Towards Tradition': the case of 'A!eret Zeqenim," AJS
Review 22 (1997), 165-98.
79. See my "Abarbanel's Intellectual Biography."
80. For an effort in this direction marred by an error as to the commentary's place within the
chronology of Abarbanel's works, see Shaul Regev, "MeshiJ:riyyut ve-'astrologiyah be-haguto
she! rabbi Yi~l_laq 'Abarbanel," 'Asuffot 1 (1987), 186-87.
81. She'elot, 8r.
82. Ibid., 8v. To gain further insight into Abarbanel's intellectual concerns in his twilight years one
should note also the testimony of a scribe who heard from Abarbanel "chapters from the
Guide directly" (MS JNUL 1116, 2lv) as well as the existence of two brief essays on
Maimonidean themes that Abarbanel dictated at this scribe's request (ibid., 19v-21 v).
83. Beyond sheer quantity, a further index of the interest which Abarbanel's eschatology has
generated is the diversity of languages in which relevant secondary literature has appeared. In
addition to studies already cited or cited below see Yeshayahu Leibowitz, "Ha-ge'ulah ve-
'a!).arit ha-yamim 'e~l 'Abarbanel," in 'Emunah his!oriyah va- 'arakhim (Jerusalem: Akademon,
32 E. Lawee

1983), 102-111; Marianne Awerbuch, Zwischen Hoffnung und Vernunft: Geschichtsdeutung der
Juden in Spanien vor der Vertreibung am Beispiel Abravanels und Ibn Vergas, Studien zu
judischen Yolk und christlichen Gemeinde 6 (Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1985);
Jacqueline Genot-Bismuth, "Le mythe de !'orient dans l'eschatologie des juifs d'Espagne a
l'epoque des conversions forcees et de !'expulsion," Annates ESC (1990), 827--30; Yehoshafat
Nevo, "Galut ve-ge'ulah be-haguto she! don Yishaq 'Abravanel," Sinai 110 (1993), 36-57.
84. A lone possible exception to this generalization is Barzilay who, in a somewhat self-contra-
dictory way given his strong earlier statements as to Abarbanel's post-1492 messianic
consciousness, did ask: "[ w]ere he really so serious in his Messianic hopes and speculations,
why, one is tempted to ask, didn't he show the slightest sign of personal involvement?" (Reason
and Faith, 130). Elsewhere, however, his suspicion evaporates as he asserts (p. 123) without
qualification, "[r]edemption, he feels, is at hand."
85. For the pre-expulsion period one may list an anonymous Spanish kabbalist who authored
Sefer ha-meshiv as one who did see himself in this way. Another anonymous Portuguese
author, fragments of whose work has only recently been recovered, viewed himself similarly
after the expulsion. See Ide!, "Introduction," 17-18 and the translated excerpt from Isaiah
Tishby, Meshihiyyut ba-dor gerushei sefarad u-fortugal (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar,
1985) as in Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History, ed.
Marc Saperstein (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 266. On the Portuguese
author of the "Genizah Fragments," as Tishby has dubbed them, see Meshihiyyut, 12-17.
86. For different types of messianic activism in medieval Judaism see Moshe Ide!, "Defusim she!
pe'ilut go'elet bi-yemei ha-benayim," in Meshihiyyut ve- 'askatologiyah, ed. Zevi Baras
(Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1983), 253-79. Writing's role is typically left undefined
in discussions of this sort. A catalytic eschatological role is conferred by some authors from
the period on their writings; see, e.g., regarding the biblical exegesis of the anonymous author
of Kaf ha-qetoret and other works the passing formulation in Moshe Ide!, "Hibburim zenul)im
she! ba'al 'sefer kafha-qe!oret,'" Pe'amim 53 (1993), 84. Abarbanel does not speak of his own
writings in this way.
87. Zevah pesah, as in Seder haggadah she/ pesah ( 1872; reprinted Jerusalem: Sefarim Toraniyim,
1985),3.
88. Netanyahu, Abravanel, 68.
89. See David Ruderman, "Hope Against Hope: Jewish and Christian Messianic Expectations in
the Late Middle Ages," in idem, ed., Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and
Baroque Italy (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 304-5, and the secondary
literature cited there.
90. For Abarbanel's role see David Kaufmann, "Don Isaac Abrabanel et le commerce des espices
avec Calicut," Revue des etudes juives 38 (1899), 145-48. For the document containing the
official Venetian response, see 147-148.
91. The term given by his followers to the failure of William Miller's prophecy of Christ's return
in the mid-1840s; for the range of responses to this event see Ruth Alden Doan, The Miller
Heresy, Millenia/ism, and American Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987),
202-14.
92. Mashmia' yeshu'ah as in Perush 'a/ nevi'im u-khetuvim, 513. Commentary on Ezekiel as in
Perush 'a/ nevi'im 'aharonim (Jerusalem: Sefarim Benei Arabel, 1979), 521. For the astrological
portent and its origins see nn. 61, 62, 153.
93. Ira Robinson, "Two Letters of Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi," in Studies in Medieval Jewish
History and Literature II, Harvard Judaic Monographs 2, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), 405. The most recent full-scale study of Abraham is
idem, "Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi: Kabbalist and Messianic Visionary of the Early Sixteenth
Century," (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1980).
94. David L. Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets: Millerites and dissenting religion in upstate New York,
1800-1850, AAR Studies in Religion 38 (Chico, CA: Scholars, 1985), 162, paraphrasing
Mircea Eliade's understanding of apocalypticism.
95. Yacobson, Bi-netivei, 160.
96. See my forthcoming article cited above, n. 70.
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 33

97. One should note, however, the element of continuity between what had come before and the
messianic works themselves as alluded to by Gross (Le messianisme juif, 26): "Abarbanel,
habitue a donner a sa pensee une expression politique et historique, s'attachera a presenter un
systeme coherent de Ia pensee messianique du judalsme."
98. For the term and some of the theoretical debates out of which it issues see William H. Austin,
"Explanatory Pluralism," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66 (1998), 20-24.
99. See, on this work, the material originating in articles by Gershom Scholem as complied in the
introduction to the photo-offset edition of the Constantinople 1510 edition, ed. Malachi Beit-
Arie (Jerusalem, 1977), 9-42.
100. Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, 282-84.
101. 16v-17r.
102. Yitzhak Baer, "Ha-tenu'ah ha-meshil_llt bi-sefarad bi-tequfat ha-gerush," Ma'assef Siyyon 5
(1933), 71-72.
103. But note the continuity between the pre- and post-expulsion periods on this score; see Yosef
Hacker, "Ha-ye'ush min ha-ge'ulah ve-ha-tiqvah ha-meshi~it be-khitvei r[abbi] Shelomo le-
bet ha-levi mi-saloniqi," Tarbi:; 39 (1970), 195-213.
104. 4r.
105. Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, 274.
106. Stephen Sharot, "Jewish Millenial-Messianic Movements: A Comparison of Medieval
Communities," in Comparing Jewish Societies, ed. Todd M. Endelman (Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press, 1997), 67.
107. For the example of three Spanish refugee kabbalists see Moshe Ide!, "Encounters Between
Spanish and Italian kabbalists in the Generation of the Expulsion," in Crisis and Creativity in
the Sephardic World 1391-1648, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1997), 347 n. Ill.
108. Robert Bonfil, "The History of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Italy," in Moreshet
Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy, ed. Haim Beinart, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992), 2:217-
22.
109. Whether the brand of messianism that Abarbanel expounded was particularly "Sephardic" is
a separate question that merits further consideration. See for elaboration of this suggestion
Byron L. Sherwin, Mystical Theology and Social Dissent: The Life and Works of Judah Loew of
Prague (Rutherford: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982), 155-56.
110. For Jewish-Christian polemics and debates in fifteenth-century Italy see Daniel J. Lasker,
Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages (New York: Ktav, 1977),
15, 18; David Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham
ben Mordecai Farissol (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1981), 57-62. Five years
prior to 1492 Abraham Faris sol conducted a series of debates with Christian friars in Ferrara
and Elijah Hayyim of Gennazano engaged in a polemical dispute with a Franciscan friar at
around the same time. For a summary see ibid., 57-58.
Ill. One might wonder whether the usual scholarly assumption of a Hispano-Jewish refugee
audience is not evidently questionable from another angle. It seems rather unlikely that non-
Iberian Jews living in Italy (and, indeed, beyond) should have been wholly indifferent to the
messianic visions and calculations of so prominent a figure as Abarbanel. This observation
having been made, one wonders further whether such non-Iberians perhaps imbued
Abarbanel's teachings and predictions with less authority than Abarbanel's Spanish coreligio-
nists. The name of at least one native Italian scholar, David son of Judah Messer Leon, comes
to mind as one who presumably viewed Abarbanel's pretense to knowledge in matters
messianic as just another example of his misguided claims to the mantle oflearning generally,
not to mention his generally insufferable overweening pride. For the disdain for Abarbanel felt
by David, who experienced profound misgivings upon the ascension of Iberian Jews generally
in Italy after 1492, see the texts published in Israelitische Letterbode 12 (1886-87), 88, wherein,
among other things, Abarbanel's arrogance in flaunting his alleged Davidic pedigree and
pretensions to Maimonidean learning are derisively dismissed.
34 E. Lawee

112. For the image drawn from the book of Leviticus of a house afflicted by eruptive plague to
express the loss of faith among his audience, with Abarbanel's own literary efforts being
depicted as purificatory rites, see Yeshu'ot meshi~o. 4r.
113. See in general Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution ofMedieval Anti-Judaism
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982); Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-century
Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
114. Sr.
115. Daniel J. Lasker, "Jewish-Christian Polemics in Light of the Exile from Spain," Judaism 41
(1992), 151-53.
116. For Abarbanel's argument, following Crescas, that the second Temple period was not a time
of complete redemption but merely one of divine "remembering," see Yeshu'ot meshi~o, 38v;
cp. Crescas' 'Or 'adonai 3:8:2 (ed. Shlomo Fischer [Jerusalem: Sifrei Ramot, 1990], 366-70).
For Abarbanel's heated rejection of Alba's application of various scriptural prophecies to the
Second Temple period see Yeshu'ot meshi~o, 27r-28v.
117. See Austin, "Explanatory Pluralism," 22-23, for the observation that an adequate answer to a
why-question will depend on "what the questioner takes as a given and what the alternatives in
the questioner's intended contrast class are:'
118. Beyond Abarbanel's well-known strenuous opposition to the "radical esoteric" reading of
Maimonides proffered by the likes of Joseph ibn Kaspi, Moses Narboni, and Profet Duran
(for a recent study which takes in this theme see my "Isaac Abarbanel's 'Stance Towards
Tradition': the case of 'A! eret Zeqenim," 165-98), note his rejection in the introduction to his
commentary on the Former Prophets of the elliptical writing style at times practiced by
Abraham ibn Ezra and Moses b. Nahman (Perush 'a/ nevi'im rishonim [Jerusalem: Torah Va-
Da'at, 1955], 13).
119. Cp. the phenomenologically parallel observation made with respect to Maimonides' multiply
problematic transmission of a family tradition regarding the time of the messianic advent as in
Joel L. Kraemer, "On Maimonides' Messianic Posture," in Studies in Medieval Jewish History
and Literature II (above n. 93), 120.
120. Tishby, Meshi~iyyut, as in Saperstein, ed., Essential Papers, 272.
121. Tishby's coinage as in Essential Papers, 259.
122. For this distinction in writings of the period see Shaul Regev, "Gerush u-ge'ulah be-'enei
hogim megurashim," in Tarbut yahadut sefarad: sefer qongres ha-ben-le'umi ha-rishon, ed.
Aviva Doran (Tel Aviv: Ha-Mikhlalah, 1994), 206.
123. Perush 'a/ nevi'im a~aronim, 207. This well-known passage is not adduced by Regev in his
article referred to in the previous note. For important (if somewhat overwrought) commentary
on the tone and biblical allusions found in the larger passage of which this remark forms a
part, see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the
Shebet Yehudah, Hebrew Union College Annual Supplements 1 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union
College Press, 1976), 57-58.
124. Perush 'a/ nevi'im rishonim, 422.
125. For the retrospective implicit seventeenth-century critique of Simone Luzzatto, see the
convincing reconstruction in Bernard Septimus, "Biblical Religion and Political Rationality
in Simone Luzzatto, Maimonides and Spinoza," in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century,
ed. Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus, Harvard Judaic Monographs VI (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 432 n. 141.
126. Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, 283-84.
127. Sanhedrin 97b: "Blasted be the bones of those who calculate the End, for they [the people who
heard these calculations] used to say: 'since [the calculated time of] the end has arrived but he
[the Messiah] has not come, he will never come:" Despite this dictum, rabbinic literature did
offer a series of such calculations. For discussion and secondary literature see David Berger,
"Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism: Messiah Son of Joseph, Rabbinic
Calculations, and the Figure of Armilus," AJS Review 10 (1985), 149-55.
128. Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, 283-84. For the generally positive evaluation of astrology among
scholars of "the generation of the expulsion" see the literature cited in Yacobson, Bi-Netivei,
353 n. 297. For the larger Italian Renaissance context relevant to those refugee scholars who
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 35

settled in Italy and were aware of Renaissance ideas, Abarbanel foremost among them, see
D.C. Allen, The Star-Crossed Renaissance: The Quarrel about Astrology and Its Influence in
England(Durham: Duke University Press, 1941), 3-46.
129. Netanyahu, Abravanel, 220.
130. 73v.
131. For quick orientation in the printing history of Abarbanel's writings see Ephraim Shemueli,
Don Yi~haq 'Abarbanel ve-gerush sefarad (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1963), 270-71.
132. Ibid., 270.
133. David W. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy (1909; reprinted London: Holland
Press, 1963), 279.
134. Manuel, Broken Staff, 155.
135 Shemueli, Don Yishaq 'Abarbanel, 270. As one of these occurred in Amsterdam in 1647, it
emerges that back-to-back printings of two of the three messianic works took place in
Amsterdam in the 1640s. In light of the scarcity of printings overall this convergence almost
surely tells a story. For regular invocations of Abarbanel's authority in messianic and other
works written in Amsterdam around this time by Menasseh ben Israel see Gaster,
"Abravanel's Literary Work," 70.
136. Manuel, Broken Staff, 155.
137. For an impressive list of Christian readers see ibid. In addition to Christian savants
stimulated, almost invariably negatively, by Abarbanel's eschatology, one notes its influence
on the messianic hopes of Portuguese New Christians as described in Jose Ferro Tavares, "0
Messianismo Judaico em Portugal (Ia Metade do Seculo XVI)," Luso-Brazilian Review 28
(1991), 141-51.
138. Shemueli, Don Yishaq 'Abarbanel, 270.
139. Paris MS heb 749 (=film no. 12055 of the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in
Jerusalem).
140. Shemueli, Don Yi~haq 'Abarbanel, 270. Some passages from these works did indeed have a long
and at times controversial afterlife, for example Abarbanel's account of the "suffering servant"
songs in Isaiah 52-53, though here it was the christological use to which these verses were put
that invited the intensity of interest in Abarbanel's handling thereof. For the "slashing attack"
on Abarbanel's treatment by Constantijn L'Empereur see Manuel, Broken Staff, 155. For
L'Empereur's awareness of the Isaiah commentary generally see Peter T. Van Rooden,
Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Studies in the Seventeenth Century: Constantijn
L'Empereur ( 1591-1648) Professor of Hebrew and Theology at Leiden (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1989), 174. In the Jewish world ongoing interest in Abarbanel's interpretation of these
chapters is attested by the production of a Hebrew abridgement of it and an abridgement of
the abridgement. See S.R. Driver and Ad. Neubauer, The Fifty-Third Chapter of Isaiah
According to Jewish Interpreters, 2 vols., reprint with prolegomenon by Raphael Loewe (New
York: Ktav, 1969), I :xii-xiii, 2:xi-xii.
141. See Tishby, Meshihiyyut, 134-38, where the figure with whom ibn Shraga takes issue is shown
to be Abarbanel. Ibn Shraga wrote his work in 1499.
142. Ibid.
143 Ruderman, "Hope Against Hope," 303, 307. Other Jewish writers including the astrologer
Abraham Zacuto set forth 1504 as their entrant for the time of the onset of the messianic era;
see Malachi Beit-Arie and Moshe Ide!, "Ma'amar 'al ha-ke~ ve-ha-'is!3gninut me-'et r[abbi]
'Avraham Zakut," Kiryat sefer 54 {1979), 182.
144. As formulated in the now classic study by Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley
Schachter, When Prophecy Fails (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956), 23.
145 See Ira Robinson, "K[etav] y[ad] she! qi~~ur 'perush nevu'ot ha-yeled' le-rabbi 'Avraham ben
'Eliezer ha-levi," 'A lei sefer 8 (1980), 151-52. Cp. Mathew N. Schmalz, "When Festinger Fails:
Prophecy and the Watch Tower," Religion 24 (1994), 293-308.
146. This is the conclusion of Ira Robinson in his unpublished study entitled "Abarbanel and
Halevi: Two Strands of Jewish Messianic Thought in the Aftermath of the Spanish Expulsion"
(13). I wish to express my genuine gratitude to Professor Robinson for putting at my disposal
the conclusions of his paper. Note that unlike Abarbanel's Paduan neighbor Joseph ibn
36 E. Lawee

Shraga, Abraham was far removed from Abarbanel geographically. Robinson ("Two
Strands," 12) nonetheless rejects as "highly unlikely," for a variety of seemingly sound reasons,
the possibility of Abraham's simply not knowing Abarbanel's messianic ideas and dates.
147. Yacobson, Bi-Netivei, 182.
148. See respectively Yacobson, Bi-Netivei, 182, 201 and 408 nn. 262~263; 206 and 410 nn. 292,
295; 209 and 411 n. 311. For other examples of apparent dependence on Abarbanel see ibid.,
166 and 388 n. 47 (on the relationship of redemption to repentance) and 193 and 404 n. 219
(on exegesis of "the wilderness of the nations" passage in Ezekiel).
149. Ibid., 398 n. !56.
150. Ibid., 8, 49~50.
151. See most recently Abraham Gross, "The Expulsion and the Search for the Ten Tribes,"
Judaism41 (1992), 130-47.
152. Ide!, "Introduction," 25; Tishby, Meshihiyyut, as in Saperstein, ed., Essential Papers, 261~62.
153. Megillat ha-megalleh, ed. Adolph Poznanski and Julius Guttmann (Berlin: Mekizei Nirda-
mim, 1924), 112.
154. As Guttmann notes in the introduction to the just cited edition of bar Hiyya's work (27),
Abarbanel does not refer to bar Hiyya by name when introducing his astrological calculations
but his reliance on his predecessor is clear. Whether Dato knew the extent of Abarbanel's
reliance on bar Hiyya remains an open question. There is also the possibility that Dato was
familiar with bar Hiyya's ideas through conduits other than Abarbanel given their widespread
popularity. See above.
155. On this point see Ruderman, "Hope Against Hope."
156. In this vein, see the well taken reservation regarding Netanyahu's assumption of a link
between Abarbanel and Savonarola in Sharot, "Jewish Millennia!-Messianic Movements," 85
n. 36 (a slightly elongated version of idem., Messianism, Mysticism, and Magic: A Sociological
Analysis of Jewish Religious Movements [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1982], 262 n. 25).
157. This, despite the frequent associations drawn between the two; see below.
158. Note that Ottoman archival documents discovered since Netanyahu first wrote his book
(though published prior to its third edition) ascribe Tiberias' rebuilding more to Don Joseph's
mother-in-law, Dona Gracia, than Don Joseph himself. See Uriel Heyd, "Te'udot turkiyyot 'al
binyanah she! teveryah be-me'ah ha-16," Sefunot 10 (1966), 193~210.
159. Abravanel, 256
160. E.g., Cecil Roth, The Duke ofNaxos of the House of Nasi (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1948), 106: "he was in the direct line of ancestry of later Zionism." The view of Don
Joseph as "Zionist avant Ia lettre" remains current; see Joseph Adler, Restoring the Jews to
Their Homeland: Nineteen Centuries in the Quest for Zion (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson,
1997), 61.
161. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, "Yosef Karo, Solomon Molkho, Yosef Nasi," in Moreshet Sepharad
(above n. 108), 2: 191.
162. Avraham David, "Meqorot J:tadashim le-J:tiddush ha-yishuv ha-yehudi bi-teveryah be-me'ah
ha-16," 'Ari'e/105~106 (1994), 82~83.
163. Abravanel, 256.
164. For recent discussion see Natan Shor, "Ha-nisayon le-haqamat 'medinah yehudit' bHeveryah
'al-yedei donah Gra~iyah Mendes ve-Don Yosef nasi ve-hakhshalato bi-yedei ha-fran~isqa­
nim," 'Ari'e/53-54 (1987), 44-50.
165. Netanyahu, Abravanel, 256. For earlier rejection ofNetanyahu's critique on similar grounds,
see Gross, "Search for the Ten Tribes," 14 7, n. 30.
166. Ahravanel, 254.
167. Ibid., 228~38.
168. Ibid., 234.
169. See the sources cited byTishby as in Saperstein, ed., Essential Papers, 281~83 nn. 29~34.
170. The formulation of Bernard McGinn in Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the
Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 149~52.
171. Sabbatai Sevi, 161, followed by Goetschel, Isaac Abravanel, 170, 193 n.4.
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 37

172. Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, 408-9.

173. Yacobson, Bi-netivei, 161-63.
174. This surmise was suggested to me as a result of concatenating various observations in Gross,
Le messianisme juif, 27, 57.
175. Schwartz, Ha-re'ayon, 232, has recently argued that Abarbanel resolved the great medieval
intrareligious Jewish debate over apocalyptic versus naturalistic messianism in favor of the
former. If this conclusion holds, one would want to explore anew the possibility that this
resolution determined, immediately or eventually, the constraints in which later Jewish
messianic activity occurred.
176. For a recent far-reaching survey along these lines not restricted to the Middle Ages, see David
Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York: Schocken, 1986) (for the
medieval period see 58-86).
177. E.g., Amos Funkenstein, Teva' his?oriyah u-meshihiyyut 'esel ha-rambam (Tel Aviv: Ministry of
Defense, 1983). Elsewhere Funkenstein speaks of the "myth" of medieval Jewish political (as
opposed to messianic) passivity; Tadmit ve-toda'ah his for it be-yahadut u-ve-sevivatah ha-tarbutit
(Tel Aviv: AmOved, 1991), 234-35.
178. Ismar Schorsch, "On the History of the Political Judgment of the Jew," The Leo Baeck
Memorial Lecture 20 (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1976), 9.
179. See, e.g., Abarbanel's account of the conquest of the Land oflsrael where an exegetical effort
is made to preserve a balance between a requirement for some human initiative and
preservation of God's role as the ultimate saving power. The Israelites are told, "Every place
that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, to you have I given it" (Josh. 1:3) lest, as Abarbanel
understands, they confuse the previous enjoinder to "arise, go over this Jordan, you, and all
this people unto the land which I do give to them" to mean that no initiative is required of
them at all. Then, however, to correct for a possible misinterpretation in the opposite direction
they are told "there shall not any man be able to stand before thee ..." (Josh. 1:5). Having been
told that "every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon to you have I given it," they
might have then believed that "the matter, since it was made dependent on the exercise of the
treading of their sole, was consequent upon their courage and not God's providence." Perush
'al nevi'im rishonim, 15-16. Cp. Abarbanel's effort to explain the absence of any reference to
God's miraculous capability in Caleb's enjoinder to the people following the scouts'
reconnaissance of the land. Commentary on the Torah, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Sefarim Benei
Arabel, 1964), 3:67. A similar effort to preserve a place for the unique divine providence that
operates in Israel's affairs is evident in Abarbanel's discussion of kingship. The upshot is that
even granting (as Abarbanel does not) monarchy's necessity for other nations, it would not
follow that Jews should have a king since the benefits which this form of government bestows
are achieved in Israel by God who "vouchsafes His particular providence to His elected
nation" (the formulation in Leo Strauss, "On Abravanel's Philosophical Tendency and
Political Teaching," in Trend and Loewe, eds. (n. 17 above), 117-18). Connections between
Abarbanel's quietistic political-messianic doctrines and other aspects of his theology are
worth pursuing; for an intriguing suggestion of one such (messianic passivity and Abarbanel's
"pessimism with respect to civilization") see Gross, Le messianisme juif, 29-30.
180. Yeshu'ot meshiho, II v.
181. Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael
Swirsky and Jonathan Chipman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 211-34.
Abarbanel's usage is not adduced in this otherwise wide-ranging survey
182. Abravanel, 255.
183. "Don Yizhaq 'Abarbanel," 258.
184. Galut, 64.
185. Ma'ayenei ha-yeshu'ah, 349.
186. Abravanel, 231: "[o]nly a man who had a deep insight into the Jewish tragedy in the dispersion
could utter such a statement."
187. P. 46r; cf. Schorsch, "History of the Political Judgment," 11 (where, however, Abarbanel is
made to sound more explicit on this score than his formulation warrants).
38 E. Lawee

188. For Maimonides see Amos Funkenstein, "Maimonides: Political Theory and Realistic
Messianism," Miscellanea Mediaevalia II (1977), 97 (and for Greco-Arabie context Kraemer,
"Maimonides' Messianic Posture," 141). For Abarbanel's kinship with Maimonides here in
opposition to more optimistic late medieval visions of the onset of the messianic age see my
'"Israel has No Messiah,"' 275-76. For the more general combination of activity and
passivity on the part of "world Jewry" as envisioned by Abarbanel (with the active role
ascribed mainly to the ten tribes) see the summary in Robinson, "Abraham b. Eliezer Halevi,"
31-34.
189. Berakhot 34b and parallels.
190. Yeshu'ot meshiho, 56v-58r.
191. For Netanyahu and Weiler as exemplifications of these two critical stances respectively see
Attias, "Between Ethnic Memory and National Memory," 146-48.
192. Kitiib al-radd wa- '1-dalfl jf '1-dfn al-dhalfl (al-kitab al-khazari), ed. David H. Baneth, prepared
for publication by Haggai Ben-Shammai (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977), 38-39. For this line of
argument reiterated and elaborated by way of the image of the seed (Israel) that falls into the
ground (exile) and appears to be lost but whose world-historical mission then grows out of this
condition see ibid., 172. Despite an obvious point of contact with Halevi's theory, it has been
suggested that Maimonides' later approach to the Jewish effect on Christianity and Islam fails
to give exile a similarly major role; see Isadore Twersky, "Maimonides and Eretz Yisrael:
Halakhic, Philosophic, and Historical Perspectives," in Perspectives on Maimonides, ed. Joel
L. Kraemer (Oxford: Littman Library, 1991), 284 n. 40. For a similar apologetic expression in
the face of exile's degradations (whose genuineness is, however, more suspect in light of its
polemical context) see Moses ben Nahman's comment at the "disputation of Barcelona"
("when I serve my Creator in your [King James I of Aragon] territory in exile ... my reward is
great ...) as in Kitvei rabbenu Mosheh ben Nahman, ed. Charles B. Chavel, 2 vols. (Jerusalem:
Mosad Harav Kook, 1963), 1:310.
193. E.g., Sefer ne!!a~ yisra'el, ed. Yehoshuah David Hartman (Jerusalem: Machon Yerusha1ayim,
1997), 586-87. For the prominence of "dialectical theology" generally in Loewe see Andre
Neher, Le puits de /'exit: Ia theologie dialectique du Maharal de Prague ( 1512-1609) (Paris:
Albin Michel, 1966). For examples of associations (comparitive and contrasting) between
Abarbanel's and Loewe's meditations on exile and redemption see, e.g., Scholem, as cited
above n. 22; Sherwin as cited above n. 109, and Gross, Le messianismejuif, 26-49.
194. Funkenstein, "Political Theory and Realistic Messianism," 81.
195. Tishby in Saperstein, ed., Essential Papers, 272.
196. Schwartz, Ha-re'ayon, 242.
197. Gersh om Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971), 35.
198. See for lucidity on this theme the otherwise elusive article of Rivka Shatz, "Qavvim li-demutah
she! ha-hit'orerut ha-poli!it-meshil).it le-'aJ:lar gerush sefarad," Daat 11 (1983), 53-66.
199. Joseph Dan, "Chaos Theory, Lyotard's History, and the Future of the Study of the History of
Ideas," Jewish Studies Quarterly 3 (1996), 210 n. 19.
200. This final suggestion, which is no more than speculation, is prompted by the fact that
Netanyahu blames messianic passivity in his book on Abarbanel mostly by implication
whereas his explicit critique falls incessantly on Abarbanel's lack of realism (above). This
suggests the prospect that "standard" Zionist metanarratives acclaim premodern messianism
because they work with the polarity "activism-passivity" and find messianism an example of
the former whereas Revisionist historians might, as they cast their gaze back, be more inclined
to evaluate premodern Jewish history in terms of "realism" or lack thereof, blaming
messianism as the prime example of this lack. Elsewhere, Netanyahu does invoke the stigma
of a pre-Zionist "ideology which glorified ... passivity"; see his lecture cited above in n. 44.
Netanyahu's sense of the inadequacies of medieval Jewish political strategy may have been
unduly magnified by his historiographic focus on late medieval Spain where, even seen as a
tactical "policy of quietism" (above), this strategy seemed at its most inadequate.
20 I. For a summary of which see Funkenstein, Teva' historiyah u-meshihiyyut.
 The Messianism of Isaac Abarbanel 39

202. David Berger," 'AI to~'ote'ah ha-'ironiyyot she! gishato ha-ra~yonalis!it she! ha-rambam li-
tequfah ha-meshil_lit," Maimonidean Studies 2, ed. Arthur Hyman (1991), 4-6 (Hebrew
Section).
203. Moshe Ide!, "Religion, Thought and Attitudes: the Impact of the Expulsion on the Jews," in
Spain and the Jews: The Sephardi Experience 1492 and After, ed. Elie Kedourie (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1992), 123-39.
204. See, e.g., respectively, Robert Bonfil, "How Golden was the Age of the Renaissance in Jewish
Historiography," History and Theory, Beiheft 27 (1988), 92-93; Ide!, "Religion, Thought and
Attitudes," 136-39, and ibid., 125-29.
205. Ide!, "Introduction," 23 and, more assertively and substantially, idem, "Encounters," 214-15.
For Graetz's assertion regarding Abarbanel's stimulus of Lemlein see the citation above n. 20.
206. For this description of Abarbanel see Manuel, The Broken Staff, 127.
 M.GOLDISH

2. PATTERNS IN CONVERSO MESSIANISM

Some rather astonishing statements about the apostasy of the pseudo-messiah

Sabbatai Zevi in 1666 were made by one his chief theologians, Abraham
Miguel Cardoso. Cardoso was a former converso, a descendent of Jews who
had converted to Catholicism under duress in Spain or Portugal during the
fifteenth century. Cardoso had himself escaped the Iberian Peninsula as an
adult in order to revert to his ancestral Judaism in freer lands. 1 Some of his
ideas concerning Sabbatai's conversion to Islam seem less influenced by
mystical or classical philosophy (contexts central to much of Cardoso's
thought) than by his converso background. In trying to understand these
statements I have gone back to examine traditions of messianism among the
conversos, looking for patterns into which Cardoso's views might fit. 2
Several messianic movements grew up within converso communities during
the early modern period, but conversos also participated actively in numerous
Jewish and Christian messianic movements. It should be understood that the
conversos were not universally concerned with messianism; but the messianists
among them were many and highly conspicuous in all their permutations. 3
Converso messianism has been studied in various contexts, most often through
analyses of particular movements in which individuals from this group
participated. I am not attempting anything like a comprehensive history or
typology of converso messianism here; I am rather searching for larger patterns
in the known material. I will focus on tendencies which appear to transcend at
least some of the geographical, temporal and even religious boundaries across
which converso culture flourished, to search for common elements of messianic
thought which may constitute distinct patterns. 4 Since conversos might be
crypto-Jews, good Catholics or practicing Jews, and they might live anywhere
in Europe or the Mediterranean over the period of several hundred years, these
common tendencies are not always easy to trace. 5
Three related aspects of the conversos' condition appear to have contributed
heavily to their messianic postures: their upbringing in a Catholic environment
tinctured with a collective memory of Jewish ancestry; their relative disconnec-
tion from authoritative messianic traditions of either Judaism or Christianity;

41
M Go/dish and R.H Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 41-63.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
42 M. Goldish

and their untenable situation as pariahs in two faiths and cultures. This
combination of factors helped shape converso messianic imagery which was
more than simply a syncretic Jewish-Christian amalgam, as previous scholars
have tended to argue; it was an outlook with elements unique or original in this
community. While a number of tendencies in converso messianism appear
similar or identical to those found in Judaism or Christianity, two connected
ideas developed particularly among the conversos and subsequently influenced
both Jewish messianism and Christian millenarianism. These are: a particular
willingness to entertain a wide variety of messianic scenarios, and the
reservation of a special place for the conversos in the messianic process, even
at times including a converso messiah.

CATHOLICISM AND JUDAISM IN CRYPTO-JEWISH CONVERSO MESSIANISM

A converso, whether he or she continued to live as a Catholic or reverted to

Judaism, could never escape the effects of a Catholic upbringing. In many cases
this upbringing was tempered by some family memories of Jewish antecedents,
or even an attempt to practice Judaism ("crypto-Judaism"). This background
left its stamp on numerous aspects of converso religious life. Even in the Jewish
community of Amsterdam, made up of former conversos, there was no
escaping the impact of the congregants' Catholic upbringing. 6 Messianism
was particularly susceptible to Catholic influences since the role of the messiah
looms so large in Christian ideas. Crypto-Jewish conversos often defined their
own religious identity through a dialectical negation of Christian principles,
centered on the messiahship of Jesus, but nevertheless absorbed the forms and
terminology of Christological thought. Other conversos were sincere Chris-
tians who accepted the tenets of Catholic Christology, though a disproportio-
nately large number of these had ideas approaching the margins of orthodoxy.
Examples of Catholic patterns in crypto-Jewish and Jewish former-converso
messianism abound in the literature. Two conflicting tendencies were at work
as a result of the Catholic background. On one hand, among the crypto-Jews
there was an impulse to define the Jewish messiah in terms of how he would
differ from the Christian messiah. For example, at the end of the sixteenth
century Diego Diaz Nieto told the Mexican Inquisition that "the Messiah was
to be a son of King David and not a son of God, and that the Messiah would
redeem the entire world .. . and that some Christians would incur eternal
punishment:' 7 Later, the former conversos of Amsterdam would be among
the few Jews ever to voluntarily polemicize against Christianity, explaining in
great detail why they had rejected belief in Jesus in favor of the contrasting
Jewish messianic hopes for the future. 8 On the other hand, despite themselves,
these conversos' concept of the messiah was itself usually tinctured with
Catholic ideas. Fernando de Madrid, in 1491 testimony, referred to the messiah
as the Antichrist, saying that "whoever did not want to believe in the Antichrist,
each day would have a limb amputated until they believed in him and stopped
believing in Jesus Christ." 9 Another New World converso called the Jewish
messiah "the true Christ." 10 This Christianized Jewish messianism is still alive
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 43

in the Southwest of the United States, where a converso reported recently that
"The Christ doll tradition in our family is meant to represent the messiah as a
child [who] we always expect to come sometime. A Christ doll was passed down
from one generation to the next, from one family to another." 11
The Christianized messianic conception asserted itself in Abraham Cardo-
so's views on the "mission" of Sabbatai Zevi. Cardoso had in mind the
"suffering servant" passage in Isaiah 53, which he interprets in an explicitly
Christological fashion, for example, when he says "It is not enough that the
messiah the son of Joseph will be desecrated for our sins, but he must rather
bear the transgressions of Israel on his shoulders, to be killed by the gentiles as
atonement for us." 12 Cardoso, unlike Catholic conversos whose syncretizing
was unconscious, was explicitly aware that he was treading dangerous ground.
He therefore attempted to preclude the attacks of critics by saying that

You will find these things in Isaiah 49 and 53, and in Psalms 89, where they
refer to [the messiah], and thus they were understood by the sages of the
Gemarah and the Zohar from whose waters we drink. You will find other
interpretations in the works of later exegetes, but this is because they were
engaged in apologetics with the barbs of the uncircumcized [Christians] with
which they attempt to prove from Scripture that the mamzer [Jesus] was
messiah. But we need not pay heed to them because our strong pillars are the
Prophets, mishnaic sages [tanaim] and talmudic sages [amoraim]. 13

Rabbi Jacob Sasportas, the great enemy of the Sabbatians, did not miss a bit
of the Christian flavor in these highly nontraditional interpretations. Further-
more, he was well aware oftheir source.

It is my opinion that this man is as he was in Portugal: from the seed of the
conversos; and he knew that the Christians interpret [Isaiah's prophecy] in
reference to their messiah. He copied it onto his messiah [Sabbatai Zevi],
this apostate .... And he is so convinced of this faith, he thinks that through
it he can achieve the salvation of his soul, as it is done according to the belief
of the Christians in Jesus, whom they invest with absolute divinity. 14

It is clear, then, that the Catholic atmosphere in which these crypto-Jewish

conversos were raised left a deep impression on their messianism, as it did on
all aspects of crypto-Judaism. Nevertheless, we must not ignore the fact that
conversos usually had some recollection of their Jewish ancestry. Certainly
those who "Judaized," resisting the pressure to become fully believing and
practicing Catholics, or who reconverted to Judaism as Cardoso did, felt their
messianic views were Jewish rather than Christian. Those who viewed the
Jewish messiah as "Antichrist" or "the true Christ" were indeed using Catholic
terminology and ideas, but they were defining their messiah dialectically
against Jesus. Lacking any background in mainstream Jewish messianic ideas,
this was their way of being Jewish. Cardoso's case is more complex. As a
former converso of Portugal, he had absorbed the language and exegesis of
44 M Go/dish

Christology. Nevertheless, at the time of the Sabbatian movement Cardoso had

been a practicing Jew for some time, and his rabbinic knowledge was by no
means negligible. In terms of theology, Cardoso produced a genuine synthesis
between Jewish and Christian messianic ideas in the passage cited: the
"suffering servant" of Isaiah is indeed the messiah as the Christians claim, but
he is the "Messiah son of Joseph," a sort of pre-messiah which exists only in
JudaismY

DISCONNECTION, ALIENATION, AND THE MESSIAH

Another powerful factor in the development of converso messianic patterns

was the lack of real connection many conversos had with traditional author-
itative sources about both Jewish and Catholic beliefs concerning the messiah.
Professor Yerushalmi has convincingly argued that conversos in the Iberian
Peninsula were not entirely cut off from knowledge of genuine Jewish post-
biblical writings. Those who studied in universities could find a great deal of
Talmudic material, for example, in anti-Jewish polemical literature. Similarly,
Inquisitorial manuals contained often correct data about rabbinic Judaism. 16
There is also evidence that rabbis and ritual circumcisers made their way to
Spain and Portugal on occasion. 17 Nevertheless, the vast majority of conversos
after the fifteenth century never came in broad contact with practicing Jews or
Jewish literature. Those who did could have received only bits and pieces of the
rabbinic tradition in this way, never seeing the "authoritative" positions of
Maimonides or the sophisticated renderings of the kabbalists. 18 Even con-
versos who returned to Judaism in Amsterdam, Livorno, Hamburg or London
seldom became real masters of rabbinic literature, and the mainstream
rabbinical positions on messianism must often have been just superimposed
on their pre-existing ideas. 19
On the other hand, the conversos were raised in another tradition of
messianic dogma: that of the Catholic Church. We have already noted that
Catholic ideas left a deep imprint on converso messianic views over a long
period, though Catholicism was just one of several forces shaping those views.
As Professor Sonne and others have shown, many converso families, both
among those which would later return to Judaism and those which would not,
held and passed on negative attitudes toward Catholicism in general, and
Catholic messianic conceptions in particular. 20 There were conversos, like the
crypto-Jews discussed above, who consciously rejected Christology even as
they inadvertently absorbed many of its tenets. Others embraced it completely,
but often retained unconscious vestiges of alternative thought. A few became
dedicated but radical Catholic millenarians. Yet another type of converso
remained somewhere in the middle, practicing Catholicism with some mental
reservations. 21
In contrast, Old Christian thinkers, for whom Catholic messianic dogma
had been entirely authoritative going back hundreds of years, were far less
likely to approach the no-man's-land outside orthodox Christology. This is one
reason a disproportionate number of Iberian millenarians were of converso
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 45

stock. (This is also why, as I will argue, many of those bold spirited Old
Christians who did challenge Catholic orthodoxy did so partly by placing
themselves into a framework of Jewish Christianity.) Jews, for whom a some-
what more elastic set of messianic positions was acceptable, could nevertheless
also not have allowed themselves into the twilight space of Jewish-Christian
exegesis and theology found among some conversos, as Sasportas's criticism
demonstrates. Thus, the removal of many conversos from completely author-
itative messianic dogma in either faith may have permitted the malleability of
their apocalyptic visions, which were often novel and sometimes heretical.
The third great force at work in converso messianic ideas was the isolation of
the conversos from full acceptance into either Jewish or Iberian Catholic
society. This condition was originally forced upon them, but later it was
sometimes turned into a badge of honor. It was manifest to all that in the vast
majority of cases the Jew next door who became converted, often under duress
of some sort, was not essentially different today as a Christian than he was
yesterday as a Jew. But after two, three, four or five generations as conforming
Catholics it is unlikely that there were very many serious Judaizers. The
descendants of most conversos would probably have assimilated eventually
had not the Inquisition and prejudice kept them separate, often driving them
back further into converso identities. 22 Nobody knew who would be a victim.
One of the most famous epithets used against New Christians was "Albor-
aique." This was the name of the beast which, according to the Koran, carried
Mohammed to heaven. It is a species not found in nature, made up of parts
from different animals. The Spanish and Portuguese saw the converso as an
inassimilable mixture of Jew, Muslim, Catholic and heretic that could never be
a full member of their society. 23 The name is not entirely inappropriate when
considering converso messianic postures.
Meanwhile, in the Jewish world, the rabbis struggled to define a policy
concerning the conversos, for both those in the Iberian Peninsula and those
who escaped. On the one hand, the Talmud teaches that even a transgressing
Jew remains Jewish. On the other hand, many of these people were content to
practice Catholicism permanently and willfully dissociate themselves from
Judaism. Furthermore, if one declared them all full Jews, one would be stuck
with certain legal situations, particularly those of levirate marriages and the
like, which could ruin people's lives. But to write off the entire group as willing
apostates with no part in Judaism would be to completely alienate thousands of
conversos who wished to return to Judaism. The debate continued over many
generations. 24
As larger groups of conversos escaped to the West and reverted to Judaism in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many discovered that the authoritarian
and difficult rabbinic Judaism practiced in contemporary Jewish congregations
was not really what they wanted. The former conversos often turned to their
own group for a source of meaningful identity, and in many cities they formed
their own congregations. A elitist attitude developed among them, and they
called themselves the "Na~ao," or the Spanish and Portuguese Nation, whose
identity was defined not by religion, but by membership in the class of the
46 M. Go/dish

conversos. 25 For these reasons the conversos often felt betrayed both by the
Spanish and Portuguese on the one hand, and by the Jews on the other.
Both the dissociation from authoritative messianic theologies and the
feelings of alienation from Jewish and Iberian society can help explain why
the conversos' messianic positions reflected a special status and understanding
for the converso condition.
For many crypto-Jewish conversos, particularly after the Expulsion, the
focus of the messiah's activity shifted from the salvation and regathering of
the Jewish people to that of the conversos, whose special enemy, the Inquisition,
would be the object of his wrath. In Isabel Alvares' 1570 inquisitional
testimony in Coimbra she explains that the New Christians are suffering for
the sin of the whole Jewish people, who created the golden calf at Mt. Sinai.
The atonement for this sin would bring the messianic age. Pedro de Serrano of
Madrid, testifying in the 1480s, believed the messianic age would make the
crypto-Jews victorious and wealthy, and the Old Christians would be ruined.
This is not to say that the converso crypto-Jews did not sometimes see their
own conversion to Christianity as a barrier to the messiah, as Fernando de
Madrid expressed it in 1491. But the accent was on the suffering to which evil
"Old Christians" and Inquisitors would be subjected at the hands of the
messiah. 26
The central role of conversos and their condition in the messianic process is
often even more specific in their consciousness. One finds such opinions as that
God would help the conversos because they were descended from Jews, who
"do not believe that the Messiah has come, but rather that he is still to come";
that the messiah would rescue the conversos from their troubles; that after the
conversos would be taken from Spain it wouldn't rain there for seven years;
that the Old Christians would then turn into mules to carry the conversos to the
Promised Land; and that the envisioned death of Leviathan signaled that the
messiah would soon come to rescue the conversos. One converso had a vision
of the messiah on a golden throne, surrounded by martyrs of the Inquisition,
promising to come soon to take conversos to the Promised Land. 27
Highly revealing is the testimony of a witness summarizing a sermon given
by the crypto-Jewish messianist Alonso de Cordoba in 1500. Alonso describes
a process wherein Elijah returns to regather the conversos from Spain and
Portugal and bring them back to the Holy Land. He interviews them to see who
believes in (as opposed to practicing?) the Law of Moses, to forgive those who
have erred, and to prepare them for their journey. Along the way everyone
becomes twenty-five years old, and young conversos are brought together with
the conversas for marriage. 28
This last element is found also in the related messianic dreams of Alonso's
contemporary, Ines of Herrera? 9 In November, 1499, Ines had a vision of her
deceased mother, who informed her that Elijah would come in the year [1]500
"... at the command of God, in order to ascertain in the world that the
conversos will leave [Iberia] and go to a certain land." 30 He would also "come
and preach before the conversos to announce the coming of the messiah." 31 In
this testimony, like that of Isabel Alvares, it is the efforts of the conversos
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 47

rather than the Jews which are the critical impetus in the messianic process. "In
order for this to occur [the coming of Elijah] they must fast, give charity, and do
their best, according to their ability." 32 It is the conversos, limited in their ability
to keep Jewish law out of fear of the Inquisition, whose good deeds are the
precondition of Elijah's arrival. The prophecies of Ines and other messianic
converso prophets of her day remained a living tradition among Iberian
crypto-Jews for many decades, reflecting the power of these motifs among the
New Christians. 33
The critical factor to note in these visions of Alonso and Ines, as well as in
other evidence from Inquisitional records, is that the conversos take a central
role in the messianic process, and the fate of practicing Jews is mainly omitted.
At times the role crypto-Jewish conversos conceived for themselves in this
process went beyond that of special and central agents, or even that of
prophets, and extended to that of the messiah. The theme of a converso messiah
can be found at widely varying times and places in the literature. Perhaps the
most influential converso messiah was Luis Dias of Setubal in Portugal, burned
at the stake in 1542. Dias was a poor tailor, a Portuguese crypto-Jew, who
began his career as a prophet but eventually announced himself to be the
messiah. He had a large following of Old as well as New Christians, and we will
presently have occasion to discuss one of these further. 34
A circle of Mexican crypto-Jews, many punished in the great auto-de-fe of
1649, had very specific beliefs about the birth of the messiah from their midst.
In 1642 it was widely believed that one of their own, the converso Gaspar Vaez
Acevedo (Sevilla), then eighteen years of age, would be the messiah predicted
by the kabbalists, and that he would reveal himself in 1648. When this failed to
occur, the group's hopes turned to a specific but unborn converso messiah: the
child expected by Ines Pereira, which was eventually born in an Inquisition cell.
lnes was actually worshiped, in a clearly syncretistic manner, as the mother of
the expected savior. Meanwhile, Sebastian Roman was accused of marrying
the conversa Doiia Geronyma Esperanza in the expectation that the messiah
would be born of their union. 35 These beliefs sound completely bizarre in either
a Catholic or a Jewish context, but in the crypto-Jewish converso context,
where Catholic, Jewish and imaginative ideas play against each other with no
authoritative referee, all was possible.
The most famous case of a converso messiah is that of Solomon Molkho, ne
Diogo Pires, which began in the mystical and political borderlands of
Christian-Jewish identity. When the adventurer David ha-Reubeni appeared
in Portugal there was an outpouring of support and messianic fervor among
the conversos. 36 The imagination of Pires, a secretary of the king, was stirred to
the point that he had mystical dreams, which presumably informed him of his
part in the incipient messianic process. In practical terms what he learned from
these visions was that he must become circumcised, which he did over the
protests of ha-Reubeni. While the messianic role which Molkho and others
imagined him playing remains obscure, it is clear that these dreams set him on
the path which led him into the Jewish world, a messianic mission, and
eventually a fiery death at the hands of the Inquisition. 37
48 M. Go/dish

It is worthwhile noting that similar tendencies of thought can be found even

among sincere Catholic conversos who believed in the messiahship of Jesus,
and among those whom they influenced. Their Christianity did not necessarily
exclude a special function for con versos in the messianic process, or even a role
as messianic agents. In a sense this is not as mad as it seems, for Jesus himself
was a sort of converso messiah, a Christian Jew. It was precisely with this in
mind that the fifteenth-century Bishop of Burgos, Paulus de Sancta Maria (ne
Solomon ha-Levi of Burgos) and his son Bishop Alonso de Cartagena,
conversos, defined their millenarian role within the context of a Jewish-
Christian theology. They declared they would be in a position to lead a
millenarian army because they were descendants of the House of David, and
thus family members of the mother of Jesus. 38 In the seventeenth century, the
maverick French millenarian Isaac Ia Peyrere, whom Professor Popkin believes
was of converso background, expected that the "Recall of the Jews" before the
Second Coming would occur through their transition into conversos in France.
They would become Jewish-Christians, practicing Judaism in the pure form
known in the circle of Christ. 39
We are now in a better position to return into the world of the former
converso Abraham Cardoso, and understand the context of his famous views
on the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi. 40

Two years ago it was revealed to me that the king messiah is destined to
dress in the clothes of a converso [anus], and because of them the Jews will
not recognize him; in short, he is destined to be a converso like me .... At
first he will be lowly, and will be considered by the Jews as an abominable
evildoer and will undergo sufferings. And all which is decreed upon him is
for the sins of Israel, since it was for this purpose that he entered the world,
and for this he was created .... And the reason [the messiah must become a
converso] is that we are all required by the Torah to become conversos
[anusim] before we leave the exile, as it is so written in the Torah, "There you
will worship foreign gods, sticks and stones" .... Therefore the law requires,
and it is thus explicitly decreed in the Torah that we will be idol worshipers
and desecrate the Torah among the nations against our will .... It is not
enough that the messiah the son of Joseph will be desecrated for our sins,
but he must rather bear the transgressions of Israel on his shoulders, to be
killed by the gentiles as atonement for us. And because they [the Jews]
abandoned the Torah, desecration was decreed on the messiah son of David,
that he become a converso against his will, in a manner which prevents him
from keeping the Torah .... And God inflicted on him the sins of us all,
because we were all required to become converts .... This is similar to what
occurred to Esther .... 41

This, of course, is not the view of a converso who has been isolated from the
Jewish tradition, but that of a sophisticated Jewish Sabbatian theologian of
converso background. Nevertheless, the concept of salvation centered on
conversos and their experience seems to show through strongly. The general
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 49

impression which Sasportas got is certainly correct: Cardoso is essentially a

converso who, despite his new incarnation as a rabbi, continues to understand
Judaism in the tropes of converso thought.

CONVERSO FLEXIBILITY AND CATHOLIC MILLENARIANISM

We have now seen something of the converso flexibility in questions of who the
messiah might be, who would be involved in the process of his manifestation,
and what that process itself could be like. Many of these forms would be nearly
unthinkable in the Jewish world before Sabbatianism, and imaginable in the
Christian world only among the more unusual sorts of millenarians. Tradi-
tional Jewish sources themselves differ as to the nature of the messiah, but the
generally accepted exoteric expectations involve a messiah who will be a male
Jew, a scholar, a descendent of the House of David. 42 So far we have
encountered the possibilities of a converso messiah (who might not actually
be considered Jewish, of course), an unborn messiah, an unlettered messiah,
and a Suffering Servant messiah. Cardoso agitated for Sabbatai Zevi, who
began as a commandment-breaking Jewish messiah, then turned into an
apostate ("converso") commandment-breaking Jewish messiah, and was still
revered after 1676 in the role of a dead apostate commandment-breaking
Jewish messiah. We have seen a messianic process in which Jews are margin-
alized and conversos placed at the center, and we have seen Catholic conversos
similarly placing themselves near the center of a messianic process that is
explicitly Christian.
This last point brings out an important principle which I would like to
emphasize. The strong antipathy crypto-Jewish conversos and sincere Catholic
conversos often felt for each other's messianic faith need not obscure our
awareness that they shared a common universe of discourse. We may first be
alerted to this by noting that both types were disproportionately represented in
messianic agitation. In examining their attitudes, moreover, we may find that a
crypto-Jewish converso messianist and a Catholic converso millenarian (even
one who was a rabid conversionist) may still have had more in common with
each other in certain aspects than they did with their non-converso coreligionists.
The flexibility of converso religion did not always exclude a messiah who is Jesus,
but it may have facilitated the development or adoption of unconventional ideas
about his Coming. 43 Flexibility in the specifics of the messianic person and
process, then, is a widespread attitude among conversos of both camps.
The removal of local Jews and concomitant rapid growth of the converso
community in Spain and Portugal occurred at the turn of the sixteenth century,
a period during which Europe was experiencing tremendous political and
religious upheavals. An incredible variety of events and ideas flooded the
apocalyptic imagination around this time, including the fall of Constantinople
to the Ottomans in 1453, the voyages of discovery, a host of odd natural
occurrences including comets and eclipses, the religious and political unifica-
tion of Spain, momentous changes in church-state relations, Renaissance
humanism and philosophy (including the impact of Erasmus), and of course a
50 M Go/dish

spate of ecclesiastical reform movements culminating in the Protestant

Reformation and wars of religion. Under the impact of all this, messianism
and millenarianism rose to a feverish pitch. 44
Iberian apocalypticism of this period, associated particularly with the
Franciscan spirituals, featured a keen interest in the spiritual (revival of ancient
prophecies, prophetic ecstasies, penitential asceticism), along with a growing
trend toward placing concrete political figures or processes in messianic roles.
One finds millenarians putting their apocalyptic hopes in Cardinal Ximines de
Cisneros, Charles V, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Sebastian of Portugal, among
others. This trend is instructive in that, despite its close association with
spiritual and mystical phenomena, it expands and concretizes the process of
Jesus' Second Coming in a manner which includes key roles for European
political leaders. The latter are sometimes even called messiahs, suggesting a
curious flexibility in the apocalyptic process, which becomes peopled with
terrestrial supporting actors and even partners joining Jesus in the Redemption
of mankind. The mechanics of redemption and reformed state of life in the
post-millennia! world become foci, supplanting to some degree the philosophi-
cal Christology of the medieval church. This represents a sharp departure from
Origen's position and is perhaps much closer to the vision of the Sibylline
Oracles. The emphasis on the concrete future predicted in prophecy, along with
the close association between sixteenth century millenarians and reform move-
ments (particularly Erasmianism), suggests a move toward a temporal Uto-
pianism more associated with early modernity. 45
The prophetic-political dimension of apocalyptic processes was a theme
since ancient times, but it experienced a major upswing under the influence of
Joachim of Fiore. In Spain there were popular traditions of this strain in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, associated particularly with the spiritual
Franciscans and Arnoldo de Villanova, who was deeply influenced by Jewish
ideas. 46 But it was in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when conversos
were becoming numerous, that these ideas became highly concrete and widely
influential in intellectual discourse. 47 Conversos moved rapidly to prominence
in this stream of thought. Their participation was immense, out of all
proportion to their numbers. They appear in the role of prophets, academics,
poets, Franciscan visionary Alumbrados, Jesuits, heretics and other forms.
Americo Castro, in his discussion on "Imperialism and Messianism,"
mentions a few of the earlier conversos whose thought affected Spanish
political millenarianism, including the authors Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandi-
no, Fray Diego de Valencia de Leon, Hernando del Pulgar and Juan de Lucena.
He comments that "The imperial longing and divination of the early fifteenth
century was a projection of Hispano-Jewish messianism, which turned into an
important ingredient in the spirit of the Spanish people." 48 Jose Nieto expresses
a similar understanding concerning the rise of the Alumbrados.

The makers of the Alumbrados' apocalyptic reformation of the church were

friars of the Franciscan order, and many of them were Jewish conversos.
Their ideas about an imminent ecclesiastical reformation were linked
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 51

together with their ideas about a political and military conquest. Thus, the
messianic-religious ideas rooted in ancient Judaism and entertained in
fifteenth century Spain by Christians of Jewish origin are the political-
religious substances upon which these Alumbrados fed. 49

These statements raise several points. First, it is clearly conversos who

imported such ideas into the Spanish Catholic millenarian discourse. Thus,
this influence could not have taken place without the intellectual conduit
created by the converso condition. Second, these scholars recognize that
Catholic conversos retained Jewish messianic ideas even as they participated
in shaping those of Iberian Christianity. Third, both authors, but Castro in
particular, see Judaism as the wellspring of both political and divinatory
(prophetic) aspects in Spanish millenarian thought.
It is clear that Judaism is not the only source of these ideas, but I would like
to point to another aspect of the converso influence. It was not only their Jewish
background which gave rise to this strain of prophetic-political millenarianism,
but perhaps even more their converso background. Fifteenth and sixteenth
century Spanish apocalypticism, as Bataillon and others have shown, was
intimately related to ecclesiastical and political reform movements. The
conversos, who were familiar with an additional messianic tradition, could be
particularly flexible about the details of the apocalyptic process. On the other
hand, the constant fear and exclusion they felt was undoubtedly a major factor
in their striving for a more Utopian political solution to the inequities of
Spanish Christianity. This factor became stronger after the establishment of
the Inquisition in the late fifteenth century, and one finds ever more conversos
prophesying and agitating for the apocalyptic universal reformation. Crypto-
Jewish converso messianists saw the solution to their ostracism in the form of a
messianism which stressed the salvation of the conversos, resettlement in Zion,
and punishment of their oppressors. Catholic millenarian conversos saw the
solution to the same woes in the form of an autochthonous political apocalypse
in which a strong Christian ruler would reform both church and state, freeing
the conversos of their stigma. 50
It is also noteworthy that both crypto-Jewish conversos and Franciscan
millenarian conversos turned to prophecy for their knowledge of the coming
End of Days. Religious "enthusiasm" of this type was generally anathema to
established religious institutions such as the Catholic Church and Jewish
rabbinic leadership because it bypassed the need for traditional clerical
interpretation or mediation. 51 Since for some conversos neither synagogue
nor church could supply the spiritual succor needed to overcome their
particular problems and anxieties, it is not surprising to find those of all camps
turning often to direct prophecy for a message of hope. On the other hand, the
silent inner prayer of the Alumbrados dexados (who will be discussed below)
also reflects a common attitude among crypto-Jewish conversos. In Judaism
the Amidah prayer is of precisely this silent, contemplative type; but silence had
more special meanings for conversos. Once Jews converted, they no longer had
the freedom to express out loud Jewish views they might still have held. In
52 M. Go/dish

many cases they also did not wish to pronounce faith in Catholicism or some of
its doctrines. Thus one finds silent contemplation of the Jewish God or silent
nullification of Catholic prayers performed publicly out of fear. Again, then, it
is possible that their unique background prepared the ground for conversos'
wide participation in these movements. 52
The early sixteenth century was the most intense period of both Spanish and
Spanish converso apocalyptic activity. While the millenarian excitement among
the Alumbrados built, Cardinal Ximines de Cisneros ( 1436-1517) was becom-
ing the most powerful clergyman in Spain, and a messianic figure in his own
right. Xirnines was Provincial of the Castile Franciscans, as well as confessor to
Queen Isabella, Archbishop of Toledo and holder of many other top church
offices. Professor Popkin has strongly argued for a millenarian explanation of
Ximines' great reforming projects, including his famous polyglot Bible project,
the Complutensis. Both his church reforms and the polyglot Bible were under-
taken, according to Popkin, in an attempt to prepare people for the imminent
apocalypse.
The critical Hebrew and Aramaic sections of the polyglot, comprising the
Old Testament in its original tongues, was overseen by three learned conversos:
Alfonso de Zamora, Pablo Nuiiez Coronel and Alfonso de Alcala. In 1507,
when the converso Archbishop Hernando de Talavera of Granada was arrested
by the Inquisition on charges of Judaizing and holding acute millenarian
beliefs, Ximines took over the Inquisition and exonerated Talavera. The
conversos surrounding Ximines, then, appear to have participated in his
millenarian expectations, in which the bridge of converted Jews was to bring
critical knowledge of ancient Judaism to bear on the apocalyptic process. This,
then, is another special role for conversos in a millenarian scheme: just as
Jewish Christians were central to Christianity at the First Coming, so would
their services assist in the Second Coming. 53
During Ximines' later years, the Franciscan political-millenarian spirituality
of earlier centuries flowered into the movement of Spanish Alumbrados. There
were two main streams, both of which ran afoul of the Inquisition, and both of
which contained a very high proportion of conversos. One was the Franciscan
visionary Alumbrados, whose millenarianism was driven by spiritual experi-
ence and prophecy. The other was the Alumbrados dexados, who opposed the
prophetic "enthusiasm" of the visionaries, and concentrated their energies on
internal meditation and knowledge of biblical prophecy. 54
Already in turmoil from the great events in Spain near the turn of the
century, the visionary Alumbrados received further impetus from the agitation
of several prophetic figures. One of the most influential was Fray Melchor, a
converso visionary who left a trail of chiliastic prophecies and found favor with
Cardinal Ximines de Cisneros around 1512. It was noted by Melchor's
opponents among the dexados, Fra. Andrea and Fra. Juan de Cazalla, the
latter himself a converso, that Melchor's version of the Second Coming
featured elements strongly associated with Judaism. These included excessive
attention to the person of the messiah and belief in a return to the terrestrial
Jerusalem, points which one finds repeatedly stressed in converso crypto-
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 53

Judaism perhaps even more than they are in Jewish thought. Fray Melchor's
prophecies of ca. 1512 predicted that over the course of twelve years (seven of
which had already elapsed!) the whole church would be transformed, the
Muslims converted, the Holy Roman Empire destroyed, and the entire church
reformed and transmitted to the Holy Land. 55 Fra. Melchor's prophecies were
a focal point of the growing millenarian wave among visionary Franciscans
and their followers.
The year 1524 was the peak of prophetic expectancy among the prophetic
Alumbrados. Public sermons were preached that the Roman church was about
to be transformed, Pope Clement VII deposed and replaced by reforming
Franciscan Alumbrados. 56 A year later the Alumbrado leaders were arrested
and put on trial before the Inquisition for a group of heresies among which
"Judaizing" in various aspects figured centrally. So many of the Alumbrado
leaders were conversos that one defendant pointed out his Old Christian
ancestry as a particular point in his defense. 57
There can be no coincidence in the fact that in the precise period of the
Alumbrado trials, when the messianic adventurer David ha-Reubeni arrived in
Portugal, he found more support among the conversos of Spain as well as
Portugal than he did among any Jewish community in Europe. Messianic
expectations must have been at their highest pitch among the Spanish Catholic
conversos at exactly this moment because of the Alumbrados. The cooperation
of the devoutly Catholic king of Portugal with ha-Reubeni in the latter's quest
to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims certainly appeared to be an
apocalyptic event to Catholic conversos, crypto-Jews and even Old Christians.
If his testimony can be believed, ha-Reubeni was so confident of his protection
that he didn't refrain from defenestrating an antagonistic Spanish priest!
Conversos from Spain came in large numbers to Portugal, Portuguese
conversos crossed the border into Spain to reclaim property they had left there,
and in general the conversos carried on around ha-Reubeni without the
slightest concern about Inquisitorial retribution. 58 One finds an effect here
which appears again at the time of the Sabbatian movement: when apocalypti-
cism is truly acute and an astonishing human portent presents himself, he is
embraced by many sides without concern for doctrinal niceties. Here, then, we
find the high pitch of converso expectations from the Catholic side connected
with the movement of a Jewish messianic figure among a very wide group of
conversos.
Conversos, particularly literary authors, played an important role in Spanish
millenarian thought throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I will
not attempt to deal with all this material, but it is impossible not to take up
briefly the case of Fray Luis de Leon (ca. 1527~1591). De Leon, a Spanish
Augustinian of converso ancestry, was among the most celebrated literary and
religious figures of sixteenth-century Spain. While his thought is best known for
its Neoplatonic influences, recent research has focused on de Leon's Hebraic,
mystical and apocalyptic thinking. In these areas he was heavily influenced by
his encounter with the works of Italian Renaissance thinkers like Ficino,
Galatino, Pico and Giorgio. 59 De Leon expected the Second Coming to occur
54 M Go/dish

in 1656 (the year the former converso Manasseh ben Israel would arrive in
London with his own messianic message), when the Islamic Antichrist was to
be vanquished. Dr. Kottman, de Leon's biographer, suggests a rather specific
meaning to these views.
His motives may well have been his conviction of the messianic destiny of the
Jews and the unique place in history accorded Spain because of their
conversion in that land. He seems to have connected this with the expulsion of
the Moors from Spain which was also seen to have apocalyptic significance. 60
It is indeed highly significant that this influential converso millenarian
emphasized the righteousness of the original Jewish Christians of apostolic
times, whose mistreatment at the hands of the gentiles would be punished at the
End of Days. De Leon, then, like many other Catholic converso millenarians,
sees a relationship between the conversion of Jews to Christianity in Jesus'
time, and the latter-day conversion of the Jews in Spain. Both play a special role
in the comings of Christ.
In Portugal, as in Spain, conversos constituted a decisive factor in shaping
millenarian patterns. In this case, the core events occur in a very limited circle
surrounding Luis Dias, the unlettered tailor from Setubal, during the 1530s
and 1540s. A close associate of Dias was a certain shoemaker from the town of
Trancoso named Gon9alo Anes, known as "0 Bandana," who may or may not
have had New Christian ancestors. 61 In any case, it was under Dias' influence
that Bandana composed a group of prophetic verses, many connected with the
messiah, called the trovas. These contained both elements of traditional
Portuguese millenarianism and of Jewish messianism, and they excited much
interest among both Old and New Christians. When a copy reached the
Inquisition, however, the author was arrested for Judaizing.
The trovas' popularity continued through the sixteenth century without
placing an identity on their key figure, 0 Encoberto, the Hidden One. This
changed after 1578, when the young Portuguese King, Dom Sebastian,
disappeared in the Battle of Alcazarquivir, leaving no heir. Many Portuguese,
shocked and bitter at seeing their kingdom fall into the hands of the Spanish
King Philip II, became convinced that Sebastian would return to fulfill the
messianic role of Bandana's Hidden One. This movement is called Sebastian-
ism, and it was at the center of Portuguese messianism for centuries. 62
Portugal, then, like Spain, was infused with spiritual-political messianic
impulses emanating from converso circles.
One can hardly overestimate the impact of Sebastianism on Portuguese
thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, a brief examina-
tion of two individuals' involvement in this movement may serve to highlight its
complex, ongoing relationship with the conversos.
Among most influential Sebastianist thinkers was one Manuel Bocarro
Frances, later known as Jacob Rosales, who lived in the early seventeenth
century. Bocarro-Rosales was a well-known physician and scientist, whose
alchemy and astronomy studies led him into prognostication. In 1624 he
published a work full of Bandarrian messianic overtones called Anacephalaeosis
de Monarchia Lusitana I (A Summary of the Lusitanian Monarchy, Vol./). When
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 55

he attempted to publish the continuation of this work, the content fell foul of the
Inquisition and the author fled for his life. Arriving in Rome, he published his
material in 1625 under the title Small Moonlight and Starlight of the Lusitanian
Monarchy. Among other things he explained there was the reason for changing
his name to Rosales. This name has a mystical Hebrew meaning, which was set
forth by the author's ancestor, a kabbalist Spanish Jew of the fifteenth century.
Bocarro-Rosales claimed that hidden in his name was the prediction that he,
Bocarro-Rosales, would be the individual privileged to proclaim the name of the
one who would restore the Portuguese royal house, a key messianic figure. These
works excited much attention among the Sebastianists. 63
Having left Portugal, Bocarro-Rosales resumed his activities as a physician,
scientist and prognosticator in Hamburg and Livorno, reverting meanwhile to
his ancestral Judaism. He became part of the circle of that other famous
converso messianist, Rabbi Menassah ben Israel. Here, then, we have a most
odd paradox. Bocarro-Rosales clearly kept up a secret Jewish identity in
Portugal, and, as we see from the centrality of his kabbalist Jewish forebear,
he connected this Jewish identity with his messianic prognostications. But the
messianic figures in these writings are, in fact, the Kings of Portugal! How are
we to understand this degree of flexibility with the identity of the messiah? A
comment made by Professor Saraiva may be helpful here. In comparing the
millenarian Jesuit Vieira with Bocarro-Rosales, he suggests they have in
common:

.. . their belief in a sort of recurrence of the same human being, or soul,

appearing behind several masks throughout history. Bocarro seems to have
believed that he himself was a new Rosales [after his ancestor], and D.
Teod6sio [the current Duke of Braganc;a] was a new D. Fernando [the Duke
of Braganc;a in his ancestor's time] .... 64

Were the thinkers involved here actually kabbalists one would be inclined to
consider such a belief in terms of gigul ha-neshamot, the "rolling metempsy-
chosis" stressed in Lurianic Kabbalah. Though it is completely speculative,
perhaps it is possible that Bocarro-Rosales was not concerned to propose a
Jewish messiah because the messiah's current manifestation was only tempor-
ary, and his soul might have been from the House of David. In any case,
Bocarro-Rosales' case represents a very high level of flexibility for messianic
candidates among the conversos.
Antonio Vieira, mentioned above in connection with Bocarro-Rosales, was
the most influential Portuguese millenarian of the seventeenth century. He was
a Jesuit, confessor and intimate friend of King Joiio IV of Portugal. During his
long life (1608~ 1697) he traveled back and forth between Portugal, Brazil, the
Netherlands and points west, preaching the birth of the apocalyptic "Fifth
Empire" under the leadership of Joiio. The emancipation of Portugal from
Spanish rule in 1640 became the occasion in Vieira's thought for the beginning
of the millennia! process. His guide for what he called his "History of the
Future" was Bandarra, whose prophetic truth he placed on a par with that of
56 M. Go/dish

the Old Testament prophets. This position would cost him dearly, as a belief in
non-canonical prophets, particularly the prohibited Bandarra, was cause for a
long imprisonment at the hands of the Inquisition.
Vieira came to the Netherlands in 1646, and again in 1647, with the intention
of gaining support for buying back Portuguese territories captured by the
Dutch. He attempted to interest the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam in this
scheme, which he apparently saw as a step in the Portuguese millenarian future.
He carried on long discussions with Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel about the
prophecies of Bandarra, which both men apparently believed were being
realized in their times. In Vieira's mind, the political goal of Jewish support
for Joao was so integral to the apocalyptic process that he was prepared in
exchange to offer the Jews an opportunity to return to Portugal unmolested by
the Inquisition! Vieira expected that the Amsterdam Jews would play a special
role in the coming events because they were both Portuguese and (former)
conversos. He defended New Christians against the Inquisition, and tried to
find common ground with Menasseh between his millenarian Catholicism and
Menasseh's messianic Judaism. He expected that the former conversos' peace-
ful return to Portugal would be followed by their re-conversion to Catholicism
with Joao's messianic manifestation, a key event in the unfolding of the "Fifth
Empire." 65
With Vieira we enter a new level of influence created by converso messian-
ism. Vieira is one of several Old Christians in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries who, under the impact of converso thought and other factors, saw the
converso condition as a key to the Millennium. The same untenable in-between
position which caused conversos to be mocked as "Alboraiques," made their
state ideal for the religious and political reformation preceding the Apocalypse.
These thinkers felt Christianity must return to its most primitive, pure form,
represented by the early Jewish Christians in biblical times, and by the Jewish-
Christian conversos in the latter days.
Another such millenarian was Michael Servetus, the sixteenth-century
Spanish arch-heretic who was condemned by both the Catholic and Calvinist
churches, and ultimately burned in Geneva. Servetus (ca. 1511-1553) was
raised in Spain at the time when conversos, Alumbrados and the Inquisition
were major subjects of discussion and controversy. He came to reject the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity early in life, and went on to formulate his own
radical theology of reform which shared many other doctrines with Judaism as
well. Servetus followed the model of prophetic Spanish millenarianism in
interpreting the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible historically rather than
spiritually. He expected the Apocalypse to come in either 1565 or 1585, and in
preparation he moved into a sort of Jewish Christianity. He used numerous
sources by converso authors, and came to perceive Pharasaic Judaism as the
root of Christianity. Servetus' shift into the Jewish-Christian space led his
fellow students, who had no reason to suspect his pedigree, to call him a
"Spanish dog of a Marrano." 66 Thus Servetus, a Catholic of apparently pure
Old Christian stock, arrived at something analogous to the converso condition
from the opposite side, out of conviction rather than an accident of birth.
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 57

A contemporary case was that of Guillaume Postel (ca. 1510-1581), the

great French millenarian reformer. Postel's mission was the harmonization of
Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought, which would ultimately create a single
universal religion under a single universal monarchy (France). Postel was also a
prophet, but his astounding erudition and the assumption he was mad
prevented these proclivities from causing his execution at the hands of the
church. Postel's scheme of universal harmony again reflects the patterns which
have become familiar by now from Iberian examples: it is prophetic, deeply
practical and political, and involves a return to primitive Christian Judaism.
Professor Kuntz, Postel's biographer, says that "Postel constantly speaks of the
Jewishness of all men. He speaks of Christian-Jews, rather than Jewish-
Christians, and the distinction is significant." 67 Postel studied Hebrew and
Aramaic, and eventually became an actual convert, though he remained a
"Christian Jew." 68 Again, then, we have an example of a Christian millenarian
who found that a Christian-Jewish space, like that occupied by conversos, was
the best possible path toward a true apocalyptic reformation.
In his French-oriented millenarianism, Postel was followed in the seven-
teenth century by another enigmatic figure, the radical and influential Isaac La
Peyrere (1596-1676), whom we have already encountered briefly. La Peyrere
was yet another prophetic-political millenarian (though his relationship with
prophecy is complex), and he was thoroughly convinced that the King of
France would be the great redeemer predicted in Scripture. After the Jews all
became "conversos" in France by proclaiming Jesus the Jewish messiah, the
King of France would take them to the Holy Land where Jerusalem and the
Temple would be rebuilt and the messiah, Jesus, would reign. In order to make
his messianic vision palatable to all parties (a doomed proposition if ever there
was one!), La Peyrere spins a doctrine of two messianic appearances which toes
the line between the Christian concept of a first and second coming, and the
Jewish concept of a messiah son of Joseph and messiah son of David. This view
had at least some minimum resonance with the former-converso rabbi,
Menasseh ben Israel, who describes it as follows:
For, as a most learned Christian of our time hath written, in a French book,
which he calleth the Rappel of the lewes [La Peyrere] (in which he makes the
King of France to be their leader, when they shall return to their country),
the lewes, saith he, shall be saved, for yet we expect a second coming of the
same Messiah; and the lewes, believe that that coming is the first and not the
second, and by that faith they shall be saved; for the difference consists onely
in the circumstance of time.
Popkin makes the point that La Peyrere broke down a major obstacle to
common Jewish-Christian messianic hopes, by painting a future in which the
Jews don't have to convert to Christianity per se to be part of the Christian
millennium (though they do have to become Jewish Christians of some sort),
and the issue of First versus Second Coming is tabled. 69
It is likely that La Peyrere himself had converso forebears, though this is not
certain. In either case, not only did he follow the model of converso messianism
58 M. Go/dish

in its general trends, he also participated in the specific pattern of giving a

special place to the conversos themselves in the apocalyptic process .
... In La Peyrere's vision, the Marranos (that is, Jews converted to
Christianity while remaining Jews) are and will be the most important
people in the world when the Messiah comes. According to La Peyrere's
theory everyone's fate will depend upon the actions of the Marranos in the
world to come. Salvation will result from the activities of the Marranos in
transforming the world, and from the providential events that will bring
about its end. 70
Converso messianic patterns, then, made their way deep into early modern
European millenarianism as it was expressed both by conversos and persons
with no Jewish background. The converso condition of Jewish-Christian
identity, so much despised by other Christians and Jews, was embraced by the
millenarians as something like an ideal, a key to the process of salvation. This is
precisely the way Abraham Miguel Cardoso portrays it: the non-converso
messiah must become a converso (albeit to Islam) in order to redeem the world.

