The Talmud (22 page)

14
Yehuda Loew,
Kitvei HaMaharal: Be’er Hagolah
(Hoenig & Sons, London, 1964), p.109.

15
Shabbat 107b.

16
Only the first volume, and part of the second of
Pahad Yitzhak
appeared during Lampronti’s lifetime. Publication of the entire encyclopedia was not completed until 1887, one hundred and thirty years after his death.

17
The quote comes from a stone table affixed to the house in Ferrera, Italy, in which Lampronti used to live (Ruderman, 1995).

18
Ruderman, 1995.

19
Nadler, 2001.

20
Feld, 1989.

21
Silverman, 1995 sees Spinoza as important in the cultural emancipation of the Jews through the
Wissenschaft des Judentums
(Scientific Study of Judaism) movement and his separation of the reason and ritual as important for the development of Reform Judaism.

22
Schwartz, 2012.

23
Schwartz, 2012.

24
Braude and Lewis, 1982.

25
Scholem, 1973.

26
Scholem, 1973.

27
The importance of
kabbalah
in Shabbetai Tzvi’s messianism has divided scholars. Gershom Scholem elucidates Tzvi’s quasi-
kabbalistic
system in great detail (Scholem, 1973) but later scholars, particularly Moshe Idel, take issue with Scholem’s view, cf. Idel, 2000.

28
This is a play on the Hebrew blessing for the release of captives. By changing one letter ‘he who releases the bound’ becomes ‘he who permits the forbidden’.

29
Scholem, 1973.

30
Deuteronomy 13.1–6 and 18.18–22.

31
Goldish, 2004.

32
Scholem, 1973.

33
Scholem, 1973.

34
Gray, 2007.

35
Goldish, 2004.

13

The challenge of the Enlightenment

The baptismal certificate is the admission ticket into European civilisation.

Heinrich Heine

After the storm

Shabbetai Tzvi’s death, ten years after his conversion, led to a flurry of speculation amongst some of his former fans. Traditionally the Messiah could only be a descendant of King David’s royal line. But the Talmud refers in passing to another Messiah, a descendant of the Bible’s multi-colour-robed Joseph, who would be slain before David’s descendant could assume his role.
1
When Tzvi died, some of his former followers assumed that he must have been the Josephite Messiah and that his death was part of the great Divine, messianic plan. A further, brief flurry of utopian expectation swept through Bohemia.

Over the years the anti-Sabbatean environment turned nasty. Sabbatean prophets continued to circulate, preaching a message of ultimate redemption and Talmudic
rejection.
2
The Talmudic establishment launched a counter-offensive, rooting out suspected closet Sabbateans from amongst their own number. One of the best-known, and most antagonistic, confrontations erupted between two highly regarded Talmud scholars, Jacob Emden in Germany and Jonathan Eybeschutz in Prague.

Jonathan Eybeschutz was widely regarded as one of the greatest Talmudic authorities of his generation. A child prodigy he became head of the
yeshiva
in
Prague and in 1725 was one of a group of rabbis who formally excommunicated the Sabbatean movement in the city. The author of many highly regarded works on Talmudic law, he was on track for a glittering career, rapidly moving from one senior rabbinic post to another. When he was accused of being a Sabbatean himself his congregants and students refused to believe it.

Eybeshutz’s chief accuser was Jacob Emden. Emden’s father had battled the Sabbateans in Amsterdam and his son now took up the cudgel. But Emden, an outstanding Talmudist in his own right, had also been Eybechutz’s rival for the post of rabbi of the Three Communities of Hamburg, Altona and Wandsbek.

The confrontation began with a book that had appeared in 1724. The work promoted a quasi-
kabbalistic
view that was seen as heretical to traditional belief, and which accorded with Sabbatean mystical doctrine. The Sabbateans themselves claimed the work as one of theirs, and named Eybeschutz as the author. Eybeschutz denied any involvement but suspicions were not fully allayed, even when he took part in the Prague excommunication of the Sabbatean movement. Thirty years later, when Jacob Emden opened some amulets that Eybeschutz had written and found that they contained Sabbatean material, the controversy flared up anew.

The Talmudic world was divided. Accusations and counter-accusations flew. There was scarcely a Talmudist in the world who could remain neutral. There were calls to depose Eybeschutz as rabbi of the Three Communities. He was obliged to appeal to the king for support. The monarch ordered fresh elections for the rabbinic post. Eybeschutz was confirmed in his position but the question mark over whether he really was a follower of Shabbetai Tzvi never went away. His cause was certainly not helped when his son declared himself to be a Sabbatean prophet.

