maoz kahana - the allure of forbidden knowledge - the temptation of sabbatean literature for...

8/10/2019 Maoz Kahana - The Allure of Forbidden Knowledge - The Temptation of Sabbatean Literature for Mainstream Rabbis in the Frankist Moment

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T H E J E W I S H Q U A RT E R LY R E V I E W , Vol. 102, No. 4 (Fall 2012) 589616

The Allure of Forbidden Knowledge:The Temptation of Sabbatean Literaturefor Mainstream Rabbis in the Frankist

Moment, 17561761M A O Z K A H A N A

For that Sabbatai Zevicursed be his nameled astray a number of the greatest men of the generation and outstanding scholars . . . they left the fold and spoke evil regarding the Oral Law . . . but when aTsadik sweetens their words, he transforms their sayings back intoTorah.

Rabbi Nah. man of Bratzlav1

SE V E N T Y-F I V E Y E A R S

after the death of Sabbatai Zevi in 1676 inremote Albania, Sabbateanism remained an issue of major public concernfor Jewish society. By the eighteenth century, Sabbateanism had becomea catch-all for a broad family of beliefs ascribed to both groups and indi- viduals throughout the Jewish dispersion. But no less disturbing was the percolation of Sabbatean ideas into mainstream writings. In 1752, RabbiJacob Emden (Yaavets) published a blacklist of suspected works: Thefollowing books have absorbed the venom of this snake in certain con-cealed parts . . . for now it sufces to demonstrate the extent to which this

This study is an expanded version of a chapter of my dissertation FromPrague to Pressburg: Halakhic Writing in a Changing World: From the Noda bi- yehudah to the H . atam sofer, 17301839 (Hebrew; Hebrew University of Jerusa- lem, 2010; (forthcoming version, Shazar Publication House, Jerusalem). The dis-sertation was generously supervised by Michael Silber. I want to thank him as well as Yehuda Liebes, Jonathan Garb, and Gavriel Wasserman for their sensi- tive reading and signicant comments.

1. R. Nah. man of Bratzlaw, Likute moharan (Warsaw, 1934), I, 207. Regarding

this source, see Yehuda Liebes, On Sabbateanism and Its Kabbalah (Hebrew; Jeru-salem, 1995), 24950.

The Jewish Quarterly Review (Fall 2012)Copyright 2012 Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved.


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THE ALLURE OF FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGEKAHANA 591

the place occupied by Sabbatean literature on the kabbalistic-Lurianicshelf of the contemporary rabbinic library.

HOLY WRITINGS OR HERETICAL WORKS?In 1752, at the height of the mounting polemic between Emden and R.Jonathan Eibeschu tz, R. Ezekiel Landau (171393) composed a letter of compromise. The letter was sent from Yampol, Volhynia (where Landauserved as rabbi) to seven of the greatest Ashkenazic communities, where the controversy had escalated into a series of mutual excommunications. 4

In order to end the quarrel and make peace in the world, R. Landausought to suppress the supposedly Sabbatean amulets issued by R. Eibe-schu tz, yet at the same time to declare Eibeschu tzs personal innocenceand clear him of all blame. At the conclusion of his convoluted efforts toresolve the confrontation between the pair, Landau added an unambigu-ous and penetrating paragraph calling for an awakening:

I have come to awaken the hearts of all the great men of the landregarding the books of magic and heresy that have been found in ourcountry . . . [that aim] to deny heretically the basic truths . . . to uprootand remove all traces of the root of the belief of Israel . . . Believe me,

amongst all gentile faiths . . . I have not heard such heresy as this. I will describe the writings and mention them by name . . . the rst begins with And I Came this Day to the Fountain . . . it denies theProvidence of the Eternal, a greater heresy than that of Aristotle andhis peers . . . saying that [the Creators] strength has diminished . . . the second is a commentary on Song of Songs . . . [the third,] theScroll of Esther, while the fourth discusses mystical intentions for the blowing of the rams horn. Therefore arise and stir yourselves! For

these writings have spread throughout almost the majority of theregions of Podolia, where they are considered holy writings. Arise and ban each pamphlet by name, and excommunicate the rst author to produce such writings, as well as all those who possess and copy such writings in order to learn from them . . . issue a printed proclamationof a severe excommunication, to vilify and curse its author . . . and

4. The letter was addressed and sent to an extensive audience: The heads and leaders of the congregations of Jeshurun . . . in the lands of Ashkenaz (i.e., Ger-

many), France, Moravia, and especially to the seven great communities, whichhe lists as Frankfurt am Main, Altona, Hamburg, Wandsbek, Metz, Nikolsburg,and Amsterdam (Josef Prager, Gah . ale esh, vol. 2 [Hebrew; Oxford MS Mich.107], 118b). On the polemic and its ramications, see, e.g., Schacter Emden,370498; Pawel Maciejko, The Jews Entry into the Public Sphere: TheEmden-Eibeschu tz Controversy Reconsidered, Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow- Instituts 6 (2007): 13554.


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those who study and possess them, and send instructions in print to this end to all communities of Israel in every country . . . Ezekiel. 5

R. Landau saw the turbulence surrounding Eibeschu tz and his handfulof amulets as a minor issue relative to the far greater problemthe spreadand attraction of Sabbatean writings, which the masses viewed as holy writings. This literature, partly associated with the acclaimed gure of Eibeschu tz,6 boasted numerous copiers and possessors among theJews of Podolia. Its circulation was not limited to members of the Sabba- tean sect proper, and its success necessitated a sharp contravening moveof separation. Thus, Landaus approach was to oppose Eibeschu tz himself only by moderate means, and even to turn a blind eye to his peccadilloes. At the same time, heretical literature (including Eibeschu tzs attributedcomposition) should be fought unambiguously. In this way, he hoped that Eibeschu tz would come to disavow his own heretical writings, thus weakening the link between the rabbinic establishment and the Sabba- tean literature. He urged bans against this literature in order to reestab- lish the recently blurred boundaries between acceptable and inadmissible writings. A whole genre perceived by many Podolian Jews as holy writ-ings was in fact heretical! It was this aspect of the ongoing controversy

that Landau, the Rabbi of Yampol, sought to emphasize.European Sabbateanism in the mid-eighteenth century was frequently

a diverse, shadowy phenomenonan open secret, whose existence wasknown but not always exposed and analyzed. Sabbateanism occurred in the environs of the traditional community; typically it was neither publiclynor sharply distinguished from the correct faith. The Sabbatean manu-script, like the Sabbatean believer himself, exploited the widespread dis-semination of kabbalistic-Lurianic culture. It was not easily differentiatedfrom holy writings based on R. Isaac Luria (the Ari) and his followers, which at the time were at the height of their popularity. 7 This blurring

5. Gah. ale esh, Part 2, 132a133a. Other, printed versions and translation arementioned below.

6. They attach themselves to a great person . . . (Gah. ale esh, Part 2,125b); for secret matters came from him (ibid., 133b).

7. See, e.g., Jacob Elbaum, Openness and Insularity: Late Sixteenth-Century Jew-ish Literature in Poland and Ashkenaz (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1990); Yosef Avivi, Kab- bala Luriana (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2008); Zeev Gries, Printing and Publishing:

Printing and Publishing before 1800, in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Printing_and_Publishing/Printing_and_Publishing_before_1800 (accessed July 18, 2010); Moshe Idel, Mysti-cism and Mystical Literature, YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. http:// www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Mysticism_and_Mystical_Literature (acces-sed July 18, 2010). Sabbateanism itself, as Gries and others have argued, playedan important role in this popularity.


