#eighth lecture: sabbatianism and mystical heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

To [compare Christianity to Sabbatianism], the fate of the Messiahs is entirely different and so is the religious paradox. The paradox of crucifixion and that of apostasy are after all on two altogether different levels. The second leads straight into the bottomless pit; its very idea makes almost anything conceivable. The shock which had to be surmounted in both cases is greater in the case of Sabbatianism. The believer is compelled to furnish even more emotional energy in order to overcome the terrible paradox of an apostate Savior. Death and apostasy cannot possibly evoke the same or similar sentiments, if only because the idea of betrayal contains even less that is positive. Unlike the death of Jesus, the decisive action (or rather, passion), of Sabbatai Zevi furnished no new revolutionary code of values. His betrayal merely destroyed the old. And so it becomes understandable why the deep fascination exercised by the conception of the helpless Messiah who hands himself over to the demons, if driven to its utmost limits, led directly to nihilistic consequences.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

Similar clear and incontrovertible evidence exists for a state of manic excitement which alternated with these attacks of depression. The Sabbatians later on no longer refer to these varying states of consciousness as the effects of illness. In their view they represent certain states of mind induced by heavenly power for which they employ theological terms—including novel ones of their own making—corresponding in the closest possible manner to the terms depression and exaltation. Their writings refer to a periodic altercation between a state of “illumination” and one of “fall” or “abandon,” an enthusiastic “stand on the highest steps” and a depth of extreme spiritual “poverty and misery.” The accounts of the maniac phase, of which by far the most illuminating comes from Sabbatai Zevi himself, supply the key to the understanding of the rule which his mental affliction had in the formation of his character, for they reveal nothing less than the ideational content of his mania. The truth which they lay bare is strange enough, and its importance for the fate of the Sabbatian movement can hardly be overrated: Sabbatai Zevi, the Kabbalistic ascetic and devotee, feels impelled, under the influence of his maniac enthusiasm, to commit acts which run counter to religious law. A latent antinomianism [rejection of Laws and against moral/religious/social norms] is discernible in these acts—harmless enough at first—to which the Sabbatians gave the restrained but significant name maasim zarim, “strange or paradoxical actions.”

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

In varying theoretical guises the apostles of nihilism preached the doctrine of the existence of spheres in which the process of Tikkun can no longer be advanced by pious acts; Evil must be fought with evil. We are thus gradually led to a position which, as the history of religion shows, occurs with a kind of tragic necessity in every great crisis of the religious mind. I am referring to the fatal, yet at the same time deeply fascinating doctrine of the holiness of sin, that doctrine which in a remarkable way reflects a combination of two widely different elements: the world of moral decadence and another, more primitive, region of the soul in which long-slumbering forces are capable of sudden resurrection. That in the religious nihilism of Sabbatianism, which during the eighteenth century proved so dangerous to the most precious possession of Judaism, its moral substance, both these elements had a share, cannot be proved better than by the tragic history of its last phase, the Frankist movement.

The connection postulated by the Torah between the original sin and the sense of shame confronts the Kabbalists concerned with the Tikkun, the elimination of the stigma of sin, with the awkward problem of the disappearance of shame in the new Messianic state. The opposite solution, that of seeking redemption by “treading upon the vesture of shame,” in the words of a famous phrase ascribed by some Gnostics to Jesus, was openly proclaimed among the radical Sabbatians by Jacob Frank. The ancient and profound word of the Mishnah that it is possible to love God also with the ‘evil impulse’ now received a meaning of which its author had not thought.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

It seems almost unbelievable that a movement [Sabbatianism] based upon such foundations [apostasy of the Messiah] should have been able to influence so great a number of people. One must, however, take into account the existence of an external factor of crucial importance; and that is the part played in the movement by the Sefardic communities. For generations the Marranos in the Iberian peninsula, the offspring of those Jews who, in their hundreds of thousands, went over to Christianity in the persecutions between 1391 and 1498, had been compelled to lead, as it were, a double life. The religion which they professed was not that in which they believed. This dualism could not but endanger, if it did not indeed destroy the unity of Jewish feeling and thinking, and even those who returned to the fold after they or their children had fled from Spain, particularly in the seventeenth century, retained some thing of this peculiar spiritual make-up. The idea of an apostate Messiah could be presented to them as the religious glorification of the very act which continued to torment their own conscience. There have been Marranos who tried to find a justification for their apostasy, and it is significant that all the arguments which they were wont to put forward in defense of their crypto-Judaism, recur later on in the ideology of Sabbatianism, above all the frequent reference to the fate of Queen Esther was supposed to have led a kind of Marranic existence at King Ahasuerus’ court “telling not her race nor her birth,” yet still faithful to the religion of her fathers.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