CoNCLUSION

The conversos, a group which should never have had a recognizable collective
identity, ended up making a profound impact on European life, not least
through its messianic conceptions. Several forces helped shape these concep-
tions, which remain visible throughout considerable divisions in time, place,
and even religion. The upbringing of the conversos in a Catholic environment
tinged with Jewish memories, their lack of a completely authoritative connec-
tion to either Jewish or Catholic messianic traditions, and their untenable
position stuck between two faiths, all acted together to shape recognizable
patterns in their messianism. The most notable of these patterns are an unusual
flexibility concerning the person of the messiah and process of his mission; and
the reservation of a unique place for conversos themselves in this process.
These elements are so pervasive that they can be found not only among both
crypto-Jews and sincere Catholic conversos, but they even turn up among
millenarians with no Jewish ancestry who have been influenced by converso
thought. Converso flexibility helped shape the prophetic-political millenarian-
ism which became so influential in western Europe during the fifteenth through
seventeenth centuries. On the other hand, through conversos like Bocarro-
Rosales and Cardoso, the special tropes of converso messianism entered the
Jewish world as well, where the extent of their influence is still being traced.
Sabbatai Zevi's conversion created a crisis of messianic faith which might
have destroyed the movement completely. Instead, a considerable number of
believers kept his faith, largely because the theologies of Cardoso and Nathan
of Gaza justified it. An underground movement continued in the Jewish world,
but many Sabbatians became "conversos" like their leader, some to Islam and
some to Christianity.
Ohio State University
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 59

NOTES
1. Many of these positions can be found in Gershom Scholem, "Redemption Through Sin," in
idem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971), 78-141. On Cardoso, see
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto- Isaac Cardoso: A Study in
Seventeenth-Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1971), Ch. 7; Nissim Yosha, "The Philosophical Background of Sabbatian Theology-
Guidelines Toward an Understanding of Abraham Michael Cardoso's Theory of the Divine,"
in Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor Haim
Beinart on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday ed. A. Mirsky, A. Grossman andY. Kaplan
(Hebrew; Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1988), 541-572.
2. My thoughts on these matters have been particularly influenced by: H.J. Scoeps, Barocke
Juden Christen Judenchristen (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1965); R.H. Popkin, "Christian Jews and
Jewish Christians in the 17th Century," in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews from the
Renaissance to the Enlightenment ed. R.H. Popkin and G.M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer,
1994), 57-72, and in other studies of his cited below; D. B. Ruderman, "Hope Against Hope:
Jewish and Christian Messianic Expectations in the Late Middle Ages," in Exile and Diaspora:
Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor Haim Beinart (Lo'azit;
Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1991), 185-202, reprinted in Essential Papers in Jewish Culture
in Renaissance and Baroque Italy ed. D. B. Ruderman (New York: New York University Press,
1992), 299-323. Stephen Sharot, Messianism, Mysticism and Magic: A Sociological Analysis of
Jewish Religious Movements (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), Ch. 6,
touches upon some important points on this subject but leaves them in embryonic form.
3. Moshe Ide! has pointed out to me that a certain specifically anti-messianic view can be found
among a different set of converses, especially skeptics like da Costa and Spinoza in
Amsterdam.
4. Since I began this study, David Gitlitz's very important book on converso religion appeared,
and it has been an invaluable aid. See David M. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the
Crypto-Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), especially Ch. 4.2. On the
conversos in general (also called marranos, crypto-Jews, Chuetas, etc.), see e.g., Yitzhak Baer,
A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, vol. II (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,
1961); Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos (New York: Schocken, 1932); Jews and
Conversos: Studies in Society and the Inquisition ed. Yosef Kaplan (Jerusalem: Magnes Press,
1985); idem, From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro (Oxford:
Littman Library, 1989); Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews
from Spain (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995). This is simply a sampling from an
enormous literature. For an extensive bibliography, see Robert Singerman, comp., Spanish
and Portuguese Jewry: A Classified Bibliography (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
1993); Meyer Kayserling, Biblioteca Espafiola-Portugueza-Judaica, rev. ed. (New York: Ktav,
1971); J.H. Coppenhagen, Menasseh ben Israel: A Bibliography (Jerusalem: Misgav Yerush-
alayim, 1990).
5. I must make a comment about converso historiography at this point. There are maximalist
and minimalist schools concerning the amount of Jewish identity or crypto-Judaism
remaining at all among Catholic converses. The maximalist position holds essentially that
because so many converses were put on trial for Judaizing from the 15th to the 18th centuries
(it was not an enormous number in fact), there must indeed have been a lot of Judaizing going
on. This position, which is found in some form in Cecil Roth, Yitzhak Baer and Haim Beinart,
has been severely criticized by "minimalist" scholars like Benzion Netanyahu and (more
moderately) Norman Roth, who think there is little relation between Inquisitional accusations
and actual Judaizing. Roth claims, for example, that since practice of public Jewish rituals, for
which many converses were tried, would have been tantamount to suicide, the vast majority of
"Judaizing" accusations must be false. Concerning the evidence about converso messianism, I
have concluded that much of the evidence both from Inquisitional records and other sources
can be accepted. This is based on my own sense of the material, and, among other things,
some ideas on deriving actual attitudes from Inquisitorial records developed by Professor
60 M Go/dish

Carlo Ginsburg. See Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion; Carlo Gins-
burg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1986), Ch. V, VIII.
6. See Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early
Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997).
7. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 103.
8. See, e.g., Saul Levi Mortera, Tratado da verdade da lei de Moises, edited, introduced and
annotated by H.P. Salomon (Braga, 1988); Richard H. Popkin, "Philosophy and Polemics in
MSS. 'Ets Haim'," (Hebrew) in Studies on the History of Dutch Jewry vol. 3, ed. Jozeph
Michman (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981), 55-63.
9. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, pp. 106-7. See also Martin A. Cohen, The Martyr: The Story of a
Secret Jew and the Mexican Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1973), 142.
10. Cohen, Martyr, 203.
11. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 107. Harris Lenowitz has pointed out to me that such testimonies
need to be treated with a certain scepticism. Nevertheless, I think the point bears mention.
12. Rabbi Jacob Sasportas, Zizath Novel Zvi, ed. I. Tishbi (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1954), 293.
13. Ibid., 292-3.
14. Ibid., 298-302.
15. On the messiah son of Joseph in Sabbatian theology, see Avraham Elqayam, "The Appointed
Messiah: On Messiah the Son of Joseph in the Thought of Nathan of Gaza, Shabbatai Zvi,
and A.M. Cardoso," (Hebrew) Da'at 38 (Winter 1997), 33-82.
16. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, "Conversos Returning to Judaism in the Seventeenth Century:
Their Jewish Knowledge and Psychological Readiness," (Hebrew) Proceedings of the Fifth
World Congress of Jewish Studies 2 (1969), 201-9.
17. Bodian, Hebrews, 144-6.
18. An exception may be found in the circle of Cardinal Ximines de Cisneros, according to
Richard H. Popkin, "Marranos, New Christians and the Beginnings of Modern Anti-
Trinitarianism" (forthcoming).
19. As Moshe Ide! has pointed out to me, the former converso Rabbi Jacob Zemah constitutes an
exceptional case in sixteenth century Safed for his strong, talismanic kabbalistic messianism.
See Ide!, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 178-9.
20. Sonne was among the first to present this idea, which has by now become a commonplace in
converso research. See e.g., Isaiah Sonne, "The 'Judaism' of Spinoza," (Hebrew) Ha-Do'ar 13
(1933-4), I:7, II:22-3, IV:56-60, V:70-l; Roth, Marranos, Ch. VII; Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit.
21. On this type see Perez Zagorin, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in
Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1990), Ch. 3. I
think Zagorin and many others have gone astray in not recognizing that the entire range of
beliefs existed among the conversos, from sincere Catholicism to fanatic crypto-Judaism; yet
they all shared a common universe of discourse, as I shall discuss.
22. This view is convincingly argued by Benzion Netanyahu in various studies. See, e.g., B.
Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition (New York: Random House, 1995), Book IV.
23. Ibid., 848-54.
24. See Simha Assaf, "Portuguese and Spanish Conversos in the Responsa Literature," (Hebrew)
Zion 5 (1933), 19-60, reprinted in idem, Beoholei Yaakov: Essays on the Cultural Life of the
Jews in the Middle Ages (Hebrew; Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1943), 145-80; H.J.
Zimmels, Die Marranen in der Rabbinischen Literatur (Berlin, 1932).
25. See: Yosef Kaplan, "The Portuguese Community of Amsterdam in the 17th Century -
Between Tradition and Change," in Society and Community (Hevrah ve-Kehillah) ed. Avraham
Haim (Jerusalem: Misgav Yerushalayim, 1991 ), 141-171; Bodian, Hebrews.
26. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 104.
27. Ibid., 104-5, who has brought this excellent material together but not commented on the
special role the conversos envision for themselves in the messianic process. For another
example, see A.Z. Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements 2nd edition (Hebrew Jerusalem:
Mossad Bialik, 1987), 319.
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 61

28. See Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 106-7, 127. The processes concerning Juan de Cordoba
Membreque and his nephew Alonso, connected with messianic movements studied by
Professor Beinart (see next note), have been discussed by Carlos Carrete Parrondo, who
emphasizes the centrality of return to Zion. See Car rete Parrondo, "Judeoconversos andaluces
y expectativas mesiimicas," in Xudeus e Conversos na His to rica vol. I, ed. C. Barros (Santiago
de Compostela: Deputacion Ourense, 1994), 325-37; idem, "Idealismo y realidad: notas sobre
Ia nocion de Jerusalem entre losjudeoconversos castellanos," El Olivo 20 (1996), 7-11. For the
issue of Zion in other converso messianic testimony see idem, "Movimientos mesianicos en las
juderias de Castilla," in Las Ires culturas en Ia Corona de Castilla y los Sefardies (Salamanca:
Junta de Castilla y Leon, 1990), 65-9, esp. 68-9.
29. The movement surrounding Ini:s and several related prophets has been studied most
thoroughly by Professor Haim Beinart, whose researches on this topic were published in
various journals and books. They are now gathered together conveniently in idem, Chapters in
Judea-Spanish History vol. II (Hebrew; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998), 543-788. On the
expectation of conversos being found to marry the conversas see 543.
30. Ibid., 546.
31. Ibid., 548.
32. Ibid., 546.
33. See Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, 328-9.
34. By far the most material on this movement has been gathered in Elias Lipiner, 0 Sapateiro de
Trancoso e o Alfaiate de Setubal (Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora, 1993); and see his
bibliography.
35. See Seymour B. Liebman, New World Jewry: Requiem for the Forgotten (New York: Ktav,
1982), 64-5; Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 109.
36. See Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, 382-7, 394-5. A further Inquisitional document
recently published has been correctly associated by Miriam Bodian with the movement of
David ha-Reuveni, although there are some unique elements in it which require further
treatment. See Carlos Carrete Parrondo and Yolanda Moreno Koch, "Movimiento Mesianico
Hispano-Portugui:s: Badajoz 1525," Sefarad 52 (1992), 65-8; Bodian, Hebrews, 173 n. 43.
37. Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, 387-8 and following. Molkho believed the messiah
would appear between 1530 and 1539, and while it is unclear whether he saw himself in the
role of messiah, there is no doubt that others did.
38. See Richard H. Popkin, "Jewish Christians and Christian Jews in Spain, 1492 and after,"
Judaism 41 (Summer 1992), 248-9. One must not let the fact that these individuals were
strongly anti-Jewish conversionary activists and important church figures detract from the
understanding that their converso identity probably influenced them, just as it did conversos
who returned to Judaism.
39. Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrere ( 1596-1676), His Life, Work and Influence (Leiden: E.J.
Brill, 1987), 95-6. For more on this general theme, see Popkin, "Christian Jews and Jewish
Christians in the 17th Century," in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, From the Renaissance
to the Enlightenment ed. R.H. Popkin and G.M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 57-72. La
Peynlre's messianism will come up again shortly.
40. These views of Cardoso were placed in the general Portuguese converso context at the time by
Haham Jacob Sasportas, and in modern research by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. It is my hope
that I have sharpened some of the specific aspects of that context here.
41. Sasportas, Zizath Novel Zvi, 291-5. Perhaps Cardoso's most interesting maneuver here is the
exegetical justification he finds for this position by reading the prophecy in Deuteronomy
28:36 as an imperative. Angela S. Selke, in her study of the Majorcan conversos, called
Chuetas, has suggested that Sabbatianism, and perhaps even the theologies of Cardoso, may
have influenced the great messianic Judaizing movement on Majorca in the 1680s. The
converso messiah of the Jewish world might have had special appeal for those suffering at
the hands of the Old Christians. See Selke, The Con versos of Majorca (Jerusalem: Magnes
Press, 1986), 194-200. The Chuetas, too, dreamed of escape to Jerusalem.
42. This too is an enormous field. See e.g., Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New
York: Schocken, 1971); Messianism in the Talmudic Era ed. L. Landman (New York: Ktav,
62 M. Go/dish

1979); Eschatology in Maimonidean Thought: Messianism, Resurrection and the World to Come
ed. J.I. Dienstag (New York: Ktav, 1983); Amos Funkenstein, Maimunides: Nature, History and
Messianic Beliefs (Tel-Aviv: MOD Books, 1997); Harris Lenowitz, The Jewish Messiahs (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Moshe Ide!, Messianism and Mysticism (Tel Aviv: Israel
Ministry of Defense, 1992); idem, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
Ide! has pioneered a much more radical set of definitions for messianism, indicating that
perhaps Judaism as well as crypto-Judaism was flexible in this regard.
43. It is highly noteworthy, however, that a number of Catholic conversos stuck on the issue of a
trinity of persons, and the charge of anti-Trinitarianism was among the most common leveled
at the New Christians.
44. See e.g., Robin Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran
Reformation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); Puritans, The Millennium and the
Future of Israel: Puritan Eschatology 1600 to 1660 ed. Peter Toon (London: James Clarke,
1970); Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, Introduction (by Moshe Ide!) and Ch. 6.
45. On some of these ideas see Marcel Bataillon, Erasme et l'Espagne 2 vols., rev. ed. (Geneva:
Droz, 1991); Alain Milhou, Colony su mentalidad mesianica en el ambiente franciscanista
espafwl (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1983); Jose C. Nieto, "The Franciscan
Alumbrados and the Prophetic-Apocalyptic Tradition," Sixteenth Century Journal 8 (1977),
3-16; Americo Castro, Aspectos del vivir hispanico: Espiritualismo, mesianismo, actitud
personal en los siglos xiv a! xvi (Santiago de Chile: Cruz del Sur, 1949).
46. See Baer, Jews in Christian Spain vol I, pp. 278-9, 434 n. 3.
47. It appears that despite the broad similarities between this trend and Savonarola's spiritual
apocalypticism, the latter explicitly opposed the temporal political approach. See Castro, Vivir
hispanico, 27 n. 18. This important footnote also brings out the influence of certain streams of
Spanish spiritual-political millenarianism on sixteenth and seventeenth century movements
elsewhere in Europe.
48. Castro, Vi vir hispanico, 22-3. For a similar comment, see Bataillon, Erasme et l'Espagne, 64-5
and n. I there. Many scholars miss a great deal by searching for influences on Spanish
millenarianism only in the Jewish roots of the converso apocalyptics, without taking the
unique converso condition itself into account as a related but independent factor. Bataillon
acknowledges the difference only in a passing comment. An influence from either Judaism or
the converso condition on messianic ideas need not render someone heretical in the Catholic
church, especially when orthodoxy itself fluctuated considerably.
49. Nieto, "Franciscan Alumbrados," 6.
50. Perhaps this situation is analogous to that of the Jews in Eastern Europe during the early 20th
century. Most people dealt with the growing anti-semitism and shrinking economic base by
either leaving for America or simply bearing up. Others, however, searched for a conclusive
solution. The main competing ideologies were the autochthonous solution, socialism or
Marxism; and the nationalist solution, Zionism. Both had messianic undertones.
51. See Michael Heyd, 'Be Sober and Reasonable~· The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth
and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), Introduction and Chapter I.
52. See e.g., Roth, Marranos, 193.
53. See Richard H. Popkin, "Jewish Christians and Christian Jews in Spain, 1492 and After,"
Judaism 41 (1992), 248-67; idem, "Savonarola and Cardinal Ximines: Millenarian Thinkers
and Actors at the Eve of the Reformation" (Paper presented at the Clark Library Conference
on Catholic Millenarianism from Savonarola to the Eighteenth Century Jansenist Thinkers,"
1998, forthcoming in conference proceedings volume).
54. On the difference between these two groups, as well as other groups of Alumbrados, see Nieto,
Juan de Valdes, 56-9.
55. Bataillon, Erasme en l'Espagne, 65-75.
56. Nieto, "Franciscan Alumbrados," 4-9.
57. Alastair Hamilton, Heresy and Mysticism in Sixteenth Century Spain: The Alumbrados
(Cambridge: James Clarke, 1992), 65-71. For a detailed discussion of the "Judaizing"
background of the Alumbrados dexados, see Melquiades Andres Martin, "Tradicion Conversa
y Alumbramiento (1480-1487): Una Veta de los Alumbrados de 1525," Studia Hieronymiana I
 Patterns in Converso Messianism 63

(1973), 381-98. While this article is less relevant to the issues of prophetic Alumbrados, it is
very useful for understanding views about "true" and "false" conversos at the turn of the
fifteenth century.
58. Aescoly, Jewish Messianic Movements, 382-7, 394-5; Gerard Nahon, "From Algarve to
Rivtigo: New Chrisitians During David ha-Reuveni's Travels in Portugal," typescript in
International Congress: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain ( 1474-1516) - Abstracts
(Jerusalem, 1992), 63-4.
59. See e.g., Karl Kottman, Law and Apocalypse: The Moral Thought of Luis de Leon (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1972); idem, "The Messianism of Fray Luis de Leon" (Typescript of a paper
presented at the UCLA Clark Library Conference on Catholic Millenarianism, 23-24 January
1998, forthcoming in conference proceedings volume); Catherine Swietlicki, Spanish Christian
Cabala (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1986), Ch. 4-5. Oddly, Kottman's
paper has the least to do with de Leon's actual messianism.
60. Kollman, Law and Apocalypse, 80.
61. Elias Lipiner discusses the debate about Bandarra's converso background, which is still
inconclusive. Lipiner, 0 sapateiro de Trancoso, 25-33.
62. See ibid. and also J. Lucio de Azevedo, A Evo/UI;ao do Sebastianismo (Lisbon: Livraria
Chissica Editora, 1947); Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court, Ch. 7. Lipiner (I: I) emphasizes the
strange way in which Europeans came to identify the Portuguese with Judaism in general, and
with Jewish messianic thought in particular. This was closely related to the Jewish elements in
Sebastianism.
63. See Antonio Jose Saraiva, "Bocarro-Rosales and the Messianism of the Sixteenth Century," in
Menasseh ben l~rael and His World ed. Y. Kaplan, H. Mechoulan and R.H. Popkin (Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1989), 240-3; Francisco Moreno-Carvalho, "Yaakov Rosales: Medicine, Astrology,
and Political Thought in the Works of a Seventeenth-Century Jewish-Portuguese Physician,"
Korol: The Israel Journal of the History of Medicine and Science 10 (1993-4), 143-156.
64. Saraiva, "Bocarro-Rosales," 243.
65. Antonio Jose Saraiva, "Antonio Vieira, Menasseh ben Israel et le Cinquieme Empire," Studia
Rosenthaliana 6 (1972), 25-57; Jose R. Maia Neto, "Epistemological Remarks on Vieira's
Millenarianism" (Paper presented at the Clark Library Conference on Catholic Millenarian-
ism from Savonarola to the Eighteenth Century Jansenist Thinkers, 1998, forthcoming in
conference proceedings volume.) Note that (with the exception of Rabbi Nathan Shapira, a
complex case) essentially the only Jews who were even willing to talk to millenarian reformers
like Vieira, La Peyrere and Hartlib were former conversos: Menasseh ben Israel, Jacob Judah
Leon Templo, Jacob and Isaac Abendana, and Benedict Spinoza (in his persona as friend of
the Collegiants.) I do not know how seriously to take Conde Bernadino de Rebolledo's
sarcasm in his poem to Dr. Juan de Prado, at the time of Queen Christina of Sweden's arrival
in Hamburg, where she stayed with the former converso Abraham Texeira. Rebolledo refers to
Christina as the former conversos' "unhoped-for messiah of the female gender." See I.S.
Revah, Spinoza et /e Dr. Juan de Prado (Paris: Mouton, 1959), 279; Susanna Akerman, Queen
Christina of Sweden and Her Circle (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), 196-7.
66. Roland Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus, 1511 1553 (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1953), esp. 13, 145-7; Jerome Friedman, Michael Servetus: A Case Study in
Total Heresy (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1978), esp. Ch. 12; idem, The Most Ancient Testimony:
Sixteenth-Century Christian Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgia (Athens, Ohio: Ohio
University Press, 1983); idem, "The Myth of Jewish Antiquity: New Christians and Christian-
Hebraica in Early Modern Europe," in Jewish Christians and Christian Jews, 41-5; Louis Israel
Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1925), III:3; Richard H. Popkin, "Marranos, New Christians and the Beginnings of
Modern Anti-Trinitarianism" (forthcoming).
67. Marion L. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things; His Life and
Thought (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), esp. 16-7, 129-38 (quotation from 130.)
68. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, 133.
69. Popkin, La Peyrere, Ch. 8 (quotation from p. 102).
70. Popkin, La Peyrere, 23. On the question of La Peyrere's converso background, see 20-3.
 K. KRABBENHOFT

3. SYNCRETISM AND MILLENNIUM IN

HERRERA'S KABBALAH

One of Gershom Scholem's most influential hypotheses was that the millenar-
ian and messianic expectations of the Jewish people in the early modern period
-in particular, the Marranos- found mystical expression in the new Kabbalah
introduced by Isaac Luria at Safed around 1570. Scholem interpreted what he
called the three great symbols of mystical experience as mirrors of Jewish
history in the wake of the 1492 expulsion: in his reading, the Lurianic doctrines
of zimzum (the metaphorical shrinking or self-limitation of Ein-Sof, the First
Cause), shevirah (the breaking of the sefirot kelim, the lower metaphorical parts
of Adam Kadmon, the emanated second being), and tikkun ha-parzufim
(restoration of the sefirot into the reconfigured faces of God) were direct
reflections of the "shattering" of a seven-hundred year old culture, its
reconfiguration in exile, and the anticipated deliverance from bondage that
would come with the fulfillment of messianic prophecy. 1 This phenomenon
coincided with the widespread belief among Christians that the Second
Coming would take place in the millenia! year of 1666, a belief whose roots
can be traced from the Book of Revelation through individuals as different as
Joaquim of Fiore, Arnold of Vilanova, Christopher Columbus, and the
Portuguese cobbler Bandarra, who predicted the return of King Sebastian,
dead in battle against the Moors, to spearhead the 1640 rebellion of the
Portuguese against their Spanish overlords? In the Jewish world, according to
Scholem, the most complete historical representation of this Jewish-Christian
millenarian syncretism was to found in the career of the would-be Messiah
Sabbetai Zevi. The link with Kabbalah was forged by those Sabbatians who
used Lurianic doctrine - especially his idea of tikkun - to justify Zevi's
conversion to Islam at Constantinople in 1666. 3
Scholem's idea has been challenged by a broad spectrum of scholars.
Historians of seventeenth-century Jewish society like Stephen Sharot, David
Biale and Jacob Barnai tend to view Sabbatianism as the culmination of social
factors rather than the expression of mystical beliefs or practice and sometimes
question the centrality of Sabbatianism to the Jewish experience generally,

65
M. Go/dish and R.H. Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 65-76.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
66 K. Krabbenhoft

while students of Lurianic Kabbalah like Alexander Altmann, Moshe Idel and
Alison Coudert find a demonstrable absence of messianic and millenarian
arguments in the works of Luria and his followers. 4 The kabbalistic writings of
Abraham Cohen de Herrera, the only member of the Lurianic school who
wrote in Spanish, lend support to the view that Lurianism is not only not
inherently messianic, but in certain of its manifestations - especially the
profoundly Platonizing form epitomized by Herrera - betrays a deep anti-
messianic bias. 5 The following comments expand on Altmann and Idel's work
on the connection between Platonism and anti-messianism in Herrera's
philosophical syncretism, tracing the roots of his reliance on Neoplatonic and
scholastic metaphysics to prove the truth of Lurianic doctrine. It becomes
apparent that Herrera's virtual obsession with these non-kabbalistic proofs of
Ein-Sof's transcendence and the nature of divine emanation in effect focused
his attention on one of Luria's three great symbolic doctrines - zimzum - while
relegating the other two to the background.

ABRAHAM CoHEN DE HERRERA: His LIFE, WoRK, AND INFLUENCE

A few words on Herrera's life will help to place him within the larger context of
this topic.
Not much is known about his early life, except that he grew up in the New
Christian community of Ferrara in the last decades of the sixteenth century,
when he went by the name Alonso Nunez de Herrera. Around 1590, in Ragusa
(modern Dubrovnik), he studied Kabbalah with Israel Sarug, a student of
Luria's disciple Hayyim Vital, who championed the new Kabbalah in Italy.
Herrera's life took a dramatic and unexpected turn later in the decade when he
found himself in Cadiz on a commercial mission for the Sultan of Morocco.
The year was 1596, and the date coincided with the devastating attack on the
Spanish fleet anchored at Cadiz by Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex. Essex
sacked the city and took a number of Spanish grandees back to London to be
held for ransom, among them, apparently by mistake, Herrera. It took four
years for his family to get the ransom together (his attempts to prove that he
was not a subject of the Spanish crown included letters to his captor, which
appear to have had little effect). 6 After his release, Herrera drops from the
historical record until 1602, when he turns up in Rouen as commercial agent
for the Duke of Tuscany. He then disappears again, resurfacing in Hamburg in
1617 and in Amsterdam in 1619, now going by the name Abraham Cohen de
Herrera.
In Amsterdam, Herrera was a member of the Neveh Shalom synagogue and
respected as a "sabio da lei." 7 Richard Popkin has called him "probably the
most learned person in Holland of the time." 8 He died in 1635, leaving money
in his will for Isaac Aboab to translate his two kabbalistic treatises from
Spanish into Hebrew. They are Puerta del cielo (Gate of Heaven) and Casa de
Ia divinidad (House of God). Aboab's Hebrew translations - Sha'ar ha-
shamayim and Beit Elohim - had wide historical repercussions, because they
were chosen by the Protestant philosemite Christian Knorr von Rosenroth for
 Syncretism and Millennium in Herrera's Kabbalah 67

inclusion in his Latin compendium of kabbalistic texts, published at Sulzbach

in 1677 and 1684. This book, Kabbala denudata (The Kabbalah Unveiled),
became the primary source of information about Luria's teachings outside the
Jewish world. Knorr's versions of Aboab's Hebrew translations of Herrera,
titled Porta coelorum and Pneumatica cabbalistica, influenced thinkers from
Spinoza, Leibniz and Henry More to the German Idealists. According to one
view, Knorr's book in effect provided "the basis for the kind of tolerant
ecumenicalism, faith in science, and belief in progress that are generally
associated with the Enlightenment." 9 Isaac Aboab, by editing and condensing
Herrera's arguments, created a version of Puerta del cielo that can be said to
have furthered this proto-Enlightenment view insofar as it underscored
Herrera's reconciliation of pagan metaphysics, Islamic Platonism and Chris-
tian theology with the intricacies of Luria's teachings.

Puerta del cielo

Herrera was not the first to attempt such a reconciliation. One noteworthy
predecessor was the thirteenth-century mystic Isaac ibn Latif, who wrote a
book by the same name as Herrera's- Sha'ar ha-shamayim- which employed
Platonic arguments in defense of kabbalistic doctrine. A more immediate
influence was Israel Sarug, whom we mentioned above. As Altmann and Ide!
have pointed out, Sarug's version of Luria's teachings reveals the profound
influence of Renaissance Platonic syncretism, enhanced by a personal enthu-
siasm that led him (it is said) to assert the complete identity of philosophy and
Kabbalah. 10 Herrera did not go this far: as Altmann notes, philosophy was for
him rather "the closest possible approximation" to Kabbalah. After Sarug he is
nevertheless probably the period's most enthusiastic proponent of philosophy's
usefulness in demonstrating mystical truth, and his general influence was far
greater than Sarug's. 11
Herrera's principal sources in Jewish tradition are the Sefer Yezirah, the
Zohar, the teachings of Moses Cordovero and, of course, Luria. The non-
kabbalistic authorities from which he draws span far greater distances in time
and place. They include Plato, Plotinus and Proclus; Averroes; the sixteenth
century syncretists Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola; Torquato Tasso
and Julius Caesar Scaliger; the Dominicans St Thomas Aquinas, Durandus de
Saint Poun;:ain, Francesco de' Silvestri (the Ferrariensis), Giovanni Crisostomo
Javelli, and Domingo Banez; and the Jesuits Benito Pereira and Francisco
Suarez. It is true that many of these authors are only mentioned in passing, but
the corpus of texts that turn up in Puerta del cielo with some frequency is
nevertheless impressive. Among them are the Parmenides, Symposium and
Timaeus; Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics; Book V of the Enneads, Proclus's
Elements of theology; Aquinas's Summa theologiae; the Liber de causis,
probably in Javelli's commentary; Ficino's Theologia platonica; and Suarez's
Disputationes metaphysicae.
The common element that cuts through this mass of names and titles is the
dilemma of the One and the Many in the essentially Platonic form of
68 K. Krabbenhoft

emanation theology. Herrera was extraordinarily interested in how the

metaphysics of emanation illuminated the doctrine of the sefirot - concretely,
how the perfect, uncreated, self-sufficient origin of all being generates a second,
derivative entity that shares its transcendent qualities without compromising
the indivisible internal unity of the First Cause. The bulk of Puerta del cielo is
concerned with this question; I will focus on just two aspects of Herrera's
lengthy, complex presentation and their relevance to the messianic and
millenarian question in the seventeenth century.

EIN-SOF AS FIRST CAUSE AND TRANSCENDENT ONE

The frequency with which Plotinus is quoted in Puerta del cielo suggests that for
Herrera, this third-century Platonist ideally combined the clarity and order of
purely rational inquiry with the mystic's spiritual insight. More specifically,
Herrera was interested in Plotinus's understanding of the One as both universal
First Cause and indivisible union of all transcendent qualities.
Plotinus is interested in explaining how the existing world of multiplicity can
be the product of a transcendent unity. In Book V of Puerta del cielo, Herrera
picks up on a passage of the fifth Ennead to the effect that there is no inherent
contradiction in the existence of a world of multiplicity which proceeds from a
single, indivisible, transcendent cause. In Platonic terms, Plotinus is explaining
how perfect unity can give rise to the duality implied by anything existing
outside of it. The crux of the matter, he says (as reported by Herrera), is that
there is in all things - not just the First Cause - a difference between the first
act or act of the essence [energeia tes ousias] and the second act. "The first Act
is the thing itself in its realized identity, the second Act is an inevitably
following outgo from the first, an emanation distinct from the thing itself." 12
The automatic quality of this event removes it from the sphere of necessity, an
important piece of Herrera's demonstration that Ein-Sof acts autonomously,
free from compulsion by any outside "other," entirely elevated above the realm
of multiplicity - and consequently uninterested (so to speak) in "sharing" its
unity with anything besides the immediate outgo - the Second Act (in
Kabbalah, Adam Kadmon). Plotinus is Herrera's authority for further noting
(in a particularly convoluted passage) that Ein-Sof "is equally the object of
what it desires by its very existence and by its very existence that desire itself
and the desire that things exist outside it by virtue of its desiring and acting of
its free will, so that there is no distinction between its being, existence, and
understanding [de su ser, vida y entendimiento nose distingue]." 13 Plotinus had
written that the One is simultaneously its own will to be what it is and the result
or outcome of that will - a concept, as Herrera so often points out, that is
entirely in agreement with the kabbalistic notion of Ein-Sof as universal First
Cause acting freely, without any external coercion or necessity, in harmony
with the first emanation or Adam Kadmon. It is also a concept that militates
against dualistic or trinitarian divisions within the Godhead: by extension, it
can be interpreted as an argument against both the incarnationist foundation
of Christian millenarianism and sabbatianism.
 Syncretism and Millennium in Herrera's Kabbalah 69

Plotinus's thinking suffuses the Platonic syncretism of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries with which Herrera was intimately acquainted. Marsilio
Ficino's Latin translation and commentary on the Enneads as well as Ficino's
own Theologia platonica are often cited in Puerta del cielo. The Theologia
platonica is a likely source for the Plotinus quotes mentioned in the preceding
paragraph, for example, as well as for Herrera's citation from Duns Scotus to
the effect that God's creation of a limited rather than an infinite number of
worlds is proof of his free will, rather than of any limitation [Puerta del cielo V,
7, fo. 52v]. 14 Another example: in Book IV, Chapter 2, Herrera transcribes
passages from Plotinus's attack on the Gnostics (Ennead 2, 9) and his
commentary on the Timaeus that demonstrate how the boundless goodness
and potency of the First Cause enable it to produce limited effects without in
any way diminishing its transcendent perfection. 15 From Ficino it is a short
step to fellow syncretist Pico della Mirandola and the popular Neoplatonizing
love-manuals that spread from Italy to the rest of Europe in the first half of the
sixteenth century. The Plotinian accent is clear, for example, in Pico's Italian
commentary on a love song by Girolamo Benivieni, one passage of which
Herrera translates faithfully. Citing Plotinus, Aristotle, and "all the Arabs,
especially Avicenna [tucti li Arabi et maxime da Avicenna]," Pico remarks:
"the supreme God brought forth a creature of the greatest possible perfection
in a created being, a bodiless creature of an intellectual nature; for this reason it
did not directly bring forth any other being, because only a most perfect effect
can proceed from a most perfect cause" ["... el sumo Dios produxo una
Criatura de naturaleza yntelectual tan perfecta quanto es possible que sea cosa
criada, y por esta razon de mas della no produxo ynmediatamente ninguna
Cosa por que de una cauza perfectissima no puede proceder sino un effecto
perfectissimo" (fo. 37v)]. 16 We should note that creation here is clearly under-
stood in the sense of emanation, as in Herrera's gloss of a passage from
Scaliger's De subtilitate: "The First Cause created in the best and most perfect
way (because it is a characteristic of perfection to make perfect works) ... the
Goodness which is the measure of potency and is one thing in the deity, and the
same thing as the deity, which neither desires nor allows any lesser power [non
vult minus posse, quam bene posse]." 17
In his efforts to lend the weight of philosophy to kabbalistic demonstrations
of Ein-Sors transcendent perfection, Herrera does not stop with the Neopla-
tonists and the Renaissance syncretists: he also reaches out to scholasticism,
where he finds parallel arguments, especially among Dominician theologans.
Thus Aquinas's Summa theologiae, 1a XLV, 6, is added to the list of authorities.
The passage that caught Herrera's eye reads: "The act of creating corresponds
to God by virtue of his very being, which is his essence" [Idea creare convenit
Deo secundum suum esse; quod est eius essentia]. Related ideas can be found in
Aquinas's De substantiis separatis 8, 54, and are based in turn on Avicenna and
Proclus. 18 Herrera cites another Dominican, Durandus, to the effect that "there
is or may be one creature which is so perfect that there can be no other more
perfect" [ay o puede aver una [criatura] tan perfecta que no puede aver otra que
sea mas perfecta; Puerta del cielo IV, 7, fo. 43v]. 19 On two occasions he
70 K. Krabbenhoft

mentions his Jesuit contemporary, Francisco Suarez - the Doctor Eximius -

who like him, as we shall see in a moment, was deeply suspicious of the kind of
millenarian fervor that permeated their century.

ONTOLOGY AND EMANATION

The working out of these philosophical proofs in kabbalistic terms is best seen
in Books VII and X of Puerta del cielo, which deal specifically with Luria's
exposition of the creatio ex nihilo through self-limitation. 20 These are the
passages in which Herrera identifies not one but three zimzumim as processes
or events within Ein-Sof prior to the breaking of the vessels. Following
Cordovero and Sarug, Herrera states that the first self-limitation results not in
the emanation of Adam Kadmon but in the act of sha'ashu'a or divine delight
that produces Avir Kadmon, the Primordial Essence. This pre-sefirotic emana-
tion is anthropomorphic only to the extent that the light of Ein-Sof is said to
shine through the four letters of the Tetragrammaton imprinted on Avir
Kadmon's forehead. There then takes place a second self-limitation, by which
this light is reorganized in the form of the ten sefirot of Adam Kadmon, the
Primordial Man. These sefirot are also called connected (akudim), or the sefirot
of the azmut of Ein-Sof. Metaphorically, the light emanating from the tip ofyod
-the light of the skull- becomes the Keter of the azmut, light from yod itself-
the light of the eyes- becomes the Hokhmah of the azmut, and so forth. When
this process is complete, the third zimzum takes place and the divine essence is
projected metaphorically in such a way that the seven lower sefirot can no
longer hold it: as separate dots (nekudim) or vessels (kelim), they shatter. Part of
the light-essence remains in the olam ha-azilut; the rest, attached to pieces of
the shattered vessels, tumbles through the worlds of creation toward the earth,
where they become the kelippot or shards of imperfection. In Lurianic terms,
the process of mystical prayer by which these shards are gathered together so as
to be returned to the realm of emanation in the configurations known as
parzufim or faces, is tikkun.
Herrera is at pains to demonstrate that these ideas are entirely consonant
with emanation ontology. For Herrera, the Platonic tradition is best repre-
sented in this respect by Plotinus' follower Proclus, whose Elements of Theology
(most likely filtered through Ficino, rather than the unabridged work itself) are
a principal source of the kabbalist's syncretism. Proclus's Proposition 100, for
example, begins: "Every series of wholes is referable to an unparticipated first
principle and cause [eis amethekton archen kai aitian anateinetai]; and all
unparticipated terms are dependent from the one First Principle of all
things." 21 As a participated series, the sefirot are causally bound to Ein-Sof in
such a way that independent activity on their part is unthinkable. Herrera turns
to Renaissance authorities to support Proclus, just as he does in his discussion
of Ein-Sof's transcendent unity. To Ficino and Pico della Mirandola he adds
the vernacular poet and essayist Torquato Tasso, whose prose dialogue "II
Messaggiero" belongs to the love-manual genre. Echoing Plotinus and Proclus,
whom he had apparently read in Ficino's translations and commentaries and in
 Syncretism and Millennium in Herrera's Kabbalah 71

Sebastian Fox Morcillo's Commentarii in Platonis Timaeum (1554), Tasso

explains:

nature does not normally ... go from one extreme to the other without some
mediation: thus between the lower and the higher species are interposed
those entities that participate both of the one and of the other. Thus nature
in effect ascends from the objects of the senses [le cose sensibile] to the
objects of the understanding [le intelligibile] by grades. 22

As with proofs of Ein-Sof's transcendence, so with the notion of emanation:

Herrera looks to Aristotelianism for corroboration, ever anxious to commu-
nicate to his readers the underlying unity of all the traditions he cites. This is
why, in Book IX, Chapter 7 of Puerta del cie/o, he can lump together Aquinas,
the Ferrariensis, Domingo Baiiez (who tangled with the Jesuit Molina in the
memorable debate over the nature of grace), and the Jesuit Suarez. Following
Aristotle's Metaphysics, says Herrera, these authorities unanimously maintain
that "the greater or lesser degree of perfection in those beings which participate
in perfection can be known by their greater or lesser closeness or approxima-
tion to the highest and most perfect being.'m For the Renaissance Thomist
Giovanni Crisostomo Javelli, in his interpretation of the tenth book of
Aristotle's Metaphysics, Herrera says, "that being ... which truly measures all
things is the first mind that is produced by and depends upon the First Cause"
(fo. 133v) - in which case the first mind or Nous is perfectly analogous with
Adam Kadmon, who by the same token cannot possibly be a Messiah-like
hypostasis of Ein-Sof.
Isaac Luria suggests that the mediations between Ein-Sof and the sefirot
kelim may be virtually infinite in number, with the crucial reservation that
however close to Ein-Sof's transcendent perfection that the o/am ha-azilut may
come, it nevertheless always remains separate, always second to the First
Cause. Herrera's Proclan theory of causation, supported by the schoolmen's
Aristotelianism, underscores the metaphysical validity of Luria's insight.
According to Proclus, the effect reflects back on the cause through the reductive
return of created entities to their transcendent source, to the pre-emanation
phase of all being, in the endless circular dialectic of procession (proodos) and
reversion (epistrofe) that is mirrored in the kabbalistic concepts of hitpashtut
and histalkut. We note that Herrera must have seen a danger to Ein-Sof in this,
to the extent that the transcendence of the First Cause could be understood to
be modified reflexively toward dualism by the introduction of any of the
creative attributes of the sefirot, a danger that is real if the metaphorical
changes within Ein-Sof are not restricted to the non-time and non-place prior
to its first self-limitation. Herrera's constant reiteration of arguments for Ein-
Sors transcendent being, epekeina tes ousias, can be read as an ongoing
warning against this kind of misinterpretation of Proclus in the kabbalistic
context.
By recourse to pagan, Christian and Islamic philosophy, then, Herrera
removes the divine essence from any possible intermixing with the worlds of
72 K Krabbenhoft

creation. Kabbalah, consequently, is guarded against blatantly incarnationist

or messianic interpretations. One last example of Herrera's reasoning on this
question is found in the seven proofs of the freedom of divine will in Book V,
Chapter 6, of Puerta del cielo. Beginning with Maimonides's analysis of
celestial mechanics, in the second part of the Guide for the Perplexed, Herrera
goes on to quote Averroes, Duns Scotus and Aquinas. The passage from
Averroes is representative. Like Maimonides, he looks at the movement of the
heavenly bodies and concludes that, however much man would like to explain
these movements in terms of final and efficient causes, "many of these causes
are either still completely unknown or become known after a long time and
long experience" - an argument to intellectual humility that carries over easily
into the arena of messianism and millenarianism. 24 If we cannot fathom the
order of the physical universe, how can we possibly penetrate the divine mind
to know the eschatological plan for all space and time? How can human
intelligence have certain foreknowledge of either the Messiah or the Last
Things? Herrera, who was wary even of the careless use of anthropomorphic
language to discuss events within Ein-Sof, would presumably plead ignorance
if asked how and when the Messiah was to procede from the Godhead; like his
contemporary Suarez when discussing the Second Coming, he might respond:
"there can never be certain knowledge of how many years there are left before
the day of judgment." 25 Such reckoning can only exist in the mind of God.

Casa de Ia divinidad
Herrera's second kabbalistic work, Casa de Ia divinidad, applies the syncretic
method to Luria's teachings on revelation. It is a work about angels, prophecy,
and supernatural visions drawn from the books of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Micah
and also scholastic and Platonic ideas of prophecy, providence, fate, and
necessity. "If the other book deals so directly with mystical ontology," we might
ask ourselves, "is it unreasonable to expect that in this one Herrera will take up
the historical application or relevance of his mysticism? Surely here we will find
a clue to his position on the messianic and millenarian fervor that swirled
around him."
Unfortunately, the clues are non-existent. There are many passages in Casa
de Ia divinidad that speak of the projection of the divine in the world, but only in
terms of the origin of the human soul and the nature of prophetic inspiration.
The language in Book V, chapter 6, is typical. Here Herrera is writing about the
communication of being from top to bottom of the universal hierarchy in the
form of the divine voice - the Platonic logos joined to Biblical revelation. He
says:

There has never been a place in either the higher or the lower worlds from
which the Deity did not speak to Israel (to Israel, it is understood, in the
giving of the Law). He spoke from the Throne of Glory saying ):J)N. (that is,
"I"), the equivalent of N.'O:J (or throne). 26
 Syncretism and Millennium in Herrera's Kabbalah 73

Herrera goes on to note that these names include the Tetragrammaton as

well as words spoken by the angels and certain of the sons of Israel; that God
has spoken from the four corners of the earth; and that he is named by all the
worlds of creation and by the sefirot, which Herrera then lists in order of their
association with the three "lower" spiritual levels of Adam Kadmon: the
spiritus, Neshamah linked with Binah and the upper Shekhinah; the anima,
Ruah, with Malkhut, Metatron and Ze'ir Anpin; and the animal soul, Nefesh,
with the Son of Man [la Nephes del Hijo del Hombre], who issues from
Malkhut. 27
Nowhere is there any suggestion of an intrusion of the eschatology of
revelation into human time, much less of an individual who would assume the
role of mediating between Ein-Sof and the worlds of creation. Herrera's gaze
remains fixed on the olam ha-azilut - as if the philosopher-rationalist were
forever reining in the mystic-believer, projecting eschatological questions into a
future knowable only to the divine intellect (another point of similarity with
Suarez). The evidence compels us to agree with Altmann's assessment, that

[Herrera's] highly charged eschatological vision is not linked to the messia-

nic concept, let alone to an acute expectation of imminent redemption. It
remains within the orbit of an essentially mythical, i.e., timeless process. 28

CONCLUSION

These remarks are admittedly speculative, in that they are based on an absence
rather than a presence. They see in Herrera's deeply syncretic explanation of
universal causation a wariness or fear that rival attempts to compromise Ein-
Sof's transcendence by blurring the boundaries between it and the olam ha-
azilut, or between the latter and the worlds of creation, could open the door to
errors which could in turn be misapplied by those who use the vocabulary of
mysticism without understanding its philosophical underpinnings. It is signifi-
cant that Herrera nowhere alludes to tikkun as a messianic activity or to any
other activity culminating in the fulfilment of messianic prophecy, and it is
interesting to speculate on how he would have viewed the millenialism of his
friend Menasseh ben Israel, not to mention the Sabbatians. It should be pointed
out that Herrera was undoubtedly no more opposed in principle to the coming of
the Messiah than Christian thinkers like Suarez were opposed to the Second
Coming. But if a rationalist like Suarez can express concern with regard to
Protestant claims about the anti-Christ, then similar sentiments are not
surprising in a rationalist mystic with a far-ranging philosophical imagination
like Herrera. It is a view that bucks the messianic trend but aims at protecting
what is unique to the Jewish mystical tradition from attempts to compromise it,
even those attempts motivated by historical catastrophe and the deepest hope
that the ancient prophecies of triumph and liberation will be fulfilled.

New York University

74 K. Krabbenhoft

NOTES
I. For Scholem's argument, see On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (New York: Schocken Books,
1977), 110 ff.; Kabbalah (New York: Dorset Press, 1987), 128-144, and The Messianic Idea in
Judaism (New York: Schocken Books, 197I),passim.
2. See Richard Popkin, "Christian Jews and Jewish Christians in the Seventeenth Century," in
Jewish Christians and Christian Jews: from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Richard
H. Popkin and Gordon M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 57. Matt
Goldish sheds new light on the influence of the marranos' Christian upbringing on
seventeenth-century Messianism in "Patterns in Converso Messianism," in the present
volume. On the connection between Bandarra, Sebastianism and Sabbetianism, see Yosef
Hayim Yerushalmi's study of Isaac Cardoso, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto (Seattle:
University of Washington, 1981), 306-313.
3. Scholem pointed out that Luria himself- according to certain of his followers- put forth his
own candidacy for Messiah. He cites Hayyim ha-Kohen of Aleppo's claim to this effect
(Kabbalah, 422). The matter is also discussed in Sabbetai Sevi, the Mystical Messiah
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 54-55.
4. Stephen Sharot, Messianism, Mysticism and Magic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1982), 93-114; David Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 80-82; Jacob Barnai, "The Polemics Between
Sabbateans and their Opponents: Social Aspects," in the present volume; Alexander Altmann,
"Lurianic Kabbala in a Platonic Key: Abraham Cohen Herrera's Puerta del cielo," Hebrew
Union College Annual 53 (1982), 317-355; Moshe Idel, "Kabbalah, Platonism and Prisca
Theologia: The Case of Menasseh ben Israel," in Menasseh ben Israel and His World, ed. Yosef
Kaplan, Henry Mechoulan and Richard H. Popkin (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989), 207-219; Moshe
Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), especially 164-182; Allison
Coudert, "Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment," in the present volume.
5. Ide! singles our Herrera and R. Joseph Shlomo Del Medigo as representative of this aspect of
Lurianic teaching. Both of them, he writes, "almost totally neutralized the messianic elements
in their works": their interest in philosophy "caused them to reject the eschatological aspects
that are characteristic of much of the Lurianic corpus and therefore also to obfuscate the
messianic aspects" (Messianic Mystics, 176). Ide! sees no fundamental contradiction between
Luria's personal messianic claims and his teachings, which he characterizes as "pre-
eschatological" rather than fully messianic (ibid., 174).
6. Sources Inedites de l'histoire du Maroc, Serie 1, Archives et Bibliotheques d'Angleterre, vol. 2,
108-109. Nissim Yosha places Herrera's encounter with Sarug in Ragusa after his release
from captivity. See Yoshe, Mitos u-metaforah: ha parshanut ha-jilosofit she/ R. Avraham Kohen
Hererah le-kabalat ha-Ari (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1994), 39-42.
7. Quoted by Ralph Melnick, From Polemics to Apologetics (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981), 38.
8. Popkin, "Christian Jews," 59. For more on Herrera's life, see Yosha, "Abraham Cohen de
Herrera: An Outstanding Exponent of Prisca Theologia in Early Seventeenth Century
Amsterdam," in Joseph Michman, ed., Dutch Jewish History (Assen/Maastricht: van
Gorcum, 1993), 117-119.
9. Allison P. Coudert, "The Kabbala Denudata: Converting Jews or Seducing Christians," in
Jewish Christians and Christian Jews from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Richard H.
Popkin and Gordon M. Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 75. See also
her "Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment," in the present volume; and
"Forgotten Ways of Knowing: the Kabbalah, Language, and Science in the Seventeenth
Century," in The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Donald
R. Kelley and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 83-99.
For Herrera's influence on Spinoza, see Richard H. Popkin, "Spinoza, Neoplatonic Kabbal-
ist?," in Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, ed. Lenn E. Goodman (Albany: SUNY Press,
1992), 387-409. Scholem's study of the historical influence of Aboab's translation is in his
Introduction to Abraham Cohen de Herrera, Das Buch Sha'ar ha-shamayim oder Pforte des
Himmels (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974), 41-64.
 Syncretism and Millennium in Herrera's Kabbalah 75

10. Sarug is reported to have said: "There is no difference between Kabbala and philosophy, and
all I teach in Kabbala I explain philosophically." In Scholem, "Yisrael Sarug - Talmid ha-
Ari?," Zion (1940), 220f, cited by Altmann, "Lurianic Kabbalah in a Platonic Key," 326.
11. Ibid., 326. See also Moshe Ide!, "Differing Conceptions of Kabbalah in the Early Seventeenth
Century," in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Isadore Twersky and Bernard
Septimus (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 179-183.
12. Ennead 5.4.27. Stephen MacKenna translation cited by J.M. Rist, Plotinus, the Road to Reality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 70.
13. Puerta del cielo VII, I, fo. 85v.
14. See Marsilio Ficino, Theologia platonica, Book II, chapter 2, e.g.: "In Deo idem est ipsa esse,
intelligere, velle." Theologie Platonicienne de l'immortalite des limes (Paris: Societe d'Edition
'Les Belles Lettres,' 1964), I: l14.
15. Book IV of Puerta del cielo begins with a statement of thirteen philosophical proofs that Adam
Kadmon is the emanated second of Ein-Sof; the rest of the book elucidates the proofs one by
one. What is of interest to the topic at hand is how these proofs, along with Herrera's
understanding of the sefirot, take his Kabbalah away from possible millenarian implications.
16. For the original Italian, see Girolamo Benivieni, Opera omnia (Florence, 1519), chapter 3.
17. Justus Caesar Scaliger, Exotericarum exercitationum liber XV de subtilitate ad Hieronymum
Cardanum (Paris, 1557), 320. Cited in Puerta del cielo IV, 7, fo. 44 r.
18. In De substantiis separatis, Aquinas contends that the first, direct emanation from God was a
first body (corpus primum) or the soul of the first sphere (anima primi orbis), presumably
identical to the primum mobile. Quoted by Cornelio Fabro, Partecipazione e causa/ita secondo
S. Tommaso d'Aquino (Turin: Societa Editrice Internazionale, 1960), 306.
19. Durandus de Saint-Poun;ain, In Petri Lombardi sententias theologicas commentarium libri IV,
Distinctio 44, Quaestio 2 (Venice, 1571. Reprint. Ridgewood, N.J.: The Gregg Press, 1964), 1:
115-116.
20. Puerta del cielo VII, 1-7 and 11-12. In Puerta del cielo, Altmann writes, "the concept of
zimzum is offered as an answer to the philosophical problem ... [of] how an infinite perfect
being (Adam Kadmon) could have emerged from the Infinite." Altmann, "Lurianic Kabbalah
in a Platonic Key," 348.
21. Proclus, The Elements of Theology, edited and translated by E.R. Dodds (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1977), 90-91. Herrera translates: "cada orden de participados se reduze a su cauza que
en su genero es ynparticipada, mas a todos los de aquel genero, o orden, participable, y todos
los que se participan, y en sus generos, no son participados, se reduzen finalmente a Ia primera
y vniuerssalissima vnidad" (fo. 74r).
22. Torquato Tasso, "II Messaggiero" in Prose, edited by Ettore Mazzali (Milan: Ricciardi, 1959),
p. 35. The Fox Morcillo connection is pointed out by the editor, 15 fn. 1.
23. Cited by Krabbenhoft, "Kabbala and Expulsion," in The Expulsion of the Jews, I 492 and After,
ed. Raymond B. Waddington and Arthur H. Williamson (New York: Garland Publishing,
1994), 138; passage translated from Puerta del cielo, fo. 133. This is why kavvanot must be
directed to Ein-Sof and not the sefirot: "our intention, devotion and practice, our final goal and
objective, should be him and not them ... but through them [a e1 y no a elias; I, I, fo. 4r].
Herrera clarifies that Keter the exalted one (el alto) is not Ein-Sof the First Cause but rather
"the first and finest effect which Ein-Sof produced by emanation" [1, 20, fo. 9r]. The other
sefirot are different, as they "proceded from giver and receiver or metaphorical male and
female" [I, 31, fo. 13v].
24. Averroes, The Incoherence of the Incoherence, trans. Simon van den Bergh (London: Luzac and
Co., 1954), 299.
25. " ... nunquam posse certum esse, quot anni residui erunt usque ad iudicii diem." Francisco
Suarez, Defonsa de Ia fe (Defensio fidei catholicae et apostolicae adversus anglicanae sectae
errores) (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Politicos, 1971 ), vol. 4, book V, chapter 8, disputation
27A, 602. As for the number 666, Suarez says, although we know from the Book of Revelation
that it belongs to the Beast, why do we start counting from one year and not another? [quam
ab alio quovis tempore computandus est ille numerus?; 674].
76 K. Krabbenhoft

26. "No huvo Iugar, ni en los superiores, ni en los inferiores, de donde Ia Divinidad no hablase
con Israel (con Israel entiende, en Ia dadiva de Ia ley). Habl6 de Ia Silla de Ia Gloria diziendo
)::>)N (a saber Yo) y assi monta tanto NO:> (o silla; quiere dezir 81). Despues habl6 de los
Angeles ...." Casa de Ia divinidad, 249.
27. Ibid., 251.
28. Altmann, "Lurianic Kabbalah in a Platonic Key," 347.
 J. BARNA!

4. SOME SOCIAL ASPECTS OF THE POLEMICS BETWEEN

SABBATIANS AND THEIR OPPONENTS*

Further research into the social history of Sabbatianism is sorely needed. This
sort of work is necessary in order to deepen our understanding not only of the
biggest and most important messianic movement in the history of the Jewish
people, but also the processes and movements acting in Jewish history at the
end of the Middle Ages and the modern period. We must try to place
Sabbatianism in its historical context, the times and places in which it
occurred, beginning with the Jewish perspective, since it affected almost all of
the Jewish communities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But we
must also try to place Sabbatianism in a perspective beyond Jewish history, in
the larger framework of the societies and religions surrounding it. This is
necessary in order to better understand not only Sabbatianism, but also both
European and Islamic movements and social trends prevailing in the same
period. Allow me to paraphrase Herzl's words (with no intent of detracting
from what Sabbatian research has achieved until now): Sabbatianism should be
returned to history, not left only in the field of Jewish mysticism, as has been
done to date in a most impressive manner, mainly by Gershom Scholem and
his school.
In the last few years, several scholars ofSabbatianism, Jewish mysticism and
theology have noted that studies of the Sabbatian movement's social aspects
were lacking. Joseph Dan recently wrote that

only during the last years has Hasidic research started to be released from
the shackles of a strange tradition, which forbade historians of Hasidism
from being involved in the research of Hasidic dogma, and forbade
researchers of Jewish thought and mysticism from looking into the history
and the social development of this movement. The basis for this tradition
lies in the conviction that Gersh om Scholem and his students dealt only with
the issues pertaining to the relationship between man and his god, whereas
the worldly issues belonged to historians. There is one exception in
Scholem's corpus: the Sabbatian movement, whose history was part of the

77
M. Go/dish and R.H Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 77-90.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
78 J Barnai

latifundium of Kabbalah scholars, with the result that this movement's

image has had an anemic representation in the writings of historians. 1

One will observe, of course, that the "openness," as well as its opposite, is
expressed in Dan's statement only in the context of the Jewish world, and does
not refer to the creations and cultures outside Jewish history or to non-Jewish
history.
This is not to say we have not had scholars who dealt with the social history
of Sabbatianism. First of all, Gershom Scholem's works have greatly con-
tributed to unveiling the social aspect of the movement, despite the fact that he
laid more emphasis on the movement's body of ideas. Scholem attempted less
to integrate the history of Sabbatianism in its rightful place and time, than to
situate it in the framework of his monumental theses about Jewish mysticism
and messianism throughout the ages. His method of research placed this issue
in the context of mysticism and almost isolated Sabbatianism from its context
in wider Jewish and general history. However, this is a separate subject upon
which I will not dwell here.
Other scholars, including Meir Balaban, Meir Benayahu, Elisheva Carle-
bach, Mortimer Cohen, Matt Goldish, Yosef Kaplan, Jacob Katz, Stephen
Sharot and others have all written on their special areas of interest, important
chapters in the social history of Sabbatianism. 2 I myself have attempted during
recent years to examine various aspects of the movement's social history,
mainly in the Jewish communities of the Ottoman Empire, but also in Europe. 3
I have tried to examine background issues, the causes for the spread of
Sabbatianism, and a few social aspects, especially those related to the Smyrna
(lzmir) community, whence Sabbatai hailed. I have not yet exhausted these
themes and I expand upon them in my recent book. •
In the present paper I would like to talk about the controversies raging
between Sabbatians and their opponents. These polemics started when Sabba-
tai Zevi emerged as a messiah in the year 1665, and they continued in many
Jewish communities throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Even
in the nineteenth century one can still detect remaining echoes of the
controversies. I will comment on them from the point of view of social history
and make a few historiographic notes as well. This is part of a larger research
project I am pursuing on the subject.
The main questions which I will try to answer in this paper are:
a. Can we characterize Sabbatai Zevi, Sabbatianism, and the supporters and
opponents of the movement sociologically, from the time Sabbatai was
announced messiah, through the period of his apostasy, after his death, and
throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? What is the historical-
social context in which the Sabbatian polemics took place? What is the
relationship between the political and social power struggles in the Jewish
communities and the controversies that broke out on religious grounds?
b. What was the seventeenth century like? Was it a single-crisis century or a
multiple-crisis century? What is the meaning of these crises? How do Jewish
 Social Aspects of the Polemics between Sabbateans and their Opponents 79

history and the polemics on the Sabbatian theme relate to what is called "the
Seventeenth Century Crisis"?4 Furthermore, were Sabbatianism and its failure
the cause for crises or trauma in Jewish society in the modern period, as is
generally agreed in Jewish historiography? Or, as Abraham Elqayam has
hinted recently, it is the other way around? Is Sabbatianism rather the result
of the seventeenth century crisis and not its cause?5 These problems are too
difficult for us to answer conclusively here, but they will be addressed indirectly
throughout the paper.
c. Are there differences between the polemics going on before the messiah
converted to Islam and the polemics after? Are there differences between the
polemics conducted in different regions of the Jewish world - Europe, the
Ottoman Empire and other Islamic countries?
d. What is the role of non-Jews - Moslem and Christian religious figures,
European intelligentsia, Hebraists, the ruling class and various officials - in
these polemics? What role did they play in the bitter disputes which broke
among the Jews concerning Sabbatianism? All this, of course, must be
considered in the general frameworks of the relationship between Jews and
non-Jews, which are central to understanding the messianic and Sabbatian
phenomenon and its aftermath.
e. What importance do the polemics have in the perspective of Jewish history
in general, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in particular? Can
they be considered a central phenomenon or are they a negligible aspect of
Jewish history?

These are only some of the questions which I intend to address here, and in
the more comprehensive research project which I am pursuing at the moment. I
will attempt to do this by synthesizing and generalizing, without presenting too
many details and examples, with only a few remarks and footnotes.

I. THE POLEMICS UP TO SABBATAI ZEVI'S CONVERSION

The great controversy concerning this issue in historiography has been

conducted between Gershom Scholem and Heinrich Graetz, the important
nineteenth-century Jewish historian. Graetz, in accord with his maskilic out-
look, utterly denied that Jewish mysticism and the traditional messianic
expectations had any positive value. He had a profoundly negativistic attitude
to Sabbatianism and explained its success by the ignorance of the masses who
were deceived by the false messiah and his prophet. 6 In this, Graetz followed in
the steps of contemporary sources and various earlier commentaries. 7 Ger-
shom Scholem, as we know, held the exactly opposite view concerning
mysticism and Jewish messianism, and considered them vital and central
movements in Jewish history. He was aware of their sometimes destructive
power, but he showed in his work on Sabbatianism that almost all the Jewish
leaders stood behind the movement in the years 1665 to 1667 and the masses
80 1 Barnai

simply followed suit. Furthermore, Scholem pointed out the fact that the few
Jewish leaders who opposed Sabbatai Zevi were swept aside during this period
and even persecuted. 8 Indeed, a systematic examination carried out by
Scholem and by other scholars in various Jewish communities led in general
to similar conclusions, although certain differences in the level of support or
opposition were found between communities. 9
The central questions raised by historians is still relevant as regards the
motives and success of this messianic outbreak which swept away almost
everyone, and the definition of the elites who either supported or opposed
Sabbatai Zevi. Jacob Katz is of the opinion that it was the "secondary
intelligentsia" who were ardent supporters of Sabbatai Zevi and it was them
who caused the success of the movement. 10 Scholem himself thought he had the
key to understanding the overwhelming factor causing Sabbatianism emer-
gence: the spread of the Lurianic Kabbalah in the generations preceding
Sabbatai Zevi. He suggested five general causes for Sabbatian success.
a. The news originated specifically from Palestine
b. The combination of the renewal of prophecy and messianism
c. The popular myth of redemption in Lurianic Kabalah
d. The call for repentance
e. The lack of clear distinction at the beginning between the movement's
different components (some of which were very heretical), allowing all to
feel they could join the movement, conservatives and dissidents alike. 11

We should note that all the factors mentioned by Scholem are components of
the Jewish religious perspective; not a single one relates to any social, political
or economic aspect. He also rejected any attempt to explain Sabbatianism by
means of external, non-Jewish factors. As we know, in recent years these theses
of Scholem have come under heavy criticism. 12
In my opinion, the massive support of the movement, which contrasts
starkly with the opposing force of individuals or groups during the years 1665
to 1667, is best explained by the separate examination of each community. It is
possible on the one hand to emphasize the important role of leaders who
supported the Sabbatian cause and were close to the local power centers, such
as Rafael Joseph Chelebi in Egypt. On the other hand, the dissociation of the
Istanbul leadership from Sabbatai Zevi represents a very different dynamic.
Among the most ardent supporters of Sabbatai Zevi were many rabbis
renowned in the Jewish world. A thorough review of the supporters and
opposers reveals issues like the following challenge for Scholem's thesis:
Sabbatai Zevi was expelled from Jerusalem, where the Lurianic Kabbalah was
relatively widespread, whereas in Smyrna, a city where Lurianism had little
hold, he was received as a Messiah. 13
The mass fervor aroused when people heard about the coming of the messiah
can be explained in terms of the recent researches carried out in disciplines
 Social Aspects of the Polemics between Sabbateans and their Opponents 81

such as anthropology and psychopathology of the masses concerning the

relation between crowds and power in many societies, the subject of an
important book by Elias Canetti. 14 In periods of ecstatic messianic fervor,
opponents are generally cast aside, which is what happened when Sabbatai
Zevi appeared on the scene. Observation of the reaction of Sabbatai Zevi's
opponents in Smyrna, the place he was known best, supports this thesis very
well. They were forced to hide or flee the city, while Sabbatai's supporters, who
in my opinion were not all true believers in the messiah, seized power in the
community by violent means. I would argue that in Smyrna, as in other
communities, including Venice, Amsterdam, and Jerusalem, the messiah theme
served as a trigger for social and political upheavals inside the communities.
Power struggles which had existed before were exploited by the opposing
parties. 15
However, one should not ignore the enormous messianic fervor which fed
the Sabbatian breakout, and Scholem is right in noting that even in stable, well-
to-do communities, where the Jews had a lot to lose, the belief and ferment
were very strong. 16 This is how he tried to show the depth of the Jewish
messianic longing, which breaks out even when not precipitated by a cata-
strophe. Nevertheless I think that the rumors about the coming of the messiah
were well received also as a result of the great catastrophe which befell the Jews
of Eastern Europe during this period, and because of outside influences, such
as the Thirty Years' War, the wars in Eastern Europe, Christian millenarian-
ism, and the unrest among the Marranos. These, as well as other factors which
came into play in the Islamic and Ottoman world, have not yet been examined
adequately. 17 One should note that the Jews were a minority group with a
tradition of suffering, expulsions and pogroms, and it was relatively easy for the
people of this generation to let their imagination go wild when the messianic
rumors reached them. We should also remember that the seventeenth century
saw a tremendous development in international communication, which facili-
tated the relatively quick transmission of rumors. 18
Two contradictory trends may be observed in the seventeenth century which
had an impact on people's receptivity toward the messianic issue. On the one
hand, this century was a period of doubt and heresy both toward religion and
the intellectual legacy of the Middle Ages. 19 On the other hand, it was a
century impregnated with mysticism and irrational elements. 20 Jewish society
in the seventeenth century was not yet struggling in the throes of a total crisis,
but the cracks were evident, and they may help explain developments in the
Sabbatian affair.
An important question concerns the involvement of the various authorities
in the Sabbatian affair and in the polemics between the Sabbatians and their
opponents. Fear of the authorities was a common motivation for the silence of
Sabbatian opponents, who were a minority. They feared to inform on and hand
over the Sabbatian believers on grounds of rebellion because they thought this
could endanger the whole community. Here too we can see that their behavior
is typical of a minority group, which is not keen to reveal the struggles going on
inside the group to the external world. In cases where they did complain to the
82 J. Barnai

authorities, such as in Smyrna and Istanbul, the authorities intervened

immediately and changed the course of events dramatically. 21
Another important issue to raise is related to the tension existing in the
Jewish communities during Sabbatai Zevi's period. We possess various
evidence to the effect that the tension in many communities was considerable,
and the messianic excitement was exploited by various factions. Some even
resorted to physical violence, throwing stones at houses, breaking in synago-
gues, disrupting religious rites, seriously wounding opponents in the open,
excommunicating and burning books and so on. 22 I think that the involvement
of the authorities and the street violence rampant in the Jewish communities
during Sabbatai Zevi's time reflect expanding rifts in Jewish society. It is not
surprising that these violent acts broke out specifically in new communities or
rehabilitated communities, which included a relatively great number of
Portuguese Marranos, such as Smyrna, Venice, Amsterdam and Hamburg.
These Marranos were novelty-seeking individuals, energetic and less sensitive
to community tradition. It is possible that the things that were happening in
these communities had an influence, direct or indirect, on other communities
as well.
Research into Jewish societies in the seventeenth century shows they were in
a state of upheaval, and researchers have not always paid attention to this fact,
which is in any case not entirely understood. The fact that Sabbatianism and its
related phenomena were widespread in the Jewish world strikes us as strange
when we consider that these things happened in communities so different from
each other in location, political subjection, and surrounding society and
religion. This makes it very difficult to give a single explanation for the
Sabbatian phenomena. I will nevertheless suggest two possible general ex-
planations here.
First, in the seventeenth century, similar political, economic and social
processes occurred in Europe and in the Islamic countries, particularly the
Ottoman Empire. I am not sure the world then was clearly divided into two
separate realms of Europe and the Moslem world. The commercial, political
and geographical continuity (i.e., common borders, exemplified by Ottoman
rule over parts of Europe), developing transportation systems, diplomatic ties
and political alliances, immigration and other factors, caused a flow of ideas,
information, patterns of rule and economy between the Europe and the Muslim
world. 23 This trend toward uniformity affected Jewish communities throughout
the world as well. Similar relationships and influences existed between Jewish
communities in Europe and Islamic countries; there is evidence that similar
interfaces prevailed even between conservative groups and groups which
wished to introduce changes. 24 Against this historical background one can, in
my opinion, better understand the spread of Sabbatianism, the flow of
information, the taking of sides, and the emergence of various pro- and anti-
Sabbatian groups.
Second, this state of affairs in the non-Jewish as well as the Jewish world
brings me to an historiographic issue. The so-called "Jerusalem School" of
Jewish history, born in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, developed a thesis
 Social Aspects of the Polemics between Sabbateans and their Opponents 83

about "the unity of Jewish history." 25 This thesis was a reaction to the Jewish
and Christian historiography of the nineteenth century, which considered the
Jews to be strictly a religious group. The Jerusalem School strove to emphasize
an integrative, national element unifying the Jews throughout the world and
throughout history. In recent years, this thesis has come under heavy criticism
and the controversy has had many implications which are not important for the
present discussion. Examination of the Sabbatian affair in this context is
fascinating because in the middle of the seventeenth century when it emerged
it conquered the Jewish world. Sabbatianism strengthened the ties between
communities and caused an exchange of information, halakhic rulings, and
verbal and written consultations between community leaders and Jews who did
not hold any position of influence. These activities support the Jerusalem
School's "unity" thesis.
It is quite possible that there is a connection between the resemblances in the
seventeenth-century European Christian and Moslem worlds, the close ties
established among various communities in the Jewish world, and the effect of
these factors on the Sabbatian breakout and its spread at this specific period. I
think that the unity of the world, and Jewish unity more specifically, is greatly
reduced in the eighteenth century, which brings us to the second part of this
study.

II. POLEMICS AFTER SABBATAI'S CONVERSION TO ISLAM AND IN THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Historiography has always considered Sabbatai Zevi's conversion to Islam in

1666 a turning point in the Sabbatian movement. Until the conversion it was a
mass movement, whereas after the conversion it became a sect. In the late
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some of the Sabbatians practiced their
new rites under cover, while others, more daring or more sophisticated, acted
in the open or were hypocritical, behaving as Jews in public and disguising
their Sabbatian beliefs. However, the storms and polemics raging in the Jewish
world concerning Sabbatianism do not, in my opinion, justify the definition of
Sabbatianism as a sect. This definition belittles the phenomenon and our
understanding of it. Today we possess enough information about Sabbatianism
during this period that we are able to argue that the phenomenon was a
widespread one (even contemporaries noted it) and had significant impact on
Jewish communities, 26 mainly in Europe. Sabbatianism during this period is
not marginal; many communities and many personalities belonging to the
establishment participated in it, and Sabbatian polemics are an integral part of
Jewish society with an important role to play. These controversies are much
more than theological discussions and their social implications are far-reach-
ing. In my opinion, the difference between the seventeenth century and the
eighteenth century can be found more in the change in the non-Jewish world
(particularly Europe) than in Jewish society.
First, I will mention some of the events and figures at the center of the main
polemics after Sabbatai Zevi's conversion.
84 J Barnai

a. The wanderings of Nathan of Gaza among the Jewish communities

following the conversion. 27
b. The Donme conversion to Islam in 1683 and its activities as a Saloniki
sect?8
c. The polemic of Abraham Michael Cardoso in the last quarter of the
seventeenth- and beginning of the eighteenth century. 29
d. The emigration of Sabbatian groups to Palestine at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, led by Rabbi Judah Hasid, Rabbi Abraham Rovigo
and their followers. 30
e. The polemic of Nehemiah Hiya Hayun in the 1720s. 31
f. The polemic of the Ramha'l (Rabbi Moses Haim Luzzatto) In the
1730s. 32
g. The controversies around Rabbi Yehonathan Eibeschutz, starting in the
1720s in Prague and raging throughout European communities during
the 17 50s. 33
h. The controversy around the book Hemdath Yamim (Delightful of Days),
first printed in Smyrna, 1731-2, the opposition to which spread m
European communities in the middle of the eighteenth century. 34
1. The Frankists and their conversion to Christianity during the 1750s and
afterward. 35

First, I would like to emphasize that for most of these controversies, the
social factors which triggered them were not always related to the Sabbatian
issue. They were connected to internal, social community clashes about leader-
ship and communal organization, to the rebellion of second-rank leaders
against leading figures, to the struggles between new factions rising against
the old establishment, between Ashkenazi Jews and Portuguese Marranos, to
the intervention of the authorities in various countries, and to religious figures
(particularly Christians) who were both captivated by the polemics and upset
by them. The controversies are also related to Christian millenarianism and to
Hebraist circles. We can argue therefore, that there is almost no aspect of
Jewish history in the eighteenth century which is not related to these polemics,
and their connection to the non-Jewish society is also quite striking. Their
impact on Jewish society in the eighteenth century is therefore considerable.
As we can see from the list of polemics mentioned before and from the
information we have collected about them (the literature dealing with them is
quite extensive), it seems that most of the important Jewish communities in the
Jewish world participated in them. However, a deeper examination shows that
the controversies which started in Turkey and in the Balkans after Sabbatai
Zevi converted, moved during the eighteenth century to Europe and stayed
 Social Aspects of the Polemics between Sabbateans and their Opponents 85

exclusively European. The Sepharadi communities in the Ottoman Empire and

the Islamic countries supply plenty of evidence for Sabbatian activity, but the
polemics in these communities almost stopped, and all further controversies
are conducted in Europe. This is a very interesting point.
I would like to argue that the "unity" characterizing the Jewish world in the
seventeenth century (connected to similar processes and influences in non-
Jewish society as well) undergoes a drastic modification in the eighteenth
century. 36 The changes sweeping Europe in this century have a dramatic effect
on the history of its Jews and cause the disintegration of Jewish society in the
first half of the eighteenth century. All the while, traditional life goes on in the
Jewish communities of the Islamic countries which did not undergo the same
changes that Europe experienced during the eighteenth century. In the eight-
eenth century, and in fact by the end of the seventeenth century, there is a
tremendous gap between Europe and the Islamic world and between the Jewish
communities in these regions. This gap influences the nature of the polemics
concerning Sabbatianism as well.
The disintegration of the Jewish social fabric in Europe did not start, in my
opinion, with Mendelssohn and Haskalah in the second half of the eighteenth
century, as some scholars argue, 37 but had already started in the first half of the
century, 38 with the changing attitude of the non-Jewish society in Central and
Western Europe to the Jews. This change encompasses the absolute monarchs,
the Hebraists, the European intelligentsia, millenarian Christian elements, and
economic factors. All these cause a profound change in Jewish traditional
society. 39 The bitterness of the controversies around Sabbatianism in the
Jewish communities of Europe in the eighteenth century must be examined
against the background of the commotion which befell general and traditional
Jewish society, and the attempts of the religious and community establishments
to protect themselves and the traditional institutions which were falling apart.
I agree with Elisheva Carlebach's opinion, expressed in her book The Pursuit
of Heresy, that Moses Hagiz, the renowned anti-Sabbatian who was active in
the first half of the eighteenth century, should be considered the first and
earliest founder of modern Jewish orthodoxy. 40 The struggle of Rabbi Jacob
Emden against the Sabbatians in the middle of the century should be classified
in a similar manner. 41 These two figures and others who waged their wars in
the communities of Central and Western Europe, are witnesses to the collapse
of traditional Jewish society in Europe even before Mendelssohn and the
Haskalah. They were concerned not only with Sabbatianism, but also with
Marrano heresy, the disruption of social institutions, and the movement of
Jews out of their own circles and into the surrounding society. Changing Jewish
society in a new political context affected the leaders, who feared these changes
and their inability to control and guide the community as they had done for
centuries in the past.
I think this is also why the Jewish leaders in all European communities in the
middle of the eighteenth century could not make up their minds in the
controversy raging between two of the period's greatest rabbis, Jacob Emden
and Jonathan Eibeschiitz when the former accused the latter of being a
86 J. Barnai

Sabbatian. The many sources dealing with the affair and the rich research
literature42 reveal the scope of this complicated scandal and support the theses
mentioned before. The controversy between the two rabbis reflects the crisis of
European Jewry in the first half of the eighteenth century. It also points to the
profound relationship between the crisis and surrounding society, particularly
in the Christian world. Abraham Cardoso, some of Rabbi Judah Hasid's
followers, Rabbi Moshe Hagiz, Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschiitz, the sons and
pupils of Eibeschiitz, and of course the Frankists, all had close relationships
with the European Christian world around them.
At the start of the eighteenth century, when the controversy between the
Sabbatians and their opponents were just starting, European Christians and
Jews were already in close intellectual contact. For example, an important
history of the Jews was written by the French Huguenot Jacques Basnage. 43
Christians studied Yiddish and Jews studied foreign languages. Millenarian
circles and missionaries became more and more numerous and the idea of "the
regathering of Israel" 44 gathered momentum. All this happened in the same
countries during the same period that the controversies between Sabbatians
and opponents raged, and the connection between the different phenomena is
in many cases quite obvious. 45 I would like to illustrate this point with one
short but important example. In the German city of Halle, the Institutum
Judaicum was established at the suggestion of the Hebraists Wagenseil and
Milller. 46 This was a Christian, missionary, messianic institute to which we are
indebted for invaluable information about Sabbatians. In these areas of
Central and Western Europe close ties were established between millenarian
Christians and Sabbatians. 47
The situation is completely different in the Islamic countries, especially in the
Ottoman Empire. Seemingly, at least, the Jewish Sepharadi establishment in
the Islamic communities shunned Sabbatianism after the conversion and
during the eighteenth century, and in practice it pursued a policy of hushing
up the affair as much as possible, for two reasons. One reason was that they
feared the Ottoman regime, which had been tolerant to the Jews during the
great messianic outbreak in 1665-1666, and reaped the fruit of the conversion
of the messiah and his believers in the year 1666, and the Donme sect's
conversion in Saloniki in 1683. 48 The second reason, which came to light
thanks to research carried out during the last generation, is that many of the
Turkish and Balkan rabbis at the end of the seventeenth century and during the
eighteenth century continued to practice Sabbatianism to some degree and
therefore did not have any motivation to fight it. 49
In a recent article I said that Sabbatianism and the Sabbatian conversions
caused ideological and creative stagnation in the Sepharadi communities of the
Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but I did not
emphasize enough the influence of Moslem regimes and society on the
stagnation. 50 However, today, after further study and comparison with Europe,
I tend to accept the view expressed to me by Professor Yehuda Nini, and see the
latter aspect, the external forces of Moslem government and society, as more
significant than the former aspect, the internal Jewish stagnation. Government
 Social Aspects of the Polemics between Sabbateans and their Opponents 87

and society in the Islamic world of the eighteenth century remained stable and
static, and Jewish society and establishments were not at any risk of
catastrophe or change in status quo. After the Sabbatai Zevi affair and the
resultant conversions, the Jewish and Ottoman establishments succeeded in
returning to their old routine and considered it an important achievement.

III. CONCLUSION

From the initial enquiries made here into the questions raised at the beginning
of the paper, a few guiding principles emerge. First of all, we became aware
that the Sabbatian affair is very complex and tortuous, and that the attempts at
monocausal explanations made in the research literature of the last generation,
defining Sabbatianism as a Jewish religious movement steeped in messianism
and mysticism disconnected from historical and other contexts, do not make
sense. One should rather emphasize the multi-faceted aspects of the phenom-
enon, especially from the historical-social point of view. An attempt was made
here to present the significant differences between the polemics of Sabbatians
and their opponents during the messianic period of Sabbatai Zevi and its
immediate aftermath on the one hand, and eighteenth century polemics on the
other. In the process of this analysis, significant differences were pointed out in
the direction taken by Jewish history in these two centuries. In the seventeenth
century there is a certain uniformity between the European and the Islamic
communities, while in the eighteenth century a rift is starting to appear
between them. The controversies themselves, as I see them, do not reflect only
the religious struggles between Sabbatians and their opponents, but have more
deep roots in Jewish society as a whole, which was trying to cope with changes
in the societies around it during the period under discussion.

Haifa University

NOTES
This paper is an English version of a chapter of my recent book Sahhateanism - Social
Perspectives [Hebrew], (Jerusalem: The Shazar Center, 2000, pp. 103-112.
I. Joseph Dan, "Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin: Between Zaddik of the Generation," [Hebrew] Jewish
Studies, 37 (1997), 301.
2. Meir Balaban, To the History of the Frankist Movement 2 volumes [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Dvir,
1934-1935); Meir Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement in Greece [Hebrew] (= Sefunot 14;
Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1971-8); Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1990); Mortimor J. Cohen, Jacob Emden, a Man of Controversy
(Philadelphia: Dropsie College Press, 1937); Yosef Kaplan, 'The Attitude of the Portuguese
Community in Amsterdam to the Sabbatean Movement, 1665-1671," [Hebrew] Zion 39
(1974), 198-216; Jacob Katz, "On the Connections Between Sabbateanism, Haskala and the
Reform Movement," in idem, Halacha in Straits [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992), 261-
278; Stephen Sharot, Messianism, Mysticism and Magic, (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1987).
88 J Barnai

3. Jacob Barnai, "On the History of the Sabbatean Movement and its Place in the Life of the
Jews in the Ottoman Empire," [Hebrew] Pe'amim 3 (1979), 59-73; idem, "Messianism and
Leadership: The Sabbatean Movement and the Leadership of the Jewish Communities in the
Ottoman Empire," in Ottoman and Turkish Jewry ed. Aron Rodrigue (Bloomington:
University of Indiana Press, 1992), 167-182; idem, "The Sabbatean Movement in Smyrna:
The Social Background," in Jewish Sects, Religious Movements and Politics Parties ed.
Menachem Mor (Omaha: Creighton University Press, 1992), 113-122; idem, "Christian
Messianism and the Portuguese Marranos: The Emergence of Sabbateanism in Smyrna,"
Jewish History 7 (1993), 119-126; idem, "The Outbreak of Sabbateanism - The Eastern
European Factor," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 4 (1994),171-183; idem, "The
Spread of the Sabbatean Movement in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," in
Communication in the Jewish Diaspora ed. S. Menache (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 313-338.
4. Crisis in Europe, 1550-1660 ed. T.S. Aston, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965); The
General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century ed. Geoffrey Parker and L.M. Smith (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1997); T.K. Rabb, The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern
Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).
5. Abraham Elqayam, The Mystery of Faith in the Writings of Nathan of Gaza [Hebrew] (Ph.D.
diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993), I.
6. Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews vol. 5 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1895),
86--167.
7. See: Shmuel Werses, Haskalah and Sabbateanism [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 1988),
146-190.
8. Gershom Scholen, Sabbatai Sevi, The Mystical Messiah (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1973), 371-433,461-651.
9. Kaplan, "Attitude of the Portuguese"; Barnai, "Messianism and Leadership."
10. Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 186.
II. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 464-46 7.
12. Moshe Ide!, '"One from a Town, Two from a Clan' -The Diffusion of Lurianic Kabbala and
Sabbateanism: A Re-Examination," Jewish History 7 (1993), 79-104. Barnai, "Christian
Messianism"; idem, "The Outbreak."
13. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 267-289, 327-331, 433-460; Barnai, "Messianism and Leadership."
14. Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (New York: Victor Gollancz, 1966.)
15. Jacob Barnai, "R. YosefEscapa and the Rabbinate of Izmir," [Hebrew] Sefunot 18 (1985), 53-
81; idem, "R, Haim Benveniste and the Rabbinate of Izmir in his Period," [Hebrew] in The
Days of the Crescent ed. Minna Rozen (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University Press, 1996), 151-191.
16. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 3-4.
17. Sharot, Messianism, Mysticism and Magic, 86-114; Barnai, "Christian Messianism"; idem,
"The Outbreak."
18. Barnai, "The Spread."
19. Scepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries ed. Richard H. Popkin
and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993).
20. Thomas Munck, Seventeenth century Europe (London: St. Martin's, 1990), 272-304.
21. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 410-412, 433-460; David Tamar, Studies in the History of the Jews in
Palestine and the East [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mosad Ha-Rav Kook, 1981), 119-135.
22. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi., 329-331, 477-517.
23. Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804 (Seattle and London:
University of Washington Press, 1977), 187-20; Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman
Empire and Modern Turkey vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 169-224;
Daniel Goffman, lzmir and the Levantine World, 1550-1650 (Seattle and London: Washington
University Press, 1990).
24. Jacob Barnai, "Portuguese Marranos in Smyrna in the Seventeenth Century," [Hebrew] in
Nation and History vol. I ed. Menachem Stern (Jerusalem: Mercaz Shazar, 1983), 289-298;
idem, "Connections and Disconnections between the Sages of Turkey and Poland and Central
Europe in the Seventeenth Century," [Hebrew] Gal-Ed 9 (1986), 13-26; idem, "Christian
Messianism."
 Social Aspects of the Polemics between Sabbateans and their Opponents 89

25. Yitzhak F. Baer, Studies in the History of the Jewish People vol. 1 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mercaz
Shazar, 1985), 27-32; Shmuel Almog, "The Historian's Mission," in History and Historians,
ed. Shmuel Ettinger (Jerusalem: Mercaz Shazar, 1993), 33; David N. Myers, Reinventing the
Jewish Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 109-176.
26. Gershom Scholem, Studies and Texts Concerning the History of Sabbateanism and its
Metamorphoses [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1974); idem, Researches in Sabbateanism
[Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: AmOved, 1991); Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement; Werses, Haskalah
and Sabbateanism; Yehuda Liebes, On Sabbateanism and its IVlbbalah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem:
Mosad Bialik, 1995).
27. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 705-780; Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement, 23-27, 227-229.
28. Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement, 77-108. Scholem, Researches, 291-390; idem, The
Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1988), 142-166.
29. Scholem, Studies and Texts, 274-369; idem, Researches, 391-452; Liebes, On Sabbateanism,
35-48; Nissim Yosha, "Time and Space- A Theological Philosophical Controversy between
Miguel Cardoso and Nathan of Gaza," [Hebrew] in Rivkah Shatz-Uffenheimer Memorial
Volume vol. I ed. Rachel Elior and Joseph Dan (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996), 259-284;
Abraham Elkayam, "The Absent Messiah: Messiah Son of Joseph in the Thought of Nathan
of Gaza, Sabbatai Sevi, and Abraham Miguel Cardoso,"[Hebrew] Da'at, 38 (1997), 33-82.
30. Meir Benayahu, "The 'Holy Brotherhood' of R. Judah Hasid and their Settlement in
Jerusalem," [Hebrew] Sefunot 3-4 (1960), 131-182; idem, The Sabbatean Movement, 451-525.
31. Scho1em, Researches, 478-488; Liebes, On Sabbateanism, 49-52; Elisheva Carlebach, The
Pursuit of Heresy, 75-122; Katz, "On the Connections"; Werses, Haskalah and Sabbatianism,
63-98. Itzhak S. Emmanuel, "The Nehemia Hiya Hayon controversy in Amsterdam,"
[Hebrew] Sefunot 9 (1964), 209-246; Menachem Friedman, "Letters relating to the Nehemia
Hayon Controversy," [Hebrew] Sefunot 10 (1966), 483-619; Matt Goldish, "Halakhah,
Kabbalah, and Heresy: A Controversy in Early Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam," Jewish
Quarterly Review 84 (1993/4), 153-176.
32. Isaiah Tishbi, Paths of Faith and Heresy [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1964), 169-203;
Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, 261-230.
33. Cohen, Jacob Emden; Moshe A. Perlmutter, R, Jonathan Eibeschuetz and his Attitude Toward
Sabbatianism [Hebrew] (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1947); Scholem, Researches, 653-734. Liebes,
On Sabbateanism, 77-237; Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, 123-160.
34. Abraham Yaari, Mystery of a Book [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1954); Scholem, Researches, 250--
288; Tishbi, Paths ofFaith and Heresy, 108-168; idem, Studies in IVlbbalah and its Branches vol.
2 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993), 339-418; Jacob Barnai, The Jews in Eretz Israel in the
Eighteenth Century [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1982), 72-94.
35. Scholem, Studies and Texts, 116-218, 422-452; idem, Researches, 631-652; Liebes, On
Sabbateanism, 193-197; Chone Shmeruk, "The Metamorphosis of Jacob Frank's, Sefer Divrei
Ha'adon from Yiddish to Polish," [Hebrew] Gal-Ed 14 (1995), 23-26; idem, "On Jacob Frank's
Childhood Memoirs," [Hebrew] Gal-Ed 15-16 (1997), 35-42.
36. Against the thesis of Katz, Tradition and Crisis, 6--8, 184-185, 195-196.
37. Ibid., 195-201.
38. See for example: Azriel Shohat, Beginning of the Haskalah among German Jewry [Hebrew]
(Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1960), 7-14; Shmuel Ettinger, "The Modern Period," in A History
of the Jewish People ed. Haim H. Ben-Sasson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1976), 727-740; Yoseph Kaplan, "The Path of Western Sephardi Jewry to Modernity,"
[Hebrew] Pe'amim 48 (1991), 85-103; Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of
Mercantilism, 1550-1750, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Matt Goldish, "Jews,
Christians and Conversos: Rabbi Solomon Aalion's Struggles in the Portuguese Community
of London," Journal of Jewish Studies 45 (1994), 256--257. On SaloW. Baron's view on this
issue, see Robert Liberles, Salo Wittmayer Baron (New York and London: New York
University Press, pp. 354, 404 (note 24).
39. Baruch Mevorah, The Problem of the Messiah in the Emancipation and Reform Controversies,
1781-1819 [Hebrew] (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1966), 1-25; Shohat,
Beginning of Haskalah, 49-71.
90 J. Barnai

40. Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy, 278.