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of boundariesthe ramications of which bedevil Sabbatean and Hasidicresearch to this day 8 was also a troublesome issue for the scholars of the time, of course in relation to their own set of concerns. 9 Landau attempted

to divert Emdens zealous advocacy of segregation away from the specicgure of Eibeschu tz toward the diffuse Sabbatean literature, whose pamphlets had been copied time and again, and which had spread throughoutalmost the majority [!] of the regions of Podolia. 10

The letter of compromise received much attention. Both antagonists printed it in their respective books, 11 and, as Landau had feared, 12 each

8. The book H . emdat yamimits sources, composition, and ways in which it was acceptedoffers an instructive example of this vagueness. There is a vast literature about this book. See among others Avraham Yaari, Talumat sefer(Jerusalem, 1954); Isaiah Tishby, Netive emunah u-minut (Ramat Gan, 1964), and the detailed research survey in M. Fogel, The Sabbateanism of the Book H . emdat yamim: A Reconsideration, ed. R. Elior, The Dream and Its Interpretation (Hebrew;Jerusalem, 2001), part 2, 365422.

9. By the mid-eighteen century this concern already had a long history, typi-ed by the stormy conicts regarding Neh . emiah H. ayon, Abraham Cardozo, andMoses H. ayyim Luzzatto. The specic arena of R. Landau and Katzenellenbogen,discussed here, is one more instantiation of these affairs. See, for instance, Elis-heva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Hersey: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Contro-versies (New York, 1990) 75256.

10. Gah. ale esh, Part 2, 132a133a. For an analysis of Emdens modus ope-randi and his Weltanschauung, see Schacter, Emden; David Sorotzkin, TheTimeless Community in an Age of Change: The Emergence of Conceptions of Time and the Collective as the Basis for the Development of Jewish Orthodoxyin Early and Late Modern Europe (Hebrew; Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew Uni- versity, 2007), 15890.

11. It was rst incorporated by Eibeschutz in Luh . ot edut (Altona, 1755), 41.Emden claimed that the former had omitted and/or distorted all inconvenient sections of Landaus missive ( Edut be-yaakov [Altona, 1756], 27b) and proceeded to publish a more complete version in his book Petah . enaim (Altona, 1755), 78, with the parenthetical additions of his own highly disputatious barbs. The form of the letter as it appears in Gah. ale esh, the source of my quotation, is the most reliableand complete of these versions. Shnayer Z. Leiman plans to publish a reconstruc- tion of the original Hebrew letter based upon several versions in the forthcomingSimon Schwarzfuchs Festschrift. In the meantime, an English translation has nowappeared in Shnayer Z. Leiman, Rabbi Ezekiel Landau: Letter of Reconciliation,Tradition 43.4 (2010): 8596. See also David Kahana, A History of Sabbatean and Hassidic Kabbalists, Based on Old and New Sources (Hebrew; Odessa, 1926); M. A.

Perlmutter, Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschu tz and His Attitude toward Sabbateanism: New Studies Based on the Manuscript of the Book Vaavo Hayom el HaAyin (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1947), 4851; and Shnayer Z. Leiman, When a Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy: R. EzekielLandaus Attitude toward R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz in the Emden-EibeschuetzControversy, in From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox,ed. J. Neusner, E.S. Frerichs, and N. Sarna (Atlanta, 1989), 3:17994.

12. Gah. ale esh, 130a; 131b.


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used it to his own advantage. Conversely, the call for a literary ban hada limited effect. The rabbis of the Brody kloyz assembled in September of the same year (1752). They rejected the proposition of their colleague,

the Head of the Court of Yampol; they preferred an indulgent attitude toward the amulets in question, although they did issue a ban on the pamphlets listed in his letter. 13 Beyond this local declaration by Landaushometown bet midrash,14 no move toward the exclusion of these texts was undertaken at this point in time by any of the great people of the land whose support the impassioned writer had hoped to enlist.

TO MEND A FENCE

A different statement of Ezekiel Landaus is recorded in an undated responsum in the rst volume of Noda bi-yehudah, published in Prague in1776. The following paragraph was written in connection with a seem-ingly run-of-the-mill halakhic discussion regarding the correct writtenform of certain letters in a Torah scroll. Earlier discussions of this topichad cited the Zohar among other sources of halakhah and customsanot unusual occurrence. 15 Surprisingly, Landau interrupts his analysis of the case in order to comment on a worrisome state of affairs:

Now, regarding the words of the Zohar, I do not wish to speak at length. How I am angered by those who study the book of the Zoharand the Kabbalistic literature in public. They remove the yoke of therevealed Torah from their necks, and chirp and make noises over the book of the Zohar, thus losing out on both, causing the Torah to beforgotten from Israel. Furthermore, since our generation has seen anincrease in the heretics of the sect of Sabbatai Zevi, may his bones rot,it would be proper to mend a fence and prohibit the study of the Zohar

and the Kabbalistic texts . . . in any case, we do not rule halakhah from the Zohar. 16 I do not wish to speak at length regarding the meaning of

13. Gah. ale esh, 140b; Aspaklarya ha-meirah (Altona, 1752), 95a; Petah .enayim 15a.

14. Landau was a member of the kloyz between 1732 and 1745, at which pointhe left for the position he held at the time, Rabbi of Yampol.

15. See, e.g., the Responsa of the Maharshal, 73; R. Menahem Lonzano, OrTorah (Berlin, 1745), section Behaalotkha and others. These two sources arecited by Landau in his responsa.

16. This expression is a paraphrase of the well-known statement of Shemuelin yHag 1.8: Rav Zeira [said] in the name of Shemuel: we do not teach [Halak-hah] from mishnah, nor from legends, nor from additional teachings, but onlyfrom Talmud. Landau rephrases the saying to t his rejection of the Zohar as asource.


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directed against particular Sabbatean pamphlets that had successfullyinltrated legitimate mystical texts but against the Zohar and kabbalistic literature as a whole. The escalation of heretical activities necessitates

a clear renunciation of kabbalistic literature in all its varieties. The living bearers of its traditions ( magidim of all types) must be removed, like their literary sources, from both the public realm and halakhic writing.

The common thread in both of Landaus reactions is his literary sensi- tivitythe cultural sources of the heretical Sabbatean sect disturbed himmore than any eeting controversy. The struggle to congure a legitimate library was an important part of his battle against the Sabbateans. Yetalthough Landau rst names and then seeks to ban the Sabbatean holy

writings, he subsequently demands a broad public enactment that would proscribe the entire kabbalistic tradition by prohibiting all study of theZohar and kabbalistic texts. The reason for this intriguing discrepancy between the two pronouncements is not immediately apparent.

WINTER 1756

While the date of the responsum is omitted from the printed editions of Noda bi-yehudah, a copy can be found in the notebooks of its addressee,R. Pinh. as of Boskowitz.

