Wednesday, January 16, 2008
"REDEMPTION THROUGH SIN"
is the title of a paper by Gershom Scholem summarizing the Sabbatean/Frankist heretical movement in Judaism. This movement has had a far greater impact on Judaism and the New World Order than its obscurity would tell. It follows the teachings of manic-depressive false messiah Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676). Using Scholem's words I will attempt a brief summary. Scholem writes:
The Sabbatian movement in its various shadings and configurations persisted with remarkable obstinacy among certain sectors of the Jewish people for approximately 150 years after Sabbatai Zevi's conversion. In a number of countries it grew to be powerful, but for various reasons, internal as well as external, its affairs were deliberately hidden from the public eye. In particular, its spokesmen refrained from committing their beliefs to print, and the few books that they actually published concealed twice what they revealed. ...
In the history of religion we frequently encounter types of individuals known as "pneumatics" (Pneumatikoi) or "spiritualists" (spirituales). Such persons, who played a major role in the development of Sabbatianism, were known in Jewish tradition as "spiritual" or "extra-spirited" men or, in the language of the Zohar, as "masters of a holy soul."...
In the Sabbatian movement, which was the first clear manifestation (one might better say explosion) of spiritualistic sectarianism in Judaism since the days of the Second Temple, the type of the radical spiritualist found its perfect expression. To be sure, illuminati of the same class were later prevalent in Hasidism too, particularly during the golden age of the movement; but Hasidism, rather than allow itself to be taken over by such types, forced them after a period of initial equivocation to curb their unruly spirituality, and did so with such success that it was able to overcome the most difficult and hazardous challenge of all, that of safely incorporating them into its own collective body...the Sabbatians pressed on to the end, into the abyss of the mythical “gates of impurity” (sha’are tum’ah), where the pure spiritual awareness of a world made new became a pitfall fraught with peril for the moral life. ...
...following the commencement of a "Palestinian period" during which organized Sabbatian emigrations to the Holy Land took place from several countries, the movement spread rapidly through Germany and the Austro- Hungarian Empire. In Lithuania it failed to take root, but in Podolia and Moravia it became so entrenched that it was soon able to claim the allegiance of many ordinary Jewish burghers and small businessmen (according to Jacob Emden, the numerical value of the Hebrew letters in the verse in Psalms 14, “There is none that doeth good, not even one," was equivalent to the numerical value of the letters in the Hebrew word for Moravia!) In Prague and Mannheim Sabbatian-oriented centers of learning came into being. The influence of the "graduates" of these institutions was great...n the middle of the eighteenth century many of the Sabbatians in Podolia converted to Christianity after the example of their leader Jacob Frank, but still others remained within the Jewish fold. Finally, a Sabbatian stronghold sprang up again in Prague, where Frankism was propagated in a Jewish form. After 1815, however, the movement fell apart and its members were absorbed into secular Jewish society, like the Frankist ancestors of Louis Brandeis. ...
Underlying the novelty of Sabbatian thought more than anything else was the deeply paradoxical religious sensibility of the Marranos and their descendants, who constituted a large portion of Sephardic Jewry. Had it not been for the unique psychology of these reconverts to Judaism, the new theology would never have found the fertile ground to flourish in that it did. ...
...many rabbis who were confirmed "believers" nevertheless managed to remain in their rabbinical posts. ...
The fire was fed by powerful religious emotions, but in the crucial moment these were to join forces with passions of an entirely different sort, namely, with the instincts of anarchy and lawlessness that lie deeply buried in every human soul. Traditionally Judaism had always sought to suppress such impulses, but now that they were allowed to emerge in the revolutionary exhilaration brought on by the experience of redemption and its freedom, they burst forth more violently than ever. An aura of holiness seemed to surround them. ...
The concept of the two Torahs was an extremely important one for Sabbatian nihilism, not least because it corresponded so perfectly to the "Marranic" mentality. In accordance with its purely mystical nature the Torah of atzilut was to be observed strictly in secret; the Torah of beriah, on the other hand, was to be actively and deliberately violated. As to how this was to be done, however, the "radicals" could not agree and differing schools of thought evolved among them. ...
there were those who said: in the world of redemption there can be no such thing as sin, therefore all is holy and everything is permitted. To this it was retorted: not at all!' what is needed rather is to totally deny the beriah, "Creation" (a word that had by now come to denote every aspect of the old life and its institutions), to trample its values underfoot, for only by casting off the last vestiges of these can we truly become free. ...despite the many psychological nuances which entered into the "transgression committed for its own sake" and the sacred sin, all the "radicals" were united in their belief in the sanctifying power of sin itself "that dwelleth with them in the midst of their uncleannesses," as they were fond of interpreting the phrase in Leviticus 16:16. ...
Sabbatians in Salonika, the Donmeh, regularly held a celebration on the twenty-second day of the Hebrew month of Adar known as "the Festival of the Lamb," the exact nature of which was kept a carefully guarded secret until some of the younger members of the sect were finally prevailed upon to reveal it to outsiders. According to their account the festival included an orgiastic rite called "the extinguishing of the lights." From what we know of this rite it probably came to Salonika from Izmir, for both its name and its contents were evidently borrowed from the pagan cult of "the Great Mother" which flourished in antiquity and continued to be practiced after its general demise by a small sect of "Light Extinguishers" in Asia Minor under the cover of Islam. There can be no question that the Donmeh took over this ancient bacchanalia based on immemorial myths and adapted it to conform to their mystical belief in the sacramental value of exchanging wives," a custom that was undoubtedly observed by other "radicals." in the movement as well. ...