Of classical Lurianism it can be said that it has no interest at all in the person of the Messiah. It is therefore not at all surprising that when a Messiah appeared who succeeded in winning general recognition, his comparative lack of personal magnetism, to say nothing of his mental peculiarities, was not regarded as a defect. As I have previously mentioned, there are no unforgettable “words of the master,” no “logia,” by Sabbatai Zevi, and nobody seems to have expected any. Only towards the end of the Sabbatian movement do you find in Jacob Frank a strong personality whose very words exercise a considerable though sinister fascination. But this Messiah [Jacob Frank, who claimed to be the reincarnation of Sabbatai Zevi] who for once is a personality in every fiber of his being, is also the most hideous and uncanny figure in the whole history of Jewish Messianism.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

According to Nathan [of Gaza], there exists a certain relationship between the Messiah and the course of all those intrinsic processes of which I have spoken in the last lecture: Tsimtsum, Shevirah and Tikkun. In the beginning of the cosmic process, En-Sof withdrew [Their] light into [Themself], and there arose that primal space in the center of the En-Sof in which all the worlds take birth. This primal space is full of formless, hylic forces, the Kelipoth. The process of the world consists in giving shape to these formless forces, in making something out of them. As long as this has not been done, the primal space, and in particular its lower part, is the stronghold of darkness and evil. It is the “depth of the great abyss” in which the demonic powers have their abode. When, following the Breaking of the Vessels, some sparks of the divine light, radiating from En-Sof in order to create forms and shapes in the primal space, fell into the abyss, there also fell the soul of the Messiah which was embedded in that original divine light. Since the beginning of creation, this soul has dwelt in the depth of the great abyss, held in the prison of the Kelipoth, the realm of darkness. Together with this most holy soul at the bottom of the abyss there dwell the “serpents” which torment it and try to seduce it. To these “serpents” the “holy serpent” is given over which is the Messiah— for has not the Hebrew word for serpent, Nahash, the same numerical value as the word for Messiah, Mashiah? Only in the measure in which the process of the Tikkun of all the world brings about the selection of good and evil in the depth of the primal space, is the soul of the Messiah freed of its bondage. When the process of perfection, on which this soul is at work in its “prison” and for which it struggles with the “serpents” or “dragons,” is completed—which, however, will not be the case before the end of the Tikkun generally—the soul of the Messiah will leave its prison and reveal itself to the world in an earthly incarnation. Thus Nathan of Gaza. It is a matter of the deepest interest that one encounters the writings of a youth from the Ghetto of Jerusalem in the seventeenth century an age-old Gnostical myth of the fate of the Redeemer’s soul, built up from Kabbalistic ideas but nevertheless obviously intended as an apology for Sabbatai Zevi’s pathological state of mind. Were it not for the fact that the raw material of this Kabbalistic doctrine is actually to be found in the Zohar and in the Lurianic writings, one would be tempted to postulate an intrinsic, though to us obscure, connection between the first Sabbatian myth and that of the ancient Gnostical school known as Ophites or as Naassenes who placed the mystical symbolism of the serpent in the center of their Gnosis.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

Solomon ben Abraham Laniado of Aleppo, an enthusiastic Sabbatian even after the apostasy of the Messiah, relates in a letter to Kurdistan what he was himself told by Sabbatai Zevi when the latter passed through Aleppo in the late summer of 1665: “Since 1648, the holy spirit and a great ‘illumination’ had come over him; it was his practice to pronounce the name of God in accordance with its letters and to commit various strange acts, because it seemed to him that to act in this way was right for many reasons and for purposes of acts of Tikkun which he proposed to carry out. But those who saw him did not understand these matters and he was like a fool in their eyes. And frequently our teachers in the holy land punished him for his wicked actions which were far removed from common-sense, so that he was compelled to part company with other people and to wander into the desert….And sometimes he was overcome by a great depression, but at other times he saw something of the glory of the Shekhinah. Often, too, God tried him with great temptations, and he overcame them all.” Laniado even asserts that when the “illumination” had passed from him, “he was like a normal man and regretted the strange things he had done, for he no longer understood their reason as he had understood it when he committed them.”