20 The manuscript enables us to establish the dateas Friday, 19 Adar I, 5516 (February 20, 1756). This dating claries theurgency and the harsh tone that holds sway over what should have beena normal halakhic exchange. On 1 Tevet (December 1, 1755), JacobFrank had crossed the Dniester into Poland. During his ostentatiouscampaign through Podolia, he had openly solicited groups of Sabbatean believers, occasionally clashing with the rabbinical establishment. 21 Twomonths later, on the eve of 26 Tevet (January 28, 1756), Frank and hissupporters were discovered in Lanckorona conducting a Sabbatean-

nihilist ritual ceremony. This incident snowballed into arrests, hearings, persecutions, and eventually into a frontal confrontation on a vast scale. As it ran its convoluted course (lasting roughly three years), the clash between the rabbis of the region and the Frankist groupunder the par- tisan patronage of the local bishop, Dembowskyescalated into twodramatic public debates (in Kamieniec Podolski and Lwow), an extraor-dinary blood libel which featured counteraccusations between Jews and the burning of the Talmud (in the wake of the rst debate) and culmi-

20. Katzenellenbogen, Derashot ve-h . idushim, Oxford University BodleanLibrary, MS Heb. E. 13, 12a12b.

21. See M. S. Balaban, Le-toldot ha-tenuah ha-frankit (Tel Aviv, 1926), 1217;and Dov Ber of Bolechovs Divre binah, in Studies in Galician Jewry, ed. A.Y.Brawer (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1956), 214.


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nated in Franks baptism, along with the conversion of many hundredsof his devotees to Christianity. 22

Landaus responsum coincides with the early stages of these develop-

ments, whose denouement was certainly not envisioned at the time. R.Pinh. as of Boskowitzs innocent question regarding the laws of letters ina Torah scroll caught Landau in the middle of the maelstromless than three months after Franks return to Poland, and within three weeks of the incident at Lanckorona.

It appears that the increase in the heretics in this particular periodimbued an ordinary halakhic discussion concerning scribal duties with asense of impending crisis, thus leading Landau to react with such inten-sity. As the newly installed rabbi and head of the court in Prague, whohad only recently departed Volhynia in the summer of 1755, Landauappears to have reacted swiftly and harshly to the unfolding of events in the provinces of his youth. 23

This increase in the heretics in this specic context should not be taken as a factual account of a surge in the number of the various Sabba- tean groups scattered throughout the Habsburg Empire and the kingdomof Poland in the eighteenth century. The exposure of a dormant Sabba- teanism to the public eye, carried out by Jacob Frank with much fanfare,entailed an increase of heretics that went beyond a correction of the earlier rabbinical refusal to recognize the strength of the sects beliefs in thehearts of seemingly mainstream Jews. The Frankist disclosure of variousSabbatean groups throughout Europe also provided a solution of sorts to their existence, which was often indistinct and confusing in their owneyes as well: they were now the subjects of clearly dened, separate cul- tish beliefs, an unambiguous heresy in the eyes of the majority. In anycase, Landaus reaction goes beyond the usual denunciation of a heresy

and the concomitant call to excommunicate it. The broad fence he wished to erect would serve to designate a community puried from both theactual heretics and from the source material shared by the rabbinicalcommunity and its Sabbatean rival: the Zohar and the kabbalistic texts.

This expanding literary exclusion apparently reects two stages of aninternal modication in Landaus basic attitude toward kabbalistic litera-

22. See Balaban, Tenuah ha-frankit , 1217; Pawel Maciejko, The Developmentof the Frankist Movement in Poland, the Czech Lands, and Germany (1755 1816) (Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, 2003), 1960 (cf. his book based on the dissertation The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 17551816 [Philadelphia, 2011]). On the different sources regarding the precise number of converts, see ibid., 4445.

23. For more on the extent of his knowledge of contemporary affairs, seeKahana, From Prague to Pressburg, 22, n. 48.


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ture and its preachers. Various sources attest to his earlier acceptance of and personal involvement in the circulation of printed works of Kabbalahand the kabbalistic magidim throughout his many years at the Brody kloyz

(173245) and the Yampol rabbinate (174555). 24 This positive outlookis in keeping with his active objection to any perverted Kabbalah that was clearly Sabbatean in nature, as seen from his 1752 declaration.

By contrast, the statement he issued in the halakhic ruling, which Ihave dated to early 1756, expresses a negative view of the very standingof Kabbalah in contemporary Jewish culture. At this particular juncturehe loudly and roundly rejects its public study, proposing a collective public veto on any type of Kabbalah study, whether of the acceptable kind

or otherwise. It is in this context that the representative character of the wandering (or stationary) magid is transformed into a menacing gure.From this point on, R. Landaus letters of approval to homiletic worksinclude warnings and attach conditions on wandering preachers andrevealing of secrets, even when no Sabbatean inuence was identied. 25

The almost forty years he was to spend in Prague (1755 to 1793) onlyserved to entrench and deepen his hostility to Kabbalahthis in a man who himself had grown up, been educated, and had been unconditionally

active in an environment saturated with it.26

Due to the intensity of ongoing events, Landaus call on this occasionreceived a speedy and noteworthy response. Three months later, after theconclusion of the rabbinical courts investigations in Satano w into theLanckorona affair, a number of rabbis (including friends and relatives of Landau) gathered in Brody and promulgated a writ of excommunicationagainst the Frankists. Yet, unlike previous bans issued against Sabbatean-sim, this excommunication was not only directed outward in an effort toisolate the proscribed group but also erected a surprising fence facing the community left inside, exactly in accordance with Landaus wordsand intentions in his communication to Rabbi Katzenellenbogen. Thisfence mandated that the minimum age for the study of the Zohar was

24. See Kahana, From Prague to Pressburg, 7388, and compare an alter-native, important attitude: Sharon Flatto, The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-Century Prague: Ezekiel Landau (the Noda Biyehudah) and his Contemporaries(Oxford, 2010), 11189.

25. See Mendel Pierkarz, The Beginning of Hasidism: Ideological Trends in Derush and Musar Literature (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1978), 14547; Kahana, FromPrague to Pressburg, 47; 83.

26. Kahana, From Prague to Pressburg, 7388; Maoz Kahana and MichaelK. Silber, Deists, Sabbateans and Kabbalists in Prague: A Censored Sermon of R. Ezekiel Landau 1770 (Hebrew), Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mys-tical Texts 21 (2010): 37178; and cf. Flatto, Kabbalistic Culture, 97232.


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thirty; in regard to the writings of the Ari and the rest of the kabbalistic literature, the requisite age was forty. 27

Two months later, this excommunication, titled The Double-edged

Sword, was partly ratied at the gathering of the Council of Four Landsin Konstantyno w28 and henceforth became the ofcial policy of the lead-ership of Eastern European Jewry. 29 At this stage Landaus earlierrequest was also grantedthe excommunication included not only the believers in Sabbatai Zevi and Nathan of Gaza but also anyone who possessed the Sabbatean pamphlets mentioned in his 1752 warning. Therelevant clause read, and the excommunication shall apply to anyone who owns the aforementioned impure books, unless he burns them,

including the names of God they contain.30

The 1756 Frankist outbreak was not the only factor that led RabbiLandau to adapt a combative approach to the kabbalistic culturalsupremacy of his surroundings, 31 but its contribution was clearly decisivein his efforts to formulate an alternative. In opposition to the ZohariteSabbatean-Frankists, who rejected the Talmud (Contratalmudists, as they were known at the time), Landau presented the mirror-image of therabbinic talmudist, whose knowledge is puried from kabbalistic dross. A contemporary confrontation had thus served to redene, and sharplyreshape, the boundaries of rabbinic culture.

