Sabbatian Heresy: Writings on Mysticism, Messianism, and the Origins of Jewish Modernity ed. by Pawel Maciejko (review)

The figure of Gershom Scholem looms large in the study of Sabbatianism, perhaps as large as that of Sabbatai Tsevi himself. Scholem's presentation of Sabbatianism as a utopian-catastrophic (or apocalyptic) movement that ruptured Jewish tradition and ushered in a radically new era is compelling in and of itself. But it also bears powerfully on modern Jewish identity, since it offers up a secularist Jewish heritage: this seventeenth-century messianic movement burst the shackles of ritual Jewish law, creating an early post-legalist Jewish identity. If some Sabbatians went so far as to adopt other religions, Scholem claimed, they essentially "remained Jewish in their hearts" (xx).

Paweł Maciejko's selection and analysis of key Sabbatian sources not only problematizes Scholem's classic reading of the movement but offers what may be the first truly systemic challenge. In an introductory essay notable for its clarity and concision, Maciejko lays out the historiographical landmarks on the path to his own compelling reformulation of Sabbatean identity as something more post-Jewish than post-legalist. Even Scholem himself departed from his insistence about Sabbatianism's distinctly Jewish character, he notes, albeit only once: the conversion to Islam by followers the Berukhiah offshoot of Sabbatianism fused together different religions as part of the redemptive process. The scholar Yehuda Liebes proceeded a step further, presenting syncretism as a more mainstream Sabbatian development. But for Maciejko, the description of syncretism does not go quite far enough. Rather than an absorption of certain tenets of other religions that remained Jewish at the core, he argues, Sabbatianism constituted a full-fledged amalgamation of different religions in which Judaism was in no way predominant. Certain strands arguably amounted to a "'Jewish Christianism' among Jews." (xxv)

The collection's most groundbreaking portion is perhaps its second chapter, concerning Tsevi's conversion to Islam. Contrary to Scholem's notion of the theology of Tsevi as second in importance to the kabbalistic re-formulations of his prophet, Nathan of Gaza, Maciejko shifts the focus onto Tsevi's own theology—a personal, trans-religious conception forged "in conscious dialogue with other faiths." (xxix) He argues, based on Tsevi's own letters, that his conversion to Islam occurred because his personal God had allegedly annulled the covenant and "literally switched religions" (24) and that Tsevi had voluntarily followed suit. Nathan of Gaza's esoteric gymnastics were attempts to keep that voluntary conversion within the bounds of Judaism. Here, there is room for skepticism, since letters that Sabbatai composed after his ostensibly forced (according to some traditions) conversion might constitute mere rationalizations. But Maciejko's presentation of Tsevi's personal theology as consistent, coherent, and central to the movement is a compelling alternative reading.

Subsequent sections shed new light on Tsevi's most influential followers and spiritual descendants, each furnished with a bracing introductory essay. Avraham Cardoza, a former converso, conceived rabbinic Judaism as worship of the wrong God and therefore a "form of idolatry, a religion no better (and in some ways inferior) to the religions of pagans, Christians, and Muslims." (68) In order to find the True God, the messiah must worship a different deity altogether. The theological innovations of Jonathan Eibeschutz, we learn, strayed not only from mainstream Judaism but from earlier Sabbateanism, too, possibly entailing atheism or crypto-Christianity. Maciejko's fresh revaluation of Jacob Frank suggests creative destruction: "whereas Sabbatai Tsevi was given special personal revelations that permitted him to expound the mysteries of the Torah, Frank denied it all: revelations, the mysteries of the Torah, and the Torah itself," perhaps in an effort to liberate humanity from "the oppression of gender, class, and religion." (142) The last section presents literary reinterpretations of Sabbatianism by modern authors such as Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and S. Y. Agnon. This superb collection opens up a conversation that had been...