The Mixed Multitude. Pawel Maciejko
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about the “new Torah” in a deliberately literal fashion. Sabbatianism was for him not a narrow halakhic problem, which could be settled by legalistic decision, or a theological deviation, which could be countered by speculative argument. It was not a heresy challenging particular tenets of Jewish belief but a schism threatening the unity of Judaism as a whole; it might have led to the split of the Jewish people and the establishment of a completely new faith. In this context, Sasportas’s scattered remarks about Jesus and Christianity assume a special significance. The rabbi was not worried about Christian “influences” on Judaism introduced by Sabbatian theosophy or about messianic “enthusiasm” that might play into the hands of the Catholic priests.17 He displayed little or no interest in contemporary Christendom: in fact, all mentions of Christianity in Tsitsat novel Tsevi refer not to the seventeenth-century Church and her clergy but to the ancient Jewish sect that led some Jews astray.18 Before Sabbatai’s conversion to Islam, Rabbi Jacob Sasportas foresaw the danger that Sabbatianism would become a new religion, separate from Judaism, like early Christianity. He expressed hope that the Jewish sages would manage to do what they had failed to do in the case of Jesus: nip the new faith in the bud.19
It is in this context that Sasportas invoked the symbolism of the mixed multitude. As discussed in the Introduction, Nathan of Gaza’s idea that those denying Sabbatai’s messiahship were descendants of the mixed multitude was gaining currency among his followers. Sasportas knew Nathan’s statements about disbelievers coming from the erev rav and “laughed at them.”20 Inspired by the writings of Nathan, Hosea Nantava, a Sabbatian serving as a rabbi of Alexandria, claimed that rejecting Sabbatai Tsevi was like rejecting the Law of Moses as well as the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. He, too, linked the rejection of the messiah with the symbol of the mixed multitude.21 Sasportas responded to the rabbi as follows:
And you destroyed your place in the land of the living [i.e., the afterlife] by saying: “Anyone who does not believe in [Sabbatai’s messianic mandate] is like one who rejects the Torah of Moses our teacher and the resurrection of the dead, and he is from the mixed multitude.” This was expressed in the letter of your prophet. May boiling liquid and molten lead be poured down the throat of the one who says such things! . . . How can he who denies your messiah . . . be like the one who denies the entire Torah?! . . . But you said that those who deny your messiah are not the [true] leaders and sages of the generation, but they are from the mixed multitude, the seed of Lilith, and the “caul upon the liver.”22 You opened your mouth to do evil and spoke about things you do not comprehend. He who does believe in him . . . is one of the mixed multitude! The truth is not what his prophet wrote but what was written by the holy Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai [purported author of the Zohar]: “The evil handmaid [Lilith] is a grave, and in it she imprisons her mistress, the Shekhinah, and she is cold and dry [as] Saturn [Sabbatai]. . . . “Her mistress” is a garden; “the handmaid” is a dunghill, and she is soiled from the side of the mixed multitude, a dunghill mingled with a garden in order to grow seeds from the side of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and from the side of idolatry she is called Saturn [Sabbatai], Lilith, soiled dunghill. It consists of all kinds of filth and vermin and dead dogs and donkeys are thrown upon it.”23 And so you see that he who comes from the side of Saturn [Sabbatai] really comes from the mixed multitude and the seed of Lilith.24
“Sabbatai” is the Hebrew name of the planet Saturn, and the Jewish tradition often linked “the reign of Sabbatai” (the astrologically elevated position of the planet Saturn) with the advent of the messiah. In a fascinating paper, Moshe Idel has argued that the outburst of messianism in the seventeenth century owed much of its potency to such speculations. Young Sabbatai Tsevi’s messianic convictions were shaped by the deep awareness of the astrological meaning of his name, and the nexus between Saturn and the coming of the messiah was of prime importance to Tsevi himself, his followers, and to many contemporary observers.25
