Thursday, July 14, 2005
NATHAN OF GAZA
It was a visionary that ushered Sabbati Zevi into fame. According to Eli Goldman, In 1663, the rabbis of Jerusalem sent Shabbetai Zvi to Egypt on communal business. There he studied with the great and famous rabbis of Kabbala. He was accepted into the most distinguished circles and accepted as a true Torah scholar and mystic.
At this time, in Gaza, a man by the name of Nathan lived. Nathan was the son of a distinguished rabbinical family from Jerusalem. Nathan was a well known and respected scholar who studied mysticism. Nathan possessed the secrets of the Kabbala and used it to bequeath blessings on those who came to him. His name soon traveled far and wide and many seeking divine intervention in their problematic lives, sought him out. Because of his lofty status and ability to invoke divine intervention to help others, Nathan declared himself to be a prophet.
Shabbetai Zvi, hearing of the miracle man of Gaza, decided to visit him in hope of procuring a relief for his bouts of melancholy and feeling that he was the messiah. As he set out upon his journey, Nathan of Gaza had a dream that the messiah came and appeared to him. When Shabbetai Zvi came to speak with Nathan, Nathan recognized Shabbetai Zvi as the messiah from his dreams. Instead of curing Shabbetai Zvi from his delusions of being the messiah, Nathan convinced Shabbetai Zvi that he was indeed the true messiah.
The two discussed the matter in the deepest Kabbalistic terms. Nathan explained to Shabbetai Zvi that he had come to bring the world to its perfection. He explained to Shabbetai Zvi the lofty status of his soul and its mission here on earth. Nathan of Gaza announced to the world that the true messiah had arrived. Shabbetai Zvi himself was transferred into a state of elated illumination, becoming certain of his true self and mission to the world.
In 1665, he proclaimed himself the messiah. Gaza, was in euphoria. Nathan the prophet, who was highly respected, independently confirmed Shabbetai Zvi's proclamation. The local population accepted the declaration and even the local rabbis, who spoke with Shabbetai Zvi, were convinced that he, indeed, was the messiah.
According to the article he began changing Jewish law. He "introduced a special blessing to thank G-d for permitting that which was forbidden," specifically to eat certain fats. He announced the ingathering of the ten lost tribes of Israel. In Greece and Turkey he "introduced new practices into the accepted religious life and declared that the fast days commemorating the Temple were abolished. Festive meals should be eaten instead."
Not only were these acts antinomian, they also are reminiscent of some of the changes that have been made to the Roman Catholic Mass, specifically going from the theology of sacrifice to the theology of community celebration.
A "frenzied messianic fever" developed around Zevi. He had support not only in the Jewish community, but also among the Muslim mystics. And he left a legacy. The article closes with a report of "The repercussions of the Shabbatai Zvi incident [which] precipitated the antagonism that erupted some fifty years later as the Chassidic movement began to spread its influence in Europe. The early Chassidim were strongly suspected of being another surfacing of the same Sabatean mysticism that caused much apostasy."
In a book review of POST SABBATIAN SABBATIANISM, by Rav Kook, Bezalel Naor writes:
...the entire phenomenon of Messianism is painted in distinctly antinomian tones. Whereas Torah requires an attitude of shamefacedness and humility, Messiah thrives paradoxically on shamelessness, chutzpah. And Rav Kook is quite explicit as to what the chutzpah consists of: Sexuality, fleshliness, and forsaking Torah. As alarming as all this is, it is well within kabbalistic tradition that again, predates Shabbetai Zevi. One may find in MaHaRaL of Prague and SheLaH, and needless to say, in Zohar, similar expressions of the extralegal origins of Messiah, conceived from the less than immaculate unions of Lot and his daughters, Jacob and Tamar, Boaz and Ruth the Moabitess, David and Bathsheba, and Solomon and Na'amah the Amonitess.
Moshe Idel asks "What prompted Jewish messianic zeal in the 16th and 17th centuries?" and suggests one cause might be the "diffusion of kabbalist literature which was permeated with calculations for the End of Days. He recounts the birth of Frankism:
In 18th-century Europe, a last burst of Shabbateanism occurred with the appearance of Jacob Frank, a former disciple of Shabbetai Zevi who came under the influence of radical Shabbatean trends in the Balkans. Frank declared himself to be an incarnation of divinity and the successor of the Messiah from Smyrna. Frankism advocated outward adherence to Catholicism while secretly believing in a nihilistic version of heretical Judaism. Spreading from Poland to central Europe, the influence of the Frankists persisted well into the nineteenth century.
He suggests that another factor might have been "a great wave of millenarianism in Europe."
A seer cannot invent doctrine out of visionary events. Doctrine is the lifepreserver of the mystic. He should cling to it. A mystic who does not cling to doctrine can easily be led astray as Nathan of Gaze and Sabbatai Zevi demonstrate with their doctrine of "holy sin." Yet antinomianism has plagued Christianity down through the centuries and led to several heresies.
Revelation is closed with the ascension of Christ. New doctrine emerging out of visionary experience has no place in tradition based faith. For a Catholic, CCC 65 explains it:
God has said everything in his Word - "In many various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son." Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father's one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one. St. John of the Cross, among others, commented strikingly on Hebrews 1:1-2: "In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word - and he has no more to say...because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.
Abraham Elqayam, in his doctoral thesis titled "The Mystery of Faith in the Writings of Nathan of Gaza" tells us:
The Sabbatian movement was a movement for spiritual redemption and religious renewal, whose principal aim was to deliver religion from its petrification and its errors, and revive religion, faith and the true Godhead. Sabbatianism is thus one of many such trends that sought to remedy the crisis of faith which beset Jews in the late 17th century. The central role of faith in Sabbatian ideology stemmed both from the crisis of faith experienced by Sabbatai Sevi himself, and the rise of scepticism and crisis of faith endured by the Jews in the 17th century.
The present study shows that Nathan of Gaza strove to set up a Sabbataiocentric experience of redemption; i.e., a redeeming religious experience centered on a concrete messiah Sabbatai Sevi. Sabbatai Sevi was thus not an abstract notion, but in his person, embodied both the foundation and the ultimate end of the redeeming religious experience. Therefore it can maintained, (sic) that Nathan of Gaza's most prominent contribution lay in shaping a fideist, heterodox prototype of "The Man of Faith", whose religious experience revolves around the sacramental belief in a fleshandblood messiah, Sabbatai Sevi.
Catholics, it could be pointed out, have such a flesh and blood Messiah in Jesus Christ. If this explanation of the popularity of Zevi is accurate, it demonstrates the potential for corruption in doctrine brought on by the rejection of Christ.
Did a similar crisis of the Catholic faith, stemming from guilt for centuries of ghettoizing the Jews combined with guilt for the complicity of German Catholics in the Nazi atrocities, arise out of the Holocaust, opening the door to "renewal" in the Catholic Church that has permitted an incursion of visionary phenomena not unlike those of Zevi/Nathan? Did the same pathway Zevi followed into moral corruption lead some of our priests into the sexual abuse crisis?