Jacob Emden didn’t emerge from the dispute happily either. Many people blamed him for fanning the flames of a controversy that should have been left to simmer quietly.
3
He fled to Amsterdam where he spent the next few years publishing legal texts and works dedicated to denouncing Sabbatean
kabbalistic
doctrines, particularly publications which he considered to be propaganda to win over
yeshiva
students.

An odious redeemer

Even after all that had happened, the age of messianic pretenders was still not over. It wasn’t long until a far more sinister contender emerged in the person of Jacob Frank, a follower of Shabbetai Tzvi though without the charisma. As a young man Frank had been initiated into the Sabbatean movement and had spent time with a branch of the Donmeh sect of Shabbetai Tzvi’s followers in Salonika. Following a pilgrimage to the grave of Nathan of Gaza, Jacob Frank returned to his original home in Podolia, Poland, where he rounded up followers, preached a message of anarchy and thinly disguised hedonism and sought to abolish the Talmud altogether.

Jacob Frank boasted that he knew nothing of the Talmud. He described himself as an unlearned man. But it is clear from his letters that he was familiar with the Bible and
kabbalah
.
4
He may even have known a little of the Talmud.

On one occasion a group of Sabbateans under Jacob Frank’s direction were discovered holding a secret ritual, an interpretation of a mystical Sabbatean ritual of human marriage with the Torah.
5
They danced unclothed around a naked woman adorned with the ornaments of a Torah scroll. The villagers who stumbled across them at the climax of their rite were horrified. They informed the Polish authorities, the participants were arrested, Jacob Frank fled and his followers were put in prison.

Now that they had been outed as Sabbateans, Jacob Frank’s followers began to hold their rituals publicly, hoping to win recruits from the mainstream Jewish community. The local rabbis asked Jacob Emden, who, as a result of his publications and his battle with Jonathan Eybeschutz had gained a reputation as an anti-Sabbatean activist, what they should do. He suggested that, since new religions were forbidden in Poland, the rabbis should ask for help from the Church to curtail the Sabbatean activities. But Jacob Frank was no fool. He outflanked the rabbis. Twenty one of his followers prepared a manifesto in Latin, a language well understood within the Church but wholly alien to most Talmudists. The manifesto alleged that the Talmud was blasphemous, contrary to reason and against the Divine commandments. They submitted
their pamphlet to the bishop, called themselves contra-Talmudists and claimed that they had been persecuted, excommunicated and falsely accused.
6

The Church saw a two-pronged opportunity. Potentially, the Frankists could be a valuable weapon in the Church’s centuries old crusade against the Jews. And, handled properly, there seemed to be a good chance that Frank’s followers might be converted to the Christian faith.

The Frankists petitioned the Church to order the rabbis to attend a disputation. A key topic would be the validity of the Talmud. The rabbis, aware of the Talmud’s history, had a pretty good idea where this would end up. They managed to resist for a full year. Finally, after extreme pressure from the bishop they gave in. They turned up to the debate in Kamienic where they were horrified to be confronted by a Frankist contingent containing several of their own colleagues, who, it turned out, had always harboured secret Sabbatean beliefs.

On 17 October 1757 the bishop decided that the Frankists had won the debate. He ordered Jewish homes to be searched and all copies of the Talmud confiscated and burnt.

The burnings took place in November 1757. On the ninth of that month the bishop was suddenly taken ill and died. Everybody, Frankists, Churchmen and rabbis saw it as an omen. The burnings ceased, the Frankists took fright and Jacob Frank fled with many of his followers to Turkey where, following Shabbetai Tzvi’s example, he converted to Islam.

Meanwhile those of his followers who had remained in Poland turned back to the Church. They reminded the ecclesiastical authorities of the promises of protection the deceased bishop had given them. After some discussion the king issued a decree of royal protection. When Jacob Frank heard of it he shrugged off his conversion to Islam and returned home.

Now that they were able to live openly, Jacob Frank told his followers that it was time to follow a new path. This would involve rejecting all forms of law but only in secret. Outwardly they were to convert to Christianity. He provided a mystical justification for all this then tried to make a deal with the Church. He would present himself and all his followers for baptism, but only on condition that they could continue to live as a separate sect with their own rituals. He also demanded a further opportunity to debate as contra-Talmudists with the rabbis. One of the themes was to be the old charge of the blood libel,
the accusation that the Talmud demands that Jews use the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes.

