KABBALAH - Selected Writings. Bernhard Pick
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of the Rites, Customs and Manner of Life of the Jews" (Padua, 1640), and translated into Latin, French, Dutch, English.5 But besides this and other works, he also wrote a polemical treatise against the Cabalists, whom he despised and derided, entitled Ari noham, i. e., "Roaring Lion," published by Julius Furst, Leipsic, 1840. In this treatise he shows that the cabalistic works, "which are palmed upon ancient authorities, are pseudonymous; that the doctrines themselves are mischievous; and that the followers of this system are inflated with proud notions, pretending to know the nature of God better than any one else, and to possess the nearest and best way of approaching the Deity." He even went so far as to question whether God will ever forgive those who printed the cabalistic works (comp. Furst, p. 7), and this no doubt, because so many Cabalists joined the Church.
But no opposition could stem the tide of the Cabala. Its wonder-working branch had now largely laid hold on the minds and fancies of the Jews, and was producing among them the most mournful and calamitous effects. The chief actor in this tragedy was the cabalist Sabbatai Zebi,6 born at Smyrna, July, 1641.
When fifteen years of age he rapidly mastered the mysteries of the Cabala, which he expounded before crowded audiences at the age of eighteen. When twenty-four years of age, he revealed to his disciples that he was the Messiah, the son of David, the true Redeemer, and that he was to redeem and deliver Israel from their captivity. At the same time he publicly pronounced the Tetragrammaton,7 which the high priest was only permitted to do on the day of atonement. As he would not desist, he was excommunicated by the Jewish sages at Smyrna. He went to Salonica, Athens, Morea and Jerusalem, teaching his doctrines, proclaiming himself the Messiah, anointing prophets and converting thousands upon thousands. As his followers prepared to be led back by him to Jerusalem, they wound up their affairs, and in many places trade was entirely stopped. By the order of the Sultan, Mohammed IV, Sabbathai Zevi was arrested and taken before him at Adrianople. The Sultan said to him: "I am going to test thy Messiahship. Three poisoned arrows shall be shot into thee, and if they do not kill thee, I too will believe that thou art the Messiah." He saved himself by embracing Islamism in the presence of the Sultan, who gave him the name Effendi, and appointed him Kapidji-Bashi. Sab bathai died Sept. 10, 1676, after having ruined thousands upon thousands of Jewish families. In spite of this fiasco the number of Sabbathai's followers was not diminished.
Famous as a champion of orthodoxy was Jacob Israel Emden (1696-1776) rabbi of Altona. During his rabbinate there, the famous Jonathan Eybenschutz8 (born in Cracow in 1690) was called to Altona in 1750, since the German and Polish Jews were divided in that place. As every rabbi was regarded as a sort of magician, the new-comer was expected to stop the epidemic raging at that time in the city. Eybenschutz prepared amulets, which he distributed among the people. For curiosity's sake one was opered, and lo! in it was written: "O thou God of Israel, who dwellest in the beauty of thy power, send down salvation to this person through the merit of thy servant Sabbathai Zevi, in order that thy name, and the name of the Messiah Sabbathai Zevi, may be hallowed in the wrorld." This amulet came into the hands of Emden. Eybenschutz denied all connection with the adherents of Sabbathai, and as he had already gained a great influence, he was believed; at least, almost everybody kept quiet. But Emden was not quiet, and finally the ban was pronounced against Eybenschutz. Even the King Frederic V of Den mark sided with Emden, and Eybenschiitz lost his position. Being forsaken by his friends, Eybenschiitz went to his former pupil, Moses Gerson Kohen, who after baptism took the name of Karl Anton. Anton wrote an apology in behalf of his. teacher, which he dedicated to the King of Denmark. This and other influences had the effect that the whole affair was dropped and Eybenschiitz was elected anew as rabbi of the congregation. Eybenschiitz died in 1764 and was followed twelve years later by his opponent Emden. Both are buried in the Jewish cemetery of Altona.
Another Zoharite was Jacob Frank9 (Jankiew Lebowicz), the founder of the Jewish sect of the Frankists, born in Poland in 1712. He acquired a great reputation as a Cabalist, and settled in Podolia, where he preached a new doctrine, the fundamental principles of which he had borrowed from the teachings of Sabbathai Zevi. He was arrested through the influence of the rabbis, but was liberated through the intervention of the Roman Catholic clergy, and authorized by the King to profess freely his tenets. His followers then, under the name of Zoharites and Anti-Talmudists oppressed their former adversaries in turn. As the papal nuncio at Warsaw declared against them, Frank and most of his adherents embraced Christianity. Frank continued to make proselytes and his sect increased in Poland and Bohemia. He lived in princely style on means furnished him by his followers, and died at Offenbach, in Hesse, December 10, 1791.
The Cabalists of the eighteenth century, with the exception of Moses Chayim Luzzatto (born 1707, died 1747), are of little importance. Modern influences gradually put a stop to the authority of the Cabala, and modern Judaism sees in the Cabala in general only an historical curiosity or an object of literary historical disquisitions.
1 See my article s. v. "Moses Cordovero," loc. cit. 57
2 He is the author of a hymn "Lecha dodi," i. e., "Come my beloved," which is found in all Jewish prayer-books, and used in the service for Sabbath eve.
3 See my article s. v. "Vital" in McClintock and Strong.
4 For a description of the component parts of this work, see Fiirst, Bibliotheca Judaica, III, pp. 479-481.
5 The English translation is found in Picard's Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World, Vol. I, London, 1733.
6 See my article s. v. "Sabbatai Zebi" in McClintock and Strong; see also Geschichte des Sabbatai-Zebi, sein Leben und Treiben, Warsaw, 1883; and Der Erzbetriiger Sabbatai Sevi, der letzte falsche Messias der Juden, etc., Halle, 1760; Berlin, 1908.
7 Called by the Jews shem-hammephorash, on which see my article s. v. in McClintock and Strong.
8 See mv article s. v. "Eybenschutz" in loc. cit., Vol. XII, p. 367.
9 Comp. Gractz, Frank und die Frankisten, Berlin, 1868.
CHAPTER V.
THE MOST IMPORTANT DOCTRINES OF THE CABALA.
God arid Creation.—After having become acquainted in previous chapters with the principal actors in the cabalistic drama we are now prepared to examine the tenets of the Cabala.
Different from the system as exhibited in the Book of Creation or Jezirah is that of the Zohar, because the more difficult, since it embraces not merely the origin of the world, but likewise speculates on the essence of God and the properties of man; in other words it treats of theology, cosmology and anthropology.
Starting from the idea of the Supreme Being as boundless in his nature—which necessarily implies that he is an absolute unity and inscrutable, and that there is nothing without him—God is called En Soph, i. e., "endless," "boundless." In this boundlessness God cannot be comprehended by the intellect, nor described in words;