Sabbatai Ṣevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676

by Gershom Scholem

Book Overview

Gershom Scholem stands out among modern thinkers for the richness and power of his historical imagination. A work widely esteemed as his magnum opus, Sabbatai Ṣevi offers a vividly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. Sabbatai Ṣevi was an obscure kabbalist rabbi of seventeenth-century Turkey who aroused a fervent following that spread over the Jewish world after he declared himself...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691172099
• ISBN13: 9780691172095
• Release Date: October 2016
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 1096 Pages
• Weight: 3.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.3" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

sometimes fascinating, sometimes dry...

but always informative. Rather than reiterating the other reviewers' comments (all of which I agree with) I wanted to mention a few things about the book that grabbed my attention: 1. That complaints about the popularization of kabbalah was as common 350 years ago as it is today. One rabbi wrote in 1662: "now there have appeared presumptuous men who abuse [kabbalah], turning it into a spade with which to feed themselves. They write books on kabbalistic subjects . . . and even mingle the inventions of their hearts with kabbalistic teachings, until it becomes impossible to distinguish between the words of the kabbalist masters and their own additions." (p. 87). Take that, Madonna! 2. Claims that the Messiah is coming were even more common among Jews in those days as today. Scholem mentions numerou such instances (usually based on gematria, a kind of Jewish numerology involving turning letters from the Bible into numbers and adding up the numbers to achieve interesting results). For example, Kabbalist Moses Cordervero wrote: "Though not delaying the date of redemption, they [our sins] have hidden it so that its light is invisible until the appointed time. But none of these things will be later than the year 408 [1648], and some will occur earlier, such as the resurrection [of the dead] in the Holy Land." (p. 88-89) Instead of getting Messiah, Jews in the Ukraine got massacred in 1648. After the massacres, other rabbis used gematria to show that the Torah predicted the massacres, and asserting that the massacres were the "birth pangs" of the Messianic age (p. 92)- a prediction which of course failed to materialize. For example, one commentator noted that the Hebrew words for "the messianic woes" equalled 408 (Id.) So when you hear someone assert that Jews' current troubles are the birth pangs of Messianic redemption, just remember that the argument has been made before. 3. The use of gematria to persuade people that Sevi was Messiah. For example, Sevi claimed that the numerical value of his name was equal to the numerical value of the Hebrew words "for the true Messiah" and "and God moved." (pp. 234-35). 4. Who Sabbatai Sevi was: a nice, rabbinically trained Jewish boy who was unfortunately under the spell of manic-depression. Even before claiming to be the Messiah, Sevi would do bizarre things in his manic phases: for example, celebrating Jewish festivals at the wrong time of year (p. 162). The Messianic movement may not have been Sevi's idea: Nathan Ashkenazi, a brilliant young rabbi in Gaza, claimed to have had a heavenly vision that Sevi was the Messiah (p. 204-05) and then gradually persuaded Sevi of this "fact" (id. at 215-20). Scholem believes that Nathan was far more energetic than Sevi, "could read people's consciences" (p. 268) and was thus able to persuade them of Sevi's status. And the people persuaded by Nathan wrote other Jews around the globe, causing the Sevi movement to explode. 5. The polarization of the Jewi

One of a Kind

Sabbatai Sevi by Gershom Scholem is a quintessential study of a little understood episode in Jewish history. Often dismissed as a marginal incident supported by marginal players, Scholem systematically outlines the background and broad scope of the acsent and decline of the "mystical messiah" Sabbatai Sevi. Scholem provides rich detail of the intellectual and political climate that paved the way for a mass messianic movement that reached across world Jewry. He documents the level of support that Sabbatai Sevi enjoyed from a critical mass of world Jewish leaders, support that would later be retracted (and denied) after the decline of the movement. The book is a challenging read for individuals without the academic background, but is nonetheless rewarding for those willing to work to digest the high-academic style of much of the writing. Like Scholem's other works, this book is a window to a world of Kabbalistic belief which historically existed in parallel to "traditional" Rabbinic Judaism, quietly passed down and further developed in the shadows. Most importantly, the book portrays the explosive mix of a powerfully appealing ideology with a cultural appetite driven by a sense of desperation.

Both Brilliant and Definitive

How often does a scholar write a text that is uniformly considered definitive? Rarely. However, Scholem's work on Sabbatai Sevi is exactly that. So important is this text, that all other examinations before have fallen away and are no longer studied and almost all that came after are derivative. A brilliant scholar, the author goes to great depths, examining both the historical and philosophical underpinnings of Judaism's largest Messianic movement since Jesus.The author rejects the traditional explanation that followers of Sevi were attracted to him because of the deprivation experienced by some Jews of the period. As Scholem points out, even wealthy communities of Jews in Amsterdam and Greece found him irresistible. Patterns of the growth of the movement are given great attention and are fascinating.Many people are put off by the length of this work (almost 1000 pages of prose). However, the field is so vast, that a shorter book would not have done it justice. While somewhat esoteric, Sabbati Sevi provides a powerful window into a period of Jewish history given too little study.

An exhaustive account of a tragic event in Jewish history

If a book is going to be 1000 pages, it had better have something awfully important to say. Luckily, this tome is an engrossing, heavily detailed account of Sabbatai Sevi, whose influence on Jewish history is usually underestimated. Scholem is the perfect author to write this book: he is the foremost expert on Kabbalah, which was a major influence on the movement. There are times when I felt the book was a little TOO heavy on detail; the book seemed to be dancing the line between dissertation and readable history book. I am glad it erred on the side of too much information, however, and Scholem's writing style (which can sometimes be awfully dense) is quite readable. I strongly recommend this book. I recommend it to Jews who want to know about their history. I recommend it to Christians, since the parallels between Sevi and Jesus are many and deep. Lastly, I recommend it to anyone who has an eye for the tragic, who is prepared to read how human frailty can bring about great acheivements and the noblest of intentions can nearly destroy a people.