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

If it be true that Kabbalah gave expression to the prevalent mood of the age, then nothing seems more natural than that there should have been the closest correspondence between the historical conditions which moulded the fate of the Jewish people in this epoch of Kabbalist ascendancy, and the inner development of Jewish religious thought, including all its new forms. A people which had suffered from all the tribulations which exile and persecution could bring, and which at the same time had developed an extremely sensitive consciousness of life actually lived between the poles of exile and redemption, needed little to take the final step to Messianism.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

this eighth lecture from major trends on Sabbatianism is truly wild… an apostate Messiah, definitely mentally ill… sacred sin in a world full of sinners, to usher in the new order…. all very fascinating, especially wrt the crypto-Jews after the Spanish expulsion. excited to post some quotes from it.

i’m especially interested in the idea of holy sin… the profane also being sublime, the Messiah as a monster… all very interesting

[ouroboros8ontology]

As a Kabbalist and a scholar [Sabbatai Zevi] does not appear to have raised himself above mediocrity. The emotional side of his character was more fully developed: he was unusually musical, fond of singing and listening to song… and the singing of the Psalms, for which he had a special fondness, moved him easily and deeply.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

Here then we have a clear description of Sabbatai Zevi’s State of mind. Of the temptations to which he was subjected in his fits of depression a great deal is said, especially in the writings of Nathan of Gaza, and we are told that they were of a demonic and erotic character. In brief, we have before us a man who felt himself pursued by demons during periods of melancholy depression which exposed him to a severe physical and mental strain, and who above all was the helpless victim of these forces. On the other hand, he shared with others of the same physical type who were like him men of a remarkable moral or intellectual level the gift of a strong personal suggestive power over others. This personal magnetism, however, was bound up with his states of exaltation and did not survive them.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

Samuel Gandor, who in the summer of 1665 was sent from Egypt to Gaza in order to investigate the events which had taken place there. This enthusiastic follower of Sabbatai Zevi and traveling companion of Nathan has left us the following description of his master: “It is said of Sabbatai Zevi that for fifteen years he has been bowed down by the following affliction: he is pursued by a sense of depression which leaves him no quiet moment and does not even permit him to read, without his being able to say what is the nature of this sadness which has come upon him. Thus he endures it until the depression departs from the spirit, when he returns with great joy to his studies. And for many years already he has suffered from this illness, and no doctor has found a remedy for it, but it is one of the sufferings which are inflicted by Heaven.”

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

Sabbatai Zevi was physically a sick man. To some extent this truth has of course been suspected before; people have talked of paranoia or hysteria. But a mass of documentary evidence now available shows that his affliction was in fact of a somewhat different nature. He was constitutionally a manic-depressive, that is to say he belonged to a type whose lack of mental balance displays itself in alternate fits of deepest gloom and most uncontrollable exuberance and exaggerated joy… The evidence of his biographers permits us to conclude that he showed the first traits of his mental affliction between his sixteenth and his twentieth year.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

For the first time in the history of medieval Jewry, the rigid emotional and intellectual attitude born from the continuity of life under the undisputed dominance of the Mosaic and rabbinical Law gave way to a new mood. The positive influence of this way of life over the Jewish mind had been so great that for centuries no movement, least of all an organized movement, had rebelled against the values linked up with the practical fulfillment of the Law. This is all the more remarkable as Orthodox Judaism by its very nature offered much greater scope to antinomian [rejection of Laws and against moral/religious/social norms] explosions than either Christianity or Islam, which yet had far oftener to contend with them. For the causes of this apparent contradiction one must go back to certain external historical factors, such as the strong instinct of self-preservation in Jewry which sensed the subversive nature of antinomian tendencies; the historical situation of Jewry was such as to make this danger only too real. One must also take into account the fact that for individuals who rebelled against the Law the obvious course was to seek a way out of the Jewish community and to enter the non-Jewish fold. Only a mystical interpretation of the fundamental categories of the Law and the Redemption was capable of preparing the ground for antinomian tendencies which strove to maintain themselves within the general framework of Judaism. On the other hand, the antinomian rebellion, when it came, was all the wilder while it lasted and engulfed a large part of the Sabbatian movement, its radical wing, to use a modern term.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

I regard it as important to follow the course of this movement, if only because the part which Sabbatianism played in the spiritual development of Jewry during the generations that followed, is generally underrated. Sabbatianism represents the first serious revolt in Judaism since the Middle Ages; it was the first case of mystical ideas leading directly to the disintegration of the orthodox Judaism of “the believers.” Its heretical mysticism produced an outburst of more or less veiled nihilistic tendencies among some of its followers. Finally it encouraged a mood of religious anarchism on a mystical basis which, where it coincided with favorable external circumstances, played a highly important part in creating a moral and intellectual atmosphere favorable to the reform movement of the nineteenth century.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy

[ouroboros8ontology]

Nathan [of Gaza] does not himself practice antinomianism [rejection of Laws and against moral/religious/social norms]; he interprets it. He raises an indefinable state of exaltation with its euphoria, which manifest itself in absurd, bizarre and sacrilegious actions, to the rank of a “sacred act” in which a sublime reality becomes manifest: the state of the new “world of Tikkun.” The meeting of these two personalities made the Sabbatian movement.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Eighth Lecture: Sabbatianism and Mystical Heresy