RABBI PINH. AS KATZENELLENBOGEN

KABBALAH AND SABBATEANISM

The aforementioned fence had indeed been constructed, but ofcial deci-sions, of course, merely present a narrow view of actual reality. A differ-

27. The writ of excommunication was printed in proclamations, reprinted by Y. Cohen-Tzeddek, Otsar h . okhmah (Lwow, 1859), 1:2228. A correspondingdescription of the excommunication was printed in 1758 by Emden ( Sefer shimush7b), which provides the source for The Records of the Council of the Four Lands,compiled and annotated by I. Bartal, Y. Halperin, and S. Ettinger (Hebrew;Jerusalem, 1990), section 753. Regarding the link between Landaus letter and the Brody excommunication, see Kahana From Prague to Pressburg, 22, n. 50.On the development of the different traditions regarding the limit of Kabbalahstudy to age forty, see Moshe Idel, On the History of the Interdiction against the Study of Kabbalah before the Age of Forty, AJS Review 5 (1980): 1*20*.

28. The distinguished backgrounds, contexts, and contents of Brody and Kon-stantyno w bans can be traced through Pawel Maciejko, Baruch Yavan and theFrankist Movement: Intercession in an Age of Upheaval, Jahrbuch des Simon- Dubnow-Instituts 4 (2005): 33354.

29. Halperin, The Records, sections 75153.30. Ibid.31. See Kahana and Silber, A Censored Sermon.


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Zohar and the rabbinic masters, the writings of Katzenellenbogen pro- vide the best demonstration of the nonexistence of any such demarcation.His life and writings combine diligent study and uninterrupted study of

Talmud, the halakhic authorities, and novel teachings of Torah, alongsidehis correspondence regarding Kabbalah, visionary dreams, the use of kabbalistic and magical talismans, and dealings with various kabbalisticNames, some of which he learnt from books, others from living mystics.Naturally, his rabbinical service was not disconnected from his writteninterests. 35 A survey of his attitude toward Sabbateanism reveals theextent to which his viewpoint differed from that of R. Landau.

Yesh manh .ilin, interestingly enough, was composed between 1758 and

1761, at the height of the Frankist confrontation discussed above. At the beginning of this book of his testament, Katzenellenbogen recorded hischildhood relationship with two wondrous mystics in 17045, during the period of his stay with his father in Fu rth:

A holy and pure man . . . his faith was in the hidden secrets of Torah,and all the pious ( H . asidim), including their most learned and ascetic, would approach him in order to draw living waters from his well of

kabbalistic wisdom . . . My fathermy master, teacher and rabbialsoattended him . . . his name was the Sage, our Master, Abraham Rovigo,may his memory be blessed, and let his merit be in our stead forever.His student who served him, our Master Rabbi Mordecai from theholy community of Lwow, he cleaved unto his masters Torah andfaith, 36 until he merited . . . that a [heavenly] Magid was revealed tohim in the form of his perfectly wise rabbi ( h . akham ha-shalem), thesame Master, Rabbi Abraham Rovigo. He studied the wisdom of the

Kabbala with him, and revealed secrets to him until he wrote a book onseveral passages from the Zohar, called Eshel avraham after the Rabbi[Rovigo] . . . since I know that our Master, Rabbi Mordecai, was not learned enough to be versed in the Talmud, he must have obtained theknowledge as a gift from Heaven for serving the great man . . . for Ihave known him [Abraham Rovigo] from my youthhis countenance

35. See, e.g., Yesh manh .ilin, section 31.36. By the recurring expression his faith Katzenellenbogen might be refer-

ring to Rovigos Sabbatean beliefs: in the faith of the righteous man; mistakenin his faith. See Y. Tishby, Netive emunah u-minutmasot u-mekhkarim be-sifrut ha-kabala ve-hashabetaut (Tel Aviv, 1964), 22930; Gershom Scholem, Shabethai Zebi veha-tenua ha-shabtait bi-yeme h . ayav (Tel Aviv, 1957), 2:822 (index), maa- minim.


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through the pages of this manuscript, which was also brought by theexigencies of history to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, we will discoveran interesting composition, roughly fteen pages in length, which in-

cludes the following lines: penitential rectications ( tikune teshuva) sentfrom Gaza, instituted by our most dignied teacher, Rabbi Nathan the Prophet Ashkenazi. 44 Katzenellenbogen kept this manuscriptincluding the penitential rectications of Nathan of Gazain his private library for many years, dating back to his Fu rth period. On one summersday in 1756 45 he added a comment of his own, identifying the copyist of the writings he had brought from Fu rth as none other than AbrahamRovigo. 46

Just as the reference to Nathan of Gaza did not lead Katzenellenbogen to burn the Sabbatean manuscript, or even remove it from his house, soRovigos afliation with Sabbateanism, clearly established by the manu-script, failed to induce the author to repudiate his youthful relationship with the latter. Nor did it have any noticeable effect on his reverential portrayal of the holy, pure man, 47 written in 1758, more than two yearsafter the outbreak of the conicts between Frank and the rabbis inPodolia.

Katzenellenbogens esteem for Rovigo belongs also to the realm of themystical. Like Mordecai Ashkenazi, the youthful Katzenellenbogen hadseen Rovigo in a dream, in which he taught him the relevant biblical verseassigned esoterically to his name. Even when writing his comment on theSabbatean rectication, more than fty years after this vision, Katzen-ellenbogen continued to recite that verse on a daily basis: since I meritedfrom heaven that he show it to me, and I heard it from that holy, puremouth. 48 This leads to the inevitable question: was Katzenellenbogen

44. Shulh. an Arukh of the Ari and Other Kabbalistic Writings (Hebrew;Oxford manuscript, MS Mich. 36 ), 214a. These lines are inserted between the lines in pages 214b and 228b. This manuscript, mentioning the rectications of Nathan of Gaza, has been noted by Scholem, Shabbetai Zevi, 460, n. 1. On theidentity of the copyist and its implications for the dissemination of Sabbateanism by Rovigo during his Fu rth days, see Tishby, who also mentions Katzenellenbo-gens aforementioned comments on this manuscript: Doctor Rabbi Meirs Let- ters to Rabbi Abraham Rovigo, 16751680 (Hebrew), Sefunot 2/3 (195960):7784.

45. June 18, 1756. Interestingly, the Hebrew date was 20 Sivan 5516, thesame date as the Frankist excommunication in Brody.

46. Shulh. an Arukh of the Ari, 259a. 47. Shulh. an Arukh of the Ari, 259a; in the same year, using the same

expression, see Yesh manh .ilin, section 6. 48. Shulh. an Arukh of the Ari, 259a. With slight variations, he copied this

two years later into his testament; Yesh manh .ilin, section 6.