41. Cohen, Jacob Emden; Scholem, Researches, 655-680; Liebes, On Sabbateanism, 198-211;
Jacob J. Schachter, Rabbi Jacob Emden: Life and Works (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University,
1988).
42. For detailed bibliography see Scholem, Researches, 653-734 (including updated footnotes by
Yehuda Liebes); Liebes, On Sabbateanism, 77-237.
43. Jacques Basnage de Beauval, Histoire des juifs depuis Jesus Christ Jusqu'au Present V Tomes
(Rotterdam 1706-1707). Updated discussion on Basnage, including bibliography, can be
found in Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, The National Narration of Exile Zionist Historiography
and Medieval Jewry [Hebrew] (Ph.D. diss., Tel Aviv University, 1996), 20-27; Miryam Yardeni,
Huguenots and Jews [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mercaz Shazar, 1998), 69-88.
44. See the introduction of Yosef Kaplan to the Hebrew edition of Thomas Coenen, Ydele
Verwachting der joden getoont in den person van Sabetai Zevi (Amsterdam 1669) [Hebrew]
(Jerusalem: Mercaz Dinur 1998), 7-21. For bibliography on the millenarianism of the
seventeenth century see ibid., 19 and notes 50-5!. On the eighteenth century see: Mevorah,
The Problem of the Messiah, 1-43; Shohat, Beginning of the Haskalah, 49-71, 198-241. Meir
Verete, "The Idea of Restoration of the Jews in English Protestant Thought 1790-1840,"
[Hebrew] Zion 33 (1968), 145-179.
45. This view could be learned from some other papers in this volume.
46. Scholem, Researches, 609-630; Mevorah, The Problem of the Messiah.
47. Shohat, Beginning of the Haskalah, 49-88. Liebes, On Sabbatianism, 212-237.
48. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 668-686; idem, The Messianic Idea, 142-166; Benayahu, The
Sabbatean Movement, 77-108.
49. Benayahu, The Sabbatean Movement, 179-224.
50. Jacob Barnai, "From Sabbateanism to Modernization: Ottoman Jewry on the Eve of the
Ottoman Reforms," in Sephardi and Middle Jewries ed. Harvey E. Goldberg (Bloomington:
University oflndiana Press, 1996), 73-80.
 R.H.POPKIN

5. CHRISTIAN INTEREST AND CONCERNS ABOUT

SABBATAI ZEVI

English and Dutch millenarians became convinced both from the study of
Scripture and from the amazing events unfolding in their countries, such as the
Puritan Revolution and the success of the Dutch Rebellion against the Spanish,
that the coming of the Messiah was imminent. Some thinkers, like the French
Protestant Isaac La Peyrere, believed it would be the Jewish Messiah, Jesus in
the flesh, who would come around 1655-56. Others were convinced that the
penultimate event, the Conversion of the Jews would take place. Rabbi
Menasseh ben Israel traveled to England to negotiate the re-admission of the
Jews, where the millenarians were convinced that the Jews would convert when
brought in contact with the pure Christianity of the Puritans.
After 1656 came and went and nothing theologically dramatic had happened,
the millenarians were most discouraged until some of them met Rabbi Nathan
Shapira of Jerusalem, who was in Amsterdam to raise money for his starving
brethren in Palestine. The Portuguese Synagogue refused to give any aid to
Ashkenazim, but the millenarians listened to his plight and took him in. When
asked if he believed that Jesus was the Messiah, Rabbi Shapira offered his theory
of the continuing appearance of the Messiah in different guises from the biblical
times onward, who does not stay because he finds mankind too wicked. Then
Shapira dined with the Dutch Chiliast Peter Serrarius, and they examined the
Gospel according to Matthew together. The rabbi was asked what he thought of
the Sermon on the Mount, and replied that it was "the teaching of our finest
rabbis." Serrarius thought the rabbi was on the verge of converting, that he had
Christ in his heart, and therefore sent the leading Scottish millenarian, John
Dury, an account of the meetings with Rabbi Shapira.
Dury immediately put out a pamphlet, An Information Concerning the
Present State of the Jewish Nation in Europe and Judea. Wherein the Footsteps
of Providence preparing a way for their Conversion to Christ, and for their
Deliverance from Captivity are Discovered, indicating that the conversion of
the Jews was about to start. Dury and others set up a fund-raising venture to
gather monies for the Jews of Palestine, and gave the rabbi a copy of the Gospel

91
M. Go/dish and R.H Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 91-106.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
92 R.H Popkin

according to Matthew to take back home and have it translated into Hebrew, in
order to help lead the Jews to convert. 1
Rabbi Shapira is said to have been the teacher of Nathan of Gaza. He also
apparently stayed in touch with his millenarian friends, so that they had some
awareness of the messianic fervor building up in the Near East. Serrarius in
Amsterdam, kept consulting with the Jews in the synagogue about how to
interpret various signs and portents. In 1664 he described rushing to the
synagogue after the appearance of a comet and the birth of a two-headed cow.
He and the rabbis, he said, did gematria together and concluded that the
Messiah would arrive in 1666. 2 When the Amsterdam synagogue received
Sabbatai Zevi's letter announcing the beginning of the messianic age and his
appointment of the Kings of the World, Serrarius made a copy that he sent to
John Dury, then in Switzerland. Serrarius became a fervent believer, and
actually died in 1669 on his way to Turkey to meet Sabbatai Zevi. 3
As is well known, there was a great deal of interest in the British Isles in
Sabbatai Zevi's career. Almost as soon as he made public his messianic
pretensions, pamphlets were appearing in England in English telling of
marvelous, miraculous events that were occurring which indicated that the
Restoration of Israel was at hand. 4 Part of the story, it was claimed, was even
taking place in Great Britain. A ship with sails of white satin, and ropes of silk,
with a sign declaring "THESE ARE OF THE TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL," is
supposed to have washed up on the Scottish shore near Aberdeen harbor! 5
Serrarius, a close friend and associate of many English millenarians, sent much
news about Sabbatai Zevi to his friends in England, and wrote some of the
most exciting and excited pamphlets of the time that circulated there. 6 Mean-
while, the secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, sent a letter to his
friend, Benedictus de Spinoza, to find out if it was true that the King of the
Jews had arrived on the historical scene. 7 He wrote on December 8, 1665 to
find out what was happening. "Here everyone spreads a rumor that the Jews
having been dispersed for more than two thousand years are to return to their
country. Few in this place believe it, but many wish for it. You will tell your
friend what you hear and judge of this matter. For myself, so long as this news
is not conveyed from Constantinople by trustworthy men, I cannot believe it,
since that city is most of all concerned in it." As far as we know, Spinoza never
answered, but further letters show that Oldenburg was getting a flow of data
about Sabbatai Zevi from Serrarius and others, originating in Constantinople,
Corfu, Vienna and elsewhere, describing what Sabbatai Zevi was doing and
about the tumult it was causing. Oldenburg shared all this with his patron,
Robert Boyle. Oldenburg became convinced, and was even able to accept
Sabbatai's conversion to Islam because God works in mysterious ways. 8
Oldenburg's son-in-law, the important theologian, John Dury, based in
Germany and Switzerland, spent much time trying to figure out where Sabbatai
Zevi fitted in the expected Christian scenario about 'the end of days.' 9 Dury,
who had been laboring for twenty-five years to bring about the conversion of
the Jews and the reunion of Christian churchs as preludes to the Second
Coming, was concerned about how to interpret the appearance and proclama-
 Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi 93

tions of Sabbatai Zevi. From the stream of information he was getting from
Serrarius, he first took a minimalist position, namely, that the King of the Jews
had arrived, and he was just that- king of the Jews in the Ottoman Empire, a
minor potentate among others subject to the Sultan. Then he saw that he would
have to put Sabbatai Zevi into a Providential scheme. Both he and and the
great apocalyptic preacher, Jean de Labadie, offered the interpretation that
God was rewarding the Jews by having their messianic moment occur, and
punishing Christians (because they were not pure enough) by delaying the
Christian Millenium. 10 Another millenarian, Nathaniel Holmes, offered a two-
Messiah theory, which he said he learned from Menasseh ben Israel, namely,
that there would be a Messiah for the Jews, followed by a return of a Messiah
for the gentiles, Jesus Christ. 11 Discussions of Sabbatai Zevi and his followers
appear in English writings up to the early eighteenth century. In the very
popular Memoirs ofa Turkish Spy living hidden in Paris, Sabbatai Zevi's agent in
Vienna appears a major figure. The Turkish spy tries to convince him of the
idiocy of his messianic beliefs, and to convert him to a rational religion. 12
The number of Christian reactions was enormous as evidenced by the huge
collection in the Zentralbiblioteck in Zurich, mostly just of German reactions.
Two that should also be added are that of Queen Christina of Sweden and that
of the great Catholic Bible scholar, Father Richard Simon. Christina, who
abdicated the throne in Sweden in 1654, converted to Catholicism and had
moved to Rome. In late 1665 she went to see her Jewish banker, Diego Teixera,
in Hamburg. She arrived just as the news of Sabbatai Zevi's announcement of
the beginning of the messianic age reached the Jews of Hamburg. She joined in
the wild festivities and dancing of the Jewish community, much to the dismay
of the Hamburg burghers. 13
Father Richard Simon was cynical about any millenarian or messianic
claims made by those around him. Nonetheless, he was a close friend of Isaac
La Peyrere. When Simon met Sabbatai Zevi's Paris agent, one Jona Salvador
(who had the tobacco monopoly in France), he wrote La Peyrere, jokingly
telling him that if he was still waiting for the Jewish Messiah, he had arrived.
He said that Salvador could give him a special prayer to recite if he went to
meet the Messiah. He also told La Peyrere that Salvador was a funny kind of
Jew. They were working together on a French translation of the Talmud.
Salvador said he could only work on Saturdays, and he smoked as he worked
on the Sabbath. Simon did not inquire as to whether these aberrant actions
were due to his feeling that the Law had been abrogated by Sabbatai Zevi. 14
Another line of European interest and concern grows out of the aftermath of
the Quaker messianic episode of late 1656 when a Quaker leader, one James
Nayler, declared that he was Jesus Christ and rode into Bristol, re-enacting
Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem, He is also supposed to have raised a Quakeress
from the grave while his followers chanted "Hosanna in the highest," and called
him the king of the Jews. Naturally he was arrested. It was decided to try him
for blasphemy in Parliament itself. Cromwell defended him, but others
regarded him as really dangerous. He was convicted, horribly punished and
jailed. His followers fled to the outposts of the Quaker commercial world 15 in
94 R.H Popkin

Amsterdam, the Levant and the American colonies. His case was very well
known all over Europe and, when Sabbatai Zevi appeared, a Polish pamphlet
called him "a Quaker Jew." 16 There is a woodcut that shows Nayler and
Sabbatai Zevi facing each other, labeling them as the two great imposters.
David Katz and I have been following out possible connections between
what happened in the Nayler movement to what happened in the prelude of the
Sabbatai Zevi movement. There were Quaker merchants in Smryna, and
Sabbatai's father is supposed to have worked for one of them. Possibly more
interesting is that a couple of Quaker missionaries went off to convert the pope
and the sultan. They do not seem to have succeeded, but they reached
Jerusalem around 1658-59. In a report it is said that they were arrested for
preaching the imminent coming of the Messiah. Their arrest occurred when
Sabbatai Zevi was in Jerusalem. 17
The public accounts of the Sabbatai Zevi movement began appearing after
his conversion to Islam in 1667. The telling of the story was mainly for
polemical purposes, first against millenarians, then against the foolish Jews.
There were accounts by John Evelyn, Paul Rycaut, Thomas Coenen, Jean
Baptiste de Rocoles, and an anonymous critic of 1708 challenging the move-
ment of the French prophets.
The most famous account is John Evelyn's The History of the THREE late
famous Imposters, viz Padro Ottomano, Mahamed Bei, and Sabatai Sevi. The
One, pretended Son and Heir of the late Grand Signnior; The Other, a Prince of
the Ottoman Family, but in truth, a Valachian Counterfeit. And the Last, The
Suppos'd Messiah of the Jews, in the Year of the true Messiah 1666. With a brief
Account of the Ground and Occasion of the present War between the TURK and
the VENETIAN Together with the Cause of the final Extirpation, Destruction,
and the Exile of the JEWS out of the EMPIRE of PERSIA, published in 1669.
Evelyn was a leading literati of the time and a member of the Royal Society. His
Diaries are an important source of information about the intellectual and
religious scene of the time. The account of Sabbatai Zevi was reprinted many,
many times into the nineteenth century. The William Andrews Clark Library
did a photographic reprint of the original edition in 1968.
A second account appears in Paul Rycaut, The History of the Turkish Empire
from the Year 1623, to the Year 1677. 18 Rycaut was the English Consul at
Smyrna when the Sabbatai Zevi movement began. He apparently knew
Sabbatai's father, as well as some of the other Jewish figures who were
involved. Although Rycaut was in England at the height of the Sabbatai Zevi's
career, and only returned after Sabbatai's conversion, he knew people who
could give him information about the affair. Rycaut was fluent in Spanish,
having attended the University of Alcala, and having translated some Spanish
texts. He would therefore have been able to converse easily with the Sephardic
merchants in Smyrna, including both the ones who spoke Ladino, and the more
recent ones who had come from Amsterdam. Gershom Scholem gave a
somewhat confusing picture of how Rycaut's text developed and its relation to
the Evelyn's version. 19 However, as we shall see, all of these English accounts
are in fact Rycaut's with slight changes.
 Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi 95

The third account seems to be little known, 20 appearing in 1708. It is entitled

The Devil of Delphos, or, The Prophets of Baal: containing an account of the
notorious Impostor, call'd SABATAI SEVI, pretended Messiah of the Jews, in
1666. Who afterwards turn'd Turk: And of many other Impostors in Church and
State,; as False Christs, and False Prophets from the Rise Of Christianity to the
Present Times. To which is added, a Proof that the Present Pretended Prophets are
the Prophets of the Devil, and not of God. 21 The author of the volume is
unknown.
I will first deal with the history of Rycaut's account, and how it appeared in
these three forms. Then, and of more interest, I will examine possible reasons
why the English public was so interested for so long in this strange episode in
Jewish history, and what role the telling of the story has played in English (and
American) Christian religious thought.
It is only fairly recently that it has become clear that Paul Rycaut wrote the
account that John Evelyn published, and wrote it after returning from his visit
to England in 1666-67. 22 Rycaut wanted the work published without his name
on it because he still had to work with the Jewish merchants and brokers in
Smyrna who had been, and continued to be, followers of the pretended
Messiah. He even had fears of being personally attacked in Smyrna if it was
known that he had written some unflattering things about Sabbatai Zevi and
his followers.
In the biography of Rycaut by Sonia Anderson, An English Consul in Turkey.
Paul Rycaut at Smyrna, 1667-1678, 23 the author details how Rycaut gathered
information from the Dutch chaplain at Smyrna, Thomas Coenen, an eye-
witness to many of the crucial events of 1666-1667, from the English
ambassador at Constantinople, Heneage Finch, the third Earl of Winchelsea,
from Rabbi Abraham Gabai, who was a follower of Sabbatai Zevi and had
published an earlier work of Rycaut's, and from others. The manuscript was
then sent to Lord Henry Howard who enlisted John Evelyn, a friend of Howard
and Rycaut, to arrange for the publication of it, along with the other tales of
imposters. These latter are by Pietro Cesii, a Persian traveler of Italian
extraction, who actually physically carried Rycaut's manuscript from Smyrna
to London. Evelyn translated Cesii's contributions into English. In the epistle
dedicatory, Evelyn hinted about the actual authorship of the pieces. In Evelyn's
own personal copy, he noted that Rycaut was the author of the story of
Sabbatai Zevi. 24 In the dedication (to the Right Honourable Henry, Lord
Arlington), Evelyn said that "the story of that Impudent Jew, comes from not
onely an Eyewitness, but from the hand of a Person, who has already gratified
the Publique with the Fruit of many rare and excellent Observations." 25
Paul Rycaut made quite clear in his History of Turkish Empire that he was the
original author when he wrote "for though it may have been elsewhere
published, yet being an issue of my Pen, I may lawfully now own it, and annex
it to this History, in respect of that near coherence it may have therewith." He
mentioned also that he was adding other particulars about what happened up
to the death of Sabbatai Zevi. 26
The Evelyn-Rycaut version was reprinted many times in a popular anthology
96 R.H Popkin

about Jewish matters, entitled Two Journeys to Jerusalem, which included an

account of a 1603 voyage to the Holy Land, an account of the fictitious meeting
of a Jewish Council near Budapest in 1650 (to decide if the Messiah had
already come), 27 and the Sabbatai Zevi story. These items were reprinted over
and over again in English, French, German, Dutch, Polish, Russian and even
Welsh, up to the nineteenth century. Three printings occurred in New England
at the very end of the eighteenth century. 28 It was the best-known account, and
the retelling of it in 1708, as we shall see, was for a very specific and immediate
purpose at that time.
John Evelyn made clear at the outset that the presentation of the story had
two motives. One was to show how foolish the Jews have been; the other, and
probably of more immediate concern, was to undermine confidence in the
English millenarians of the time. In the introduction "To the Reader," Evelyn
pointed out that Sabbatai Zevi was the twenty-fifth pretender ("as I am credibly
inform'd" to being the Jewish Messiah. 29 This case "might, one would think, at
least open the Eyes, and turne the hearts of that obstinate and miserable People."
So, the fiasco might lead to the Jews' accepting Christianity. Even more
important, though, "I could wish our modern Enthusiasts, and other prodigious
Sects amongst us, who Dreame of the like Carnal Expectations, and a Temporal
Monarchy, might seriously weigh how nearly their Characters approach the Style
and Design of these Deluded Wretches, least [sic] they fall into the same
Condemnation, and the Snare of the Devil." 30
Although many present-day historians contend that millenarianism ceased
to be an important view after the end of the Puritan Revolution, Evelyn's
comments would indicate that it was active and alive around 1669, and that the
"modern Enthusiasts" were expecting a bodily arrival of an historical figure
who would be the Messiah-King. In spite of the Restoration and the attempt of
the Latitudinarian Church of England to suppress such views and the
accompanying disturbances of the expecters, various prophetic predications
kept being made. Evelyn, a royalist, hoped that English people reading of the
disastrous career of Sabbatai Zevi and his followers would, like the Turkish
Jews, come again to their senses, presumably by giving up false millenarian
expectations. In the context of Evelyn's book, The History of the Three late
famous Imposters, the Sabbatai Zevi story gets the most space, over half of the
actual volume. 31
In Rycaut's presentation, which in his History of the Turkish Empire is the
first part of the section "Anno 1666. Hegira 1077," begins with telling about
Christian millenarian predictions based on the Book of Revelation. According
to these, "this Year of 1666, was to prove a Year of Wonders, of strange
revolutions in the World, and particularly, of blessing to the Jews, either in
respects of their Conversion to the Christian Faith, or of their Restoration to
their Temporal Kingdom." Nothing is said about Jewish predictions or
expectations. To make clearer who is being criticized at the outset, Rycaut, a
royalist like Evelyn, went on, "This opinion [about the conversion of the Jews
and their restoration] was so dilated and fixt in the Countries of the Reformed
Religion, and in the heads of Fanatical Enthusiasts, who dreamed of Fifth
 Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi 97

Monarchies, the downfall of the Pope and Anti-Christ, and the greatness of the
Jews". 32 Rycaut came from a prominent Royalist family. In the Cromwell
period, early in Rycaut's career, he was actually present at the Protector's
council chamber on December 18, 1655, to hear the discussion about whether
the Jews should be re-admitted to England. Many "Fanatical Enthusiasts"
were present. The main account that has been preserved of Cromwell's own
millenarian speech in favor of readmitting the Jews is the one that Rycaut told
his chaplain forty years later. 33
Then, completely contrary to Scholem's thesis that the Sabbatai Zevi move-
ment emanated entirely from Jewish events and concerns, Rycaut claimed that
the Jews, "this subtle people judged this Year [1666] the time to stir, and to fit
their Motion according to the season of the Modern Prophecies." 34 The
millenarians, having stirred up the Jews, then, are also held responsible for the
reports about the movements of the Lost Tribes, and about the boat in
Aberdeen. "These reports agreeing thus near to former Predictions, put the
wild sort of the World into an expectation of strange accidents this Year should
produce in reference to the Jewish Monarchy." 35
In this telling of the tale, the Jews were not the originators of the events, but
the recipients of lunacies from the Christian millenarian world, which led
Sabbatai Zevi and the Jews to enact a frenzied messianic scenario. Rycaut had
no information about how any or all of this could have arisen from within the
Jewish world, nor did he offer any connecting links between the Protestant
millenarians in Europe and the Jews in Turkey. There were Protestant
millenarians among the European merchants in Smyrna, though Rycaut said
nothing about them, or about whether they might have influenced the local
Jews. (Sabbatai Zevi's father, whom Rycaut knew, is believed to have worked
for Quaker merchants who were probably followers of the Quaker messianic
pretender, James Nayler. 36 ) Nor did he mention any of the millenarian-
messianic ideas that might have been brought to Smyrna by Jewish merchants
who had just come from Amsterdam, and who knew about the prophetic views
of Menasseh ben Israel. 37
Instead, Rycaut just informed us that following on the Christian predictions,
"Millions of people [presumably all Jews] were possesed when Sabatai Sevi first
appeared at Smyrna" and announced that he was the Jewish Messiah, and that
the messianic Kingdom would soon begin. Jews all over the world soon heard
of this. Sabbatai's doctrine "so deeply possessed them with a belief of their new
Kingdom and riches." 38 The term "possessed" is twice used to describe what
was happening, as if it was a kind of witchcraft or demonic possession. Rycaut
then informed the reader that he himself had seen "a strange transport in the
Jews" as he traveled from Constantinople to Budapest in 1666. Rycaut then
told the story of the Sabbatian movement, of how the Jews went berserk, and
finally how it came to naught. He treated it as an obvious imitation of the story
of Jesus. After Sabbatai Zevi told Nathan of Gaza of his intention to declare
himself the "Messiah of the World," "it was thought necessary, according to
Scripture and ancient Prophecies, that Elias was to precede the Messiah, as St.
John Baptist was the Fore-runner of Christ." 39
98 R.H Popkin

Two important differences in Rycaut's presentation in the History of the

Turkish Empire and in the Evelyn version are (1) that in the former Rycaut
omitted the names of those persons named by Sabbatai Zevi to be the kings of
the world, and the other, that (2) he briefly dealt with what happened to
Sabbatai Zevi and to the Turkish Jews afterwards. The omission is probably
due to the fact that Rycaut knew that the British authorities and merchants in
Smyrna had to deal with the people so named, and did not want to cause them
difficulties. 40 Rycaut described a second pseudo-Messiah who turned up in
Smryna in 167112 from the Morea. The Jews immediately disowned him and
got the Turks to condemn him to prison. Rycaut closed his account with the
news that Sabbatai Zevi died in 1676 still in "the house of Pharaoh." Then he
announced it was time to turn from "the phrensie of the Jews" to "matters of
greater Consequence", those concerning Turkish affairs. 41
The third telling of the Sabbatai Zevi occurs in a little known work whose
author is unknown, The Devil of Delphos, or, The Prophets of Baal: containing an
account of the notorious Impostor, call'd SABATAI SEVI, pretended Messiah of
the Jews, in 1666. Who afterwards turn'd Turk: And of many other Impostors in
Church and State,; as False Christs, and False Prophets from the Rise Of
Christianity to the Present Times. To which is added, a Proof that the Present
Pretended Prophets are the Prophets of the Devil, and not of God. 42 The title
pretty much indicates the point of the work. The story of Sabbatai Zevi brings
up the whole history of imposters in the history of Christianity and in Christian
states. And this leads to an expose of pretended prophets of the moment,
namely, those involved with the movement of French prophets in England from
1706 onward, which was having a great effect on the religious scene at the time.
The "Preface to the Reader, by Way of Introduction to the following History"
states that "The Design of Publishing the following History, is, to shew thee the
Danger that many have fallen into thro' the Delusions of pretended Prophets,
who have not been wanting to appear in almost all Ages of the World, as our
Saviour himself foretold, Math.24.5,24." 43 Even though Sabbatai Zevi figures
so prominently in the title page, his case does not come up in the prefatory
discussion. Instead, the prophets of the moment are attacked. A sermon by Dr.
Blackall preached before the Queen of England is cited about the dangers of
these "pretended inspired prophets at this time risen amongst us, who are daily
gaining of Proselytes." 44 Readers are told that their faith should be based on
the teachings of the Church of England, and that the present prophets are as
great imposters as any who have appeared before. 45 Nothing is said in the
preface about Jews or Judaism. So, the focus of the work is strictly on a crisis in
English Christianity at the time caused by the arrival of the French prophets
and by their English adherents. 46
The body of the book is "An Historical Account of several False Christs, False
Prophets, Pretenders to Miracles, and other Notorious Impostors." 47 It begins
way back in early Christian history. Though the longest chapter is on Sabbatai
Zevi, he does not appear on the scene until midway through the book. The
account of his affairs is preceded by discussions of the cases of Cerinthus,
Montanus, Arrius, Mahomet, revelations and prophecies of several Romanists,
 Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi 99

Gerard, or the publicans (1184), of one who pretended to be blind and

recovered sight at the tomb of Henry III (1274), John Powdras (1318), Joannes
de Ruperscissa (1364), Janovesius, Walter Lolhard (1376), La Pucelle [Joan of
Arc] - a great imposter (1429), a pretended blind beggar (1447), Perkin
Warbeck- a counterfeit prince (1493), followed by a digression about Perkin,
the pretended Prince of Wales, the supposed son of James II, Thomas Muntzer
(1521 ), Dr. Balthazar Hubmor (1523), John Hut (1523), Melchior Rinck
(1526), Hofman the skinner (1528), John Matthias (1532), John Buckhold
(John of Leyden, 1533), Elizabeth Barton (the holy maid of Kent, 1534),
Hermanus Sutor (1535), Theodorus Sator - an Anabaptist turned Adamite
and Prophet (1535), Henry Nicholas- Father of the Family of Love (1535), and
David George - a false Christ and Prophet "tho' a Miracle of the Anabaptists"
(1544). Nobody in Jewish history is in the list, but much is devoted in the
sixteenth century prophetic Anabaptist and Mennonite figures. All of the
accounts are straightforward presentations of the purported historical facts
about the various personages. No connection is made between their activities
and any present events.
The author then began his presentation of the Sabbatai Zevi story saying, "I
the more willingly give the Readers the History of this Impostor, because it
borders very much on the Ground wuth the Pretensions of our Prophets." It is
then explained, "For the Messiah which the Jews expect has been a great Snare
to them, and produc'd as many Warnings of his Coming, as the Christian
Notion of the Return of Christ to live and reign a Thousand Years on Earth,
and call home to Jews and build a new Jerusalem." 48 The explanation of the
delusions of both the Jews and Christians is the same, and has produced an
abundance of imposters, among whom Sabbatai Zevi "is one of the most
Famous."49 Next we are told, as Rycaut had said at the outset, "This Tragi-
Comedy was strangely prepar'd by a Writing; and Predictions of several
Christians in their Comments on the Revelations, that the Year 1666, should
bring the Blessing of Jews of being converted to the Christian Religion, or
restored to their Temporal Power and Kingdom, which they have so long
expected." 50 Then the text goes on citing and paraphrasing Rycaut's telling of
the story up to Sabbatai Zevi's conversion to Islam, and the rabbis condemning
the belief in Sabbatai's messiahship.
At this point the author stated that the rabbinical condemnation was "to
solve the Shame their Folly had brought upon them". The topic is now quickly
turned to the then present situation, by asserting that "in all Probability our
Prophets when the 25th of May is past, will find Dr. Emes, 51 translated to
Heav'n, or Walking on the Walls, &c. as Elias was by the Jews of Smyrna." 5 2 In
both the Jewish case and that of the believers in the French Prophets, the
author insisted, "the Spirit that appears in such a sort of People is seldom
brought to an acknowledgment of its Error." 53
The account of Sabbatai Zevi is the longest in the Devil of Delphos, and is
clearly focused on exposing the prophetic pretensions of the then contempor-
ary French prophets, especially Mr. Lacy and Sir Richard Buckeley. The
Sabbatai Zevi story is the center of the book, and is followed by a few more
I 00 R. H Popkin

recent prophets: Doomsday Sedgwick (1685), and Mr. Mason of Buckingham-

shire (1694). 54 Then we are given A Word to the Present Pretended Prophets, a
lengthy discussion of the Cevennes prophets, the actual French Protestants in
the post Revocation era who were prophesying the end of the world, 55 and of
Sir Richard Buckeley and Mr. John Lacy. 56 As an indication of the craziness
going on in the world, the author then told the story of the devils of Loudon,
the supposed infestation of a nunnery in France by demons. This case also
reflects on the reliability of the claims of Lacy and Sir Richard Buckeley. The
work then concludes by stating that "The Marks and Tokens of their Divine
Mission [that of Lacy and Sir Richard] has been prov'd to be no Marks at all, but
what Imposters have had, and made use of, which the Devil's Agents have been
furnished with .... So we have plainly sen these Prophets belong to Baal, and that
to consult them is to consult the Devil of Delphos." 57
Each of these English tellings of the Sabbatai Zevi story is addressed
primarily to prophetic and millenarian developments in the English scene.
The showing of how silly and crazy the Jews could be is secondary, but
important as a historical curiosity. All three of the tellings take it for granted
that the Sabbatai Zevi case is derivative from Christian millenarian expecta-
tions. Nothing is suggested that might show antecedent developments in
Judaism that generated messianic hopes at the time.
Rycaut, who apparently knew important Jews in Smryna who were involved
in the Sabbatian movement, including his publisher, Rabbi Gabai, does not
seem to have asked questions of Jews about what led the Jews of Turkey to be
so willing to accept a messianic claimant at the time. Instead he and his friend,
John Evelyn, immediately assumed that they could account for the matter as a
spin-off of what was going on amongst the millenarians in England. The
anonymous author of The Devil of Delphos was so agitated about the case of
the French prophets in the early eighteenth century that he or she saw the
whole history of false Christs and prophetic imposters as throwing light on the
millenarian development of the time. The author accepted the same explana-
tion of the Sabbatai Zevi movement as his source, Evelyn or Rycaut, presented.
He then used the case to throw even more doubt on the followers of the French
prophets, since they exhibited the same kind of behavior as Sabbatai Zevi and
his followers.
If the English telling of the story of what happened to the Jews in Turkey was
directed at denigrating English millenarian and prophetic believers of the time,
then why has the account been reprinted so many times in many languages?
Not much else in Jewish history after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem has
been of serious interest to the non-Jewish world.
Some commentators used the Sabbatai Zevi case as a way of showing that
the Jews were not capable of telling a true Messiah from a false one. Therefore
they should accept the Christian news that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. 58
The reprintings of Rycaut's account in his History ofthe Turkish Empire appeal,
no doubt, to those who were looking for a readable account of what went on in
the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century. The story of Sabbatai Zevi is
just put in its proper chronological place, and is not a featured part of the
 Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi 101

History. The Evelyn-Rycaut version, which has been reprinted much more,
seems to be part of an English literature intended to show that English
Protestant Christianity is the pure version that should convert the Jews. The
Sabbatai Zevi story appears with The Journey to Jerusalem, an account of
English travelers to the Holy Land early in the seventeenth century, and an
account of the supposed Jewish council of 1650 debating about whether the
Messiah had come. Elsewhere I have shown that the latter work was intended
to show the unique merits of English Reformed Christiantiy for converting the
Jews and bringing about the millennium. 5 9 I think the Rycaut-Evelyn story of
Sabbatai Zevi was supposed to reinforce this by first condemning the bad
millenarians, the enthusiasts, fifth monarchists, etc., and second, showing the
gullibility of the Jews of the time. As Michael McKeon, in his study of English
interest in the Sabbatai Zevi story during 1665-1667 shows, there was a
constant concern to find out "What is the larger meaning of these Jewish
activities?" It was often assumed that they must have some significance in terms
of expected Christian developments. 60 It would be interesting to find out what
people in New England at the end of the eighteenth century made of the
package, published by a millenarian believer in the role of the American
Revolution as a harbinger of the millennium, or what the readers of the Welsh
or Russian or Polish editions made of it.
The use of the Sabbatai Zevi story in the Devils of Delphos is, perhaps, more
intriguing. English Christians in 1706-1708 were confronted by the French
prophets claiming to have direct knowledge from God of when Christian
millenarian prophetic predictions would be fulfilled. These new prophets were
having a disturbing effect on the religious scene. The anonymous author
thought he, or she, could defuse the prophetic claims by putting them in the
history of false Christs and prophets within Christianity, and especially by
juxtaposing the then contemporary movement with the frantic and frenetic
movement within Judaism a half century earlier. It would be interesting to find
out if the Sabbatai Zevi story was brought up to oppose other Christian
millenarian movements in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
that is, if the story had a further life within Christendom.
In contrast to these English accounts, a French account, later translated into
German, seems to have functioned solely as a vehicle for denouncing Jews and
Judaism in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The account of
Sabbatai Zevi in Rocoles's Les Imposteurs insignes, of 1683 is briefly mentioned
in Gershom Scholem's and Sonia Anderson's studies. They say that the Evelyn-
Rycaut account also appeared in the work by Jean-Baptiste Rocoles, Les
Imposteurs insignes ou Histoire de plusieurs hommes de neant, de toutes Nations,
qui ont usurpe Ia qualite d'Empereurs, Roys & Princes, Amsterdam, 1683, and
1696, reissued in Brussels in 1729. No study has been made of Rocoles's
version, and its intent. The work was reprinted in French, and translated into
German 61 and English. 62 The English did not include the essay on Sabbatai
Zevi, no doubt because it contains almost the entire content of the Evelyn-
Rycaut edition.
Rocoles, 1620?-1696 was a strange figure. He was a professor at Paris, and
102 R.H Popkin

the canon of the College of Saint-Benoit. Then, as one accounts says, "as a
result of the instability ofhis character," he quit all of his posts, and armed with
letters from the Calvinist leader, Claude, and from Pierre Bayle, in 1672 he left
France and Catholicism to study at the Calvinist University at Geneva. Then,
after three years there, he went to Berlin and became a royal "historigraphe,"
writing histories for the ruling family. He left that for Leiden, where he
married, and then in 1678 reverted to Catholicism. Next he returned to
Protestantism in Holland, but finally ended his life as a French Catholic once
again. In 1685 he was reestablished as the canon of Saint-Benoit. 63
I first became aware of Rocoles's book when the then librarian of the
William Andrews Clark Library, John Bidwell showed me a volume that had
mysteriously been sent to the Clark from an anonymous donor who had given
it to the UCLA German Department. Bidwell noticed that there was a portrait
of Sabbatai Zevi in the work, and knew I would be interested. In short order I
realized this was a German translation of a French work. Fortunately the
French original is in the UCLA Spinoza collection, so I was able to study the
texts. His book covers thirty-six cases of imposters, starting with the pseudo-
Smerdis, the false Philip of Macedon, and onward through ancient, then
Islamic cases, Russian ones, European ones, some Chinese ones. The last five
are Jewish cases starting with the false Alexander, king of the Jews, at the time
of Jesus; then Bar Kochba who rebelled against the Romans, 128 a.d; the false
Moses of Candia, 448 a.d.; David Elroy, 933 a.d.; and then Sabbatai Sevi,
a.d.l666 who gets a long thirty five page account. A curiosity which misled
Scholem is that Rocoles dates all of the impostors with the phrase "in the year
of the world," and then a figure that is close to the Jewish calendar, followed by
a second date, "in the year of Jesus Christ, a.d." Scholem thought Rocoles was
using the Jewish calendar and had the wrong date, which indicated he was a
poor scholar. 64 He was in fact using Archbishop Ussher's Chronology which
has the beginning of the world at 4004 b. c. Ussher has thought he had improved
over the Jewish calendar by careful historical scholarship.
Rocoles says at the outset of his account that he has borrowed his narrative
from the Dutch version as a well as French one. The Dutch version is that of
Thomas Coenen, 65 who had been a Dutch official in Smyrna at the time of the
Sabbatai Zevi affair. The French is the translation of the Rycaut-Evelyn
account attributed to a M. Robinet in 1673. In combining these two sources
Rocoles actually provided the European reader with a much more comprehen-
sive account than the Rycaut-Evelyn one that was the best known one for the
next two centuries. The Dutch account, by an actual eyewitness, was only
printed once, only in Dutch, and so played a very slight role in the general
knowledge of the episode in Europe.
In addition to supplying what was the most extensive account of the time,
Rocoles also made the account the basis for a very strong attack on Jews and
their beliefs. This started with a quatrain under the picture of Sabbatai Zevi
attacking Jewish incredulity. 66 After the chapter on Sabbatai Zevi, the book
ends with "Reflexions historiques, sur la malice, & la punition temporelle de la
Nation Juive, entr' autres de son dernier banissement de Perse." 67 The Rycaut-
 Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi 103

Evelyn account is mainly a critique of enthusiastic millenarians on the English

scene, with the folly of the Jews a secondary matter. The fact that a false
Messiah had just come on the scene was supposed to tell us that the same could
be the case of the expectations of the Fifth Monarchy Men, and other
revolutionary messianists in England. Rocoles focused his case against the
Jews per se, since he was not concerned with the English political-theological
context. And his attack on the Jews is quite extreme even for its time. It surveys
the bad ways the Jews have acted in history from ancient times to the present. It
treats the alleged way that Jewish doctors over the centuries have poisoned
princes and rulers. 68 Such behavior has led to the need to banish them over and
over again. 69
A further curiosity is that the German edition of Rocoles's text was issued in
the 1720s and reissued in two editions, 1760 and 1761 from Halle. The latter70
is a learned edition with footnotes by Johann Friedrich Joachim, professor of
Law and History at the University of Halle. It contains footnotes naming
specific Jewish doctors who have poisoned their patients, and it is full of
additional antisemitic information.
So, as the telling of the Sabbatai Zevi story, moved from England to France
to Germany the focus changed from exposing the dangers of Christian
millenarianism in England to showing the dangers of Jews in European
civilization from ancient times to the present day. It remains to be examined
whether Rocoles's account in French or in German played any role in the new
kinds of anti-semitism that were emerging in both France and Germany.

Washington University, St. Louis and UCLA

NOTES
1. On Rabbi Nathan Shapira and his visit to Amsterdam, see R.H. Popkin "Rabbi Shapira's
Visit to Amsterdam in 1657," Dutch Jewish History, Proceedings of the 2nd International
Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984) 185-
205; idem, "Christian Jews and Jewish Christians in the 17th Century," in R.H. Popkin &
Gordon Weiner, Jewish Christians and Christian Jews from the Renaissance to the Enlight-
enment (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 64-67.
2. An account of Serrarius's discussion with the rabbis in Amsterdam in 1664 appears in a letter
of John Dury. Ms. Staats-Archiv Zurich, Dureana, E II 457d, fol. 421. Cf. R.H. Popkin, "Two
Unused Sources about Sabbatai Zevi and his Effect on European Communities," Dutch Jewish
History II (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1989) 67-74.
3. On Serrarius's career, see Ernestine G.E. van der Wall, De Mysteike Chialast Petrus Serrarius,
en zijn Wereld (Lei den: I CG, 1987).
4. See Michael McKeon, "Sabbatai Sevi in England," Association of Jewish Studies Review 3
(1977), 131-169. See also the items listed in Cecil Roth's Magna Biblioteca Anglo-Judaica
(Jewish Historical Society of England, London, 1937), 392-394.
5. A New Letter from Aberdeen in Scotland. Sent to a Person of Quality. Wherein is a more full
Account of the Proceedings of the Jews, Than hath been hitherto Published. By R.R. (1665), 2-3.
See, on this, McKeon, "Sabbatai Sevi in England," 141-42; Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sebi,
The Mystical Messiah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 348-49.
6. See Van der Wall, Petrus Serrarius, esp. chaps. IX-X.
104 R.H Popkin

7. Oldenburg wrote from London to Spinoza on December 8, 1665, "Here everyone spreads a
rumor that the Jews having been dispersed for more than two thousand years are to return to
their country. Few in this place believe it, but many wish for it. You will tell your friend what
you hear and judge of this matter. For myself, so long as this news is not conveyed from
Constantinople by trustworthy men, I cannot believe it, since that city is most of all concerned
in it." The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg ed. Marie Boas Hall and Rupert Hall
(Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965), 2:467. Further letters show that Oldenburg
was getting a flow of data about Sabbatai Zevi from Serrarius and others, which he was
sharing with his patron, Robert Boyle.
8. See Oldenburg's correspondence for 1666 and 1667.
9. Popkin, "The End of the Career of a Great 17th Century Millenarian: John Dury", Pietismus
und Neuzeit XIV (1988), 203-220.
I 0. Popkin, "The End of the Career." In the same volume, see the article by Ernestine G.E. van der
Wall. "A Precursor of Christ, or a Jewish Imposter? Peter Serrarius and Jean de Labadie on
the Jewish Messianic Movement around Sabbatai Sebi", 109-124.
II. Nathaniel Holmes, "Some Glimpses of Israel's Calling," in Miscellanaea (London, 1669). See
also R.H. Popkin, "Jewish-Christian Relations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries:
The Conception of the Messiah," Jewish History V (1992), 163-177.
12. See R.H. Popkin,"A Late 17th Century Gentile Attempt to Convert the Jews to Reformed
Judaism", in Israel and the Nations. Essays Presented in Honor of Shmuel Ettinger ed. S. Almog
(Jerusalem: Historical Society oflsrael), 1987, XXV-XLV.
13. On this see Susanna Akerman, Queen Christina of Sweden and her Circle (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1991).
14. On this see Richard Simon, Lettres choisies nouvelle edition, Tome II (Rotterdam , 1702),
letters I and 2 to La Peyrere, 1-17.
15. On Nayler see Mabel R. Brailsford, A Quaker from Cromwell's Army: James Nayler (New
York: Macmillan, 1927); Emilia Fogelklou, James Nayler, the Rebel Saint, 1616-1660
(London: E. Benn, 1931); Isabel Ross, Margaret Fell. The Mother of Quakerism (London:
Longmans Green, 1949), Ch. 8; Chrisopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (London:
Temple Smith 1972), Ch. 10.
16. Hanna Swiderska, "Three Polish Pamphlets on the Pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Zevi", British
Library Journall5 (1989), 212-216.
17. See Popkin, "Jewish-Christian Relations," esp. 169-70.
18. J.M. for John Starkey; London, 1680.
19. Scholem, Sabbatai Sebi, 432, note 235.
20. It is not listed in Scholem's enormous bibliography in Sabbatai Sebi. It is listed in Roth's
bibliography, Magna Biblioteca, 395, #27, and is reported to be in the Mocatta Library.
21. London. Printed for the Author; and sold by Tho. Bullock, at the Rose and Crown at
Holbourn-Bridge. 1708.
22. In most library catalogues and bibliographies it is still listed as being by John Evelyn.
23. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
24. This copy of the History of the Three Late Famous Imposters is in the British Library, shelf
mark Eve. a. 25. See Anderson, An English Consul, 213-15 and the notes there.
25. Evelyn, History of the Three Late Famous Imposters, A2v--A3r. Rycaut had published two
works by then.
26. Paul Rycaut, History of the Turkish Empire from the Year 1623 to the Year 1677 (London 1680).
By the time this appeared, Rycaut's Turkish career was over, so he did not have to worry about
recriminations from various Jews of Smyrna.
27. Popkin,"The Fictional Jewish Council of 1650: A Great English Pipedream", Jewish History V
(1991), 7-22.
28. A list of printings is given in Anderson, An English Consul, 294-96.
29. Evelyn, History of the Three Late Famous Imposters, unnumbered 6th page.
30. Ibid.
31. It takes up 41-111.
32. Rycaut, History, 201.
 Christian Interest and Concerns about Sabbatai Zevi 105

33. Anderson, An English Consul, 24.

34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. A German woodcut of the time shows Sabbatai Zevi and James Nayler as the two great
imposters. The British Library has acquired some Polish pamphlets about Sabbatai Zevi, in
which he is called a "Turkish imposter or a Jewish quaker" and in which the excited reaction of
the Quakers in Bristol to the news about the Jewish Messiah is described. See Swiderska,
"Three Polish Pamphlets."
37. A young Israeli scholar, Jacob Barzai, is preparing a study of the role of Menasseh's ideas on
the Sabbatian movement. He has found that Menasseh's Hope of Israel was published in
Smyrna in Spanish in 1657 by these new arrivals.
38. Rycaut, History, 201.
39. Ibid., 202.
40. The revised text without the names appears on 207. The list of names ofthose made princes by
Sabbatai appears in Evelyn, The History, 65-66
41. Ibid., 219.
42. I have used the copy of this rare work that is in the collection of the William Andrews Clark
Library at UCLA. The only other copy in the US is at Harvard. There are a few copies in
England including one at the British Library.
43. Anon., The Devils of Delphos, I.
44. Ibid., 2. The sermon by Dr. Offspring Blackall was "The Way of Trying Prophets." A Sermon
Preached before the Queen at St.James's, November 9, 1707, published in London at the time.
45. Ibid., 6-7.
46. On this see the excellent book by Hillel Schwartz, The French Prophets. The History of a
Millenarian Group in Eighteenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1980).
47. Devil of Delphos, 9.
48. Ibid., 56.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Thomas Emes was the first of the French prophets to die in late December 1707. Lacy and
others predicted he would be resurrected on May 25, 1708. This became a critical matter
within the movement, and a major reason for opponents to challenge the movement when the
prophesied resurrection did not occur. See Schwartz, French Prophets, chap.IV, "The Legacy
of Dr. Thomas Emes". Schwartz discusses many critical responses of the time to the French
prophets, but does not mention the Devils of Delphos.
52. Devils of Delphos, 72-73.
53. Ibid., 73.
54. John Mason inspired the millenarian group called the Philadelphians. On him see Christopher
Hill, "John Mason and the End of the World," in Puritanism and Revolution (New York:
Panther, 1969), 311-23.
55. This discussion is from page 75 to II 0. On the events and people involved see Schwartz, The
French Prophets, Ch. I.
56. When the first French prophets came to London in 1706, Buckeley and Lacy were among their
first followers. Buckeley was a baronet and Lacy a wealthy Presbyterian. Lacy became one of
the most important prophets in the movement, and Buckeley a leading defender of the group.
See Schwartz, The French Prophets, 75-76 and passim..
57. Ibid., 110.
58. Charles Leslie, "A Short and Easy Way with the Jews," in his Theological Works vo!.
(London, 1721), 52.
59. Popkin,"The Fictional Jewish Council."
60. McKeon, "Sabbatai Sevi in England," 161.
61. There were German editions in 1760 and 1761 and an edition in the 1720s is mentioned.
62. The English edition, The History of Infamous Imposters, was published in 1683 at London. In
1686 another edition, The Lives and Actions of Several Notorious Counterfeits: who, from the
106 R.H Popkin

most abject and meanest of the people, have usurped ye titles of emperours, kings, and princes,
containing the history of twelve informers, appeared in London.
63. See the accounts of his life in J.F. and L.G. Michaud, Biographie universelle nouv'elle edition,
tome XXXVI (Paris, 1854), 268-269; J.S.F. Hoefer, Nouvelle Biographie Generate tome XLII
(Paris, 1971), 471-473; E. Haag and E. Haag, La France Protestante tome VII (Paris, 1857),
463-464.
64. See Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, bibliographical item 55 on 941.
65. Ydele verwachtinge der Joden getoont in den persoon van Sabethai Zevi (Amsterdam 1669).
66. Rocoles, Les Imposteurs, 501.
67. Ibid., 537-566.
68. Ibid., 544-556.
69. Ibid., 566 ff.
70. Johann Baptista von Rocoles, Geschichte, erkwurdigen Beitreiger ed. Johann Friedrich
Joachim (Halle, 1761).
 A.P. COUDERT

6. KABBALISTIC MESSIANISM
VERSUS KABBALISTIC ENLIGHTENMENT

Gershom Scholem's philosophy of Jewish history rests on the assumption that

forces within Jewish culture are sufficient to explain historical developments
without recourse to the intrusion of foreign ideas or influences. 1 Thus for
Scholem, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain set off a chain reaction that led
from the Lurianic Kabbalah, to Sabbatian messianism, and finally to secular-
ization and the Haskalah. Rather than a gradual progression, Scholem
envisions Jewish history as a series of catastrophic ruptures. 2 This is especially
true in the case of Sabbatianism, which Scholem contends destroyed Judaism
from within. Thus, fervent, antinomian messianism, when disappointed, led to
its polar opposite, secularism and religious indifference.
Scholem's internalist view of Jewish history fit comfortably with the
tendency of other Jewish historians to treat the early modern period as an
extension and intensification of the hostility between Christians and Jews
characteristic of the late Middle Ages. Citing the continued expulsion of Jews
from major centers of European culture and commerce, these historians
argued that the Jews became more marginalized than ever since they were
effectively barred from the economic, cultural, and intellectual developments
marking the period from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. 3
Jonathan Israel was one of the foremost modern scholars to challenge this
view. In European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism he instead emphasizes the
reintegration of Jews into Western Europe during the early modern period and
the positive effects this had on Jewish social and economic life. 4 Moshe Idel
concurs, arguing that one of the most important consequences of the Expulsion
was the relocation of large numbers of Jews, and the consequent re-vitalization
of Jewish intellectual life as different schools of thought in both philosophy and
Kabbalah interacted. The fact that many Jews relocated in Christian lands also
contributed to the cross-fertilization of Jewish and Christian thought. 5 Alex-
ander Altmann, Richard Popkin, David Katz, David Ruderman, Ernestine van
der Wall, Matt Goldish, Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, and Silvia Berti are among
those scholars who have added to the cultural aspect of this argument by giving

107
M. Go/dish and R.H. Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 107 -124.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
108 A.P. Coudert

specific examples to show the substantial interaction between Christian and

Jewish scientists, philosophers, and intellectuals in the early modern period. 6
I would like to add to this new assessment of Jewish-Christian relations in the
early modern period by proposing that even in the face of very real anti-semitism
Christians and Jews interacted in ways that were extraordinarily significant in
fostering both the ideal of toleration and the idea of progress, twin pillars of our
modern, secular and scientifically oriented society. The experiences of a small
but significant number of both Jews and Christians converged during this period
as the customary link between national, political, and religious identity became
strained to the breaking point. What I am essentially arguing is that the unsettled
religious, political, and economic conditions characterizing the early modern
period affected a small percentage of Christians and Jews in remarkably similar
ways. For certain individuals Jewish and Christian history consequently
followed a similar path, from a religious ideology based on exclusivity and
apocalyptic expectations to one of tolerance and increasing secularization, and
from a view of history focused on a forfeited, ideal past to one embracing the
inevitability of progress through human endeavor rather than divine interven-
tion. The thrust of this paper is therefore two-fold: first, to illustrate the ways in
which contact between Jews and Christians promoted scepticism and secular-
ization on both sides of the religious divide; and, second, to show how various
forms of Jewish and Christian messianism, but not the kind of radical,
apocalyptic messianism characteristic of Sabbatianism, fostered the conviction
that man could improve himself and his environment. My examples will come
primarily from Sulzbach and Amsterdam, two places where Jews and Christians
had unusually close relationships.

I. SCEPTICISM AND SECULARIZATION:

Most scholars have rejected Scholem's contention that the antinomian excesses
of Sabbatianism undermined Judaism and encouraged secularism in favor of a
sociological explanation: secularization was largely the result of increased
social and intellectual contact with Christians. Paradoxically, one of the
reasons for this increased contact was the growth of intolerance. The intoler-
ance of the early-modern period had a similar effect on many Jews and
Christians. The streamlining of states along religious lines led to forced
conversions among both groups, which meant that many Jews and Christians
shared the experience of what Peter Berger has described as "alternation."
Stephen Sharot describes the crisis of identity and rootlessness this engendered
among some Marranos:

They had passed between logically contradictory intellectual universes.

What was peculiar about the former Marranos was that they experienced
alternation in a largely traditional society, a society of closed and binding
world views in which people were assigned definite and permanent identities.
The Christian and Jewish worlds in the seventeenth century were separated
by legal, cultural, and social barriers; Jews and Christians had little contact
 Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment 109

beyond formal economic and political relationships, and each group

regarded the other as another species of being. In such a society alternation
caused acute problems of identity and location in society. Many former
Marranos retained a nostalgia for the land of their births, and a few
returned despite the dangers. Some retained a fondness for Catholicism, a
few returning to the religion of their childhood. Others, identifying strongly
with Judaism, felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and sought pardon for
their Catholic past by such practices as wearing hair shirts. 7

Petuchowski, Kaplan, and others have discussed the shock felt by some
Marranos and conversos upon their reconversion to Judaism and discovery of
what real Judaism was like. 8 By the same token, Jewish converts to Christianity
raised questions about the cult of saints, the worshipping of images, and
traditional Christian interpretations of Scripture. As Popkin, Faur and others
have argued, the conversos were thus an important factor in the rise of
secularism and modernity. 9
The same sense of deracination and loss of identity plagued many Christians
forced to convert as regimes became more intolerant. The doctrine of cuius regio,
eius religio led to great confusion as populations were literally forced to convert
over night when their rulers, or the religion of their rulers, changed. The problem
of religious identity was equally perplexing in those areas where religious
conformity could not be enforced. In Holland or England, where a smorgasbord
of religious ideologies was available, the very choice offered proved unsettling,
and there are cases of people moving back and forth between denominations and
even religions. To take the admittedly extreme case of Johann Peter Spath: born
a Catholic, he converted to Lutheranism, only to return again to Catholicism for
a short time, at which point he started reading Jacob Boehme and frequented
Mennonite and Socinian gatherings in Amsterdam. While there he became
involved with Christian kabbalists, which eventually led to his conversion to
Judaism. In many ways Spath's religious odyssey parallels Oriel d'Acosta's; both
men were unable to accommodate the demands of institutionalized religion,
whether Christian or Jewish, or in d'Acosta's case both Christian and Jewish!
D'Acosta's suicide and Spath's rejection of Christianity indicate the extreme
anguish that religious scepticism could cause in a period in which religious
impulses and religious institutions were in many cases poles apart. In the same
way that Spath belonged to the burgeoning number of Christians "sans eglise,"
d'Acosta belonged to the growing number of Marranos "sans eglise" and, one
might add, "sans synagogue." 10
Many Christians experienced the same acute religious anxiety as Spath and
d'Acosta, although few went as far as to renounce Christianity and Judaism
altogether or commit suicide. For example, some thirty-nine German Princes
and one very famous Queen, Christina, converted to Catholicism during the
seventeenth century. 11 Among these Princes was Christian August of Sulzbach,
who was born a Lutheran but converted to Catholicism in the aftermath of a
spiritual and psychological collapse that had led him, among other things, to
read the Bible to his horses for hours on end and to attempt to cure a blind man
110 A. P. Coudert

with spittle mixed with earth (on the model of John 9: 6-7). 12 While many
converts clearly adapted to their new religions, what has been described in the
case of Jewish converts as a "Marrano mentality" can apply equally well to
many Christian converts. As a result of forced or voluntary conversions they,
too, had to confront the question of what religion, if any, offered the truth and,
indeed, whether truth was absolute, relative, or simply unknowable. Like the
Marranos, their experiences could lead to the kind of sceptical outlook and a
non-dogmatic, essentially non-denominational religion that came to character-
ize Deism, if not to outright scepticism or atheism.
In important ways the Reformation had the unintended effect of bringing
Christians into closer contact with Jews. Luther's insistence that Scripture
alone revealed the word of God encouraged Protestants to turn to Jewish
commentaries when the text proved difficult to understand. The Protestant
search for "real" Christianity - meaning, Christianity as it was before it had
been corrupted by the Catholic Church - also encouraged a closer look at
Jewish sources, and this led many Christians to "Judaize" in the manner of the
Sabbatarians. The study of early Christian history created greater awareness
about the way key Christian concepts, such as Jesus's nature, and fundamental
doctrines, like the Trinity and the atonement, had evolved over time. This
realization encouraged, in turn, a skeptical, less dogmatic approach to doctrine
among some Christians, although it is true to say that others simply dug in
their heels more deeply and reiterated their various Christian beliefs as divinely
ordained truths.
Christian kabbalists provide a further example of how dangerous the
Protestant emphasis on Scripture proved to be for dogmatic assertions of any
kind. Scholem was entirely aware of the way Christians had used and abused
the Kabbalah to undermine the faith of some Jews, but as far as I know, he
never investigated the subversive influence the Kabbalah exerted on Christian-
ity. The Kabbalah's subversive influence on both Judaism and Christianity has,
however, been pointed out by Ernst Benz in his illuminating article, "La
Kabbala chretienne en Allemagne du xvi au xvii siecle." Benz emphasizes the
religious no-man's land that many Jews and Christians found themselves in as
a result of their kabbalistic studies.

The Kabbalah allowed certain people to accept the idea that kabbalistic
prophecies concerning the Messiah found their realization in Jesus Christ;
but these prophecies were not compatible with the dogmatic formulas of the
Church on the subject of the Trinity, because they comprised, with the
doctrine of the sefirot, a different interpretation of interdivine life. Thus, it
frequently happened that starting from Judaism Jewish kabbalists took a
step towards Christianity; but they never arrived at a complete acceptance
of Christian dogma. Inversely, the thinking of Christian kabbalists, starting
from a Christian perspective, often evolved in a manner that led to conflict
with the traditional doctrine of their Church and ecclesiastical authorities.
In this way, esoteric groups of Jews and Christians found themselves in a
frontier region beyond the borders of their respective religions. 13
 Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment 111

As I have argued elsewhere, this is exactly the position that Christian

kabbalists like Francis Mercury van Helmont, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth,
and their patron, Prince Christian August of Sulzbach found themselves in as a
result of their esoteric studies and their publication of the Kabbala denudata.
All three of these Christian kabbalists came to embrace the view that anyone
could be saved no matter what their religion, a conviction that destroyed the
rationale for Christian missionary activity. 14
The conversion of Johann Peter Spath to Judaism was due in part to his
experience in Sulzbach, where he had come to help in the editing and
publication of the Kabbala denudata. The tendency of the Christian kabbalists
in Sulzbach to attenuate Christian doctrine by either explaining it allegorically
or dismissing it altogether weakened Spath's Christian convictions, as did his
contact with Jews and Jewish sources. Spath eventually came to the conclusion
that if Christians disagreed so fundamentally among themselves and if
Christian kabbalists appropriated Jewish philosophy for their own purposes,
while discarding Christian fundamentals, perhaps the real kernel of truth lay in
the Judaism, from which Christianity arose. Herman van der Hardt, professor
of oriental languages and librarian at Helmstedt, suggested that this was
indeed Spath's reasoning when he described Spath as concluding, after a long
internal battle, that, "everything is uncertain except this: God is certainly
one." 15 Spath consequently had himself circumcised and assumed the name
Moses Germanus. His dramatic conversion provides an example of the way
increasing contact between Christians and Jews in the early modern period
contributed to religious scepticism.
No one really knows whether Moses Germanus finally found spiritual peace
in Judaism. His Christian critics certainly denied that he did, claiming instead
that he had actually been killed by "the Jews" because he was about to
reconvert to Christianity. This was obviously a comforting thought for his
Christian detractors. 16 He died in 1701 only five years after his conversion.
Although he married a Jewish woman, started a family, and took the position
of a schoolteacher, he was so poor that he was forced to accept charity from his
former Christian friends. This suggests he may not have been fully integrated
into the Jewish community. We know that in the minds of many Christians
conversion did nothing to erase the Jewishness of the convert; Yosef Kaplan
argues that there was a similar feeling among Jews about converts to
Judaism. 17 The idea that one's religious identity could be a matter of choice,
not birth, was not yet fully accepted, although the increasing numbers of
Christians and Jews questioning their religious allegiances encouraged just
such a view.
As we have seen, the secularization process arising from the encounter
between Jews and Christians cut both ways. Obviously many other factors
fostered secularization, but it is important not to lose sight of the religious
roots of the process or the part Jewish-Christian relationships played in it.
112 A.P Coudert

2. MESSIANISM AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Scholem's contention that a direct line leads from the Kabbalah to the
Enlightenment via Sabbatian messianism has been rejected by scholars who
consider Sabbatian messianism a distortion of kabbalistic thinking. In Messia-
nic Mystics, for example, Moshe Ide! argues that far from Lurianic Kabbalah
exploding into Sabbatianism, as Scholem contends, 18 Sabbatianism originated
in popular apocalyptic messianism, which was only later interpreted and
justified in terms of Lurianic Kabbalah. 19 In the view of other scholars the link
between the Kabbalah and the Enlightenment does not include Sabbatian
messianism but the more communal form of messianic activism characteristic
of the Lurianic Kabbalah. 20
The coming of the Messiah is not emphasized in the Lurianic Kabbalah nor
is apocalypticism in general. Consequently, Ide! claims that Sabbatai Sevi was
"non-Lurianic, not to say anti-Lurianic," and he contends that the messianic
elements in Lurianic Kabbalah was neither as original as Scholem thought nor
as widespread. 21 Stephen Sharot and David Biale also reject the idea that
messianism is central in the Lurianic Kabbalah. Biale goes as far as to say that
the Lurianic Kabbalah is anti-messianic and anti-apocalyptic since the notion
of restoration, or tikkun, is described as a gradual process, predicated on the
dedicated work of generations of devoted worshipers and not on the coming of
the Messiah:

The person of the Messiah was of little importance to Luria. Since

redemption does not come "suddenly, like a thief in the night," but in a
long, gradual process extending back to creation. Luria gave men an active
role in the restoration of the divine sparks: each generation must fulfill its
quota of "restorations." Against the belief of some secularists that Jewish
messianism was always passive in the Middle Ages, Scholem's repeated
emphasis on Luria's importance reveals the profoundly activist potentiality
in mysticism. If the early Kabbalah was quietistic, it ultimately developed
into a mystical doctrine teaching man's active role in the cosmos. 22

The activism of the Lurianic Kabbalah distinguishes it from the passivity

that generally accompanies extreme apocalyptic thinking, which is predicated
on the intervention of a divine savior, often envisioned as a vengeful king and
warrior who will take responsibility for initiating the new world order.
Ide! and Werblowsky have also emphasized the activist, theurgic aspect of
Lurianic mysticism. The kind of activism demanded of the kabbalist is
extraordinary because of the central role given to man in the process of tikkun.
The Lurianic Kabbalah encourages mankind to restore the world to its original
perfection and thus to engage in rational attempts to fix situations rather than
wait for then to be fixed through divine intervention:

When God's absolute reign over the historical processes was envisaged as
weakened or flawed, or at least problematic, man was conceived of as having
 Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment 113

been called to help consolidate it by devoting himself to the perfect system of

behavior, the halakhic dromena. Thus, a certain "rationalizing" picture of
the conjunction between god and man emerges. Man is responsible for, and
in the case of the kabbalists even deemed to know the reason for, the flaw in
the divine, and he also has the tools to repair it ....
To a great extent, the regular, ordinary life has acquired in this literature a
new sense, which is established in the awareness that the Jews, especially the
kabbalists, may and should perfect basic processes which shape reality in
general, or human nature, in particular, not only those which affect the
Jews. 23

The emphasis in Lurianic Kabbalah on human responsibility for the cosmic

order leads Idel to describe man's role as "universe maintenance activity." 24
For this reason he disputes Scholem's contention that kabbalists "escape
history" and refuse to engage in communal affairs. 25 Werblowsky also
emphasizes the central role of man in the Lurianic vision of tikkun, taking the
argument a step further by claiming that in a very real sense man becomes the
savior of God:

This is spiritual activism at its most extreme, for here God has become a real
salvator salvandus. But to the Jew, Israel's exile became meaningful because
it was seen as a participation in the profounder exile of God, and God
Himself required Israel's active participation in the redemption of Himself
and His people. It is not surprising that in this kabbalistic system the
personality of the messiah played a relatively minor role. He was not so
much a redeemer as a sign and symbol that the redemptive process has been
achieved. In fact, the messianic doctrine of Lurianic Kabbalah comes close
to the structure of an evolutionist scheme. 26

The Lurianic kabbalist could not retreat into his own private world. He had
to participate in a cosmic millennia] drama in which his every action counted.
The Lurianic Kabbalah was the first Jewish theology that envisioned perfection
in terms of a future state, not in terms of a forfeited ideal past, and as such it
contributed to the idea of progress emerging in the West. This is a point I have
argued in the case of the Christian kabbalists at Sulzbach, whose adoption of
the Lurianic Kabbalah inspired them with an ecumenical, progressive vision of
a vastly improved world in which religious tolerance and the pursuit of science
(or what was called "Natural Philosophy" at the time) played major roles. It is
clear that for these Christian kabbalists, science went hand in hand with their
esoteric beliefs. What is not so clear, however, is whether Jewish kabbalists also
considered science and mysticism compatible and whether they, like their
Christian kabbalist counterparts, took the kabbalistic notion of tikkun as a
mandate for an active attempt to reform and improve the world. Scholarly
opinion varies on this point.
David Ruderman has shown that there was no innate conflict between the
Kabbalah and science. On the basis of sound evidence, he refutes the idea
114 A.P Coudert

propounded by Barzilay that the Lurianic Kabbalah is totally at odds with

science and only leads to superstition and witchcraft. 27 As Ruderman says, "In
reality no 'pure kabbalist' or, for that matter, 'pure rationalist' was visible in
Italian Jewish culture." 28 He reiterates a point made repeatedly in the last thirty
years by historians of science that it is impossible to pigeon-hole early modern
intellectuals -whether Christian or Jewish - into such categories as "rational-
ists," empiricists," "mystics," or "occultists" because they lived in a period
when science relied on all kinds of sources and methodologies, including occult
and prophetic ones. 29 Ruderman gives the following evocative example of two
Jewish intellectuals, who were supposed to be at loggerheads, meeting to
investigate the way natural phenomena reaffirmed their faith:

The scenario of the kabbalist Basilea, crouched in a darkened room with one
of Venice's most distinguished rabbis, R. Jacob Aboab, examining the effect
of light rays through a narrow opening in the window, performing a
scientific experiment to reaffirm the truth of their sacred tradition, is as
revealing a snapshot as any regarding the complexity of the Jewish
intellectual ambiance in the Italian ghettos in the Eighteenth century and
the place of science in that setting. 30

Altmann and Idel have also illustrated the syncretistic nature of Jewish
culture in the Renaissance and early modern periods by showing the way
kabbalistic thinkers integrated Neoplatonism, magic, and science into their
study of Kabbalah. Herrera is a case in point. In his own kabbalistic writings
he refers to the Florentine Neoplatonists Marsilio Ficino and Pico della
Mirandola. Israel Sarug also combined Lurianic Kabbalah with Neoplatonism.
Another area in which philosophy, magic, mysticism, and science combined
was in the work of Jewish and Christian alchemists. Knorr von Rosenroth
included a Jewish alchemical treatise in the first volume of the Kabbala
denudata. It is entitled Esh M'tzaref (The Refiner's Fire). 31 In The Jewish
Alchemists, Raphael Patai claims that this treatise gives the fullest presentation
of the metaphysical, theosophical, and kabbalistic foundations of medieval
Jewish alchemy. 32 It is therefore of great interest to scholars of Jewish alchemy
and all the more so because the original, written probably in Hebrew or
Aramaic, appears to be lost.
The primary goal of the author of Esh M'tzarefis to emphasize the unity of
religion and science by showing how the mysteries of alchemy exactly parallel
those of the Kabbalah. He cites passages and phrases from the Bible, Talmud,
and Zohar and interprets them alchemically. He also draws a correspondence
between the sefirot, the planets, and the seven metals:

Gold - Sun - Geburah

Silver - Moon - Gedulah [Hesed]
Iron - Mars - Tiphereth
Tin- Jupiter- Nezach
Cooper -Venus- Hod
 Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment 115

Lead- Saturn- Yesod

Quicksilver [mercury]- Mercury- Malchut 33

The author was fully conversant with current alchemical theory and
practices. But although he mentions various alchemical processes and chemical
reactions, he claims to belong to the select brotherhood of spiritual alchemists,
who felt themselves vastly superior to "puffers" or "sooty empirics," to use the
derogatory names applied to more practically-minded and mercenary practi-
tioners of the art. Spiritual alchemists, he says, must follow the example of the
Prophet Elisha. They must be spiritually pure, despise riches, and practice the
art of medicine, for the true alchemist is "the true healer of impure metals." 34
This view of alchemy was shared by Knorr, van Belmont, and Christian
August, all of whom were skilled alchemists and spent considerable time in
the alchemical laboratory set up by van Belmont in Sulzbach. Thus the Jewish
author of Esh M'tzaref believed just as the Sulzbach Kabblists did that the
Kabbalah unlocks the secrets of the two great books God has given man, the
book of Scripture and the book of Nature, since both books - the first dealing
with the upper world and the second with the lower - are intimately linked.
This is the message of the frontispiece of Knorr's Kabbala denudata, where the
figure of the Kabbalah is depicted running towards the entrance to the
Palatium Arcanorum, or Palace of Secrets, by which Knorr meant the secrets
ofnature. 35 In her left hand she carries the Old and New Testaments with a key
to both dangling from her wrist.
Until the publication of Patai's pioneering book most historians down-
played Jewish interest in alchemy. As long as alchemy was considered
disreputable, Jewish historians were reluctant to accept the idea that Jews were
involved in its practice. Moritz Steinschneider, for example, inadvertently
endorsed an anti-Semitic stereotype when he claimed that "The Jews were
much too knowledgeable about the real gold-scales to let themselves be fooled
by 'the philosopher' stone." 36 But as Patai argues, when alchemy was
considered one of the greatest of the arts and sciences, as it was throughout
the Middle Ages and early modern period, Jews were as attracted to it as
anyone else. The many Jewish alchemical sources he cites amply prove this. It is
surely interesting that the great exponent of Lurianic Kabbalah, Bayim Vital,
was also a practicing alchemist and a physician - the two professions meshing
nicely. Indeed both van Belmont Knorr were highly respected for their medical
knowledge and preparation of medicines.
Before the 1960s alchemy was generally considered an "occult" and conse-
quently disreputable pursuit with little connection to chemistry (which is
precisely why Steinschneider denied Jewish involvement). In recent years,
however, it has become increasingly clear that until at least the middle of the
eighteenth century alchemy and chemistry were synonymous and that far from
inhibiting the emergence of genuine scientific chemistry, alchemy contributed
to its development. Alchemy valued transmutation, in other words, change and
evolution. It was oriented towards this world and the improvement of it. It
proclaimed the power and liberty of the individual to manipulate matter and
116 A.P. Coudert

determine his own spiritual welfare without the mediation of any institution or
authority. 37 For Christians living in an age of bitter sectarian warfare, alchemy
provided a refuge for those who clung to the Renaissance ideal of a universal
philosophy or prisca sapientia that would unite men in a common quest to
restore the world to its prelapsarian perfection. Christian Alchemists were
essentially a fifth column within every Christian denomination; 38 they carried
forward the optimistic ideals of Renaissance Platonists into the age of the
Enlightenment. Boyle, Locke, Leibniz, and Newton all studied alchemy, and
during the past thirty years scholars have become increasingly aware of the way
alchemical ideas shaped their scienti fie views. 39 The pivotal role that alchemy
played in the evolution of modern consciousness explains why more alchemical
texts were written, published, and studied in the sixteenth and seventeenth
century than in any previous period. 40 Thus alchemy in its early modern form
contributed to the transformation of the medieval into the modern world, not
simply in terms of directing the human will towards the world - the point made
by Frances Yates about occult philosophy in general- but also by promoting
the empirical, experimental approach to nature characteristic of many
branches of modern science. 41 The fact that Vital was at one and the same
time a kabbalist, an alchemist, and a physician provides additional evidence
that at least some Jews pursued mystical and scientific studies with the
practical aim of adding to the store of natural knowledge and improving the
world.
There are striking similarities between alchemical and kabbalistic thought. 42
Both alchemy and the Kabbalah envision creation as a dynamic process in
which spiritual entities (the four elements or three principles of sulphur,
mercury, and salt, in the case of alchemy, and the ten sephirot in the case of
the Kabbalah) interact to produce the material realm. Human action has the
potential for good or evil in both systems, but the emphasis in each is on the
powerful effect humans can have in restoring matter it to its original spiritual
state. Many scholars of the Kabbalah emphasize its dualistic aspects, 43 but in
several provocative articles Elliot Wolfson stresses the inherent monism in
much of the Zohar as well as the Lurianic Kabbalah, and he connects this
monism with the alchemical concept of transmutation. In both the Zohar and
Lurianic Kabbalah there is the idea that in order to attain holiness one must
descend into the realm of evil. As Wolfson says,

This image of spiritual transformation drawn from alchemy is related by the

Zohar to the verse "And Abram when down to Egypt" (Gen 12:10). In the
Zohar R. Simeon bar Yohai interprets this to signify the "refining" of
Abram: "R. Simeon said, Come and see: Everything has secret wisdom ....
If Abram had not gone into Egypt and been refined there first, he could not
have partaken of the Blessed Holy One. 44

In alchemy what is in need of transmutation is base matter, and transmuta-

tion consists in purifying or spiritualizing this base matter. Thus matter and
spirit are not polar opposites but exist as a continuum. The Lurianic texts
 Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment 117

Knorr and van Helmont studied and included in the Kabbla denudata had a
similar view of matter. 45 Luria believed that through repeated reincarnations
every existing substance from the lowliest pebble through plants, animals, men,
and finally Jews would ascend up the ladder of creation until perfected and
thereby free to return to the Godhead from which it originated. 46 This return
completed the process of tikkun. The idea of restoration is prominent in
alchemy as well and figures often in the titles of alchemical works. One of the
most striking alchemical images in Ripley Reviv'd (1678) is of a "gloriously
adorned" Queen, who holds a book entitled Philosophy Restored to its Primitive
Purity. She gives this to the alchemist to eat, at which point he becomes a
thoroughly enlightened member of the alchemical brotherhood. 47 Alchemical
processes were predicated on the idea of death and rebirth, an idea that was
often couched in religious terms as the death of the old Adam and the birth of
the new man.
The notions of transformation, purification, redemption, and restoration
characteristic of both alchemy and the Kabbalah explains the ease with which
messianic and millenarian themes became incorporated into both traditions,
particularly during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Drawing on
medieval Jewish and Christian traditions dealing with the expected return of
Elias, Paracelsus created the figure of Elias Artista, a magus and precursor of
the Messiah, who possessed all nature's secrets and heralded a future realm of
equality and justice for the pious and poor. 48 Similar ideas surrounded the
figure of Elisha, whom Knorr describes as a "most famed prophet, an
exemplary naturalist and sage and disdainful of riches." 49 This transformation
of both Elias and Elisha from prophets into magi and natural philosophers
reveals the way apocalyptic and messianic thought contributed to the emerging
idea of scientific progress. 5 ° Francis Bacon drew on Jewish, Christian,
Hermetic, Neoplatonic, and alchemical sources in elaborating his vision of the
"Great Instauration" that would accompany "The Advancement of Learning."
As he says in the latter work, learning leads to "a restitution and reinvesting (in
great part) of man to sovereignty and power ... which he had in the first state of
creation." Religion and science are partners in restoring man to his prelapsar-
ian state: "Full instauration combines pure religion with mastery of nature in
order to return humanity to its original, prelapsarian condition." 51
The foregoing discussion provides evidence that at least for some Jewish and
Christian kabbalists, alchemists, and natural philosophers esotericism and
science were compatible. But for how many was this true and for how long
did such a view prevail? Scholarship dealing with the Scientific Revolution
during the past thirty years has increasingly recognized the contribution made
by esotericism. But does this hold true for Jews? Did Jewish kabbalists
continue to be interested in scientific developments and continue to see man
as playing an active role in maintaining and, indeed, shaping his destiny and
the world's? Hava Tirosh-Samuelson argues that the expulsion had the effect of
turning Sephardic Jews away from messianism and activism in general towards
a more quietistic quest for personal redemption. 52 David Ruderman contends
that after the Sabbatian debacle ritual activism rather than theosophical or
118 A.P. Coudert

philosophical speculation came to dominate kabbalistic speculation. 53 These

conclusions appear to lend support to Scholem's categorization ofkabbalists as
escapists. Such a conclusion is belied however by !del's analysis of eighteenth
and nineteenth century Hasidism, which he sees as carrying forward the
Lurianic notion of tikkun but in a way that is more concerned with the human
than the divine realm:

The messianic enterprise, in ... [Lurianic] Kabbalah ... includes the extrac-
tion of the sparks from the coarse matter and their return to the higher
structure, in other words, a dispersed divinity is reunited by the kabbalistic
tiqqun. This is a theocentric vision par excellence. In the Hasidic texts,
however, the restoration of the pristine unity is followed by the act of
mediation, which means turning to look to human needs, individual and
communal and providing for a perfect natural course. It is a more concrete
outlook, not only because it is much more anthropocentric and much less
theocentric than in Lurianism, but also because ... [it] is more concerned
with an integrated vision of human personality. The human body, not the
souls alone, is part of the collective qomah of Israel and is involved in the
messianic enterprise. 54

Taking R. Yisrael Ba'al shem Tov as an example, Idel analyzes the practical,
communally oriented thrust of his messianism:" ... one major component of the
way the Besht has imagined messianism is as the active improvement of the
plight of the people here below by means of magical activities which include,
inter alia, the drawing down of the divine power for the benefit of the
community." 55 While stressing the "practical dedication to and care for the
spiritual life and well-being of their communities" shown by the Besht and
other Hasidic Masters, Idel makes it clear that the agency they used to
accomplish their aims was magic. In this sense, it is hardly possible to argue
that eighteenth and nineteenth century Kabbbalists and Hasidim were at the
forefront of developments in science. Nevertheless, they were imbued by the
wish to improve the human condition and fully convinced that this could be
accomplished through the actions of human beings. Both Scholem and Idel
draw a connection between Jewish messianism and Zionism, thereby suggest-
ing that messianism could be and was in at least one instance transformed into
an intense form of social and political activism. It may therefore not be too
much of a stretch to suggest that kabbalistic messianism encouraged other
forms of Jewish social activism as well in the same way that it encouraged
activism among Christian kabbalists. Thus for some Christians and Jews,
failed apocalyptic dreams gave way to a new and more optimistic vision of
man and his potential for improving himself and the world, a view that in many
cases led them to reject the concepts of man's fallen nature, an eternal hell, and
an irredeemably corrupted world.
One of the key features of modernity is the locating of God within history.
Rather than existing beyond history as the goal toward which reality moves,
God- imagined in various forms (natural law, the spirit of history, evolution)-
 Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment 119

has become part of the dialectical process, working in conjunction with man to
achieve a state of perfection within this world. This conception had many
sources: Greek philosophy, particularly the Aristotelian notion of potentiality,
Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and, I would suggest, the Kabbalah in both its
Jewish and Christian forms. As the frontispiece to the Kabbala denudata shows,
for at least some seventeenth century Christian kabbalists the notion of tikkun
changed from the idea of "man saving God" to "man saving himself and the
universe." This shift from the divine to the human plane occurred among some
Christian millenarians and messianists as well. As Charles Webster pointed out
over twenty years ago, English and continental Christian millenarians increas-
ingly believed that human beings could hasten the advent of the millennium by
employing science and technology for "the relief of man's estate." 56 The
collective endeavors of human beings eventually replaced the Messiah in the
schemes of these would-be reformers. What is so interesting is that many of
these Christian millenarians were well acquainted with Jewish and Christian
kabbalists in Amsterdam and Sulzbach.