...organized Sabbatian nihilism appeared in four main forms:
1. That of the "believers" who chose "voluntary Marranism" in the form of Islam. ...
2. That of the "believers" who remained traditional Jews in outward life while inwardly adhering to the "Torah of atzilut" ...
3. That of the Frankists who "Marranized themselves" by converting to Catholicism. ...
4. That of the Frankists in Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, and Rumania, who chose to remain Jewish. ...
In summary, the five distinguishing beliefs of "radical" Sabbatianism are:
1. The belief in the necessary apostasy of the Messiah and in the sacramental nature of the descent into the realm of the kelipot.
2. The belief that the "believer" must not appear to be as he really is.
3. The belief that the Torah of atzilut must be observed through the violation of the Torah of beriah.
4. The belief that the First Cause and the God of Israel are not the same, the former being the God of rational philosophy, the latter the God of religion.
5. The belief in three hypostases of the Godhead, all of which have been or will be incarnated in human form. ...
The annihilation of every religion and positive system of belief---this was the "true way" the "believers" were expected to follow. Concerning the redemptive powers of havoc and destruction Frank's imagination knew no limits. "Wherever Adam trod a city was built, but wherever I set foot all will be destroyed, for I came into this world only to destroy and to annihilate. ...
...all who would be warriors must be without religion..."I did not come into this world to lift you up but rather to cast you down to the bottom of the abyss. Further than this it is impossible to descend, nor can one ascend again by virtue of one's own strength, for only the Lord can raise one up from the depths by the power of His hand." The descent into the abyss requires not only the rejection of all religions and conventions, but also the commission of "strange acts," and this in turn demands the voluntary abasement of one's own sense of self, so that libertinism and the achievement of that state of utter shamelessness which leads to a tikkun of the soul are one and the same thing. ...
In this doctrine of immoralism we are confronted both with a total and overt rejection of all traditional norms of behavior, and with an exaggerated feeling of freedom that regards the license to do as it pleases as a proof of its own authenticity and as, a favor bestowed upon it from above .... The entire doctrine rests on the concept of an "extra spirit" as a privilege conferred upon a new type of human being who from here on is no longer to be subject to the standards and obligations that have hitherto always been the rule. Unlike the ordinary, purely "psychic" individual, the pneumatic is a free man, free from the demands of the Law....
The hopes and beliefs of these last Sabbatians caused them to be particularly susceptible to the "millennial" winds of the times. Even while still "believers" --in fact, precisely because they were "believers"--they bad been drawing closer to the spirit of the Haskalah all along, so that when the flame of their faith finally flickered out they soon reappeared as leaders of Reform Judaism, secular intellectuals, or simply complete and indifferent skeptics. ...
That is an inadequate summary. If you really want to understand them, reading the entire paper is called for.
There is one additional aspect of Sabbatianism that is touched on briefly in this paper. Frequently in reading about the claims of blood libel within the Jewish community, we are presented with a Catholicism vs. Judaism scenerio, one side opposing the other. In Scholem's paper he points to a sort of third rail that is a component of these stories.
The Sabbateans were the enemies of the orthodox Jewish rabbis. They wanted to curry favor with the Catholics in order to gain some protection from the power of the rabbis. According to Scholem:
lf one accepts what Heinrich Graetz and David Kahana have to say on the subject of Sabbatian theology, it is impossible to understand what its essential attraction ever was; indeed, if it is true, as both these writers claim, that the entire movement was a colossal hoax perpetrated by degenerates and frauds, one might well ask why a serious historian should bother to waste his time on it in the first place. And if this is the case with Sabbatianism in general, how much more so when one ventures to consider what is undoubtedly the most tragic episode in the entire drama, that of the Frankists, the psychological barriers to the understanding of which are incomparably greater. How, for instance, can one get around the historical fact that in the course of their public disputation with Jewish rabbis in Lvov in 1759 the members of this sect did not even shrink from resorting to the notorious blood libel, an accusation far more painful to Jewish sensitivities than any of their actual beliefs? A great deal has been written about this incident, particularly by the eminent historian Meir Balaban, in whose book, On the History of the Frankist Movement (in Hebrew), it is exhaustively dealt with. Balaban, who makes the Lvov libel a starting point for his over-all inquiry, reaches the significant conclusion that there was no organic connection between it and the Frankist "articles of faith" presented at the disputation. The members of the sect, in fact, were reluctant to make the accusation at all, and did so only at the instigation of the Catholic clergy, which was interested in using them for purposes of its own, having nothing to do with their Sabbatian background. That they finally agreed to collaborate in the scheme can be explained by their desire to wreak vengeance on their rabbinical persecutors.
If, in fact, so-called Jewish testimony to blood libel was actually Frankist testimony for its own nefarious purposes, it is no more acceptable than testimony obtained under torture.
