Shabbetai Zevi in High Defintion

Abuses of Authority, Tradition, and the Occult

I genuinely never thought that I would be the kind of person to write essays on various Twitter phenomena or even singular tweets, but on September 11th, 2023, Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone made the following observation on twitter dot com.

Sometimes I think about how the Jewish future is going to be deeply shaped by those with the most profound relationship with Jewish mysticism - Chasidim and Sefardim, and how few people realize that. Buckle up friends.`

I do not know why this tweet showed up on my feed, but I felt obliged to comment on it as follows:¹

Now imagine what Shabbetai Tzvi could have pulled off with an internet connection

This poast alone garnered a whopping twenty-seven likes, and the subsequent poast suggesting I write about it on my substack got six, which is more than enough to convince me that it might be worth fleshing out a bit more in detail.

First, in keeping with my Maimonidean proclivities, I will start by stating what this essay is not: it is not about the authenticity of Kabbalah, the authorship of the Zohar, critiques of Chasidic literature, and it will also not denigrate particular movements more than necessary. Furthermore, I am not interested in theological or Halakhic claims, I am writing about issues of politics, authority, and sociology. There will be references to people who abuse Kabbalistic ideas and concepts to all sorts of nefarious ends, but I am not making a “if X therefore Y” claim that is universally applicable.²

Academics dispute what allowed the Sabbatean movement to be so influential: was it the fallout of the Khmelnitsky massacres? Social contagion? Folk religion run amok? As is the case in many a historical phenomenon, multiple things can be true. Explaining the rise of Shabbetai Zevi may sound insane retrospectively, as those four hundred years removed from that mass hysteria, and while the whole episode is extremely embarrassing (to put it mildly), but yet it holds a certain degree of fascination for us, because it is a reflection of our own deepest eschatological feelings and dreams. Shabbetai Zevi, in my humble opinion, is one of the five most important Rabbis of the post-Talmudic era.³ We can’t escape that long shadow that was cast by a mentally ill individual whose delusions were only reinforced instead of dispelled.

Study of the Sabbatean movement leads to some fascinating parallels with Christianity. The Messiah who might not have been, a core group of original followers, and a prophet of sorts with the vision⁴ to turn what might have been a provincial, backwards cult into a world-shaping force. There are of course, many differences between the two, but one that stands out to me is one that was noted by the late great Gershom Scholem in his magnum opus, a biography of both Shabbetai and the movement he generated. While historical revisionism in the Orthodox world places the blame on the “Amcha” for Shabbetai’s success, Scholem’s scholarship makes the opposite (and thus more problematic) claim: it was the endorsement of the rabbinical establishment. Scholem argues that even R. Yaaqob Sasportas, the staunchest opponent of the rampant social contagion, initially supported it.⁵

It is worth noting that the above flies in the face of his general thesis which views the popularity of Kabbalah as a sort of bottom-up phenomenon. Namely that the much-deried “Amcha” maintained Israel’s quasi-pagan, mythologized conception of the universe and of the Tora.⁶ It was only later under the influence of Islam and those pesky Aristotelians that the esoteric tradition of Israel was on its way out until its revival within a century or two of its extinction date.

If you’re a Hegelian or a Brisker (in my rapidly advancing age, I often repeat myself) the irreconcilable contradiction between these two ideas is infuriating. Perhaps you might treat this as an issue of BeMai Hakha ‘Asqinan but that dialectical tool is irrelevant in our case. In our case, the answer is the same as outlined above: both are true. Instead we have a chicken and an egg problem, and rather than try and solve that we are forced to conclude the impossible: the chicken and the egg both came first. In other words, there is a dynamic between the clergy and the laity in which both fuels the fantasies of the other.

With that brief introduction in place, the central question remains in place: how would have Shabbetai and Nate of Ghazza fared in the social media era? We will never know for sure, but based on contemporary trends we can extrapolate a few things. First: in one meaningful respect, Shabbetai’s movement would have been at a disadvantage. First and foremost, part of what made the movement spread the way it did was the lag between when things transpired and when your average Jew would hear of them; usually weeks, if not months, later. In my view, the anticipation for the next installment of the Messianic soap opera was instrumental in maintaining momentum. In our own era, the failures, inconsistences, fictions, and erratic behaviors of the so-called Messiah would be only full display, weakening the cause. However the opposite is also possible: the erratic behavior and outlandish claims would boost his popularity. We will obviously never be able to determine the outcome of a hypothetical, but the underlying symptoms of contagion are still there.