Sasportas was clearly well acquainted with astrological interpretations of the advent of Sabbatianism: in a letter to Rabbi Raphael Supino, he noted that “it is not enough, as you said, for the Gentile sages and astronomers to claim that the ascension of the planet Saturn hints [at the coming of the messiah] and is a sign of Redemption,”26 and he linked the renewal of messianic claims among the Jews with the ascent of the “bloody star,” Sabbatai-Saturn.27 In this context, Sasportas’s invocation of the quotation from the Zohar tying the symbolism of Saturn with that of the mixed multitude was an exegetical masterstroke: it drew upon previous separate Sabbatian interpretations of both motifs and, by connecting them, inverted their meanings: the ascension of Saturn was indeed linked with the advent of Sabbatai Tsevi, but it signified the beginning of the reign of the erev rav, not the coming of the messiah. The mixed multitude were not, as Nathan of Gaza would have it, the rabbis who opposed Sabbatai but the Sabbatians themselves. What is even more interesting is what Sasportas left out of the passage he quoted: in printed editions of the Zohar, the dead dogs and donkeys that are thrown onto the dunghill are equated with “sons of Esau and Ishmael,” the Christians and the Muslims, respectively. Some manuscript versions explicitly identified the dead dog with Jesus and the dead donkey with Muhammad.28
The astrological notion that the advent of Sabbatianism paralleled the birth of Christianity was strengthened by the concept of the so-called coniunctio maxima, the conjunction between Saturn and Jupiter. Astrology—both Jewish and Christian—often interpreted the great conjunction as the moment of emergence of a new religion.29 The Star of Bethlehem was taken to be a great conjunction,30 and some astrologers linked the messianic pronouncements of Sabbatai Tsevi with the great conjunction that took place in November 1648. While Sasportas made no explicit mention of the 1648 conjunction, he linked the ascension of the planet Saturn with the rise of a threat of a profound rift within the Jewish people that “would turn the hearts of sons from their fathers and set husband against wife.”31
Intellectually fascinating as it must have been, this interpretation was far too radical for other rabbis; the subsequent rabbinic anti-Sabbatian works used the literary form of Tsitsat novel Tsevi (a collection of letters, firsthand testimonies, and polemical commentary) as a blueprint for polemics and borrowed many specific motifs from Sasportas’s writings, but they largely refrained from accepting his conclusions. Sasportas’s conceptualization of Sabbatianism as a new religion had no direct continuation: the most important anti-Sabbatian work of the early eighteenth century, Moses Hagiz’s Shever poshe’im (1714), contained only one reference each to the erev rav and the establishment of a new faith, and both terms were used loosely to suit the argument.32 It also lacked any mention of Sasportas.33
During his lifetime, Sasportas was a lone fighter against Sabbatianism: his open opposition to Sabbatai during the height of the movement earned him little sympathy among the Jews of Hamburg and might even have endangered his life.34 Tsitsat novel Tsevi had been prepared for publication but remained in manuscript.35 In 1737, Sasportas’s son produced an abridged edition of his father’s magnum opus. However, leaders of the community, who were eager to suppress the memory of the involvement of their families in Sabbatian enthusiasm sixty years earlier, ordered that the entire print run be confiscated and destroyed.36
The book would have disappeared completely, if not for the fact that a copy (allegedly the only remaining one) of this suppressed edition was found in Amsterdam by Rabbi Jacob Emden. In 1757, at the height of the polemics against the Frankists, Emden published this abridged version of Tsitsat novel Tsevi.37 The publisher felt a deep affinity between himself and Sasportas: he emphasized that his namesake Rabbi Jacob shared the same anti-Sabbatian zeal and had been required to pay a similarly high price for his relentless campaign against the heretics. Like Sasportas—and in contrast to other rabbis of the period—he also believed that heresy should not be swept under the carpet but engaged in an open polemics, without regard for communal feelings, family ties, reputation, or the high social status of his opponents. Since the pattern of rabbinic apologetics established in the first half of the eighteenth century failed to eradicate Sabbatianism, and the conceptual tools employed in the battle against crypto-Sabbatians in Western Europe were not apt to engage their more outspoken