The Mixed Multitude. Pawel Maciejko
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Nathan’s perspective—were to be decided on this Zoharic foundation: the Talmud did not provide the foundation for judging the messianic mandate of Sabbatai Tsevi, yet his messiahship could be unequivocally established on the basis of the Zohar.58
Nathan’s statements provoked angry reactions from some traditionally minded rabbis (including Jacob Sasportas)59 but were enthusiastically received by Sabbatians themselves. Abraham Cardoso presented the entirety of the past thousand years of Jewish history as a conflict between the rival camps of kabbalists and “literalists” (pashtanim) and argued that the Judaism of the latter was in no way better than the idolatrous faiths of the Gentiles: it did not contain even the slightest speck of the knowledge of the True God.60 Nehemiah Hayon boldly called for printing and distributing all kabbalistic works,61 advocated open individual inquiry into esoteric matters, and demanded total abolition of any constraints imposed on the study of kabbalah.62 In 1700, Hayyim Malakh wrote to Rabbi Abraham Broda of Prague “to send him learned people skilled in the matters of kabbalah in order to debate the faith of Sabbatai Tsevi together with him.”63 Two pupils of Broda went to Vienna to take up the challenge and suffered a miserable defeat in the disputation, in which Malakh argued that the Zohar unambiguously supported the truth of the faith in Sabbatai Tsevi. (Records of the Vienna disputation are not known to exist, but Emden—who did not witness them, either—mused that they might have formed a basis for the Kamieniec theses of the Frankists).64
The presentation of Sabbatian belief as a legitimate corollary of kabbalah in general, and the Zohar in particular, was a source of constant difficulty for its opponents. The Zohar had firmly established canonical status in Judaism, and many respectable halakhists engaged in kabbalistic speculation. Some maintained that the Zohar was more authoritative than any other source, insofar as it did not explicitly contradict the Babylonian Talmud. Over time, “the golden rule evolved that whenever halakhic rulings contradict the kabbalistic precepts, preference must be given to the former; otherwise, the kabbalistic precepts become mandatory.”65 Accordingly, Nathan’s position on the role of the Zohar in making legal decisions might have posed special problems in the context of the debate about the current advent of the messiah, but it was, in itself, firmly grounded in accepted tradition. Unbridled kabbalistic speculation not directly linked to the mastery of halakhah also had precedents within normative Judaism and was by no means necessarily objectionable: in the sixteenth century, Rabbi Hayyim Vital argued for placing limitations on the study of the Mishnah and Talmud so that students could devote themselves more fully to esoteric lore. Not only was, in his view, a command of Jewish law unnecessary for dealing with the kabbalah; it also deprived the student of the time needed for exploring higher secrets.66
The polemics against Sabbatianism put an end to this relative laxity and the tolerance toward esoteric pursuits. Four out of six extant anti-Sabbatian bans pronounced in Poland between 1670 and 1753 forbade the dissemination of esoteric manuscripts (megillot setarim) and placed severe restrictions on printing kabbalistic works.67 Mishaps such as the Vienna disputation made the matter urgent: in the eighteenth century, anti-Sabbatianism was increasingly taking the shape of a battle against all kabbalah. Following the arrest of the participants of the Lanckoronie ceremony, the rabbis of Satanów confiscated many subversive and heretical books and manuscripts.
