In the mid-seventeenth century, Shabbatai Zvi, a rabbi from Izmir, claimed to be the Jewish messiah, and convinced a great many Jews to believe him. The movement surrounding this messianic pretender was enormous, and Shabbatai's mission seemed to be affirmed by the numerous supporting prophecies of believers. The story of Shabbatai and his prophets has mainly been explored by specialists in Jewish mysticism. Only a few scholars have placed this large-scale movement in its social and historical context. Matt Goldish shifts the focus of Sabbatean studies from the theology of Lurianic Kabbalah to the widespread seventeenth-century belief in latter-day prophecy. The intense expectations of the messiah in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam form the necessary backdrop for understanding the success of Sabbateanism. The seventeenth century was a time of deep intellectual and political ferment as Europe moved into the modern era. The strains of the Jewish mysticism, Christian millenarianism, scientific innovation, and political transformation all contributed to the development of the Sabbatean movement. By placing Sabbateanism in this broad cultural context, Goldish integrates this Jewish messianic movement into the early modern world, making its story accessible to scholars and students alike. Table of Contents: Preface Prologue 1. Messianic Prophecy in the Early Modern Context 2. Nathan of Gaza and the Roots of Sabbatean Prophecy 3. From Mystical Vision to Prophetic Explosion 4. Opponents and Observers Respond 5. Prophecy after Shabbatais Apostasy Notes Index Reviews of this book: Goldish looks at the Jewish messianic surge of the 17th century, which culminated with the Sabbatean movement, and places it in a broader multidimensional context...He has produced a well-written, scholarly addition and modification to the literature. --Paul Kaplan, Library Journal

Sephardic Jews who voluntarily or forcibly converted to Catholicism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to avoid persecution or expulsion were known as conversos or New Christians. Some tried to live the double life of a Crypto-Jew, outwardly embracing Christianity while secretly maintaining Jewish practices. Others were in a state that was neither Jewish nor Christian, and, as painful and humiliating as it was, these Marranos (a term for conversos that became abusive), actually created a new kind of modern personality. By tracing the usage of this disparaging term, Masks in the Mirror also explores the nature of the historical circumstances as it becomes evident that anyone living under these circumstances - constantly threatened and persecuted by the Inquisition and suspected of being heretics and untrustworthy by their Christian colleagues and neighbors - could be driven to a state of madness. Focusing on families and childrearing, this book attempts to grasp the structures of feeling that created such madness, which while debilitating could often be creative and exciting, especially among poets, playwrights, and novelists. It looks at the play of masks, the secrecy and the illusion, that Marranos experienced daily, which some attempted to exorcise in their writings, and it explores the possibility of applying the concept of Marranism generically.

Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse explores for the first time the extent to which the unusual religious diversity and tolerance of the Dutch Republic affected how its residents regarded Jews and Muslims. Analyzing an array of vernacular publications, this book reveals how Dutch writers, especially those within the nonconformist and spiritualist camps, expressed positive attitudes toward religious diversity in general, and Jews and Muslims in particular. Through covering the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) and the post-war era, it also highlights how the Dutch search for allies against Spain led them to approach Muslim rulers. The Dutch were assisted in this by their positive relations with Jews, and were thus able to shape a more affirmative portrayal of Islam. Revealing noticeable differences in language and tone between English and Dutch publications and exploring societal attitudes and culture, Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse is ideal for students of British and Dutch early-modern cultural, intellectual, and religious history.