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who kept a Sabbatean manuscript in his home and who recorded his andhis fathers relations with Rovigo and Ashkenazi in unreservedly affec- tionate terms, was he a distinguished rabbi of a standard community, and

a secret believer in Sabbateanism at the same time?Interestingly, it appears that troublesome thoughts of this kind actually

occurred to Katzenellenbogen himself. On November 17, 1758, 49 roughly two and a half years after writing his rst comment, 50 he added anothernote, prominently positioned at the head of the binding of the Shulh . anArukh of the Ari (which included the aforementioned Sabbatean manu-script). This note was written in the course of his use of Nathan of Gazas penitential recticationshe had copied parts of it for he own purposes,

excellent words, as he put it.51

After praising Rovigo once again, Kat-zenellenbogen sought to rid himself of any suspicion:

Now I have observed in this book that he calls Nathan of Gaza a trueand righteous prophet . . . the same man who prophesied falselyregarding Sabbatai Zevi, may his name be blotted out, who caused agreat stumbling-block. Lest anyone suspect me, God forbid, of beingone of them, far be it for [me] the seed of father, our holy teacher, mayhis memory be blessed, and the faith of the righteous, may he live

forever. However, we do not criticize the lion [Ari], that God-fearing, righteous man; one should not be astonished even if he wrotesuch things, for in those days, in the year 1666, most communities of Israel believed in those strange matters. But their disgrace has since been revealed, and no more need be said. 52

The unease of the owner of the Sabbatean manuscript at the time is evi-dent to anyone who glances at it. Alongside this note, at the head of the binding, Katzenellenbogen scribbled a few short words of reservationnext to the praises of Nathan the Prophet, on the opening page of theSabbatean rectication itself. He added similar comments to the closing page as well. 53

49. Shulh. an Arukh of the Ari, 259a. The page was originally placed at thehead of the binding of the writings. It is dated Friday, on the eve of Shabbat Parashat Vayyera, 16 H. eshvan 5519 [1759].

50. Shulh. an Arukh of the Ari, 259a.51. Shulh. an Arukh of the Ari, 259a. On the signicance of penitential recti-

cations for Rabbi Pinchas, see Yesh manchilin, sections 3846; Kahana FromPrague to Pressburg, 4951.52. Shulh. an Arukh of the Ari, 259a.53. Shulh. an Arukh of the Ari, 214a (and his disgrace was revealed, for he

was a false prophet, as is well-known); 223a. Although these additions areundated, they direct the reader to the earlier, more detailed comment, whichappears above.


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The timing of the addition of this comment, autumn 1758, is telling.The excommunications of the Sabbateans in 1725 may have had no effecton Katzenellenbogen, nor the ones issued in 1756 at Brody or by the

Council of the Four Lands at Konstantyno w, nor even Landaus agitated letter of the same yearbut the events of the following two years mayhave nally affected him. The public debate between the Sabbateans and the rabbis in Kaminiec-Podolsk under the supervision of the priests, and the ensuing triumph of the Sabbateans, which culminated in the burningof the Talmud in 1757, was followed by the iron letter of Augustus III,king of Poland, in which the king granted Frank his protection upon hisreturn to Poland, in those very days of 1758. 54

These spiraling events transformed the local unmasking in Lanckoronainto something else entirelya kind of representative medieval publicdisputation that threatened to leave its mark on all communities of Israel throughout the world. It is likely that these developments stirred Katzen-ellenbogen into the realization of a possible further manifestation, wide-spread in scale, of that great stumbling-block, in his words, caused bySabbatai Zevi years ago, long before his birth. The tensions of the pasthad returned to shake up the present, demanding a reevaluation.

It is at this juncture that Katzenellenbogen felt the need to add a noteexplaining his ownership of a proscribed manuscript. However, in the process of deecting any possible suspicion, he revealed his attitude toward Rovigo and the Sabbatean movement as a whole, which in effectremained unchanged: while Katzenellenbogen expressed reservationsover the praise of Nathan of Gaza, the false prophet cited at the start of the rectication, he nevertheless retained his praise for the penitentialrectications themselves (which he copied and considered of useful value) as well as his affection for the gure of Rovigo, the source of the writings.

He drew a shrewd distinction between the sociological meaning of the belief in Sabbateanism for those who witnessed the events of thosedays, the seventh decade of the seventeenth century, when it was a nor-mative and perhaps even necessary faith, and its signicance for aneighteenth-century gure like Katzenellenbogen himself, far removedfrom such a set of beliefs, once their disgrace had been exposed. 55

The historical distance between then and now allowed him to retain

his adoration of Rovigo, the hero of his youth, despite the fact that in

54. See Balaban, Tenuah ha-frankit , 192200.55. This expression is based on bH. ul 56b. This term was frequently applied

to Sabbateanism, as in the aforementioned citation from Landau, and similarly by R. Elazar Fleckeles ( Teshuvah me-ahavah, part 1, 8), and many others.


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retrospect he had been mistaken. 56 Even at this stage, Nathans penitential rectication was not buried or consigned to the ames.

Katzenellenbogen, the recipient of Landaus 1756 letter, had indeed

fallen prey to the allure of forbidden knowledge. Just like the massesof Podolia, he viewed Nathan of Gazas rectications as holy writings,and just like them, he denied being a Sabbatean adherent. Katzenellenbo-gens four personal comments scribbled on the back of the penitentialrectication manuscript appear to reect a change of heart in the light of current events. Between the initial revelation of the Frankist movementand later its fateful denouement, he had to confront afresh the implications of a normative rabbi such as himself possessing a Sabbatean

manuscript. His response clearly displays a dialectical attitude toward theSabbatean phenomenon on the one hand and its literary productions on the other. Katzenellenbogens public writings of those years also suggest that he recoiled from some of his earlier opinions in light of the ensuingevents. In the winter of 1761, about three years after he had begun his testament Yesh manh .ilin, he had completed one hundred and fty pages of the project. In the traditional manner, he sought to nish on a positivenote by mentioning the long-awaited redemption. At this point, more thana year after the Frankist conversions began (September 1759), his trou- bled state of mind is manifest in the concluding paragraphs of his personal testament:

According to the Tosafot 57 . . . even Shmuel, who says the only differ-ence between this world and the days of the Messiah is the subjugationof the kingdoms alone, 58 agrees that we will nonetheless possess theTemple and the holy city of Jerusalem, may it be rebuilt speedily in the days of the Messiah, in our days, with Gods help. And what shall we do with those who believe in Sabbatai Zevi etc., and claim that hehas already arrived; may their name be blotted out? For if so, where is the Temple in its glory? And Jerusalem, our holy city? In our sins, oursplendor has been removed from us. 59

56. The rst part of the quotation cited above includes a renewed account of Rovigos praises (Shulch. an Arukh of the Ari, 259b).

57. The reference is to the comments of the Tosafot on bShab 63a, which hehad mentioned earlier in section 239.

58. bBer 34a.59. Yesh manh .ilin, section 241. This section can be approximately dated to Jan-

uary or February 1761. In March 1760, Katzenellenbogen set aside the conclu-sion of the volume, due to the passing of his wife. In early November 1760 heundertook to nish the work ( Yesh manh .ilin, Everyday Events, 346). This he


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Here Katzenellenbogen confronts the Sabbatean faith, claiming that evenaccording to the minimalist positions put forth by the Talmud and itscommentaries, there can be no redemption without the building of the

Temple and Jerusalem. If the Messiah has already arrived, as the believ-ers in Sabbatai Zevi claimed, where is the Temple, and why has Jerusa- lem not been rebuilt? Even our splendor, the dignity of the Jewishcommunity in its exile, has been taken away. Such were his sentiments in the winter of 1761, roughly a year after the mass conversions of Franksfollowers, a sizeable number stemming from Podhayce, the seat of hisfather long ago. Alongside this bitter and emotional rejection, one canstill detect his basic approach beneath the pressures of the hour: even

after the blood libel and the Frankist conversions, the belief in SabbataiZevi remains a kind of mistake, one that can be corrected by talmudicargumentation. The praises of Rovigo and Zakendorf, 60 with which theauthor began his testament three years earlier, were not expunged from the manuscript even at this stage.