Arizona State University

NOTES
l. David Biale, for example, suggests that Scholem's outlook can best be described in dialectical
terms: "Scholem's theory of how mystical heresy ushered in the modern period of secularism
and rationalism is the culmination of his attempt to show the hidden influence of mysticism on
Jewish history. His account of the development of kabbalistic messianism into apocalyptic
heresy and finally secular enlightenment rests on his theory of the productive conjunction of
opposites: myth and monotheism, mysticism and rationalism, apocalyptic messianism and
secularism. This theory derives from his understanding of the role of demonic forces in
history" (Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1979], 164). Scholars have also pointed out the way Scholem's philosophy of
history was influenced by his Zionism and attack on the kind of universalist thinking
represented by the Wissenshaft des Judenthums. Moshe Ide! has, however, pointed out the
limits of Scholem's strictly internalist view of Jewish history in the case of "Jewish
Gnosticism," which Scholem variously described as both intrinsic to Judaism (in the case of
Merkabah mysticism) and a foreign element (in later Kabbalah). See Ide!, "Subversive
Catalystis: Gnosticism and Messianism in Gershom Scholem's View of Jewish Mysticism,"in
The Jewish Past: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians, ed. David N. Myers and David B.
Ruderman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 39-76.
2. As Ide! astutely points out, in this regard Scholem subscribes to the "lachrymose" view of
Jewish history. Ide!, Messianic Mystics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 269.
Scholem also believed that messianic movements were provoked by crises, but as Ide! points
out messianism can also arise from hope: while the Holocaust did not stimulate messianism,
the establishment of Israel and the Six Day War did (ibid., 8).
3. On this point see David Ruderman's review of Israel's book (see next footnote) in the Jewish
Quarterly Review 78 (1987), 154-59.
4. Israel, European Jewry in the Age ofMercantilism: 1570-1713 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
5. Ide!, "Religion, Thought and Attitudes: the Impact of the Expulsion on the Jews," in Spain and
the Jews: The Sephardi Experience, 1492 and After, ed. Elie Kedourie (London: Thames and
Hudson, Inc., 1992); idem, "Hermeticism and Judaism," in Hermeticism and the Renaissance,
ed. I. Merkel and A. Debus (Washington: Folgar Library, 1988), 59-76; idem, "Jewish
120 A.P. Coudert

Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance," in Neoplatonism and Jewish
Thought, ed. Lenn E. Goodman (Albany: State University Press, 1992), 319-351; idem,
"Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance," in Jewish
Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. B.D. Cooperman {Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1983}, 186-242.
6. Alexander Altmann, "Lurianic Kabbalah in a Platonic Key: Abraham Cohen Herrera's
Puerto del Cielo," Hebrew Union College Annual 53 (1982}, 317-52. Richard H. Popkin,
"Jewish Anti-Christian Arguments as a Source of Irreligion from the Seventeenth to the Early
Nineteenth Century," in Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, ed. M. Hunter
and D. Wootton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 159-81; idem, "Jewish Messianism
and Christian Millenarianism," in Culture and Politics, ed. Perez Zagorin {Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1980), 67-90; idem, "The Jews of the Netherlands in the Early
Modern Period," in In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile relations in late medieval and early
modern Europe, ed. R. Po-chia Hsia and H. Lehmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), 311-16. Richard, H. Popkin and Gordon M. Weiner, ed., Christian-Jews and
Jewish-Christians (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994). David S. Katz, "The Abendana Brothers and
the Christian Hebraists of Seventeenth-Century England," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 40
(1989), 28-52; idem, "Henry More and the Jews," in Henry More ( 1614-1687): Tercentenary
Studies, ed. Sarah Hutton (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), 173-188; idem,
"The Phenomenon of Philo-Semitism in Christianity and Judaism," in Studies in Church
History 29 (Oxford, 1992), 327---61; idem, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to
England, 1603-1655 {Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); idem, Sabbath and Sectarianism
in Seventeenth-century England (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988). Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, Between
Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Juda Messer Leon {Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1991). Silvia Berti, "At the Roots of Unbelief," The Journal of the History
ofIdeas 56 (1995), 555-75; Matt Goldish, "Newton on Kabbalah," in The Books ofNature and
Scripture, ed. Richard H. Popkin and James E. Force {Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 89-103. J.
van den Berg and Ernestine G.E. van der Wall, ed., Jewish-Christian Relations in the
Seventeenth Century: Studies and Documents (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988); David B. Ruderman,
"The Italian Renaissance and Jewish Thought," Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms,
and Legacy, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr., 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Univeristy of Pennsylvania Press,
1988) I: 382-433; idem, "Jewish Thought in Newtonian England: The Career and Writings of
David Nieto," Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 58 (1992}, 193-219;
idem, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995); idem, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a
Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician {Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1988); idem, A Valley
of Vision: The Heavenly Journey of Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1990).
7. Sharot, Messianism, Mysticism, and Magic, 108.
8. Jakob 1. Petuchowski, The Theology of Haham David Nieto: An Eighteenth-Century Defense of
the Jewish Tradition (Jerusalem: Ktav Publishing House, 1970); Yosef Kaplan, The Story of
Isaac Orobio de Castro, trans from the Hebrew by Raphael Loewe (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989); Matt Goldish, "Halakhah, Kabbalah, and Heresy: A Controversy in
Early Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam," The Jewish Quarterly 84 (1993-4), 153-76; Miriam
Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation Conversos and Community in Early Modern
Amsterdam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Jose Faur, In the Shadow of
History: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity (New York: State University of New
York Press, 1992).
9. Richard H. Popkin, "Jewish Anti-Christian Arguments as a Source of Irreligion from the
Seventeenth to the Early Nineteenth Century," in Atheism from the Reformation to the
Enlightenment, ed. M. Hunter and D. Wootton {Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 159-
81; idem, "Skepticism about Religion and Millenarian Dogmatism: Two Sources of Toleration
in the Seventeenth Century," in Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the
Enlightenment, ed. J.C. Laursen & Cary J. Nederman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-
nia Press, 1997), 232-50. idem, "L'Inquisition Espagnole et Ia diffusion de Ia Pensee Juive dans
 Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment 121

Ia Reniassance," VIle Congres International de Tours, Science de Ia Renaissance (Paris: J. Vrin,

1973). Faur, In the Shadow of History, I. Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics: The
Marrano of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
10. Uriel d'Acosta, A Specimen of Human Life (New York: Bergman Publishers, 1967); L.
Kolakowski, Chretiens sans Eglise: La Conscience religieuse et le lieu confessionnel au xvii siecle
(Paris: Gallimard, 1969). For a discussion of Spath's life and conversion, see H.J. Schoeps,
Philosemitismus im Barock (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1952), 67ff. The fullest account of his life
can be found in the report that J.T. Klumpf sent to J.J. Schudt, which Schudt included in his
JUdische Merkwilrdigkeiten (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1714-1718), I: 273-276; IV: 192-203.
11. Heribert Raab, "Das 'discrete Catholische' des Landgraften Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels (1623
his 1693): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Reunionsbemiihungen und der Toleranzbestrebun-
gen im 17. Jahrhundert," Archiv fur Mittelrheinische Kirche-Geschichte 12 (1960), 175-98;
idem," 'Sincere et ingenue etsi cum Discretione.' Landgraf Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels (1623-
93) uber eine Reform von Papstum," Beitriige zu kirchlichen Reformbemiihungen von der A/ten
Kirche his zu Neuzeit. Festgabe for Erwin Iserloh. hrsg. Baumer (Paderborn und Munchen:
Ferdinand Schoningh, 1980).
12. Volker Wappmann, Durchbruch zur Toleranz: Die Religionspolitik des Pfalzgrafen Christian
August von Sulzbach, 1622-1708 (Neustadt: Verlag Degener & Co., 1995).
13. Ernst Benz, "La Kahhale chretienne en Allemagne du xvi au xviii siecle," in Kabbalistes
Chretiens: Cahiers de l'Hermetisme, ed. Antoine Faivre and Frederick Tristan (Paris: Editions
Albin Michel, 1979), 111-12.
14. Allison P. Coudert, "The Kabbala Denudata: Converting Jews or Seducing Christians?" in
Christian-Jews and Jewish-Christians, ed. Richard H. Popkin and Gordon M. Weiner
(Dordrecht: Kluwer,l994), 73-96. Christian August was Prince of Sulzbach and a Hebrew
and kabbalistic scholar of considerable renown. His spiritual crisis had clearly not been
resolved by his conversion to Catholicism but only (and eventually) by his embracing a
skeptical ecumenism. See Volker Wappmann, Durchbruch zur Toleranz: Die Religionspolitik
des Pfalzgrafen Christian August von Sulzbach.
15. Van der Hardt made this observation in a conversation he had with Gottlieb Stolle. G.E.
Guhrauer, "Beitrage zur Kenntneiss des 17. u. 18. Jahrhunderts aus den handschriflichen
Aufzeichungen Gottlieb Stolle's," Allgemeine Zeitschriftfilr Geschichte 7 (1847), 403.
16. Schudt, Jiidische Merkwiirdigkeiten, IV, ch. 18, 192, par. 2.
17. Elisheva Carlebach, "Converts and their Narratives in Early Modern Germany: The Case of
Friedrich Albrecht Christiani," Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 40 (1995), 65-122.Yosef
Kaplan, "Political Concepts in the World of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam during the
Seventeenth Century: The Problem of Exclusion and the Boundaries of Self-Identity," in
Menasseh ben Israel and his World, ed. Yosef Kaplan, Henry Mechoulan, and Richard H.
Popkin (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989), 45-62. According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, Moses
Germanus taught in a Shephardi school, although he took an Ashkenazic name and married
an Ashkenazic wife. The hostility between the two groups in Amsterdam might explain
Spath's insecure position.
18. Scholem, Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 59:
" ... [Lurianic Kabbalah] was in its whole design electric with Messianism and pressing for its
release; it was impelling a Messianic outburst." See also Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish
Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1954), 244-86.
19. Ide!, Messianic Mystics, 268: "The apocalyptic Messianism of the masses had induced the
theologians to strongly and often quite radically interpret Luria and other texts, in many cases
distorting or even inventing texts. It is less a matter of inner developments, as Scholem would
put it, and more one of external factors that provoked the messianic hermeneutics." Ide!
contends that Lurianic Kabbalah was far too complicated for the masses, and consequently
not as influential as popular apocalypticism (265ff.).
20. Jacob Taubes goes as far as to argue that far from leading to the Enlightenment Sabbatianism
delayed it. See his article, "The Price of Messianism," in Essential Papers on Messianic
Movements and Personalities in Jewish History, ed. Marc Saperstein (New York: New York
University Press, 1992), 555.
122 A.P Coudert

21. Ide!, '"One from a Town, Two from a Clan' - the Diffusion of Lurianic Kabbala and
Sabbateanism: A Re-Examination," Jewish History 7 (1993), 84-85.
22. David Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History, 157.
23. Ide!, Messianic Mystics, 251.
24. Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), ch. 8.
25. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 20; idem, Messianic Idea, 1-2. Ide! points out that
by envisioning kabbalistic symbolism as a reflection of and reaction to historical experience,
which Scholem does in On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (New York: Schocken Books, 1965,
2), he undermines the idea that Kabbalists were escapists. Idel, Messianic Mystics, 270.
26. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, "Messianism in Jewish History," in Essential Papers on Messianic
Movements and Personalities in Jewish History, ed. Marc Saperstein, 48.
27. David Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 131.
28. Ibid., 120.
29. Ibid., 217.
30. Ibid., 222.
31. This appears in excerpts (Kabbala denudata I, 1: 116-18; 185-86; 206-8; 227-8; 235-36; 241-
42;272-73;301-5;345-46;359;430;441-43;455-6;483-85;625-26;676).
32. Patai, The Jewish Alchemists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), ch. 26, 323ff.
33. Scho1em, Alchemie und Kabbala, in G. Scholem, Judaica 4 (Frankfurt/M, 1984), 84-8. As
Scholem points out, Malchuth is associated with "Goldwasser," but this in tern is often called
Mercury. Other sets of correspondences between the sejirot and metals are described in the
treatise as well.
34. Kabbala denudata, I, I: 116; Patai, The Jewish Alchemists, 322.
35. William Eamon, "From the Secrets of Nature to Public Knowledge," in Reappraisals of the
Scientific Revolution, ed. D. Lindberg and R. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), 333-365; idem, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval
and Early Modern Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
36. Cited in Patai, The Jewish Alchemists, 8.
37. Bernard Gorceix, La Bible des Rose-Croix (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1970), lxiii. "Durant
cette longue historie [between the medieval and modern world], le role qui echoit a l'alchimie
est encore tn!s mal connu. II nous parait tres important. En effet, nous avons deja dit que
l'alchimie etait a Ia fois science et religion, au point de rencontre de !'experience chimique et de
!'experience mystique. Elle etablit un parallelisme qui, avec les annees, s'affirme de plus en plus
nettement, entre Ia transmutation metallique et les mysteres de Ia foi. De parallelisme va plus
loin qu'une simple analogie, telle que Ia comprenait le Moyen Age traditionnel: Ia science par
excellence decrit ce qu'elle appelle une transmutation, une evolution de Ia matiere vers !'esprit.
Ainsi, elle degage Ia reftexion sur Ia matiere d'une simple meditation atomistique, pour
decouvrir en elle Ia marque de divin, pour enoncer des lois, des regles, des etapes de sa
sublimation. Exteieurement, elle proclame !'independence de son effort speculatif, par rapport
a toute orthodoxie, religieuse sur tout. Ces simples considerations theoriques illustrent les
relations particulierement riches qui unissent alchemie et philosophie: l'alchmie favorise le
rapprochement d'une analyse theologique et de !'analyse cosmologique. Elle montre Dieu dans
le monde, Dieu dans Ia matiere, Dieu dans l'historie. Parce qu'elle formule des phrases definies
dans Ia preparation du grand oeuvre, dans Ia creation du corps spirituel, elle conduit a une
reftexion ordonee sur Dieu, sur l'homme, sur le monde. Sans philosophie, elle pose deja les
questions centrales de toute philosophie: Ia theogonie, Ia theodicee, les rapports entre esprit et
matiere. Parce qu'elle s'attache a Ia description d'une transmutation, d'un sublimation, d'une
evolution, elle invite a une philosophie du devenir et de l'histoire. Parce qu'elle proclame Ia
Iiberti: de sa meditation, elle incite Ia philosophie a affirmer son independence: en elfet, elle
prete a l'homme un role eminent, celui d'achever !'oeuvre de nature, d'acceU~rer !'evolution
historique de Ia matiere vers !'esprit."
38. Robert Shuler describes the way alchemists from the various Christian denominations could
square the practice of alchemy with their religious beliefs. But in doing so, I would argue, they
changed the character of their respective religions.This seems to be particularly true of
 Kabbalistic Messianism versus Kabbalistic Enlightenment 123

Protestant alchemists and mystics (the two often overlapped), who greatly attenuated the
doctrines of human depravity and predestination. R. Schuler., "Spiritual Alchemies of
Seventeenth-century England," The Journal of the History of Ideas 41(1980), 293-318).
39. Richard Westfall, "Newton and Alchemy," in Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the
Renaissance, ed. B. Vickers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198); Betty-JoT. Dobbs,
The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy: or, "The Hunting of the Green Lyon" (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975); eadem, The Janus Face of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in
Newton's Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); eadem, "Newton's
Alchemy and his 'Active Principle' of Gravitation," in Newton's Scientific and Philosophical
Legacy, ed. P.B. Scheurer and G. Debrock (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988);
eadem, The Significance of Alchemy in the Age of Newton," in Science, Pseudo-Science and
Utopianism in Early Modern Thought, ed. S.A. McKnight.(Columbia, MO: University of
Missouri Press, 1992); G. MacDonald Ross, "Leibniz and Alchemy," in Magia natura/is und
die Entstehung der modernen Naturwissen-schaften, Studia Leibnitiana 7 (1978), 166-180;
Lawrence Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and his Alchemical Quest (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1998).
40. William Eamon remarks on the "fervent interest in alchemical and 'hermetic' subjects in the
early Royal Society" and sees it as part of a Baconian program of research. See his book,
Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 299.
Christopher Meine! points out the close tie between alchemical experiments and evolving
theories of matter, remarking on how little seventeenth century atomism contributed to the
understanding of material properties and processes. See his article, "Early Seventeenth-
Century Atomism: Theory, Epistemology, and the Insufficiency of Experiment," Isis 79
(1988), 68-103.
41. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964)
448. Principe categorically rejects the idea put forth by some scholars that by the seventeenth
century alchemy had become totally divorced from practical experiment (The Aspiring Adept,
138ft). Yates herself denied that the occult sciences made any practical contributions to
"genuine" science. She suggested that the scientific revolution occurred in two stages, "the
first phase consisting of an animistic universe operated by magic, the second phase of a
mathematical universe operated by mechanics." Thus, while the will to science lay in
occultism, the actual way of science lay in its rejection (Giordano Bruno, 449, 451). More
recent assessments of the scientific revolution downplay or eliminate this distinction.
42. In "Alchemie und Kabbalah," Scholem argues that originally the Kabbalah had nothing to do
with alchemy and that whatever elements of alchemy exist in kabbalisic texts were foreign
imports. On this point see Ide!, "The Origin of Alchemy according to Zosimos and a Hebrew
Parallel," Revue des Etudes Juives 145 (1986), 117-24; Patai, "Maria the Jewess- Founding
Mother of Alchemy, Ambix 29 ( 1982).
43. See, for example, Isaiah Tishby, "Gnostic Doctrines in Sixteenth-century Jewish Mysticism,"
Journal of Jewish Studies 6 (1955), 146--52; Joseph Dan, "Jewish Gnosticism?" Jewish Studies
Quarterly 2 (1995), 309-28.
44. Elliot Wolfson, "Light through Darkness: The Ideal of Human Perfection in the Zohar,"
Harvard Theological Review 81 (1988), 85. See also, Wolfson, "Left Contained in Right: A
Study of Zoharic Hermenuetics," The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies 11 (1986),
27-52.
45. While Knorr does distinguish between matter and spirit, like van Belmont he sees both as
belonging on a continuum. Van Belmont discusses this in his Cabbalistical Dialogue ...
(London, 1682), which was first published in Latin in the Kabbala denudata, I, 2: 308ff. Knorr
sets forth his view of matter in one of his annotation in his translation Della Porta. Des
vortrej]lichen Herrn Johann Baptista Portae von Neapolis Magia natura/is ... hrg. Von Christian
Peganium sonst Rautner gennant (Niirnberg, 1713), 12-14).
46. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, ch. 7.
47. William Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the
Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 119.
124 A.P. Coudert

48. Kurt Goldammer. "Paracelsische Eschatologie: zum Verstandnis der anthropologice und
Kosmologie Hohenheims," Nova Acta Paracelsica 5 (1948), 45-85; Paracelsische Eschatologie
II, ibid. 6 (1952), 68-102.
49. Kabbala denudata, 1: 116.
50. Herbert Breger, "Elias Artista - A Precursor of the Messiah in Natural Science," in Nineteen
Eighty-Four: Science between Utopia and Dystopia, ed. Everett Mendelsohn and Helga
Nowotney (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1984), 49-72. Walter Pagel, "The
Paracelsian Elias Artista and the Alchemical Tradition," Medizinhisorisches Journall6 (1981),
6-19.
51. Cited in Stephen A. McKnight, "The Wisdom of the Ancients and Francis Bacon's New
Atlantis," in Reading the Book of Nature: The Other Side of the Scientific Revolution, ed. A.G.
Debus and M.T. Walton (Sixteenth Century: Essays & Studies, vol 41. Kirksville, Missouri:
Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998), 105, 106.
52. "The Ultimate End of Human Life in Post-Expulsion Philosophic Literature," in Crisis and
Creativity in the Sephardic World, 1391-1648, ed. Benjamin R. Gampel (New York: Columbia
Press, 1997).
53. Ruderman, A Valley of Vision, 15.
54. Ide], Messianic Mystics, 227. See also Ide], Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany, NY:
State University of New York, Press, 1993).
55. Idel, Messianic Mystics, 228.
56. Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform. 1626-1660 (London: Duck-
worth, 1975).
 E. CARLEBACH

7. THE LAST DECEPTION: FAILED MESSIAHS AND JEWISH

CONVERSION IN EARLY MODERN GERMAN LANDS

Jewish and Christian religious messianic traditions collided, intersected, and

reverberated in an endless cycle which continually revised and reworked
mutual perceptions and definitions. This paper will study the interplay between
Christian expectations concerning Jewish conversion, Jewish messianism, and
Jewish deceitfulness in early modern German literary culture. Jewish conver-
sion to Christianity, collective or individual, and expressions of Jewish
messianism constituted two extreme reactions to the Christian claims concern-
ing the messiah. The former was interpreted by both Christians and Jews as a
capitulation to the Christian interpretation of history, whereas the latter utterly
rejected those claims. Christian notions of Jewish deceit undermined the
meaning of both these Jewish responses and reinterpreted them, reshaping the
signs of the endtime to carry a far more sinister meaning, in which conversions
were transformed into new avenues of subversion and messianic claimants into
predictable precursors of the Antichrist. They took on particular configura-
tions in early modern German culture.

I
Conversion of the Jews was an integral element of the Christian drama of the
end of time. 1 As Andrew Gow has observed, "Much of medieval Christian
apocalyptic ignored the topic of the Jews except insofar as they - or some of
them - were to convert before the Last Judgment." 2 Medieval art and drama
had always depicted the end of times in dramatic detail. Its conventions were
well known even to those who could not read. For every Last Judgment
depicted by a Hieronymus Bosch, Lucas Cranach, or Albrecht Durer, count-
less others by lesser artists, sculptors and craftsmen adorned the sacred spaces
of medieval and early modern people. 3 Flugschriften, early printed pamphlets,
a medium unique to sixteenth century German lands, circulated material and
motifs that do not appear in any other European language. 4 The apocalyptic
tenor of Reformation-era German lands and the heightened interest in Jewish

125
M. Go/dish and R.H Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 125-138.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
126 E. Carlebach

conversion among theologians resonated deeply in early modern German

culture.
Christian opinions concerning the tempo and method of Jewish conversion
toward the end of time differed. Some believed that all Jews would be converted
by the time of the Second Coming; others, that only a small remnant would
ultimately convert, and the salvation of the church was not linked to Jewish
conversion. Their attitudes toward the management of converts and conversion
differed accordingly. 5 These theological positions had practical political con-
sequences. The belief in the ultimate conversion of all Jews was the basis of the
traditional Christian rationale for maintaining the status quo with regard to
political treatment of Jews. They could be tolerated within Christendom
because at the end of time they would all be converted. Christian magnanimity
would ultimately persuade them of its superiority. The view that Jews might
never ultimately become Christians translated into a harsher political policy,
for there was no theological justification for Christian rulers to maintain
Jewish subjects. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the
question of Jewish conversion and the methods most suited to achieve it,
remained on the agenda of each successive movement within Protestantism.
The divergent expectations concerning Jewish conversion at the end of time
were complicated by notions of Jewish deceitfulness. The perception that Jews
were inherently deceitful was an all encompassing component of the medieval
perception of Jews and the Jewish religion. "It is known to all what a deceitful
people the Jews are." 6 It was a commonplace in the entire discourse on Jews
and money; on Jews and medicine, Jews and conversion, Jews and religiosity. 7
The perception of Jewish deceitfulness represents a change from an earlier
medieval depiction of Jews as credulous, blind, and deceived. This reversal was
particularly effective with regard to the case of the messiah. Jews who had been
portrayed as obdurately blind to the truth concerning the messiah, to their own
obvious detriment, were transformed into active deceivers, trying to pass off
the Antichrist as the true messiah. While medieval Christian polemicists
blamed the rabbinic elite for misleading its own people concerning the true
nature of the messiah, the literature of the late fifteenth century and beyond
shifted the burden of deceitfulness onto the entire Jewish people.
The evolving notions of Jewish deceitfulness were fully articulated in the
writing of Martin Luther. In his early consideration of the Jews, "That Jesus
Christ was born a Jew," (1523) Luther viewed the warped position of Jews in
contemporary Christian society through the lens of natural historical causality.
It was Christian persecution that had led the Jews to reject Christ; their error
was understandable, natural, and ultimately, correctable. This view of Jews
corresponded with the view that a massive and complete Jewish conversion to
Christianity would take place at the end of time. For many reformers, the
ultimate success of the campaign to unmask the dissimulating villains, the final
reckoning at the end of time, included the total conversion of the Jews. 8
Luther's late diatribe, "On the Jews and their Lies," (1543) reversed his earlier
evaluation. 9 Jews were no longer viewed as passive subjects of natural forces,
but as participants together with diabolical forces in a willful deception. In
 The Last Deception 127

Luther's view, everything which was evil and debased, (related to the systems
he opposed), had attained its current status by means of deception. Luther
claimed that acts of Jewish piety and prayer were simply instruments of
deception, the means which Jews employed to deceive not only the Christians,
but even God.
Luther's charge of deliberate concealment of their true nature was not
merely a theological danger, but a political one as well. He accused Jews of
secretly bearing an implacable hatred toward Christianity, under the guise of
being loyal subjects. He located the Jewish desire to upend the Christian world
in Jewish messianic hopes. In the Jewish apocalyptic scenario, the natural
world order was inverted: Christians would see the triumph of the Jewish faith
at the end of time. The very notion of an armed Jew, bearing a regal scepter, of
Jewish political and military domination, was absurd in any but the most
apocalyptic context. 10 The seeming irrationality of Jewish messianic beliefs
proved that these were no mere theological differences, but rather demonic
fantasies of Jewish revenge crystallized around messianism.
In Luther's writing Jewish messianism had become the code word for every
negative stereotype of the Jews: yearning to dominate Christians, murder as
many of them as possible, and extract their last gold and silver from them, but
particularly for double deception. 11 In his characteristic polemical mode,
Luther invoked the parable of a whore dressed as a pious woman, who would
then deserve even greater revilement because the attempt to conceal an
inherently sinful position made it much worse. The Jews were vile whores in
the eyes of God "because, under the guise and decor of external laws and
sanctity, they practiced all sorts of idolatry and villainy." 12 The quintessential
deceiver of Christians was the figure of the Antichrist. Posing as a powerful
figure of the apocalypse, only the coming of the true Christ would expose the
vile imposter, when the false appearances of corrupt institutions of this world
would be stripped away to reveal God's Christian truth.

II
Early modern German literature depicted Jews attempting to deceive Chris-
tians only to become the 'betrogene' the swindled. At first, stories of reversal of
Jewish fortune stood alone. Kirchhof's story "Beraubung eines Juden,"
detailed an elaborate plot to despoil a Jew, in which the author does not
conceal his delight at the outcome. 13 In another story, a Jew dogged the steps of
a nobleman who owed him money, to the barbershop. As he was being shorn of
his beard, the nobleman told the Jew, "Wait until your beard is shorn, and I'll
pay you." When the Jew agreed, he left on half the beard, and never repaid the
debt. The earliest versions of Faust featured a Jewish lender who was duped out
of his money. The common thread in all the narratives was that Jews started
out wanting to deceive, and ended up being deceived.
Another deceit motif which came to be applied specifically to Jews in the
literature of this period mocked the fruits of the childbirth of Jewish women,
depicting them as giving birth to various animals. Earlier stories presented this
128 E. Carlebach

motif independently; it was eventually linked to the other topos of deceit, the
Jewish expectation of the messiah. In one such story God punished and
deceived the Jews as a result of His displeasure that they did not acknowledge
the true messiah by having a Jewish woman give birth to two pigs. 14 This story
has much in common with that of Fischart, who depicted Jews awaiting the
messiah, who turns out to be a girl. In Till Eulenspiegel's story, three Frankfurt
Jews bought Till's own excrement from him, which he had wrapped in red
material, for one hundred Gulden. They were given to believe that whoever
ingested this prophecy-berry would be able to tell the future. Jews were willing
to pay this high price because they wanted to know when the messiah would
come. They called all the Jews to the synagogue to demonstrate effectiveness of
this "berry." As one Jew ceremoniously put it into his mouth, he recognized the
deceit; they were all covered with disappointment and shame. 15
The Fastnachtspiele, farcical comedies written for Shrove Tuesday, became
an important vehicle for mockery of Jews. Hans Folz, one of most popular
writers, developed some of the standard themes in his play, Ein Spil von dem
Herzogen von Burgund. In it, Jewish rabbis announced the coming of a messiah.
The Sybilla-seer immediately uncovered this as a deceitful plot on part of the
rabbis: it was not the messiah, but the false messiah, the Antichrist. When
asked why he was called the Antichrist [in German 'Endcrist'] the creature
answered simply, "For I signify the end of the Christians." Asked for their
motive, the rabbis answered that Jews were awaiting their messiah so that they
could assert power over Christians. In their address to their Christian
audience, the rabbis were disrespectful in the extreme, ordering them to move
out of the way so that Jews could have their turn at "Gewalt, herschaft und
regiment." More than a thirst for power, however, was embedded in Folz's
lines. The Jewish rabbis revealed a bloody revenge fantasy for everything they
suffered at the hands of the Christians.

We have been in misery now/ For fourteen hundred years/ And in that time/
Suffered a great deal at the hands of Christians/ .... If only they knew/ What
great curses, what hatred and envy/ We have always harbored for them,/
How much we have stolen from them, I How many whose lives we have
spoiled, I Of those to whom we were physicians; I How many young
children/ We have stolen from them and killed. 16

In this drama, Jewish messianic hope became intertwined with the grossest
medieval Christian projection fantasies, in which Christians believed that Jews
could not but be thirsting for revenge after the torment they had suffered at
Christian hands. 17 Of course, these Jewish fantasies ended in failure; they were
fantasies, "with which you Jews so stupidly attempt to/ fool other people and
yourse1ves." 18 Jews were both deceivers and deceived. Similarly, Pamphilius
Gengenbach's Der Nollhart (1517) contained classical depictions of the Antic-
hrist and the savage tribe of the Red Jews. Suffused with themes of intense
Jewish waiting to avenge the sufferings they had endured at the hands of
Christians for so many years, one of its Jewish characters' sole desire was that
 The Last Deception 129

God send the Messiah to his people the very next day. It all turned out to be a
vehicle for further deceit of the Jews, and their ultimate conversion on
Judgment Day.
Hans Folz wrote another, more developed, drama in verse, "Von der Juden
Messias." In it, a rich Jew had beautiful daughter. Two windows of his house
faced a Christian student's quarters. The student fell in love with the Jewish
woman, gained entry to her room, and found a cunning way to conceal his
doings: he stayed in her parent's room at night. During their sleep, with aid of a
reed pipe, he told them of God's decision that their daughter would bear the
messiah. They were forbidden to inquire about the father. It was time for the
Jewish race, [geschlecht] withered away for so long, to rule over Christians and
pagans. The father shared his revelation with four elders, who shared it with the
entire people with songs of praise. The daughter was royally outfitted, treated
like noblewoman, sent gifts from all over world. In the end, the child born after
great pains was a girl. The disappointed crowd wanted to fall upon them, but
the student managed with help of authorities to bring them to safety. They
converted, and the student married the girl. The Jews, who had hoped that the
last days of Christianity were at hand, were condemned to live on in shame, as
the piece celebrated the triumph of Christianity.
A further development of this story of Jews as messianically deceived takes
place in Prague. In this version it was a monk claiming to be an angel who
deceived the Jewish girl. The rest of the story unfolded as in Folz, with one
further twist to the Jewish self-deception. In order not to stand shamed before
Christians, the rabbis ask if it would not be possible for the messiah to be born
in the guise of a girl. The narrative was written concisely, as though reporting
factual events. 19
Folz linked Jewish messianic hopes to contemporary political matters. In his
view, Jews regarded the Turks, now threatening the Empire, as natural allies
who might redeem them from Christian power until the messiah came. The
Christian response to this scenario was that the coming of the Turks would be
equally devastating for Jews as for Christians. This retort finally defeated the
Jew, now called "The fallen Jew," [der fallend Jud] who was ordered to "be
silenced" [und sei geschwigen]. In the sixteenth century, the spiritual defeat of
the Jews was often paired with the military triumph against the Turks to form
parallel scenes of the end of time.
Another Folz drama, "Ein Vasnachtspil, Die Alt und neu Ee," was in reality
°
a polemical disputation rendered in simple terms. 2 Folz wrote it as a dialogue
between church and synagogue with a rabbi representing the Jews. Among the
theological issues it covered was the Jewish-Christian debate over the messiah.
The Jews beseeched the rabbi to search the Talmud to find out when the
messiah would come. The Christian representative, the "Doktor," challenged
the rabbi to explain how it was that despite pleas to God and promises of
redemption, Jews were still subject to the rage, mockery, bondage, and
humiliation that the gentiles heaped upon them.
Early modern German literary works devoted to the theme of vain Jewish
messianic expectations combined with the literature of the Antichrist, so that
130 E. Carlebach

the demonic Antichrist who would appear at the end of time was in fact the
person the Jews expected as their messiah. "If Jesus was the Messiah, the only
person for whom the Jews could be waiting would be the Antichrist." 21
Accumulated centuries of myth and tradition had provided the Antichrist with
a biography which reads like a counter-history to the story of Jesus' life. It
placed the Antichrist squarely within a Jewish ambit. The Antichrist was born
to Jewish parents, raised as a Jew, endowed with every demonic trait associated
with Jews and hailed by the Jews. He would briefly control the world until God
revealed his true nature; then he would be destroyed, along with all the Jews.
The Antichrist, "will call himself God and circumcise himself and call himself
the messiah and rebuild Solomon's temple and place his throne therein and all
the Jews will hasten to him ... and he will draw the Jews to himself, saying he is the
Messiah, and he will follow Christ's footsteps, saying he wants to ascend to
Heaven from the Mount of Olives.'m The Antichrist tradition saw the Jewish
messiah/Antichrist as "master of terror, fullness of malice, who will...do
wonders ... through dissimulation." 23 As in other motifs, the Jews started out
as deceivers in the literature of the Antichrist; the ultimate denouement was
known to all Christians.
Within these basic contours, endless variations on each motif were dissemi-
nated through literary, dramatic, and visual means, and combined with the
most derisive caricatures of the Jewish character. While the legend and the
messianic association grew in every vernacular, it flourished with greater
variety and vibrancy in German lands. Jews were mocked for being deceived
by rabbinic tradition with regard to the nature of the messiah, and the Jewish
proclivity to follow false messiahs was constantly noted in traditional polemic
as well as literary satire. The false identity of the Jewish messiah/ Antichrist
reinforced the suspicion that Jews who entered the Christian world could be
presenting false facades, and intended to harm rather than redeem Christians.

III
Failed Jewish messianic movements played right into this literary discourse,
providing historical confirmation for what may have otherwise seemed like an
absurd polemical exaggeration. Failed messianic movements such as that of
Asher Lemlein in the early sixteenth century and particularly that of Sabbatai
Zevi in the seventeenth, were duly noted by German writers and theologians
and incorporated into a topos in which messianic failure was linked to Jewish
conversion. This was not simply a theological datum of which Jews were
vaguely aware; it was an active, oppressive barb in their flesh, with which they
were continually tormented.
Johannes Pfefferkorn, notorious convert to Christianity in the early sixteenth
century, recalled the excitement over the appearance of Asher Lemlein,
harbinger of the messiah. "Oh, how miserably we were deceived!" 24 Sebastian
Munster, Christian Hebraist and disciple of Elijah Levita, had the Christians
say in Havikuah, his polemical dialogue:
 The Last Deception 131

And it happened in the year 1502 that the Jews did penance in all their
dwelling places and in all the lands of exile in order that the messiah might
come. Almost a whole year, young and old, children and women did
penance in those days, the like of which had never been seen before. And in
spite of it all there appeared neither sign nor vestige, not to speak of the
reality itself.

He then turned to the Jews he hoped to persuade:

"For how did that repentance of 1502 help you, when all Jews in their
habitations and places in exile . .. young and old, infants and women,
repented as never before and nothing was revealed to you." The result was
"You Jews [too] see and understand that your rabbis are confused and
wrong:' 25

Antonius Margaritha wrote in Der gantz Jiidisch glaub that Jews continually
prayed for the messiah, that their writings contained "many excellent sayings
concerning the redemption and the future of the mashiach," and that it formed
a central a part of their belief system. "Because their entire faith [cf. the title he
chose for the book!] and hope consists of the belief that God will still redeem
them through their unknown messiah"; it was so central that it was asked of
Jews on their deathbeds whether they believed in the messiah. If they could
only be made to believe [that he had come] "they would already become one
with us." 26 Margaritha, like many missionaries and converts who succeeded
him, urged Christians to use the messianic issue as a common ground in order
to win Jews to conversion.
Shortly after the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi, seventeenth-century German
author Hans Grimmelshausen, famous for his Adventures of Simplicissimus
wrote the most elaborate version of the tale that had been developed by Folz
and his contemporaries. 27 His The Enchanted Birds Nest contained a chapter,
"The False Messiah," which can stand as an independent narrative, and
represents a significant expansion on this theme. The hero, a gentile, posed as
Elijah the prophet to a rich Portuguese Jew. He convinced the Jew to let him
sleep with his beautiful daughter by promising him that the child to be born of
that union would be the messiah. The Jew agreed, and the child was awaited
eagerly by Jewry the world over. When the child was born and turned out to be
a girl, the rabbis immediately interpreted this as God's way of protecting his
newborn Messiah from the wrath of the gentiles. Grimmelshausen openly
alluded to the Sabbatian parallels, he repeatedly emphasized the depth of
Jewish credulousness: "If the Jews can imagine that ... is the messiah, it is no
longer surprising that they let themselves be duped by so many swindlers in the
past." 28 The informant (who gave the gentile hero enough information to pass
himself off as a Jew) was a Jew who had recently converted to Christianity. His
Christian faith had wavered when he heard of the imminent arrival of the
Jewish messiah. Once it was revealed as a hoax, his Christian faith was
reaffirmed. Many of the Jewish characters embraced Christianity in the end.
132 E. Carlebach

"Since your messiah has come to naught, I urge you to embrace the Christian
religion." 29 When the sole hope of Jewish vindication in the face of Christianity
had been refuted, only conversion was left for the Jews.
The story persevered; it was retold in the eighteenth century in Abraham de
Santa Clara's "Ein Student betrieget einen Juden." It went farther than its
predecessors only in imagining that after the Jews eagerly await birth of boy
messiah, their disappointment at the birth of a girl caused them to smash the
child against a wall.
Literary sources were only one of the conduits of the images of Jewish deceit,
self-delusion, and ultimate despair which merged messianic and conversionist
themes. The standard sources of knowledge about Jews in the early modern
Christian world contained abundant confirmation. Christian Hebraists who
wrote about Jewish customs and practices would mock Jews and list the false
messiahs that had appeared. Johannes von Lent's Schediasma Historico
Philologicum de Judaeorum pseudo-Messiis concentrated solely on Jewish false
messiahs. Although Lent's list was far from reliable, and certainly not the first
of its kind, it was a model of the effectiveness of listing as a polemical tool and
served as the source for many of his successors. 30 Lent counted nineteen Jewish
false messiahs after the time of Jesus, from Bar Kochba to Mordechai of
Eisenstadt, with a special section devoted to Sabbatai Zevi. 31 The conclusion to
be drawn from the fact that Jews had been duped by false messiahs from the
time of Jesus was obvious to Christians.
Johann Jacob Schudt's Jildische Merckwilrdigkeiten, the great eighteenth-
century compendium of Jewish lore, devoted substantial sections to the
Sabbatian movement and its aftermath. If there were any doubt as to Schudt's
intentions towards this material, his introduction to the fourth volume, a poem
by Johann Riederer addressed directly to the Jews, makes his meaning
perfectly clear:

Du blinder Hauffe du! Ihr armen Kinder Levi!

greifft mit den Handen doch dass schon Maschiach kam
Das euer falscher Christ/der Sabbatai Sevi
Wie Andre hiebevor/ ein garstig Ende nahm
denckt dass man eure List/und heilloss Wesen kennet
ob ihr uns hundertmahl gleich Edomiter nennet .... 32

After the movement of Sabbatai Zevi, the notion of Jewish credulity in

messianic matters became a stock image throughout Europe. In his His to ire des
juifs, Jacques Basnage devoted a substantial section to his strategies for
conversion of the Jews. He introduced the Sabbatian movement with an
apology: "If this article seems a bit long, it is important to remember the
impudence of the imposters and the credulity of the people. Moreover, this
Jewish credulity did not stop with the death of Sabbatai." Long after the
apostasy, there were still many Jewish followers. 33 During the height of the
movement of Sabbatai Zevi, Christian pamphleteers did not hesitate to
fabricate fantastic stories for which they had no sources. A German theologian
 The Last Deception 133

reported that the reason Christian newsmongers were adding inventions of

their own was to deceive the Jews, a meritorious deed according to the doctrine
of 'an eye for an eye.' 34
Many individual converts from Judaism cited the messianic movement of
Sabbatai Zevi as influential in their decision to convert to Christianity or to
remain converted if they had earlier moments of misgiving. Among those
already converted to Christianity was Italian Giulio Morosini, whose Christian
faith was strengthened by the Jewish messianic failure. His guide for those who
preach to the Jews, Via della Fede = Derekh Emunah devoted a considerable
place to Sabbatai. Lotharius Franz Fried, formerly Joseph Marcus, similarly
devoted considerable space to false messiahs in his anti-Jewish tract. 35
Friedrich Albrecht Christiani, formerly Barukh of Prosstitz, credited Sabbatai
with showing him the error of the Jews and the truth of Christianity. 36 Ragstatt
de Weile converted in 1669 and reflected with scorn on the many Jews who still
believed in Sabbatai. Jacob Melamed of Cornitz converted "since Sabbatai
Zevi, for whom we had waited a whole year with fasts and mortifications, was
all lies." Wolf Levi and Simcha Hasid, nephews of the Sabbatian R. Judah
Hasid, converted in Nordlingen in 1707. 37 Mordechai ben Shemaya of
Neuhaus studied Kabbalah with Sabbatian visionary Abraham Rovigo; he
converted to Christianity to become Phillip Ernst Christfels in 1701. 38 The
missionary institutes of Esdras Edzard and Heinrich Callenberg made special
use of the Sabbatian debacle in their efforts to convert Jews. 39 Sigismund
Hosmann's guide to penetrating the obdurate Jewish heart, Das Schwer zu
bekehrende Juden-Hertz, devoted an entire chapter to the exploitation of
Sabbatai's story for missionary purposes. 40 Each of these converts viewed their
conversions as the pioneering "Erstlinge," to be followed by mass Jewish
conversion to the true messiah, Jesus. 41
Jewish false messiahs became a standard feature in the literature of converts,
polemicists, and missionaries. Converts remembered that the very first ques-
tion they were asked upon becoming Christian concerned the messiah. 42 Some
mentioned how the news-sheets of the day, the Zeitungen, disseminated and
elaborated stories concerning the coming of the Jewish messiah only to have it
all end up in failure. "Our easily won hope was lost, exchanged for mockery." 43
The early seventeenth-century Christian Gerson's exposure of the Jewish
Talmud contained several sections on Jewish messianic beliefs, but concluded
with the clinching argument: "The Jews have accepted several false Messiahs
and were deceived through them." 44

IV
Converts and missionaries linked the issue of false messiahs directly to the
question of effectiveness of Jewish ritual. According to the Christian concep-
tion of ritual and liturgy as paths to salvation Jewish ritual had failed to
achieve the desired result. The practitioners of a failed or false ritual could only
be continually duped by failed or false saviors. One example illuminates the
way salvation and ritual were interconnected. It is an account of magical
134 E. Carlebach

"Sambatjon" waters, purportedly from the mythical river Sambatyon that

guarded the Ten Lost Tribes. Subject of works from the sixteenth century,
including Menasseh ben Israel's Mikveh Israel, small samples of the water or
sand, said to be from the mythical river were brought by emissaries from the
east to the Jewish communities of western Europe. In the mid-eighteenth
century, the water became the subject of an expose written by the convert
Augusti. He claimed to have heard from another convert, Wallich, that the
synagogue leaders, rabbi and cantor were perpetrating a fraud by manipulating
the waters, which were stored in a glass in the Holy Ark, to be displayed in the
synagogue on special occasions. When the Friday evening prayers commenced,
the cantor opened the curtain and the water appeared to be jumping. The Jews
viewed this motion as miraculous; they sang and danced until it subsided with
the exact onset of the Sabbath. As soon as the Sabbath was over, the waters
began their motion again, mirroring the midrashic stories about the properties
of the river itself, which rested only on the Sabbath. The converts used this
example to prove that the common Jews were duped by a conspiracy between
the rabbi and the cantor. The cantor, with the complicity of the rabbi, pulled a
hidden thread which ran through his stand to cause the continuous waves. This
was the secret which Wallich had revealed to Augusti, who published it in a
special pamphlet, "The secrets of the Jews concerning the Sambatjon and the
Red Jews."
This fraud being perpetrated on Jews by their leaders went far deeper than a
cheap magic trick. It touched upon the belief in the existence of the Ten Tribes,
linked to the messianic message of consolation for Jews in history. Just as the
existence of the Tribes was mythical rather than historical, this fraud
symbolized the entire network of vain beliefs fostered by Jews concerning the
coming of the Messiah. With the exposure of this fraud, "the consolation of the
Jews is lost." 45 This one example was repeated several times in works
concerning Jewish ritual; it was the final chapter of Georg Bodenschatz'
description of Jewish beliefs and rituals. It demonstrates the many overlapping
layers of meaning and polemical counter-meaning that Jews, converts, Hebra-
ists and missionaries read into Jewish ceremonial life and Jewish messianic
hopes.
The link between Jewish messianic expectation, and particularly the appear-
ance of Jewish messianic figures, with the most horrific fears of Christians, had
a profound impact on Jewish messianic activity within the Christian world.
When Josel of Rosheim, sixteenth-century leader of German Jewry, heard that
the messianic claimant, Shlomoh Molkho, would appear before the emperor in
Regensburg, he begged the latter not to stir up the heart of Emperor, and then
retreated from town lest he be associated in any way with the doomed
messianic affair. 46 As late as the eighteenth century, a satirical mockery of
fallen court Jew Suss Oppenheimer linked him with Sabbatai Zevi. 47 By linking
Jewish messianic hope to the image of Jews as deceived deceivers in polemical
and popular representation, early modern German-Christian culture inscribed
a very inhibiting imprint upon the messianic posture of Ashkenazic Jews. 48
Ironically, the fear that Jewish messiahs were deceivers of monumental
 The Last Deception 135

proportions extended in the Christian imagination to converts from Judaism.

Christians no longer welcomed them as heralds of the Second Coming but as
part of the larger deception being perpetrated by Jews. Jewish conversions to
Christianity in early modern German lands must be viewed within the multiple
contexts of these powerful cultural currents, subversive messianism and Jewish
deceitfulness. Often working counter to one another, these themes endowed
each conversion with great apocalyptic weight while undermining its claim to
authenticity.

Queens College, CUNY

NOTES
* Another version of this article will be published in another venues.
I. Romans II: 24--27.
2. Andrew Colin Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200--1600 (Leiden,
1995), 97.
3. On the late North European apocalypses, see Peter K. Klein, "The Apocalypse in Medieval
Art," in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 196-199; Edward Cohen, "Hieronymus Bosch and
Victor von Carben: The Controversy between Church and Synagogue in some of Bosch's
Paintings," Studia Rosenthaliana 18 (1984), 1-11.
4. Gow, The Red Jews, 3, 92. Not only the myth of the Red Jews, but the term itself, existed only
in German language materials through the sixteenth century.
5. On early modern German attitudes toward Jewish conversion see Martin Friedrich, Zwischen
Abwehr und Bekehrung: Die Ste/lung der deutschen evangelischen Theologie zum Judentum im
17. Jahrhundert (Tiibingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1988, Beitriige zur historischen Theo1ogie, 72), 19-
29; 55-62. Christopher M. Clark, The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the
Jews of Prussia 1728-1941 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 9-32.
6. Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, (Konigsberg, 1711), 2:574.
7. For images and sources connecting the Jews with avarice, see Richard Wilhelm Stock, Die
Judenfrage durchfunf Jahrhunderte, (Niirnberg: Verlag der Sturmer, 1939), passim. This Nazi
inspired work, dedicated to Julius Streicher, contains many antisemitic works from the
fifteenth century in facsimile. It also contains a separate section on the deceitfulness and
dangers of Jewish conversion to Christianity. On Jewish deceit of Christians in medicine, see
most recently John M. Efron, "Interminably Maligned: The Conventional Lies about Jewish
Doctors," in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
ed. Elisheva Carlebach, John M. Efron and David N. Myers (Hanover and London: Brandeis
University Press, 1998), 296-310. Eisenmenger distilled this strand of anti-Jewish discourse in
his summa, Entdecktes Judenthum, 1:233: "When Jews are young, they deceive Christians with
usury, when older, with medicine, although some have never laid eyes on a medical book.
Through this, some Christians are murdered .. . . I believe today there are still many such
deceitful doctors in Germany. I myself know a Jewish 'medicastrum' who does not know three
words of Latin, and studied little. Even though today many Jews in Germany do go to
universities and study to become doctors, a Christian can never trust them because their
hatred is insatiable." At one point in Entdecktes Judenthum, 2:574--576, Eisenmenger under-
mined his entire painstaking collection of rabbinic citations, by acknowledging that there was
a vast body of work that would show them in an opposite, and very favorable light. Whenever
one accused Jews of negative behavior, they refuted it with a citation from their rabbis
forbidding that behavior. "To this I respond: The teachings of the rabbis are good and
desirable; all Jews should follow them so that Christians would not be brought to grief
136 E. Carlebach

through their shameful deceit. But because the rabbis not only countenance such abominable
deceit, and do not punish it ... , it follows that they must have another doctrine, which is
opposite of the previously mentioned one." I have cited here only token citations, from
German sources; voluminous literature exists for each of these themes in medieval Europe.
8. The belief in the ultimate conversion of the most resistant opponents of Christ was later
radicalized by Jakob Boehme to the notion of apokatastasis, a literal belief in universal
redemption, including even the redemption of the devil and the end of Hell. See Pierre
Deghaye, "Jacob Boehme and his Followers," in Modern Esoteric Spirituality ed. Antoine
Faivre and Jacob Needleman, (New York, 1992), 210-247.
9. The essay of 1523, "That Jesus Christ," can be found in English translation in Luther's Works
ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), Vol. 45; "On the Jews," in Vol.
47,137-306.
10. Gow, The Red Jews, 117.
11. Ben-Zion Degani, "Strands of Medieval antisemitism in the Work of Luther and their
Influence on anti Jewish Writing in Germany," [Hebrew] Eshel Be'er Sheva 3 (1986), 183. In
his negation of Jewish messianism Luther drew on earlier medieval anti-Jewish polemics.
12. Luther's Works, 47:170. On the parallels between harlots and Jews in medieval imagery see
Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in North European Literature of the Middle Ages
1 (Berkeley: Univesity of California Press, 1993), 44.
13. Oskar Frankl, Der Jude in den deutschen Dichtungen des 15.16. und 17. Jahrhundertes (Miihr.-
Ostrau, 1905), 58-59.
14. For further discussion of the depictions of Jews in early modern German popular literature
see, Heiko A. Oberman, "Zwischen Agitation und Reformation: Die Flugschriften als
'Judenspiegel,'" Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit ed. Hans-Joachim
Kohler (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotto, 1980), 269-289.
15. Frankl, Der jude, 66.
16. Hans Folz, "Ein Spil von dem Herzogen von Burgund," in Fastnachtspiele aus demfilrifzehnten
Jahrhundert I ed. A. von Keller (Stuttgart, 1853) 169-190. This translation from Gow, The
Red Jews, 375.
17. Eisenmenger Entdecktes Judenthum (Konigsberg, 1711), 1:854, wrote that the Jews awaited
their messiah daily so that they could then, in a miserable and gruesome manner, murder all
Christians: "Alsdann aile Christenjiimmerlicher und grausamer weise ermorden mogen." This
seemed such an obvious statement that no prooftexts were deemed necessary to support it.
18. Gow, The Red Jews, 374.
19. A version of this story was cited by Eisenmenger who dated it to 1222. Entdecktes Judenthum,
2:665--666. None of the authors who cited the story as an anti Jewish polemic seemed aware
that it was a subversive parody of the Virgin Mary and the belief in Immaculate Conception.
20. On the dialogue as a literary form in early modern European literature, see Colette Winn, The
Dialogue in Early Modern France, 1547-1630, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 1993); Rudolf Bentzinger, Untersuchungen zur Syntax der Reformationsdialoge
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992).
21. Cited in Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and
its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943/Philadelphia:
Jewish Publication Society, 1983), 32, 224 n.2.
22. Cited in Gow, Red Jews, 362-3, from a Middle High German Historienbibel of the fourteenth
or fifteenth centuries. The Antichrist biography bears many similarities to the medieval
Toledot Yeshu, a Jewish polemical counterhistory. See Anna Sapir Abulafia, "Invectives
against Christianity in the Hebrew Chronicles of the First Crusade," Crusade and Settlement
ed. PeterW. Edbury (Cardiff: University College Press, 1985), 66-72.
23. Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic traditions in the Middle Ages (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1979), 49-50.
24. Hans-Martin Kim, Das Bild vom Juden im Deutschland des fruhen 16. Jahrhunderts dargestellt
an den Schriften Johannes Pfefftrkorns (Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1989), 30 n. 68, 30-37.
25. Cited from Ha-viku'ach (Basel, 1539), in Abba Hillel Silver, A History ofMessianic Speculation
in Israel (New York: Macmillan, 1927), 145, n. 141. Miinster published two editions of this
 The Last Deception 137

anti Jewish work whose central message was the Jewish error concerning the messiah: Vikkuah
Christiani Hominis cum Iudaeo, pertinaciter prodigiosis suis opinionibus & scripturae violentis
interpretationibus addicto, colloquium (Dialogue of a Christian and a Jews Stubbornly Addicted
to his own strange Opinions about the Messiah) (Basel, 1529) and Messias Christianorum et
Iudaeorum (Messiah of the Christians and Jews) (Basel, 1539). I thank Prof. Stephen Burnett
for allowing me to read his illuminating study, "A Dialogue of the Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy
and Anti-Jewish Polemic in Sebastian Munster's Messiahs of the Christians and the Jews
(1529/39)," Archiv for Reformationsgeshichte 91 (2000): 168-90. See Frank E. Manuel, The
Broken Staff: Judaism Through Christian Eyes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1992), 48-49 0

26. Antonius Margaritha, Der gantz Judisch glaub (Augsburg, 1530), 13a: "Beten sy auff dn
Moschiach und wenn sy dis glaubeten/ weren sie mit uns schon eins." "Because," Margaritha,
Der Gantz, 98a. The deathbed scene which Margaritha claimed to have attended, Margaritha,
Der gantz, 34b.
27. Der Abentheuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (Nuremberg, 1669); trans. Hellmuth Weissenborn
and Lesley Macdonald Simplicius Simplicissimus (London, 1964).
28. Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, "The False Messiah," Courage the Adventuress
and the False Messiah transl. Hans Speier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 279.
29. Ibid., 286.
30. On the list as a literary category, see Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to
Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 36-53; on 'listenwissenschaft' as a
polemical tool, see Steven M. Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of
Symbiosis under Early Islam (Princeton: Princeton Univesity Press, 1995), 98-100. Among
the many who relied on Lent was Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum 2:647-664.
31. Johannes a Lent, Schediasma Historico Philologicum de Judaeorum pseudo-Messiis (Herborna,
1697). His section on Sabbatai Zevi is found on 76-102.
32. Johann Freiderich Riederer, Intro. to vol. 4, Johann Jacob Schudt, Judischer Merckwilrdigkei-
ten (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1714--18).
33. Jacques Basnage, Histoire des juifs depuis Jesus-Christ jusqu'a present (La Haye, 1716).
Introduction to Vol. 9.
34. Buchenroeder, Eilende Messias Juden-Post, cited in Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical
Messiah 1626-1676 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 471.
35. Lotharius Franz Fried, Neupolierter und wohlgeschliffener Juden-Spiegel: Darinnen der Juden
greuliche Verstockung und Blindheit oo. und Ihre Falsche Messiasse 000 (Mainz, 1715). Fried
listed nine false Jewish messiahs, 17 ff.; he lavished the most space on Sabbatai, 31-38, and
concluded his section with the Antichrist, 56 ff.
36. Friederich Albrecht Christiani, Juden Glaube und Aberglaube (Leipzig, 1713), 65 ff.
37. Schudt, Judische, vol. 2: 62 described the devastation among the followers ofR Judah Hasid:
"viele wieder zuruck in Europam gekehrt [from Israel] deren ein gut Theil den christliche
glauben angenommen. Unter den letzteren dan auch Wolff Levi gewesen des gedachten R.
Judah Chasid Schwester Sohn aus Lublin burtig der zu Nordlingen u.c. 1707 getaufft und
Franciscus Lotharius Phillipi genandt worden." Eisenmenger, Entdecktes, 2:667 provides
another contemporary report of the Judah Hasid movement from a derisive persepective,
which I intend to analyze more fully in another venue.
38. On this convert see Deborah Hertz "Women at the Edge of Judaism: Female Converts in
Germany, 1600-1750," Jewish Assimilation, Acculturation and Accomodation ed. Menachem
Mor (Landam, Md.: University Press of America, 1990), 87, who cited the name as
Mordechai Schemaja from Le Roi. This convert's writings include Emunah hadasha she! ha-
Yehudim [in Hebrew]; oder, das neue Judenthum 000 denen Juden und Christen zu nutzlichem
Gebrauch ... entworffen (Onolzbach, 1735-1736); and Gespriich In dem Reiche der Todten uber
die Bibel und Talmud, Zwischen dem seeligen Herrn Doctor Luther und dem Beruhmten
JUdischen Ausleger, Namens Raschi, [oo.] Vols. 1-4 (Schwabach, 1737-1740).
39. Both Christiani and Theodore John mentioned the influence of Edzard in their decision to
convert. Wiirfel reported that a twenty-year old Berlin Jew who had been instructed by Edzard
in 1694 could not be baptized in Hamburg because the number of Jews preparing for baptism
138 E. Carlebach

under Edzard at that time was so great, that preference had to be given to the local Jews
wishing to convert. Those who came from other cities were sent elsewhere for the ceremony.
Andrea Wiirfel, Historische Nachrichten von der Juden-Gemeinde welche ehehin in der Reich-
stadt Nilrnberg angericht gewesen aber Ao 1499 ausgeschaffet worden (Niirnberg, 1755), 112b.
[Page numbers 111-112 are erroneously paginated twice, this is the second set.] Callenberg's
institute published an anonymous history of Sabbatai Zevi in the eighteenth century. Der
Erzbetrilger Sabbatai Sevi der falsche Messias der juden unter Leopold's I regierung ... (Halle,
1760). On Callenberg's institute and the Sabbatian connection, see Azriel Shohat, Beginnings
of the Haskalah Among German Jewry (Im Hilufe Tekufot) [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik,
1960), 175-182.
40. Sigismund Hosmann, Das Schwer zu bekehrende Juden-Hertz nebst einigen ... Mitteln zu der
Juden Bekehrung (Helmstadt, 1701). Pp. 74-104 are devoted to descriptions of Sabbatai's
movement.
41. Daniel Jacob Bon, Wolgemeintes Sendschreiben ... (Nordhausen, 1694), 20-34.
42. A list of converts from this period who stressed the centrality of the messiah for their
conversion would far exceed the space and scope of this note. Examples include Theodore
John, An Account of the Conversion of Theodore John, a late teacher among the Jews ... which he
delivered before he was baptized in the presence of the Lutheran congregation, 31 October 1692
trans/from high Dutch into English. London, 1693, 2; his account dwells on this subject alone
through page 42; Giitgen Steinhardin, Lebens - Geschichte und Glaubens - Bekenntnis
(Nuremberg, c. 1775), 5-6, "dass wir Juden schon iiber 1700 Jahre vergeblich auf den Messias
warteten, da Er doch wiirklich gekommen seye." Note also her prayers to "Herro Messias," 8
43. Bon, Wolgemeintes Sendschreiben, 3.
44. Christian Gerson, Des Jildischen Thalmuds filrnehmster Inhalt und Widerlegung (6th ed.,
Leipzig, 1698) 1:351. Gerson, converted in 1600, wrote this book in 1607. "Die Jiiden haben
etliche falsche Messias angenommen und sind dadurch betrogen worden," 350.
45. This passage is cited at length in Gottfried Selig, Der Jude, (1772) 9:23-29. He cited it from
Bodenschatz, 4: appendix 2, who cited it from the book of convert Friedrich Albrecht Augusti,
Geheimnisse der Juden von dem Sabbathjon, wie auch von den rothen Juden, 45. Augusti cites
this 'swindle' of the Jews from an oral report by his contemporary and fellow convert
Christoph Wallich. Wallich's pre-conversion Jewish occupation as cantor and scribe qualified
him as an authority, "who knew these things well."
46. Joseph of Rosheim: Historical Writings ed. Hava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt (Jerusalem: Magnes
Press, 1996), 296.
47. Curieuser Nachrichten aus dem Reich der Beschnittenen. This work was reprinted many times; I
have consulted the (Cana in Galilaa, 1737; Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1738) eds. "Erste
Unterredung. Zwischen Sabbatai Sevi einem in dem vorigen Seculo in den morganliindern
hochst-beriichtigt gesesenen Judis. Ertzbetriigerund dem fameusen Wiirtenbergischen Avan-
turier Jud Joseph Siiss Oppenheimer, worin dieser beider beschnittenen Spitzbuben Leben
und Begebenheiten entdeckt." Aside from Shabbatai Zevi, Oppenheimer was linked to other
famous local deceivers such as Jorg Honauer. Richard I. Cohen and Vivian B. Mann,
"Melding Worlds: Court Jews and the Arts of the Baroque," From Court Jews to the
Rothschilds 1600-1800 (Munich-New York: Prestel, 1996), 107, and to Isaac Nathan lscherlen,
222.
48. On the polemical uses of Sabbatian messianism against the Jews, see my "Sabbatianism and
the Jewish Christian Polemic," Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies
Division C, Volume 2 (Jerusalem, 1990), 1-7.
 E.R. WOLFSON

8. MESSIANISM IN THE CHRISTIAN KABBALAH

OF JOHANN KEMPER

11)}:::1 ')y O!lm 01N l'N

"A man is not to be blamed for his suffering."
- Rashi, Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 16a

A number of scholars have duly noted the complex and fascinating spiritual
odyssey of Moses ben Aaron Kohen of Cracow who became Johann Kemper of
Uppsala. 1 The story of Kemper's conversion to Christianity from Judaism in
the latter part of the seventeenth century would have been interesting enough,
but what adds to this intrigue is the fact that all of his compositions, which
were written in Hebrew in the early decades of the eighteenth century,
demonstrate beyond any doubt that he possessed complete mastery over
traditional Jewish learning of both an exoteric and an esoteric nature. Indeed,
the primary goal of Kemper's treatises was to establish the truths of
Christianity on the basis of Jewish sources, including most importantly the
classical work of medieval Jewish esotericism, the Zohar, to show that the
messianic faith of the Christians was in fact the truly ancient Kabbalah of
Judaism. The polemical aspiration of Kemper is stated clearly in his composi-
tions. Thus, on the title page to Kemper's first work, his Hebrew translation
and commentary to the Gospel of Matthew, which he called Me'irat 'Einayim,
his literary intent is well communicated:

Evangelium Matthrei, Jesus Christi Filii Dei Apostoli, Ex Syriaca in

Sanctam Hebraeam linguam terse, polite & luculenter versum, non vero ut
pridem in hanc translatum habetur. Porro, ut ex collatione Novre & Veteris
Legis, Mosis nimirum Prophetarum & Hagiographorum, de earundem
similitudine & harmonia constaret; fini ejus brevis commentarius adjectus
est, titulo 0')')} 111'NY.) Illuminatio Oculorum, quo validis, ab ipsis Talmu-
dicis Doctoribus, aliisque religionis Judaicre Explanatoribus & Mystis
petitis argumentis. 2

139
M. Go/dish and R.H Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 139-187.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
140 E. R. Wolfson

In the first part of his massive commentary on the Zohar composed in 1711
to which he gave the two names Ma{!eh Mosheh and Maqqel Yaaqov, 3 Kemper
explains: "I have passed through the river of the Zohar to gather from its
statements here and there, and they will be joined together, 4 and I divided them
into three chapters, the first is the chapter on the Trinity, 5 the second is the
chapter on the Messiah in his divinity, and the third is the chapter on Metatron,
and he is in essence that very Messiah in his embodiment, to show the nations
and the rulers through a speculum that shines that all that had a monument
and a name 6 in the ancient tradition (qabbalah yeshenah) was for them an
inheritance from the generations, and it is the essence of the faith that is
submerged and planted today amongst the Christians in the matter of the
Messiah:' 7 Similarly, in the introduction to the second part of this anthology of
zoharic passages, which Kemper called Beria~ ha-Tikhon, he writes: "This
treatise fastens, strengthens, and fortifies the first edifice, and it seals the doors
of its gates, so that the Jews may not open their mouth against the faith of the
Christians, which is a tradition (qabbalah), an ancient teaching (limmud yashan
noshan), and a heritage (masoret) in the hands of our ancestors, the holy fathers,
masters of the tradition (ba'alei ha-qabbalah), and this doctrine (halakhah) is
established on golden stones, viscous stones in the unfathomable founda-
tions." 8 The point is reiterated in the third part of this anthology, Qarsei ha-
Mishkan, in a passage wherein Kemper offers an explanation for his choice of
title: "For just as the hooks of the Tabernacle were luminous like the stars these
zoharic passages will illumine all those who read them so that they will see
through a speculum that shines that the messianic faith is a true faith, and it is
ancient." 9 Finally, the same idea is expressed in the introduction to the last part
of this composition, Leqe~ he- 'Ani, wherein Kemper explains that after
completing the translation of and commentary on Matthew, his intent was to
translate all of the New Testament. However, he was persuaded by some ofthe
learned men around him to disclose the secrets hidden in kabbalistic books in
order to strengthen the faith of Christians. 10
With respect to the effort of utilizing Jewish esoteric lore, and specifically the
Zohar, to substantiate the Jewish roots of the basic theological dogmas of
Christianity, one might argue, Kemper shared the strategy that was adopted by
Christian kabbalists of Renaissance Italy. 11 Following the pioneering research
of Chaim Wirszubski, we may distinguish two patterns of Christian Kabbalah:
The utilization of older Jewish esoteric teachings to confirm truths articulated
by Christianity, and the Christianizing application of kabbalistic methods of
interpretation to construct new ideas and symbols. 12 It seems to me, however,
that, in the final analysis, the latter pattern is a species of the former, and thus
we can speak of one overall agenda that informs Christian Kabbalah. Indeed, it
is necessary to contextualize the latter in the larger development of the
Christian attempt to subvert Judaism by means of appropriating it, 13 a process
that can be charted in three distinct stages: The first (evident already in the
New Testament and Patristic writings) is restricted to the use of Hebrew
Scripture to prove the truths of Christianity; the second (which becomes more
conspicuous in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries due to the increase in
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 141

Jewish apostasy) is focused on the use of Talmud to achieve this end; and the
third (which is a central component of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
although it clearly had an earlier historical manifestation) relates to the use of
Kabbalah as confirmation of the Christological presuppositions. 14
In a fundamental way, however, Kemper is different from notable Christian
humanists who availed themselves of the esoteric lore of Kabbalah such as
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 15 Johannes Reuchlin, 16 and Paul Ricci. 17
Kemper's rabbinic background imposed upon him the need to preserve the
nomian framework of Kabbalah even as he sought to undermine that frame-
work by proving the truths of Christianity on the basis of traditional texts.
Consequently, in contrast to the typical profile of the Christian kabbalists,
including a figure like Guillaume Postel who affirmed a form of Christian
Judaism (as opposed to Jewish Christianity) predicated on the belief that
Christianity must be true to its origins in the Mosaic law, 18 Kemper upheld
the theurgical nature of the kabbalistic symbols that he appropriated in his
effort to demonstrate the truths of Christianity in the esoteric teachings of
Judaism. 19 The literary works composed by Kemper display an astonishing
blend of rabbinic halakhah, aggadah, and Christian spirituality, and the bridge
that links the two spheres of religious discourse is the theosophic orientation
derived primarily from the zoharic corpus. 20 With great exegetical ease and
remarkable flights of speculative fancy, Kemper reinterprets halakhah and
aggadah through the lens of Kabbalah illuminated in a Christological light.
The intricate weaving of these different strands is reflected in Kemper's
somewhat unusual messianic stance as well, which is the primary focus of this
study.
To state my thesis at the outset: According to Kemper, the esoteric import of
Christian messianism cannot be fully appreciated unless one has a grasp on the
history of rabbinic culture as it was expressed particularly in the mystical
tradition. Beyond trying to persuade Jews of the truths of Christianity, Kemper
is implicitly privileging one whose religious path mirrors his own. 21 His works,
therefore, can be seen not only as an ongoing attempt at self-legitimization, but
as a more subtle affirmation of the Jewish orientation regarding the innate
superiority of the Jew as the real Israel who possesses the knowledge of the
truth, which encompasses the primary principles of the Christian faith, to wit,
the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Word, and the divinity of the
Messiah. 22 Alternatively expressed, Kemper is committed to the belief that
from its inception Christianity is illustrative of the esoteric truth of Judaism,
which is most clearly articulated in the Zohar. We might say, then, that, for
Kemper, the open secret of Christianity is the esoteric truth of Judaism and the
concealed disclosure of Judaism is the exoteric truth of Christianity. Both Jews
and Christians must heed Kemper's arguments. The messianic task of Kemper
was to cultivate a religious philosophy that would simultaneously foster a
Jewish Christianity for the Jews and a Christian Judaism for the Christians. 23
With respect to this project Kemper clearly was indebted to the bold
hermeneutic of the Sabbatian form of Kabbalah, which pushed the halakhic
tradition to its limit by narrowing the gap separating the sacred and the profane
142 E.R. Wolfson

(a point to which I shall return), but it fit in as well with the larger cultural
patterns of his historical moment and geographical setting attested in the post-
Reformation fraternities ofneo-Rosicrucians and Freemasons, which loosened
considerably the boundaries between Judaism and Christianity, in large
measure due to the interest of these occult fraternities in Jewish esotericism. 24
Many examples could be adduced to illustrate the claim that I have made,
but for the purposes of this study it would be wise to begin with one that deals
with an issue that divided the religious orientation of Jews and Christians from
very early on in their complex mutual histories, the rite of bodily circumcision.
In a passage from Beria~ ha-Tikhon, Kemper interprets one of the zoharic
explications25 of the rite of circumcision. 26 The thrust of the original passage is
that circumcision entails the inscription of the Tetragrammaton as the sign of
the covenant upon the flesh of the Jewish male, which corresponds to the
phallic gradation of the supernal anthropos, the attribute of Yesod. 27 The
zoharic authorship speaks as well of the supernal waters flowing down upon
the sign of the covenant, which justifies the attribution of the term "living soul"
(nefesh ~ayyah) to the baby who has been circumcised. As a consequence of the
circumcision of the penis, the baby Jewish boy receives the divine overflow
from the channel in the sefirotic realm. Additionally, a connection is made
between that sign and the foreskin, on the one hand, and the distinction
between pure and impure animals that Israel can or cannot eat, on the other.
That is to say, the foreskin corresponds to the demonic potency, which is
related to the impure animals, and the sign that is manifest after the removal of
the foreskin corresponds to the divine potency, which is related to the pure
animals.
Kemper elaborates in a Christological manner on these themes and notes
that the supernal waters mentioned in the Zohar refer to the waters of baptism,
the primary means through which one gains access to God. Echoing an archaic
theme of Jewish esotericism, Kemper notes that circumcision is the inscribed
letter or sign ( 'ot rashum, which is the Hebrew translation of the zoharic
rendering of the biblical 'ot berit, the "sign of the covenant," as 'at rashima'),
which is related to the Tetragrammaton. To hear the resonance of the Jewish
esoteric tradition in Kemper's words, one must bear in mind the convergence
of anthropomorphic imagery and linguistic symbolism, which is a prominent
feature of the kabbalistic orientation in its various historical manifestations. 28
The identification of the phallic Yesod as YHWH, which is the inner essence of
the Torah, points dramatically to this convergence, for the flesh of the penis- at
times signified simply as basar, the "flesh" - is constituted by the twenty-two
letters that are comprised within the four letters of the name.Z 9 The Christolo-
gical reading proffered by Kemper ensues from a splitting of the symbolic
image and its somatic reflection, that is, he separates the inscription of the
carnal sign of circumcision and the marking of the spiritual sign of baptism. 30
The baptismal mark is characterized further as the "sign of truth" ( 'ot 'emet), an
"inner, spiritual sign" ( 'ot penimi ru~ani) that replaces circumcision of the flesh
(milat ha-basar). From other passages in Kemper's compositions, however, we
may posit that he identified the biblical notion of the sign, associated with the
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 143

rainbow revealed to Noah, 31 the head and arm phylacteries, 32 and the
Sabbath, 33 as the Messiah. Analogously, the sign of circumcision inscribed on
the flesh alludes symbolically to the messianic figure, 34 an allusion that is
transferred to the rite of baptism, the circumcision of the spirit that displaces
that of the flesh. 35 As a result of the baptismal immersion, therefore, rather
than the carving of the semiotic sign on the body, the person is truly called the
"living soul." Kemper notes, moreover, that when the carnal sign of circumci-
sion is removed, the distinction between Israel and the nations with respect to
prohibited and permitted animals will be abrogated since that distinction first
arose as a result of the sign of circumcision. Kemper incorporates the Pauline
perspective inasmuch as he views the rite of circumcision as a cut that binds
together Jewish males into one covenantal community, but in the process
separates the members of this community from the rest of humanity. As a
consequence of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the covenant of the
circumcision of the flesh, the ontic unity of the central point is severed into
polar opposites, the holy corona and the sordid foreskin. 36 By contrast, the
waters of baptism erase the inscription of carnal difference in the spirit of one
flesh, which facilitates the investiture of the name in the body of Christ.
Needless to say, the notion that circumcision of the flesh will be nullified by
baptism is not apparent in the zoharic text, but Kemper presents this
Christological position as if it were the standard kabbalistic teaching.
What is so remarkable in Kemper's thinking is the exegetical link he forges
between the overcoming of Jewish ritual and the presentation of that ritual in
the symbolic language of zoharic Kabbalah. Thus, Kemper focuses on the
custom mentioned in the Zohar regarding the throne of Elijah that is set up at
the ceremony of the rite of circumcision. In spite of the fact that this was a
widespread Jewish practice in his day, Kemper laments that the "deranged
Jews" (ha-yehudim me!orafei da'at) do not discern that "by way of secret" ('a/
derekh sod) the figure of Elijah alludes to the Messiah, for he is the "righteous
Lord," the "archon of peace," the "angel of the covenant," who established and
fulfilled the promise that God made to Adam regarding the seed of woman
trampling the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15), which refers more specifically to
the demonic potency psychically anchored in the phallic impulse to extend and
to overflow. The force of Kemper's logic is that Jewish ritual, particularly as it
is understood in the kabbalistic tradition, reflects the Christological truth that
Jews reject. The Jewish people, therefore, preserve a religious custom whose
meaning escapes them. The argument comes full circle when Kemper writes:
"Know that Elijah numerically is fifty-two (J.)))), which refers to the son (p),
that is, the son of God. But the Jews do not understand, and they do not want
to know such matters." 37 In a similar vein, in Maqqel Ya'aqov, Kemper
interprets the nexus between the Tetragrammaton, circumcision, and cleaving
to the divine attribute called ~addiq (the righteous one) in the Zohar, as a clear
indication that the Kabbalah affirms that the ultimate purpose of circumcision
is to facilitate the act of conjunction with God. Through a clever exegetical
move, related especially to the verse "And your people, all of them righteous,
shall possess the land for all time; they are the shoot that I planted, my
144 E.R. Wolfson

handiwork in which I glory" (I sa. 60:21 ), Kemper concludes that righteousness

is linked especially to Israel's recognition of and attachment to Christ, an idea
that is based on the play of words between ne~er, "shoot," and no~ri,
"Christian." Hence, the mystical rationale for circumcision is to occasion the
union of the soul with Jesus, the everlasting sign of the covenant who bears the
ineffable name. 38 As Kemper puts it in one context, Jesus is the "portion in
which the child is implanted through the covenant of circumcision." 39 The
spiritual interpretation supersedes the literal, but the former is discernible in
the latter to one who has eyes to see and ears to hear.
Along these lines, in Qarsei ha-Mishkan, Kemper interprets the zoharic
claim 40 that by means of circumcision one is bound to the supernal king as an
affirmation of the idea that one is conjoined to Jesus, who is symbolized by the
letter waw, through circumcision. 41 For Kemper, therefore, circumcision of the
flesh on the part of male Jews can facilitate the attainment of the spiritual ideal
of Christian faith. The point is made rather poignantly in 'Avodat ha-Qodesh:
"After the circumcision the Holy Spirit comes to the child, and then he is
implanted in Jesus the Messiah, for he is the image and the icon through which
the primordial Adam was created." 42 In the continuation of this passage,
Kemper goes on to say that the Jewish rite of circumcision created a division
between Israel and the nations, which is overcome by the covenant of baptism
(berit ha-{evilah) that results in a cutting away of the foreskin of the heart and
the removal of the spirit of impurity from all people. Notwithstanding the
predictable privileging of Christian baptism over Jewish circumcision, it is
instructive that Kemper explains the latter in terms of receiving the Holy Spirit
and being bound to Jesus, which are associated with the former. 43
The specific example of circumcision is illustrative of the more general
position that Kemper takes with regard to the status of Jewish ritual in both
its legalistic and conventional aspects, halakhah and minhag. That is, Kemper
offers a symbolic interpretation of ceremonial practices, even though he
accepts the standard Christian critique of the letter of the law (traceable to
Paul) and urges his Jewish readers to recognize that it has been surpassed by
the spirit of the new covenant. 44 In his own language: "Thus the essence of the
rationale for the ritual commandments, which have been abrogated and
nullified in the New Testament, is that all of them were merely an image (defus)
and a shadow (~el) of that which was to come. For example, the fringes of the
garments 45 allude to the garments of righteousness, 46 the garments of salva-
tion; the phylacteries of the head and the arm47 allude to the inscribed sign,
which is the Messiah ... the cloth combining two kinds of material, the mixed
seed, and the mating of animals [of a different species] 48 allude to the
injunction not to serve two masters, 49 Jesus and Satan." 5° Kemper's main
effort is to remove the stumbling block that prevents Jews from believing in the
truths of the New Testament, which he thinks is related to the implicit
antinomianism of the Christian viewpoint. "The essence of their rejection of
the belief in the New Testament is on account of their opinion that the
commandments are abrogated. If they contemplate these compositions clearly
they will discover and comprehend that all of them were an image and a
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 145

likeness, and in the place where there is the essence of the form there is no need
for the transient image and shadow." 51 Kemper's position on this matter is the
classical typological argument, for the law of the Old Testament is viewed as a
prefiguration of the fuller spiritual reality that is disclosed in the New
Testament, and hence once one apprehends the true form there is no need to
preserve the appearance. Nevertheless, there is a distinctive twist to Kemper's
presentation, for the polemical strategy that he adopts to convince the Jews is
to argue that the commandments possess an enduring spiritual value but that
this is only detectable by heeding the messianic teaching of Jesus, which is itself
an ancient and venerable tradition. 52 Just as Jesus, who was both divine and
human, came to fulfill rather than to abolish the entire Torah, 53 which is
encapsulated in the two commandments, 54 to love God with all one's heart,
soul, and might 55 and to love one's neighbor as oneself, 56 so every Jew who
believes in the messianic calling of Jesus can fulfill the Torah in its entirety. 57
The point is underscored in Kemper's interpretation of the zoharic claim 5 8 that
salt used in sacrificial offerings (Lev. 2: 13) had the role of sweetening the
bitterness of judgment as a reference to the fact that had the Gospel not been
given the Torah of Moses could not have endured on account of the bitterness
of the punishments and curses contained therein. The New Testament functions
as the salt that sweetens the bitterness of the Old Testament - an image that is
meant, no doubt, to convey the idea that the New Testament is the preservative
that protects the flesh of the Old Testament from petrifaction - and thereby
facilitates the possibility that the Jew can execute all the obligations imposed
upon him by God. 5 9 Conversely, the awareness that the commandments are to
be interpreted typologically would promote the acceptance of the New
Testament on the basis of the simple logic that if the rituals are merely an
image of the true form, then once one possesses the former the latter is
necessarily confirmed as well. 60 In order to make this argument cogently,
however, it is necessary for Kemper to extol the symbolic virtue of the
commandments. The symbolic element is discernible only to one who knows
the kabbalistic literature, which in turn is rooted in classical rabbinic texts.
Only one with intimate knowledge of rabbinic tradition, therefore, could
mount the argument proffered by Kemper with rhetorical success. As another
illustration of Kemper's approach, I cite the following passage that elaborates
on the identification of Jesus as the Sabbath61 and as the sign of circumcision,
the central pillar62 hidden as the single point in the middle of the circle:

Sabbath and circumcision both instruct about the single point, the con-
cealed of the concealed, which is Jesus the Messiah 63 ... and [concerning]
this they said in the Talmud 64 that if Israel kept one Sabbath as is
appropriate the Messiah would surely come to them immediately. If the
Jews would accept this Lord of Sabbath ('adon ha-shabbat), 65 they surely
would believe that the Messiah has already come to them, and they would
not wait for another. They also alluded to him in the three types oflabor that
they prohibited on the Sabbath, that is, the prototypes of labor ( 'avot
146 E.R. Wolfson

mela'khot), which instruct about God the Father, the offspring of God, the
Son who is born from the Father by means of the Holy Spirit, according to
the belief of the Christians, and the third, which they prohibited on account
of rest, instructs about the labor of the Holy Spirit, for it rests and reposes in
the heart of man, and it rests and nullifies the labor of Satan .... By way of
secrecy ( 'al derekh nistar) this is in order that they do not create division or
separation in this Trinity ... and this itself is the secret of the three meals on
Sabbath .... "For in six days the Lord made [heaven and earth]" (Exod.
31: 17) .... Jesus is called amongst the masters of tradition (ba'alei qabbalah)
the sixth day 66 on account of the fact that he is preparation for the
Sabbath. 67 He who believes in him enters into the eternal life, which is
entirely Sabbath68 . . . . They said, moreover, that these six days instruct
about the six sejirot, that is, Keter, lfokhmah, Gedullah, Ne!fa~, Tif'eret, Yesod
Malkhut. Malkhut is the seventh when one counts in this way, although in
the correct order she is the tenth. These sejirot are all from the right and
amongst them is the central pillar. 69

To the best of my knowledge, this form of argumentation is not character-

istic of the Christian kabbalists; it is distinctive to a figure like Kemper who
was capable of living with one foot in both worlds. Even other Jewish apostates
who utilized kabbalistic symbolism to advocate on behalf of Christianity, such
as Ludovico Carretto, 70 do not exemplify this tendency. The polemical tool
employed by Kemper may be stated in the following way: Subversion of the
tradition was possible only by recapitulating the tradition. This posture is
exemplified, for instance, in Kemper's comment in another passage in Beria~
ha-Tikhon that all those who believe in Jesus "are called Israel (yisra'el), the just
ones (ha-yesharim) who believe and have faith in the just God ('el yashar), and
He brought these ones out from the iron furnace, the side of impurity, and they
ascended to the Son, which is the Shekhinah. This is alluded to in the
commandments of circumcision and the paschal sacrifice." 71 The true nature
of Israel- what it means to be a Jew in the spiritual as opposed to the carnal
sense- is linked to the belief in the just God, that is, Jesus, who is also identified
with the kabbalistic symbol of the Shekhinah, for the letters ofthe wordyisra'el
(7Nl\D)) are transposed into the expression 'el yashar (l\D) 7N). 72 Just as the
Father elevates the Son from the material world, an idea that Kemper links to
the zoharic interpretation of the sheep slaughtered as a sacrifice when the
Israelites departed from Egypt as a sign that God lifts the Shekhinah and the
Jewish people out of the land of impurity, 73 so each individual Jew can be lifted
out of a state of unholiness by accepting the messianic status of Jesus, which is
expressed especially in his suffering the pain of the inherent limitations of the
physical world.
Affirmation of this belief, however, need not entail a complete nullification
of the Torah. On the contrary, appropriating the Johannine tradition, which
itself was likely based on earlier Jewish sources of a Palestinian provenance, 74
Kemper explicitly identifies the Messiah as the incarnation of the Word, the
"mystery of the bread of the New Testament" (sod le~em berit ~adashah). 75 In
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 147

the synoptic tradition, Jesus describes the bread of the Last Supper as his body;
hence, the ritual act of breaking the bread is symbolic of the dissemination of
the master's being to his disciples. 76 In the Gospel of John, this tradition is
transformed into the identification of the body of Jesus as the bread of life that
descends from heaven, i.e., the Word of God made flesh, which is symbolized
by the actual bread on the table that is distributed by the master to the
disciples. 77 Heeding the original ceremonial context for the narrative about
the Last Supper, Kemper characterizes Jesus more specifically as the "bread of
affliction" (le~em 'oni), 78 the unleavened bread consumed by Jews at the
Passover seder as a reminder that the Israelites departed hurriedly from
Egypt. 79 Subsequently, I shall return to Kemper's interpretation of the central
symbolic association of Jesus and the unleavened bread of the Passover ritual,
but for the moment the important point to emphasize is the fact that underlying
this association is the Christological presumption regarding the portrayal of
Jesus as the Torah. 80
Kemper extends this older notion by linking Jesus symbolically to the
holiday of Pentecost, the fiftieth day after Passover, which in the rabbinic
imagination celebrates the giving of Torah at Sinai. 81 Having identified Jesus in
this manner, Kemper is able to apply the kabbalistic interpretation of
Pentecost to the Messiah. That is, according to the theosophic symbolism that
Kemper elicits from the zoharic anthology, Pentecost is linked to the third of
the ten gradations, 82 which is called most frequently Binah, the attribute of
God's understanding, an identification that is based in part on the fact that
Pentecost is the fiftieth day from Passover and there are (according to one
rabbinic tradition) 83 fifty gates of understanding. 84 This gradation, moreover,
is depicted frequently in the Zohar and other kabbalistic literature by the
symbol of the mother. 85 Hence, the identification of Jesus and the Torah, and
the further linkage of the Torah and Pentecost, facilitates the correlation of
Jesus and Pentecost, which is interpreted in light of the kabbalistic association
of Pentecost and the maternal symbol of Binah. 86 Furthermore, in the zoharic
symbology, attested in other kabbalistic sources as well, the attribute of Binah
is allied with themes related to both the messianic redemption and the
eschatological future; 87 indeed, one of the standard designations of this
gradation is 'olam ha-ba,' the world-to-come, which is glossed as the world that
comes perpetually. 88 From the standpoint of the theosophic symbolism
developed especially in the zoharic corpus, the messianic moment will consist
of the opening of the womb of Binah, which is portrayed in terms of the
aforementioned image of the fifty gates, a process that reflects the theosophic
dynamic that ensued in the exodus from Egypt. 89 The role of Binah in the
messianic drama is also related to the images of the fiftieth year of the Jubilee 90
(here the holiday of Pentecost is obviously relevant as well insofar as it
symbolizes the spiritual freedom that is attained fifty days after Passover,
which celebrates the initial deliverance 91 ) and the supernal ram's horn (shofar),
which signifies liberation from bondage. 92 The eschatological restoration, by
contrast, is portrayed as the return to the womb of the mother, a theme that is
expressed by the traditional notion of teshuvah, "repentance," or literally the
148 E.R. Wolfson

"turning back." 93 From the standpoint of this analysis what is critical is that
the merging of kabbalistic and Christological symbols lead Kemper to a
fascinating application of the image of motherhood to Jesus. 94
In several other contexts in his writings, Kemper reiterates and explains this
symbolism in slightly different terms. For instance, in Qarsei ha-Mishkan,
Kemper cautions the reader "not to be astonished that in the Kabbalah the
Messiah is called 'mother,' that is, like the bird who hovers over his fledglings,
and he guards them beneath his wings so that the bat does not come to devour
them, and thus Jesus behaved . .. . This is the way of the secret of 'Let the
mother go' (Deut. 22:7), that is, the Messiah, for he came for the purpose of
guarding his fledglings from every trouble and evil affiiction." 95 In another
passage from this composition, Kemper remarks that the "great secret"
concerning the fact that the masters of the tradition (ba'alei qabbalah) called
the Messiah "mother" is related to the idea (derived exegetically from Zohar
2:213b) that he gives birth to new souls. 96 Elsewhere Kemper identifies Jesus as
Wisdom or the Word, which is related to the second rather than the third of the
ten sefirot, and by virtue of this function Jesus produces and sustains every-
thing that is created in the manner of a mother that gives birth and nourishes
an infant. 97 For our purposes it is not necessary to attempt a resolution of these
ostensibly conflicting explanations. What is far more important to the discus-
sion of Kemper's hybrid of kabbalistic and Christological messianism is the
fact that the adaptation of the kabbalistic symbolism facilitates the application
of feminine images to Jesus, 98 a position that is reflected as well in the
identification of Jesus as the Shekhinah, as we have already noted in passing. 99
For Kemper the ascription of feminine symbols to Jesus is of supreme
theological significance insofar as it articulates in a metaphorical way the
foundational dogma of Christian faith, the belief in the incarnation of the
divine in the flesh of a mortal human being. 100 The key to this unique turn in
the path of Kemper's thought is the assumption that the Kabbalah preserves a
rudimentary truth about the ancient Christian belief regarding the nature of
the Messiah as the embodiment of the Torah. 101 The principle of faith
articulated in the Gospel of the fourth evangelist, the embodiment ofthe Word,
which is at the same time the investiture of the name, in the flesh of Jesus, is
understood as an expression of the suffering of the Messiah. The point is
underscored in the following passage in Maqqel Ya'aqov wherein Kemper
remarks that the characterization of Jesus as the son must be complimented
by that of the daughter:

"Son" and "daughter" are mentioned with respect to that supernal grada-
tion. He is called "son" when he sits to the right of the Father. "[The Lord
established his throne in heaven,] and his sovereign rule is over all" (Ps.
103:19), before him "every knee shall bow down" (Isa. 45:23), and then he is
the son that inherits the property of his father .... Do not be astonished by
the fact that he is contained in the name "mother" and that of the "son," for
with respect to the ten sefirot as well he is comprised in the right side and
that of the left, Ifokhmah on the right and Binah on the left. He is called
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 149

"daughter" when he descends to the earth, "impoverished and riding a

donkey" (Zech. 9:9) 102 ... then his power is weakened like a female, and
with regard to this aspect it is possible to apply to him the name "daughter,"
that is, the daughter does not inherit in the place of the son .... For that very
reason he is called as well Ze'eir 'Anpin, for he diminished and lowered
himself to bear the sufferings on behalf of human beings to atone for their
sins. 103

The mystery of Jesus assuming bodily form for the sake of atoning for
human transgressions is framed more specifically in terms of the archetypal
symbols of mother and daughter appropriated from the language of the
Kabbalah. Most interestingly, Kemper interprets the zoharic idiom, Ze'eir
'Anpin, literally, the "small face" (qe;;;ar 'appayim), as referring to the feminine
aspect of Jesus, for in his view this expression denotes the diminishing of his
stature by entering the corporeal world, which is set against the exalted state
when he is enthroned to the right of God in the heavenly abode. 104 The upper
status of divine wisdom, therefore, is related to the metaphorical image of the
son occupying a throne alongside the throne of glory, whereas the lower status,
the incarnation of wisdom in the garment of the material world, is expressed by
the image of the daughter whose impoverishment is represented by the
prophetic image of the messianic king riding on a donkey. 105 In Maqqel
Ya'aqov, Kemper attributes the title Ze'eir 'Anpin to Metatron on account of
the fact that "he diminished himself.'" 06 To appreciate this comment it is
necessary to bear in mind that Kemper repeatedly notes in his compositions
that Metatron is Jesus (indeed, as I noted above, the third part of Maqqel
Ya'aqov is called sha'ar me!a!ron). 107 This identification stems from the fact that
in the kabbalistic texts themselves Metatron is characterized both as the glory
of God and as the highest angel. 108 This dual role is appropriated by Kemper
to express an ancient Christian belief regarding the status of Jesus as the
glorified angel, that is, the angel who is the divine glory. 109 From the
Christological vantagepoint this implies that the glory is embodied in the form
of an angel manifest in the world. 110 The technical designation of God as Ze'eir
'Anpin is another way of conveying this basic idea of Jesus humbling himself by
assuming the corruptible form of a physical body.
Along similar lines, Kemper interprets the zoharic passage regarding the
augmentation in the supernal world of the one who diminishes himself in this
world 111 as a reference to the mystery of the incarnation by means of which
Jesus lowers himself into the material world, culminating in his being bound to
the cross of the crucifixion. 112 Interestingly, Kemper associates the words
attributed to the head of the academy in the aforementioned zoharic text, "the
one who is small is great, and the one who is great is small," 113 with the words
ascribed to Jesus, "whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever
humbles himself will be exalted.'' 114 The pietistic virtue of humility is thus
linked to the incarnational theology. 115 For Kemper, this mystery entails the
feminine transposition of Jesus, which is signified by the technical term ze'eir
'anpin. In recent years, it has been suggested that the symbol of Ze'eir 'Anpin in
150 E.R. Wolfson

some kabbalistic sources from the period of the Zohar (late-thirteenth and
early-fourteenth centuries) denoted the feminine Shekhinah, which was con-
trasted with the masculine potency designated as 'Arikh 'Anpin, literally, the
"long face," and metaphorically, the "long-suffering one." 116 Curiously, it
appears that Kemper's Christological orientation led him to recover what
may have been the original intent of this symbolic locution. In another context,
Kemper explains this secret by reflecting on a distinction in the Zohar between
the name "Israel," which signifies the head and the masculine, and the name
"Jacob," which signifies the heel and the feminine. 117 According to Kemper,
both names refer to Jesus, the former to his elevated status as the Son of God
seated to the right of the Father, and the latter to his diminished status as a
human being in this world, which is depicted by the image of the daughter. As
Kemper is quick to point out, the feminine depiction of Jesus does not mean
that he was anatomically female, but it suggests that from the perspective of the
hierarchy of gender values (relative to a specific cultural context) in his
weakened state he can be referred to as female. 118
The specifically Jewish character of the tradition regarding the incarnation
of Jesus is highlighted in another passage wherein Kemper demonstrates his
astonishing exegetical prowess by interpreting the biblical notion of the two
loaves of bread connected to sacrifices as a reference to the rabbinic dual
Torah: The Written Torah refers to the Old Testament and the Oral Torah to
the New Testament. 119 In a bold move, Kemper applies the rabbinic notion of
the Oral Torah to the Johannine doctrine of Jesus as the incarnation of the
Word. 120 Thus, for example, Kemper comments on the following zoharic
reading of the verse describing the action of Moses at Marah on behalf of the
Israelites who complained that they could not drink the bitter water, "So he
cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, and he threw it into the
water and the water became sweet" (Exod. 15:25): "There tree is naught but the
Torah, as it is written, 'It is a tree of life to those who grasp it' (Prov. 3: 18), and
the Torah is naught but the blessed holy One ... and when the splendor of the
glory of their king was upon them, then 'he threw it into the water and the
water became sweet' ": 121

"'The water became sweet,' this is the Messiah, and he is also called there
the Tree of Life, 122 and here he is initially called Torah, that is, the Word of
the Lord ... concerning him it is said in the apostle John, 'In the beginning
was the Word' (Jn. 1:1), for the Torah comes forth from him, 123 and, in
particular, the Oral Torah, that is, the Torah of comfort (tarat nehamah), the
Gospel, 124 and he is called here the blessed holy One." 125 .