In the modern internet landscape, it seems that every now and then some “charismatic” preacher pops up, says insane things,⁷ gets wide traction (in part due to antisemites having their biases confirmed) and then said lunatic parlays those fifteen minutes of fame into a life of “Kiruv” and grifting. Now in defense of these online preachers, they do not (as far as I know) have criminal convictions. However, the structures of their “groups” and the ideas preached contain a certain Sabbatean bent. There’s the egregious misuse of Biblical, Talmudic, and Kabbalistic concepts in terms which are designed to create an ever more insular in-group and in some cases cut individuals off from their families and the Jewish community at large. Eliezer Berland is of course an example of such a criminal, though he did not rely on the interwebs (nor could he) to advance his cause. Nor did the predatory German rabbi who convinced several young women, based on perverse notions of Kabbalistic Tikkunim and reincarnation, forced several young women to have sex with him in exchange for “spiritual healing”. The list goes on and on.

In some instances, the abuse and misuse of certain concepts should be wholly unsurprising. However, what are we supposed to say when people create cult dynamics while relying on the actual intent of said sources?⁸ What happens if a rabbi uses their authority to coerce the laity into all sorts of forbidden and evil acts and arrangements on the basis of that very authority?⁹

I will not answer those questions. Those are not for me, an anon on the interwebs to decide. However, I will say that those are the final form of an already extant phenomenon: namely, the centralization of communal and religious authority in the hands of a Saint. While perhaps an autocracy might work for some better than others, the reality is that autocrats have no checks on their powers whatsoever. You could even argue that a rigid hierarchy of this type conforms with the natural order. Even so, the extremely centralization and worship of the Autocrat has had ruinous downstream effects. To be fair to some of them, many did not ask to be made into the Pope. In fact, many wished nothing more than to sit and study Tora as the world around them chugged along. Alas, the opportunities were too great. Many gave into temptation and sought to desecrate the graves and memories of the unwitting and unwilling Popes.

The small scale cultist is a logical conclusion of this ideology. The difference between Berland and another high profile rabbi with a criminal record is that Berland made the mistake of committing sex crimes (unacceptable) as opposed to financial crimes (unacceptable, but l’maiseh acceptable). His claims of unique authority were not unique amongst the demented. What bothers the average Jew is how could anyone voluntarily follow so deranged and cruel. The answer is provided by Scholem. There has been a desperate need to mythologize the banality of life. Many people, whether due to poverty, inertia, boredom, or experiential sterility, seek out the Cosmacrator who can restore the crown of the myth to its former glory.¹⁰ This yearning, when harnessed properly can yield immeasurable glory in this world, and all sorts of power and prestige. Unlike Shabbetai, modern charismatics do not need to reshape the entire Jewish world. They need to carve a niche, a chosen remnant, who will blindly follow them to the death. The obvious problem is this: monotheism and mythology are mutually exclusive. The embrace of the mythical is necessarily the rejection of a God with absolute dominion over the natural order. However, this is not a religion of the philosophers we are speaking about. We are dealing with motivations that treat emotions and experience as the means to knowledge rather than knowledge as the means to experience. The cycle in which the people’s yearn for the return of the mythic savior is easily exploitable, and only a decent person wouldn’t try to take advantage of it.¹¹

There is no way around the fact that personal charisma is essential to cultivating a following. I will end this essay with the following: the ultimate Jewish leader, Moshe Rabbenu, was the opposite of a charismatic. He was a poor speaker until the very end of his life, his authority was constantly challenged and in modern political terms we would treat his era as one of tremendous instability. All we explicitly know of his personality is his great humility. It was not through charisma that he endured, rather it was through his knowledge and the source of what he spoke. For those of us who are alarmed by our circles’ increasing susceptibility to the charismatics, it is very easy to write it off as not our problem. Our leaders would never. But it is not a question of leadership alone. It is a question of the what the demos desires. And if Scholem and Rabbi Lightstone are even half right, the demos desires a dark and unstable future.

1. I did not enjoy the feeling of linking to my own tweet. I profusely apologize for this shameless display of public masturbation.

2. If you succeed in doxing me, I am willing to give you one (1) free, hour-long lecture on any of those topics as long as you agree to not make my information public.

3. The other four being Rashi, Maimonides, Yosef Karo, and Isaac Luria. This is a measure of impact and influence, not of righteousness.

4. Kethiv: vision, Qeri: marketing genius

5. I am not an expert on R. Sasportas’ life nor on the Sabbatean controversy. I understand that this claim is disputed in every direction. I am offering what Scholem proposes.

6. I know this is horrifically simplistic. Don’t @ me, bro.

7. See my prior post “Did the Reform Movement Cause the Holocaust?”

8. I must stress that this particular issues is very hard to discuss candidly without straying from the objectives of this piece.

9. Regardless of how you feel about the ever-extant “crisis” of people going “OTD”, I think anyone would be hard pressed to blame someone who was abused at the hands of a religious authority figure, though this might just be another “radical” opinion of mine.

10. This is, in some respects, the essence of right-wing populism which posits the Kingdom of Heaven is Eden. Left-wing populism posits Eden is the Kingdom of Heaven. והמבין יבין

11. I am aware that this paragraph is clunky and vague. That was by design. I can’t condense eight hundred years of dispute into a single essay.