LEARNING TORAH EVEN FROM AH . ER

An extract from the third volume of Katzenellenbogens writings mightaid our understanding of his complex stance toward the heretical move-

ment, various manifestations of which he witnessed in his youth and oldage. To this end, let us return to autumn 1756, a few short months after the bans issued at Brody and Konstantyno w. Revealing an intriguingsense of timing, Katzenellenbogen records in one of his notebooks 61 afrank description of the various stages of vacillation he experienced dur-ing the course of dozens of years of indecision caused by Or Yisrael a book which incorporated a clear expression of Sabbatean faith, as Kat-zenellenbogen discovered upon reading it. He wrestled with these misgiv-ings for four decades:

achieved on the tenth of Tevet of that year, after which he wrote sections 235 through 241, which deal with the days of the Messiah and the redemption. Hisrabbinical correspondence with son in Ettingen (sections 24244) form a kind of appendix to the book.

60. Isaac Zakendorf was the synagogue attendant ( shamash) at Fu rth. It washe who copied the writings of Nathan of Gaza that Rovigo transferred to the volume of writings later owned by Katzenellenbogen. For a description of his praise (an upright, God-fearing, righteous man, of great piety) and Katzenel- lenbogens record of his copying work, see Yesh manh

.ilin, section 32.

61. Pinchas Katzenellenbogen, Derashot ve-h . idushe torah (Oxford manu-script, MS Heb. E. 130) 24ab. The passage quoted below is part of a broadersurvey of Katzenellenbogens overall attitude toward various kabbalistic texts,and of his reaction to the different writs of excommunication of the period. I hope to say more about the particular context of this passage on another occasion.


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When I was in the community of Markbreit, 62 a book entitled OrYisrael came into my possession. I realized that this man 63 was indeeda great Kabbalist. I learned wonderful ideas from this book, which I

studied literally every day. However, when I came to realize from his words that he was a believer in the faith of Sabbatai Zevi, may theMerciful One protect us from such things, 64 I realized that it was a mitsvah to withdraw from the study of this book, so that I should not be drawn into error, God forbid. I said that just as I will receive rewardfor expounding it, so will I be rewarded for withdrawing from it. 65

Subsequently, however, I retracted and said to myself: why should Irefrain from studying this book? It is entirely comprised of kabbalistic

explanations, elucidations of the Zohar, and clarications of the wordsof the Holy Ari, may his memory be blessed. All its teachings areinsightful, becoming, and in good taste. If he is in error regarding his beliefs ( emunato), I will make sure not to follow his mistake, just as R.Meir learned Torah from Ah . er by eating the pulp of his words anddiscarding the rind etc. 66 I did not want to hold back from the bookany longer, but I was confused as to what to do; I would not read it ona regular basis as before, but only occasionally, etc. [This remained the

62. Katzenellenbogen served as a rabbi in Markbreit from the summer of 1722 to the summer of 1750, before moving to Boskowitz. Regarding his unhappinessas rabbi of this community, a role that took up all his time, see, e.g., Yesh manh .ilin,section 182, as well as many other sources.

63. The reference is to the author of the book, R. Israel Jaffe (Uman 1640Frankfurt an der Oder, aft 1702). The book was rst published in Frankfurt ander Oder in 1702, about twenty years before Katzenellenbogen read it.

64. The authors belief in Sabbatai Zevis messianic claims is in fact alreadyevident from the fourth page of the book. Thus Katzenellenbogens recollectionin 1756 that he had observed that the book was Sabbatean in nature already in the early 1720s, some thirty years earlier than the rst printed warnings to theeffect, which appeared in Emdens Torat ha-kenaot (1752). For a survey for the books Sabbatean expositions, and the signicance of the polemical controversysurrounding it, see Kahana Sabbatean and Hassidic Kabbalists, part 2, 12629; Yehuda Liebes, The Letter tsadi and the Attitude of the Vilna Gaon and HisCircle toward Sabbateanism (Hebrew), Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 9 (2003): 225307.

65. A paraphrase of the comment by the tanna R. Shimon Ha-Amsoni in bPes22b and elsewhere.

66. A paraphrase of the Talmuds statement regarding R. Meir, who learnedTorah from the heretical tanna Elisha ben Avuyah, known as Ah . er, theOther. Regarding Elisha ben Avuyah and his talmudic portrayal, see YehudaLiebes, The Sin of Elisha: The Four Who Entered Paradise and the Nature of Talmudic Mysticism (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1986).


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case] until one time, [a certain individual] appeared to me in a dreamand greeted me with peace, and I answered him with peace. 67 I askedhim who he was, and he replied that he was Elijah the Prophet. Among

other things, he encouraged me to study the book Or Yisrael , praisingit highly. I awoke perturbed by this dream, and I said to myself: whoam I that Elijah the Prophet should reveal himself to me? This dreammust be a worthless message that the deceiving and destructive forceshave sent to mislead me, and perhaps he only says so, etc. After thisincident, which happened in about 5483 [1723], 68 I withdrew my handfrom that book, only reading it on the ninth of Av [!], or the occasionalhalakhah which cannot lead one astray, and even this only once or twice a year. 69 Several years passed during which I did not so much asglance at it.

For this I must praise and give thanks to the Holy One, blessed behe and blessed be his name, for inspiring the above abstention. None- theless, this last summer [1756] 70 I have occasionally returned to the

67. The description of this dream (and perhaps the language of the dreamitself) undoubtedly alludes to the well-known chorus recited at the conclusion of Shabbat: Happy is he who has seen his face in a dream [!]; happy is he who isgreeted by him with peace and responds to him with peace. Such revelationsof Elijah have deep and diverse cultural roots. For a mere sample, see thesources collected by Meir Ish-Shalom, Tana de-ve Eliyahu rabah ve-zuta (Jerusa- lem, 1969), 2738, and the Maharals thematic discussions of this issue ( Netsah .Yisrael , chap. 28), as well as that of R. Joseph H . ayyim of Baghdad (Responsa Rav pealim (Jerusalem, 1970), part 2, section 4. The link between the teachingsof the Ari and a possible revelation from Elijah was likewise a key issue in discus-sions of the source of his authority.

68. Katzenellenbogen was living in Markbreit in 5483 (172223). Over thefollowing years Katzenellenbogen received additional support regarding variousissues in the form of further dreams. These dreams featured many importantrabbinic gures of his acquaintance, such as R. Naphtali Katz of Frankfurt amMain (16601719), R. Jacob Katz (d. 1740, head of the court of Frankfurt amMain, author of the responsa Shav Yaakov), and especially his late father-in-law,R. Gabriel Eskeles (d. 1718), who served as head of the court in Prague, Metz,and Nikolsburg. On these dreams in general, and the authors self-awarenessregarding the cultural role of the dreamer, see Yesh manh .ilin, section 6; 913;see also sections 6566; 185; 189, and others.

69. The second part of the book (from page 77b onward) indeed gives theappearance of a halakhic commentary, but it too clearly betrays a complexkabbalistic bent, as indicated by its title: A mystical commentary on Orah

. h . ayim, along with a commentary on teachings of the Zohar, and talmudicexplanations . . . (Yesh manh .ilin 77b).

70. This date of this passage is November 29, 1756, as it appears at the headof the lengthy section of which this forms a part (Oxford MS Heb. E. 130, p. 22b). This past summer thus refers to the summer of 1756.


