Sabbatai Sevi
Not that anyone gives a fuck, but here's a few excerpts from what I'll be spending day and night working on for the next few weeks.
The theology of the Sabbatian movement arose from a dramatic and selective reinterpretation of Jewish mysticism, ultimately giving rise to the paradoxical state of messianic nihilism. This movement, which arose from beliefs it ultimately abandoned, is seen by Gershom Scholem as the starting point of modern Jewish history. Sabbatianism maintained its link to traditional mysticism by expounding upon Lurianic Kabbalah and shifting focus from a gradual, historical notion of redemption to that of a sudden, individualized redeemer, a concept found in their messiah Sabbatai Sevi. In this way the Lurianic Kabbalah “provided the Sabbatians with their messianic vocabulary even as they radicalized its meaning”(Biale 81). This was a shattering of traditional Jewish values, which loosened the chains binding the heretical forces of antinomianism and nihilism that were to arise with force following the apostasy of Sevi. Moreover, Sabbatianism provides an excellent case study with which to examine Scholem’s proposition that mysticism always balances “the razor’s edge between religion and nihilism” (Alter 440).
While Sabbatianism was conceived amidst the epistemic landscape of Kabbalism, it must be noted that this birth represented a radical new breed of mysticism. Sabbatianism gained much of its fire from the siblings of apocolypticism and redemption, while “the early medieval Kabbalah was not especially interested in eschatology. It focused instead on issues of theosophy and cosmogony: the beginning rather than the end of history” (Biale 79). Furthermore, Luria saw redemption as a gradual process unfolding throughout history, calling upon each and every man to act as his own microcosmic agent of redemption. “As Scholem accurately put it, in Lurianic Kabbalah the advent of the Messiah would be the result of preparatory human actions rather than a sudden eruption of the eschaton in the world”(Idel 259). Sabbatianism effectively robbed the people of this active involvement, stating that in Sevi’s person was contained the whole of the restorative process. Nathan of Gaza outlawed the Lurianic kabbanot, prayer forms used to accelerate the process of gathering the divine sparks fragmented at creation (Biale 81). He argued that they “were no longer valid because the inner structure of the universe had changed and no holy sparks were left under the domination of the powers of evil, the kelippot”(Idel 251). This proved to be dangerous, emphasizing the unimportance of the individual and implanting the nihilistic notion that redemption was already manifest, regardless of human action. Thus, no moral schemata remained to guide moral action, as Sevi’s followers were left adrift with no rudder and no map. So it can be seen that while the early Kabbalistic schools attempted to “ignore the reality surrounding them, and to escape from it by ascending a ladder which goes up, towards God,” Sabbatianism also failed to be a force of progress in the hylic, historical world (Dan 119).
Special attention must be paid to the conflicting, paradoxical views with which the many modern scholars view the Sabbatianism’s antinomianism. That it is viewed as abhorrent, or perhaps even terrifying, is obvious, for the movement ultimately dissolved any notions of a stable, monolithic reality accompanied with a singular cosmogony. The Sabbatians ultimately descended into a state of ongoing war with coherent thought structures, not only those of the outside world, but their own personal ones as well. They waged symbolic war against any system capable of being opposed, which effectively imprisoned them in binary opposition to the very dogmas they sought to relinquish. They are also, however, viewed as a source of vitality, a dynamo giving birth to a new modernist Judaism from within the constricting shell of the old. Robert Alter notes that to “cast off all the restraints of the established moral system is also, at least from a certain modern viewpoint with a Nietzschean genealogy, to free oneself from all the crushing impedimenta of the spiritually dead past”(Alter 436). There remain those, however, who fundamentally resist this outlook, emphasizing the fact that the movement did not, as Scholem suggests, lead to positive change, but was instead colored only by an early potential for vitality, which soon collapsed under the weight of nihilistic apathy. Moshe Idle argues that “antinomianism in general, especially as it moves toward unbridled excesses to which its inner logic drives it, is rather an expression of cultural, moral, and psychological disintegration, sharing with vitality only the superficial similarity of violent motion” (Idle 25).