Reiterating this theme, Kemper notes in another passage. "And this is what
is said, moreover, 'There is no good but the Torah 126 ... this is the Word and
the Oral Torah, as is known, and concerning him it says 'For I have given
you a good instruction' (Prov. 4:2), for he was given to humanity in his
descent to earth as atonement for sin and expiation for transgression." 127
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 151

The nexus that Kemper establishes between the Gospel and the Oral Torah is
predicated on the portrayal of the Logos in the Fourth Gospel. That is, the
Gospel is the Oral Torah, for the latter is the Word that is incarnate in the flesh
of Jesus so that he might atone for the sins of humankind in the corporeal
world. In this respect, the Oral Torah in its true spiritual sense is a Torah of
comfort, for the suffering of Jesus in his assuming material form alleviates the
suffering of human beings by providing a mechanism for forgiveness. In
another comment, Kemper makes explicit the pharasaic/rabbinic underpin-
ning of the identification of Jesus and the Oral Torah, which figures promi-
nently in his interpretation of the doctrine of incarnation: "He is the Oral
Torah. That is, the teaching of the Gospel that Jesus spoke orally, and he is
verily the one about whom it says that the world was created through him (Jn.
1:3), that is, the Word of the Lord, which is better than sapphire stone." 128 Such
a symbolic interpretation would have been unthinkable for the standard
exponents of Christian Kabbalah. Only one who had lived within the nomian
framework of halakhah could identify the foundational text of rabbinic law, the
Oral Torah, as the New Testament or the Gospel, which, in Kemper's own
view, espouses a perspective that is decidedly beyond the nomos.
Kemper draws an unambiguous distinction between the Talmud, or the Oral
Torah of the rabbis, and the genuine Oral Torah, which is the word spoken by
Jesus. Utilizing a passage in the Zohar wherein it is emphasized that the Oral
Torah is constructed out of the Written Torah, 129 Kemper points out that the
Talmud cannot be considered the true Oral Torah since its foundation is laid on
the sand of the sharp-wittedness of the rabbinic minds rather than on the solid
base of an oral exposition of Scripture as we find in the case of the Gospel. 130
"This Torah was spoken orally by the Messiah to all the patriarchs and to the
true prophets, and it was as clear as the sun, but they were commanded to write
it in a hidden way that would have to be explained orally to the masses, and
especially the teaching of the Gospel that the holy mouth spoke to you. This
secret may be revealed, but to others it must be by way ofparable 131 that needs
a commentary, and this is the true, just, and correct Oral Torah." 132 The
critique against the rabbinic Oral Torah is expressed by Kemper in another
passage based on a contrast made in the Ra'aya' Meheimna' section of the
Zohar between the superior position of the masters of the tradition, ma'arei
qabbalah, and the masters of the attributes, ma'arei middot, who are from the
side of the Tree of Life, and the rest of the people who are from the side of the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is characterized by the moral
duality of good and evil and the halakhic dichotomy of permissible and
prohibited. 133 In Kemper's own formulation, a distinction must be made
between the oral tradition of the Pharisees and the "just Oral Torah" (torah
she-be- 'al peh yesharah), which is the "teaching of the Gospel" (torat 'even
gillayon) or the "messianic Torah" (tarat ha-mashia~). 134
The insistence on Kemper's part that the Gospel is the authentic Oral Torah,
for it is an exposition of the Written Torah, underscores the extent to which he
affirms the dialectical relationship that pertains between the two Testaments.
The Gospel represents a departure from the Torah, but this departure itself is
152 E.R. Wolfson

encoded in the symbolic intent of the Torah, which is disclosed through the
scriptural exegesis of the Gospel, which Kemper identifies as real Oral Torah
and as the wisdom of the Kabbalah that was revealed by Simeon ben Yol).ai.
According to Kemper, halakhah le-mosheh mi-sinai, the idiom employed by
rabbinic authorities to designate ritual forms of behavior presumably revealed
orally to Moses at Sinai, 135 denotes the teaching of the Gospel transmitted
verbally by Jesus. 136 What Jesus taught is the torah she-be- 'al peh, the teaching
passed on by word of mouth, which is the halakhah given to Moses at Sinai. By
receiving the Mosaic tradition, therefore, one is infused with the messianic
spirit, an infusion that helps one envision the laws of Scripture as venturing
beyond the limit of its circumscription. The paradox of the identification of the
New Testament as the Oral Torah, which is the interpretation of the Written
Torah, evokes the recognition that in some instances violation of the law may
be the only appropriate means to fulfill it, an idea expressed in talmudic
literature itself in the saying attributed to Reish Laqish, pe'amim she-biyulah
she! torah zehu yesodah, "There are occasions when the nullification of the
Torah is its foundation." 137 It lies beyond the scope of this study to discuss in
detail the theme of the law extending beyond its limits in Judaism, a
phenomenon to which I refer by the term "hypernomianism," but suffice it to
say that within the classical rabbinic corpus the long-standing tradition of
breaking away from tradition 138 is well attested, and thus adherence to the law
may require an infraction of the law. Simply put, Kemper well understood that
the insight that the law is preserved only by its being transcended, which is
expressed in the claim of the New Testament that Jesus came not to abolish but
to fulfill the law, 139 is itself rooted in the rabbinic interpretation of the law.
Certainly, Kemper's hypernomianism is related more specifically to his
understanding of the universal and spiritual nature of the messianic redemp-
tion, but with respect to this matter as well his view is based, at least in part, on
an intimate knowledge of rabbinic and kabbalistic sources. Thus, for example,
in Beria~ ha-Tikhon, Kemper interprets the zoharic claim that on the feast of
Tabernacles the Messiah will come, 140 alluded to in the biblical name !Jag ha-
'asif, the "festival of gathering" (Exod. 23:16, 34:22), in terms of the rabbinic
tradition 141 that during this festival the goodness of God overflows to all the
nations. 142 Kemper links this notion to the baptismal formula adopted by Paul,
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither
male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). Kemper
interprets the zoharic reworking of the rabbinic motif as an allusion to the
eschatological soteriology of Paul, the universal application of messianic
salvation to the point that there is a breakdown of cultural, socioeconomic,
and gender binaries. Again, we see the complex exegetical strategy that marks
the way of Kemper's thinking: The nomian impulse of rabbinic tradition, which
seemingly is at odds with the antimonian tendency of Christological messian-
ism, is turned against itself to yield its very opposite. The key to the
hermeneutical inversion in Kemper's thinking is his reading rabbinic texts
through the filter of kabbalistic symbolism. The literal world of halakhah can
only be preserved through the symbolic reinterpretation of the traditional laws
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 153

and customs. 143 For instance, the symbolic explanation of the Jewish liturgical
cycle, which Kemper deduces from the Zohar, allows him to assert that the
Sabbath and all of the festivals allude to Jesus. 144 The complexity of his
position should be readily apparent: The messianic truth of Jesus is encoded
typologically in Jewish law. Kemper's view summons the collateral affirmation
of antithetical possibilities: The kabbalistic understanding of Christian typol-
ogy implies that one may abrogate the law in order to express its ultimate truth.
Conversely, by fulfilling the halakhah with proper kabbalistic intent, one can
live a faithful Christian life. Kemper's view is poignantly expressed in the
following interpretation of the statement from one of the later strata of zoharic
literature, "Those who are occupied with the Torah and the commandments for
the sake of the blessed holy One and his presence, 145 not in order to receive a
reward but as a son who is obligated in the honor of his father and mother, are
verily bound and inscribed in the central pillar and his presence as if they were
one in it." 146
Those who are engaged in the Torah for its own sake, not in order to receive
a reward, are bound and inscribed in the central pillar, that is, they did not give
credence to their good actions because they fulfilled the Torah of Moses, but
rather they believed in this Lord of the Sabbath, and as a consequence they
surely became one with him. All this agrees with what the holy mouth said that
"the Son of Man is the Lord of Sabbath." 147 This is reproof of the Pharisees
who broadened their phylacteries, 148 that is, they were glorified and exalted by
the fact that they had these signs, but they did not discern that these signs
allude to him, for all of the commandments in the Torah, the insignificant and
the significant, all allude to the one concealed point, which is the Messiah. 149
Prima facie, the words of Kemper seem to confirm the standard typological
argument of Christian triumphalism: The rituals of the Jews are rendered
obsolete by the fact that their true, spiritual meaning is realized through faith in
the messianic status of Jesus. A closer examination, however, indicates that the
perspective articulated by Kemper is more complex. The zoharic passage
allows Kemper to express the view that the fulfillment of the commandments
on the part of observant Jews can have redemptive value if they understand (as
the Pharisees in the time of Jesus did not) that the inner intent of the ritual
behavior points to Christ. Performance of the ceremonial laws with the proper
intentionality affords the pious Jew the opportunity to be conjoined with and
inscribed in the body of Jesus, which is the incarnation of the Torah. Indeed,
the commandments (when understood kabbalistically) are performative signs
that incarnate this spiritual truth as a living reality and not merely as an
antiquated possibility. Conversely, in the absence of the proper intention,
Jewish rituals lack spiritual valence. The importance of the zoharic literature
for Kemper lies precisely in the fact that it presents a symbolic understanding
of ritual that avoids the mutually exclusive antinomies of literalism and
allegorism. Perhaps in consonance with some of his Lutheran compatriots in
eighteenth-century Sweden, 15° Kemper would have agreed that the inner
meaning of Jewish law lies in the major tenets of Christian faith, but for him
there is no necessity for the Jew to abrogate the law in practice. 151 On the
154 E. R. Wolfson

contrary, the Jew can express messianic faith through ritual observance, for the
spiritual intent of the ritual pointed originally to that faith. Unfortunately, as
Kemper often enough remarks, the Jews living in his time were ignorant of the
purpose of their laws and customs, and thus their religious practices rang
hollow; however, this does not mean that Kemper ruled out the possibility that
these practices could be infused again with their original spiritual design.
To illustrate the point, let us consider Kemper's utilization of the zoharic
explanation of the obligations to destroy the leaven (~arne~) before Passover as
a symbolic gesture of destroying the false gods, which are identified further as
the demonic potency or the evil inclination that rules over the idolatrous
nations, and to eat the unleavened bread (ma~~ah) at the seder, which serves
as a sign oflsrael's cleaving to the holy portion of the divine, for the unleavened
bread corresponds symbolically to the Shekhinah, the beginning of the entry
into the mystery of faith. 152 Kemper explicates the Zohar in the following way:

The blessed holy One commanded one to eat unleavened bread on Passover
for a revealed reason, to remember the exodus out of Egypt, the physical
redemption ... but according to the hidden way there is another reason for
eating the unleavened bread, that is, to destroy the leaven completely. The
leaven is Satan, for he ferments the dough of the heart (me~ame~ 'et 'issat ha-
lev), that is, he destroys and annihilates the spark of the good thought (ni~~o~
ma~shavah (ovah) that is found in the heart of man, and he snuffs it out in the
stormy waters .... Therefore, God commanded one to remove the physical
leaven in order to remind man that he must similarly destroy the spiritual
leaven, and to eradicate it from the chambers of the heart in every manner
.... and to burn it in the fire of the holy spirit (be- 'esh rua~ ha-qodesh) so that
he would be saved on the day of judgment (yam ha-din) from the burning fire
of Satan. And this is what is said [in the zoharic passage], "This is the
beginning of entry into the holy portion," that is, this is the beginning of a
man's repentance (teshuvat ha-'adam). 153

The burning of the physical leaven in preparation for Passover alludes

symbolically to the obliteration of the spiritual leaven, 154 which is the evil
inclination or Satan, the true mark of redemption. 155 To this point, Kemper
has not strayed far from the path of the Zohar. 156 The shift occurs in his
reading of the appropriation on the part of the zoharic authorship of the
mishnaic ruling that on Passover the produce (tevu'ah) of the land is judged. 157
In the zoharic text, the ruling is interpreted as follows: "The mystery of the
Mishnah (raza' de-matnita'): It has been established that on Passover [the
produce of the land is judged], this corresponds to the supernal chariot, the
secret of the Patriarchs and King David." 158 The produce, tevu'ah, denotes
symbolically the supernal chariot, which consists of the quaternity of powers in
the divine pleroma, the Patriarchs, the central three pillars or the fourth, fifth,
and sixth of the ten sefirot, and King David, the fourth leg or the tenth sefirah.
In the zoharic text, we find an alternative interpretation: The word tevu'ah is
linked exegetically to the word tevu'otoh in the verse, qodesh yisra'el la-yhwh
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 155

re'shit tevu'oto, "Israel is holy unto the Lord, the first of his produce" (Jer. 2:3).
The extra he' at the end of the word tevu'otoh (ilm·nJ.n) signifies the first he' of
the holy name, that is, Binah, the upper Shekhinah, the beginning of the left side
whence judgment emerges. This is the esoteric significance of the mishnaic
dictum that on Passover the produce of the land is judged, the tevu'ah of the he',
that which the divine mother yields, which I take to be a reference to the
daughter, the lower Shekhinah, the "judgment of the he'," in the verbatim
language of the Zohar. This is alluded to as well in the symbolic correspon-
dence established between the unleavened bread and the Shekhinah, the dina'
de-malkhuta'dina', 159 which in this case must be rendered as the "judgment of
Malkhut that is judgment."
Kemper interprets this "ancient tradition" of the rabbis regarding the
judgment of the produce on Passover in a distinctively Christological way:

The word tevu 'otoh is with a he', which is the supernal mother, the he' that is
known. This is to say, they will be judged on account of the fact that they did
not have faith in the one to which the bread of affliction points, and all the
more so in the eradication of the leaven. When a person considers this
judgment, he will certainly repent and enter the portion of the righteous one,
foundation of the world .... And this is the great judgment spoken of here,
that is, when the Lord of the commandments, this bread of affliction, comes
to judge the inhabitants of the world, and especially those who consume the
spiritualleaven. 160

The zoharic notion of the night of Passover being the time of execution of
judgment, which is related specifically to Malkhut, is interpreted by Kemper to
refer to the day of great judgment that will be executed by Jesus, who is
characterized as the "Lord of the commandments," 'adon ha-mi!fWOt, and as
the "bread of affliction," le~em 'ani. The common denominator of these two
characterizations is the fact that this bread of affliction, the unleavened bread
that Jews consume on that night, refers to Jesus who is the Word of God,
which, as we have seen, in Kemper's thought signifies the Oral Torah or the
Gospel that is transmitted orally. Insofar as Jesus is this bread of affliction, or
the Oral Torah, he is appropriately designated the "Lord of the command-
ments," since the primary purpose of the Oral Torah (from the rabbinic
perspective reflected in Kemper's words) is to expound on the laws of the
Written Torah. Embedded in the Jewish rituals pertaining to the holiday of
Passover, therefore, are the signs of the Christian faith. 161 Kemper complains,
however, that the Jews of his time were preoccupied with the external
performance of the rituals of burning the leavened bread and baking the
unleavened bread, but the essence of the enterprise was missing insofar as they
neglected the zoharic interpretation of the rituals as sacramental acts pointing
symbolically to an inner spiritual world that corresponds to the divine
reality. 162 One can suppose that, in principle, Kemper entertained the possibi-
lity of a Jew celebrating the Passover rituals halakhically and thereby affirming
the faith of Christianity.
156 E. R. Wolfson

Along these lines, it is important to recall Kemper's interpretation of the

Last Supper narrative in Matt. 26: 17-29. Kemper accurately notes that the
sitting of Jesus at the table with his twelve disciples (Matt. 26:20) is a reference
to the custom still practiced by Jews to recline at the Passover seder when they
recount the exodus from Egypt. In particular, Kemper focuses on the ritual of
eating the unleavened bread at the conclusion of the meal, which is tradition-
ally called 'ajiqomon. 163 "After the whole meal they eat the 'ajiqomon, which is a
reminder of the paschal sacrifice, and in the time of the Temple they would eat
the 'ajiqomon, which is the paschal sacrifice, after the whole meal in order to
show that this eating is not natural when they eat out of hunger, but it is rather
a spiritual eating, and it is necessitated by the commandment of the Lord." 164
The lawfulness of the commandment is not set over and against spirituality. On
the contrary, according to Kemper's interpretation of the Jewish rite enacted at
the Last Supper, the spiritual dimension is embodied in the divine command-
ment, for the consumption of the 'ajiqomon is portrayed as a spiritual eating
since it is an obligation to eat it at the conclusion of the meal when one is
satiated and there is thus no natural impulse to eat. The true intent of the eating
of the 'ajiqomon is disclosed by Kemper in his explanation of the reference to
the breaking of the bread at the Last Supper and the bidding of Jesus to the
disciples, "Take, eat, this is my body" (Matt. 26:26):

"He broke it for them," and thus they do until this day, for the head of the
household divides the 'ajiqomon, which I mentioned, to all those inclining at
the table, to each one according to his portion, and then they drink the last
cup of red wine, for on that night they drink four cups, and that bread they
break with their hands without a knife, for it is forbidden to use a knife on
that night. Thus you see that Jesus did not institute any new thing in the
covenant of the bread and the wine, for there was bread and wine in the
Torah of Moses with respect to the paschal sacrifice, as it says in the Talmud,
even the poor man in Israel should not be denied the cups of red wine on this
night .... Rather, he strengthened and established the Old Testament, which
was but a shadow (~el) of the New Testament. He gave the bread and the
wine as a sign and a guarantee to us that any time that we make use of this
holy covenant he will come and dwell in our midst .... In general, there is
nothing new in the new Torah, but rather it explains and clarifies the Torah
of Moses, and without it we could not understand anything from the Torah
of Moses. 165

Kemper translates the breaking of the bread (£KA-a:m;v) on the part of Jesus
with the Hebrew wa-ya~a~, which no doubt is meant to bring to mind the
expression ya~a~, the technical term used in the traditional Haggadah for the
breaking of the middle of the three pieces of unleavened bread, 166 the larger
portion of which is set aside to be eaten at the conclusion of the meal as the
'ajiqomon. The choice of this locution on the part of Kemper is meant to
underscore that the bread broken at the Last Supper, which is identified as the
body of Jesus, is the 'ajiqomon of the Passover seder. 167 Kemper makes a
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 157

similar connection between the wine drunk at the Last Supper, which is
identified as the blood of Jesus, and the four cups of red wine drunk at the
seder. Kemper insists, moreover, that there is no innovation on the part of
Jesus in the New Testament, for both the unleavened bread and the wine are
associated with the paschal sacrifice in the Torah of Moses. 168 In point of fact,
however, there is a specific mention of unleavened bread in conjunction with
the paschal sacrifice (Num. 9: 11 ), but there is no explicit reference to wine. The
latter apparently was an innovation on the part of the rabbis, and in one
tannaitic source 169 a prooftext is adduced to prove the legitimacy and the
appropriateness of using wine at the Passover meal in order to express
festivity. 170 What is most significant is Kemper's insistence that both ritual
objects of the Last Supper are derived from biblical law. From his perspective
the laws pertaining to the paschal sacrifice in the Old Testament are a
foreshadowing of the events in the New Testament. But this typological
relationship implies as well that the New Testament is not a radical departure
from or an inordinate overturning of the Old Testament. On the contrary,
Kemper unequivocally affirms that there is spiritual value in the Jewish rituals;
indeed, the New Testament clarifies that value, which can still be realized by
pious Jews if they perform these rituals with the proper intent.
The extent to which ritual law itself encapsulates Christological faith is well
illustrated in another passage wherein Kemper sets out to interpret the custom
recorded in the Zohar, 171 which can be traced to the German Pietists, 172
regarding gazing at one's shadow on lei/ ha-~otam, the eve of Hoshanah Rabbah
on which one's fate for the upcoming year is supposedly sealed. 173 Kemper
relates that in his time there were Jews who mistakenly interpreted the meaning
of the zoharic text in terms of a folkloristic practice of looking at one's shadow
by the light of the moon. The correct explanation of the custom recorded in the
Zohar involves the recognition that the shadow refers to Jesus who is the image
(~elem) and likeness (diyoqan) of the FatherY 4 The superstition that Kemper
attributes to the Jews, which is the historically and philologically correct
explanation of the custom, 175 is rejected in favor of the Christological
interpretation, which is presented as the true meaning of the zoharic passage.
The practice of looking at one's shadow at the conclusion of the festival of
Tabernacles attests to one of the basic phenomenological convictions of the
Christian faith, to envision Jesus as the shadow-image of the Father who has
no image. 176 Although the example in this case is minhag, religious custom, as
opposed to halakhah, religious law, the logic of Kemper's hermeneutic is the
same: The Jewish rite embodies and thus potentially reenacts the principle of
Christian faith.
Another striking example of this orientation is found in Kemper's explana-
tion for the "ancient custom" (minhag qadmon) of Jewish fathers placing their
hands on the heads of their sons and blessing them so that they may be saved
from Satan and protected beneath the wings of the Messiah. 177 An allusion to
the Christological import of this gesture is allegedly found in the statement of
Jacob when he sought to bless the sons of Joseph, "The angel who has
redeemed me from all harm shall bless the lads" (Gen. 48:16), for the mal'akh
158 ER. Wolfson

ha-go'el, the redeeming angel, is a technical reference to Jesus, the glorious

angel who brings salvation to the world. After having established this point,
Kemper writes: "Therefore, even to this day there is still a custom amongst the
Jews to bless their sons on every Sabbath, and they say, 'God make you like
Ephraim and Manasseh' (ibid., 20), that is, they should be blessed by that very
blessing with which Jacob blessed the sons of Joseph, and that angel shall
redeem them." 178 Hence, from Kemper's perspective, the Jewish men who
perform this gesticulation at the Sabbath table inadvertently affirm the
Christological belief in the providential role of Jesus as the angel who redeems.
Kemper employs the same motif to explain the rabbinic tradition that the
blessing go'al yisra'el, the "one who redeems Israel," immediately precedes the
standing prayer of eighteen blessings, shemoneh 'esreh, which is the central
component of the liturgy. That is, the blessing to the one who redeems Israel is
placed before the standing prayer of silent devotion because the redeeming
angel (mal'akh ha-go'el) is the opening through which one enters to worship
God. 179 The symbolic, and more specifically Christian, interpretation is the
true meaning of the rabbinic notion that one must mention the redemption in
proximity to prayer (somekh ge'u/lah la-tefi/lah), 180 and not the application of it
on the part of the Jews to the actual liturgical order. Instead of concentrating
on Jesus, the angel who redeems, when the Jews pray, their attention is
preoccupied with the fastidious details of the rules and regulations pertaining
to their formal prayers. 181 Nevertheless, it is possible for Jews to find the
spiritual meaning in the structure and content of their own worship insofar as it
embodies the messianic truth. As Kemper himself notes regarding the formula-
tion of the prayer of go'a/ yisra'el, "Thus the prayer 'Rock of Israel' (~ur yisra'el)
is an excellent prayer, for the Messiah is called the 'rock our deliverer' (§ur
yish'enu) 182 on account of the fact that he created (ya~ar) the world, 183 and also
because he was the rock (~ur) that went with Israel in the desert and brought
forth water for them ... and he is the liberator and savior designated for the
redemption." 184 Unwittingly, therefore, the Jews preserve the Christian faith in
their prayers.
The extent to which Kemper reinterpreted the theurgical approach to the
commandments promulgated in the major works of theosophic Kabbalah in
light of his Christian messianism is evident from his remark in Maqqel Ya'aqov
concerning the well-established custom to say "for the sake of the unification of
the blessed holy One (qadosh barukh hu) and his presence (shekhinah)"
preceding the performance of a devotional act. 185 According to Kemper, this
formula "comprises all of the threefold unity (shilush ha-yi~ud) ... the blessed
holy One refers to the Father ... and in the expression 'his presence' they
comprehended the Son and the Holy Spirit, for both of them are comprised in
the word Shekhinah. 186 It would be ludicrous, of course, to assume that
Kemper for even one moment imagined that the Jews who utilized this
liturgical formula actually understood it in the Christological way that he
proposes. What is critical is his opinion that the symbolic meaning of this
formula - whether appreciated by Jewish worshipers over the ages or not -
relates to the Christian belief in the unity of the threefold hypostases of the
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 159

divine. Unwittingly, therefore, the Jews affirm the fundamental dogma of the
Christian faith each time they utter this kabbalistic introduction prior to saying
a blessing or performing a ritual action. Halakhic observance is thereby
transformed into an act of giving witness to the truth of the Trinity, which
Kemper considers to be an "ancient tradition" (qabbalah yeshenah) amongst
the Jews already alluded to in the scriptural account of the three angels who
visited Abraham in the guise of human beings by the terebinths of Mamre
(Gen. 18: 1-2). The use of this biblical narrative to anchor the Trinitarian belief
is well attested in the history of Christian exegesis; however, Kemper's reading
is based particularly on the interpretation of this story in a section from
Midrash ha-Ne'elam according to which the three men signify the three angels
who accompany the Shekhinah to receive the soul of the righteous man at the
time of his death, 187 an idea that is based on a statement attributed to R.
Eleazar regarding the three groups of angels who go out to greet the righteous
man when he departs from this world. 188 "The Shekhinah itself," writes
Kemper, "appears in the image of the three angels, and this alludes to the
Trinity (shilush), or the three angels that accompanied her allude to this secret,
and it is one." 189 To comprehend fully Kemper's reading of the zoharic passage,
we must bear in mind again that for him the Shekhinah is Jesus. Just as the
appearance of the three angels to Abraham is a visionary recital of his
experience of the manifestation of Jesus in the three persons of the divine
substance, so at the moment of death the righteous soul is greeted by Jesus in
the form of three angels. Interestingly, Kemper utilizes this very notion to
explain the comment made in the 'Idra' Zu?a' section of the Zohar concerning
Simeon ben Yol).ai's praying three times when he realized that he was not given
permission to reveal a matter for which he suffered all of his days: 190 "This
passage is said with respect to the death of R. Simeon ben Yol).ai, for then the
Shekhinah, which comprises the Trinity of the one (shilush ha-yi~ud), was
revealed to him, and thus he prayed three times." 191 Kemper mimics Simeon
ben Yol).ai and thus ends his anthology of zoharic passages by praying three
times to the threefold unity (yi~ud ha-meshulash) that is God. 192
In the opening section of Maqqel Yailqov, which explores the doctrine of the
Trinity at great length, Kemper introduces the discussion by noting that the
first thing he must do in his effort to combat the resistance on the part of the
Jews to the Christian faith is to establish the foundation stone that supports the
whole edifice, viz., belief in the Trinity (ha-shilush ba- 'elohut), which Kemper
considered to be the ultimate mystery of the esoteric tradition in Judaism. 193
The specifically kabbalistic nature of the doctrine of the Trinity is underscored,
for instance, in a passage in Beria~ ha-Tikhon wherein Kemper relates the
mystery of the threefold unity to the four worlds of the standard ontology
adopted by the kabbalists: The world of emanation (£l~ilut) 194 refers to the
Father who is set apart (ne'e~al) from the eye of every living being; the world of
creation (beri'ah) refers to the Son, for the word hera' in Aramaic means son, 195
which alludes to the fact that Jesus is the word of God (ma'amar 'elohim) by
means of which the world was created; the world of formation (ye~irah) refers
to the Holy Spirit, for it forms (me~ayyer) the complete faith in the Trinity of
160 E. R. Wolfson

the one (shilush ha-yi~ud); and the world of doing ('assiyah) signifies the
threefold unity (ha-yi~ud ha-meshulash) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 196
To accomplish the task of proving that the trinitarian belief is the supreme
secret of Judaism, Kemper must show that ancient communities of Jews
affirmed this creed, for it is the "foundation upon which everything is
dependent, and all of the opposition ofthe Jews rests on this obstacle." 197 The
strategy he adopts to make his case is citation of key zoharic passages that he
interprets in a trinitarian manner coupled with an explication of various
ritualistic forms of behavior (such as and the three occurrences of the
Tetragrammaton in the priestly blessing, Num. 6:24-26, and the scribal
tradition to use three yodin to signify the Tetragrammaton) 198 whence he elicits
allusions to the Christian doctrine. A poignant illustration of Kemper's
Christological interpretation of halakhic practice is found in his insistence that
the "great secret" of the three daily prayers alludes to the Trinity, an idea that he
spells out in more detail by explicating the talmudic discussion 199 regarding the
relationship of the three patriarchs to the three prayers: Abraham instituted the
morning prayer for he corresponds to the Father; Isaac instituted the afternoon
prayer for he corresponds to the Son; and Jacob instituted the evening prayer
for he corresponds to the Holy Spirit. 200 Needless to say, the Jews are ignorant
of the Christological essence of their ritual practices. Indeed, as Kemper
remarks in the continuation of this passage, when the Jews pray they should
be directing their hearts to the Trinity, but instead they worship like a
drunkard, for their lips move but their hearts are not properly focused. 201
The point is made explicitly by Kemper in one passage wherein he notes that
on the outside of the mezuzah (the parchment scroll containing Deut. 6:4-9 and
11:13-21, which is placed in a wooden or a metal case that is affixed to the
doorpost) is written the name Shaddai, which is numerically equivalent to
Metatron (both expressions equal 314), who is identical with Jesus. On the
inside of the parchment is written the expression m::> 'tO:J1Y.l:l m::>, which is a
coded reference (through the technique known as a"t ba"sh, i.e., substituting a
letter with its corresponding letter working in reverse from the end of the
alphabet, the taw for the 'alef, the shin for the bet, the reish for the gimmel, and
so on) to the words il1il' 1)'il~N il1il\ "the Lord, our God, is Lord" (Deut.
6:4), an allusion to the threefold unity (shilush ha-yihud) of the divine. 202 It
follows that the spiritual intent of the common practice of Jews to kiss the
mezuzah as they enter or exit through a door is to allude to the Trinity even
though "they do not know what they are doing." 203 On occasion Kemper even
employs a rabbinic text in his effort to discredit the Jews of his time, as we find,
for example, in the following passage that concludes a discussion of the
essential connection between the Shekhinah and the community of Israel,
which is clearly based on the kabbalistic perspective: "However, the Shekhinah
has departed from the Jews in this time in accordance with their dictum in the
Talmud, 'The Shekhinah journeyed ten times,' 204 and hence neither the name
'Israel' nor that of the 'community of Israel' applies to them, and they 'are like
the beasts that perish' (Ps. 49: 13), 'they have eyes, but cannot see' (ibid., 115:5),
and they do not pay heed to discern words of the tradition (divrei qabbalah) like
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 161

these with a balanced mind and on a just scale (lishqol be-shiqqul ha-da'at u-ve-
kaf mo 'znei !fedeq), but rather they grope like a blind person in a chimney." 205 In
the course of his writings, Kemper provides specific examples of Jewish
customs that demonstrate both the implicit mystical (i.e., Christological)
meaning of the rituals and the ignorance of Jews regarding the spiritual intent
of their own tradition. 206 Thus, in the section on the trinity (sha'ar ha-shilush) in
Maqqel Ya'aqov, Kemper elaborates on a number of Jewish customs that allude
symbolically to the trinitarian belief, and, in that context, he addresses the
larger hermeneutical question that we have been pondering:

The matter is that their mentioning of the three patriarchs [in the standing
prayer of eighteen benedictions] instructs about the Trinity (shilush), and the
fact that they end [the blessing magen 'avraham] by referring to one
[patriarch, i.e., Abraham] instructs about the unity (yi~ud). Do not wonder
at the fact that I presented to you in this place that one may find in their
prayers many secrets 207 .... He who has a brain in his head will conclude
that the patriarchs point to the Trinity, and by way of this deception they
denied and contradicted all belief in the Trinity, and Satan assisted them in
this matter, until the point that the wisdom of Kabbalah was also lost. But
know that even today they have very ancient and just customs that instruct
about the Trinity, but they cover their faces with a mask. 208

Rabbinic ritual, especially when it is refracted through the prism of

Kabbalah, attests to the elemental truths of Christianity. In another passage
from Beriah ha-Tikhon, Kemper relates that the "Jews have an ancient custom
of eating a .meal on Saturday night, which they call the melawweh malkkah, 209
°
that is, to escort the Sabbath that is departing from them." 21 Kemper then
recounts that the eating of this meal alludes to the rabbinic tradition regarding
the bone that will survive whence the body will be reconstructed in the
eschatological future. 211 From his perspective the Jewish practice of eating this
meal is indeed "precious," for "it alludes to the bread that is the body of the
Messiah, 212 which is the just Sabbath in which all of the believers shall take
rest. He is the master of Sabbath and when it departs he shall give bread to
those who believe in him, 213 for they are his bride and he is the bridegroom, the
'bridegroom of blood' (Exod. 4:25-26), for he gave his blood on behalf of his
bride .. . . You can find this custom in a book that is called Tiqqun Shabbat
Malkhata', but the Jews presently destroy the custom and this tradition
(qabbalah) as is their destructive way." 214 The Jewish ritual symbolically
embodies the Christological truth and thus it points beyond itself. The Jews
may be unaware of the spiritual depth of their own actions, but there is always
the potential that they shall discern the messianic impulse that lies beneath the
external layer of their laws. To take hold of that impulse, however, it is
necessary to apprehend the spiritual meaning of the rabbinic tradition, which
is in fact close to the perspective of Christian eschatology, but this can only be
disclosed through the kabbalistic interpretation. When the matter is viewed in
this way, it becomes clear that the masters of Kabbalah and the Christian
162 E.R. Wolfson

faithful concur that the body that is resurrected is spiritual in nature, and the
eschaton is a state of being in which all sensual pleasures and temptations are
abrogated. 215 Kemper links together the response of Jesus to the Sadducees
that there is no marriage after the resurrection since the bodies that rise
become like the heavenly angels 216 and the talmudic dictum (attributed to
Rav) that in the world-to-come there is no eating, drinking, procreation,
business transactions, jealousy, hatred, or competition, but only the righteous
sitting with their crowns on their heads, deriving pleasure from the splendor of
the Shekhinah. 217 Leaving aside the legitimacy of connecting these two texts,
what is crucial is Kemper's belief that the kabbalistic interpretation casts the
physical resurrection literally affirmed in the rabbinic sources in a spiritual
light, which is the view espoused by Jesus as well.
Kemper's theoretical position naturally reflects the split consciousness of his
own existential situation. He cannot divest himself completely of his rabbinic
upbringing even though he is a fully committed Christian. On the contrary, the
veracity of his Christian affiliation is confirmed most precisely by the rabbinic
and kabbalistic sources with which he is so intimately familiar. Another
fascinating example of the spiritual pull inside Kemper's heart is found in his
explanation in Maqqel Ya'aqov of the custom mentioned in the Zohar of
shortening the letter 'alef in the utterance of the word 'e~ad, "one," in the
recitation of the liturgical affirmation of the monotheistic faith, shema' yisra'el
yhwh 'elohenu yhwh 'ehad, "Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one"
(Deut. 6:4). 218 The rabbinic tradition219 to elongate the word 'e~ad is presented
by Kemper as a response to a Jewish-Christian practice, which alludes to the
mystery of the diminution of Jesus. 220 Even in this case where the rabbinic
custom is set in opposition to an alleged Christian practice, 221 Kemper relies
on Jewish texts to establish the facticity of the latter. The zoharic text serves as
the pretext to establish a supposedly original context to account for this
liturgical gesture. When viewed from that vantage point it is clear that this
example, like countless others that could have been provided, illustrates the
point that, according to Kemper, the halakhah itself contains symbolic
references to the Christian faith, although it often takes the spiritualized
reading of the Zohar to cast light on the messianic potential of Jewish ritual.
The dissemination of this belief represents the distinctive element of Kemper's
messianic teaching.
It is with respect to this orientation, moreover, that Kemper's Sabbatian
background becomes crucial. Various scholars have noted this connection in
general terms and some have more specifically described Kemper as a disciple
of the Sabbatian prophet, ~adoq of Grodno, who appeared between 1694-
1696.222 The precise historical and literary connections are of less importance
to me than the general impact that this relationship had on Kemper's attitude
toward the messianic potentiality of traditional Jewish law when interpreted
kabbalistically. On an historical note, however, it is important to remark that in
Maqqel Ya'aqov Kemper relates that in 1695 there was a messianic upheaval in
the Jewish community. He writes:
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 163

What a great confusion there was amongst the Jews. They emptied their
homes and sold everything ... they prepared and established the way to go
up by foot with the Messiah to Jerusalem with security and trust. There was
one particular person in Vilna whose name was R. ~adoq, and he was the
principal and chief cause for this confusion. 223

Although Kemper does not make this connection explicitly, one may
conjecture that the messianic disappointment occasioned by this event in 1695
may have served as a catalyst for his conversion to Christianity one year
later. 224 The path of Sabbatian messianism apparently led to a dead-end for
Kemper - yet another false start, but it did open up a new path for him
expressed in his embrace of the Christian faith. 225 One may conjecture further
that the decision to convert allowed Kemper to preserve the religious impulse
of Sabbatianism while moving beyond the spiritual gridlock that he may have
felt by remaining part of the community of observant Jews who did not
actualize their messianic hopes and expectations. 226
In an important way, however, the Christological approach to halakhah
promulgated by Kemper is reflective of the complex and paradoxical attitude
of the Sabbatians toward religious laws and rituals. To grasp this point it is
necessary to bear in mind that antinomianism of an absolute and unqualified
sense is not characteristic of either Sabbatai Zevi or most of his followers. 227
Even in the case of those who accepted the breaking of normative halakhah as
an expression of their messianic belief, the break with tradition was not viewed
as an unconditional abrogation of law, but rather as its fulfillment. 228 The
antinomianism exemplified by the pseudo-Messiah and his adherents is a form
of hypernomianism, 229 which should be contrasted with the metanomianism
that characterized the attitude of Paul in relation to Pharisaic Judaism. 230 To
be sure, in the writings of Sabbatians themselves there is much debate
concerning the question of the temporary or permanent abolition of traditional
religious laws and customs. 231 One thing, however, that the extreme and
moderate Sabbatians shared in common was the view that the outwardly
antinomian acts, the ma'asim zarim, are endowed with religious significance,
for they are dialectically related to the halakhic tradition. That is, breaking the
law is for the sake of fulfilling it. Indeed, the literary evidence suggests that
even after the apostasy Sabbatai Zevi himself continued to live a conflicted life,
manifesting, as Scholem put it, "double-faced behavior as a Jew and a
Muslim." 232 One is here reminded of what may be called the "Marrano
complex," a spiritual affinity that was already noted by Abraham Cardoso,
who wrote in one of his letters: "In the future Messiah the King will don the
garments of a Marrano, and on account of that the Jews will not recognize him.
In short, in the future he will be a Marrano like me." 233 Indeed, the
dissemination of the paradoxical ideology of Sabbatianism can be understood
in light of a widespread spiritual disposition in communities of the Sephardi
Diaspora brought on by the duplicity that was essential to the Marrano
existence, Jew on the inside and Christian on the outside.Z 34
Notwithstanding the logical and historical reasonableness of this claim, it
164 E. R. Wolfson

must be pointed out that the dialectical relationship of antinomianism and

traditional observance in Sabbatian ideology strikes an even more paradoxical
chord than the Marrano situation as well as the general antagonism toward
Jewish law that lies at the heart of Pauline Christianity. For Sabbatai Zevi and
his supporters, acts of breaking the law were considered themselves religious
rites. The point was well understood and succinctly expressed by Scholem
whose words unfortunately have not been well heeded by subsequent scholars:
"And this and nothing else is the true heritage of Sabbatai Zevi: the quasi-
sacramental character of antinomian actions, which here always take the form
of a ritual, remained a shibboleth of the movement, not least in its more radical
offshoots . .. . The performance of such acts is a rite, a festive action of an
individual or a whole group, something out of the ordinary, greatly disturbing
and born from the deep stirring of emotional forces." 235 Perhaps even more
paradoxical than the notion of the holy sinner is the idea of cultic sinning,
which in some cases even involved uttering a blessing or a liturgical formula
before a transgression was committed. In Sabbatian ideology, the overturning
of Jewish ritual is itself a ritualistic performance, and thus transgressing the
Torah yielded the invention of new forms of ceremonial behavior that were
appropriate to the eschatological disposition. From the perspective of Sabba-
tian messianism, then, redemption does not imply the complete abrogation of
the halakhah. On the contrary, redemption is predicated on keeping the faith,
which involves fulfilling the will of God through the commandments, even if
that may entail an action that appears to be an abolition of the law. To put the
matter somewhat differently, the dialectic of Sabbatian spirituality is based on
a reversal of the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction, for a thing is both
itself and its opposite - indeed, it is itself precisely because it is its opposite.
This logic of the paradox is highlighted by the identification of the holy
Messiah with the impure serpent, which is expressed through the numerical
equivalence of the two relevant Hebrew terms n~'Vr.:l and 'Vm (both equal
358). 236 How more powerfully could the identity of opposites be expressed?
When this breach with Aristotelian logic is applied to the question of ritual
action, then we can conclude that transgression is the ultimate compliance to
the law. The acceptance of this dialectic should mitigate against the notion of
the definitive abrogation of the law and the unqualified departure from the
nomian framework. To obliterate the halakhic world entirely would be to erase
the very context that affords one an opportunity to realize the paradox of
messianic spirituality by means of which one exceeds the strict boundary of the
law.
It is precisely this dialectic that best captures Kemper's approach. On the
surface his goal was to convince both Jews and Christians that classical
rabbinic and kabbalistic literature contain allusions to the secrets of Chris-
tianity, the recognition of which necessitates on the part of Jews the acceptance
of the messianic claims of Christianity and the concomitant rejection of the
legalism and ceremonial formalism of the Jewish traditions. Beyond this aim,
however, is another one that is somewhat more subtle and daring: The nomian
tradition itself preserves hints that point toward the truths of the Christian
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 165

faith. Ostensibly, the latter surpasses the former, but from the esoteric
perspective, which is provided by the Kabbalah in particular, even the halakhah
comprises the mysteries of Christianity. Kemper's messianic calling is related
to the task of exposing these elements of Judaism. The Jews thus may be able to
subvert the law by fulfilling it, and Christians, too, will need to be cognizant of
the world of halakhic Judaism in order to discover some inner truths of their
own faith. The latter is accomplished particularly by Christians becoming
aware of the kabbalistic symbolism as it is reflected through the prism of the
Zohar. In the termination of one passage wherein Kemper discusses several
complicated theological issues on the nature of the divine, he impels the reader,
"Regarding these principles read the Kabbalah, and then your heart will be like
the opening to an assembly hall." 237 The effort to ground the Christian
eradication of law in Jewish tradition is expressed pointedly in Kemper's
comments on the statement attributed to Jesus that he had not come to abolish
the law and the prophets but to fulfill them (Matt. 5: 17):

The Jews should not say that Jesus has come to diminish the Torah, but, on
the contrary, to strengthen it, and if you place your eyes of your hearts in all
of the New Testament you will find it so. Regarding the fact that he rendered
permissible the ritual law (torah minhagit), this is the covenant of mercy
(berit ~esed) 238 concerning which Isaiah prophesied, "For the Torah shall go
forth from me" (Isa. 51:4). Consider the verse following this one, "My
righteousness is near, my salvation (yish'z) went forth" (ibid., 5). The rabbis
themselves said, 239 "Why is [a pig] called ~azir? For in the future it will be
restored ('a tid leha~zir)." 240

The replacement of the Torah of Mosaic law by the covenant of mercy, which
is the new Torah proffered by Jesus, is a process affirmed by the rabbis
themselves in terms of their belief that the pig, the epitome of the laws of ritual
purity that distinguish sharply between the permissible and the forbidden,
would in the future be transformed into something holy. Trespassing the law is
the eschatological fulfillment of the law, precisely because the law contains
within itself the impulse to exceed the boundaries that must be overcome.
I conclude by noting that Kemper expressed his messianic role particularly
through a commentary on the Zohar by rendering explicit the Christological
secrets he thought were encoded in that text. Indeed, from Kemper's vantage
point, since the Zohar was written several years after the crucifixion of Jesus,
for political reasons it was necessary for Christological matters (especially the
doctrine of the three hypostases that constitute the unity of God, yi~ud ha-
meshulash) to be written in that work in an esoteric language (lashon nistar). 241
In another context, Kemper cites and analyzes one of the more overt messianic
passages in the Zohar, which offers a detailed account of the advent of the
Messiah in the Galilee. 242 In the course of his analysis, which includes a
comparison of the zoharic text to parallel accounts in the New Testament,
Kemper notes that this section was undoubtedly one of the "ancient writings"
(ketavim yeshenim) that made its way into the zoharic text, which he describes
166 E. R. Wolfson

as "a book assembled from the manuscripts of R. Simeon ben Yo]?.ai." 243
Hence, even before the incarnation of the Messiah (fzitgashmut ha-mashia~),
the Jews had a tradition about the messianic age related to astrological
phenomena and the sign of the covenant in the form of the rainbow. 244 In
several passages wherein he discerns references to Jesus in the zoharic texts,
Kemper states that had the Pharisees read the words of the Zohar they would
not have persecuted Jesus. 245
The essential point from my perspective is that these examples (and others
that I could have cited) demonstrate that Kemper viewed the zoharic anthology
as a repository of messianic secrets that were deliberately concealed on account
of their Christological orientation. 246 On occasion he extends this viewpoint to
the unusual legends (haggadot meshunot) in the Talmud:

The intention of the rabbis in these overtly bizarre aggadic passages was to
relate in a concealed manner truths about Jesus. If one does not embrace
this hermeneutical principle, then the language of these texts would appear
to be ridiculous. 247

Reflecting on a midrashic comment regarding the difference between the

First and the Second Temples, which is derived exegetically from the verse
"The glory of the latter house shall be greater than that of the former one"
(J1aggai 2:9), 248 Kemper remarks that the custom of the "masters of Talmud"
was "to enter an elephant through the eye of a needle," 249 an expression he
employs in order to emphasize that the rabbis were subtle in their thinking and
they often hid secrets in their statements. In this particular case, according to
Kemper, the hidden matter concealed in the rabbinic interpretation is that the
"latter house" refers to the anticipated third Temple, which is the body of Jesus
°
that endures in perpetuity. 25 Kemper's attitude with respect to rabbinic
aggadah as a repository of secret gnosis, which relates specifically to Christian
truths, and its contiguity to kabbalistic lore is made explicitly in the introduc-
tion to his Leqe! he- 'Ani in his description of Beria~ ha-Tikhon: "It is an
anthology of the Zohar from the book of Genesis, but I tried in that
composition that in almost every zoharic passage that I brought, I placed
before you as well an aggadah from the Talmud that is similar to the zoharic
matter to show that the traditions in the Talmud are correct if they are
explained adequately and properly in accordance with the custom of the
ancients to write matters that require a good explanation, and on the whole I
illustrated that the view of the Zohar verily agrees with the New Testament." 251
Although Kemper's remark is limited to the specific case of the zoharic
passages that he cites and comments upon in Beria~ ha-Tikhon, it is evident
that these words contain his general hermeneutical stance vis-a-vis the esoteric
and the exoteric sense of the legendary, folkloristic, and mythical material
contained in the Talmud. The two levels of meaning that Kemper applies to the
talmudic material (an approach enunciated in the High Middle Ages by both
philosophers and kabbalists) 252 is patently obvious in one context in the
aforecited work wherein he sets out to defend the meaningfulness of the
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 167

aggadic statement that "from the time the Temple was destroyed prophecy was
taken from the prophets and given to fools and infants" 253 against those who
would say there is no substance or benefit in the rabbinic dicta:

Through this statement they will see with their eyes that with great intention,
consideration of mind, and weighing of the matter, the masters of the
Talmud did what they did with respect to the legends that seem strange to
the eyes (haggadot meshunot ha-nir'ot Ia- 'einayyim), and there are sensible
words in what they did in order to pacify the heart of the nation .... But the
masters of the Talmud themselves knew the truth, and the one who weighs
this in his mind knows clearly that there is a great benefit for Christians to
read the Talmud, that is, that they will be able to see for themselves and to
show others the machinations and the deceitful way of which the masters of
the Talmud had to make use in order to remove the faith in the Messiah from
the hearts of the populace. 254 If so, it is definitively proven that the edifice of
the Messiah is built on a strong rock that cannot be removed from it place
even by all the winds of the world .. . . The masters of the Talmud were
cunning, and all of the words that they uttered were parables and riddles,
and words that draw the heart. 255

The intent of the talmudic masters was to speak concurrently in an exoteric

manner for the masses and in an esoteric manner for the initiates. On the
surface, it might appear that the rabbis of the Talmud were opposed to the
kabbalists since the former did not opt to speak overtly about secrets. 256 Closer
examination of the aggadic texts, however, suggests that there is agreement
between the kabbalists and the rabbis even though the latter did in fact
generally avoid speaking about secrets in an open way. 257 Kemper perceptively
cites in this discussion 258 the enigmatic statement attributed to Jesus to the
effect that those on the inside can grasp the secret of the heavenly kingdom,
whereas those on the outside must receive the teachings in a parabolic form so
that the truth is concealed from them. 259 The rabbis of the Talmud, according
to Kemper, operated in an analogous fashion, and thus they employed parables
in their aggadic pronouncements in order to hide the truth from the masses,
truths that accord not only with the secrets cultivated and explicated by the
kabbalists, but with the essential teachings of Jesus as well.
By way of summary, we might say that Kemper's own messianic role was to
expose these very secrets, to reverse the code of esotericism, as it were, by
uncovering what he considered to be the true messianic intent of the aggadic
and kabbalistic symbolism. The exegetical process itself, therefore, is imbued
with messianic significance. In spite of his conversion to Christianity and the
apparent repudiation of Judaism, in the mode and substance of his argumenta-
tion, Kemper remained faithful to his rabbinic training, for the most mean-
ingful way that he expressed his Christian faith was through textual
interpretation. In particular, the hermeneutical act of disclosing the mysteries
hidden beneath the surface of the Zohar is for him the true sign of messianic
conviction and the primary means by which one attains the ultimate salvation
168 E R. Wolfson

of mind and body. Thus, Kemper encourages his reader to examine the full
contexts of the zoharic passages that he cites in support of his Christological
views, for by reading the Zohar one may proceed "from chamber to chamber"
until one arrives at the "holy of holies, which is salvation (yeshu'ah)." 260 The
citations mentioned by Kemper should serve as a "sign" ( 'ot) for the larger
context. Implicit here is Kemper's soteriological belief that the reading of the
Zohar is itself a redemptive act. Nothing could be more clearly rabbinic in its
orientation than the conviction that study of a sacred text is the decisive means
to gain redemption. If for no other reason than this, Kemper well deserved the
title "rabbi" as he was known to his colleagues and students. 261

New York University

NOTES
1. H.J. Schoeps, "Rabbi Johan Kemper im Uppsala," Siirtryck ur Kyrkohistorisk Arsskrift (1945),
146--177; idem, Barocke Juden, Christen, Judenchristen (Bern and Munich: Francke Verlag,
1965), 60-67, translated into English by G.F. Dole, "Philosemitism 'in the Seventeenth
Century," Studia Swedenborgiana 7 (1990), I 0-17; R. Eli or, Galya' Raza' (Jerusalem: Magnes,
1981), 19 n. 9; G. Scholem, Studies and Texts Concerning the History of Sabbateanism and Its
Metamorphoses [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1982), 94 n. 72; Y. Liebes, On Sabbatean-
ism and Its Kabbalah: Collected Essays [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1995), 172 and
222; idem, "A Profile of R. Naphtali Katz of Frankfort and His Attitude Towards
Shabbateanism," [Hebrew] Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996), 301-302; D.
Abrams, "The Boundaries of Divine Ontology: The Inclusion and Exclusion of Metatron in
the Godhead," Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994), 318. On the probable relationship of
Kemper and Swedenborg, see M.K. Schuchard, "Emanuel Swedenborg: Deciphering the
Codes of a Celestial and Terrestrial Intelligencer," in Rending the Veil: Concealment and
Secrecy in the History of Religions, ed. E.R. Wolfson (New York and London: Seven Bridges
Press, 1999), 181-182.
2. MS Uppsala Heb. 32. On fol. 2a there appears a Hebrew version of the title page.
3. At the bottom of the first (unnumbered page) of Maqqel Yaaqov, Ms Uppsala Heb. 24, there is
an explanation of why the composition has two names in what appears to be the signature of
the author himself: "I, Moses Kohen of Cracow who is now Johann Kemper, and [the treatise]
is called Matteh Mosheh on account of my past name, and [it is called] Maqqel Yaaqov on
account of my present name, for I struggled with and against the Jewish people, and I
prevailed." The explanation for the second name, Maqqel Yaaqov, is an obvious allusion to the
account of the change of Jacob's name to Israel in Gen. 32:28. Kemper reviews the
explanation of the name of this treatise in the introduction to Leqer he- 'Ani, fol. 149a: "I made
a start with my first composition, which is called Maqqel Yaaqov, as a memorial to my name,
which is Johann Kemper, for the name yaaqov also instructs about this."
4. Ezek. 37:17.
5. Brief selections from this part of Kemper's treatise were published together with a Latin
translation and explicatory notes in Phosphorus Orthodoxa Fidei Veterum Cabbalistarum seu
Testimonia de Sacro Sancta Trinitate et Messia Deo et Homine ex pervetusto libro Sohar
deprompta, qua nunc primum Latine reddita, suisque & R. Johann is Kemperi Judao-Christiani,
ed. Andreas Norrelius (Amsterdam, 1720).
6. Isa. 56:5.
7. MS Uppsala Heb. 24.
8. MS Uppsala Heb. 25.
9. MS Uppsala Heb. 26, fol. 74b.
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 169

10. MS Uppsala Heb. 26. fol. 149a. See ibid., fol. 150a, where Kemper explains that in the fifth
part of his large compendium of zoharic passages, the Leqe! he- 'Ani, he was only able to cite
relevant texts from the Zohar on Numbers and Deuteronomy without any commentary (hence
the title of this part, the "impoverished anthology") since it was his intent to return to the
work of translating the New Testament, a point he makes as well at the conclusion of the text
(fol. 162a).
II. For a comprehensive study of this influence, see F. Secret, Le Zohar chez les kabbalistes
chretiens de Ia renaissance (Paris: Mouton, 1958).
12. Ch. Wirszubski, Pica della Mirando/a's Encounter With Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1989).
13. On the tendency in Christian Kabbalah to sublimate or to express overt hostility towards the
particularistic character of Jewish esotericism, which is related to the belief that the ultimate
expression of the prisca theologia is revealed in Jesus, see G. Mallary Masters, "Renaissance
Kabbalah," in Modern Esoteric Spirituality, edited by A. Faivre and J. Needleman (New York:
Crossroads, 1992), 132-153.
14. See G. Scholem, "Zur Geschichte der Anfiinge der christlichen Kabbala," in Essays presented
to Leo Baeck (London: East and West Library, 1954), 158-193, now translated into English in
The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and Their Christian Interpreters, ed. J. Dan
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 17-51. Scholem duly noted the
intellectual and textual links that connect the agenda of Christian kabbalists like Pico and
the effort of Raymundus Martini in his Pugio fidei, the thirteenth-century polemical work that
sought to demonstrate the truths of Christianity from rabbinic aggadah. From Scholem's
perspective, then, Jewish apostates of an earlier period set the stage for Christian kabbalists
who interpret Jewish esoteric texts as espousing views that prefigured the truths of
Christianity. Consider as well the passing remark of P. Beitchman, Alchemy of the Word:
Cabala of the Renaissance (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998), 294 n. II:
"In Ramon Martini's Pugio fidei (Sword of Faith) of the middle of the thirteenth century, a
text that was articulate enough to stay in circulation for four centuries, Christian Cabala is
very much a weapon in the wars of conversion." On the possibility that Jewish esoteric
doctrine was used as early as the twelfth century by Jewish converts, such as Petrus Alfonsi, to
prove the truth of Christian theological doctrines, see B. McGinn, "Cabalists and Christians:
Reflections on Cabala in Medieval and Renaissance Thought," in Jewish Christians and
Christian Jews From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. R.H. Popkin and G.M. Weiner
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 11-34, esp. 12-16. Also relevant here is my own argument that
one may discern a polemical stance against Christianity in some sections of Sefer ha-Bahir,
widely presumed to be one of the most important kabbalistic works to appear on the historical
scene in the High Middle Ages. The gist of my claim is that the use of Jewish esoteric motifs on
the part of apostates in the twelfth century occasioned a response on the part of rabbinic
authorities who expressed older doctrines in a form to reflect the contemporary scene. See
E.R. Wolfson, Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 83-88.
15. In addition to the work of Wirszubski cited above, n. 12, see H. Greive, "La Kabbale
chretienne de Jean Pic de Ia Mirandole," in Kabbalistes Chretiens, ed. A. Faivre and F. Tristan
(Paris: Albin Michel, 1979), 159-179; K. Reichert, "Pico della Mirandola and the Beginnings
of Christian Kabbala," in Mysticism, Magic and Kabbalah in Ashkenazi Judaism, ed. K.E.
Griizinger and J. Dan (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), 195-207; and
Beitchman, Alchemy of the Word, 65-207.
16. See J. L. Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (New York:
Kenni kat Press, 1965), 41 --64; J. Dan, "The Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin and Its Historical
Significance," in The Christian Kabbalah, 55-95.
17. See F. Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrhiens de Ia Renaissance (Paris: Dunod, 1964), 87-99; J.
Fabry, "La Kabbale chretienne en Italie," in Kabbalistes Chrhiens, 54-57.
170 E.R. Wolfton

18. See M.L Kuntz, Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things: His Life and
Thought (The Hague, 1981), 130-133; McGinn, "Cabalists and Christians," 25. In the preface
to the second translation of the Zohar, Postel declares his aim as showing that Christ is the
"purpose of the law," finis enim Legis est (cited by McGinn, op. cit., 24).
19. McGinn, "Cabalists and Christians," 16, cites the observation of Ide! from an hithertofore
unpublished paper, "Jewish Kabbalah in a Christian Garb: Some Phenomenological Re-
marks," to the effect that the "basic change that the theosophical Kabbalah underwent in the
Christian presentation is the obliteration of the theurgical nature of this mystical lore." As I
argue in this study, Kemper represents an interesting exception inasmuch as he preserved the
theurgical dimension of theosophical Kabbalah in particular and demonstrated a sustained
interested in the role of ritual praxis more generally in a manner that exceeds the approach
that one would expect of a Christian seeking to illustrate the foundational theological truths of
Christianity, to wit, the incarnation and the Trinity. The claim made by Ide! seems reasonable
enough, but it must be pointed out that the theurgical aspect of theosophic Kabbalah would
have at least resonated with the exalted role accorded human nature in Renaissance
Hermeticism, another major source of influence on Christian kabbalists. See A.P. Coudert,
Leibniz and the Kabbalah (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), I 06-111. Traditional kabbalistic theurgy
is not, however, universalistic in nature, and the particular role accorded to Israel in this
cosmic drama through fulfillment of halakhic ritual is what is missing in Christian Kabbalah.
20. In this study, I will speak of the zoharic anthology as a unified literary corpus, reflecting the
hermeneutical assumption of Kemper. I am obviously aware of the current trend in zoharic
scholarship to be more attentive to the complex interweaving of diverse textual strands, but in
terms of the task of reconstructing Kemper's thought this scholarly debate it is irrelevant.
21. While I have no reason to assume that after his conversion Kemper continued to practice the
rituals of Judaism, it is reasonable to presume on the basis of his writings, as I will argue in
more detail below, that he maintained that faithfulness to the Jaws of Judaism could be seen as
an expression of the messianic belief in Jesus. With respect to this claim there is a natural
affinity between Kemper's spiritual comportment and the orientation of Jesus as well as the
early Jewish-Christian sects in contrast to the view of Christianity proffered by Paul and his
followers. For a highly readable summary of this issue, see D. Flusser, Jesus (Jerusalem:
Magnes, 1997), 56-80.
22. This is not to suggest that Kemper did not take a harsh stand against the beliefs and practices
of the Jews of his time, and especially for rejecting the messianic calling of Jesus. A
particularly poignant expression of his animus is found in the stories he recounts in Beriah
ha-Tikhon, fols. 123b-124b, regarding the opposition on the part of Jews in Poland and in
Czechoslovakia toward those who wanted to pronounce their faith in Jesus. In the incident
that Kemper reports from Prague, a man apparently even killed his own son because the latter
wanted to accept the belief of the Christians. As Kemper notes, it is against this background
that it is necessary to understand the Seder ha-Tefi/lah u-Mesirat Moda'a', the declaration of
faith in the God of Israel to be uttered close to one's death so that the person is not tempted by
Satan to convert to Christianity. The manifesto is included in Nathan Neta Hannover's
Sha'arei Siyyon from which it is cited by Kemper, Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 12la-122b. Kemper
also cites a passage from the Midrash ha-Ne'e/am section of the Zohar (1 :98a; see note 24 with
respect to the issue of which edition of Zohar Kemper used) to illustrate that within the
kabbalistic tradition there is justification for the view that the moment of the demise of the
physical body is a propitious time to declare the basic tenet of Christian faith, for only by
proclaiming belief in Jesus can one drive Satan away to the "pasture of pigs and to the depth
of the sea" (Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 124b). Another rather strident remark against the Jews
occurs in 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, MS Uppsala Heb. 26, fols. 138b-139a. Kemper refers to the Jews
in derogatory terms as "lacking knowledge and understanding" since they believe that every
Sabbath the wicked go out from Gehenna until the end of Sabbath when they return. Kemper
offers a Christological reading of this zoharic idea, viz., the Sabbath in which the wicked rest
is Jesus who eliminates their suffering permanently.
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 171

23. In Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 186b, Kemper explains that the seventy cows sacrificed in the course
of the festival of Tabernacles correspond to the seventy nations (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah
55b), "for the essence of the coming of Jesus was to redeem Israel, and to perform miracles
and wonders for them. By means of this event all of the other nations were also redeemed, and
especially when the Jews degraded and rejected him." Kemper thus emphasizes the Judaic
component as the primary factor of the messianic task of Jesus. See ibid., fol. 196b, where
Kemper responds to the ethnocentric position of a particular zoharic passage in the following
terms: "For the essence of the coming of the Tree of Life into his garden was for the sake of
Israel ... that is, to perform miracles and wonders, but with respect to the aspect of redemption
and the reception of the Gospel all are equal."
24. See E. Mazet, "Freemasonry and Esotericism," in Modern Esoteric Spirituality, 248-276; A.
Versluis, "Christian Theosophic Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," in
Gnosis and Hermeticism From Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. R. van den Broek and W.J.
Hanegraaff (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 217-236, esp. 228-229.
25. Zohar 1: 13a. Kemper utilized the Lublin edition of the Zohar, but for the sake of convenience
I have cited the relevant zoharic passages according to the more standard pagination, which
follows the Mantua edition.
26. Beriah ha-Tikhon, fols. 12b--14a.
27. For discussion of this motif, see E.R. Wolfson, "Circumcision and the Divine Name: A Study
in the Transmission of Esoteric Doctrine," Jewish Quarterly Review 78 (1987), 77-112.
28. See E.R. Wolfson, "Anthropomorphic Imagery and Letter Symbolism in the Zohar," [Hebrew]
Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1989), 147-181.
29. See Wolfson, "Circumcision and the Divine Name," 96-106.
30. Rom. 2:28-29. The typical Christian approach to circumcision, which may be traced to Paul,
is affirmed in Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 117b: "Immediately, when the Messiah came and he was
circumcised, the sign of the covenant of circumcision ceased. Know that the word milah is
numerically equal to 'elohim, for milah equals 85, and 'elohim is 86, but if you combine [the
addition of one derived from] the word [to the sum of milah] they are identical." See, by
contrast, Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fol. lOb, wherein Kemper (based on Zohar 2:60b) describes the
kabbalistic account of circumcision as providing the means by which one cleaves to Jesus, who
is symbolized by the letter waw.
31. Maqqel Ya 'aqov, fols. 50 a-51 b, 59b-60b.
32. Beriah ha-Tikhon, fol. 18a.
33. Ibid., fols. 116a-b.
34. Ibid., fol. 150a: 'The Messiah is the Shekhinah, which is called the sign of the covenant ('ot
berit)." And ibid., fol. 225b: "It is known that the one who is the holy mystery is the Messiah,
for he is the concealed point of Ein-Sof ... and he is the sign of the covenant spoken of with
respect to the rainbow."
35. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fo!. 82b.
36. The radical division between Israel and the other nations along the axiological line of holy
versus demonic is precisely the consequence of the zoharic view, as we see, for instance, in
Zohar 3:9la-b: "From the eighth day Israel cleave to him, to his name, and they are inscribed
in his name, and they are his, as it says, 'And who is like your people Israel, one nation on this
earth' (2 Sam. 7:23). The nations do not cleave to him, and they do not walk in his laws, and
the holy marking is removed from them to the point that they cleave to the other side that is
not holy." In spite of the unequivocal ethnocentrism of the zoharic perspective, Kemper
maintains that the Christological expansion of boundaries is the hidden intent of the Jewish
ritual when perceived through the lens of the theosophic symbolism.
37. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 14a. On the identification of Jacob and Elijah as the Son of God, see
ibid., fo!. 186b.
38. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fols. 73b--75b. See Beriah ha-Tikhon, fol. 105a: "Therefore, Jesus established
in prayer, 'Hallow be your name,' for he is in his name and his name is in him." The
connection between Jesus and the divine name is an ancient Jewish-Christian mythologou-
menon, as we find attested, for example, in Johannine and Gnostic Christologies. See J.E.
Fossum, The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord: Samaritan and Jewish Concepts of
172 E. R. Wolfson

Intermediation and the Origin of Gnosticism (Tiibingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1985), 96-112; idem,
"In the Beginning Was the Name: Onomanology as the Key to Johannine Christology," in The
Image of the Invisible God: Essays on the Influence of Jewish Mysticism on Early Christo/ogy
(Gottingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1995), 109-133.
39. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 20la-b.
40. Zohar 2:60b.
41. Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fols. 10b-1la. On the nexus of the waw, the Son of God, and the sign of
the covenant, see Beri~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 186b.
42. 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, fol. 14lb. On the link between Adam and Jesus, see below, n. 117.
43. See 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, fols. 135b-136b.
44. Rom. 7:6; 2 Cor. 3:3-6. Needless to say, the topic of Paul's attitude towards and personal
observance of the law are highly complex issues that have been discussed by a host of scholars.
Here I refer only to a sampling of relevant sources that offer a range of different perspectives.
See H.J. Schoeps, Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History,
trans. H. Knight (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961), 168-218; W.D. Davies, Paul and
Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1970), 69-74, 224--226; idem, Jewish and Pauline Studies (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984),
91-122; E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 474--515; P.J. Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha
in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990); J. Murphy-
O'Connor, OP, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 152-157,206-207.
45. Num. 15:38.
46. Isa. 61:10.
47. Deut.6:8.
48. Lev. 19:19.
49. Matt. 6:24; Lk. 16:13; The Gospel of Thomas, trans. R. Valantasis (London and New York:
Routledge, 1997), 47:2, 123-124.
50. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 18a.
51. Ibid, fol. 18b.
52. In the introduction to Beria~ ha-Tikhon, Kemper states explicitly that his intent is to silence
the Jews from speaking out against those who believe in Jesus because it is a "tradition, an
ancient teaching, and a heritage from our sacred forefathers, the masters of the kabbalah and
halakhah."
53. Matt. 5:17-20. Consider the more ambiguous reworking of this passage in Lk. 16:16-17.
54. Mark 12:28-34; Matt. 22:36-40; Lk. 10:25-28.
55. Deut. 6:5.
56. Lev. 19:18.
57. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 212a-b.
58. Zohar 1:24lb.
59. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 233b. On the nexus of the salt of sacrifices and Jesus, see ibid, fols. 217a-
b.
60. Maqqel Yaaqov, fol. 18b.
61. On the older Jewish-Christian identification of Jesus as Sabbath, see Wolfson, Along the Path,
80-82, and references to primary and secondary sources given in the accompanying notes.
62. Kemper adopts the standard theosophic symbol of the kabbalists that identifies the sixth of
the emanations, Tif'eret, as the central pillar, which is also depicted as the son that emerges
together with his twin sister (Malkhut) from the union of the father (l!okhmah) and mother
(Binah). For Kemper, of course, the Christological implication involves the identification of
the central pillar as Jesus. However, he offers an interesting viewpoint whereby the first and
the last of the ten emanations, Keter and Malkhut, are contained within the central pillar, an
idea that is linked exegetically to the verse "I am the first and I am the last, and there is no god
but me" (lsa. 44:6). See Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 200a-b.
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 173

63. Cf. Berial} ha-Tikhon, fol. ll7b: "The sign of circumcision and the Sabbath instruct about him,
and the eight days of circumcision instruct about the [letter]l}et of lfokhrnah, and similarly the
eight days of the sacrifice ... and from these signs a crown is made for the head of a ~addiq." On
the sacrificial nature of Jesus, see the remarks of Kemper to Matt. 26:15 in Me'irat 'Einayirn,
fol. 184a.
64. Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat ll8b. Interestingly, Kemper misquoted the tradition reported in
the name of Simeon ben Yo~i to the effect that if Israel were to keep two consecutive
Sabbaths, then the redemption would come immediately. Perhaps he had in mind an
independent tradition reported in the same talmudic context in the name of Rav that if Israel
were to keep one Sabbath, no foreign nation would have dominion over them. The important
point is that from Kemper's perspective the talmudic dictum indicates that correct observance
of the Sabbath on the part of the collectivity of Israel occasions the coming of the Messiah
who is the Lord of Sabbath (see following note for references). This designation of Jesus
indicates the aspect of the nomian tradition that transgresses its own boundary as ceremonial
law, a phenomenon that I refer to as "hypernomianism." In Berial} ha-Tikhon, fol. ll2b,
Kemper combines the New Testament designation of Jesus as the "Lord of Sabbath" with the
rabbinic depiction of the world-to-come as the "day that is entirely Sabbath" (see below, n. 68)
in order to support the Christian practice to celebrate Sabbath on the first day of the week as
opposed to the Jewish custom of the seventh day. In Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fols. 27a-b, Kemper
utilizes the description of Jesus as the "Lord of Sabbath" to interpret the halakhic ruling
(Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 61a, 132a; 'Eruvin 95b, 96a; Menal;10t 36b) that it is not
necessary to wear phylacteries on the Sabbath. See ibid., fol. 35b: "Thus you see who is the
Lord of Sabbath, that is, the king to whom peace and the world-to-come belong, that is, the
eternal Sabbath and the eternal rest." And in 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, fol. 138b: "It says [Zohar
3:94b] that Sabbath is the joy of everything, this refers to the one about whom the Sabbath
instructs ... that is, concerning the one who is the Lord of Sabbath, and he is the joy of the
righteous in the future to come, and he is the Father's unique Son .. . and the day of the
wedding is the day that he acquired for himself the Matrona, that is, our holy community of
believers, and this is the day he rose from the dead, for then he is wed to those who believe in
him."
65. Based on the reference to Jesus in the synoptic gospels as K6ptos 1:06 crcx~~chou. See Mk. 2:28;
Matt. 12:8; Lk. 6:5.
66. See Berial} ha-Tikhon, fols. 27a-b: "Concerning Aaron it says [Zohar 1:26la] that he holds on
to the sixth gradation, that is, of the ten sefirot, that is, Tif'eret, which is the splendor of the
entire world (tif'eret kol ha-'o/arn). As [it says] in the New Testament, he who wants to be
glorified should be glorified in Jesus, and he is called the sixth day, that is, 'the sixth' (ha-
shishz), with the definite article (he' ha-yedi'ah) ... and this definite article instructs about the
man who is known above ('adam ha-yadu'a le-rna'alah) ... and this is the secret of the double
bread (lel}ern rnishneh) on the sixth day, for he is the second gradation, and subservient to his
Father. Thus the double bread alludes to the two attributes, human and divine." Kemper
proffers a Christological interpretation of the rabbinic custom to have two loaves on bread at
the Sabbath table (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 39b, Shabbat 117b), which is anchored
exegetically in the biblical verse (Exod. 16:22).
67. I am not certain to whom Kemper refers when he speaks of the "masters of tradition" (ba'alei
qabbalah) who identify Jesus as the sixth day in preparation of the Sabbath, which is eternal
life, but it is of interest to recall that Abraham Abulafia identified Jesus as the sixth day in
polemical contrast to the Jewish messiah who corresponds to Sabbath. See M. Idel, Studies in
the Ecstatic Kabbalah (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 51-52.
68. Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a.
69. Beriah ha-Tikhon, fols. 116a-117a.
70. His p~lemical treatise written to his children, the Liber Visorurn Divinorurn, was published in
Paris, 1554. Regarding this figure, seeR. Bonfil, "Who Was the Apostate Ludovico Carreto?,"
[Hebrew] in Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to
Professor Hairn Beinart on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. A. Mirsky, A.
174 E.R. Wolfson

Grossman, andY. Kaplan (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1988), 437-442; idem, Jewish Life in
Renaissance Italy, trans. A. Oldcom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 118.
71. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 20b. See ibid., fol. 217b, wherein Kemper interprets the claim in Zohar
I :216a regarding the efficacy of protecting the sign of the covenant of circumcision as the
means of conjunction of the righteous male to the Shekhinah as follows: "Accordingly it says,
'And all of your people are righteous' (Isa. 60:21), that is, those who are with him and who
believe in this Messiah, and they are Israel (yisra'el), the just ones (yesharim) who believe in the
just God ( 'el yashar), and therefore 'they will inherit the land.' It says [in the zoharic text],
What is the reason? For they are circumcised, that is, they were then implanted in the
righteous one, foundation of the world."
72. See Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fol. 68a: "In every place that you find the Zohar explaining one of the
holy names with reference to one of the patriarchs, you must understand that the patriarchs
believed in him, and especially the name 'Israel,' which instructs about the just God ( 'el
yashar), a reversal of the letters of yisra'el." In Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 104b, the expressions
yisra'el and 'el yashar are applied to the Holy Spirit. See also Maqqel Yaaqov, fol. 111b. On the
identification of the Church, the community of Israel, and the Shekhinah, see ibid., fol. 15b.
73. Zohar 1:260a.
74. SeeP. Borgen, Bread From Heaven: An Exegetical Study of the Concept of Manna in the Gospel
ofJohn and the Writings of Philo (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), 114, 147-192; The Gospel According
to John I-XII, trans!. with introduction and commentary by R.E. Brown (Garden City:
Doubleday, 1986), cxxii-cxxv.
75. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 22b.
76. Mk. 14:22; Matt. 26:26; Lk. 22:19. See also 1 Cor. 11:23-25.
77. Jn. 6:48-58; see the study of Borgen cited inn. 74.
78. Deut. 16:3.
79. Maqqel Yaaqov, fol. 26b.
80. The identification of Jesus as the Torah underlies Kemper's remark in Maqqel Yaaqov, fol.
97a, "When he ascended and sat to the right of his Father, he was his delight every day, and he
was one with his Father." The appropriation of this motif of God taking pleasure with Jesus,
which is based on the Christological reading of Prov. 8:30, is predicated on the presumed
identity of Jesus as divine wisdom. See Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 202b.
81. Beria~ha-Tikhon, fols. 22b-23a.
82. See, for instance, Zohar 3:96a-b, 97b (Piqqudin); The Book of the Pomegranate: Moses de
Leon's Sefer ha-Rimmon, ed. E.R. Wolfson (Atlanta: Scholar's Press, 1988), 138-139.
83. Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 21 b; Nedarim 38a.
84. Zohar 2:123a, 132a, 155b; 3:253b.
85. Zohar 1:2a, 154a; 2:85a; 3:290a, 290b-291a; G. Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the
Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, trans. J. Neugroschel, ed. and revised J. Chipman
(New York: Schocken, 1991), 174-176; I. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of
Texts, trans. D. Goldstein (Oxford: Littman Library, 1989), 293, 295; E.R. Wolfson, Circle in
the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1995), 98-106. The last of the sefirotic emanations, Shekhinah, is also
designated in some zoharic passages by maternal images, such as the "holy mother," 'imma'
qadisha', in Zohar 2:125a.
86. On the nexus of Jesus, the symbol of the mother, and the Torah, see Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol.
232a. In Maqqel Yaaqov, fols. 70a-b, Kemper applies the symbol of the interrogative pronoun
"who,'' which is associated in the theosophic symbolism of the Zohar with Binah, to Jesus.
Kemper decodes the Hebrew word for this pronoun mi ('Y.l) as an abbreviation for mashia~
yeshu (1\!J' n>\!JY.l), the "messiah Jesus." Underlying the association of Binah and Jesus is the
standard identification of this divine gradation as the Jubilee, the fiftieth year corresponding
to the fifty gates of understanding. On the depiction of Jesus as the Jubilee, see Qarsei ha-
Mishkan, fol. 9a.
87. For recent discussion of the impact of the soteriological function of Binah on the messianic
pretense of Sabbatai Zevi, see M. Ide!, "Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi: A New Approach to
Sabbateanism,'' in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations From the Bible to Waco, ed.
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 175

P. Schafer and M.R. Cohen (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998), 181-199, and idem, Messianic Mystics
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 187-197.
88. Zohar 3:290b; R. Moses de Leon's Sefer Sheqel ha-Qodesh, ed. C. Mopsik [Hebrew] (Los
Angeles: Cherub Press, 1996), 26. As Mopsik notes, ad locum, the source for this zoharic
wordplay is Sefer ha-Bahir.
89. Zohar 1:2lb, 26la-b; 2:43b, 46a, 83b, 85b; Book of the Pomegranate, 133-134, 137; J.H.A.
Wijnhoven, "Sefer ha-Mishkal: Text and Study," (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1964), 102-
103; Joseph Gikatilla, Sha'arei 'Orah ed. J. Ben-Shlomo, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik,
1981), 1:111, 2:48-49, 68--69.
90. Sheqel ha-Qodesh, 25.
91. See, for instance, Zohar 2:85b, wherein the various symbolic images coalesce: "It has been
taught that Israel went out from Egypt from the side of the Jubilee, and thus the exodus from
Egypt is mentioned fifty times in the Torah, and it took fifty days for them to receive the Torah,
and the liberation of slaves occurs after fifty years."
92. Zohar 2:46b. For Kemper, the "great ram's horn," shofar gadol, which is mentioned in an
eschatological context in Isa. 27:13, refers to the evangelical teachings of comfort (see below,
n. 124) that come forth from the mouth of Jesus. See Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 68b; Beria~ ha-
Tikhon, fol. 214b. Kemper thus offers a symbolic explanation of the ritual to blow the shofar
on Rosh ha-Shanah. Kemper accepts the rabbinic notion that the shofar is reminiscent of the
attempted sacrifice of Isaac, which he connects (following a much older typological approach
in Christian sources) with the crucifixion of Jesus. However, on this very basis, he is critical of
the Jews for fulfilling the ritual in a concrete, literal manner. Somewhat cynically Kemper
remarks that instead of the Jews confusing Satan by blowing the shofar, Satan confuses them,
for their ritual observance leads to a neglect of Jesus. See Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 223b-224a.
93. See Wolfson, Circle in the Square, 102-103; idem, "Tiqqun ha-Shekhinah: Redemption and the
Overcoming of Gender Dimorphism in the Messianic Kabbalah of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto,"
History of Religions 36 (1997), 317-320. The influence of the kabbalistic terminology is
evident in Kemper's designation of the eschatological redemption as the "universal repen-
tance," ha-teshuvah kolelet. See Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 20la, 203b, 204a, 220b.
94. See Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 46b, where the Trinity is described in the following way: f!okhmah is
the Father, Binah is the Son (based on decoding the word as ben yah, the son of yod-he; the
letters that stand respectively for f!okhmah and Binah), and the Holy Spirit is the vapor that
comes out from their combination and overflows to the prophets. The zoharic idea of the
heterosexual union of the father and the mother, f!okhmah and Binah, is transformed in
Kemper's mind into the ontological (and, apparently, asexual) union of the Father and the
Son. In Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 202b, Kemper similarly relies on the tradition of the ba'alei
qabbalah to decode the word binah as ben yah, to explain the attribution of the gradation of
Binah (or Tevunah) to Jesus. On the attribution of the symbol of the mother to Jesus, see ibid.,
fols. 213a-b. In that context, the depiction of Jesus as mother is the basis for linking the
persona of Rachel to Jesus, for just as Rachel was the mother who sacrificed her life for the
sake of her children, so Jesus sacrificed his life for the sake of his children. See ibid., fols. 232a-
b, where Kemper again links the image of Rachel weeping over her children to Jesus, who is
identified as the Shekhinah in her angelic posture. In that context, however, the feminine
depiction of Jesus, related especially to the figure of the mother, is associated with the
execution of judgment, in contrast to the image of the son, which conveys the quality of
mercy. Kemper derives this correlation of attributes and gender from the standard kabbalistic
symbolism. The androgynous nature of Jesus is linked exegetically in that context to the
description of the angel of God as both male and female in Zohar 1: 232a. See Wolfson, Circle
in the Square, 203 n. 34. The image of the nurturing mother who bears the pain of her children
is implicit in the description of Jesus in Matt. 23:37 (with parallel in Lk. 13:34) as the "hen that
gathers her brood under her wings," which is based ultimately on Deut. 22:6. On the
application of maternal imagery to Jesus in medieval Christian sources, see C.W. Bynum,
Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1982); and G.M. Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 297-304.
176 E.R. Wolfson

95. Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fols. 2b-3a.