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book, for he truly was a great and cherished kabbalist, all of whose words are in good taste, and composed with perceptive understanding. And if he was in errorI said to myselfnow that I have reached old

age 71 [ . . . God] will assist me and teach me the way of truth, and until the day of my death he will lead me in straight paths for the sake of his true name, Amen, let it be his will.

This remarkable passage sketches out in clear terms Katzenellenbogensspiritual tribulations, as his unequivocal rejection of Sabbateanism con-fronts his honest appreciation of the merits of the book and the pleasurehe takes in reading it. While its author is decidedly mistaken in his

faith, he remains a great and cherished kabbalist, all of whose wordsare in good taste, and composed with perceptive understanding. The endresult of his confusion and misgivings is far from unambiguouseven anexplicit revelation of Elijah in favor of the book leads him to distancehimself temporarily from its perusal. This point is remarkable: Katzenel- lenbogen, who accepted Nathan of Gazas rectications, was suspiciousof Elijah the Prophets visionary revelation! It is likely that the then-standard association of prophecy with Sabbateanism caused Katzenellen- bogen to doubt the validity of his own dream. 72 The Elijah whoappeared in his dreams might actually be a lure from the Other Side[Satan], as R. Isaiah Bassan feared might be the case in regard to theidentity of the otherwordly magid who visited his student Moses H . ayyimLuzzatto, suspected in his time of Sabbateanism. 73 A similar concern wasexpressed by the Gaon of Vilna when he ruled that now that the delin-quents (Sabbateans) have increased . . . it is impossible for all the words[of a magid] to be holy of holies without any dross. 74

It will be recalled that in his youth a magid appeared to Katzenellenbo-

gen in the form of the Sabbatean Rovigo, just as he featured in the dreamsof his Sabbatean student, Mordecai Ashkenazi. 75 Although his admiration

71. Katzenellenbogen turned sixty-ve in 1756.72. See, e.g., Scholem, The Dreams of Mordecai Ashkenazi ; Tishby, The First

Sabbatean Maggid. On the early stages of this phenomenon and its broaderEuropean context, see, e.g., Matt Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets (Cambridge,Mass., 2004). For later ones, see Moshe Idel, On Prophecy and Early Hasid-ism, in Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements and the Babi-Bahai Faiths,ed. M. Sharon. (Leiden, 2004): 4175.

73. S. Ginsburg, Rabbi Moses Haim Luzzatto and His Generation: A Collection of Letters and Records (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1937), 1:86.

74. Rabbi H. aim of Volozhin, Sifra de-tzniuta im biur ha- Gra (Jerusalem,1986), introduction.

75. See Shulh. an Arukh of the Ari, 259a.


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of Rovigo remained intact, Katzenellenbogen had also learned to suspect the authenticity of the medium of the vision. Thus when Elijah theProphet appeared to him at night in order to encourage his continued

study of the problematic volume, Katzenellenbogen suspected a mislead-ing emissary of the deceiver. Throughout those years Katzenellenbogendid not withdraw from Nathan of Gazas rectications but continued tomake use of them. It seems that in this case the use of traditional, clearlydened texts, albeit clearly Sabbatean in origin, was to a certain extentmore straightforward than his own trust in his inner world and hisdreams.

At this juncture Katzenellenbogen appears to have triumphed almost

completely over his attraction to the book, only peering into infrequently.Fascinatingly, he succumbed to this temptation on, of all days, the ninthof Av. On the one hand, this is the date on which conventional Torahstudy is forbidden; on the other, a dialectical analysis of Sabbatean mate-rial appears eminently suitable for the overtly disposable character of aday of mourning for dashed hopes of redemption, one which the Sabba- teans sought to annul. On regular days Katzenellenbogen would turnonly to the safer halakhic sections of the book, which presented nodanger.

Still, this tortuous effort to steer clear of the book was not the end of the matter. It was only toward the end of the 1750s, safeguarded by thedivine protection and providence afforded to him by his old age, thatKatzenellenbogen felt free to read his cherished book as much as he wished. In the liberty afforded him by his advanced years, Katzenellenbo-gen reminisced about the various changes in his attitude toward the vol-ume over the previous four decades. He viewed its authors belief inSabbatai Zevi as an error that might contain edible matter, rather

than as a heresy that rendered the book simply as taboo. This coming to peace with the work in question occurred toward the end of the summerof 1756, when the uproar surrounding the Rabbinic-Frankist clash wasat its height. Only a few months earlier, Katzenellenbogen had receivedLandaus reply regarding the increase in heretics and the need to erecta fence around all study of kabbalistic works. In these last years of his life, Katzenellenbogens inclinations tended in the opposite direction.

Katzenellenbogen was not a Sabbatean, but his objections to Sabba-

teanism were limited. While the great stumbling-block, as he calls it,caused harm to the Jewish people, he did not perceive its human and literary consequences as categorically negative. Within a Jewish tradition that seemed in some ways to lack the necessary vocabulary and historicalexperience for an understanding of the term heretic and the exclusion


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daus attack was not directed against Katzenellenbogen. It is his very position as a legitimate correspondent, rather than visionary magid,or chirper in publica position that made him likely (in Landaus

view) to agree with the latters argumentsthat serves to emphasize Kat-zenellenbogens very different cultural outlook.

In actual fact, Landaus exclusionary move is more dialectical in nature than might be understood from his polemical declarations. In Prague, where he spent forty years of his life, he had to maintain a tense butstable coexistence with wealthy and well-known Sabbatean families who were prominent in community life. 79 Landaus consistent policy was toissue harsh public pronouncements while deliberately and knowingly

turning a blind eye to his constituents.80

It seems that the clear barriersunattainable in relation to the Prague Jewish community nd magniedexpression and importance in his literary works.

WORDS OF TRUTH WITHIN LIES

I will tell you face-to-face: how could such a thing be, that words of truth could be found within lies?! Hence whoever is wise should eat the pulp and discard the rind, as Rabbi Meir did with Ah . ers teachings.

Moshe H. aim Luzzatto 81

I have attempted to trace, step by step, the parallel reactions of these two correspondentsRabbi Pinh . as Katzenellenbogen and Rabbi EzekielLandauto the tumultuous events, which they experienced from a certain distance, in the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia respectively.However, this limited survey has wider implications with regard to theconceptualization and exclusion of the Sabbatean movement in the latterhalf of the eighteenth century and beyond.

The unambiguous compartmentalization of impure and pure, com- bined with the revelation and exposure of Sabbatean literature andgures, was a discourse beloved by Emden, who made continuous use of

79. On the Sabbateans of Prague, see, e.g., Gershom Scholem, A FrankistDocument from Prague, in Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee, ed. S. Lieberman (Jeru-salem, 1974), 2:787814; Scholem, Researches in Sabbateanism, ed. Y. Liebes(Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1991), see index; Maciejko, Frankist Movement, 23146; Alexandr Putk, Prague Jews and Judah Hasid: A Study of the Social, Politicaland Religious History of the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries, Judaica Bohemiae 38 (2003): 72105; ibid, 39 (2004): 5392.

80. On Landau and the Sabbateans of Prague, see Kahana, From Prague toPressburg, 7378.

81. Letters of the Ramh . al (Ginsburg, Letters and Records), 152.


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such rhetoric through many years of obsessive writing. The Sabbateanheresy-hunters 82 mindset, which has also on occasion inltrated thediscourse of exposure which became familiar in historical research,

does not appear to accord with the actual consciousness of many of the time. All the participants had to deal with an uncertain reality, in whichSabbatean homiletics were interlaced with legitimate kabbalistic texts.However, in contrast to Jacob Emdens purge campaign, Landau andKatzenellenbogen deeply shared the sense that they were dealing with a literary totality that resisted easy censorship.