The Heresy of Jacob Frank is the first monograph length study on the religious philosophy of Jacob Frank (1726-1791), who, in the wake of false messiah Sabbetai Zevi, led the largest mass apostasy in Jewish history. Based on close readings of Frank's late teachings, recorded in 1784 and 1790, this book challenges scholarly presentations of Frank that depict him as a sex-crazed "degenerate," and presents Frank as an original and prescient figure at the crossroads of tradition and modernity, reason and magic, Kabbalah and Western Esotericism. Frank's worldview combines a skeptical rejection of religious law as ineffectual and repressive with a supernatural, esoteric myth of immortal beings, material magic, and worldly power. With close readings of the theological and narrative passages of Frank's teachings, Michaelson shows how the Frankist sect evolved from its Sabbatean roots and the infamous 1757-59 disputations before the Catholic Church, into a Western Esoteric society based on alchemy, secrecy, and sexual liberation. Sexual ritual, apparently tightly limited and controlled by the sect, was not a libertine bacchanal but an enactment of the messianic reality, a corporealization of what would later become known as spirituality. While Frank was undoubtedly a manipulative, even abusive leader whose sect mostly disappeared from history, Michaelson suggests that his ideology anticipated themes that would become predominant in the Haskalah, Early Hasidism, and even contemporary 'New Age' Judaism. In an inversion of traditional religious values, Frank's antinomian theology held personal flourishing to be a religious virtue, affirmed only the material, and transferred messianic eros into social, sexual, and political reality.

Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new world. As aspirations for liberation clashed with adherence to tradition, as national, ethnic, cultural, and other alternatives emerged and a long, circuitous search for identity began, it was no longer evident that the definition of Jewishness would be based on the beliefs and practices surrounding the study of the Torah. In The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe Shmuel Feiner reconstructs this evolution by listening to the voices of those who participated in the process and by deciphering its cultural codes and meanings. On the one hand, a great majority of observant Jews still accepted the authority of the Talmud and the leadership of the rabbis; on the other, there was a gradually more conspicuous minority of "Epicureans" and "freethinkers." As the ground shifted, each individual was marked according to his or her place on the path between faith and heresy, between devoutness and permissiveness or indifference. Building on his award-winning Jewish Enlightenment, Feiner unfolds the story of critics of religion, mostly Ashkenazic Jews, who did not take active part in the secular intellectual revival known as the Haskalah. In open or concealed rebellion, Feiner's subjects lived primarily in the cities of western and central Europe—Altona-Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Breslau, and Prague. They participated as "fashionable" Jews adopting the habits and clothing of the surrounding Gentile society. Several also adopted the deist worldview of Enlightenment Europe, rejecting faith in revelation, the authority of Scripture, and the obligation to observe the commandments. Peering into the synagogue, observing individuals in the coffeehouse or strolling the boulevards, and peeking into the bedroom, Feiner recovers forgotten critics of religion from both the margins and the center of Jewish discourse. His is a pioneering work on the origins of one of the most significant transformations of modern Jewish history.

"What made Jesus the Messiah? This book will teach you the Jewish roots of your faith and help you gain a fresh new perspective on the resurrection of Jesus. In 1994, after one of the greatest rabbis of the twentieth century died at the age of ninety-two, his followers began to proclaim him as the Messiah. They expected him to rise from the dead and even come again. Is this possible? Could a deceased rabbi be the Messiah? In this fascinating book, biblical scholar Michael L. Brown, PhD, takes you on a captivating journey beginning in Brooklyn, New York, where this famous rabbi died in 1994, then back through Jewish history, looking at little-known Jewish beliefs about the Messiah, potential Messiahs that emerged in each generation, and teachings about the reincarnated soul of the Messiah. Dr. Brown then looks at the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus from his unique perspective as a Messianic Jew, demonstrating why Jesus' resurrection uniquely confirms that He alone is the promised Messiah. This page-turner is for everyone who is interested in the Jewish roots of our faith, everyone fascinated by Jewish tradition, and everyone wanting to gain a fresh new perspective on the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. It is also a great witnessing tool for Christians who want to share the good news of Yeshua the Messiah with their Jewish friends"--

Over the centuries, the messianic tradition has provided the language through which modern Jewish philosophers, socialists, and Zionists envisioned a utopian future. Michael L. Morgan, Steven Weitzman, and an international group of leading scholars ask new questions and provide new ways of thinking about this enduring Jewish idea. Using the writings of Gershom Scholem, which ranged over the history of messianic belief and its conflicted role in the Jewish imagination, these essays put aside the boundaries that divide history from philosophy and religion to offer new perspectives on the role and relevance of messianism today.