96. Ibid, fol. 67b.
97. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fols. 9a-b, 33a-b; Beria~ ha-Kikhon, fols. 28b and 54a.
98. The feminine nature of Jesus (identified explicitly with the Shekhinah), in contrast to the
masculine nature of Christ, is affirmed by Postel. See F. Secret, "L'Hermeneutique de
Guillaume Postel," Archivio di Filosofia 3 (1963), 101-102. On the importance of Jewish (and
especially kabbalistic) sources for Postel's idea of the feminine principle of Jesus, see also
Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, 82-83, 105.
99. In Beriah ha-Tikhon, fol. 116a, Kemper attributes the title Shekhinah to Jesus for he "dwells in
the midst of people," even though he is also the "righteous one who is the foundation of the
world." Kemper explains the confluence of the masculine and the feminine symbolism in light
of the zoharic passage (from the Ra'aya' Meheimna' section) wherein the Shekhinah is called
the "sign of the covenant" ( 'ot berit) from the side of Yesod (Zohar I: 166a). See ibid., fol. 230b,
where Jesus, identified as the Shekhinah, is also referred to (on the basis of Josh. 3:11) as the
"ark of the covenant, Lord of all the earth," 'aron ha-berit 'adon kol ha- 'ares. In Qarsei ha-
Mishkan, fol. Ia, the term Shekhinah is applied to the Holy Spirit but also to Jesus who is
identified as well with the attribute of Hokhmah. See Be ria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 179a, where
Kemper applies the technical zoharic term for the Shekhinah, haqal tapuhin qadishin, the
"orchard of holy apples" (see Zohar 1:143b, 151b, 224b; 2:6lb, 84b, 88b; 3:128b, 288a, 292b),
to Jesus, for "this tree in its branches (the Trinity) is planted in the field of apples, which refers
to his holy community who believe permanently in this Trinity." On the attribution of the
expression matronita' to Jesus in talmudic and zoharic sources, see Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 27a;
Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 216a-b. The identification of Jesus with the Shekhinah allows Kemper
to apply an array of symbols associated with the feminine divine presence in zoharic literature
to Jesus. See, for example, the application of the symbol of the "opening," petah, or that of the
"opening of the tent," peta~ ha- 'ohel, to Jesus, in Maqqel Ya'aqov, fols. 77b-78a, based on
zoharic passages wherein these symbols refer to the Shekhinah (see Zohar 1:36b-37a, 54b, 98a,
103b; 2:36a; 3:14a, 7lb). Kemper extends the kabbalistic symbolism to include the image of
the curtain (parokhet) or the veil (yeri'ah) as a symbolic reference to Jesus. On this latter image,
see the interesting exegetical remark in ibid., fols. 64b--65a: "The holy curtain instructs about
the Messiah. And this is a great secret, for on the day of the crucifixion of Jesus the Messiah
the curtain was torn and rent. The reason why the curtain is called that which divides is
because just as it is impossible to enter into the Holy of Holies except through the curtain, so it
is impossible to enter before the Father except by means of the Son."
100. In Beriah ha-Tikhon, fols. 177b-178a, the doctrine of incarnation is not only related to the
attribution of feminine symbols to Jesus, but also to the virtue of humility, although the link
between the two is an ancient and prevailing association. Given the bond of this quality and
Moses, Kemper draws a typological link between Moses and Jesus. The former is the "first
redeemer" concerned with physical redemption, whereas the latter is the "final redeemer"
concerned with the spiritual redemption. On the relationship of Moses and Jesus, see ibid., fol.
209a: "The letters of il'<JY.l ['Moses'] are the reverse of 0\Dil ['the name,' which here signifies the
divine], and thus he was the paradigm (defus) for Jesus in the labor of redemption, and Moses
did what he did through him." See Maqqel Ya'aqov, fols. 96b, 113b. And the following
interesting remark that Kemper makes after copying an account of Moses and the uniqueness
of his prophecy in Zohar 3:268b-269a: "The splendor of the glory of Moses appeared when
the Messiah was revealed to the apostles" (Leqet he- 'Ani, fol. 160b). The analogies that
Kemper draws between Moses as the first redeemer and Jesus as the final redeemer are
reminiscent of the connection made between Moses and Sabbatai Zevi in Sabbatian texts. For
references to the latter in primary and secondary sources, which has been interpreted in a
Christological way, see E.R. Wolfson, "The Engenderment of Messianic Politics: Symbolic
Significance of Sabbatai Sevi's Coronation," in Toward the Millennium, 222-223 n. 60.
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 177

101. On the identification of Jesus as the Torah of truth, which is the Word of God, see Beriah ha-
Tikhon, fols. 183a-183b. ·
I 02. The use of this verse to denote the suffering of the Messiah, which is related more specifically
to his ostensibly antinomian behavior and his enduring hardship for the sake of redeeming
others, is a prominent feature of various Sabbatians tracts, especially those of Nathan ofGaza
and his followers. In some of the relevant contexts, the Sabbatian thinkers reinterpreted the
exegesis of this verse in Zohar 3:69a. For references, see Wolfson, "Engenderment of
Messianic Politics," 228 n. 74.
103. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fols. lOa-b. On the attribution of Ze'eir 'Anpin to Jesus, see Qarsei ha-
Mishkan, fol. 13b.
104. Ibid., fol. 34a. On the enthronement of Jesus to the right side of the divine, see also Heb. 1:3,
and the comments of Kemper, Me'irat 'Einayyim, fol. 198b. In Maqqel Yalzqov, fol. 65a, the
descent of Jesus to earth to bear the iniquities of humanity is described as the exile of the
divine, which is related exegetically to the verse "and I was amidst those who were in the exile"
(Ezek. 1:1). Similarly, in Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 177b, the incarnation of Jesus in the human
form is characterized as the exile of the Shekhinah. See ibid., fols. 214a-b.
105. I note, parenthetically, that on the basis of a passage from the Ralzya' Meheimna' stratum of
zoharic literature (Zohar 3:279a) Kemper assigns image of the donkey to the Messiah son of
David who is in a state on contrition in contrast to the image of the ox applied to the Messiah
son of Joseph, which signifies his exalted state. The traditional dual Messiah of Judaism is
thus interpreted by Kemper as a reference to the incarnational theology in Christianity, which
is predicated on the belief in one messianic figure characterized by the paradox of elevation in
heavenly kingship and debasement in the suffering of the material world. For a survey of the
two messianic figures from classical rabbinic texts to sixteenth-century kabbalistic sources, see
R. Goetschel, "Les Figures du Messie fils de David et du Messie fils de Joseph," Pardes 24
(1998), 21-49.
106. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 116a. The theme is elaborated in Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fol. 68a, in an
interpretation of the distinction between the two forms of Israel found in Zohar 2:216a: "The
elder Israel (yisra'el sabba) is the Father, the Ancient of Ancients, and the younger (;u~) is the
Son, Ze'eir 'Anpin, for he diminished himself (hiz'ir 'et ·a~o) and descended to the earth, and
he is the youthful (na'ar) Metatron."
107. See the study of Abrams referred to above, n. I. In Maqqel Yalzqov, fols. 68a-b, Kemper cites
the piyyut from the liturgy for the blowing of the ram's horn on Rosh ha-Shanah wherein there
is a reference to yeshulz sar ha-panim, "Jesus the angel of the countenance," who is identified
further as Metatron. See Phosphorus Orthodoxa, 15 n. 12. Regarding this poem, see Y. Liebes,
"The Angels of the Shofar and Yeshua Sar ha-Panim," [Hebrew] Jerusalem Studies in Jewish
Thought 6, 1-2 (1987), 171-198.
108. See E.R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish
Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 224-226, 258-259.
109. For a recent study of this motif, which has been examined by many scholars, see Ch. Gieschen,
Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998).
110. Kemper also identifies Jesus as the "angel of the covenant," mal'akh ha-berit (Mal. 3:1), and as
the "angel of the countenance," ma/'akh ha-panim, terms that are applied as well to Metatron.
See Me'irat 'Einayim, fols. 179a-b, 186a.
Ill. Zohar 1:122b.
112. Beriahha-Tikhon, fol. 152a.
113. See reference, n. 111.
114. Matt. 23:12.
115. The source for the nexus between the humility, which entails the concern for others, and the
incarnation of Jesus in human form, which is depicted as an emptying of himself until the
point of death, is Phil. 2:3-8.
116. M. Ide!, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 119 and 135;
Y. Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, trans. A. Schwartz, S. Nakache, and P. Peli (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1993), 110-114.
178 E. R. Wolfson

ll7. Zohar 1:266b (Ra'aya' Meheimna). On the feminine character of the symbol of Jacob in
Ashkenazi esotericism and its impact on the Spanish Kabbalah, see Wolfson, Along the Path,
27-29, 40, 43, 51-52, 144 n. 189. The central motif that I studied in this connection is the
image of Jacob engraved on the throne. Interestingly enough, in Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 186a,
Kemper interprets the statement that in a time of distress for the people of Israel God looks
upon the icon of Jacob and he is filled with mercy (Zohar 1:168a; regarding this passage and
related sources, see Wolfson, op. cit., 177 n. 347) as a reference to the Father gazing upon the
Son. The icon of Jacob symbolically represents Jesus, for, as Kemper reminds the reader,
according to the "masters of the tradition" (ba'alei qabbalah) the form of the supernal Adam is
in the likeness of Jacob, ~rat 'adam 'ila'ah ke-~rato she/ ya'aqov (the precise formulation in
Zohar 1:3Sb is "Jacob was the pattern of primal Adam," ya'aqov dugma' de- 'adam ha-ri'shon
hawah). Hence, the image of Jacob refers to Adam, who is identified further as Jesus. The
nexus between Adam and Jesus is an ancient one in Christian soteriology. See M. Simon,
"Adam et 1a redemption dans Ia perspective de l'eglise ancienne," in Types of Redemption:
Contributions to the Theme of the Study-Conference Held at Jerusalem 14th to 19th July 1968,
ed. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky and C. Jouco Bleeker (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), 62-71. On the
relationship of Jacob and Adam as a polemic against this Christological perspective in
zoharic literature, see E.R. Wolfson, "Re/membering the Covenant: Memory, Forgetfulness,
and the Construction of History in the Zohar," in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays
in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. E. Carlebach, J.D. Efron, and D.M. Myers (Hanover
and London: Brandeis University Press, 1998), 218-220. On the possibility that in one of its
original settings the image of Jacob actually had implicit Christological overtones, see
Wolfson, Along the Path, 5.
ll8. Beria~ha-Tikhon, fols. 176a-177b.
119. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 22b.
120. The rabbinic interpretation of the Christological depiction of Jesus as the incarnation of the
Word as referring to the Oral Torah underlies the expression peh qadosh, the "holy mouth,"
which Kemper frequently applies to Jesus when he cites words from the gospel texts. See, for
instance, Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 211a, 231b.
121. Zohar 2:60a-b.
122. Cf. Me'irat 'Einayyim, fol. 175a.
123. Based on Isa. 51:4. Cf. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 223a, where Kemper reminds the reader that on
the Jewish holiday of Pentecost it is necessary to remember the one to whom the Torah
alludes, the "Word of the Lord," and "especially the new Torah that comes forth from him!'
The new Torah is the Gospel, which Kemper elsewhere identifies as the Oral Torah. The nexus
Kemper establishes (on the basis of the zoharic text) between Jesus and the revelation of the
Torah is the true meaning of the Pentecost. Kemper is thus critical of the Jews in his day who
thought that the only significant practices for the holiday were reading the 613 command-
ments and the 'aqdamot poem, which is complex recounting of the Sinaitic epiphany (see ibid.,
fol. 223b). Interestingly, Kemper concludes his commentary on Matthew by copying the
'aqdamot, presumably on account of the messianic implication he imputed to it. See Me'irat
'Einayyim, fols. 206a-207b.
124. In Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 196a, Kemper refers to the "Gospel of comfort." And see ibid., fols.
2llb--212a, where the voice of Jesus is described as the "voice of comfort, the Gospel, the
sweet voice."
125. Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fol. II b. See ibid., fol. 27a, where the Written Torah is identified as the
Torah of Moses and the Oral Torah with the Gospel. On the contrast between the Written
Torah or the Torah of letters, which is the Torah of Moses, and the Oral Torah, which is the
Gospel, see also Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 201b--202a.
126. The precise formulation cited by Kemper, leit !OV 'ela' torah, appears in Zohar 2:117b (Ra'aya'
Meheimna), but it is based on the statement, 'ein tov 'ela' torah, which appears in earlier
rabbinic texts, such as Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot Sa. For a list of some of the other
relevant sources, see Midrash Mishle, ed. B.L. Visotzky (New York: Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, 1990), 30 n. 41.
127. Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fol. 26a.
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 179

128. Ibid., fol. 73b.

129. Zohar 3:90b. In the original context, the symbolic meaning of this statement is the Malkhut,
which is the Oral Torah, emanates from Tif'eret, which is the Written Torah, in the same
manner that the female is constructed out of the male.
130. 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, fol. 133b.
131. Mk. 4:11-12. See A.Y. Collins, "Messianic Secret and the Gospel of Mark: Secrecy in Jewish
Apocalypticism, the Hellenistic Mystery Religions, and Magic," in Rending the Veil: Conceal-
ment and Secrecy in the History of Religions, ed. E.R. Wolfson (New York and London: Seven
Bridges Press, 1999), 26-27.
132. Ibid., fol. 134a.
133. Zohar 3:98a.
134. 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, fol. 139b.
135. For a recent discussion of this idiom in its multiple nuances, see D. Weiss Halivni, "Reflections
on Classical Jewish Hermeneutics," Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research
62 (1996), 21-127.
136. 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, fol. 140a.
137. Babylonian Talmud, MenaJ.tot 99a-b. I explore this dimension of rabbinic legalism in a
separate study, "Beyond Good and Evil: Hypernomianism, Transmorality, and Kabbalistic
Tradition," which will appear in a volume on Jewish mysticism and ethics that I am presently
writing. It is of interest to note that G. Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other
Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1971), 84, remarks that the nihilistic
doctrine that the "violation of the Torah could become its true fulfillment (bi!~lah she/ torah
zehu kiyyumah)" is the "dialectical outgrowth of the belief in the Messiahship of Sabbatai
Zevi." I would propose that the nihilistic tendency is a much older tendency within the nomian
tradition, and the words from the talmudic passage that Scholem (incorrectly) cites lend
expression to the hypernomian perspective that the measure of the law is determined by the
possibility of trespassing its limit. This, I submit, is the meaning of the rabbinic insight that the
abrogation of the Torah is at times its very fulfillment. Scholem, by contrast, tended to see the
irruption of the antinomianism in the Sabbatian and Frankist movements, and especially the
latter, as a fundamental overturning of the rabbinic ethos. See, for example, Scholem's
observation, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1954), 318, that the
doctrine of the holiness of sin and the conception that transgressive acts must be practiced
with religious fervor "are radically opposed to everything which for centuries had formed the
essence of moral teaching and speculation in Judaism. It is as if an anarchist rebellion had
taken place within the world of Law."
138. Scholem, Major Trends, 348, speaks of the "tradition of breaking away from tradition" to
characterize Hasidism.
139. Matt. 5:17-20.
140. Zohar 1:26la.
141. Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 55b.
142. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 26a-b. See above, n. 23
143. The logic of Kemper's orientation can be fruitfully compared to the anti-Talmudism in the
anonymous Sefer ha-Qanah, which is likewise presented in terms of a radically symbolic
interpretation of traditional Judaism in light of kabbalistic theosophy that leads to a reductio
ad absurdum of the halakhic orientation insofar as everything is interpreted as a symbol. See
Scholem, Major Trends, 211. See also idem, Sabbatai $evi: The Mystical Messiah 1626-1676
trans. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 117: "The author
[of Sefer ha-Qanah] clearly wished to preserve the world of halakhah, but only by showing that
a purely interpretive or 'literal' Judaism simply cannot exist .. . . The literal, exegetical
understanding of the Talmud breaks down in the dialectic of its own immanent criticism and
can only be saved by virtue of its inherent mystery. The only possible interpretation of Torah
and Talmud is mystical interpretation."
144. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 16a: "And thus [the name of the prophet Haggai] instructs about the word
~g [festival] or shabbat [Sabbath], and Jesus is the master of the festivals and the Sabbaths."
180 E.R. Wolfson

145. In the zoharic context, the reference is to the sixth and the tenth of the sefirot, Tif'eret and
Malkhut, the Qadosh barukh hu' and the Shekhinah, the king and the matrona.
146. Zohar 2:119a (Ra'aya' Meheimna).
147. See above, n. 65.
148. Matt. 23:5. In his comments on this verse in Me'irat 'Einayyim, fol. 175a, Kemper relates the
broadening of the phylacteries on the part of the Pharisees to the phylacteries of Rabbenu
Tam worn by Jews in his time.
149. Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fols. 27a-b.
!50. In Me'irat 'Einayyim, fol. 177b, Kemper praises the monarchy of Sweden for spreading the
Gospel to all corners of the world, and thus preparing for the great day of the Lord. Kemper's
participation in this missionizing activity consisted of his trying to convince the Jews in
particular to repent in the name of Jesus and assent to the messianic faith.
!51. In Beriah ha-Tikhon, fols. 148a-b, Kemper express the view (following Zohar 1:13lb) that the
Torah provides Israel with the means to be delivered from the angel of death. For Kemper, the
Torah, which is the Tree of Life, is identified as Jesus who is the Word of God by means of
which heaven and earth were created. In principle, therefore, the Torah is the antidote to evil.
However, the inevitability of human transgression makes it impossible for even one of the laws
in the Torah to be fulfilled properly, and thus there must be another means of justification so
that one may be delivered from death.
152. Zohar 1:226b.
153. Beriahha-Tikhon, fol. 22lb--222a.
154. I Cor. 5:6--8. In that context, the sacrificial offering of Jesus is presented as liberation from the
old leaven, and unleavened bread of the festival is identified as the virtues of innocence and
integrity.
!55. See Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 7la: "We can explain the verse 'The scepter shall not depart from
Judah ... until he comes to Shilo' (Gen. 49:10), that is, the evil inclination, which is Satan, will
not be removed from the earth until the coming of the Messiah, for then he will cause the spirit
of impurity to pass from the earth (Zech. 13:2), and this even the Jews acknowledge, for in the
time of the Messiah the blessed holy One will destroy this leaven."
156. See E.R. Wolfson, "Left Contained in the Right: A Study in Zoharic Hermeneutics," AJS
Review 11 (1986), 50-51.
157. Mishnah, Rosh ha-Shanah 1:2.
158. Zohar 1:226b.
159. In its original rabbinic contexts, this dictum (attributed to Samuel) indicates that the decree of
the ruling political power is a decree that must be upheld. See Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim
28a; GiWn I Ob; Baba Qama 113a, 113b; Baba Batra 54b, 55 a. When refracted through the
lens of the theosophic symbolism of the Kabbalah, the dictum conveys the mystery of the
providential execution of judgment that comes forth to the world from Malkhut, the last of the
ten luminous emanations.
160. Beriah ha-Tikhon, fol. 222b.
161. The matter is stated succinctly in Maqqel Ya'aqov, fols. 46b-47a: "When the heart is not
purified by the fire of the Holy Spirit, the understanding and wisdom of Jesus do not dwell
within it .... This is the secret of destroying the leaven before the time to eat the unleavened
bread, for the bread of affliction alludes to the Messiah."
162. Beriah ha-Tikhon, fol.222b.
163. For the history of this term, see B.M. Bokser, The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and
Early Rabbinic Judaism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 65
and 132 n. 62.
164. Me'irat 'Einayim, fol. 184b.
165. Ibid., fos. 184b--186b.
166. See M.M. Kasher, Hagadah Shelemah: The Complete Passover Hagadah ed. S. Ashknage
[Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1967), 77.
167. It is also important to bear in mind that Kemper interpreted the three pieces of unleavened
bread on the Seder plate to be a reference to the Trinity, and the middle one, which is broken
and consumed as the 'afiqomon, is designated as the "bread of affliction" (lehem 'oni) or the
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 181

"bread of the Messiah" (le~em mashia~), the "bread of the body of Jesus" (le~em gufyeshu'a).
See Maqqel Ya'aqov, fols. 25b-26b.
168. A similar point is made by Kemper, Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fol. 6b: "The festival of bread and
wine that Jesus established ... were also in the case of the paschal sacrifice, as is known."
169. Tosefta; PesaJ:rim 10:4. On the prescription to drink wine as the seder, see also Mishnah,
PesaJ:rim 10:1, 2, 4, and 7, although in these passages no prooftext is adduced to anchor the
ritual in Scripture.
170. See Bokser, Origins of the Seder, 45-46.
171. Zohar 1:257b.
172. See J. Dan, The Esoteric Theology of Ashkenazi Hasidism [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik,
1968), 224-229. For an extensive list of other relevant sources wherein this religious practice is
discussed, see D. Sperber, Customs of Israel: Sources and History vol. I [Hebrew] (Jerusalem,
1990), 15-16 n. 14.
173. Beria~ha-Tikhon, fols. 15a-b.
174. Ibid., fol. 16a.
175. See Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, 772 and 776 n. 109; I. Ta-Shema, Ha-Nigleh She-Banistar:
The Halachic Residue in the Zohar [Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv, 1995), 22-23.
176. A key scriptural passage in this regard is Col. 1:15. For the possible link between this verse
and ancient Jewish esotericism, see Fossum, Image of the Invisible God, 13-39.
177. Beriah ha-Tikhon, fol. 49b.
178. Ibid., fol. 50a. See ibid., fol. 231b. On the designation of Jesus as the ma/'akh ha-go'el, see
Maqqel Ya'aqov, fols. 105a-106a, llb-112a.
179. A nexus is drawn between the ma'lakh ha-go'el and the rabbinic teaching regarding the
proximity of ge'ullah and tefillah in Zohar I :205b. In that context, the redeeming angel refers
symbolically to the Shekhinah, and tefillah to the masculine potency.
180. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 4b, 9b, 21a, 30a.
181. Beriah ha-Tikhon, fols. 229a-b.
182. Ps. 95:1.
183. Kemper's remarks are based on the connection made in some rabbinic sources between the
word 'rock' (~ur) attributed to God and the activity of creation, which is related to the verb
ya~ar. For select references, see Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines, 71 n. 69.
184. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 230a-b. Kemper makes clear in the context that the messianic
salvation is related more specifically to the dissemination of the Gospel throughout the world.
185. Regarding the kabbalistic context for this liturgical formula, see G. Scholem, Major Trends,
275-276, 413 n. 97; idem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead, 192 and 300 n. 1001. Tishby,
The Wisdom of the Zohar, 1160; D. Sperber, Customs of Israel: Sources and History, vol. 2
[Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1991), 116-121; M. Hallamish, "The Place of Kabbalah in Custom," in
D. Sperber, Customs of Israel: Sources and History, vol. 3 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1994), 186-
187.
186. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 15b.lt is of interest to note that Norrelius, Phosphorus Orthodoxa, 24-25
n. 6, cites 2 Cor. 3:15 in conjunction with the kabbalistic practice to say "for the sake of the
unity of the blessed holy One and his presence" prior to putting on the phylacteries.
187. Zohar 1:98a.
188. Babylonian Talmud, Ketuvot 104a.
189. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 119b.
190. Zohar 3:29lb.
191. Leqet he- 'Ani, fol. 162a.
192. Ibid.·
193. See Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 29b.
194. Kemper uses the term 'a~ilah, but I have taken the liberty to use the more conventional
expression.
195. On the use of this philological device to link the Christological teaching regarding the Son to
the act of creation, see the remarks of Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 146-152; see also Wolfson,
Along the Path, 73.
196. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 45a-b.
182 E. R. Wolfson

197. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 18a.

198. Ibid., fol. 26a.
199. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 26b.
200. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 104b.
201. Ibid., fol. 105a.
202. On the presumption that the utterance of the three names of God in Dent. 6:4, the
proclamation of the monotheistic faith, alludes to the Trinity, see Qarsei ha·Mishkan, fol. 8b.
See Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 29a. For an earlier exegetical linkage of the threefold unity of the
divine to three names of God mentioned in Deut. 6:4, see Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 140-
145.
203. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 20b.
204. Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 31a
205. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fols. 16a-b.
206. Kemper often distinguishes sharply between the masters of esoteric tradition, ba'alei qabbalah,
and the masters of law, ba'alei talmud, for the former expressed opinions that resonated with
the truths of the Christian faith. Needless to say, pejorative terms are used with reference to
the rabbis on account of their effort to explain the laws and customs in a concrete manner. See,
for instance, Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 207a-b, 219b, 224b. A typical presentation of Kemper's
ambivalent attitude towards the ba'alei talmud appears in a lengthy discussion of the rabbinic
dictum that in the days of the Messiah Israel will not receive converts (Babylonian Talmud,
Yevamot 24b) in 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, fols. 122a-123b. Even though this statement is preserved
in the talmudic corpus, Kemper is of the opinion that the rabbis did not comprehend this
tradition or at the very least they removed it from is contextual meaning and attempted to
interpret it wrongly in order to destroy the edifice constructed by Jesus based thereon (fol.
122a). The ostensible contradiction between this statement and the missionizing tendency of
those who believed in the messianic claim of Jesus is resolved by relating the rabbinic idea
especially to an inferior element such as the mixed multitude ('erev rav) who accompanied
Israel when they exited from Egypt (Exod. 12:38). According to Kemper, the tradition
recorded in the Talmud is not talking about righteous converts such as those who professed
the Christian faith. On other occasions, Kemper distinguishes a view expressed by the author
of the Zohar and masters of Talmud. For example, see Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 186b and 2lla-
b. The latter example is of interest because it displays the complexity of Kemper's attitude
towards his rabbinic heritage. On the one hand, he finds support in rabbinic texts, including
the Mishnah (Berakhot 5:1), for the admonition of Jesus that to pray one should seclude
oneself in one's room and worship the invisible God in contrast to the hypocrites who stand
and pray in the synagogues and street corners (Matt. 6:5-6). On the other hand, he sets the
spiritual idea of worshiping in silence expressed in Zohar 1:209b-210a, which is presented as
in accordance with the perspective of Jesus, against the spatial reading ofPs. 130:1 attested in
Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot lOb.
207. In many occasions, Kemper deduces Christological truths from Jewish liturgical practices
even if Jewish worshippers are ignorant of the true intent of these practices. For example, see
Qarseiha-Mishkan, fol. !Sa: "You must know who is the holy name, and he is the one to whom
they pray [in the qaddish] and respond in a loud voice, 'Amen, let his great name be blessed
forever and ever.' They said in the Talmud [Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 119b with slight
variation], 'Whoever responds "Amen, let his great name" with all his might is guaranteed the
world-to-come.' This great name is no other than the Messiah, for he is the master in heaven,
and in every place that you find in the prayers of the Jews [the formula] 'for the sake ofyour
name' it is necessary to understand 'for the sake of your Messiah' ... and especially in the
prayer designated for fast days, 'Save us and atone for our sins for the sake of your name.' This
must be understood as a reference to the Messiah, for [the word] 1Y.lV ['your name']
numerically equals n>VY.l:J. ['by means of the Messiah'].'' For a parallel discussion of the
Christological implications of the qaddish prayer, see Beria!z ha-Tikhon, fol. I 05a. See ibid., fol.
109a-b, where Kemper deduces the messianic truth of Jesus from a verse in the kabbalistic
hymn, Lekhah Dodi, written in the sixteenth century by Solomon Alkabets, to which Kemper
refers simply as qabbalat shabbat. Typically, Kemper concludes his discussion by saying that
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 183

the Jews in his time chirp like birds, but they do not know the true intent of the words that they
utter in prayer. In Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 198b, Kemper even finds a Christological allusion in
the Sabbath hymn, barukh 'adonai yom yom ya'amos lanu yesha' u-.fidyom, composed by
Simeon bar Isaac Abun. See ·o~ar ha-Tefillot (New York, 1966), 1:767-780.
208. Maqqal Ya'aqov, fols. 48b--49b.
209. Regarding the kabbalistic custom of making a fourth meal at the termination of Sabbath, see
E. Ginsburg, The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1989), 277 n. 2.
210. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. Ill b.
211. For references to this idea in rabbinic and zoharic sources, see L. Ginzberg, The Legends ofthe
Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1968), 5:363 n. 345.
212. The allusion is to the bread of the Last Supper, which Jesus distributed to his disciples and
identified as his body. For references, see above, n. 76.
213. On the distribution of bread by Jesus to those who believe in him (see reference in previous
note as well as Mk. 6:41, 8:19-20; Lk. 24:30; Jn. 6:11, 21:13), seeMaqqel Ya'aqov, fols. 113b--
114a, where the matter is related exegetically to Zohar 3:244b (Ra'aya' Meheimna').
214. Beria~ha-Tikhon, fols. 112a-b.
215. Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 143a-144a.
216. Mk. 12:25; Matt. 22:30; Lk. 20:35-36.
217. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 17a.
218. Zohar 1:122b.
219. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 13b.
220. Maqqel Yaaqov, fol. 20b. See Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fol. 152a.
221. A most striking halakhic understanding of Jesus is presented in Me'irat 'Einayyim, fol. 15lb,
where Kemper interprets the blessing of bread on the part of Jesus when he broke bread with
his disciples (Matt. 14:19): '"He raised his eyes to heaven and blessed.' From here you see that
Jesus fulfilled the blessing of the bread before eating, and there is no substance to what they
said in the Talmud [Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 48b] that the blessing over the bread is not
from the Torah, since it is said, 'When you have eaten your fill, bless [the Lord your God]'
(Deut. 8:10), it follows that one must bless prior to eating if one is bless after eating." Kemper
elicits from the narrative about Jesus evidence for the existence of a ritual that challenges the
rabbinic viewpoint that the blessing before the meal is not an explicit scriptural injunction.
222. See references to the work of Schoeps, Scholem, and Liebes cited above, n. I.
223. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 6b. Regarding this messianic episode, see I. Tishby, "The Report of the
Redemption ofR. ~doq ofGrodno in 1695," [Hebrew] Zion 12 (1947), 88.
224. After his conversion, Kemper demonstrated the tendency to view the crises in Jewish history
of his own time from the Christological perspective, especially in terms of the messianic
drama. For example, see Beria~ ha-Tikhon, fols. 173b--174a, where he mentions the massacre
of thousands of Jews in the Ukraine in 1648/49. On the impact of the Chmielnicki catastrophe
on messianic speculation in kabbalistic texts from the seventeenth century and the specific role
these pogroms may have played on the flourishing of the Sabbatian phenomenon, see
Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 88-93; Y. Barnai, "Christian Messianism and the Portuguese
Marranos: The Emergence of Sabbateanism in Smyrna," Jewish History 7 (1993), 119-126;
idem, "The Outbreak of Sabbateanism - The Eastern European Factor," Journal for Jewish
Thought and Philosophy 4 (1994), 171-183; S. Berti, "A World Apart? Gershom Scholem and
Contemporary Readings of 17th-century Christian Relations," Jewish Studies Quarterly 3
(1996), 212-214.
225. This is not to suggest that Kemper made a clean break with Sabbatian material after he
converted and moved to Sweden. On the contrary, there is textual evidence that indicates that
he continued to study and to teach this material to his students. For example, consider the
citation of a passage from Ne~emiah ~yyon's 'Oz l'elohim (Berlin, 1713), 80a, by Norrelius in
Phosphorus Orthodoxre, 23 n. 4. Consider also Leqet he- 'Ani, fol. 160b, where Kemper copies a
pseudo-zoharic passage from a manuscript of R. Solomon Saraval that proposes 5427, i.e.,
1666/67, as the time of the messianic redemption. Kemper comments, "Consider that in that
very year there was turmoil amongst the Jews related to the fact that the Messiah would come
184 E. R. Wo(/Son

to them." Regarding the Venetian rabbi Solomon f!:ay Saraval and his involvement with the
messianic fervor of the Sabbatian movement, see Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 360, 362, 499-501,
766.
226. My conjecture with respect to the spiritual odyssey of Kemper parallels the argument that
Liebes, On Sabbateanism, 212-237 has made with respect to a clandestine circle of Jewish-
Christians in Prague that arose in the early part of the eighteenth century. After the demise of
their leader, Jonathan Eybeschutz, the members of the group despaired of their hope in the
messianic status of Sabbatai Zevi and adopted an esoteric form of Christianity. As Liebes
notes (212), this transition was made possible by the Christological elements of their faith,
which were rooted in the older Kabbalah, and especially in zoharic literature, and in the
syncretistic nature of the Sabbatian phenomenon itself. The same dynamic is discernible in the
case of Kemper.
227. I am here deliberately leaving out of consideration the more nihilistic attitude toward law and
ritual that one finds in the Donmeh sect in Salonika who converted to Islam in 1683 and the
Frankist sect in Poland who converted to Catholicism in 1759. It is particularly relevant to
contrast the more radical nihilism exemplified in the case of Jacob Frank and his followers to
the more attenuated approach to Jewish law that one finds in the writings of Kemper. Given
the fact that Kemper, like Frank, became a Christian, one might have expected a similar
attitude with respect to the unqualified abrogation of the law to emerge from their thought,
but it is decidedly not the case. Regarding the crypto-Jewish sect of the Diinmeh, see Scholem,
Messianic Idea, 142-166. On the extreme religious nihilism of Frank, see Scholem, Major
Trends, 308, 318, 330; idem, Messianic Idea, 127-134; idem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem, 1974), 287-
309. For an attempt to place Frank's antinomian eschatology in a social context, see H.
Levine, "Frankism as Worldly Messianism," in Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish
Mysticism 50 Years After: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on the History of
Jewish Mysticism, ed. P. Schafer and J. Dan (Berlin, 1993), 283-300, esp. 296-298.
228. See Scholem, Major Trends, 291-294, 296; idem, Messianic Idea, 19-24, 49-141; idem, "Der
Nihilismus als religiiises Phiinomen," Eranos Jahrbuch 43 (1974), 27-35. On the necessity to
preserve the traditional commandments in the thought of Abraham Cardoso, see E.R.
Wolfson, "Constructions of the Shekhinah in the Messianic Theosophy of Abraham Cardoso
With an Annotated Edition of Derush ha-Shekhinah," Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of
Jewish Mystical Texts 3 (1998), 25-27, and sources cited on 26 n. 47.
229. Recently, Ide!, Messianic Mystics, 197, has argued that in addition to the "antinomianism" of
Tiqqunei Zohar, Sabbatai Zevi may have been influenced by the "anomianism" of the ecstatic
Kabbalah and the theosophic Kabbalah from the circle of Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi,
which may have been communicated to the pseudo-Messiah through works like Sefer ha-
Peli'ah. I would raise two problems with !del's conjecture. First, I am not certain that
"anomianism" is in fact the right term to characterize the ecstatic Kabbalah. I prefer the term
"hypernomianism," by which I mean the fact that the meditational practices, which induce the
prophetic states of consciousness, push at the limits of the law and thus extend the boundaries
of prescribed ritual behavior. See E.R. Wolfson, "Mystical Rationalization of the Command-
ments in the Prophetic Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia," in Perspectives on Jewish Thought and
Mysticism, ed. A. Ivry, A. Arkush, and E.R. Wolfson (Reading, 1998), 311-360. Second, the
role of ritual in Sefer ha-Peli'ah is itself a complex question, which can only be evaluated by
examining carefully the other work written by this kabbalist, Sefer ha-Qanah. I am not certain
that "anomian" is a term that can be used to characterize the approach of these sources. See
M. Kushnir-Oron, "The Sefer ha-Peli'ah and the Sefer ha-Kanah: Their Kabbalistic Principles,
Social and Religious Criticism and Literary Composition," [Hebrew] (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew
University, 1980), 230-272; T. Fishman, "A Kabbalistic Perspective on Gender-Specific
Commandments: On the Interplay of Symbols and Society," AJS Review 17 (1992), 199-245.
230. See R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, "Messianismus und Mystik," in Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in
Jewish Mysticism 50 Years After, 20-21. The Sabbatian abrogation of the law as an expression
of the fulfillment of the law in the messianic moment seems closer in spirit to some of the
teachings attributed to Jesus. See M. Bockmuehl, "Halakhah and Ethics in the Jesus
Tradition," in Early Christian Thought in Its Jewish Context, edited by J. Barclay and J. Sweet
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 185

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 273-275. On the analogy between Paulinism
and Sabbatianism, see Scholem, Messianic Idea, 58-59. Parallels between key elements of the
Sabbatian messianism and early Christianity, particularly as expressed in Paul, have been
drawn elsewhere by Scholem and by a number of other scholars. See Scholem, Major Trends,
307 (in that context, Scholem emphasizes the antinomian tendencies of both Christianity and
Sabbatianism); idem, Sabbatai !jevi, 282-286, 332-354, 545-548, 795-799 (however, for a
rejection of the impact of seventeenth-century Christian millenarian speculation on the
messianic calculation of the Sabbatians, see 153-154); idem, Messianic Idea, 123-125; C.
Wirszubski, Between the Lines: Kabbalah, Christian Kabbalah, and Sabbatianism, ed. M. !del
(Jerusalem, 1990), 131; Y.H. Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto Isaac Cardoso:
A Study in Seventeenth-Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (New York and London:
Columbia University Press, 1971), 307 n. 11; S. Sharot, Messianism, Mysticism, and Magic: A
Sociological Analysis of Jewish Religious Movements (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1982), 120; W.D. Davies, "From Schweitzer to Scholem: Reflections on
Sabbatai Svi," in Gershom Scholem, 77-97; E. Schweid, Judaism and Mysticism According to
Gershom Scholem: A Critical Analysis and Programmatic Discussion trans. with an introduc-
tion by D.A. Weiner (Atlanta: Scholar's Press, 1985), 82-86. On the possibility of tracing some
of the phenomenological affinities between Sabbatian doctrines and Christianity through
historical channels like the converso who returned to Judaism, Jacob f!:ayyim ~maJ:l, who was
the teacher of Nathan of Gaza, see M. Idel, "Differing Conceptions of Kabbalah in the Early
17th Century," in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century ed. I. Twersky and B. Septimus
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 198, and in more detail in idem,
Messianic Mystics, 205-206. The Christological element seems to be rather evident in the
presumption made by several Sabbatians regarding the fact that Sabbatai Zevi was Adam
redivivus and thus he had the power to rectify the primordial sin of spilling semen in vain. See
the text of Bar Perlhefter published by A. Elqayam, "The Rebirth of the Messiah," [Hebrew]
Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 1 (1996), 134-135, and references to
other sources on 135 n. 37. While I would not disagree with Elqayam that Islamic esotericism
exerted an important influence on the Sabbatian faithful, I cannot agree with his assessment in
this context that the identification of Sabbatai Zevi as Adam is based on the Shi'ite notion of
the Messiah being the incarnation of Adam. The description of the messianic figure rectifying
the sin of Adam suggests a Christological background. For a more sustained discussion of the
impact of Sufism on Sabbatai Zevi, see A. Elqayam, "Sabbatai ~vi's Manuscript Copy of the
Zohar," [Hebrew] Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 3 (1998), 365-378.
In that study, 378-379, Elqayam mentions the letter written by Sabbatai Zevi in 1666 wherein
he describes himself as the "firstborn son of the Lord, his only son," terms that bring to mind
the depiction of Jesus in Christianity. The fuller text is cited in Scholem, Sabbatai fievi, 616-
617, and see the sustained discussion of the description of Sabbatai Zevi as the firstborn of
God in A. Elqayam, "The Mystery of Faith in the Writings of Nathan of Gaza," [Hebrew]
(Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University), 1993, 213-220. The passage has been more recently noted by
Ide!, Messianic Mystics, 206, who remarks on 399 n. Ill, that he is unaware of any discussion
of this text. On the relationship of Sabbatai Zevi and Jesus, see also Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi,
399.
231. Scholem, Messianic Idea, 100-108.
232. Scholem, Sabbatai fievi, 728.
233. 'Inyanei Shabbetai fievi, ed. A. Freimann (Berlin: Mekize Nirdamim, 1912), 88; $i~at Novel
!jevi ed. I. Tishby (Jerusalem:Mosad Bialik, 1954), 291. See Scholem, Messianic Idea, 95;
Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court, 314-320. For further discussion of this issue and citation of
other relevant scholarly treatments, see Wolfson, "Constructions of the Shekhinah," 36-37 n.
79.
234. Scholem, Major Trends, 309-310, 319; idem, Sabbatai !jevi, 546-547, 796-797.
235. Major Trends, 293-294.
236. See Scholem, Major Trends, 297; Sabbatai !jevi, 227, 235-236, 391, 813; Liebes, On
Sabbateanism, 172-182. Apropos of the identification of the savior and the serpent, which is
supported by the numerical equivalence of the words mashiah and nahas~, it is of interest to
186 E.R. Wolfson

consider Kemper's interpretation in Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 69a, of a passage from the author of
Tiqqunei Zohar preserved in Zohar 1:27a, '"And the Lord showed him a tree' (Exod. 15:25),
this is the Tree of Life, and by means of it 'the water became sweet' (ibid.), and this is Moses the
anointed one (mashial}), concerning whom it is said 'the rod of God is in my hand' (ibid., 17:9).
The 'rod' refers to Metatron, who is from the side of life and from the side of death. Thus he
turns into a rod if he is an assistant ('ezer) from the good side, but he turns into a serpent is he
is in opposition to him (kenegddo)." Commenting on this text, Kemper writes: "Jesus is the
Tree of Life, and he is sweetened water to the one who has faith in him, and the rod of
indignation to one who denies him, for then he turns into the serpent." Kemper's interpreta-
tion of the zoharic passage leads him to identify Jesus and the serpent, which may indeed be a
resonance of the Sabbatian identification of mashial_l and the nahasl}. On the attribution of the
same terms to Satan and the Messiah, see Berial} ha-Tikhon, fol. 180a; Qarsei ha-Mishkan, fols.
5b-6a.
237. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 28b.
238. Kemper's terminology may be based on the expression torat l}esed, the "Torah of Mercy," in
Prov. 31 :26. It will be recalled, moreover, that in Sabbatian thought (perhaps traceable to
Sabbatai Zevi himself) Judaism is referred to as torat mosheh, the "Torah of Moses," or torat
'emet, the "Torah of truth," in contrast to Islam, which is designated torat l}esed. See Scholem,
Sabbatai $evi, 813, 863-864; idem, Researches in Sabbateanism, ed. Y. Liebes (Tel Aviv: Am
Oved, 1991), 115-117, 182-183, 244; Liebes, On Sabbateanism, 32-33, 250, 292 n. 228,439 n.
82. Perhaps Kemper's berit l}esed is based on the biblical torat l}esed, which has been read
through the Sabbatian lens.
239. Several medieval figures cite this dictum (with slight variations) in the name of the rabbis. See
Rabbenu Bal}ya: Be'ur 'al ha-Torah ed. H. Chavel, 3 vols. (Jerusalem, 1981), 2:459; Menahem
Recanati, Be'ur 'al ha-Torah (Venice, 1545), 137c. For other relevant sources regarding this
tradition, see Wolfson, "Tiqqun ha-Shekhinah," 308-309 n. 83.
240. Me'irat 'Einayyim, fol. 116a.
241. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 25b.
242. Zohar 1:119a.
243. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 59b.
244. Ibid., fol. 60a.
245. Ibid., fols. 64a, 70b.
246. Kemper employs this logic to argue against adopting a literal approach to certain passages in
the zoharic text, such as the description of the reward and punishment in the hereafter. See
Maqqel Ya'aqov, fols. 97b-98a; Berial} ha-Tikhon, fol. 106b. See ibid., fols. llla-b, where
Kemper challenges the literal interpretation proffered by the rabbis regarding the resurrection
of the body from the one imperishable bone (see above, n. 211).
247. Maqqel Ya'aqov, fol. 73a. See Berial} ha-tikhon, fols. 114a, 226b.
248. Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 3a-b.
249. The expression is used in Babylonian Talmud, Baba Me~i'a 38b with reference to those who
are from Pumbeditha.
250. Berial} ha-Tikhon, fol. 23b. See, however, ibid., fol. 173b, where the masters of the Mishnah
presumably hid the secret that the masters of Talmud got wrong.
251. Leqet he- 'Ani, fol. 149b.
252. See M. Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis: A Thirteenth-Century Commentary on the Aggadah
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 1-20.
253. Babylonian Talmud, Baba Batra 12b.
254. See Berial} ha-Tikhon, fol. ISla, where Kemper states explicitly that the intent of the rabbis in
the Talmud was to "remove from the nation the matter of faith in the word of Jesus."
255. Ibid, fols. 159a-160a.
256. Ibid., fol. 160b.
257. Ibid., fols. 160b-161a.
258. Ibid., fol. 16la.
259. See above, n. 131.
260. Maqqel Ya'aqov, 16b.
 Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper 187

261. See, for instance, the title page to Me'irat 'Einayyim: "Translatum & enucleate explicatum ab
erudito & ad fidem Christianam converso Judreo, Rabbi Johanne Kemper, cuo olim apud suos
nomen Moses Cohen de Cracovia." Kemper is also referred to as "rabbi" in Phosphorus
Orthodoxa,S-9,22-23,32-33,34-35,38-39,44-45.
 H.LENOWITZ

9. THE CHARLATAN AT THE GOTTES HAUS

IN OFFENBACH

It is a commonplace in the published research on the Jewish messiah Jacob

Joseph Frank (1726-1791) that what he said to his followers contained
gleanings from many sources, that were then restyled to fit his own mytho-
poesis. Gershom Scholem, knowing more than others, and suspecting yet
more, went farther in discovering Frank's sources than any other scholar. 1 Yet
it must be said (1) that his analysis of Frank's mythopoesis rarely took into
account the fact that Frank's myths, for various reasons, changed over his
lifetime; and (2) that Scholem's feelings about Frank's sources were intempe-
rate and extremist. On the one hand, he credited the Sabbatian school of
Barukhia Russo with a great deal of influence on Frank's teaching and its
expressions; 2 on the other, he denied Frank any real depth of knowledge of any
of the written sources of this school's doctrine - from the midrashim and the
Talmud through the Zohar and Lurianic and Sabbatian literature. 3 A spell, cast
by his desire to show that the roots of modern Judaism lay in Sabbatianism, lay
over all of Scholem's considerations of Frank. In this conception, Frankism
was the horrifying last stage of Sabbatianism- a Jewish movement at first and
then a non-Jewish movement that broke away from all that was Jewish.
Scholem claimed that Frankism was one of the most important sources of
Hasidism, Reform Judaism and the Haskalah, and that Frankists were
themselves key players in the development of these movements. 4 Furthermore,
at least in his first studies of Frank, Scholem's general convictions led him to
adduce the Carpathians, the Valentinians and Marcionites and general
"Gnosticism" in order to demonstrate the high degree of similarity between
their teachings and this latter-day expression of Jewish mysticism and the
teachings of Gnostics, one which recollected the similarly close relationship
between Gnosticism and other much earlier schools and writings of Jewish
esotericism, even if direct or indirect influence was not actually the case. Like
all but a very few writers on Frank, Scholem was able to reach his foregone
conclusions by avoiding or circling around the key document of Frankism:
Frank's dicta.

189
M. Go/dish and R.H Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 189-202.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
190 H Lenowitz

As far as I can determine, only Hippolyt Skimborowicz and Alexander

Kraushar (in the late nineteenth century), Abraham Duker, Hillel Levine,
Aviva Sela, Jan Doktor, Chone Shmeruk and I have gone through any
significant part of the dicta in the only original mss that have existed since the
late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. 5 The publications that resulted
from their research - in a way, not unlike that of the scholars who have not
troubled themselves with the manuscripts - have consisted of fragmentary
studies on topics relating closely to the interests of the writer or his back-
ground. Skimborowicz hoped to reach a wide audience; he re-presented the
dicta in a condensed, summarized form, which appeared first in the popular
magazine Tygodnik Illustrowany ("The Illustrated Weekly") and then in a
reprint. Professor Duker was not interested in the dicta themselves but in
whatever light they might shed on "Polish Frankism's duration." Professor
Levine, who discovered the Lublin ms containing the last of the dicta, saw to
the translation into Hebrew and the annotation of another part of the same ms,
the Kronika and Rozmaite anekdoty. It is clear from Levine's English introduc-
tion to his publication of the Kronika that he gained some familiarity with the
part of the Lublin ms containing the dicta, though it is not at all clear that he
actually read through all that material in the original language. Jan Doktor has
published an annotated, Polish edition of the same parts of the Lublin ms that
appeared in the Levine volume as well as an edition of the dicta from the mss of
the Jagiellonian Library of the University of Krakow. Both Doktor's notes and
his introduction make it clear that he lacks the knowledge of Jewish (Hebrew)
literature, history, culture etc. that is needed in order to understand the
material. His contribution is therefore limited to a reasonably sound reproduc-
tion in printed form of one part of the Lublin ms and the Jagiellonian mss.
Kraushar was likewise unfamiliar with the Jewish intellectual tradition and
presented only those dicta that suited him and those only in a mutilated form. 6
Nevertheless, later scholars have relied on the versions of the dicta as they are
presented in Kraushar's original Polish volumes or in the Hebrew translation
(predominantly) from volume 1. 7 Only I and Professor Shmeruk, at the very
last of his life, have escaped this tendency. 8
I want to lay all this to the side and return to the subject of Frank as
ethnographer, mythopoet and charlatan. My feeling is that Frank's commu-
nications with his followers show him to us as he gleaned material for his
ongoing myth from his contacts with the world of Jacob Hirschfeld and Franz
Thomas von Schoenfeld just as he had earlier harvested other grist from his
contact with members of the sect of Barukhia; these influences were perhaps
even more significant than his observations of the worship of the Virgin while
he was imprisoned in Czestochowa in between these two periods. 9 First
Scholem and then Katz and then again Scholem, 10 deep in the toils of their
debate over what Sabbatianism actually did have to do with modern forms of
Judaism, 11 were certain that Frank and his ideas had some impact on his
"nephew," Franz Thomas von Schoenfeld (ne Moshe Dobrushka, actually the
son of his cousin, Schoendel Dobrushka, nee Hirsh!, of Brno) and thus on the
constitution of the Lodge of the Nascent Dawn, etc. 12 Time and place are the
 The Charlatan at the Gottes Haus in Offenbach 191

determinants not only of the accession of an idea but also of its employment.
Frank got to be a Barukhian as a consequence of his dealings with sectarians of
that movement during the times he was residing and trading in Turkey and
Walachia. He may have learned something about the usefulness of mariolatry
below Jasna Gora. After his release from imprisonment there in 1772 until his
death, he lived in Brno and in Offenbach and was in touch with the Dobrushka
family and with royals and nobles of Austria. Sh. Z. Dobrushka, Shoendl's
husband, was a tobacco monopolist who was licensed by the Austrian court; he
never converted to Catholicism, but after he died his children did and were
ennobled and took the name von Schoenfeld. Shoendl took over her husband's
business and became wealthy in her own right, continuing to support Frank
with generosity. Moshe, the second son of Salomon and Schoendl, was both a
Sabbatian, in some sense, and a Mason (in some sense; and a Jacobin of
note 13 ). Another Freemason, Wolfgang Ernst II, the prince of Ysenburg,
provided Frank his palatial residence on the river Main at Offenbach. 14
Wolfgang Ernst was occupied with the world of ideas and symbols of his time.
His neighbor, the great Prince Carl von Hessen-Kassel, was even one of the
Asiatic Brothers. 15
It is with this last layer of experiences and what they brought to Frank's
transformations that I am concerned. Scholem maintained that Dobrushka/
Schoenfeld and thereafter the Asiatics were profoundly influenced by Frank,
particularly during the years 1784-5 while they were both in Brno. I hope to
cast some light on the complementary phenomenon - the influence of
Schoenfeld, Hirschfeld, the Asiatics and the milieu of esoteric and radical
Freemasonry on Frank at Brno and then at Offenbach 16 - and how it
contributed to the creation of Frank's identity. The matter is somewhat
complicated by the fact that Frank picked up and used whatever he found of
mystery and its habiliments in his way as he sought to maintain the loyalty of
his following through mystification (and by other methods, tyranny and
abnegation among them). Therefore some of his practices must be seen as
emerging from several sources at once, combining and recombining over time,
emphasizing this or that element. The appearance of an idea or practice in
Frank's expressions at some particular time and place relates to the contribu-
tion it makes then and there to his overriding goal - to maintain himself as
leader of his group. Understanding this can provide some guidance to the
source of the idea or the practice.
The general tenor of Frank's doctrine as it related to the immediate milieu
tended to be oppositional rather than straightforward. Sabbatianism arose as
an antagonist in its world. This character was strengthened after Zevi's
conversion in 1666 and colored many of the subsects into which it disinte-
grated. The spirit of antagonism continued to govern relationships within these
movements and among them and between the world of Sabbatianism and other
Jewish worlds. Most importantly, latter day Sabbatianism set two dimensions,
exterior and interior, against each other in a dynamic balance, so that when
Frank says- as he does many times in many ways- that his followers must take
the customs and clothing and language of the people of the place where they
192 H Lenowitz

are living, he means that they should live that pose. It was very difficult for the
followers, many of whom sought only an easier life, to maintain the required
balance between the semblance and the reality of assimilation while enduring
the stress of an inimical relationship with the non-Sabbatian Jewish commu-
nity. Ultimately, many became good Christians, at first liberal and at last
conservative. But for Frank doubleness was identity. He was a Turk in Poland;
a Polish Jew in Turkey - which is probably how he got his last name; among
Jews, not a Jew; among Sabbatians, not a Sabbatian; among Christians, not a
Christian; and so on, always a thing defined by being apart from its
surroundings, secret in its double nature. The Company (his following) was a
semi-secret society, bound by secret customs and special names or names with
special meanings, and silence was to be its speech in the outside world. After
his followers betrayed him to the Inquisition in 1759/1760, Frank came to
realize that none but he could be trusted to maintain the sacred doctrine of
doubleness in the world around him and his group. 17
Frank's costume and its meanings, among other features of his practice,
show how this oppositionalist tendency operated on the different symbols he
deployed, differently, at different times. Schenk-Rink (n. 16, above) writes (p.
9), "The old Seiior was a stout gentleman of medium height. He wore a long,
red silk cloak, 18 trimmed with ermine, and had a tall cap of fur on his head,
decorated with gold cords and topped by a white egret feather." Frank was the
only one in his neighborhood, we can be sure, wearing such an outfit, so weird
within the conventions of what was accepted dress in Offenbach. The cape was
red, then, because no one else wore one, except perhaps a prince of the Catholic
Church. It was red because it was the color 'adam: red; because 'adam was
'edam, Edom, the abode of Esau but also, since the days of Herod of Idumea,
the common Jewish epithet for Christianity. The garb of Esau in which Frank
robed himself had belonged first to Adam and then to Nimrod in the aggadot;
in the Torah, Jacob stole it from Esau to receive Isaac's blessing. The coat fits
Frank perfectly. But did he make it himself? Leib ben Ozer describes Sabbatai
Zevi in his Migdal Oz, imprisoned in grandeur on an island in Turkey: "People
came to speak with him in this fortress from all quarters of the world and
brought him fine gifts and paid him honor with large donations. The guard who
kept watch over him made a lot of money from what he was paid to let people
in to see Sabbatai Zevi. Everyone who came to see him left his presence
requited and completely faithful to the belief that Sabbatai Zevi would gain
great things from the Turkish ruler. He was dressed in red clothes and the scroll
of the Torah that he had with him was clothed in red and set by his right side
always, in a red cover with gold decorations." 19 Frank's red cloak descends,
oppositionally, from a number of traditions, perhaps especially from the
tradition of the court dress of Sabbatai Zevi, the man Frank called "The First,"
meaning "not the last." 20
I think that the tradition of the charlatan - whether Frank learned it from
others or developed it himself for the same purposes and in the same ways
other charlatans did- best configures him and his deeds. As a typical charlatan
Frank had the clothes - fancy, arcane and antiquated gear - the many and odd
 The Charlatan at the Gottes Haus in Offenbach 193

relations with women, the pretenses to medical skill, the custom - particularly
in Offenbach- of absenting himself in the mornings for secret rituals, a lifelong
pattern of cyclic wealth and poverty and, like several (including Zevi but not to
neglect Cagliostro and Swedenborg among others), he spent a lengthy time in
jail. The last was not intentional, not part of his guise, but was imposed on him,
as in the other cases, because he was seen to be the sort of person who was
meant to be sent to jail and suffer there, but not too hard. Frank did not fail to
point out the similarities and differences between himself and these others. Like
his garb, Frank's sword and the sabers worn by his uhlans and given to the
youth that came to his court to learn military manners mocked the normal
employment of this weaponry. The sword was not to be used in order to win out
in some final war fought between enemies ancient and modern. The sword had
not any more to do with winning at armed combat than did the formal, edgeless
sword worn on occasion by the Commander of a Lodge, a Knight of the Rosy
Cross, a Templar. The Asiatics wore sabers of course. And then there's the
matter of money, an important interest - if not the primary goal then a
necessary means to it - of the charlatan. Barrels of it were supposed to have
tumbled into the cellars of Frank's court, said by some to have come from
Poland; by others, from his pay as a spy for the Russians, etc. The agent-of-a-
foreign power rumor could easily have been spread by Frank himself, along
with the rumors about his daughter's lineage (a by-blow of the Romanovs), etc.
But, on the other hand, there might actually have been a link between
charlatanry, espionage and fund-raising. Schoenfeld was guillotined, perhaps,
as a suspected agent of Austria and, as Katz puts it of H.H. von Ecker und
Eckhoffen, "He and his younger brother H. Carl had behind them a rich past in
the history of Masonic societies in Germany. The Eckers were of the type of
aristocrats who had lost their property and forfeited the economic support of
their class .... They were not at all discriminating in their choice of occupation
- so long as it allowed them to maintain their standard of living. This could
best be achieved through association with those who wielded the real power in
the states: the absolute princes, and the rising capitalists who enjoyed their
patronage. Members of Masonic societies were at times drawn from the upper
and propertied classes, but because these organizations often had need of
individuals ready to perform remunerative functions, they also served as refuge
for those searching for an easy, but not always honest, livelihood" (p.27). 21
How important a part, in fact, such figures played in the very formation of the
Lodges and Orders themselves remains to me unclear. Having been treated to
M.K. Schuchard's detailed contexting of Rabbi Falk of Galicia and London, 22
it seems likewise very difficult to separate out the strands of a triple role such as
filled Frank's hands: agent, magus, bunco artist.
How much was Frank a franc-mar;on? Frank's adoption and elaboration of
another's symbol occurred at one point in time rather than another and had a
limited range of meaning, specifically appropriate to what he sought to portray
to himself and his followers. Frank would not - as far as we know he did not -
wear a long red silk cloak in Turkey. He might have liked to, but that would
have identified him with Sabbatai Zevi to the followers of Sabbatai and to
194 H Lenowitz

others who knew of Sabbatai's practice. It might be possible then sometimes to

use his motive against him to reveal the meaning of his symbols and their
sources. I would like to turn to one: the sign itself, the carte d'identite, the pass,
the passport, the bilet which, having been given one by another assures others
that its bearer is bonafide and protected. I believe that this will help us
understand the circumstances of certain dicta at least.
The order in which the dicta appear in the mss is not chronological. 23 As
with the editing of the Psalter the first dictum, in which the word "sign" makes
its first appearance, is intended to determine the reading of all that follows. The
first dictum, as it is amplified by Dictum 33, is Frank's call vision (cp. the
appearance of Ezekiel's call vision at the first of that biblical book with the
appearance of Isaiah's call in Isa. 6). Frank's tale of his call reveals a
characteristic feature of the politics that govern the relationship between the
Messiah and his followers: he does not seek the task and attempts to refuse it,
thus providing a model of humility for his followers and reassuring them of the
cosmic necessity of the movement and of his own, unmotivated, worthiness to
lead it. In demonstrating how he acted properly and was rewarded he likewise
provides a model for his followers:

"1. I had a vision in Salonika, as though the following words were said to
somebody: Go lead Jacob the wise into the rooms and when you and he come to
the first room, I admonish you that all the doors and gates be opened to him.
When I entered the first room, a rose was given to me as a sign by which I could
go on to the next and so on consequenter from one room to the next. And so I
flew in the air accompanied by two maidens whose beauty the world has never
seen."

Nowhere else in the dicta is the sign a rose24 nor is a sign like this given to the
recipient by a higher authority elsewhere, yet the use of a sign abounds in the
dicta and its employment as a symbol packed with meaning is multiple. The
following excerpt from dictum 266 introduces the purpose and power of the
sign that is proper to a follower in good standing:

There is a certain stone [which has been j there from the beginning and there is
engraved the name of all those who are to come there in their time, but those
people must have a sign in their hand and a card from me and the name of my
Brothers, so you would not have had anything to fear. After coming to the very
first place you would have been given a certain man who would lead you, only
you would have had to be obedient in everything, whatever he would tell you.

The word I have translated here as "card" and below as "pass" is in Polish
"bilet." I think that this was the word originally used by Frank: it is non-Polish
of course and the editors or translators were careful, as can be seen in the
Krakow and Lublin mss, to preserve the foreign words and phrases Frank used,
even to the point of obscuring the meaning of the passage. This word is to be
found again in dicta 309, 806, 1023, 1105, 1280 of the remaining material. 25
 The Charlatan at the Gottes Haus in Offenbach 195

309. At the time when Matushewski, O.B.M traveled to Czestochowa the Lord
said: When Matushewski will want to heed me and shed all his confusions, and
will stay beside me for three days, then I will give him particularly one word and
will put in his hands a card with which I will send him to a place, about which the
whole world has no knowledge at all. When he returns from there, he will be
shown the greatness of God in this world, since his height would be 30 cubits or
more and he would be able to eat a whole ox a day.

806. If I had sent you to the Baalakaben with a pass from me I :around 10 000
householders of them live in the Czech mountains, they have their own king:/
after having come there, you would have said to them: Our leader, wise Jacob, is
now in great difficulties, if you help him with money now, then he will aid you at
that time which is known only to you and him. Every one of them would have
contributed 1 million ducats. You would have promised them to come to them
again. With my pass they would have led you to their king; there you would have
begun to receive riches beyond count from him.

1023. None knows of the place of the Baalakaben, but the Maiden has given me
to know where their place is. I would send you with my pass, only two words
from me; but to tell you those two words with my mouth I cannot, but I can only
give them to you on the pass.

1280. If you had been in wholeness, then I would have sent one of you with a
pass from that Maiden to the Great Brother. Having come to that screen, you
would have found one guard, who would have asked you where are you going?
You would have replied: I seek my brothers. He would have recognized you, that
you are one ofthose brothers, [the ones1 who are there,for the others have faces
like yours, for every thing is created in two. And as soon as your brother had
seen you he would have recognized that you are his brother, then from great
love, as soon as he would only have blown his spirit into you, you would
immediately have become his equal in beauty, power, height and wisdom. Only
then would he have led you with that pass to the Great Brother. But you must
know that [at his place1 are rooms without number; and there are many of
them in which he has not been since the beginning; for he is made to forget them.
Among them is one room, in which all the deeds of men are written down rightly
and all the words they speak during the day. He himself sees and watches over
everything that happens here in this world. And if you had entered that room,
you would have found there those words which I would have told you here that
day. All would have been written down clearly there before you, and you would
have read there: that you were to say to the Great Brother that he should enter
that room he had never been in. You would already have known of which room I
speak, because there it would have been appointed in my words. In that room
the Great Brother himself would there have read all my words, which I would
196 H Lenowitz

have spoken with him from here. Know that he cannot now get through that
screen; but just so I would have revealed to him by what means he could get
across the barrier. He himself does not now have the power of crossing, only the
queen of Sheba shares the power, so that she can cross here at night; as was said
above. If he were to come to me here in this world I would lead him to my room,
which is the Hayder Horusi, and here he himself would read all the things he
needs. At that time our Brothers would be united with the sisters from there and
the brothers from there with our Sisters, as was said above. For we are water,
and they are fire, and from great enthusiasm they would be made one; for they
long deeply for bodies, and we need them. Therefore I told you several times,
that I myself will give the marriage feast of your sons and daughters; that was
my desire for them. The children which would have been born, you would only
then have seen their power. At their cry a whole town would fall. Also if you had
asked the brother who was your equal for several little gold trees which are in his
land, higher than the tallest tower, then he would have sent [them j to me, you
would only have had to signify to him in which place they were to be engrafted.
They would have been planted and grown immediately.

The Baalakaben, 26 "those who carry canes," are to be found at the entrance
to the way that leads to the one who can release the treasure to the correctly
identified Brothers sent by Frank. There are more guards - Frank builds the
whole trial of passage into grandiose proportions - and ultimately the
ambassadors reach the Great Brother, the one who dispenses riches of health,
wealth and power eternal.
By 1728 the use of a certificate to identify a Mason from one Lodge to the
Master of another Lodge had been not only established but made requisite to
his recognitionY I think that when we begin to add up all the features of
Frank's conduct in his latter days we find that he very likely borrowed the idea
from what he learned from Hirschfeld and Dobrushka and even perhaps from
the Prince of Y senburg. His use of the pass resembles as well the use Blavatsky
made of the notes and slips from her Masters. Frank's pass was never intended
to be displayed - not even to non-existent beings -- and I am sure he never
actually wrote one (he was not much of the writing sort). But the pass of which
he speaks in the dicta was to be a written document, not simply a password or a
spoken ritual of recognition. It had to be written by him; it was not a tradition
that could be passed on by others and exist independently of Frank's authority
over it. He made use of the image in order to insert yet one more barrier
between his followers and the achievement of their wishes, one that would be
under his control and so always, but not quite, within their reach. But they
would fall well within his own reach, their desire enkindled by his new offering.
If the Masonic pass was the source for Frank's bilet he could make free use
of it. To the extent that the use of such a certificate was known to the Asiatics
who were acquainted with Frank's mentions of it, Frank's bilet was different
from their certificate of recognition. Frank's pass introduced the one carrying it
into trans-human society and this- as well as the non-existence of the real bilet
- set the two documents in opposition to each other. Moreover, if Schoenfeld
 The Charlatan at the Gottes Haus in Offenbach 197

was an active member of the Company, or even one of the Brothers, no other
Freemason seems to have been. The danger of the bilet being found derivative
of its employment in the Lodges was minimal.
Two other possible sources for Frank's bilet present themselves; the bilet is
directly opposite both of them in interesting ways. Several passages from the
Zohar I. 81 b mention a pinkas, a note or some such document, which is
presented by the middle of the three lower aspects of the spirit, the ruah, as it
passes upwards at the time of death. The pinkas is given to the ruah as it makes
its way through the burial cave of Adam and if, upon inspection by the
cherubim and the flashing sword at the next stage of its journey, the ruah is
found unblemished it is permitted entry ot the Garden of Eden; if not, it is
rejected. Frank's bilet is quite different from the pinkas. It is given by him and it
is not refusable. That the bilet is not given after death as is the pinkas accords
with Frank's myth and opposes that of the Zohar. First of all, human beings,
according to Frank, have no souls; 28 this is one of the indications of the malign
creation in which they live, a central theme in Frank's myth. Second, Frank is
offering real eternal life, health and youth here on earth to his followers if they
but follow him, and this idea too is opposite that of the Zohar.
A second possible source for the bilet to oppose is the kvitel of Hasidic fame.
It is not possible to determine when the use of this instrument entered
Hasidism, 29 but it is already activated during Frank's lifetime. The kvitel is a
note brought to the tsaddik or rebbe of Hasidism which contains a follower's
petition. The rebbe sees to its presentation in Heaven. The note was accom-
panied by a payment to the rebbe for his services, the pidyon hanefesh.
Interestingly enough, in the dicta Frank doesn't appear to have demanded
monetary contributions from his followers but rather to have depended on
their generosity. Second, Frank's bilet-bearing follower enters into supernal
realms himself, while the disembodied hasidic kvitel makes the journey alone in
the rebbe's prayer. The kvitel is, finally, a petition and the bilet is a pass.
How much of a charlatan was Frank? He was surely a magus, "commanding
elemental spirits ... establishing contact with higher beings." 30 He was, as we
can readily understand, not an alchemist, nor did he employ any material
medium (crystals, for example). It is not easy to think of him as a religious
mystic closely associated with a holy text and its transformations. He was anti-
clerical, anti-atonement, a worshipper of the generative forces of nature, and he
gained power over them through his clothing, among other things. The robes of
Adam and of Nimrod and of Esau "cast fear upon the animals." Frank alone
had the power to wear them, to be one with nature and to dominate it. Frank
stood alone but for his Brother.
When Frank was baptized he took the additional name of Joseph and it was
by this name more than the other that he made his way into the circles of the
Radziwils and the Austrian court and perhaps the Russian court too. Given his
interest in names, the ones he gave his followers and especially the one he gave
himself, I imagine that he somehow picked up from someone the diagrammatic
understanding of how the sefirot of Tiferet and Yesod are spoken of as Jacob
and Joseph and joined them together in himself. I was of course struck with
 198 H Lenowitz

wonderment by Godwin's presentation of Richard Cosway's engraving of

himself as Esau - if that is what the Hebrew inscription, shmo 'eysav, at the
foot of the engraving means. 31 Cosway could not have gotten the idea from
Frank himself, but his circle (that of his wife's admirers, that is) included
Englishmen, Americans and Jacobins; some of the last could have come in
contact with Frey/Schoenfeld/Do brushka before he was executed, or with his
writing. Esau was not only Frank's ideal and free master of nature's powers, as
he might have seemed to Cosway. I would offer the suggestion, one based on a
guess, like those made by students of the dicta from Kraushar through
Shmeruk, that translation obscures as well as reveals originals. In the Polish
of the dicta Frank calls the figure that stands before God Himself- the highest
contact any man (actually, only Frank himself reached this height) has ever
made with the True God - the Wielki Brat, in Polish, the "Great Brother."
"Older Brother" would be quite a different word, stary, in Polish; but in
Hebrew the "Older Brother" and the "Big Brother" are one and the same, ha-
ah ha-gadol, and the ah ha-gadol of Yakov and the one who should have had
Rachel as his lover but for the interference of Yosef, was, of course, Eysav.