The difference between the two is that whereas Landau sought to negate this dangerous totality, to the extent that he attempted to formulate

a novel, insulated cultural path, one that would entail the complete exclu-sion of kabbalistic texts, the older Katzenellenbogen, like many of hiscontemporaries, could not cut his profound ties to kabbalistic literature,including its Sabbatean offshoots. Notwithstanding his many concernsand scruples, he felt free to return to reading Or Yisrael and continued tomake use of Nathan of Gazas rectications, which he kept in his library; this despite his resolute opposition to Jacob Frank and his followers, andin the face of all the letters, excommunications, and ofcial decisions of the Council of the Four Lands.

Katzenellenbogens loyalties to this material, however, does not provea secret leaning toward Sabbatean beliefs, nor is it due to any eccentricityof character. In my opinion, his personal struggles are representative of those of a large proportion of the rabbinic mainstream and their deep-seated historical memory of the spread of Sabbateanism throughoutJewry over the previous century. Add to this the pervasive Sabbateanstrain of the beloved kabbalistic sources, and one can see why it was sodifcult to embark on a campaign to remove this heresy and its sourcesfrom Jewish literature.

The sporadic jottings of Katzenellenbogens forgotten manuscripts, bymy reading, have noteworthy implications for our understanding of oneof the marvels of contemporary Jewish literaturethe widespread appealof Sabbatean literature for the rabbinic elite, an attraction common toHasidim and Mitnagdim, Sephardim and Ashkenazim alike. It is pre-cisely this sense of cultural continuity, as described in Katzenellenbogens writings, that motivated the complex, dialectical confrontation with the

Sabbatean stumbling-block characteristic of so many at the time. When

82. In accordance with Emdens self-appraisal of his role: for it is the zealous-ness of God . . . and it is He who has decreed that I must conduct the hunt ( Sefer hitavkut [The Book of Struggle], 148a).


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viewed as an error and a stumbling-block of central importance to the continued existence of Judaism and its literature, the study and scru- tiny of Sabbateanism became almost compulsory, as the movement

demanded rectication and sweetening, and sometimes even acceptance and enrichment. 83

This partly explains, I believe, the attraction of Sabbatean literatureand its various offshoots for so many different writers of the age, from R.Luzzatto 84 and R. Azulai (H. ida)

85 to R. Nah. man of Bratzlav86 and R.

Menachem Mendel of Shklov, student of the Vilna Gaon, 87 each in accor-dance with his approach. Paradoxically, the same attraction was felt byand motivated the life project of the faithful heresy-hunter himself, R.

Jacob Emden, who obsessively investigated any homiletical material andnumerological expositions of Sabbatean origin. 88 Admittedly, a certain portion of the Sabbatean limb was amputated from the Jewish body as aresult of the Frankist conversion of 1759, but its remaining appendages,including a diverse and complex literary inheritance, posed a troubling, yet fruitful and ongoing, challenge.

Fitting context for this important cultural phenomenon might be the

83. This is the meaning of the well-known rectication of the soul attempted by the Baal Shem-Tov on behalf of Sabbatai Zevi, by connecting with him soul to soul, spirit to spirit, essence to essence, as the legend has it. See AvrahamRubenstein, In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1991), 26265. A detailed account of a soul/spirit/essence rectication for Nathan of Gaza andSabbatai Zevi performed by R. Judah Petaiah in Baghdad in 1911 can be foundin his book Minh . at yehudah (Jerusalem, 1956), 7699. Anticipating these kinds of rectications, and in opposition to a tendency he (correctly) sensed in the writ-ings of Moshe H. aim Luzzatto, Emden compared Sabbateanism to that primevalsnake whose legs have been cut off, and which will not be mended even in thefuture. Tsitsim u-ferah .im (Altona, 1768), 16b. See below regarding his realisticapproach. See also Haviva Pedaya, The Baal Shem Tovs Iggeret Hakodesh:Towards a Critique of the Textual Variations, and an Exploration of its Conver-gence with the World-Picture: Messianism, Revelation, Ecstasy and the Sabba- tean Background (Hebrew), Zion 70.3 (2005): 31155, 34849.

84. See, e.g., Tishby, Netive emunah u-minut , 16985; Jonathan Garb, Ram-h. al: Experience, Messianism, and Power, http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/ jogarb// ramhallecture.doc

85. See Tishby, Netive emunah u-minut , 22732.86. Likute moharan (Collected Teachings of Our Teacher, Rabbi Nah . man),

part 1, 207 (cited partly at the top of the essay); Liebes, On Sabbateanism,23861.

87. See Yehuda Liebes, The Vilna Gaon School, Sabbateanism and Das Pin-tale Yid (Hebrew), Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah 50/52 (2003):25591; 198212.

88. See Y. Liebes, On Sabbateanism, 198212.


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616 JQR 102.4 (2012)

literary genre of forbidden texts and their weighty inuence on variousmanifestations of modern European culture. 89 Equally signicant might be the formation of the modern self in its individual and collective guises,

which develops by way of contrast with earlier, more diverse and obscureidentities. 90 Yet it appears that for our purposes the more pertinent tradition is the internal Jewish one, at once ancient and relevant. Katzenel- lenbogen himself utilized this tradition in his conceptualization of his persistent attraction to the forbidden texts. It is this tradition that tells of the tanna R. Meir, who persisted in learning Torah from Elisha ben Avu- yah, even after the latter became a heretic: he ate the pulp and discarded the rind.91 Torah should be learned, it seems, even from the Other.

89. A parallel example, with many points of similarity and contrast, can befound in Darntons study of philosophical literature in prerevolutionaryFrance; see Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France(New York, 1995). In a Jewish connection, the kabbalistic writings of the Ram-h. al himself form an integral part of any such discussion, as they were prohibitedand banned, while having a unusually wide inuence, throughout the eighteenthcentury.

90. Emdens long-term project of literary purication, including the typologi-cal conict between himself and R. Jonathan Eibeschutz, can be helpfully viewedfrom this vantage point as well, in the form of an encounter between a vague,convoluted, multifaceted sense of self and a certain kind of modern, distinct, pureidentity. On these transformations, see Dror Wahrman, The Making of the ModernSelf: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven. Conn., 2006). Wahrmans study focuses mainly on England, and to a limited extent France and the United States. His work is partly a development of Taylors classic, moregeneral survey of European culture: Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 1989). The development of secret socie- ties in the eighteenth century, such as the Freemasons, is also relevant to thisdiscussion. A similar approach to Emdens complex personality can be found inSchacters study of his autobiography: Jacob J. Schacter, History and Memoryof Self: The Autobiography of Rabbi Jacob Emden, in Jewish History and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi , ed. E. Carlebach, J. M. Efron,D. N. Myers (Hanover, N.H., 1998), 42852. See also Sorotzkin, The TimelessCommunity. On mixed identities in eighteenth-century Jewish society, includ-ing Sabbateanism, see David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton, N.J., 2010), 15990.

91. bH. ag 15a. Luzzatto used this exact same metaphor.

maoz kahana - the allure of forbidden knowledge - the temptation of sabbatean literature for...

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