Customer Reviews

Sabbatai Sevi

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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 Jewish community over Sevi, which led to shameful behavior by believers and nonbelievers alike. In one of his manic phases, Sevi once smashed the doors of a hostile congregation with an ax on the Sabbath and took over the service (p. 395). Nonbelievers and believers alike asked non-Jewish kings to punish their opponents on trumped-up charges (p. 514). Even "nonbelievers" conceded that the believers were usually the majority (p. 475).

6. The ability of the masses to experience religious delusions. For example, when the movement was at its height in Smyrna, Greece, dozens of Jews claimed to have seen Elijah (p. 417) and hundreds of Jews engaged in mass "prophecies". During these prophecies, they trembled, swooned, proclaimed that Sevi was messiah- and forgot their words afterwards (p. 419). False prophecy is real - and the false prophets might not even be aware of their own falsity.

7. The manipulation of Sevi by Turkish authorities, who first arrested him, then sought revenue by charging admission to Jews who sought to visit their Messiah (p. 603), then compelled him to convert to Islam.

8. The apparent abdication of authority by even hostile rabbis. Turkish rabbis asked their counterparts in Jerusalem (who knew Sevi better than they) to comment on his messianic claims. The Jerusalem rabbis never answered (p. 613).

9. The occasional presence of good sense even among believers. When asked about the issue, Sevi's brother Elijah praised Sevi, but added that "he was an expert in cloth and linen but not in divinity." (p. 614).

10. The fact that Sevi's apostasy did not immediately eliminate all his support, since a few "believers" claimed that his conversion to Islam was a trick- an impression nurtured by Sevi himself, who contained to receive Jewish visitors after his apotasy and to study Torah etc.

11. The attempt by anti-Sevi rabbis to cover up the whole affair after Sevi apostasized- for example, rabbis in Venice wrote to other Jewish communities commdanting them "to destroy all documents rlating to the movement of 1666 [Sevi's] and to obliterate all testimony of this shameful episode." (pp. 762-63). If you have been thought that only a lunatic fringe supported Sevi, now you know why.

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.

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.

This story has everything: personal conflict, political overtones, romance, madness, coincidence, religion, intrigue and a surprise ending. Why does Hollywood recycle 60's TV shows and leave stories like this in the dustbin?

This book is less about the man, Sabbatai Sevi, than it is about the Kabbalah movement and its impact on the Jewish people. This book is not a "popular" history book. For example, the author spends the first 100 pages of the book discussing the history and fundamental principals of Kabbalah. (Perhaps the discussion was shorter in the original Hebrew as it would not surprise me that the translator needed to "digest" many of the concepts for the English readers.)

Although the book primarily follows a chronological order the author often deviates from the chronology of the events and addresses tangential issues. Scholem's knowledge of the times and issues are encyclopedic and it is not difficult for a reader to get lost in the details of the numerous tangents which the author pursues.

However, if one gets passed the "professor" like writing and the tangents one is rewarded with an amazing picture of the man and the times.

Scholem rarely cites other historians for conclusion but rather develops his ideas independently by reference to numerous primary sources. For example, Scholem compares and analyses the different contemporary account of the events surrounding Sabbatai's apostasy that appear in the different historical accounts and by reference to primary sources, which were often not available or consciously omitted by the previous writers, debunks many myths surrounding this key event. By following his sources the reader is given the opportunity to make up their own mind as to what might have "really" happened.

Scholem seeks to understand how the whole Jewish world could have been swept up in the euphoria of the Messiah, and not just the illiterate masses as many other historian have contended. It was refreshing to see Sabbatai Sevi not being simply dismissed as a charlatan and a quack but the possibility of his "belief" in himself as Messiah honestly addressed. Scholem does not simply sweep "problematic" facts under the carpet of history because it may be uncomfortable for some to believe how could both the lay and religious leaders all believe in the Messiah who, thanks to our hindsight, we "know" did not bring redemption to the Jewish people.

Although Scholem does not address this issue directly, after reading this book I now better understand how events surrounding the Sabbatian movement explain the initial reaction of the Jewish leaders to the Hassidic movement. I also find this historical account instructive in understanding of the dangers of the current messianic strains in HaBaD and the current simplistic popularity of Kabbalah.

I would have given this book 5 stars, but I am giving it 4 as a caution to the readers because of its difficult reading style and length.

In this famous book, the historian Gershom Scholem goes through the history of Shabtai Zevi: the man who, in the seventeenth century, convinced the majority of world Jewry that he was the messiah and then converted to Islam to save his own life. The story is fascinating, and Scholem probably knows more about it than almost anybody else in the world. Although the book is a "historical" book, not really intended for casual reading, it is stirring in parts and not that hard to get through. Scholem has definite opinions about Shabtai -- e.g. how great a part Kabbalah played in the movement, whether he really believed in himself as the messiah -- that not all historians would agree with. Still, this is a worthwhile book.

My husband saw this book at my parents house and became quite interested in it. It is quite scholarly (I think my father read it in graduate school) and quite detailed. I think the author is supposedly an expert on kabbalah. Delivery was fast. Thanks Amazon!