University of Utah

NOTES
I. Scholem admitted to being influenced by the appraisals of Frank in vol. 7, bk. 2, 17-18, 30-36
of Israel Zinberg's History of Jewish Literature (Vilnius, 1936) (in Yiddish), and later -
eighteen years after having written his essay, "Redemption through Sin," kneset 2 (1937),
347-392 (in Hebrew)- by the essay of Y. Kleinman, "The morality and poetry of Frankism,"
Jevrejski Almanach (1923), 195-225 (in Russian). He must have seen the single volume of the
work of A. Kraushar- Frank and the Polish Frankists (Krakow, 1895) (in Polish)- that N.
Sokolow had translated into Hebrew in 1895 as well. These highly colored descriptions and
assessments of Frank, along with H. Graetz' enflamed and condemnatory work, Frank and the
Frankists, the History of a Sect (Breslau, 1868) (in German), and M. Balaban's sketch, Towards
the History of the Frankist Movement (Tel-Aviv, 1934) (in Hebrew), constituted the view of
Frankism that Scholem formulated in his dialectic response in the essay of 1937 and
thereafter. Scholem expressed his feelings about the importance of Kleinman's essay in "The
Shabbatian movement in Poland," in Y. Heilprin, ed., The Jews in Poland, (Jerusalem, 1954)
vol2, 73n30 (in Hebrew), and said that he had not seen it before then. See Sh. Verses, Haskalah
and Sabbatianism, (Jerusalem, 1988), 11-13 (in Hebrew) for further discussion.
2. See "Redemption ...", 124 (H. Halkin's translation can be found in G. Scholem, The Messianic
Idea in Judaism" (New York, 1971); 'The Shabbatian movement ... ," 66n5; "Barukhia, leader
of the Shabbatians in Salonika," tziyon, 6, (1941), 119-147, 181-202 (in Hebrew). Scholem's
entry, "Frank, Jacob, and the Frankists," Encyclopaedia Judaica, voi. 7, col. 56, makes the
same point in 1971 and it remains unchanged in the celebratory reprint of the "Redemption
..."essay in 1973 (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik).
3. "Redemption ... ," 127
4. H. Skimborowicz, The Life, Death and Teachings of Jacob Joseph Frank, (Warsaw, 1866);
Abraham Duker, "Polish Frankism's duration," Jewish Social Studies 25 (1963), 287-333;
Hillel Levine, "The Lublin manuscript of the Frankist Ksiega Slow Panskich - some themes,"
Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem (1986); The Kronika-
 The Charlatan at the Gottes Haus in Offenbach 199

on Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement (Jerusalem, 1984); Aviva Seta, A study in one three-
fold tale of Jacob Frank, MA thesis (University of Utah, 1988); "Motif and Plot in the tales of
Yakov Frank," Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem (1990);
Ch. Shmeruk, "The 'Book of the Words of the Lord' - its transmutations from Yiddish to
Polish," gal'ed 14 (1995) (in Hebrew); "A new look at the 'Book of the Words of the Lord' Jacob
Frank," Teksty drugie 6, 36 (1995) (in Polish); H. Lenowitz and Dan Chopyk, "The Sayings of
the Lord, Jacob Frank," Alcheringa: Ethnopoetics III, 2 (1978); Lenowitz, "An introduction to
the Sayings of Jacob Frank," Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies in
Jerusalem (1982); "The three-fold tales of Jacob Frank," Proceedings of the Ninth World
Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem (1986); "The false messiah's dreams," Tiferet, 1
(1988); "The visions of the Lord [Jacob Frank]," Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of
Jewish Studies (1990); "The tale of Zahak in the' Collection of the Words of the Lord," in M.
Marashi, ed., Persian Studies in North America (Bethesda, 1994); "The messiah makes an
account of himself," Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies (1998); The
Jewish Messiahs (Chapter 8), (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); "Returning ... ," n. 2
(above); J. Doktor, Various notes, happenings, deeds and anecdotes of the Lord [Jacob Frank],
(Warsaw, 1996) (in Polish); The Book of the Words of the Lord [Jacob Frank], (Warsaw, 1997)
(in Polish).
5. Bibliotheka Jagiellonska mss 6968, 6969/1/2/3.
6. See Krausbar's "confession" I.15f. inter alia. Moreover, Krausbar was moving towards a
conversion to Catholicism while writing the work on Frank. This, along with his ignorance of
Jewish literature, may be presumed to have motivated his selection, heavy editing and
bowdlerization of the dicta texts. It is also the case that Krausbar does not reproduce any of
Frank's dicta touching on the Russians, and this is very likely due to his fear of irritating that
occupying power.
7. M. Balaban's acquaintance with the dicta appears to have been haphazard. For example, in
the introduction to Towards the History ... he discusses the nature of Polish Jewish belief and
practice in the 18th century and retells a famous tale of spirit possession from Kaidanover's
kav ha-yashar but fails to note that the same tale appears in Frank's dicta. (Balaban's work in
general has been criticized for his lack of depth in Jewish, especially Hebrew, sources.) There
have been translations of the dicta as they appear in Kraushar and in the BJ mss. Ms.
Hadassah Goldgart did one into German from the Kraushar material (the appendices) for
Scholem; it is now in the Scholem archive at the National Library of Israel shelf-listed under
the title Skimborowicz gave the dicta in his monograph, Biblia balamutna; Ms. Fania Scholem
did a translation of the BJ mss into Hebrew for her husband, but it is unreliable and Scholem
must have come to know that he could not depend on it for further work.
8. Shmeruk's article shows just how important a document the dicta are, not only for under-
standing Frankism but for understanding the varieties of Jewish life of the time and place. In
the Polish version in Teksty drugie 6, 36 (1995), written after the Hebrew article in gal'ed
appeared, he admits to having discovered how vast was the difference between the mss of the
dicta and what appeared in Kraushar's work. Prof. Shmeruk had a typescript of the mss
prepared for his use. (His immediate plan was to have produced an essay on the life of Jewish
boys in 18th century Podolia, using the dicta as an important source.) When we began going
over the typescript together it became clear that the transcriber he had hired had made many
errors in reading the mss. (There are also more than a few errors in the editions of J. Doktor,
unfortunately.) I am indebted to Professor Shmeruk for sharing with me his learned
conclusions concerning other researchers. At an earlier stage of my own work, I was likewise
privileged in having the guidance of Professor Duker. He was the one who had the original
microfilms of the BJ mss made and it was he who drove me to learn Polish.
9. However important a part Polish worship may have played, Scholem's opinion concerning the
influence ofmariolatry ("Redemption ... ," 125) on the creation of the image of his daughter by
Frank needs to be balanced by the history of the term "matronita" used for the wives of
Sabbatai Zevi and Barukhia Russo.
10. G. Scholem, "A forgotten mystic of the Enlightenment, E.J. Hirschfeld," Yearbook VII of the
Leo Baeck Institute (1962), 247-278 (in German); J. Katz, "Mendelsohn and E.J. Hirschfeld,"
200 H Lenowitz

Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts Year VII (1964), 295-311 (in German); Katz, "The first
controversy over accepting Jews as Freemasons," tziyon, 25 (1965) (in Hebrew); Katz,
Freemasons and Jews (Jerusalem, 1968) (in Hebrew; English translation, (Cambridge, MA:
1970); Scholem, "The career of a Frankist: Moshe Dobrushka and his transformations,"
tsiyon 35 (1970), 181-127 (in Hebrew). Initially, Scholem wrote that Hirschfeld was the mystic
behind the doctrines and practices of the Asiatic Brothers; after Katz showed that the chief
informant was, in fact, von Schoenfeld/Dobrushka and pointed to materials Scholem hadn't
used, Scholem reworked his thinking and produced- noting somewhat less obligation to Katz
for the guidance than he might have and leaving his own misdirection alone- the great article
on Dobrushka (which has also appeared in French, with some few changes).
II. In general, there is no serious scholarly contention against the connection between Sabbatian-
ism, including Frankism, and Hasidism though there has been a long debate over the question
of the "neutralization" of messianism in Hasidism as a component of its successful program to
gain adherents. On the other hand, there is good deal of objection to drawing a connection
between Sabbatianism/Frankism and either Reform Judaism or the Haskalah, or both. See
Verses (n. I) most recently and before him J. Katz, "Concerning the question of the
connection between Sabbatianism and the Haskalah and Reform Judaism," in Studies in
Intellectual and Jewish History Presented to Professor Alexander Altman (Tuscaloosa, 1979) (in
Hebrew).
12. This is not the place to go into the whole history of the fringe-Masonic lodge in its various
transformations and leaderships. Seen. 10 above for further information and bibliographic
guidance. I am indebted to the library of the Prins Frederik Masonic Center in the Hague and
its gracious conservator, Dr. E.P. Kwaadgras, for the courtesy extended me there on these
researches. I am also obliged to the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam for the
guidance I received there, initiating me into this aspect of my research. I was led to the latter
by a note in J. Godwin's Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany, 1994), one of several helpful
directions given me by my friends, noted students of 16th century magic and science, Drs.
Michael and Phyllis Walton. I will return to the Godwin book, below.
13. Scholem, "Career ..."; A. Mandel, The Militant Messiah, (Atlantic Highlands, 1979), 121-173;
P. Arnsberg, From Podolia to Offenbach, (Offenbach am Main, 1965) (in German)
14. It is not clear whether the Prince ever collected the 3 000 000 fl. for which he sold Frank the
Schloss Ysenburg and the noble prerogatives that accompanied it.
15. The Order of the Asiatic Brethren (hereafter, the Asiatics) was transformed more than once
and known by other names: the Knights of the Rising Dawn, the Brothers of St. John the
Evangelist of Asia in Europe. The group and its history are described by Scholem - "A
forgotten Jewish mystic of the period of the Enlightenment, E.J. Hirschfeld" Yearbook VII of
the Leo Baeck Institute (1962) (in German) which is based on the writings collected in The
Brothers of St. John the Evangelist of Asia in Europe ... (Berlin, 1803) (in German) then by
Jacob Katz, incorporating new material from the collection of George Kloss - in Jews and
Freemasons in Europe 1723-1939 (Cambridge, 1970) (and see the notes and bibliography
there) - and then again by Scholem, taking into account Katz' work and some other new
material ~- in "The career of a Frankist, Moshe Dobrushka and his transformations," tsiyon,
35 (1970) (in Hebrew).
16. Kraushar covers the whole history of Frank to the death of Ewa. The last days of Frank's court
and the first of Ewa's are described in A.G. Schenk-Rink, The Poles in Offenbach on the Main,
(Frankfurt/Main, 1866) (in German). The influence of the Asiatics, and in particular of
Hirschfeld, on Ewa Frank and her court at Offenbach after the death of her father may shed
some light back on the period before his death. "The memoirs of Moses Porges, the conduct of
the Frankist court at Offenbach," ed. N.M. Gelber, Yivo Historishe Shriftn I (1929) (in
Yiddish) are one source among many.
17. Towards the end of his life Sabbatai Zevi sent a letter to followers requiring of them that they
"bury their belief in me; cut off the branches of their practices and preserve the root." The
letter is presented and discussed in A. Elkayam, "'Bury my faith' -a letter from Sabbatai Zevi
in exile," pe'amim, 55 (1993) (in Hebrew). The idea of "silence" in this letter from Frank's most
important predecessor shows well how different the orders of the two messiahs to their
 The Charlatan at the Gottes Haus in Offenbach 20 I

followers, that they must be silent about their faith, were, and how different the circumstances
that produced them. Zevi's command deals with how his remaining followers should conduct
themselves in order to be members in good standing of Jewish communities, and it was
preceded by other letters in which Zevi made attempts to explain his conversion, so that the
matter of silence was woven into the core of the faith. Frank required silence from his
followers largely in retrospect of the act of their betrayal; he made no attempt to keep his faith
secret before that time or to have his followers keep it secret. He complained that his followers
caused his being sent to prison with their confessions before the Inquisition and the loose chat
that led to them and neither sought to have them return to good standing in their previous
Jewish circles nor to have their faith remain secret from any but the Polish Catholic
authorities.
18. Frank bought this cloak in Brno in the summer of 1776. Kronika, (Levine) #94, p. 82.
19. Sh. Zucker, R. Plesser, eds., R. Leib ben Ozer, The Story of Shabtai Zvi, from the original
Yiddish manuscript with Hebrew translation, introduction and notes by Zalman Shazar,
(Jerusalem, 1978) 35a.
20. Frank's employment of the symbolism of flags or banners provides a more typical and vexing
example of the difficulty in establishing the origin and application of an important symbol.
Frank often speaks of the Company and the Brothers and Sisters arranged as military troops
when the time comes, each one having its own flag of certain colors. The dispositions of the
flags and the four companies in three sub-divisions each that exhibit them ultimately derive
from the account in Numbers. (The account is elaborated in midrashim and receives some
treatment in the Zohar, though the elaborations do not seem to contribute to Frank's version.)
Bridging this history to another, the messiahs David Reubeni and Shlomo Molkho carried a
flag made for them by Beatriz Abravanel to their fateful meeting with Charles V near
Regensburg; flags appear in the iconography of Sabbatai Zevi, associated with the return of
the lost tribes of Israel and Zevi's command over them as the new Moses. On the other side of
the bridge a completely separate history of flags exists, of course, to which the Israelites are
extraneous: their use as military emblems by kings and nobles from Mesopotamia through
Rome into Europe. (Perhaps Charles V dispensed with Reubeni and Molkho because he was
irritated at the insolence of two Jews waving their bastard flag.) This collective history writes
the flags Frank describes in dictum 439: For there will come an innumerable force ofJews. In one
row there will be no less than 10 000. Each company will have its flag. All the flags will be of
different colors, except black and blue, which will go to the end; and the flags will be lowered and
that will last only briefly. Suddenly a certain thing will appear on these fogs, they will come and
tell me that this-and-this appeared on that flag, and so they will report to me about each flag. Then
I will take something round and in it I will put the names of those people, no one will be allowed to
put his hand in it, but the name of each individual will rise up on its own. Only then will they call
him: Come forward. What that round thing is I cannot reveal to you. It was prepared for you that
you would carry my flag, for we shall go with that flag to a certain thing, therefore I also called you
Brothers, so that you could carry that flag and I would have walked with you under that jUJg, now I
must carry it alone, although it will be difficult for me, yet it stands: that Jacob was left alone. At
that time all who have died in that status will come to life. In the image Frank finds nobility, as
did other Jews who began to attain the seals and coats of arms of successful entry into non-
Jewish and aristocratic society. Still another history brings some of these impulses together:
the religious parades of Poland in which banners were displayed and none so precious as the
banner of the Mother of God and Poland, the Black Virgin of Czestochowa. Together with this
there occurs the ban promulgated in 1666 by King Jan Kazimierz against the parading of
banners emblazoned with the figure of Shabtai Zvi throughout Poland, a clear case of
iconomachy, returning the matter to Czestochowa and the contending Virgins (Mary the
Mother of God and Ewa Frank the Matronita, the Bride of God).
21. The Schoenfelds - Moshe made himself known in France as "Junius Frey" - died together
with Danton and Chabot. One motive that connects the several figures is sex: Julienne, the
"youthful" sister of the Schoenfelds and the aging Chabot; another is money: it seems that the
handling of the dismemberment of the Compagnie des Indes by Chabot, the treasurer of the
Revolution, or his associates exhibited some impropriety and the financial affairs of the
202 H Lenowitz

Schoenfelds fueled the suspicion that they were Austrian spies. See Scholem, "Career ... ,"161-
175, Mandel, The Militant Messiah, 121-154.
22. See her article in this volume.
23. The mss of the dicta are all labeled "as spoken in Brno" except for a part of the Lublin ms
which is said to have been "spoken in Offenbach." The dicta include material recorded as early
as the group's sojourn in Iwanie and as late as 1791 and it is all mixed together with no respect
for chronology. Shmeruk thought to show that the speeches were made in Yiddish at
Offenbach or Brno, then translated to Hebrew and still later, at Offenbach, to Polish where
the dicta were numbered. Still, there are dicta from Iwanie, bound to that place by phrases
that show they were uttered "in Iwanie," that gestures were observed at the time of their
utterance, "Here the Lord raised his holy finger," set among dicta spoken at later times. I must
also add that there is no necessity to Shmeruk's argument. It is very likely that some of the
dicta went through the process he proposed and others went through other processes. A
similar problem arises in regard to the Kronika; see Levine in the "English summary" vi and
vii. Cp. Kraushar, n.6, above, but Kraushar doesn't take up the question of the editing of the
whole ms, in stages.
24. The Asiatics' costumes as they advanced through three degrees were embroidered with roses
of different colors, and who knows but that the flower came to them from the Zohar?
25. These numbers are my own. There are problems with the pagination and item numbering of
the dicta in all the remaining mss and there are even inconsistencies in Kraushar's own
references. While awaiting the publication of my translations, notes and introduction of the
Zbior slow Panskich (the Cracow recension is so titled, The Collection of the Words of the Lord),
including the Lublin material, I have sent a copy of the draft -which it would be better not to
depend on - to the Scholem Library at Giv'at Ram. The word biZet also appears in dictum
1057 in the sense of English "billet."
26. Scholem went into the use Frank makes of the Baalekaben in his article, "Barukhia ... ," 196-
202. These figures are also referred to in Polish in the dicta as the beznogy, the "legless." This
linguistic usage shows how far Frank was from the understanding of the whole legend, as
Scholem would have it, from the time of the Zohar through that of his predecessor, Barukhia.
See further, my article, "Returning to 'Redemption through Sin,'" (n. 2, above).
27. Book of Constitutions, 1728.
28. Dictum I 08. I tell you, people who come forth from earthly seed have no soul yet and their spirit is
like that of a beast, and that is what Job said: Through my body I see God, which means: that the
Adam who created Adam was not whole, but those people who will be worthy to embrace a soul
from God himself will be able to see from one end of the world to the other and live forever. Even
concerning Jacob no more is [said] than that his spirit became alive but not [his] soul.
29. See A. Wertheim, "Traditions and Customs in Hasidism," in G.D. Hundert, Essential Papers
on Hasidism (New York, 1991), 378-382.
30. Godwin, 127.
31. Ibid., 134.
 M.K. SCHUCHARD

10. DR. SAMUEL JACOB FALK: A SABBATIAN

ADVENTURER IN THE MASONIC UNDERGROUND

The secretive and controversial personality of Dr. Falk, the "Baal Shem" of
London, presents unusual challenges for the historian who tries to trace his
movement through the shadowy underground of international "illuminist"
Freemasonry. As the following contemporary quotations reveal, Falk's influ-
ence stretched from England to the far reaches of Russia, Algiers, and Italy:

The famous Chaim-Schahul-Falck ... departed for England, where the

Portuguese Jews of the highest reputation rendered him honors as their
prince and sovereign pontiff ... [But] Parliament had him arrested in
London, and afterwards he was released on condition that he would no
longer kabbalize. (Comte de Rantzow, Memoires [Amsterdam, 1741])

Cagliostro came at just the right moment for himself, when several lodges of
Freemasons, who were infatuated with Swedenborg's principles, were
anxious at all costs to see spirits; they therefore ran to Cagliostro, who
declared he had all the secrets of Dr. Falk. (Catherine the Great to Baron
Grimm [Moscow, 1781])

As to the Kabbalah, all is upset by the unexpected death of Dr. Falk ... up to
now I have found nothing certain relating to that famous Rabbi, whether he
is genuine or a knave .... Believe me, I have found news about that Jew,
among the Jews of Algiers, and they ... attribute their success against the
Spaniards to him - Voila! (General Charles Rainsford, M.P. [Harwich,
1782])

Cagliostro perceived that their [Freemasons'] ceremonies were disfigured

and disgraced by magic and superstition; the principles of Swedenborg, a
Swedish preacher; and those of M. Falc, a Jew rabbi, are regarded as chiefs by
the illuminated. (Report of the Vatican Inquisition [Rome, 1791])

203
M.D. Go/dish and R.H. Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern
European Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 203-226.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
204 M.K. Schuchard

From the time of his youth in the 1720's, in Podhayce near the Polish-Turkish
border, to his death in 1782 in London, Falk lived in a world of clandestine
intrigues and shifting boundaries in politics, religion, and science. 1 Considered
an ignoramus and charlatan by orthodox rabbis, he was revered as a master of
the holy names of God by mystical Jews and theosophical Christians, who
sought his kabbalistic instruction and assistance in medicine, alchemy, sexual
magic, treasure-finding, lottery-predictions, and diplomatic intrigue. Reports
of his magical and political exploits circulated in courts and lodges from
London to Holland, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania, Poland,
Russia, and Algiers. The main communication line for these reports was the
clandestine network of Franco-Scottish (Ecossais) Masonic lodges established
by exiled supporters of the Stuart dynasty, who were forced to flee Britain by
the victorious Hanoverian regime. Compounding the secrecy maintained by
"traitorous" Jacobites and by Freemasons generally was the fact that Falk was
a crypto-Sabbatian, who maintained contact with "heretical" Jews in many
countries. Thus, to decipher his kabbalistic and Masonic career requires
investigation that stretches geographically throughout Europe and biographi-
cally through multiple layers of concealment.
From the first published report of his kabbalistic skills, in the Count of
Rantzow's Memoires (Amsterdam, 1741), Falk was presented as a magical
showman and psychic healer, who harbored quasi-messianic ambitions. In
both Podhayce and Furth, towns which "harboured centers of secret Sabba-
tianism," Falk developed a reputation as a supernatural wonder-worker, and
his services were soon sought by various Christian aristocrats in Germany. 2 At
Cassel he cured the epilepsy of a daughter of the Court Jew by means of
kabbalistic talismans without any medication and, from a distance, he over-
turned wine barrels in a locked cellar. 3 When Jesuits complained that Falk's
claims to find buried treasure were based on forbidden black magic and
recommended that he should be burned, the Elector of Cologne banned him
from his territory. Rantzow reported that Falk also performed a magical
ceremony with a black goat before the Duke of Richelieu, French ambassador
in Vienna, and the Count of Westerloh, during which Westerloh's valet had his
head turned backward and died of a broken neck. However, Falk's alleged
participation in this affair would later be rejected by his banking patrons, the
Boas brothers at The Hague. 4
Falk escaped the threatened auto da je and found refuge with the Baron de
Donop, Aulic Councillor of the Empire, who had witnessed his exploits at
Cassel and scorned the hypocrisy of the Jesuits. At Donop's residence in
Geilberg, Falk evoked an angelic spirit, which appeared in a burst of brilliantly
colored lights, and conversed with it in Hebrew. 5 In Donop's park, Falk drew a
large circle with his wand and filled it with magical characters; he then prayed
in Hebrew until a flame rose from the ground and burned the tips of his hair.
Falling to his knees, Falk prayed and pronounced the sign as favorable. In a
repeated ceremony, Donop saw the ground open to reveal the roots of an oak
tree stripped of bark and filled with a great quantity of gold. When Donop said
it would be necessary to cut down the oak to retrieve the hidden treasure, Falk
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 205

replied that whoever ordered the cutting would die instantly.

After Falk performed more acts of kabbalistic magic - making his hunting
knife float in the air and revealing more hidden gold - he urged Donop to
convert to Judaism and thus be saved. When Donop asked for an explanation,
Falk warned him of a universal war that would soon come to the whole earth
and that would last more than thirty years. In the peace afterwards, there
would reign universally as many princes as he had fingers on his left hand. In
this prophecy, there was a foreshadowing of Falk's future millenarial and
political ambitions.
Falk then moved to the castle of Rantzow's father, probably in 1736, where
Westerloh, Donop, and other admirers of the kabbalist joined them. Rantzow
fils was determined not to be gulled by Falk, but he was surprised that the Jew
immediately perceived his unvoiced scepticism. "This new pontiff'' told him he
knew what Rantzow had in his soul and then chastised him for not believing in
"our ancient Jews," of whom Jesus Christ said, "this race will never believe in
me unless it sees miracles and signs." Falk then promised to show such
phenomena to anyone stricken with incredulity. Rantzow replied that Falk
spoke of the New Testament as if he was a Christian, to which Falk asserted
that he had probably read it as much as Rantzow had. Rantzow, who admitted
in his Memoires that he was not very devout, accepted Falk's boast but then
asked how the Jew could remain in his error. In a remarkable rejoinder, Falk
boldly asserted:

I am so little in error ... and love it so little, that I work at freeing all my
brothers from it. They are waiting for somebody to liberate them for the
oppression and the slavery in which they are. The time is approaching, but I
cannot say more about it. Your law assumes ... that we are rejected by the
people elected by God. But one would have to prove to me that God, who is
immutable, could change His decrees. It is quite apparent that He has not
changed them with regard to our people, that we are actually under His
hand which beats us on our heads like the hands of a father who punishes his
children. The Christians bask in the glory of the world. The Jews are in
ignominy, so that in a true sense they are the only Christians. The death of
Jesus Christ has come about in order to announce to us a humiliating state,
after which we must fill the earth, to the very ends of the universe, with the
cry of the magnificence of God and the glory of the Jewish nation. This
nation has withstood the injuries of all time, it preserved its name in unity,
despite all the efforts of the powers of the earth. Unsuited to perform
impostures, and very indifferent to the politics of the century, we do not
count except in the thunder of heaven that will be detonated by the ministers
of His vengeance. One should not say that we are blind. We always see the
finger of God over our heads. Would you, Monsieur, cease to recognize your
father as your father because he punishes you? Is not that chastisement the
most beautiful sign which the true tenderness of a father can give? When all
the Jews will be humble of heart, in sackcloth and ashes, He shall respond
with their deliverance. 6
206 MK. Schuchard

As Falk continued to demonstrate his skills to Rantzow's father and guests

(making the castle shake to its foundations with thunderous noises, evoking a
spirit with eyes that shone like the sun, producing a vision of a seated
personage under the Hebrew word Jehovah and protected by the wings of
cherubim, etc.), young Rantzow struggled to maintain his sceptical attitude and
Christian belief. Finally, the reigning Duke of Brunswick-Luneberg wrote to
Rantzow fils and ordered him to abandon the famous Falk, "sovereign pontiff
of the Jews, descendant of King David, if one wants to believe it on the faith of
a passport of the Grand Seigneur." 7 While Falk sought a new patron, Rantzow
heard "from a very good source" that the Jew requested a great prince to give
him refuge and the freedom to work at his Kabbalah for forty days. Falk even
offered to have his work examined by such theologians as the prince deemed
reliable to ensure that he did nothing except with the help of God. But the
prince refused refuge to Falk and advised him rather to multiply bread for the
poor than to augment the treasures of the rich. According to Patai, the forty
days of work entailed alchemical processes. 8
There is no evidence that Falk had Masonic contacts at this time, for the
expansion of Ecossais Freemasonry into Germany was just beginning. 9
However, when he left the Rantzow estate, he went to Holland, where he
evidently made his first contacts with international adventurers who partici-
pated in secret diplomacy, espionage, alchemical fund-raising, and kabbalistic
political predictions. Passing through Holland in 1736-39 were Theodore von
Neuhof, the recently ejected king of Corsica, and Emanuel Swedenborg,
Swedish scientist and intelligence agent, who were both active in clandestine
Jacobite and Masonic intrigues and who would subsequently seek Falk's
assistance. 10 Also living in Holland was a suspected Sabbatian, the exiled
Italian savant Moses Luzzatto, whose kabbalistic theories evidently influenced
Swedenborg. 11 Falk would subsequently own and cherish Luzzatto's books. 12 It
was probably at this time that Falk met Simon and Tobias Boas, Jewish
bankers and active Masons, who became his patrons and protectors. The
Boases often assisted Swedish diplomats in political and financial affairs. 13
From Holland, according to Rantzow, Falk moved on to England (circa
1737-40), "where the Portuguese Jews of the highest reputation rendered him
honors as their prince and sovereign pontiff." 14 One of Rantzow's friends
informed him from London that Parliament ordered Falk's arrest, but then
released him on condition that he no longer practice Kabbalah. General
Charles Rainsford, a British M.P. and Swedenborgian Freemason, later
reported to a French Masonic research lodge that Falk was also censured for
his kabbalistic indiscretions, apparently by certain Jewish authorities:

... they maintain that he had misemployed some knowledge (connaissances)

which had been entrusted to him, and that for that reason he was punished,
and obliged to pass the rest of his life in solitude, without daring to
communicate his knowledge, which he had the imprudence to make
apparent for ostentation. 15
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 207

The parliamentary order and kabbalistic censure account for the extreme
secrecy that Falk maintained about his continuing magical activities. Though
little is known about his early years in London, until his servant Hirsch Kalisch
recorded his activities in his diary of 1747-51, evidence emerges in the
journals, correspondence, and diplomatic reports of other visitors to London
which suggests that Falk became involved in a clandestine Masonic system that
utilized Kabbalah and alchemy to support efforts to restore James Stuart, the
"Old Pretender," to the British throne. These contacts came through French
and Swedish agents, who provided secret intelligence and military support for
the Jacobite cause. It was no coincidence that Baron von Donop's son, who
witnessed Falk's exploits, was then in the military service of the Swedish king,
and that the rare copy of Rantzow's Memoires in the Swedish Royal Library
was owned and inscribed by Count Carl Gustaf Tessin, Swedish foreign
minister and leader of Ecossais Freemasonry. The Corsican "Pretender,"
Theodore von Neuhof, had earlier served in the Swedish army and acted as an
intelligence agent in the Franco-Swedish-Jacobite Plot of 1716-18. All of these
politically active Masons tried to exploit kabbalistic, Hermetic, and Rosicru-
cian techniques and networks in order to further their "patriotic" causes.
Moreover, they believed that those causes had millenarial significance, for they
would reverse the political and spiritual trends that usurped legitimate kings
and upset God's ordained microcosmic order.

II
In order to understand why Falk - a defiantly proud Jew - would be attracted
to Jacobite or Scottish-rite Masonry, it will be necessary to briefly trace the
history of Jewish-Stuart collaboration in the early development of Free-
masonry. From the sixteenth-century, the Stuart kings in Scotland were
actively involved in ambitious architectural programs, and they worked closely
with operative Masons, whose traditional craft lore drew on the Sepher Yetzirah
and other works of Jewish mathematical-architectural mysticism and visualiza-
tion (including the kabbalistic-Lullist Art of Memory). 16 James VI was
initiated in the lodge at Perth circa 1600, and when he became James I of
England in 1603, he brought Scottish Masonic interests to London. 17 A
Scottish poem would proudly link Stuart Freemasonry with Rosicrucianism
and the acquisition of prophetic powers ("second sight"). 18 As "Mason Kings,"
James and his son and grandson considered themselves Solomonic monarchs
and utilized Jewish visionary and ritual themes while they sought to rebuild the
Temple of Wisdom in their kingdoms. 19 Their anti-Scottish opponents accused
them of being "Judeo-Scots"- the heirs of those Jews banished from medieval
England who found refuge in Scotland. 20 That the Scots did not eat pork was
considered proof of their Hebraic lineage - a heritage that the Stuarts proudly
accepted.
During the Cromwellian interregnum, when Menasseh ben Israel labored to
open England to Jewish immigration, he was supported by various Protestant
millenarians who expected (even demanded) that the Jews would eventually
208 M.K. Schuchard

convert to Christianity. 21 At the same time, when the exiled Charles II sought
the support of royalist Jews in Holland, he made clear that he did not expect
them to convert, and that he would grant them protection to live and worship
as Jews under his restored regime. Many exiled royalists- especially the Scots-
identified with the Jews of the Diaspora and adapted their mystical language of
reclaiming Jerusalem (Britain) and rebuilding the Temple (a virtuoso culture
based on art, architecture, and science). There is evidence of contact between
Scottish Freemasons (such as Sir Robert Moray and Alexander Bruce) and
Dutch Jews during the 1650's. 22 In fact, the puzzling tradition- based on now-
lost documents- of a Masonic initiation carried out by Jews in Rhode Island in
1658 was probably linked to Sir William Davidson, a Scottish merchant and
manager of Dutch Jewish trade with the colonies, who served as Charles II's
liaison with Jewish sympathizers. 23 In Holland Davidson collaborated closely
with the Masons Moray and Bruce in secret royalist projects. According to
eighteenth-century Jacobite Masons, General Monck and the Scottish architect
Sir William Bruce utilized these secret Masonic networks to organize the
restoration. 24
Throughout his reign, Charles II struggled to maintain religious toleration in
Britain, despite the strong anti-Catholic sentiments of most of his subjects. As
J.C. Riley observes, "Seventeenth-century Englishmen regarded Papists with
much the same suspicion and hatred that Americans held for Communists in
the late 1950's," though Romanists composed less than two percent of the
English population. 25 Grateful to Jewish supporters of his restoration, Charles
granted royal protection to the Jews and personally guaranteed their right to
practice their religion freely (despite attacks on the community by Protestant
extremists). In 1665 this Jewish-Stuart affiliation was recognized in a Masonic
document which featured Hebrew lettering, Jewish symbolism, and Stuart
loyalism. 26 In 1675, after the conclusion of the Anglo-Dutch war, Rabbi Jacob
Judah Leon - a probable member of the earlier Davidson-Moray circle -
traveled from Amsterdam to London to exhibit his famous model of the
Jerusalem Temple. 27 In an introductory pamphlet, Leon praised the Stuarts
for their support of his work and for their respectful attitudes towards the Jews.
Armed with recommendation letters from Constantijn Huygens (Moray's old
friend and fellow Mason) to Christopher Wren and the Earl of Arlington (both
Masons), Leon reportedly met and conversed with the king as a Masonic
brother and an equal. 28 While in London, he also designed the coat of arms for
the restored Masonic fraternity, and his design would later be resurrected by
devotees of "ancient" Stuart Freemasonry in London.
After the 1688 expulsion of James II - who had promised full religious
freedom to Catholics, Dissenters, Quakers, and Jews - many royalist Jews in
England and on the Continent remained loyal to James's "Jacobite" parti-
sans.29 Francis Francia, known as "the Jacobite Jew," worked for the Stuart
cause from 1702 until 1750, acting as financial manager of the Swedish-
Jacobite plot of 1716 and organizing a "club of noble Jews" that was probably
a Masonic lodge, for Francia was listed as a Freemason. 30 The exposure and
defeat of the Swedish-Jacobite plot, which included a Masonic component,
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 209

provoked a counter-reaction by supporters of the Hanoverian regime. Thus, in

1717 four lodges in London joined together to form the Modern Grand Lodge,
which vowed loyalty to George I's government and devotion to Newtonian-
Whig science. 31 Over the next decades, Jacobites and Hanoverians maintained
rival Masonic systems that struggled for dominance in Britain and abroad.
Though Masonic histories in English have tended to glorify the Modern Grand
Lodge system in Britain, Continental historians argue that the "Ancient"
Jacobite system attracted more recruits in the rapidly expanding Ecossais
lodges in Europe and the New World. Moreover, the "Ancient" system was
especially attractive to Jews because of its emphasis on Hebraic mystical lore. 32
It was in the Jacobite systems that the older kabbalistic and Rosicrucian
traditions were preserved and embellished. Thus, the Ecossais Masons some-
times solicited kabbalistic Jews to share their occultist knowledge. The secret
enclaves of Sabbatians, whose antinomian theosophy allowed them to pretend
sympathy for Christianity, provided fertile soil for these Masonic questers. It is
even possible that Francia, like Rabbi Leon's sons, harbored Sabbatian
sympathies, for he alternated between Jewish and Christian identities. In the
1690's in Amsterdam, Leon Templo.fi/s contributed his father's Temple drawings
to Wilhelm Surenhuys for a Latin edition of the Mishna, and these designs
subsequently emerged in the Masonic tracing boards used in Ecossais lodge
rituals. 33 During the same period in London, the tenure of Rabbi Solomon
Allyon initiated a clandestine Sabbatian sub-culture, which maintained links
between fellow sectarians in London and on the Continent. Like the Jacobites,
who were considered seditious rebels and traitors by the reigning Hanoverian
government, the Sabbatians were considered rebels and heretics by the reigning
orthodox rabbis. In the murky underworld, where both "outlawed" parties
operated, they sometimes found interests and ambitions in common. Thus, Dr.
Falk's appearance on the Ecossais stage was a new but not unprecedented act in
the long-running drama of the "Judeo-Scots."

III
At the time when Falk first passed through Holland in the late 1730's, the
leader of the Moravian Brotherhood - Count Nicholas Zinzendorf - was
sponsoring a Judenmission, in which Moravians lived in the Jewish community
in Amsterdam and tried to find a via media between Judaism and Christianity
through mutual study of Kabbalah. 34 By the early 1740's, when the Judenmis-
sion extended operations to London, the Moravians were publicly accused of
having links with the Jacobites and Freemasons. One participant in the
Moravian outreach to the Jews was Emanuel Swedenborg, who had earlier
been influenced by the Christian kabbalism of Rabbi Johan Kemper, a crypto-
Sabbatian, who was evidently his Hebrew instructor in Uppsala. 35 Since then,
Swedenborg had visited Jewish synagogues and communities in Prague, Han-
over, and Rome. In 1743-45 he lived incognito in Amsterdam and London,
where he participated in Moravian rituals, studied Kabbalah, was initiated into
the Jacobite Masonic degrees, and established contact with local Jews. 36
210 M.K. Schuchard

Swedenborg had long demonstrated mild symptoms of interictal epilepsy

(the Geschwind Syndrome), in which he periodically stuttered, trembled,
swooned, saw visions, wrote obsessively, and developed messianic notions. 37
While ill with a high fever (or a more severe seizure) in London, he proclaimed
to his Moravian companion that he was the messiah, that he had come to be
crucified for the Jews, and that he must go to the synagogue to preach. The
frightened Moravian took the delirious Swedenborg to Dr. William Smith, a
specialist in epilepsy and mental illness, who drew on Jewish medical traditions
and kabbalistic hypnotic techniques in his treatment. 38 Smith was a friend of
Dr. Falk, who also treated epilepsy and "spirit possession," and he probably
provided Swedenborg with an entree to the secret world of the Baal Shem. 39
In his Journal of Dreams, recorded in London, Swedenborg hinted at his
participation in Falk's magical rituals performed "on a bridge over water," and
he often visited Falk's neighborhood near Wellclose Square, where (by happy
°
coincidence) the Swedish church was located. 4 Falk would later occupy a large
mansion in Wellclose Square, where he maintained a private synagogue and
public tabernacle, and Swedenborg sometimes stayed in the King's Arms
Tavern in the square. Owned by Eric Bergstr6m, 41 a Swede with Moravian
connections, the tavern was the meeting place for a French-affiliated lodge that
welcomed Jewish members. Perhaps inspired by Falk's own millenarial
predictions, Swedenborg wrote a messianic treatise (published posthumously)
that linked Jacobite with Jewish dreams of a return to Jerusalem and the
rebuilding of the Temple. 42
In 1744--45 Swedenborg's political party (the pro-French "Hats") secretly
cooperated with the Stuarts and utilized Ecossais Masonic networks for secret
communications and arms shipments. Despite widespread anti-Semitism in
Sweden, Swedenborg's political mentors also hoped to open their country to
Jewish immigration, and they undertook top-secret negotiations with Jewish
agents on the Continent and in England. At The Hague the Swedish
ambassador Joachim Preis- a close friend of Swedenborg- worked with the
Boas brothers on the Jewish immigration project, at a time when the Boases
acted as patrons of Dr. Falk. For many Ecossais Masons and their Jewish
friends, there seemed to be a new convergence of interests and opportunities.
As the charismatic young prince Charles Edward Stuart prepared to sail for
Britain, at the head of a Franco-Swedish-Jacobite invasion force, he planned a
manifesto promising complete religious freedom. A draft was penned by
Voltaire, with the advice of the Swedish ambassador in Paris, Count Carl
Frederick Scheffer, a Freemason and close friend of Swedenborg. 42 Thus,
despite Hanoverian propaganda that painted the Jacobites as authoritarian
Papists, Prince Charles revived the earlier Stuart policy of religious liberty that
must have appealed to many Jews, for their co-religionists in England had
actually lost privileges after the so-called "Glorious Revolution" of 1689, when
William III did not include the Jews in his policy of limited toleration. 43
I argue elsewhere that Swedenborg and Falk became associated with a
clandestine Jacobite system, the "Rite of Seven Degrees," brought from Rouen
to London in 1743-44 by the French military officer and engraver Lambert de
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 211

Lintot - a system that utilized the kabbalistic and Hermetic sciences for
restoration projects. 44 Like Swedenborg, De Lintot apparently received a
subsidy from the secret diplomatic fund of Louis XV, who also sent the
Rosicrucian adventurer and crypto-Jew known as the Comte de Saint-Germain
to serve as a Jacobite-Masonic agent in London. Saint-Germain may even have
met Falk, through their mutual friend Dr. De la Cour, a wealthy Jewish
physician, who often brought curious Christians to meet Falk. 45 De Lintot's
Masonic rite drew on the universalist Christian kabbalism of the Chevalier
Andrew Michael Ramsay, and he developed elaborate, higher degrees invol-
ving kabbalistic meditation techniques that enabled the initiate to transmute
sexual arousal into visionary ecstasy.
Many of De Lintot's Masonic engravings survive, and some hint at the
kabbalistic sexual theosophy that was revealed in the secret instruction of his
system. Under its Jacobite name, the "Rite of Heredom of Kilwinning," one
engraving featured nude females dancing around phallic pillars, with the note
"Nothing without the V Point," a reference to the vulva or kabbalistic
Shekinah. 46 In Sweden borg's dream diary, he referred to his practice of intense
meditation which produces an erection, which he tries to maintain without
ejacu1ation. 47 Similarly, in Falk's dream diary, he described his student Cos-
man Lehman enacting a phallic ritual in which he achieves an erection but then
spoils it by ejaculating in different directions. 48 As Wolfson explains, certain
techniques of intense meditation by kabbalists allow them to see visions and
experience intense erotic pleasure. 49 Among some radical Sabbatians on the
Continent, meditation on the Shekinah was accompanied by ritualized mas-
turbation, much to the horror of orthodox critics. 50 In the state of sexual
arousal and psychic trance, the adept sometimes received prophetic illumina-
tion about current and future political affairs -which attracted the attention of
politically minded diplomats and Masons.
In 1783, one year after Falk's death, General Charles Rainsford, who had
been collaborating with Falk on a highly secretive kabbalistic-masonic scheme,
received inquiries from Parisian Masons about the system of Falk and De
Lintot, whose papers and regalia Rainsford acquired. Falk had earlier listed
himself as a member of the lodge "Observance of Heredom, Scotland." 51 In
answer to a question about the ritual term "Heredom," Rainsford replied
cautiously that it did not refer to an actual mountain in Scotland but rather to
the Jewish symbol for Mons Domini or Malchuth, the tenth sephira of the
kabbalistic system. Following the note "Cabala" and the Hebrew letters for
Malchuth, Rainsford explained:

The word "Heridon" [sic] is famous in several degrees of masonry, that is to

say, in some invented degrees (grades forges), or in degrees of masonry so-
called. Apparently, the enlightened brethren who have judged it proper to
make the law, that Jews should be admitted to the Society have received the
word with the secrets (mysteres) which have been entrusted to them. 52

Rainsford's smoke-screen reply, combining hints at higher mysteries with

212 MK. Schuchard

scoffing at their legitimacy, was typical of "illuminist" replies to outside

inquiries. Moreover, he was an officer in the British army and had to be
discrete about his associations with Jacobite and foreign Masons.
Meanwhile, the crushing of the Jacobite rebellion ofl745 drove its sympathi-
zers further underground, while the Hanoverian victors launched a propagan-
da campaign against the Judaized Jacobites and their Masonic henchmen (led
by the Whig journalist Henry Fielding). In his government subsidized
Jacobite:~ Journal (1747-48), Fielding linked Masons, Jacobites, and Jews as
seditious and untrustworthy residents. Despite the loyalty displayed by most
Jews, led by Samson Gideon who saved the Bank of England during the "panic
of '45," Fielding hinted at his awareness of the secret Jacobite sympathies of
other Jews. This was especially threatening to Falk and his clandestine Ecossais
associates. Expressive of the lingering resentment felt by many Whigs at the
"Jacobite Rabbins" who pledged their loyalty to James II in 1685, Fielding
claimed that the Jacobite Scots had circumcised themselves after the Battle of
Culloden and joined their Jewish allies for revolutionary purposes:

I have often amused myself with comparing the People called the Jacobites
with the People called Jews; between whom I find a stricter Analogy than
perhaps can be discovered between any other two Sects ... it is the unhappy
Fate of both these People, who have been alike deprived of their own
divinely constituted Kings, to live under Governments which they hold to
be damnable and diabolical, and no Allegiance nor Submission due to them:
But, on the contrary, are daily hoping and looking for their Destruction. 53

Despite the need for intensified secrecy, which leaves so much of the
"illuminist" underground difficult to trace, Dr. Falk emerges from the shadows
through the diary of Hirsch Kalisch, his semi-literate servant, whose jottings in
1747-51 make it possible to place the Baal Shem among his fellow kabbalists,
Masons, and political intriguers in London. 54 Still acting as an intelligence
agent, Swedenborg returned periodically to London and recorded descriptions
of a Jewish magician that matched in all details Kalisch's portrayals of Falk. 55
As Swedenborg began anonymously publishing Arcana Coelestia, which was
subsidized by Louis XV, he carefully distanced his kabbalistic scriptural
interpretations and notions of cosmic sexuality ("conjugial love") from his
Jewish sources.
Dr. Falk's most important visitor, however, was King Theodore I, who was a
hero to the Jews because of his declaration of religious freedom in Corsica and
his invitation to Jews to settle there. 56 However, since his military expulsion
from Corsica, Theodore had struggled to support himself through kabbalistic
and Hermetic performances, while he linked his restorationist cause with that
of the Stuarts. Arriving in London in late 1748--early 1749, Theodore possibly
sought out Swedenborg, whose diplomatic mentors had long supported
Theodore's schemes. He also sought Falk's magical assistance, and the
impoverished Baal Shem believed that he was finally on the way to economic
and political power. Often accompanied by Dr. Smith, Theodore received
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 213

kabbalistic talismans and predictions from Falk, whom he paid with funds he
had collected from Continental supporters. Eventually, Theodore ran out of
money and was arrested for debt; however, his unusually long prison sentence
was probably provoked by the government's concern about his Jacobite
intrigues (carried out with his Irish brother-in-law Killmallock). While in
prison, Theodore continued to initiate sympathizers into his neo-Masonic
"Order of Deliverance," and fellow Masons such as David Garrick and Horace
Walpole tried to help him. Through Garrick's international theatrical visitors,
Theodore ~ and Swedenborg ~ met Masonic actors from France and Russia,
who returned to their home lodges with tales of Falk and the clandestine
Jacobite Masonic rites in London.
While Theodore languished in prison, the young Stuart prince ~ now
lionized as "Bonnie Prince Charlie" ~ caused a diplomatic sensation when he
disappeared from Avignon and began a secretive, restless search for supporters
in Germany, Poland, and Sweden. The Jacobite Masons, who believed that the
prince was made Grand Master of the Templar Masons at a ceremony in
Holyrood Palace, tried to provide him with hiding places and communication
networks. 58 Many French Masons were ashamed of Louis XV's harsh treat-
ment of the prince, and they secretly sent funds to his supporters. Falk's
association with the Royal Order of Heredom, which claimed Prince Charles
as its Grand Master and maintained links with the French Grand Master
(Comte de Clermont) and his elite Rose-Croix rite, perhaps explains his
contacts with ambassadors from France, who visited him in London, supplied
him with French funds, and took his disciple Cosman Lehman back with them
to Paris.
In 1756 there was a revival of "Ancient" Jewish-Stuart Masonic links in
London, when Laurence Dermott ~ an Irish Mason ~ placed a notice in the
Public Advertiser about a meeting of Royal Arch Freemasons in a tavern on
Capel Street, "near Wellclose Square." The location was significant, for
Dermott actively recruited Jews to his system and wove kabbalistic and Jewish
symbolism into Royal Arch rituals. 59 To replace the Constitutions published by
the "Modern" Grand Lodge, Dermott published AHlMAN REZON, which
included "the Prayers to be used in the Jewish and Christian Lodges ... together
with Solomon's Temple and Oratoria." Dermott studied the papers of Rabbi
Leon "Templo," in the possession of Leon's grandson, and he reiterated the
claim of Charles Il's Masonic role. In the 1764 revised edition, he added the
story of Rabbi Leon's visit to Charles and reproduced the Jew's Masonic coat
of arms (adopting it as the "Ancients" emblem). Dermott also described a
dream vision, in which a white-bearded Jew wearing a golden breastplate
revealed the Solomonic origins of Freemasonry. With Dr. Falk living right
around the corner from the Royal Arch lodge, it is tempting to see him as the
original of the dream-figure. Over the next years, Dermott studied Hebrew,
probably with Falk or the Buzaglo brothers, fellow Sabbatians and Masons. 60
The "Ancient" and "Royal Arch" system gained many recruits, who avidly
studied Kabbalah in order to rise through its mystical degrees. For Falk, this
philo-Judaic Masonic development opened new opportunities. Despite the
214 M.K. Schuchard

failure of his enterprise with King Theodore (who died in 1756), his sense of
power was enhanced by local Masonic attention and French aristocratic
overtures. He began to show the proud defiance of his earlier days with
Rantzow. When Kalisch angered him, Falk boasted that he could destroy with
his magical powers not only Kalisch and his father but half of Poland.
Fortunately, Falk calmed down, for Poland soon became a major factor in his
growing reputation as a Baal Shem.
As the Stuart prince spent eight years of incognito wandering, he sought the
support of Polish nationalists, who chafed under the Anglo-Russian domina-
tion of their country. Son of a Polish mother and now supported by the exiled
former king Stanislaus Lesczcynski, Prince Charles was viewed as a legitimate
candidate for the Polish throne in 1757. 61 He especially won the admiration of
the princes Lubomirsky and Czartorisky, leaders of Ecossais Freemasonry in
Warsaw and avid students of Kabbalah. Both princes had contacts with
Sabbatian Jews, and Czartorisky was criticized as "a half-Sabbatian" (ein
halber Schops). 62 Prince Marius Lubomirsky would later marry a Sabbatian
and convert to Judaism. Then, in 1758, a wave of messianic expectation swept
Poland, as Jacob Frank - a crypto-Sabbatian with messianic pretensions -
encouraged his followers to convert en masse to Catholicism. The Czartoriskys
and their Masonic allies welcomed the Zoharites to the "new" Poland, and
there would be increasing exchange between Masonic kabbalists and the
Frankists.
Meanwhile, in London, Zinzendorf and the more radical Moravians were
intrigued by the events in Poland, and they sent emissaries- including a Jewish
Moravian - to link up with the Frankists' millenarial crusade. Falk was
probably aware of this Moravian outreach, for Kalisch stayed in touch with
his family in Moravia. In Hamburg and Frankfurt, a shadowy group of
Masons was also stirred by these Frankist developments, and they organized
the "Gold-und-Rosenkre utzer" brotherhood, who solicited Jewish assistance
as they they worked for kabbalistic regeneration, alchemical transmutation,
and millenarial consummation. Among their recruits were Johannes Muller
and J.C. Oetinger, who both developed Rosicrucian relationships with Swe-
denborg.63 Muller also maintained mysterious contacts with Rabbi Jonathan
Eibeschiitz, a crypto-Sabbatian and friend of Falk. 64
The spread of Sabbatian heresy became so alarming to orthodox rabbis that
they mounted a propaganda and persecution campaign against the "rebels." In
Hamburg Rabbi Jacob Emden determined to expose not only the Sabbatian
but the Christianizing intrigues of the new enthusiasts. Rabbi Moses David, an
old friend of Falk from Podhayce, fled to London, where he found refuge in
Wellclose Square. Another visitor, Susman Shesnowski, wrote to his son in
Poland to describe the activities of the two kabbalists, and he hinted that Falk
possessed not only magical but messianic powers:

Hear, my beloved son, of the marvellous gifts entrusted to a son of man, who
verily is not a man, a light of the captivity, who hath set his heart to gather
the dispersed of Ariel .... His name is Samuel Falk ... who dwells at present
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 215

in London . .. he wrote an explanation of his words to the worthy Moses

David, the aged and renowned Cabbalist who formerly dwelt in Podhayce
and was then famed as a Baal Shem .... He now dwells in the shadow of the
aforementioned saintly man .... In Cheshvan he withdrew into his house
near the bridge. His house was entirely closed ... and there he abode about
six weeks without food, drink, or sleep, or kindling any fire. In the sixth
week ... he directed that ten learned men should assemble, who had purified
themselves by immersion in the Ritual Bath. At midnight we came to his
house, and then donned white surplices. On Wednesday he bade the
Cabbalist, Moses David, write in his notebook. Then he directed another
member of the Brotherhood ... to kindle the light of two candlesticks. When
Moses had completed writing he asked the company to enter the chamber
barefooted. Lo! and behold, the saintly man was seated on his throne
arrayed like an angel of heaven, diademed with a golden mitre ... .This is
the saintly man who, according to my poor understanding, stands alone in
our generation, for he knows the mystery of our Law and does wondrous
things .... I am grateful that I have been received into this Brotherhood, who
by their piety can hasten the advent of the Messiah .... My son, be very
circumspect, and show this only to wise and discrete men. For here in
London, this matter has not been disclosed to any one who does not belong
to our Brotherhood. 65

Moses David, who was awed by Falk's performance, wrote a dangerously

explicit letter to Eibeschiitz, in which he described the magical deeds of the
holy man Falk, "who is still human but already above human." 66 It is unclear
whether David believed that Falk was the Messiah or the major messenger of
the Messiah's coming; certainly, he believed that Falk was the man of the age
who would usher in the new millenarial era. After some months, David
returned to Eibeschiitz's yeshiva in Altona, where the enemies of the Sabba-
tians stepped up their attacks. They claimed that David indulged in antinomian
rituals, so that "Everybody who is unholy did turn him [Falk] into a Messiah
because he is unholy." Though Falk had "entrapped" many wealthy Jews and
Christians, in order to raise money for the Brotherhood, the orthodox rabbis
expelled his colleague David, who had "broken the tablets of Haon." The later
confiscation of David's amulets - with references to Falk, Eibeschiitz,
Baruchia, and Sabbatai Zevi, while featuring a Christian cross - revealed that
the Brotherhood aimed at some kind of syncretism between Sabbatianism and
Christianity. 67
The turbulent year of 1759 ended with the cancellation of the projected
Franco-Jacobite invasion of Britain, which the foreign minister Choiseul had
planned as the largest military operation in French history. Swedish, Polish,
and Jacobite agents who had participated in the clandestine arrangements were
thrown into disarray, as their carefully cultivated links with Masons, Jews, and
dissidents lost their political-military goal. However, Falk's expanding interna-
tional connections were not forgotten, and individual aristocrats increasingly
sought his magical and Masonic assistance for their political ambitions. From
216 M K. Schuchard

1764 onward, Fa1k received the patronage of the wealthy Goldsmid brothers,
who also became Masons. 68 Increasingly affluent from his investments in
French funds and lottery winnings, Falk could now afford to play a more
ambitious political role.
In 1771 Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt and a territorial Grand
Master of Masonry, corresponded with Sweden borg about his political predic-
tions and the state of various spirits in the afterworld. 69 Not satisfied with
Swedenborg's brief answers, the Landgrave subsequently sent his Jewish agent,
Simon Van Geldern (great-uncle of Heinrich Heine) to London to solicit
instruction from Falk. 70 Though Falk and Van Geldern apparently did not get
along, Ludwig later affirmed that "in his youth he worked with a Jew believed
by him to have been a pupil of Falc." 71
Another possible visitor to Swedenborg and Falk in 1771 was the Jewish
savant Mordechai Gumpel Levison, who came from Berlin to London in order
to pursue medical studies. 72 According to Beswick, Swedenborg had recently
visited a Masonic lodge in Berlin, where he met the Prussian army physician
Johann Christian Theden, a Rosicrucian Mason, who became a friend and
protector of Levison. 73 Theden may have informed Levison that Swedenborg
was in London, for Levison subsequently became a Swedenborgian. 74 Levison
studied under the Scottish physicians William and John Hunter, who were
Masons and Jacobite sympathizers. The brothers were interested in Sweden-
borg's theories and had contacts with his local devotees. William owned
Swedenborg's Economy of the Animal Kingdom, while John collaborated with
Peter Woulfe, a Swedenborgian alchemist who befriended Levison. 75 It seems
likely that Levison's Hebrew work, A Dissertation on the Law and Science
(1771), was influenced by Swedenborg's as well as Linnaeus's theory of
correspondences. 76
Levison also met Dr. Smith, mutual friend of Swedenborg and Falk, who
would subsequently sponsor the Jew's medical accreditation from Marischal
College, Aberdeen. 77 As a youthful protege of Eibeshchiitz, Levison perhaps
heard of Falk's reputation as a kabbalistic healer and was then introduced to
him by Smith. If Levison was associated with the crypto-Sabbatian circle of
Eibeschiitz and Falk, it would explain the hostility of orthodox rabbis to his
alleged heretical views and sexual improprieties. Levison was accused of
consorting with "the bad Abish," who was "one of the wisest men of his
generation; the two companions "conspired to destroy Judaism" by their
antinomian behavior. 78 Graupe suggests that "Abish" referred to Eibeschiitz,
though it could also refer to the latter's confrere, Falk. Over the next decade,
Levison collaborated with the Swedish illumines who infused alchemical and
kabbalistic theories into William Blake's Sweden borg Society. 79
In 1771-72 a visiting French Mason, Phillipe Jacques de Loutherbourg,
painted Swedenborg's portrait and- allegedly- Falk's, which features the Baal
Shem proudly holding Masonic compasses while drawing a kabbalistic talis-
man. 80 After Sweden borg's death in London in February 1772, Falk visited the
Boas brothers at The Hague, where he attended meetings of the French-
affiliated "Indissoluble" Lodge. 81 Rumors about his and Swedenborg's con-
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 217

tributions to the higher degrees spread through Europe and Scandinavia.

Since his accession to the Swedish throne in a bloodless coup in 1772, Gustav
III - a patron of Swedenborg - made Freemasonry an instrument of state and
worked diligently to expand the Swedish Rite into foreign countries - especially
in hostile Russia and Prussia, where initiates loyal to the Swedish Grand
Master would form a pro-Swedish fifth column. 82 The Swedes claimed to
possess certain hieroglyphs that provided the key to the kabbalistic secrets
hidden in the old Judaic wisdom books - evidently a reference to De Lintot's
engravings and Falk's revelations. 83 By dangling the bait of rare magical arcana
before would-be adepts, the king's agents were able to attract many Masons in
various countries to the Swedish Rite. Gustav's usage of Masonic networks
was part of an obsessively secret strategy to protect Sweden from foreign
invasion and domination.
Gustav was especially worried about the tragic fate of Poland, which he
viewed as prophetic of Sweden's vulnerability. Thus, he supported the nation-
alist rebellion led by Prince Adam Czartorisky, which was crushed by Russia
and Prussia. Like the Swedish royalists, the Polish nationalists utilized
international Masonic networks to support their cause. In 1772 a desperate
Czartorisky visited Tobias Boas at The Hague, and then both men traveled to
London to solicit Falk's magical and financial assistance. Moving on to Paris,
Czartorisky called on the Duke of Chartres, Grand Master of the Grand Orient
system of French Masonry, and probably informed him about Falk. In 1773 a
new link between Falk's and Swedenborg's theosophy was initiated by the
Marquis de Thome, who established a Swedenborgian Masonic lodge in Paris
and subsequently studied Kabbalah under Falk. In 1774 the old Ecossais
network was weakened when De Lintot's lodge succumbed to pressure from
the British government and voted to remove the Stuart Pretender from his
position as Grand Master of the Rite of Heredom of Kilwinning. 84
It was perhaps this new development that prompted Falk to visit France in
1775, when his name appeared on a Parisian lodge list. 85 After his visit, the
powerful Grand Master Chartres traveled to London to receive Falk's
kabbalistic support for his reformist political agenda. Falk consecrated a
talismanic ring that would ensure Chartres' rise to the French throne. But
Falk's most significant pupil in London was a lowly Sicilian painter named
Joseph Balsamo, who evidently came from a Marranist background and
harbored kabbalistic and Masonic ambitions. Balsamo may have met Sweden-
borg, Levison, and Falk during his first visit to London in 1771, for he later
referred to Swedenborg in personal terms and his alchemical theories would be
noted by Levison. 86 On a return visit in 1776, Balsamo worked with Falk to
develop the "Egyptian Rite," a new Masonic system infused with Swedenbor-
gian theosophy and kabbalistic symbolism. Assuming the name "Count
Cagliostro," the former Balsamo and Falk visited a Masonic lodge at The
Hague in 1777, where they launched a remarkable campaign to recruit
Swedenborgian and Ecossais Masons in many countries to the Egyptian Rite.
General Rainsford recalled his own visit in 1777 to "my friend Boas the Jew
banker" at The Hague:
218 M.K. Schuchard

... in conversing with one of the sons, we fell upon the topick of Dr. du Falk,
the famous Cabalist, who I had heard a great deal of both at Harwich from
the Captain of the Packets, at Helvoet Sluys, and at Maasland Sluys, and
found him in high repute at all three places, for the Propriety of his Behavior
and Sanctity of his Manners and, as well, from the the respectable Character
he appeared in of a venerable Rabbi of great Benevolence & Charity, but
knowing that the Boas family had a particular Knowledge & Correspon-
dence with him, I questioned the Son about him .... The Jew made no
Hesitation to answer my Questions, and enter minutely into his Character
87

Boas recounted his conversation with Falk about Rantzow's Memoirs, and
Falk assured him that he really performed "the very singular and surprising"
magical feats, but that "at present he would not or dare to attempt them."
Nevertheless, Falk was a "most profound Cabalist and a very holy man," who
had formerly been distressed for money but that Lehman had helped him "by
various Means, sometimes not so creditably." Rainsford was pleased to hear
about Falk's moral influence on the formerly dissolute Lehman, who was his
close friend and who was "now at Versailles, in close connexion with the Chev.
de L~-g [Luxembourg] and the Prince de Tingri [Pingre]." The latter two
were high-ranking French Masons. 88 Rainsford planned to use Boas's informa-
tion for some kind of Masonic project he hoped to launch.
During the same year (1777) in Russia, Bourree de Corberon - a French
diplomat - was informed that Dr. Falk was considered "the Old Man of the
Mountain" and the source of the deepest kabbalistic-masonic arcana, which he
revealed to Thoux de Salverte, now a leading Mason in Poland. 89 Falk's alleged
connection with the medieval sect of Assassins would send a frisson through
the lodges of would-be magicians and political power seekers. Thus, when
Cagliostro left The Hague and travelled to Ecossais and Swedenborgian lodges
in Germany and Lithuania, he was welcomed as the emissary of the "Great
Cophta," whose identity as Falk was revealed only to elite adepts. In 1778
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - an initiate of the Swedish Rite - published his
Masonic dialogues, provocatively titled Ernst und Falk, and some readers
assumed that his portrayal of the character Falk as a kabbalist and political
manipulator was based on the Baal Shem of London. When the Russian
Masons asked Cagliostro for the hieroglyphs engraved by Lambert de Lintot,
Falk made a raid on the "Heredom" lodge and sent the hieroglyphs to
Moscow. 90
Rival Masons and critics charged that Cagliostro was a crypto-Jew, who
hoped to overturn existing religious and political norms in the name of a
transcendent, liberationist, universalist culture. While Cagliostro was in
Europe in 1781, the "Great Cophta" allegedly convinced the Scottish radical,
Lord George Gordon, to convert to Judaism and join their Masonic cam-
paign.91 Another bizarre actor in the drama of the "Judeo-Scots," Gordon's
partisans had unleashed riots that almost destroyed London, in order to
prevent the recruitment of Catholic troops to use against the American
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 219

revolutionaries. The fact that a Russian dissident participated in the Gordon

Riots alarmed Catherine the Great, who looked upon Gordon and subse-
quently Cagliostro and Falk as international revolutionaries. Thus, when
Cagliostro arrived in St. Petersburg, Catherine sent her spies to glean
information on his plans. On 9 July 1781 she reported to Baron Grimm that
Cagliostro came at just the right moment for himself, when "several lodges of
Freemasons, who were infatuated with Swedenborg's principles," ran to
Cagliostro, "who declared he had all the secrets of Dr. Falk." 92 Stating that
her "hands itched to flog Cagliostro," the Empress succeeded in driving him
out of Russia; she later lampooned him and Falk in the portmanteau character
of "Kalifalkerston" in her anti-Masonic comedy. 93
Cagliostro claimed that Gustav III implored him to visit Sweden, but he may
have learned that Levison's role as a court alchemist and medical professor in
Stockholm had recently come to an unhappy end. 94 Resisting Gustav's
invitation, Cagliostro travelled instead to Poland, where he tried to recruit
Masons from the rival political systems then struggling for dominance. The
nationalist Masons in Warsaw complained that only Falk and Jacob Frank
were true masters of Kabbalah, and they lamented the lack of expert
instruction in their lodges. 95 Moving on to Strasburg, Cagliostro collaborated
with Jean Benoit Scherer, a former friend of Swedenborg, and Frederick
Rudolph Saltzmann - both prominent Ecossais Masons. Saltzmann reported
that Cagliostro had high praise for Swedenborg, who had been persecuted in
Sweden, but that the greatest man in Europe was Dr. Falk. 96 Currently in
London there were five or six Masons who possess "connaissances" (evidently
De Lintot, Rainsford, and their colleagues), but they lack the Falkian key to the
hieroglyphs. Saltzmann concluded that Cagliostro seemed Jewish, but he was
not sure.
By 1782, through Swedenborg's legacy and Cagliostro's work, Falk had
become revered and feared as the Unknown Superior of revolutionary Free-
masonry. An international convention of Masons, meeting at Wilhelmsbad,
determined to learn more about him. As Savalette de Langes, royal treasurer in
Paris, reported to a French delegate:

Dr. Falc, in England. This Dr. Falc is known to many Germans. From every
point of view he is a most extraordinary man. Some believe him to be Chief
of All the Jews, and attribute all that is marvelous and strange in his conduct
and in his life to schemes which are entirely political .... There has been a
curious story about him in connection with Prince de Guemene and the
Chev. de Luxembourg relating to Louis XV. whose death he had foretold.
He is practically inaccessible. In all the higher Sects of Adepts in the Occult
Science, he passes as a man of higher attainments ... 97

Savalette further reported that Cosman Lehman, pupil of Falk, was now
with the Duke of Luxembourg (who would later become Grand Master of the
Egyptian Rite). 98 Ambassador Waldenfelds of Wetzlar and Baron von Glei-
chen of Copenhagen also know Falk and should be questioned. In Gleichen's
220 MK. Schuchard

memoirs, he reported on Madame de Ia Croix's kabbalistic "prowess" which

enabled her to counter Falk's political assistance to the Duke of Chartres. She
boasted that by her magical prayers she shattered the talismanic ring that Falk
gave Chartres, which "disappeared in the middle of the National Assembly." 99
Savalette and the delegates at Wilhelmsbad also hoped to get information
from London, but the chief English representative- General Rainsford- could
not attend because of military duties in Algeria. While there, he heard stories of
Falk's magical powers that had helped the Algerian Jews in their successful
struggle against Spain. He also noted, "I have found some rather curious MSS.
in Algiers in Hebrew relating to the Society of Rosicrucians, which exists at
present under another name with same forms. I hope moreover to be admitted
to their true knowledge." 100 When he returned, Rainsford hoped to work with
Falk on the development of the "Asiatic Brethren," a Rosicrucian form of
Freemasonry, whose initiates dreamed of developing a new kabbalistic religion
that did not require conversion of Jew or Christian but would transcend all
sectarian divisions. 101 The rumors (inaccurate) that Falk and Levison con-
verted to Christianity were probably provoked by their association with this
Judeo-Christian order.
As Gershom Scholem and Jacob Katz have shown, the "Asiatic Brethren"
represented a politically bold, imaginatively colorful, and spiritually innovative
attempt to utilize collective kabbalistic meditation and Masonic ceremony to
bring about millenarial change. 102 According to a manuscript history by Franz
J. Molitor, the "Asiatics" drew on the thaumaturgic traditions of Sabbatian
kabbalists "such as Sabbatai Zevi, Falk (the Baal Shem of London), Frank, and
their similar fellows." 103 This linkage between Falk and Frank would subse-
quently be noted at the Philalethes convention in Paris. 104 However, General
Rainsford reported sadly in October 1782, "As to the Kabbalah, all is upset by
the unexpected death of Dr. Falk." 105 Having followed Falk's career since the
1740's, Rainsford was still not sure whether he was "genuine or a knave." The
question remains posed.
For the Catholic Inquisition, who imprisoned Cagliostro as a seditious
Freemason in 1790, his unholy merger of Swedenborgianism and Falkian
Kabbalah threatened Christendom. While undergoing torture, Cagliostro
accused his former heroes of perverting Masonry. He claimed that while he
was in Courland, he perceived "here as elsewhere" that the Masons' "ceremo-
nies were disfigured and disgraced by magic and superstition," based on the
principles of Swedenborg and Falk, who were considered chiefs of the
"illuminated" Freemasons. 106 He "wished to undeceive them, and to initiate
them into the rites of his Egyptian masonry." While Cagliostro languished in
an Alpine prison, the French Revolution deteriorated into the Terror and
international warfare. Though reactionary critics would see in "illuminated"
Freemasonry the source and vehicle of revolution, other veterans of Ecossais
experiments in psychic and spiritual liberation remained privately loyal to their
earlier ideals.
Rainsford remained intrigued and puzzled by Falk's character, but he also
made clear why so many Jews and Christians hoped that Falk could lead them
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 221

to a kabbalistic illumination that would reveal the secrets of the universe and
usher in a better world. "Perhaps I am too visionary and too eager for the great
secret," Rainsford wrote, but "whilst the World is employed in cutting throats
on the one hand, one is well in the right to honour God and study his Works on
the other." 107 After Falk's death, Rainsford worked with other illuminist
Masons in London to establish the Masonic Universal Society, which trans-
mitted the millenarial dreams of Swedenborg, Falk, Frank, and Cagliostro into
the artistic milieu of William Blake and from there into the revival of Rose-
Croix Freemasonry in the literary milieu of William Butler Yeats. 108
For artists and poets, Falk and his kabbalistic heirs offered visionary
techniques that elevated the mind and body into transcendent realms. For
anti-semites like Edouard Drumont, Benjamin Fabre, and Nesta Webster, Falk
and his henchmen created a vast Jewish-Masonic conspiracy that threatened
the established religions and governments of Europe. 109 Thus, whether genuine
or a knave, the Baal Shem of London remained a potent imaginative and
political force well into the twentieth century.

Atlanta, Georgia

NOTES

1. Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 26 (1902-05), 148-73; Solomon

Schechter, "The Baal-Shem, Dr. Falk," Jewish Chronicle (9 March 1913), 15-16; Cecil Roth,
"The King and the Cabalist," in idem, Essays and Portraits in Anglo-Jewish History
(Philadelphia, 1962), 139-64.
2. Michal Oron, "Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk and the Eibeschuetz-Emden Controversy," in
Mysticism, Magic and Kabbalah in Ashkenazic Judaism, ed. Karl Grozinger and Joseph Dan
(Berlin and New York: Walter de Grutyer, 1995), 243-56.
3. [Jorgen Ludwig Albrecht Rantzau], Memoires du Comte de Rantzow, ou Les Heures de
Recreation a/'usage de Ia Noblesse de /'Europe (Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1741 ), 198-208. I
have examined copies of this extremely rare volume in the National Library in Paris and
Royal Library in Stockholm; so far, no copy has been located in Britain or the USA.
4. Gordon P. Hills, "Notes on Some Contemporary References to Dr. Falk, the Baal Shem of
London, in the Rainsford MSS. at the British Museum," Transactions of Jewish Historical
Society of England 8 (1915-17), 124.
5. Rantzow, Memoires, 202-03.
6. Ibid., 199-201. I use the translation of this passage in Raphael Patai, The Jewish Alchemists
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994), 457-58.
7. Rantzow, Memoirs, 221-22.
8. R. Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 461.
9. For the best accounts of Jacobite or Ecossais Freemasonry on the Continent, see Rene Le
Forestier, Les Illumines de Baviere et le Franc-Mar;onnerie Allemande (Paris: Hachette, 1915);
Pierre Chevallier, Les Dues sous /'Acacia (Paris: J. Vrin, 1964), La Premiere Profanation du
Temple Mar;onnique (Paris: J. Vrin, 1968), and Histoire de Ia Franc-Mar;onnerie Fram;aise (Paris:
Fayard, 1974), vo1 I; Rene Le Forestier, La Franc-Mar;onnerie Templiere et Occultiste au XVII/e
et X/Xe Siecles, ed. Antoine Faivre (Paris: Louvain, 1970).
10. For Falk's contacts with Swedenborg, Theodore, and other Freemasons, see the extensive
documentation in my article, "Yeats and the Unknown Superiors: Swedenborg, Falk, and
222 MK. Schuchard

Cagliostro," in Secret Texts: the Literature of Secret Societies ed. Marie Roberts and Hugh
Ormsby-Lennon (New York: AMS, 1995), 114-67.
II. For Luzzatto's probable influence on Swedenborg, see my essay, '"Emanuel Swedenborg:
Deciphering the Codes of a Celestial and Terrestrial Intelligencer," in Rending the Veil:
Concealment and Revelation of Secrets in the History of" Religions ed. Elliot Wolfson (New
York: Seven Bridges Press, 1999), 177-207.
12. List of Falk's books in his diary, to be published in Hebrew and English editions by Professor
Michal Oron of Tel Aviv University.
13. For examples, see Giacomo Casanova's accounts of diplomatic-financial intrigue by the
Swedish ambassador Preis, Tobias Boas, and the Rosicrucians St. Germain and Marquise
d'Urfe; in Casanova's History of My Lif"e trans. W.R. Trask (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1966),
V, 107-44, 292 n.37, 293 n.51. His memoirs, despite their self-serving distortions, provide a
valuable and comical backdrop to the combination of hard-nosed diplomatic and military
intrigue with Masonic and kabbalistic schemes- a combination which undergirded much of
the secret history of the eighteenth century.
14. Rantzow, Memoires, 222-23.
15. G. Hills, "Notes on ... Falk." 98.
16. I am currently completing a history of Stuart Freemasonry. entitled Restoring the Temple of"
Vision: Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart Culture. For background, see David Stevenson, The
Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 1590-1710 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988);
also, the generally accurate popular history by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, The
Temple and the Lodge (London: Jonathon Cape, 1989).
17. R.S. Mylne, The Master Masons to the Crown of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1893), 128-30.
18. Henry Adamson, The Muses Threnodie (Edinburgh, 1638).
19. On the Stuarts' Masonic affiliation, see James Anderson, The Constitutions of the Freemasons
( 1723) and (1738). Facs. ed. (Abingdon: Burgess, 1976),39-41; on their Solomonic culture,
Vaughan Hart, Art and Magic in the Court of the Stuarts (London: Routledge, 1994).
20. Arthur Williamson, "'A Pi! for Pork-Eaters': Ethnic Identity, Apocalyptic Promises, and the
Strange Creation of the Judeo-Scots," in The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and After ed.
Raymond Waddington and Arthur Williamson (New York: Garland, 1994), 237-58.
21. DavidS. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485-1850 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994),
107-44.
22. National Library of Scotland. Kincardine Papers: Correspondence of Sir Robert Moray and
Alexander Bruce. I discuss at length their kabbalistic-Masonic interests and Jewish contacts in
Restoring the Temple of Vision.
23. David S. Katz, Sabbath and Sectarianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1988), 155-64. W.S. Samuel, "Sir William Davidson, Royalist (1616-1689) and the Jews,"
Transactions of Jewish Historical Society of" England 14 (1940), 39 79.
24. According to Andrew Michael Ramsay's report to Carl Gustaf Tessin in 1741; see A.F. von
Busching, Beitrage zu der Lebensgeschichte Denkwiirdiger Personen (Halle, 1783-89), III, 319-
38; G.D. Henderson, Chevalier Ramsay (London: Thomas Nelson, 1952), 171. On Bruce's role,
see Hubert Fenwick, Architect Royal: The Life and Works of" Sir William Bruce, 1630-1710
(Kineton: Roundwood, 1970), xiii, xvi, 4-9.
25. J.C. Riley, "Catholicism and the Late Stuart Army: the Tangier Episode," Royal Stuart Papers
XLIII (Huntington: Royal Stuart Society, 1993), 2-3. Riley discusses the Whig hostility to
Charles IT's policy of full religious toleration- including Catholics, Dissenters, Moslems, and
Jews- in the British colony of Tangier.
26. Treloar MS. "Ye History of Masonry" (I 665); reproduced in John Thorpe, "Old Masonic
Manuscript. A Fragment," Lodge of" Research, No. 2429 Leicester. Transactions for the Year
/926-27, 40-48.
27. A.L. Shane, "Jacob Judah Leon of Amsterdam (1602-1675) and his Models of the Temple of
Solomon and the Tabernacle," Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 96 (1983), 146-69.
28. On Wren and Arlington as Freemasons, see J.Anderson, Constitutions, 103-105. For Moray's
use of Masonic seals in his correspondence with Huygens, see my essay, "Leibniz, Benzelius,
and Swedenborg: The Kabbalistic Roots of Swedish Illuminism," in Leibniz, Mysticism, and
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 223

Religion eds. A.P. Coudert, R.H. Popkin, and G.M Weiner (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Press, 1998), 84-106.
29. On James Il's Declarations of Indulgence, see F.M.G. Higham, King James the Second
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1934), 257; on his protection of the Jews, see D. Katz, Jews,
146-50; on their receding rights under William III, see ibid., 161-62; also Norman Roth,
"Social and Intellectual Currents in England in the Century Preceding the Jew Bill of 1753"
(Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1978), 189-90.
30. Marcus Lipton, "Francis Francia- the Jacobite Jew," Transactions of Jewish Historical Society
of England II (1924-27), 190-205; John Shaftesley, "Jews in Regular English Freemasonry,
1717-1860," Transactions of Jewish Historical Society of England 25 (1973-75), 159. My
examination of the unpublished Stuart Papers at Windsor reveals that Francia was not a
double-agent, as suggested by some historians, but a loyal Jacobite throughout his life (see
microfilms 1911149; 2271164; 2471178; 295 I 146).
31. For the "Modern" system of Masonry, see Robert F. Gould, The History of Free-Masonry
(New York: John Yorston, 1885); John Hamill, The Craft: a History of English Freemasonry
(Aquarian Press, 1986); Margaret Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in
Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York: Oxford UP, 1991).
32. Samuel Oppenheim, "The Jews and Masonry in the United States before 1810," Publications of
the American Jewish Historical Society 19 (1910), 41, 76--87.
33. M. Schuchard, "Leibniz," 93; James Curl, The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry (London:
B.T. Batsford, 1991 ), 89.
34. Erich Beyreuther, "Zinzendorfund das Judentum," Judaica !9 (1963), 193-246.
35. See Elliot Wolfson's essay on Kemper's theosophy in this volume.
36. I have published extensively detailed documentation on Swcdenborg and his Masonic
associates in "Yeats and the Unknown Superiors"; in order to avoid repetition here, I will
footnote only new material that did not appear in that bibliography. For additional
biographical information, see my articles, "Swedenborg, Jacobitism, and Freemasonry," in
Swedenborg and His Influence ed. E.J. Brock (Bryn Athyn: Academy of New Church, 1988),
359-79; 'The Young Pretender and Jacobite Freemasonry: New Light from Sweden on his
Role as 'Hidden Grand Master','' in The Consortium on Revolutionary Europe. 1750-1850
(Tallahassee: Florida State UP, 1994), 363-72; "Swedenborg's Travels: New Documents Raise
New Questions," in Annual Report of the Swedenborg Society (London, 1998). As part of a
long-term biographical project on Swedenborg, I am currently collating diplomatic docu-
ments from the Riksarkiv in Stockholm, Stuart Papers at Windsor, journals of Royal Society
of Sciences in London, and Masonic archives in London, Edinburgh, and The Hague.
37. See D. Frank Benson, "The Geschwind Syndrome," Advances in Neurology 55 (1991), 411-20.
38. William Smith, M.D., A Dissertation on the Nerves (London, 1768), and A Sure Guide to
Sickness and Health (London, 1776).
39. On Falk's treatment of mental illness and epilepsy, seeM. Oron, "Dr. Samuel Falk." 245, 249.
40. Falk initially lived on Prescott Street, near Wellclose Square. The Swedish clergymen, who
served the Swedish church in the adjoining Prince's Square, resided in Wellclose Square.
41. Emanuel Swedenborg, Concerning the Messiah About to Come trans. Alfred Acton (Bryn
Athyn: Academy of New Church, 1949).
42. Laurence Bongie, "Voltaire's English, High Treason and a Manifesto for Prince Charles,"
Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 171 (1977), 7-29. On 17 September 1745, Scheffer
made veiled references to Tessin about the Scottish rebellion and a related "Manifeste," at a
time when he was collaborating with Voltaire; see Jan Heidner, Carl Frederick Scheffer: Lettres
particulieres Carl Gustaf Tessin 1744-1752 (These pour le doctoral a l'Universite de Stock-
holm, 1982), 95-96.
43. D. Katz, Jews, 161-62.
44. Schuchard, "Secret Masonic History," 40-51; also, William Wonnacott, "The Rite of Seven
Degrees in London," Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 39 (1926), 63-98.
45. Jean Overton Fuller, The Comte de Saint-Germain: Last Scion of the House of Rakocc:y
(London: East West, 1988), 72.
46. Engraving reproduced in "A Symbolical Chart ofl789," Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 3 (1890), 36.
224 M. K. Schuchard

47. Discussed in my article, "Swedenborg: Deciphering the Codes."

48. SeeM. Oron, "Dr. Samuel Falk," 254 n.50.
49. Elliot Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish
Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994), 42.
50. Elijah Judah Schochet, The Hasidic Movement and the Gaon of Vilna (London: Jason Aronson,
1994), 44-48.
51. Wonnacott, "Rite of Seven Degrees," 63-98. Also Grand Lodge Library, London: MS.
Minute Book of Lodge St. George de !'Observance, 1777-79; in the Wonnacott Files, "Falck,
John Christian" is identified as the Baal Shem.
52. G. Hills, "Notes on the Rainsford Papers in the British Museum," Ars Quatuor Coronatorum
26 (1913 ), 98-99.
53. Henry Fielding, The Jacobite's Journal and Related Writings ed. W.B. Coley (Wesleyan UP,
1975), 281-85.
54. I am grateful to Mrs. Cecil Roth for allowing me to consult her unpublished translation of
Kalisch's diary. Professor Michal Oron will publish Hebrew and English editions of Kalisch's
text and Falk's commonplace book.
55. See descriptions of Jewish hypnotists and magicians recorded during Swedenborg's residence
in Wellclose Square in 1748-49, in The Spiritual Diary of Emanuel Swedenborg trans. George
Bush and John Smithson (1883; rpt New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1966), #3719-23,
3771, 4012, 4045-47, 4056, 4140, 4305. Swedenborg also recorded the name "Falker," which
was used by Falk when referring to his own father.
56. On Theodore I's political, kabbalistic, and masonic career, see Valerie Pirie, His Majesty of
Corsica (New York: Appleton-Century, 1939), and Andre LeGlay, Theodore de Neuhoff
(Monaco and Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1907). The diplomatic papers of the Swedish ambassa-
dor Preis at The Hague reveal Theodore's continuing ties with Swedish Hats and Jacobites
(Riksarkiv, Stockholm).
57. In London in November 1748, Swedenborg made an oblique allusion to a personage who had
once been a king but would now be considered "a rebel, for he was now in the kingdom of
another"; See Spiritual Diary, # 3872, and for detailed documentation on Theodore, Falk, and
their foreign visitors, "Yeats and the Unknown Superiors."
58. M.K. Schuchard, "Young Pretender," 363-72.
59. J. Shaftesley, "Jews," 151-55.
60. Falk owned Solomon Buzaglo's commentaries on the Zohar. For background, see Cecil Roth,
"The Amazing Clan of Buzaglo," Transactions of Jewish Historical Society of England 23
(1971), 11-22; H.J. Zimmels, "Note on Solomon ben Joseph Buzaglo," Transactions of Jewish
Historical Society of England 17 (1951-52), 290-92. Swedenborg's friends Preis and Tessin
were approached by Joseph Buzaglo de Paz about a colonization scheme. When Buzaglo took
the project to Copenhagen, Jacob Emden - Falk's great adversary - claimed that they hoped
to introduce Sabbatianism into Denmark. See Carl Sprinchorn, "Sjuttonhundratalets Svenska
Kolonisplaner," Svensk Historisk Tidskrift 43 (1923), 132-35.
61. On Prince Charles's Polish connections, see Frank McLynn, Charles Edward Stuart (London:
Routledge, 1988).
62. H. Adler, "Baal Shem," 155; S. Schechter, "Baal Shem," 15-16; M. Kukiel, Czartorisky and
European Unity ( 1770-1861) (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1955).
63. Reinhard Breymayer, '"Elie Artiste': Johann Daniel Muller de Wissenbach/Nassau (1716
jusqu' apn\s 1785), un aventurier entre le pietisme radicale et l'illuminisme," Actes du Colloque
International Lumieres et Tlluminisme ed. Mario Matucci (Universite de Pisa, 1985), 65-84.
Extremely rare information on Swedenborg and the German Rosicrucians is given (in
German) in a Russian dissertation by I. Barskov, Perepiska Moskovskikh Masonov 18-Go
Veka (St. Petersburg, 1915), 215-78 (available through University Microfilms).
64. Reinhard Breymayer, "Ein radikaler Pietist im Umkreis des jungen Goethe: der Frankfurter
Konzertdirektor Johann Daniel Muller alias Elias/Elias Artista (1717 bis 1785)," Pietismus
und Neuzeit 9 (1983), 220-24.
65. H. Adler, "Baal Shem," 158-59.
 Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk 225

66. Ch. Wirzubski, "The Sabbatian Kabbalist R. Moshe David of Podhajce" [Hebrew], Zion 7
(1942), II, 83.
67. M. Oron, "Falk," 254-55; Yehudah Liebes, "The Messianism of R. Jacob Emden and His
Attitude Towards Sabbatianism" [Hebrew], Tarbiz, 49 (1979-80), 122-65; "New Writings in
Sabbatian Kabbalah from the Circle of Rabbi Jonathon Eibeschuetz" [Hebrew], Jerusalem
Studies in Jewish Thought 5 (1984), 191-347.
68. Grand Lodge Library, London: Abraham and Benjamin Goldsmid appear on lodge lists in
1777.
69. Alfred Acton, Letters and Memorials of Emanuel Swedenborg ed. Alfred Acton (Bryn Athyn:
Swedenborg Scientific Association, 1955), 736-53.
70. For accounts of Van Geldern's adventures in the kabbalistic-masonic underground, which
often parallel Falk's and Swedenborg's, see Fritz Heymann, Der Chevalier von Geldern: Eine
Chronik vom Abenteuer Juden (Amsterdam: Querida Verlag, 193 7), 305-43; Ludwig Rosenthal,
Heinrich Heines Grossoheim Simon van Geldern (Kastellum: Aloys Henn, 1978), 61-63.
71. J.S. Tuckett, "Savalette de Langes, les Philaletes, and the Convent of Wilhelmsbad, 1782," Ars
Quatuor Coronatorum 30 (1917), 156.
72. On Levison, see A.E. Arppe, Anteckningar om Finsk Alkemister (Helsingfors: Finska
Vetenskapen Societen, 1870), 1-110; Giista Bodman, "August Nordenskiiild, en Gustav Ills
alkemist," and H.J. Schoeps, "Lakaren och Alkemisten Gumpertz Levison," in Lychnos (1943),
189-229, 230-48; David Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Disovery in Early Modern
Europe (New Haven: Yale UP, 1995), 344-70.
73. Samuel Beswick, The Swedenborg Rite and the Great Masonic Leaders of the Eighteenth
Century (New York: Masonic Publishing Company, 1870), 46. Despite the many exaggerations
in Beswick's book, he did have access to rare Masonic oral and archival sources.
74. C. F. Nordenskjold wrote C. B. Wadstrom (31 January 1784) that "Herr Levison ... gave himself
out as a Swedenborgian"; letter in Academy Collection of Swedenborg Documents:
#1664.31, Academy of New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. Theden's participation with
Swedenborg in a network of German-Russian Rosicrucians, who studied Kabbalah, is
revealed in Barskov, 21 7-18.
75. Mungo Ferguson, The Printed Books in the Library of the Hunterian Museum in the University
of Glasgow (Glasgow: Jackson, Wylie, 1930), 218-19, 347; G.P. Durant and W.D. Rolfe,
"William Hunter (1718-1783) as Natural Historian: His Geological Interests," Earth Science
History 3 (1984), 12; Gumpertz Levison, An Essay on the Blood (London: T. Davies, 1776), 95n.
76. There was much mutual influence between Swedenborg and Linnaeus, who were cousins. On
Linnaeus's influence on Levison, see D. Ruderman, Jewish Thought, 347, 358-65.
77. Kenneth Collins, "Jewish Medical Students and Graduates in Scotland," Jewish Historical
Society of England 29 (1982-86), 79, 83. Aberdeen was the first British university to grant Jews
medical degrees, beginning in 1739; see s.v. "Aberdeen," Encyclopedia Judaica.
78. See Heinz Moshe Graupe, "Mordechai Schnaber- Levison: The Life, Works, and Thought of a
Haslakah Outsider," Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 41 (1996), 3-20.
79. See my "Secret Masonic History," 41, 45, 47n.24, 48-51. In future, I hope to publish a detailed
study of Levison's contacts with Swedenborgian Masons and "Asiatic Brethren" in London,
Stockholm, and Hamburg.
80. Though Cecil Roth believed that Falk's portrait was painted by John Singleton Copley, the art
historian Stephen Lloyd (Scottish National Portrait Gallery) examined the portrait, with Mrs.
Roth's permission, and concluded that it was painted by De Loutherbourg.
81. Masonic Library, The Hague. Dutch Grand Lodge Historical Membership List: "Johan
Falck," member "Indissoluble" Lodge, 1772-73. Several Boases appear in the lodge registers.
82. For Gustav III's diplomatic and Masonic initiatives, see Claude Nordmann, Grandeur et
Liberte de Ia Suede ( 1660-1792) (Paris, 1962), and Gustav Ill: wr dl:tnocrat courrone (Lille,
1982).
83. In-Ho Ly Ryu, "Freemasonry Under Catherine the Great: a Reinterpretation" (Ph.D. diss.,
Harvard University, 1967), 136, 145-59; and '"Moscow Freemasons and the Rosicrucian
Order," The Eighteenth Century in Russia ed. J.G. Garrard (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), 215.
84. W. Wonnacott, "Rite of Seven Degrees," 75.
226 M K. Schuchard