In the course of its investigation of the case, the Kamieniec consistory issued an order to present the sequestered writings for inspection by the episcopal court. We do not know if this order was carried out by the rabbis, and we have no information concerning the titles or even the general character of the works in question. What we do know is that the consistory dispatched priests (sometimes accompanied by converted Jews who acted as interpreters)68 to interview the suspected Sabbatians in loco. One of these priests was the Bernardine Gaudenty Pikulski, who later composed the most comprehensive Christian account of early Frankism. When recounting his meeting with Sabbatians in Lanckoronie in 1757, Father Pikulski wrote: “The tenets of [Sabbatai’s] belief were described by his followers in their books. And the books are: first—Or Izrael, which means “the light of Israel.” Second—Hemdas Cwi. Third—Keyser Josef. Fourth is the book published some seven years ago in Amsterdam by Emmanuel Chay Riky, and it is titled Joser Leywawa.”69
Or Izrael (Or Yisrael) was a commentary on the Zohar and Lurianic dicta published in 1702 by Israel ben Aaron Jaffe. Hemdas Cwi (Hemdat Tsevi) was a work on Tikkune ha-Zohar by Rabbi Tsevi Hirsh Hotsh, published in Amsterdam in 1706. Keyser Josef (Keter Yosef) was a kabbalistic prayer book by Rabbi Joseph ben Moses of Przemyńl, first published in Berlin in 1700. Finally, Joser Leywawa (Yosher Levav), by Raphael Immanuel Ricchi Hai, appeared in Amsterdam in 1742 and dealt with the mystery of tsimtsum as well as Lurianic kavvanot. Two of the four books mentioned by Pikulski had already aroused suspicions in the first half of the eighteenth century. Or Yisrael was found to be “tainted by Sabbatianism and pervaded with confusion” by Moses Hagiz70 and qualified as a “heretical book” by Jacob Emden.71 Keter Yosef was similarly condemned by Hagiz,72 while Emden claimed that without its author’s knowledge, the printers had added Sabbatian elements based on the writings of Nathan of Gaza.73 Yet Sabbatianism was alleged only with regard to these two of the four items and only by the most ardent heresy hunters such as Hagiz or Emden. None of the books in question was unreservedly condemned by the majority of the rabbis; all of them were printed with rabbinic approbations and were not generally regarded as contrary to accepted beliefs. What all four books had in common was not Sabbatianism (or at least not overt Sabbatianism) but their authors’ pronounced tendency to disseminate and popularize kabbalah among the wider strata of Jewish society. This was especially true about Tsevi Hirsh Hotsh:74 in addition to Hemdat Tsevi, he was the author of the first adaptation of the Zohar in Yiddish, Nahalat Tsevi; in the introduction to the latter work, he asserted that “everyone should study kabbalah according to his perception and comprehension.”75
Three of the books mentioned by Father Pikulski appeared in the first decade of the eighteenth century and Hemdat Tsevi in 1711: during that period, the idea that every Jew should study kabbalah “according to his perception and comprehension” might have still slipped by rabbinic vigilance. By the 1750s, the situation had changed: regardless of whether all or some of the four books listed by Pikulski were indeed “tainted with” Sabbatian elements, in the minds of many rabbis the dissemination of kabbalah among the unlettered and statements about a plurality of readings had become unequivocally associated with heresy. This became immediately clear in the rabbinic responses to the discovery of the Lanckoronie ritual. For its participants, the ritual might or might not have had kabbalistic underpinnings; for the rabbinate, it was directly linked with the spread of kabbalah, the unauthorized and uncontrolled study of esoteric matters, and possible forgeries creeping into the accepted kabbalistic works. The letters of rabbis involved in formulating the bans against the Frankists placed special emphasis on the issue of heretical literature.76 The fullest expression of this tendency can be found in the closing section of the May 1756 herem of Brody:
We deem it necessary to place restrictions and create order with regard to those who . . . cast off the study of the Talmud and the codifiers and attempt to penetrate the deepest secrets of the Torah without learning first how to read its plain meaning and attaining the understanding of Gemarah. . . . And so we pronounce the ruling that we prohibit anyone to study these writings, even the writings that are certainly of the ARI’s [Isaac Luria’s] authorship. It is strictly forbidden to study them until one has reached the age of forty. The Zohar, the books Shomer emunim [of Rabbi Joseph Ergas], and Pardes rimonim77 of Rabbi Moses Cordovero alone may be studied by one who has attained the age of thirty, provided they are in printed form and not in manuscript.78
The idea of the prohibition of the study of kabbalah before the age of forty had a long history. However, never before did it receive the patronage and authority of a formal rabbinic assembly. Neither was it ever linked to the explicit demand that the mastery of halakhah must precede any kabbalistic inquiry.79 The Brody pronouncement thus bore extraordinary weight and—in an unprecedented way—combined both