Bringing to light a hidden chapter in the history of modern Judaism, Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah explores the shamanic dimensions of Jewish mysticism. Jonathan Garb integrates methods and models from the social sciences, comparative religion, and Jewish studies to offer a fresh view of the early modern kabbalists and their social and psychological contexts. Through close readings of numerous texts—some translated here for the first time—Garb draws a more complete picture of the kabbalists than previous depictions, revealing them to be as concerned with deeper states of consciousness as they were with study and ritual. Garb discovers that they developed physical and mental methods to induce trance states, visions of heavenly mountains, and transformations into animals or bodies of light. To gain a deeper understanding of the kabbalists’ shamanic practices, Garb compares their experiences with those of mystics from other traditions as well as with those recorded by psychologists such as Milton Erickson and Carl Jung. Finally, Garb examines the kabbalists’ relations with the wider Jewish community, uncovering the role of kabbalistic shamanism in the renewal of Jewish tradition as it contended with modernity.

This extraordinary collection of essays is the first to approach the phenomenon of spirit possession among Jews from a multidisciplinary perspective. What beliefs have Jews held about spirit possession? Have Jewish people believed themselves to be possessed by spirits? If so, what sorts of spirits were they? Have Jews' conceptions of possession been the same as those of their Christian and Muslim neighbors? These are some of the questions addressed in these thirteen essays, which together explore spirit possession in a wide range of temporal and geographic contexts. The phenomena known as spirit possession are both very widespread and very difficult to explain. The late Raphael Patai initiated study of spirit possession as found in the Jewish world in the post-Talmudic period by taking a folkloric and anthropological approach to the subject. Other scholars have opened up new avenues of inquiry through discussions of the topic in connection with Jewish mystical and magical traditions. The essays in this collection expand the variety of approaches to the subject, addressing Jewish possession phenomena from the points of view of religion, mysticism, literature, anthropology, psychology, history, and folklore. Scholarly views and popular traditions, benevolent spirits and malevolent shades, exorcism, social control, messianic implications, madness, literary structure, and a host of other topics are brought into the discussion of spirit possession in Jewish culture. This juxtaposition of approaches among the essays in this volume, some of which analyze the same texts in different ways, creates a broad foundation on which to contemplate the meaning of spirit possession.

The Burden of Silence is the first monograph on Sabbateanism, an early modern Ottoman-Jewish messianic movement, tracing it from its beginnings during the seventeenth century up to the present day. Initiated by the Jewish rabbi Sabbatai Sevi, the movement combined Jewish, Islamic, and Christian religious and social elements and became a transnational phenomenon, spreading througout Afro-Euroasia. When Ottoman authorities forced Sevi to convert to Islam in 1666, his followers formed messianic crypto-Judeo-Islamic sects, Dönmes, which played an important role in the modernization and secularization of Ottoman and Turkish society and, by extension, Middle Eastern society as a whole. Using Ottoman, Jewish, and European sources, Sisman examines the dissemination and evolution of Sabbeateanism in engagement with broader topics such as global histories, messianism, mysticism, conversion, crypto-identities, modernity, nationalism, and memory. By using flexible and multiple identities to stymie external interference, the crypto-Jewish Dönmes were able to survive despite persecution from Ottoman authorities, internalizing the Kabbalistic principle of a "burden of silence" according to which believers keep their secret on pain of spiritual and material punishment, in order to sustain their overtly Muslim and covertly Jewish identities. Although Dönmes have been increasingly abandoning their religious identities and embracing (and enhancing) secularism, individualism, and other modern ideas in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey since the nineteenth century, Sisman asserts that, throughout this entire period, religious and cultural Dönmes continued to adopt the "burden of silence" in order to cope with the challenges of messianism, modernity, and memory.