85. Gustave Bord, La Franc-Mar;onnerie en France de Origines a1815 I (Paris, 1908), 261.
86. Wellcome Institute of History of Medicine, London. Lalande Collection. MS. 1048:
Transcript of "Lettre de Rodo1phe Sa1tzmann a J.B. Willermoz (Strasbourg, 31 December
1780); A. Arppe, Anteckningar, 22, 99.
87. G. Hills, "Notes ... Fa1k," 124. It is presently unknown if this Falk-Boas correspondence
survives.
88. See Charles Porset, Les Philalethes et /es Convents de Paris: Une po/itique de folie (Paris:
Honore Champion, 1998), 137, 665 n.9, 586-87.
89. Maria Luisa Trebi1iani, "L'Esoterismo mistico e scientista di Bourree de Corberon," Annuario
de/l'Jnstituto Storico Italiano per /'eta modern a econtemporaneo, XVJJ-XVIII (1965--66), 21, 31-
35.
90. Fa1k's raid occurred in a complicated political context. After De Lintot's lodge elected the
Duke of Cumberland (disaffected brother of George III) as Grand Master, they received visits
from Danish Freemasons, who were rivals of the Swedish Masons and hoped to gain
dominance in the Rite of Heredom. Falk remained loyal to the former Ecossais-Swedish
associations. See W. Wonnacott, "Rite of Seven Degrees," 79-80, 94. Suggestions of the
rivalry between De Lintot and Falk appear in "Livre des deliberations de Ia loge de l'Union,
no. 170," in Grand Lodge Library, London. The Masonic library in Copenhagen has
documents of Danish participation in the London controversy.
91. Percy Colson, The Strange History of Lord George Gordon (London: Robert Hale, 1937), 169-
72. The section on Falk was contributed anonymously by Cecil Roth. I give further
information on the links of Falk and Cagliostro with Gordon in "Lord George Gordon and
Cabalistic Freemasonry: Beating Jacobite Swords into Jacobin Ploughshares," to be published
in Secret Conversions to Judaism in Early Modern Europe, eds. Martin Mulsow and Richard
Popkin.
92. Jacques Grot, ed., Lettres de Grimm a 11mperatrice Catherine fl. Sbornik lmperatorskago
Russago Istorischaskago Obscestva, 2nd. rev. ed., vol. 44 (St. Petersburgh, 1884), 212-13.
93. See Wilfrid Rene Chettoui, Cagliostro et Catherine II: Ia satire imperiale contre /e Mage (Paris:
Editions Champs-Elysees, 1947), 63-96. My identification of Cagliostro and Falk as the model
for "Kalifalkerston" draws on his study.
94. H. Schoeps, "Liikaren," 236-37; H. Graupe, "Mordechai," 11-12.
95. Jacob Schatzky, The History of the Jews of Warsaw I [Yiddish] (New York: Yiddish Scientific
Institute, 1947-53), 89.
96. Wellcome Institute: Lalande Collection. MS. 1048.
97. J. Tuckett, "Savalette de Langes," 153-54.
98. C. Porset, Philali!thes, 586-87.
99. Charles-Henri, Baron de Gleichen, Souvenirs ed. M.P. Grimblet (Paris: Leon Techener, 1868),
176.
100. C. Hills, "Notes on ... Falk," 125.
I 0 I. See the chapter on the Asiatic Brethren in Christopher Mcintosh, The Rose Cross and the Age
of Reason (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 162-77.
102. Jacob Katz, Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723-1939 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1970);
Gershom Scho1em, Du Frankisme au Jacobinisme (Paris: Le Seul Gallimard, 1981).
103. G. Scholem, Du Frankisme, 39.
104. C. Porset, Phi/alethes, 502.
105. G. Hills, "Notes on ... Falk," 125. Falk died in Apri\1782.
106. (Monsignor Barberi], The Life of Joseph Balsamo, Commonly Called the Count Cagliostro
(Dublin, 1792), 152-53.
107. G. Hills, "Notes on Rainsford," 107.
108. For this transmission from Blake to Yeats, see my "Secret Masonic History" and "Yeats and
the Unknown Superiors."
109. Edouard A. Drumont, La France Juive I (Paris: C. Marpon, 1886), 275-76; Benjamin Fabre
[Jean Guiraud], Un lnitie des Societes Secretes supl!rieures: "Franciscus, Eques a Capite
Galeato" 1753-1814 (Paris: La Renaissance Fran~aise, 1913), 84-110; Nesta Webster, Secret
Societies and Subversive Movements (London: Boswell, 1924), 174-95.
 INDEX

Aalion, Solomon (Ayllon, etc.) 89, 209 American Colonies 94

Aaron 173 Amram, David W. 35
Abarbanel, Don Isaac viii, xvi, 1-39 Amsterdam x, xiii, xviii, 19, 35, 42, 56, 59, 60,
Abarbanel, Joseph 19-20 66, 81, 82, 87, 89, 91, 92, 94, 97, 100, 103,
Abendana Brothers 120 108, 109, 119, 120, 121,200.203,204,208,
Abendana,Jacob 63 209
Abendena, Isaac 63 Anderson, James 222
Aberdeen 97, 103, 216, 225 Anderson, Sonia 95, 100, 104, 105
Aboab, Isaac 66, 74 Andrea, Fra. 52
Aboab, Jacob 114 Anes, Goncalo 54
Abraham 159, 160 Aquinas, St. Thomas 67, 68, 71, 72, 75
Abram 116 Aragon viii
Abrams, D. 168, 177 Ariel 214
Abravanel (Abarbanel), Beatriz 201 Aristotle 67, 68, 71
Abulafia, Abraham 173, 184 Arkush, A. 184
Abu1afia, Anna Sapir 136 Arlington, Earl of 208, 222
Acevedo, Gasparvaez 47 Arnold of Villanova 65
Adam 117, 143, 144, 172, 178, 185, 192, 197, Arnsberg, P. 200
202 Arppe, A.E. 225, 226
Adam Kadmon 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 75 Arius 98
Adamson, Henry 222 Artista, Elias 117, 124
Adler, H. 36, 224, 225 Asher Lemlein (movement) 130
Aescoly, Aaron Ze'ev 28, 60, 61, 62, 63 Ashkenazi, Joseph ben Shalom 184
Akerman, Susanna 63, 104 Ashkenazim 91
Albo, Joseph 16, 34 Asiatic Brothers 191, 193, 200, 202
Alboraiques 56 Assaf, Simha 60
Alcala, Alfonso de 52 Aston, T.S. 88
Alcazarquivir 54 Attias, Jean Christophe 29, 37
Aleppo 74 Augusti, Friedrich Albrecht 134, 138
Alexander (King of Jews) 102 Austin, William H. 33, 34
Alfonsi, Petrus 169 Austria 191, 193, 197
Alfonso II 12 Averroes 67, 72, 75
Algeria 220 Avicenna 68
Algiers 203, 204 Avignon 213
Alkabets, Solomon 182 Awerbuch, Marianne 31
Almog, Shmuel 88, 104 Azevedo, 1. Lucio de 63
Alroy, David I 02
Altmann, Alexander 66, 67, 72, 73, 74, 75, Baal 95, 98
107, 114, 120 Baalakahen (group) 195, 196, 202
Alton, Alfred 223, 225 Baa1-Shem of London (See Falk, Samuel
Altona 215 Jacob)
Alumbrados 50-53, 56, 63 Ba'al Shem Tov 118
Alvares, Isabel 46 Bacon, Francis 117, 124
Allen, D.C. 34 Baer, Yitzak 5, 24, 25, 29, 30, 33, 59, 62, 88
America (See also United States of America) Baigent, Michael 222
ix, xiii, 62, 94 Bainton, Roland 63

227
M.D. Go/dish and R.H Popkin (eds.), Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern
European Culture: Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern World, 227-238.
(g 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
228 Index

Balaban, Meir. 78, 87, 198, 199 Blau, J.L. 169

Balkans ix, 84 Blavatsky, Madame 196
Balsamo, Joseph 217 Bleeker, C. Jouco 178
Bandarra 54, 56,63, 65 Boas Brothers 210, 216, 218, 225, 226
Baneth, David H. 3 Boas, Simon 206
Banez, Domingo 67, 71 Boas, Tobias 206,217,222
bar Hiyya, Abraham 8, 18, 20, 21, 22, 36 Bocarro-Rosales, Jacob 54, 55, 58, 63
bar Isaac Abun, Simeon 183 Bockmuehl, M. 184
Bar Kochba viii, 102, 132 Bodenschatz, Georg 134, 138
bar Yohai, Simeon 116 Bodian, Miriam 60, 61, 120
Baras, Zevi 32 Bodman, Giista 225
Barberi, Monsignor 226 Boehme, Jacob xi, 109, 136
Barcelona 38 Bohemia ix
Barclay, J. 184 Bokser, B.M. 180, 181
Barnai, Jacob xvi, xvii, 65, 74, 77-90, 105, 183 Bon, Daniel Jacob 138
Barnes, Robin Bruce 62 Bonfil, Robert 31, 33, 39, 173
Barros, C. 61 Bongie, Laurence 223
Barskov, I. 224, 225 Bord, Gustave 226
Barton, Elizabeth 99 Borgen, P. 174
Baruchia 215 Bosch, Hieronymus 125, 133
Barukh of Prosstitz 133, 137 Boyle, Robert 104, 116, 123
Barukhia (Russo) 190, 191,198 Brailsford, Mabel R. 104
Barzilay, Isaac 28, 32, 114 Brazil xi, 55
Basnage de Beauval, Jacques 86, 90, 132, 137 Breymayer, Reinhard 224, 225
Bataillon, Marcel 51, 62 Bristol 93, 105
Baumer, Remigius 121 Britain (See also England) 204, 208, 209, 210,
Bayle, Pierre xiii, 102 215
Bei, Mahamed 94 British Isles 92
Beinart, Haim 33, 59, 61 British Library 105
Beit-Arie, Malachi 33, 35 British Museum 221
Beitchman, Philip 169 Brno xix, 5, 191, 201, 202
ben Israel, Manasseh x, xi, xiii, 4, 35, 53-54, Brock, E.J. 223
56,57,63, 73, 74,91,93,97, 105,134,207 Brothers of St. John the Evangelist 200
ben Ozer, Leib 192 Brown, R.E. 174
ben Shemaya, Mordechai (of Neuhaus) 133 Bruce, Alexander 208, 222
ben Yohai, Simeon 152, 159, 166, 173 Bruno, Giordano 123
Benayahu, Meir 78, 87, 89,90 Brunswick-Luneberg, Duke of 206
Benivieni, Girolamo 68, 75 Brussels I 00
Ben-Sasson, Haim H. 89 Buckeley, Sir Richard 99, 100, 105
Ben-Shalom, Ram 31 Buckhold, John 99
Ben-Shammai, Haggai 38 Buchenroeder 137
Ben-Shlomo, J. 175 Budapest ix, 96, 97
Benson, D. Frank 223 Bullock, Tho. I 04
Bentzinger, Rudolf 136 Burgos, Bishop of 48
Benveniste, Haim 88 Bush, George 224
Benz, Ernst 110, 121 Buzaglo, Solomon 224
Berger, David 34, 38 Bynum, Carol W. 175-176
Berger, Herbert 124
Berger, Peter 108 Cadiz 66
Bergstrom, Eric 210 Cagliostro 193, 203, 218, 219, 220, 221,222,
Berlin 102, 216 226
Bernadino de Rebolledo, Conde 63 Caleb 37
Bernstein, Simon 30 Calvinist University at Geneva 102
Berti, Silvia 107, 120 Cambridge, University of xii
Beswick, Samuel 216,225 Canada xi, xiv
Beyreuther, Erich 223 Canetti, Elias 81, 88
Biale, David 37, 65, 74, 112, 119, 121 Capel Street 213
Bidwell, John 102 Cardoso, Abraham Miguel 41, 43, 44, 48, 49,
Black Virgin (of Czestochowa) 20 I 58, 59, 60, 61, 74, 84, 86, 89, 163, 184
Blackall, Dr. Offspring 98, 105 Cardoso, Isaac 185
Blake, William 216, 221, 227
 Index 229

Carlebach, Elisheva xviii, 78, 85, 87, 89, 121, College of Saint Benoit 100
135, 178 Collins, A.Y. 179
Carpathians 189 Collins, Kenneth 225
Carreto, Ludovico 145, 173 Combardi, Petri 75
Cartagena, Bishop Alonso de 48 Comenius, Jan Amos xii
Casanova, Giacomo 222 Constantine 35
Casimir, King John xi Constantinople (Istanbul) ix, x, 7, 22, 23, 33,
Cassel 204 49,65,80, 82,92,95,97,104
Castile Franciscans 52 Conversos 59
Castille viii, 7, 8, 61 Cooperman, Bernard Dov 31, 120
Castro, Ami:rico 50, 51, 62 Copenhagen 224,226
Castro, Isaac Orobio de 59, 120 Copley, John Singleton 225
Catherine the Great 203, 219, 226 Coppenhagen, J.H. 59
Catholic Church 192 Cordovero, Moses 67, 70
Catholic Inquisition 220 Coronel, Pablo Nunez 52
Catholicism 191, 199 Corral!, Tim xiv
Catholics 208, 222 Corsica 206, 212, 224
Cazalla, Fra. Juan de 52 Coudert,AllisonP. xviii,66, 74,107,121,170,
Celebi, Rafael Joseph 80 223
Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies at Courland 220
UCLA xi,xvi Cranach, Lucas 125
Cerinthus 98 Crescas, Hasdai 16, 34
Cesii, Pietro 95 Cromwell, Oliver x, xi, 93, 97, 104
Charles I x Culler, Jean Overton 223
Charles II 208, 213, 222 Curl, James 223
Charles V 50, 201 Czartorisky, Adam 214, 217, 224
Charles VIII 12 Czechoslovakia 170
Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) Czestochowa 190, 195
210, 213, 214, 224
Chartres, Duke of 217, 220 D' Acosta, Uriel 59, 109, 121
Chasin, Stephanie xiv d'Urfi:, Marquise 222
Chavel, Charles B. (Hayim) 38, 186 Dan, Joseph 36,38, 77-78,87,89,123,169,
Chazan, Robert 33 181, 184, 221
Cheshvan (month) 215 Daniel 14
Chettoui, Wilfrid Rene 226 Dato, Mordecai 10, 13, 21-22, 24, 31, 36
Chevallier, Pierre 221 David 48, 57, 154, 177
Chipman, Jonathan 37, 174 David, Avraham 36
Choiseul 215 David, Moses 214, 215
Chopyk, Dan 199 David, R. Moshe 225
Christian August, Prince of Sulzbach xviii, 66, Davidson, Sir William 208, 222
108, 109, Ill, 115, 119, 121 Davies, W.D. 172, 185
Christiani, Friedrich Albrecht 121, 133, 137 de Corberon, Bourri:e 218
Christina, Queen of Sweden x, 63, 93, 104, 109 de Cordoba, Alonso 46, 47,61
Chuetas 61 de Cracovia, Moses (=Moses of Cracow) 187
Clark, Christopher M. 135 de Charles-Henri, Baron Gleichen 226
Claude (Calvinist leader) 102 de Donop, Baron 204, 205, 207
Clement VII, Pope 53 de Guemene, Prince 219
Clermont, Comte de 213 de Ia Cour, Dr. 211
Coenen, Thomas 90, 94, 95, 102 de Ia Croix, Madame 220
Cohen, Edward 135 de Langes, Savalette 219
Cohen, Jeremy 33 de Leon, Fray Diego de Valencia 50
Cohen, Mark R. 175 de Leon, Fray Luis xiii, 53-54, 63
Cohen, Martin H. 60 de Leon, Moses 175
Cohen, Mortimer 78, 87, 89 de Lintot, Lambert 210,211,217, 218,219,
Cohen, Richard I. 30, 138 226
Cohn, Norman xi de Loutherbourg, Phillpe Jacques 216, 225
Coimbra 46 de Lucena, Juan 50
Coley, W.B. 224 de Luxembourg, Chev 219
Cologne 204 de Neuhoff, Theodroe 224
Colson, Percy 226 de Rantzow, Comte 203, 204, 205, 206, 207,
Columbus, Christopher ix, 30, 65 214, 218
230 Index

de Saint Pour ain 67, 75 Eliade, Mircea 32

de Salverte, thoux 218 Elias 117
de Sanota Maria, Paulus 48 Eliav-Feldon, Miriam xvi
de Serrano, Pedro 46 Elijah 46, 47, 131, 143, 171
de Silvestri, Franchesco 67 Elior, Rachel 89, 168
de Thome, Marquis 217 Elisha 115, 117
de Tingri, Prince 218 Elqayam, Abraham 60, 79, 88, 89, 185, 201
de Villa Sandino, Alfonso Alvarez 50 Emden,Jacob 85-86,89,214,221,224,225
de Villanova, Arnoldo 50 Emes, Thomas 99, 105
de Weile, Ragstatt 133 Emmanuel, ltzhak S. 89
de Wissenbach, Johann Daniel Miiller 224, 225 Emmerson, Richard K. 135
de Zamora, Alfonso 52 Endelman, Todd M. 33
Debrock, G. 123 England ix-xiii, 28, 34, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 98,
Debus, A.G. 119, 124 100,103,105,109,120,123,203,206,207,
Degani, Ben-Zion 136 210,219,223
Deghaye, Pierre 136 Ephraim 158
Del Pulgar, Hernando 50 Erasmus of Rotterdam ix, 50
Delphos 95, 98, 99, 100, 105 Ernst, Wolfgang II 191
Denmark xiii, 204, 224 Esau 192, 197, 198
Dermott, Laurence 213 Escapa, Yosef 88
Descartes, Rene xii Esdras Edzard (institute) 133
Devreux, Robert 66 Esperanza, dona Geronyma 47
Dias, Luis 4 7 Essex 66
Dienstag, J.l. 62 Esther 48
Dissenters 208, 222 Ettinger, Shmuel 89, 104
Doan, Ruth Alden 32 Eulenspiege1, Till 128
Dobbs, Betty-JoT. 123 Europe viii, ix, xi, xii, xiii, xv, xvii, xix, 2, 41,
Dobrushka, Moshe 191,200 49,53,58,60,62,68, 78, 79, 81,82,83,84-
Dobrushka, Salomon 191 85, 86, 88, 91, 94, 97, 102, 132, 107, 120, 121,
Dobrushka, Schoendel 190, 191, 196, 198 201,209,216,219
Dodds, E.R. 75 Evans, Arise xviii
Doktor, Jan 190, 199 Evelyn, John 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 101, 102, 104,
Dole, G.F. 168 105
Doron, Aviva 34 Ezekiel 72, 194
Dras, Luis 54
Driver, S.R. 35 Fabre, Benjamin 221, 227
Drumont, Edouard A. xix, 221, 227 Fabro, Cornelio 75
Dubrovnik (See also Ragusa) 66 Fabry, J. 170
Duke of Tuscany 66 Faivre, Antoine 121, 136, 169, 221
Duker, Abraham 190, 199 Falk, Samuel Jacob (Ba'al Shem of London)
Duns Scotus 68, 72 xiii, xix, 193, 203-227
Duran, Profet 10, 31, 34 Farissol, Abraham b. Mordecai 33
Durandus 68 Faur, Jose 109, 120, 121
Durant, G.P. 225 Faust 127
Durer, Albrecht 125 Fell, Maragaret 104
Dury, John xii, 91-93, 104 Fenwick, Hubert 222
Ferdinand, King of Spain xvi, 50
Eamon, William 121, 123 Ferguson,Mungo 225
Edbury, Peter W. 136 Fernando de Madrid 42
Edinburgh 223 Fernando, Duke D. 55
Edom 192 Ferrara 19, 33, 66
Edzard 137 Festinger, Leon 35
Efron, John M. 135, 178 Ficino, Marsilio 53, 67, 68, 70, 74, 114
Egypt 9, 22, 80, 116, 146, 147, 154, 156, 175, Fielding, Henry 212, 224
182 Finch, Heneage 95
Eibeschiitz, Jonathan (Yehonathan) 84, 86, 89, Fiore, Joachim of viii
184,214,215,216,221,225 Fischart, Johann 128
Ein-Sof 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 171 Fishman, Talya 184
Eisenmenger, Johannes 135, 136, 137 Florence ix, 28
Elbing xii Flusser, David 170
Eleazar, R. 158 Fogelklou, Emilia 104
 Index 231

Fo1z, Hans 128, 129, 131, 136 Git1itz, David 59, 60, 61
Force, James E. xiii, 120 Gnosis 62
Fossum, J.E. 172, 181 Gnostics 189
Fraenke1-Go1dschmidt, Hava 138 God 195,198,202,204,205,206,207,220
France viii, x, xiii, xiv, 28, 48, 57, 100, 102, Godwin J. 198, 200, 202
103,202,204,213,217 Goethe, J.W. 225
Frances, Manuel Bocarro (See Bocarro- Goetschel, Roland 29, 30, 36, 177
Rosales, Jacob) Goffman, Daniel 88
Francia, Francis 208, 209, 223 Goldammer, Kurt 124
Frank, Ewa 200, 201 Goldberg, Harvey E. 90
Frank, Jacob Joseph (Yakov) xiii, xix, 89, 184, Goldgart, Hadassah 199
189-202,214,219,220,221 Goldish, Matt xiii, xv-xix, 41-64, 74, 78, 89,
Frankfurt 128, 214 107, 120
Frankism 200 Goldman Brothers 215
Frankl, Oskar 136 Go1dsmid, Abraham 225
Freemasons 191, 197,200,203,204,206,208, Go1dsmid, Benjamin 225
220 Goldstein, D. 174
Freimann, A. 185 Goldstein, Gabriella xiv
French Wa1oon Seminary xii Goodman, Lenn E. 74, 120
Frey 198 Gora, Jasna 191
Fried, Lotharius Franz 133, 137 Gorciex, Bernard 121
Friedman, Jerome 63 Gordon, George Lord 218, 226
Friedman, Menachem 89 Gould, Robert F. 223
Friedrich, Martin 135 Gow, Andrew 125, 135, 136
Funkenstein, Amos 37, 38, 62 Graetz, Heinrich xv, 4, 28, 39, 79, 88, 198
Fiirth 204 Granada 52
Graupe, H.M. 216, 225, 226
Gabai, Abraham 95, 100 Greece 87
Galatino 53 Gregoire, Abbe Heni xii, xiii
Gampel, Benjamin R. 27, 33,124 Greive, H. 169
Gaon, Sa'adya 18 Grimblet, M.P. 226
Garcia, Dona 36 Grimm, Baron 203, 219
Garden of Eden 197 Grimmelshausen, Hans 131
Garrand, 1. G. 226 Gross, Abraham 36, 37, 38
Garrett, Clarke 28 Gross, Benjamin 28, 31, 32
Garrick, David 213 Grossberg, M. 30
Gaster, Moses 35 Grossman, A. 59, 173-174
Gaza 89 Grot, Jacques 226
Geilberg 204 Grozinger, Karl E. 169, 221
Gelber, N.M. 200 Guhrauer, G.E. 121
Gemarah 43 Guiraud, Jean 227
Geneva 56, 102 Gustav III 219, 225, 226
Gengenbach, Pamphilius 128 Guttmann, Julius 36
Gennazano 33
Genot-Bismuth, Jacqueline 31-32 Haag, E. 106
George I 209 Hacker, Yosef 30, 33
George III 226 Hagiz, Moses 85, 86
George, David 99 Hague, The 200,204,210,216,217,218,223,
Gerard 98 224,225
Germanus, Moses 111, 121 Haifa University 29, 87
Germany ix, x, xi, xii, xiv, xviii, 92, 103, 121, Hakohen, Hayyim of Aleppo 74
193,204,206,213,218 Hakohen, Saul II
Geronimo de Santa Fe, San Mateo 16 Halevi, Abraham ben E1iezer 13, 14, 21-22,
Gerson, Christian 133, 138 32,35,38
Gideon, Sampson 212 Halevi, Judah 25
Gieschen 177 Halivni, D. Weiss 179
Gikatilla, Joseph 17 5 Hall, Marie Boas 104
Ginsburg, Carlo 59-60 Hall, Rupert I 04
Ginsburg, E. 183 Hallamish, M. 181
Ginzberg, L. 183 Halle 86, 103
Giorgio, Francesco 53 Hamburg 44,63, 82, 93,137,214,225
232 Index

Hamilton, Alastair 62 Hungary x

Hamill, John 223 Hunter, John 216
Hanegraaff, W.J. 171 Hunter, M. 120
Hannover, Nathan Neta 170 Hunter, William 216, 225
Hanover 209 Hut, John 99
ha-Reubeni, David 47, 53, 61, 63, Hutton, Sarah 120
Hart Library 63 Huygens, Constatijn 208
Hart, Vaughan 222 Hyman, Arthur 38
Hartlib, Samuel xii
Hartman, Yehoshua David 38 Iberia ix, 36, 44, 45, 46
Harvard College xii 105 ibn Catif, Isaac 67
Harwich 203 ibn Ezra, Abraham 30, 34
Hasid, R. Judah 84, 86, 89, 133, 137 ibn Kaspi, Joseoh 34
Hasid, Simcha 133 ibn Shraga Abraham, Joseph 35
Hasidism 189, 197, 200 Ide!, Moshe 28, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 59,
Haskalah 85, 189, 200 60, 62, 66, 67, 74, 107, 112, 114, 118, 119,
Hayder Horusi 196 121,124,170,173,174,177,184,185
Hayon (or Hayun), Nehemia Hiya 84, 89, 183 Ines of Herrera 46, 47, 61
Hayyin, Elija 33 Inquisition 192, 20 I
Hayyun, Joseph 7 Isaac (patriarch) 160, 175, 192
Hebrew Union College 34 Isabella, Queen of Spain ix, xvi, 50, 52
Hebrew University of Jerusalem 82-83 Isaiah 43, 72, 165, 194
Heidner, Jan 223 Ischerlen, Isaac Nathan 138
Heilprin, Y. 198 Israel, Land of xi, xiv, 8, 9, 16, 21, 23, 24, 26,
Heine, Heinrich 216 29,30, 37,38,43,48,62,63, 72, 73, 75, 86,
Heinrich Callenberg (institute) 133 89,104, 126, 127, 130,136, 105, 113, 119,
Helmont, Francis Mercury van xviii, 115, 117, 141, 142, 143, 145, 150, 154, 156, 158, 160,
Ill, 123 162, 170, 171, 173, 174,175,177,180, 181,
Helmstedt Ill 182
Henderson, G.D. 222 Israel, Jonathan 89, 107, 119
Henry III 99 Israel, Rabbi of Ruzhin 87
Herod of Idumea 192 Israelites 20 I
Herrera, Abraham Cohen de (Alonso Nunez de Italy ix, x, xiii, 6, II, 12, 13, 15, 16, 32, 33, 34,
Herrera) xvii, 65-75, 120 35, 59, 66, 68, 140, 203
Hertz, Deborah 137 Ivry, A. 184
Herzl, Theodor 77 Iwanie 202
Hesche!, Abraham Joshua 28 Izmir (See Smyrna)
Heyd, Michael 62
Heyd, Uriel 36 Jabotinsky, Vladimir 2, 6, 29-39
Heymann, Fritz 225 Jacob 150,158,160,168,171,178,192,194,
Higham, F.M.G. 223 195, 197, 202
Hill, Christopher xi, I 04, I 05 Jacob, Margaret 223
Hillgarth, J. N. 30 Jacobins 191
Hills, G. 222, 224, 226, 227 Jacobites 204
Hirschfield, E.J. 200 Jagiellonian Library 190
Hirschfield, Jacob 190, 196 James, St. 105
Hius, Gordon P. 221 James I, King of Aragon 38
Hoefer, J.S.F. 106 James II 99, 208, 212, 223
Hofman the Skinner 99 James VI 207
Holbourn-Bridge 104 Jansenist thinkers 62
Holmes, Nathaniel 93, 104 Jantzen, G.M. 176
Holy Roman Empire 53 Javelli, Giovanni Crisostomo 67, 70
Holyrood Palace 213 Jerusalem Temple 208
Holland 204, 206, 208, 209 Jerusalem viii, 30, 52, 53, 57, 61, 81, 89, 91, 93,
Hanauer, Jorg 138 94, 95, 99, 100, 101, 208
Hosmann, Sigismund 133, 138 Jesus of Nazareth vii, 43, 48, 49, 50, 54, 57, 90,
House of David 55 91, 93, 97, 99, 100, 102, 110, 139, 144, 145,
Howard, Henry 95 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 155-56,
Hsia, Ronnie Po-Chia 120 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 165, 166, 167, 169,
Hubmor, Balthazar 99 170, 171-172, 173,174, 175,176,177, 178,
Hundert, Gershon D. 202 180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 205
 Index 233

Joachim of Fiore SO, 65 Lac~ John 99,100,105

Joachim, Johann Friedrich 103, 106 Laemmlein, Asher (See Lemlein, Asher)
Joan of Arc (Ia Pucelle) 99 Landmun, L. 61-62
Joiio IV, King 55, 56 Lasker, Daniel J. 33, 34
Job 202 Laursen, John C. xiii, 121
John, St. 97, 150,200 Lawee, Eric xvi, 1-39
John, Theodore 137,138 Le Forestier, Rene 221
Jordan 37 LeGlay, Andre 224
Joseph ofRosheim 134, 138 Lehman, Cosman 211,213,218, 219
Joseph 43, 48, 57, 60, 89, 157, 158, 177, 197, Lehmann, H. 120
198 Leibniz, G.W. 67, 116, 123, 223
Josephus xv Leiden xii, 35, 102
Judah 180 Leigh, Richard 222
Jurieu, Pierre xiii Lemlein, Asher 4, 6, 23, 27, 39
Lenowitz, Harris xviii, xix, 60, 62, 199
Kaidanover, Z.H. 199 Lesczcynski, Stanislaus 214
Kalisch, Hirsch 207, 212, 214, 224 Leslie, Charles I 05
Kaplan, Yosef 59, 60, 63, 74, 78, 87, 88, 89, 90, Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 218
109, 111, 120, 121, 174 Levant Colonies 94
Karo, Yosef 36 Levant 94
Kasher, M.M. 180 Levi, Wolf 133, 137
Katz, David S. 222, 223 Leviathan 46
Katz, Jacob 78, 80, 87, 88, 89, 94, 107, 120, Levine, Hillel 184, 190, 199, 202
190,193,200,220,226 Levison (Schnaber), Mordechai Gumpel
Kaufman, David 32 (Gumpertz) 216, 217, 219, 220, 225
Kayserling, Meyer 59 Levita, Elijah 130
Kazimierz, Jan (King) 201 Liebes, Yehuda 89, 90, 168, 177, 181, 183, 184,
Kedourie, Elie 38, 119 185, 186, 225
Kellner, Menachem M. 29, 31 Liebman, Seymour 61
Kelly, Donald R. 74 Lindberg, D. 121
Kemper, Johann (ne Moses ben Aaron Kohen) Linnaeus, C. 216, 225
xviii, 139-187, 209, 223 Lipiner, Elias 29, 61, 63
Kirchhof 127 Lipton, Marcus 223
Kirn, Hans-Martin 136 Lisbon 7, 11, 34
Klein, Peter K. 13 5 Lithuania 204, 218
Kleinman, Y. 198 Livorno 44
Kloss, George 200 Locke, John 116
Klumpf, J.T. 121 Lodge of the Nascent Dawn 190
Knight, H. 172 Louis, St. I 03
Knights of the Rising Dawn 200 Loewe, H. 28, 37, 38
Knights of the Rosy Cross (Templars) 193 Loewe, Judah 22, 24, 26 , 33
Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian xviii, 66-67, Loewe, Raphael 35, 120
111, 114, 115, 117, 123 Lolard, Walter 99
Koch, Yolanda Moreno 61 London x,x~,44,89,95, 104,105,106,193,
Kohen, Moses of Cracow (See Kemper, 203,204,206,207,208,209,210,211,212,
Johann) 213,214,215,216,217,218,219,220,223,
Kohler, Hans-Joachim 136 224,225,226
Kottman, Karl xiii, 54, 63 Lost Tribes of Israel 20 I
Krabbenhoft, Kenneth xvii, 65-78 Louis XV 211, 212, 213, 219
Kraemer, Joel L. 34, 38, 47 Lubomirsky, Marius 214
Krakow 194 Ludwig IX 216
Krausbar, Alexander 190, 198, 199, 200, 202 Luria, Rabbi Isaac xv, 65, 66, 67, 70, 72, 74,
Kuntz, Marion L. 63, 171, 174 112, 117, 121
Kuriel, M. 224 Luther, Martin 110, 126, 127, 136
Kushnir-Oron, M. 184 Luzzatto, Emanuel 206, 222
Kwaadgras, E.P. 200 Luzzatto, Moses Hayyim 84, 175
Luzzatto, Simone 34
Labadie, Jean de 93, 104 Lyotard, J.-F. 38
La Peyrere, Isaac xi, xiii, 48, 57, 58, 61, 63, 91, Lloyd, Stephen 225
93, 104
Lacunze, Immanuel xii MacDonald Ross, G. 123
234 Index

MacKenna, Stephen 74 Milhou, Alain 30, 62

MacDonald, Lesley 137 Miller, William 32
Madrid 46 Mirsky, A. 59, 173
Mahomet 98 Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della (See Pico della
Maia Neto, Jose R. 63 Mirandola, Giovanni)
Maimonides 10-11, 18, 25, 26, 34, 37, 44, 62, Mocatta library I 04
72 Mohammed 45
Mamre 159 Molina, Luis 71
Mamzer (See also Jesus of Nazareth) 43 Molitor. Franz 1. 220
Mandel 202 Molkho, Solomon 4, 6, 23, 28, 36,47 61, 134,
Mann. Vivian B. 138 201
Manuel, Frank E. 29, 35, 39, 137 Monck, General 208
Marashi, M. 199 Monopoli 9
Marcionites 189 Montanus 98
Marcus, Joseph 133 Moorish Kingdom viii
Margaritha, Antonius 131, 13 7 Mopsik, C. 175
Marks, Richard G. 30 Moray, Sir Robert 208, 222
Marrano 58, 59, 60 Morcillo, Sebastian Fox 70, 75
Marsichal College 216 Mordecai of Eisenstadt 132
Martin, Bernard 28 More, Henry 67, 120
Martin, Melquiades Andres 62, 63 Moreno-Carvallo, Francisco 63
Martini, Raymundus 169 Morocco 66
Mason of Buckinghampshire 99 Morosini, Giulio 133
Mason, John 105 Mortera, Saul Levi 60
Masons 191, 193, 196.200,211. 212,213,215, Mortier, Pierre 221
217,219 Moscow 203, 218, 226
Masters, G. Mallary 169 Moses of Candia 102
Mathushewski, O.B.M. 195 Moses 46, 145, 150, 152, 153,156, 157, 176,
Matthew 139, 140 178, 186, 201
Matthias, John 99 Moslems 222
Matucci, Mario 224 Mount of Olives 130
Maze!, E. 171 Mount Sinai 45
Mazzali, Ettore 75 Mulsow, Martin 226
McGinn, Bernard 36, 135, 136, 169, 170 Miiller, J.M. 86, 214
Mcintosh, Christopher 226 Munck, Thomas 88
McKeon, Michael 100, 103, 105 Munster, Sebastian 130, 136, 137
McKnight, Stephen 123, 124 Muntzer, Thomas 99
McLynn, Frank 224 Murphy-O'Connor, 1. 172
Mechou1an, Henry 63, 74, 121 Muslims 53
Mede, Joseph xii Myers,DavidN. 89,119,135,178
Mediterranean xvii, 41 Mylne, R.S. 222
Meine!, Christopher 123
Melamed. Jacob (ofCornitz) 133 Nahmanides 18, 34, 38
Melchor, Fray 52, 53 Nahon, Gerard 63
Melnick, Ralph 74 Nakache, S. 177
Mellinkoff, Ruth 136 Naples 9, 12
Menache, S. 88 Napier, John ix
Mendelsohn, Moses 200 Narboni, Moses 34
Mendelsohn, Everett 85, 124 Nasi, Don Joseph 23
Mendes, Gracia 36 Nasi, Yosef 6, 36
Mendes, Joseph (Miguez) (See Nasi, Don Nathan ofGaza 58, 60, 84, 88, 89, 92, 97, 177,
Joseph) 185
Merkel, I. 119 National Library in Paris 221
Mesopotamia 201 National Library of Israel 198, 199
Messer Leon, David b. Judah 33, 120 National Library of Scotland 222
Messer Leon, Judah 33, 61 Naxos, Duke of (See Nasi, Don Joseph)
Metatron 149, 160, 177, 186 Nayler, James 93, 94, 96, 104, 105
Mevorah, Barouh 89, 90 Nebuchadnezzar 14
Micah 72 Nederman, Cary 1. 121
Michaud, 1. F. I 06 Needleman, Jacob 136, 169
Michaud, L.G. 106 Neher, Andre 38
 Index 235

Netanyahu, Benzion 2-3, 5-6, 9, 12, 23, 24, 25, Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 53, 67, 68, 70,
26,28,29, 30,31,32, 34, 36, 37,38, 59,60 114, 141, 169
Netherlands x-xiii, 41, 55, 56, 66, 102, 103, Pires, Diogo (See also Molkho, Solomon) 47
107, 109, 120 Pirie, Valerie 224
Neubauer 35 Plato xviii, 67
Neugroschel, J. 174 Plesser, R. 20 I
Neveh Shalom Synagogue 66 Plotinus 67, 68, 70
Nevo, Yehoshafat 32 Podhayce 204,214,215,225
New England xii, 96 Podolia 199
New York University 73 Poland x-xi, 88, 170, 184, 192, 193, 198,204,
Newman, Louis Israel 63 213,214,217,218,219
Newman, William 124 Popkin, Jeremy xiii
Newton, Isaac ix, xii, xiii, 116, 123 Popkin, Richard H. vii-xiv, xvi, xvii, xviii, 28,
Nicholas, Henry 99 41,48, 52, 57,59,60,61,62,63,66, 74, 88,
Nieto, David 120 91-106, 105, 107, 109, 120, 121, 169,223,
Nieto, Diego Diaz 42 226
Nieto, Jose C. 50, 62 Porges, Moses 200
Nimrod 192, 197 Porset, Charles 226
Nini, Yehuda 86 Portugal viii, x, 7, 10, II, 12, 35, 41, 43, 44, 47,
Noah 143 49, 53, 55, 56, 59,60,63, 65
Nordenskjold, C.F. 225 Postel, Guillaume 57, 141, 170, 176
Nordlingen 133 Powdras, John 99
Nordmann, Claude 226 Pozanski, Adolph 36
Norrelius, Andreas 168, 181, 184 Prado, Juan de 63
Nowotney, Helga 124 Prague 26, 28, 33, 38, 84, 129, 170, 184, 209
Preis, Joachim 210, 222, 224
Oberman, Heiko A. 136 Prescott Street 223
Oetinger, J.C. 214 Prince's Square 223
Offenbach xix, 191, 192, 193, 200, 202 Principe, Lawrence 123
Ohio State Univeristy, The 58 Proclus 67, 70, 71, 75
Oldcorn. A. 174 Prussia 217
Oldenburg, Henry xii, 104 Pumbeditha 186
Oppenheim, Samuel 223
Oppenheimer, Suss 134, 138 Quakers 208
Ormsby, Lennon Hugh 222
Oron, Michal 221, 222, 223, 224, 225 Rabb, T.K. 88
Ottoman Empire 78, 79, 82, 85, 86, 87-88, 93 Rabil. Albert, Jr. 120
Ottomano, Padro 94 Rachel 175, 198
Radziwils (Polish royal family) 197
Pagel, Walter 124 Ragusa (See also Dubrovnik) 66
Palatium Arcanorum (Palace of Secrets) 115 Rainsford, Charles, M.P. 203, 206, 211, 217,
Palestine vii, x, 2, 23, 30, 80, 84, 88, 91 218,219,220,221,224,227
Paracelsus 117 Ramsay, Andrew Michael 211, 222
Paris 35, 93, 100, 210, 213,217, 219,220 Rantzau, Jiiruen Ludwig Albrecht 221
Parker, Geoffrey 88 Rantzow, A. 221, 222
Parliament 203, 206 Rash, Yehoshua 29
Parrondo, Carlos Carrete 61 Rashi 18
Patai, Raphael vii, 114, 115, 121, 123, 221 Raub, Heribert 121
Paul, St. 152, 163, 170,171, 172 Ravid, Benjamin C.l. 30
Peli, P. 177 Ravitzky, Aviezer 37
Pelikan, Jaroslav 136 Rawidowicz, Simon 30
Pereira, Ines 47, 67 Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon 90
Perrmutter, Moshe A. 89 Rebolledo, Conde Bernadino de 63
Persian Empire 94 Recanati, Menahem 186
Pesaro 20 Regensburg 134,201
Petuchowski, Jakob J. 109, 120 Regev, Shaul 31, 34
Pfefferkorn, Johannes 130 Reichert, K. 169
Philip II, King 54 Reill, Peter xiv
Philip of Macedon I 02 Reperscissa, Joannes de 99
Phillipi, Franciscus Lotharius 137 Resh Laqish !52
Reubeni, David 4, 6, 23, 201
236 Index

Reuchlin, Johannes 141, 169 Savalette 220

Revah, I. S. 63 Savonarola ix, 12, 28, 36, 62, 63
Rhode Island 208 Scaliger, Julius Caesar 67, 68, 75
Ricci, Paul 141 Scandinavia 216
Richelieu, Count of 204 Scoeps, H.J. 59
Riecken, Henry W. 35 Scotland 103, 207
Riederer, Johann Freuderich 132, 137 Schachter, Jacob J. 89
Riley, J.C. 208, 222 Schachter, Stanley 35
Rinck, Melchior 99 Schafer, P. 175, 184
Rist, J.M. 74 Schatzky, Jacob 226
Roberts, Marie 222 Schecter, Solomon 221, 224
Robinet, M. 102 Scheffer, Carl Frederick (Count) 210, 223
Robinson, Ira 32, 35, 38 Schemaja, Mordechai (from Le Roi) 137
Rocoles, Jean Baptiste de 94, 100, 102, 103, Schenk-Rink, A. G. 192, 200
106 Scherer, Jean Benoit 219
Riidelheim 31 Scheurer, P. B. 123
Rodrigue, Aron 88 Schloss, Ysen burg 200
Rolfe, W.D. 225 Schoenfeld, Chabot 202
Roman Empire viii, ix Schoenfeld, Danton 202
Roman, Sebastian 47 Schoenfeld, Julienne 202
Romanovs 193 Schoenfelds (family) 202
Rome 55, 93, 201, 222, 224 Schoeps, H.J. 59, 121, 168, 172, 183,225,226
Rosales, Jacob (Ya'akov) (See Bocarro- Schofman, Louis 30
Rosales, Jacob) Scholem Library at Giv'at Ram 202
Rosenthal, Ludwig 225 Scholem, Fania 199
Rosenzweig, Franz 5 Scholem, Gershom xv-xvii, xix, 4, 24, 28, 33,
Ross, Isabell 104 38,59,65, 74,77-78,79-80,81,88,89,90,
Roth, Cecil 103, 221, 224, 225, 226 94, 97, 100,102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 110,
Roth, Norman 31, 36, 59, 60, 62, 223 112, 113, 118, 119, 121, 123, 163, 164, 168,
Rouen 66, 210 169, 174, 179, 181, 18~ 184, 185, 186, 189,
Rovigo, Abraham 84, 133 198,199,200,202,220,226
Rowe, David L. 32 Schorsch, Ismar 37
Royal Library in Stockholm 221 Schochet, Elijah Judah 224
Rozen, Minna 88 Schuchard, Marsha Keith xix, 193,223,224
Ruderman, David xvi, 33, 35, 36, 32, 59, 107, Schudt, Johann Jacob 121, 132, 137
113, 117-118, 119, 120, 121,124,225 Schwartz, A. 177
Russia 193, 197, 203, 204, 213, 217, 218, 219, Schwartz, Dov 27, 31, 36 38
224 Schwartz, Hillel I 05
Russo, Barukbia 189, 200 Schweid, E. 185
Rycaut, Paul 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, Schweitzer, A. 185
104, 105 Sebastian, King of Portugal x, 50, 54, 65
Ryu, In-HoLy 226 Secret, F. 169, 170, 176
Sedgwick, Doomsday 99
Sabbioneta 30 Sela, Aviva 190, 199
Sadoq of Grodno 162, 163, 183 Selig, Gottfried 138
Safed 65 Selke, Angela S. 61
Saint Benoit 102 Semah, Jacob Hayyim 185
Salonika 19, 86, 184, 194, 198 Septimus, Bernard 34, 74, 185
Saltzmann, Frederick Rudolph 219 Serrarius, Peter 91, 92, 93, 103, 104
Saltzmann, Rodolphe 226 Servetus, Michael 56, 63
Salvador, Jonas 93 Setubal 47, 54
Sambatyon River 134 Sevilla 47
Samuel, W.S. 222 Shaftesley, John 223, 224
Sanders, E.P. 172 Shane, A.L. 222
Santa Clara, Abraham de 132 Shapira, R. Nathan 63, 91, 92, 103
Saperstein, Mark 32, 34, 36, 38, 121, 186 Sharot, Stephen xvi, 33, 36, 59, 65, 78, 87, 88,
Saraiva, Antonio Jose 55, 63 108, 112, 120, 185
Saraval, Solomon 18 3-184 Shatz, Rivka 38
Sarug, Rabbi Israel xvii, 66, 67, 70, 74, 114 Shaw, Stanford J. 88
Sasportas, Rabbi Jacob 43, 45, 49, 60, 61 Sheba, Queen of 196
Sator, Theodorus 99 Shemueli, Ephraim 35
 Index 237

Sherwin, Byron L. 33, 38 Sweet, .T. 184-185

Shesnowski, Susman 214 Swiderska, Hanna 104, 105
Shil6 180 Swietlicki, Catherine 63
Shmeruk, Chone 89, 190, 198, 199, 202 Swirsky, Michael 37
Shohat, Azriel 89, 90, 138 Switzerland ix, xii, 92
Shor, Natan 36
Shraga, Joseph ibn 20 Talavera, Archbishop Hernando de 52
Shuler, Robert 123 Talmage, Frank Ephraim 28, 31
Sibylline Oracles 50 Tamar, David 88
Silver, Abba Hillel 30, 136 Tangier 222
Simon, M. 178 Ta-Shema, I. 181
Simon, Richard 93, 104 Tasso, Torquato 67, 70-71, 75
Singerman, Robert 59 Taubes, Jacob 121
Skimborowicz, Hippolyt 190, 199 Tavares, Jose Ferro 35
Smith, Jonathan Z. 137 Templo, Jacob Judah Leon 63, 208, 209, 213,
Smith, L.M. 88 222
Smith, William, M.D. 210,212, 216, 223 Teodosio, Duke D. 55
Smithson. John 224 Tessin, Carl Gustaf 207, 222, 223, 224
Smyrna 78, 80,81,82,84,88,94,95,97,98, Texeira, Abraham 63
99, 100, 102, 104, 105, 183 Texeira, Diego 93
Sofer, Moses 5, 29 Theden, Johann Christian 216, 225
Solomon (King) 130, 213 Theodore I 212, 213, 214, 221
Solomon, H.P. 60 Thorpe, John 222
Sonne, Isaiah 60 Tiberias 23
Spain viii, xiii, xv, 7, 10, 15, 17, 18, 22, 34, 44, Tirosh-Rothschild, Hava (See also next entry)
46, 29, 30, 31, 38,41,45,49, 51, 5~ 53, 54, 107, 120
56, 59, 61, 62, 63, 107, 119,220 Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava 27, 117
Spath, Johann Peter (See also Germanus, Tishby, Isaiah 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 60, 89, 123,
Moses) 109, Ill, 121 174, 181,183, 185
Speier, Hans 137 Titus viii
Sperber, D. 181 Toledo, Archbishop of 52
Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict) 3, 5, 34, 59, 60, 63, Tomson, P.l 172
67, 74, 92, 102, 104, 121 Toon, Peter 62
Sprinchorn, Carl 224 Tortosa 16
St. Petersburg 219 Trachtenberg, Joshua 136
Stanford University 27 Trancoso 54
Starkey, George 124 Transylvania xi
Starkey, John 104 Trebiliani. Maria Luisa 226
Steinherdin, Gutgen 1, 38 Tremonte, Laura Emerson x1v
Steinschneider, Moritz 115 Trend, lB. 28, 37
Stern, Menachem 88 Trevor-Roper, Hugh xi
Stevenson, David 222 Trismegistus, Hermes xviii
Stock, Richard Wilhelm 1, 35 Tristan, Frederick 121, 169
Stockholm 219, 223, 225 Tuckett, J.S. 225, 226
Stolle, Gottlieb 121 Turkey 84, 88, 92, 95, 97, 100, 191, 192, 193
Strasburg 219 Turkish Empire ix 94, 95, 96, 98, 104
Streicher, Julius 135 Twersky, Isadore 32, 34, 38, 74, 185
Stuart Dynasty 204, 208, 210, 212, 213, 214,
222,223 Ukraine 183
Suarez, Francisco 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 75 United States of America xi
Sugar, Peter F. 88 University of Acala 94
Sultan of Morocco 66 University of California Los Angeles 103, 105
Suranyi, Anna xiv University of Halle I 03
Surenhuys, Wilhelm 209 University of Krakow 190
Sutor, Hermanns 99 University of Valladolid 30
Sweden x, xi, xiii, xiv, 63, 153, 180, 183, 204, Uppsala m.s. 168, 169, 209
213 Ussher, Archbishop 102
Swedenborg, Emmanuel xiii, 168, 193, 203,
206,209,210,211,212,213,214,216,2 17, Valantasis, R. 172
219,220,221,222,223,224,225 Valentinians 189
Swedish Royal Library 207 van den Berg 120
238 Index

van den Broek, R. 171 Werses, Shmuel 88, 89, 198

van der Hardt, Herman Ill, 121 Wertheim, A. 202
van der Wall, Ernestine G.E. 103, 104, 107, Westerloh, Count of 204, 205
120 Westfall, Richard 123
van Geldern, Simon 216, 225 Westman, R. 121
van Rooden, Peter T. 35 Whiston, William xm
Vandenberg, Simon 75 Wijnhoven, J.H.A. 175
Vanderjagf, Arjo 88 Wilhelmsbad 219,220
Vatican Inquisition 203 Willermoz, J.B. 226
Venice 12, 23, 30, 81, 82 William Andrews Clark Library xi, xvi, 62, 63,
Verses, Sh. (See Werses, Shmuel) 94, 102, 105
Versluis, A. 171 William III 210, 223
Vickers, B. 123 Williamson, Arthur H. 75, 222
Vieira, Father Antonio xiii, 55 Winchelsea 95
Vienna ix, 93, 204 Windsor 223
Vilna 163 Winn, Colette 136
Virgin Mary 136, 190 Wirszubski, Chaim 140, 169, 185, 225
Vital, Hayyim 66, 115 Wolfson, Elliot xviii, 116, 123, 139-187, 168,
Vizotzky, B.L. 178 169, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179,
Voltaire 210, 223 180, 181, 184, 185, 186, 211, 222,223, 224
von Biisching, A. F. 222 Wonnacott, William 223, 224, 226
von Carben, Victor 135 Wootton, D. 120
von Ecker, H. Carl 193 Woulfe, Peter 216
von Ecker, H.H. (und Eckhoffen) 193 Wren, Christopher 208, 222
von Grimmelshasuen, Hans Jacob Christoffel Wurfel, Andrea 137, 138
137
von Keller, A. 136 Ximines de Cisneros, Cardinal 50, 52, 60, 62
von Lent, Johannes 132, 137
von Neuhof, Theodore 206 Yaari, Abraham 89
von Schoenfield, Franz Thomas 190, 191, 193, Yacobson,Yorarn 31, 32, 34, 35,36
196, 198, 200 Yagel, Abraham ben Hananiah 120
von Wessen-Kassel, Carl 191 Yardeni, Miryam 90
Yates, Frances 116, 123
Waddington, Raymond B. 75 Yeats, William Butler 221, 223, 224, 227
Waddington, William 222 Yehiel of Pisa 7
Wagenseil, C. 86 Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim 31, 34, 44, 59, 60,
Walachia 191 61, 63, 74, 135, 185
Walfish, Barry 28 Yosha, Nissirn 59, 89
Walpole, Horace 213 Yovel, Yirrniyahn 121
Walton, M.T. 124 Ysenburg 191, 196
Walton, Michael 200
Walton, Phyllis 200 Zacuto, Abraham 35
Wallich, Chistoph 134, 138 Zagorin, Perez xi, 60, 120
Wappmann, Volker 121 Zernah, Jacob 60
Warbeck, Perkin 99 Zevi, Sabbatai xii, xiii, xvi, xvii, 3, 6, 23, 41,
Warsaw 30,214, 219 43,48,49, 58,60,65, 78, 80, 81, 82,83, 84,
Washington University 103 87,88, 89, 90,92,93,94,95,96,97,9 8,99,
Wasserstrom, Steven M. 137 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 130, 131,
Watts, Pauline Moffitt 30 132, 133, 134, 137, 138, 163, 164, 174, 176,
Webster, Charles 119, 124 179, 184, 185, 186, 191, 192, 193,200, 201,
Webster, Nesta 221,227 215, 220
Weiler, Gershon 29, 38 Zevi's father 94
Weiner, D.A. 169, 185 Zimrnels, H.J. 60, 224
Weiner, G.M. 59, 61, 74, 120, 121, 223 Zinberg, Israel 28, 29,198
Weinstein, Donald 28 Zinzendorf, Nicholas 209, 214
Weissenborn, Hellmuth 137 Zohar 43, 123, 116, 170, 172, 174, 175, 176,
Wellclose Square 210, 213, 214, 223, 224, 226 177, 178,179,180, 181, 183,185, 186,
Wellcome Institute of History of Medicine 226 Zucker, Sh. 20 l
Werblowsky, R.J. Zwi 28, 36, 112, 121, 178, Zurich 93
179, 184
 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
*
INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

1. E. Labrousse: Pierre Bayle. Tome 1: Du pays de foix ala cite d'Erasme. 1963; 2nd printing
1984 ISBN 90-247-3136-4
For Tome II see below under Volume 6.
2. P. Merlan: Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness. Problems of the Soul in the Neoar-
istotelian and Neoplatonic Tradition. 1963; 2nd printing 1969 ISBN 90-247-0178-3
3. H.G. van Leeuwen: The Problem of Certainty in English Thought, 1630-1690. With a Preface
by R.H. Popkin. 1963; 2nd printing 1970 ISBN 90-247-0179-1
4. P.W. Janssen: Les origines de la reforme des Carmes en France au 17" Siecle. 1963; 2nd
printing 1969 ISBN 90-247-0180-5
5. G. Sebba: Bibliographia Cartesiana. A Critical Guide to the Descartes Literature ( 1800-1960).
1964 ISBN 90-247-0181-3
6. E. Labrousse: Pierre Bayle. Tome II: Heterodoxie et rigorisme. 1964 ISBN 90-247-0182-1
7. K.W. Swart: The Sense of Decadence in 19th-Century France. 1964 ISBN 90-247-0183-X
8. W. Rex: Essays on Pierre Bayle and Religious Controversy. 1965 ISBN 90-247-0184-8
9. E. Heier: L.H. Nicolay (1737-1820) and His Contemporaries. Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire,
Gluck, Metastasio, Galiani, D'Eschemy, Gessner, Bodmer, Lavater, Wieland, Frederick II,
Falconet, W. Robertson, Paul I, Cagliostro, Gellert, Winckelmann, Poinsinet, Lloyd, Sanchez,
Masson, and Others. 1965 ISBN 90-247-0185-6
10. H.M. Bracken: The Early Reception of Berkeley's Immaterialism, 1710-1733. [1958] Rev. ed.
1965 ISBN 90-247-0186-4
11. R.A. Watson: The Downfall ofCartesianism, 1673-1712. A Study of Epistemological Issues
in Late 17th-Century Cartesianism. 1966 ISBN 90-247-0187-2
12. R. Descartes: Regulce ad Directionem lngenii. Texte critique etabli par Giovanni Crapulli avec
la version hollandaise du 17e siecle. 1966 ISBN 90-247-0188-0
13. J. Chapelain: Soixante-dix-sept Lettres inedites a Nicolas Heinsius (1649-1658). Publiees
d' apres le manuscrit de Leyde avec une introduction et des notes par B. Bray. 1966
ISBN 90-247-0189-9
14. C. B. Brush: Montaigne and Bayle. Variations on the Theme of Skepticism. 1966
ISBN 90-247-0190-2
15. B. Neveu: Un historien a!'Ecole de Port-Royal. Sebastien le Nain de Tillemont (1637-1698).
1966 ISBN 90-247-0191-0
16. A. Faivre: Kirchberger et l'llluminisme du 18e siecle. 1966 ISBN 90-247-0192-9
17. J.A. Clarke: Huguenot Warrior. The Life and Times of Henri de Rohan (1579-1638). 1966
ISBN 90-247-0193-7
18. S. Kinser: The Works of Jacques-Auguste de Thou. 1966 ISBN 90-247-0194-5
19. E.F. Hirsch: Damiiio de Gois. The Life and Thought of a Portuguese Humanist (1502-1574).
1967 ISBN 90-247-0195-3
20. P.J.S. Whitemore: The Order of Minims in 17th-Century France. 1967 ISBN 90-247-0196-1
21. H. Hillenaar: Fenelon et les Jesuites. 1967 ISBN 90-247-0197-X
22. W.N. Hargreaves-Mawdsley: The English Della Cruscans and Their Time, 1783-1828. 1967
ISBN 90-247-0198-8
23. C.B. Schmitt: Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirando/a ( 1469-1533) and his Critique ofAristotle.
1967 ISBN 90-247-0199-6
24. H.B. White: Peace among the Willows. The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon. 1968
ISBN 90-247-0200-3
 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES

INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES* OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

25. L. Apt: Louis-Philippe de Segur. An Intellectual in a Revolutionary Age. 1969

ISBN 90-247-0201-1
26. E.H. Kadler: Literary Figures in French Drama (1784-1834). 1969 ISBN 90-247-0202-X
27. G. Postel: Le Thresor des propheties de l'univers. Manuscrit publie avec une introduction et
des notes par F. Secret. 1969 ISBN 90-247-0203-8
28. E.G. Boscherini: Lexicon Spinozanum. 2 vols., 1970 Set ISBN 90-247-0205-4
29. C.A. Bolton: Church Reform in 18th-Century Italy. The Synod of Pistoia (1786). 1969
ISBN 90-247-0208-9
30. D. Janicaud: Une genealogie du spiritualisme fran~ais. Aux sources du bergsonisme: [Felix]
Ravaisson [1813-1900] et la metaphysique. 1969 ISBN 90-247-0209-7
31. J.-E. d'Angers: L'Humanisme chretien au 17" siixle. St. Fran'<ois de Sales et Yves de Paris.
1970 ISBN 90-247-0210-0
32. H.B. White: Copp'd Hills towards Heaven. Shakespeare and the Classical Polity. 1970
ISBN 90-247-0250-X
33. P.J. OJ scamp: The Moral Philosophy of George Berkeley. 1970 ISBN 90-24 7-0303-4
34. C.G. Norefia: Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540). 1970 ISBN 90-247-5008-3
35. J. O'Higgens: Anthony Collins ( 1676-1729), the Man and His World. 1970
ISBN 90-247-5007-5
36. F.T. Brechka: Gerard van Swieten and His World ( 1700-1772). 1970 ISBN 90-247-5009-1
37. M.H. Waddicor: Montesquieu and the Pilosophy of Natural Law. 1970 ISBN 90-247-5039-3
38. O.R. Bloch: La Philosophie de Gassendi (1592-1655). Nominalisme, materialisme et meta-
physique. 1971 ISBN 90-247-5035-0
39. J. Hoyles: The Waning of the Renaissance ( 1640-1740). Studies in the Thought and Poetry of
Henry More, John Norris and Isaac Watts. 1971 ISBN 90-247-5077-6
For Henry More, see also below under Volume 122 and 127.
40. H. Bots: Correspondance de Jacques Dupuy et de Nicolas Heinsius ( 1646-1656). 1971
ISBN 90-247-5092-X
41. W.C. Lehmann: Henry Home, Lard Kames, and the Scottish Enlightenment. A Study inN ational
Character and in the History of Ideas. 1971 ISBN 90-247-5018-0
42. C. Kramer: Emmery de Lyere et Marnix de Sainte Aldegonde. Un admirateur de Sebastien
Franck et de Montaigne aux prises avec le champion des calvinistes neerlandais.[Avec le texte
d'Emmery de Lyere:] Antidote ou contrepoison contre les conseils sanguinaires et envinemez
de Philippe de Marnix Sr. de Ste. Aldegonde. 1971 ISBN 90-247-5136-5
43. P. Dibon: Inventaire de la correspondance ( 1595-1650) d'Andre Rivet ( 1572-1651). 1971
ISBN 90-247-5112-8
44. K.A. Kottman: Law and Apocalypse. The Moral Thought of Luis de Leon (1527?-1591). 1972
ISBN 90-247-1183-5
45. F.G. Nauen: Revolution, Idealism and Human freedom. Schelling, Hiilderlin and Hegel, and
the Crisis of Early German Idealism. 1971 ISBN 90-247-5117-9
46. H. Jensen: Motivation and the Moral Sense in Francis Hutcheson's [1694-1746] Ethical
Theory. 1971 ISBN90-247-1187-8
47. A. Rosenberg: [Simon] Tyssot de Patot and His Work ( 1655--1738). 1972
ISBN 90-247-1199-1
48. C. Walton: De la recherche du bien. A study of [Nicolas de] Malebranche's [1638-1715]
Science of Ethics. 1972 ISBN 90-247-1205-X
 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
*
INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

49. P.J.S. Whitmore (ed.): A 17th-Century Exposure of Superstition. Select Text of Claude Pithoys
(1587-1676). 1972 ISBN 90-247-1298-X
.50. A. Sauvy: Livres saisis aParis entre 1678 et 1701. D'apres une etude preliminaire de Motoko
Ninomiya. 1972 ISBN 90-247-1347-1
.51. W.R. Redmond: Bibliography of the Philosophy in the Iberian Colonies of America. 1972
ISBN 90-247-1190-8
52. C.B. Schmitt: Cicero Scepticus. A Study of the Influence of the Academica in the Renaissance.
1972 ISBN 90-247-1299-8
53. J. Hayles: The Edges of Augustanism. The Aesthetics of Spirituality in Thomas Ken, John
Byrom and William Law. 1972 ISBN 90-247-1317-X
54. J. Bruggeman and A.J. van de Yen (eds.): lnventaire des pieces d' Archives fran<;aises se
rapportant a I' Abbaye de Port-Royal des Champs et son cercle et a Ia Resistance contre Ia
Bulle Unigenitus eta I' Appel. 1972 ISBN 90-247-5122-5
55. J.W. Montgomery: Cross and Crucible. Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), Phoenix ofthe
Theologians. Volume I: Andreae's Life, World-View, and Relations with Rosicrucianism and
Alchemy; Volume II: The Chymische Hochzeit with Notes and Commentary. 1973
Set ISBN 90-247-5054-7
56. 0. Lutaud: Des revolutions d'Angleterre a La Revolutionfram;aise. Le tyrannicide & Killing
No Murder (Cromwell, Athalie, Bonaparte). 1973 ISBN 90-247-1509-1
57. F. Duchesneau: L'Empirisme de Locke. 1973 ISBN 90-247-1349-8
58. R. Simon (ed.): Henry de Boulainviller- <Euvres Philosophiques, Tome I. 1973
ISBN 90-247-1332-3
For <Euvres Philosophiques, Tome II see below under Volume 70.
59. E.E. Hanis: Salvation from Despair. A Reappraisal of Spinoza's Philosophy. 1973
ISBN 90-247-5158-6
60. J.-F. Battail: L'Avocat philosophe Geraud de Cordemoy ( 1626-1684). 1973
ISBN 90-247-1542-3
61. T. Liu: Discord in Zion. The Puritan Divines and the Puritan Revolution (1640--1660). 1973
ISBN 90-247-5156-X
62. A. Strugnell: Diderot's Politics. A Study of the Evolution of Diderot's Political Thought after
the Encyclopedie. 1973 ISBN 90-247-1540-7
63. G. Defaux: Pantagruel et les Sophistes. Contribution a l'histoire de l'humanisme chretien au
16e siecle. 1973 ISBN 90-247-1566-0
64. G. Planty-Bonjour: Hegel et la pensee philosophique en Russie (1830-1917). 1974
ISBN 90-247-1576-8
65. R.J. Brook: [George] Berkeley's Philosophy of Science. 1973 ISBN 90-247-1555-5
66. T.E. Jessop: A Bibliography of George Berkeley. With: Inventory of Berkeley's Manuscript
Remains by A.A. Luce. 2nd revised and enlarged ed. 1973 ISBN 90-247-1577-6
67. E.I. Perry: From Theology to History. French Religious Controversy and the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. 1973 ISBN 90-247-1578-4
68. P. Dibbon, H. Bots et E. Bots-Estourgie: lnventaire de la correspondance (1631-1671) de
Johannes Fredericus Gronovius [1611-1671]. 1974 ISBN 90-247-1600-4
69. A.B. Collins: The Secular is Sacred. Platonism and Thomism in Marsilio Ficino's Platonic
Theology. 1974 ISBN 90-247-1588-1
 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES

INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES* OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

70. R. Simon (ed.): Henry de Boulainviller. <Euvres Philosophiques, Tome II. 1975
ISBN 90-247-1633-0
For <Euvres Philosophiques, Tome I see under Volume 58.
71. J.A.G. Tans et H. Schmitz du Moulin: Pasquier Quesnel devant Ia Congregation de /'Index.
Correspondance avec Francesco Barberini et memoires sur Ia mise a!'Index de son edition des
<Euvres de Saint Leon, publies avec introduction et annotations. 1974 ISBN 90-247-1661-6
72. J.W. Carven: Napoleon and the Lazarists (1804-1809). 1974 ISBN 90-247-1667-5
73. G. Symcox: The Crisis of French Sea Power ( 1688-1697). From the Guerre d'Escadre to the
Guerre de Course. 1974 ISBN 90-247-1645-4
74. R. MacGillivray: Restoration Historians and the English Civil War. 1974
ISBN 90-247-1678-0
75. A. Soman (ed.): The Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Reappraisals and Documents. 1974
ISBN 90-247-1652-7
76. R.E. Wanner: Claude Fleury (1640-1723) as an Educational Historiographer and Thinker.
With an Introduction by W.W. Brickman. 1975 ISBN 90-247-1684-5
77. R. T. Carroll: The Common-Sense Philosophy ofReligion ofBishop Edward Stillingjleet ( 1635-
1699). 1975 ISBN 90-247-1647-0
78. J. Macary: Masque et lumieres au 18e [siecle]. Andre-Fran~ois Deslandes, Citoyen et
philosophe (1689-1757). 1975 ISBN 90-247-1698-5
79. S.M. Mason: Montesquieu's Idea of Justice. 1975 ISBN 90-247-1670-5
80. D.J.H. van Elden: Esprits fins et esprits geometriques dans les portraits de Saint-Simon.
Contributions a I' etude du vocabulaire et du style. 1975 ISBN 90-247-1726-4
81. I. Primer (ed.): Mandeville Studies. New Explorations in the Art and Thought of Dr Bernard
Mandeville (1670-1733). 1975 ISBN90-247-1686-I
82. C. G. Noreiia: Studies in Spanish Renaissance Thought. 1975 ISBN 90-247-1727-2
83. G. Wilson: A Medievalist in the 18th Century. LeGrand d' Aussy and the Fabliaux ou Contes.
1975 ISBN90-247-1782-5
84. J.-R. Arrnogathe: Theologia Cartesiana. L'explication physique de I'Eucharistie chez
Descartes et Dom Robert Desgabcts. 1977 ISBN 90-247-1869-4
85. Berault Stuart, Seigneur d' Aubigny: Traite sur l' art de la guerre. Introduction ct edition par
Elie de Comminges. 1976 ISBN 90-247-1871-6
86. S.L. Kaplan: Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV. 2 vols., 1976
Set ISBN 90-247-1873-2
87. M. Lienhard (ed.): The Origins and Characteristics of Anabaptism I Les debuts et les cara-
cteristiques de l'Anabaptisme. With an Extensive Bibliography I Avec une bibliographie
detaillee. 1977 ISBN 90-247-1896-l
88. R. Descartes: Regles utile.\· et claires pour la direction de l'e.1prit enla recherche de la verite.
Traduction selon le lexique cartesien, et annotation conceptuelle par J.-L. Marion. Avec des
notes mathematiques de P. Costabel. 1977 ISBN 90-247-1907-0
89. K. Hardesty: The 'Supplement' to the 'Encyclopedie'. [Diderot et d' Alembert]. 1977
ISBN 90-247-1965-8
90. H.B. White: Antiquity Forgot. Essays on Shakespeare, [Francis] Bacon, and Rembrandt. 1978
ISBN 90-247-1971-2
91. P.B.M. Blaas: Continuity and Anachronism. Parliamentary and Constitutional Development in
Whig Historiography and in the Anti-Whig Reaction between 1890 and 1930. 1978
ISBN 90-247-2063-X
 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
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INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

92. S.L. Kaplan (ed.): La Bagarre. Ferdinanda Galiani's (1728-1787) 'Lost' Parody. With an
Introduction by the Editor. 1979 ISBN 90-247-2125-3
93. E. McNiven Hine: A Critical Study of [Etienne Bonnot de] Condillac's [1714-1780]'Traite
des Systemes'. 1979 ISBN 90-247-2120-2
94. M.R.G. Spiller: Concerning Natural Experimental Philosphy. Meric Casaubon [1599-1671]
and the Royal Society. 1980 ISBN 90-247-2414-7
95. F. Duchesneau: La physiologie des Lumieres. Empirisme, modeles et theories. 1982
ISBN 90-247-2500-3
96. M. Heyd: Between Orthodoxy and the Enlightenment. Jean-Robert Chouet [1642-1731] and
the Introduction of Cartesian Science in the Academy of Geneva. 1982
ISBN 90-247-2508-9
97. James O'Higgins: Yves de Vallone [166617-1705]: The Making of an Esprit Fort. 1982
ISBN 90-247-2520-8
98. M.L. Kuntz: Guillaume Postel [1510-1581]. Prophet ofthe Restitution of All Things. His Life
and Thought. 1981 ISBN 90-247-2523-2
99. A. Rosenberg: Nicolas Gueudeville and His Work (1652-172?). 1982 ISBN 90-247-2533-X
LOO. S.L. Jaki: Uneasy Genius: The Life and Work of Pierre Duhem [1861-1916]. 1984
ISBN 90-247-2897-5; Pb (1987) 90-247-3532-7
101. Anne Conway [1631-1679]: The Principles of the Most Ancient Modern Philosophy. Edited
and with an Introduction by P. Loptson. 1982 ISBN 90-247-2671-9
102. E.C. Patterson: [Mrs.] Mary [Fairfax Greig] Sommerville [1780-1872] and the Cultivation of
Science (1815-1840). 1983 ISBN 90-247-2823-1
103. C.J. Berry: Hume, Hegel and Human Nature. 1982 ISBN 90-247-2682-4
104. C.J. Betts: Early Deism in France. From the so-called 'deistes' of Lyon (1564) to Voltaire's
'Lettres philosophiques' (1734). 1984 ISBN 90-247-2923-8
l05. R. Gascoigne: Religion, Rationality and Community. Sacred and Secular in the Thought of
Hegel and His Critics. 1985 ISBN 90-247-2992-0
106. S. Tweyman: Scepticism and Belief inHume's 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'. 1986
ISBN 90-247-3090-2
107. G. Cerny: Theology, Politics and Letters at the Crossroads of European Civilization. Jacques
Basnage [1653-1723] and the Baylean Huguenot Refugees in the Dutch Republic. 1987
ISBN 90-247-3150-X
108. Spinoza's Algebraic Calculation of the Rainbow & Calculation of Changes. Edited and Trans-
lated from Dutch, with an Introduction, Explanatory Notes and an Appendix by M.J. Petry.
1985 ISBN 90-247-3149-6
l09. R.G. McRae: Philosophy and the Absolute. The Modes of Hegel's Speculation. 1985
ISBN 90-247-3151-8
110. J.D. North and J.J. Roche (eds.): The Light of Nature. Essays in the History and Philosophy of
Science presented to A.C. Crombie. 1985 ISBN 90-247-3165-8
Ill. C. Walton and P.J. Johnson (eds.): [Thomas] Hobbes's 'Science of Natural Justice'. 1987
ISBN 90-247-3226-3
112. B.W. Head: Ideology and Social Science. Destutt de Tracy and French Liberalism. 1985
ISBN 90-247-3228-X
113. A.Th. Peperzak: Philosophy and Politics. A Commentary on the Preface to Hegel's Philosophy
of Right. 1987 ISBN Hb 90-247-3337-5; Pb ISBN 90-247-3338-3
 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
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114. S. Pines andY. Yovel (eds.): Maimonides [1135-1204] and Philosophy. Papers Presented at
the 6th Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter (May 1985). 1986 ISBN 90-247-3439-8
115. T.J. Saxby: The Quest for the New Jerusalem, Jean de Labadie [1610-1674] and the Labadists
( 1610-1744). 1987 ISBN 90-247-3485-l
116. C.E. Harline: Pamphlets, Printing, and Political Culture in the Early Dutch Republic. 1987
ISBN 90-247-3511-4
117. R.A. Watson andJ.E. Force (eds.): The Sceptical Mode in Modern Philosophy. Essays in Honor
of Richard H. Popkin. 1988 ISBN 90-247-3584-X
118. R.T. Bienvenu and M. Feingold (eds.): In the Presence of the Past. Essays in Honor of Frank
Manuel. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1008-X
119. J. van den Berg and E.G.E. van der Wall (eds.): Jewish-Christian Relations in the 17th Century.
Studies and Documents. 1988 ISBN 90-247-3617-X
120. N. Waszek: The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel's Account of 'Civil Society'. 1988
ISBN 90-247-3596-3
121. J. Walker (ed.): Thought and Faith in the Philosophy of Hegel. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1234-1
122. Henry More [1614-1687]: The Immortality of the Soul. Edited with Introduction and Notes by
A. Jacob. 1987 ISBN 90-247-3512-2
123. P.B. Scheurer and G. Debrock (eds.): Newton's Scientific and Philosophical Legacy. 1988
ISBN 90-247-3723-0
124. D.R. Kelley and R.H. Popkin (eds.): The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the
Enlightenment. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1259-7
125. R.M. Golden (ed.): The Huguenot Connection. The Edict of Nantes, Its Revocation, and Early
French Migration to South Carolina. 1988 ISBN 90-247-3645-5
126. S. Lindroth: Les chemins du savoir en Suede. De Ia fondation de I'Universite d'Upsal a Jacob
Berzelius. Etudes et Portraits. Traduit du suedois, presente et annote par J.-F. Battail. Avec une
introduction sur Sten Lindroth par G. Eriksson. 1988 ISBN 90-247-3579-3
127. S. Hutton (ed.): Henry More ( 1614-1687). Tercentenary Studies. With a Biography and Bibli-
ography by R. Crocker. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0095-5
128. Y. Yovel (ed.): Kant's Practical Philosophy Reconsidered. Papers Presented at the 7th Jerus-
alem Philosophical Encounter (December 1986). 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0405-5
129. J.E. Force and R.H. Popkin: Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton's
Theology. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0583-3
130. N. Capaldi and D.W. Livingston (eds.): Liberty inHume's 'History(}{ England'. 1990
ISBN 0-7923-0650-3
131. W. Brand: Hume 's Theory of Moral Judgment. A Study in the Unity of A Treatise of Human
Nature. 1992 ISBN0-7923-1415-8
132. C.E. Harline (ed.): The Rhyme and Reason of Politics in Early Modern Europe. Collected
Essays of Herbert H. Rowen. 1992 ISBN 0-7923-1527-8
133. N. Malebranche: Treatise on Ethics (1684). Translated and edited by C. Walton. 1993
ISBN 0-7923-1763-7
134. B.C. Southgate: 'Covetous of Truth'. The Life and Work of Thomas White (1593-1676). 1993
ISBN 0-7923-1926-5
135. G. Santinello, C.W.T. Blackwell and Ph. Weller (eds.): Models of the History of Philosophy.
Vol. I: From its Origins in the Renaissance to the 'Historia Phi1osophica'. 1993
ISBN 0-7923-2200-2
136. M.J. Petry (ed.): Hegel and Newtonianism. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2202-9
 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
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137. Otto von Guericke: The New (so-called Magdeburg) Experiments [Experimenta Nova, Ams-
terdam 1672]. Translated and edited by M.G. Foley Ames. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2399-8
138. R.H. Popkin and G.M. Weiner (eds.): Jewish Christians and Cristian Jews. From the Renais-
sance to the Enlightenment. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2452-8
139. J.E. Force and R.H. Popkin (eds.): The Books of Nature and Scripture. Recent Essays on
Natural Philosophy, Theology, and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza's Time
and the British Isles of Newton's Time. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2467-6
140. P. Rattansi and A. Clericuzio (eds.): Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th Centuries.
1994 ISBN 0-7923-2573-7
141. S. Jayne: Plato in Renaissance England. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3060-9
142. A.P. Coudert: Leibniz and the Kabbalah. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3114-1
143. M.H. Hoffheimer: Eduard Gans and the Hegelian Philosophy of Law. 1995
ISBN 0-7923-3114-1
144. J.R.M. Neto: The Christianization ofPyrrhonism. Scepticism and Faith in Pascal, Kierkegaard,
and Shestov. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3381-0
145. R.H. Popkin (ed.): Scepticism in the History of Philosophy. A Pan-American Dialogue. 1996
ISBN 0-7923-3769-7
146. M. de Baar, M. Ltiwensteyn, M. Monteiro and A.A. Sneller (eds.): Choosing the Better Part.
Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678). 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3799-9
147. M. Degenaar: Molyneux's Problem. Three Centuries of Discussion on the Perception of Forms.
1996 ISBN 0-7923-3934-7
148. S. Berti, F. Charles-Daubert and R.H. Popkin (eds.): Heterodoxy, Spinozism, and Free Thought
in Early-Eighteenth-Century Europe. Studies on the Traite des trois imposteurs. 1996
ISBN 0-7923-4192-9
149. G.K. Browning (ed.): Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Reappraisal. 1997
ISBN 0-7923-4480-4
150. G.A.J. Rogers, J.M. Vienne and Y.C. Zarka (eds.): The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical
Context. Politics, Metaphysics and Religion. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4530-4
151. R.L. Williams: The Letters of Dominique Chaix, Botanist-Cure. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4615-7
152. R.H. Popkin, E. de Olaso and G. Tonelli (eds.): Scepticism in the Enlightenment. 1997
ISBN 0-7923-4643-2
153. L. de 1a Forge. Translated and edited by D.M. Clarke: Treatise on the Human Mind (1664).
1997 ISBN 0-7923-4778-1
154. S.P. Foster: Melancholy Duty. The Hume-Gibbon Attack on Christianity. 1997
ISBN 0-7923-4785-4
155. J. van der Zande and R.H. Popkin (eds.): The Skeptical Tradition Around 1800. Skepticism in
Philosophy, Science, and Society. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4846-X
156. P. Ferretti: A Russian Advocate of Peace: Vasilii Malinovskii ( 1765-1814 ). 1997
ISBN 0-7923-4846-6
157. M. Goldish: Judaism in the Theology of Sir Isaac Newton. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4996-2
158. A.P. Coudert, R.H. Popkin and G.M. Weiner (eds.): Leibniz, Mysticism and Religion. 1998
ISBN 0-7923-5223-8
159. B. Friden: Rousseau's Economic Philosophy. Beyond the Market of Innocents. 1998
ISBN 0-7923-5270-X
160. C.F. Fowler O.P.: Descartes on the Human Soul. Philosophy and the Demands of Christian
Doctrine. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5473-7
 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
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INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

161. J.E. Force and R.H. Popkin (eds.): Newton and Religion. Context, Nature and Influence. 1999
ISBN 0-7923-5744-2
162. J.V. Andreae: Christianapolis. Introduced and translated by E.H. Thompson. 1999
ISBN 0-7923-5745-0
163. A.P. Coudert, S. Hutton, R.H. Popkin and G.M. Weiner (eds.): Judaeu-Christian Intellectual
Culture in the Seventeeth Century. A Celebration of the Library of Narcissus Marsh (1638-
1713). 1999 ISBN0-7923-5789-2
164. T. Verbeek (ed.): Johannes Clauberg and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century.
1999 ISBN 0-7923-5831-7
165. A. Fix: Fallen Angels. Balthasar Bekker, Spirit Belief, and Confessionalism in the Seventeenth
Century Dutch Republic. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5876-7
166. S. Brown (ed.): The Young Leibniz and his Philosophy ( 1646-76). 2000
ISBN 0-7923-5997-6
167. R. Ward: The Life of Henry More. Parts I and 2. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6097-4
168. Z. Janowski: Cartesian Theodicy. Descartes' Quest for Certitude. 2000
ISBN 0-7923-6127-X
169. J.D. Popkin and R.H. Popkin (eds.): The Abbe Gregoire and his World. 2000
ISBN 0-7923-6247-0
170. C. G. Caffentzis: Exciting the Industry of Mankind. George Berkeley's Philosophy of Money.
2000 ISBN 0-7923-6297-7
171. A. Clericuzio: Elements, Principles and Corpuscles. A Study of Atomisms and Chemistry in
the Seventeenth Century. 2001 ISBN 0-7923-6782-0
172. H. Hotson: Paradise Postponed. Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenari-
anism. 2001 ISBN 0-7923-6787-1
173. M. Goldish and R.H. Popkin (eds.): Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture. Volume I. Jewish Messianism in the Early Modem World. 2001
ISBN 0-7923-6850-9
174. K.A. Kottman (ed.): Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture.Volume
II. Catholic Millenarianism: from Savonarda to the Abbe Gregoire. 2001 ISBN 0-7923-6849-5
175. J.E. Force and R.H. Popkin (eds): Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European
Culture .Volume III. The Millenarium Tum: Millenarian Contexts of Science, Politics and Every-
day Anglo-American Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 2001
ISBN 0-7923-6848-7
176. J.C. Laursen and R.H. Popkin (eds.): Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern
European Culture. Volume IV. Continental Millenarians: Protestants, Catholics, Heretics. 2001
ISBN 0-7923-6847-9

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