The theology of the Sabbatian movement arose from a dramatic and selective reinterpretation of Jewish mysticism, ultimately giving rise to the paradoxical state of messianic nihilism. This movement, which arose from beliefs it ultimately abandoned, is seen by Gershom Scholem as the starting point of modern Jewish history. Sabbatianism maintained its link to traditional mysticism by expounding upon Lurianic Kabbalah and shifting focus from a gradual, historical notion of redemption to that of a sudden, individualized redeemer, a concept found in their messiah Sabbatai Sevi. In this way the Lurianic Kabbalah “provided the Sabbatians with their messianic vocabulary even as they radicalized its meaning”(Biale 81). This was a shattering of traditional Jewish values, which loosened the chains binding the heretical forces of antinomianism and nihilism that were to arise with force following the apostasy of Sevi. Moreover, Sabbatianism provides an excellent case study with which to examine Scholem’s proposition that mysticism always balances “the razor’s edge between religion and nihilism” (Alter 440).
While Sabbatianism was conceived amidst the epistemic landscape of Kabbalism, it must be noted that this birth represented a radical new breed of mysticism. Sabbatianism gained much of its fire from the siblings of apocolypticism and redemption, while “the early medieval Kabbalah was not especially interested in eschatology. It focused instead on issues of theosophy and cosmogony: the beginning rather than the end of history” (Biale 79). Furthermore, Luria saw redemption as a gradual process unfolding throughout history, calling upon each and every man to act as his own microcosmic agent of redemption. “As Scholem accurately put it, in Lurianic Kabbalah the advent of the Messiah would be the result of preparatory human actions rather than a sudden eruption of the eschaton in the world”(Idel 259). Sabbatianism effectively robbed the people of this active involvement, stating that in Sevi’s person was contained the whole of the restorative process. Nathan of Gaza outlawed the Lurianic kabbanot, prayer forms used to accelerate the process of gathering the divine sparks fragmented at creation (Biale 81). He argued that they “were no longer valid because the inner structure of the universe had changed and no holy sparks were left under the domination of the powers of evil, the kelippot”(Idel 251). This proved to be dangerous, emphasizing the unimportance of the individual and implanting the nihilistic notion that redemption was already manifest, regardless of human action. Thus, no moral schemata remained to guide moral action, as Sevi’s followers were left adrift with no rudder and no map. So it can be seen that while the early Kabbalistic schools attempted to “ignore the reality surrounding them, and to escape from it by ascending a ladder which goes up, towards God,” Sabbatianism also failed to be a force of progress in the hylic, historical world (Dan 119).
Special attention must be paid to the conflicting, paradoxical views with which the many modern scholars view the Sabbatianism’s antinomianism. That it is viewed as abhorrent, or perhaps even terrifying, is obvious, for the movement ultimately dissolved any notions of a stable, monolithic reality accompanied with a singular cosmogony. The Sabbatians ultimately descended into a state of ongoing war with coherent thought structures, not only those of the outside world, but their own personal ones as well. They waged symbolic war against any system capable of being opposed, which effectively imprisoned them in binary opposition to the very dogmas they sought to relinquish. They are also, however, viewed as a source of vitality, a dynamo giving birth to a new modernist Judaism from within the constricting shell of the old. Robert Alter notes that to “cast off all the restraints of the established moral system is also, at least from a certain modern viewpoint with a Nietzschean genealogy, to free oneself from all the crushing impedimenta of the spiritually dead past”(Alter 436). There remain those, however, who fundamentally resist this outlook, emphasizing the fact that the movement did not, as Scholem suggests, lead to positive change, but was instead colored only by an early potential for vitality, which soon collapsed under the weight of nihilistic apathy. Moshe Idle argues that “antinomianism in general, especially as it moves toward unbridled excesses to which its inner logic drives it, is rather an expression of cultural, moral, and psychological disintegration, sharing with vitality only the superficial similarity of violent motion” (Idle 25).
posted by David at 1:45 PM
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