The blood libel had been undergoing something of a revival. The number of trials of Jews accused of ritual murder in Poland had been on the rise since the Counter-Reformation in the 1560s. In 1710, Jan Serafinowicz, a Jewish convert to Christianity, had published a book in which he claimed that the Talmud instructs Jews to desecrate the Host, the sacred bread used in the Mass, to deface Christian images and to use Christian blood in their rituals.

But Serafinowcz’s book didn’t have the effect he desired. The blood libel trials had begun to attract attention, the wrong kind of attention, in Rome and in Protestant Europe. The Middle Ages were over, Church leaders no longer believed the myth of the blood libel and there was little sympathy for Jacob Frank’s attempts to revive the charge. As far as the Church was concerned, the man was becoming an inconvenience.

The dispute Frank asked for did eventually take place, but nothing much came of it. In 1759 Jacob Frank, who had been born a Jew, had converted to Islam, rescinded his conversion and then founded his own religion, was baptised, along with thousands of his followers, into the Christian faith. The Talmud was to hear no more of him.

A free spirit

Many in the rabbinic camp saw the conversion of Frank and his followers as a tremendous victory. One man deeply regretted it. He may even have died of pain because of it.
7
He was no Frankist and he was certainly no enemy of the Talmud. But he saw Jacob Frank and his followers as part of the mystical body of Israel, and their apostasy as the equivalent of the amputation of a limb. His name was Israel Ba’al Shem Tov, meaning the Master of The Good Name. He is usually referred to by his initials, the
Besht
. He is known as the founder of the deeply spiritual Hasidic movement.
8
He is one of three men born in the early
eighteenth century, each with radically different world views, each of whom would have a seminal and enduring influence on the story of the Talmud.

The Ba’al Shem Tov was born into a world in which magical events regularly occurred and wonder-working rabbis, Masters of the Name, travelled from village to village. They were able to heal the sick, write amulets and exorcise demons. But whilst the Ba’al Shem Tov was capable of this, and much more besides, he was no ordinary miracle-working mystic. Yes, he could prophesy the future, reveal to people their previous incarnations and understand the healing nature of plants. But what set him apart from all other wonder-working rabbis was his ability to touch souls, to bind himself up, inextricably, in the needs of others. It was his charisma, rather than any seemingly supernatural powers, which drew people to him, which created a circle of followers around him, which resulted in a hagiography of stories, legends and fables, reverently passed down amongst his acolytes.
9

The Ba’al Shem Tov inspired the mystical, life-affirming movement that became known as Hasidism. It wasn’t the first deeply spiritual movement to emerge in the Jewish world but it took hold like no other. It still flourishes today, three hundred years after the
Besht
, perhaps even stronger than ever.

The
Besht
was a man of the people. This comes across clearly in the many tales in which he is found talking to innkeepers, travelling with wagon drivers, wandering through the markets, drinking and swapping stories with a group of companions in the forests. It was this simplicity which attracted followers to him. It also brought him and the first generations of his followers into conflict with those Talmudists who were not drawn to the lifestyle he advocated.

One of the fiercest critics of Hasidism, David of Makow, who married in the year that the Baal Shem Tov died, described him as ‘an ignoramus, a writer of amulets, who didn’t learn because he wasn’t able to learn, who walked through the streets and markets with a stick, pipe and tobacco’.
10
We shouldn’t read too much into these words, David of Makov was a polemicist and couches his criticism of Hasidism in extreme terms, even appearing to find something shameful about sticks, pipes and tobacco. But his description of the
Besht
illustrates the depth of resentment that developed between the Hasidim and the mainstream.

Whatever David of Makow said, the Baal Shem Tov and his followers were deeply religious people and they held fast to all the basic principles of their faith, including the virtue of study. But the way they studied was not the way it was done in the Talmudic colleges. The Talmudists studied the Talmud as a duty and an intellectual exercise, analyzing and challenging its arguments, peering beneath its many layers to determine the theoretical roots and practical application of religious law. The Hasidim saw something else in Talmudic study. Their ultimate goal was to elevate the soul to a mystic state of union with God. This could be achieved through complex spiritual exercises, but also through simple, joyous activities like dance, song and study. As one of the
Besht’s
followers puts it:

When they learn Gemara (=Talmud) they clothe themselves in great fear, trembling, terror and awe of the Holy one. Their Torah (=learning) lights up their faces. When they mention the name of a tanna or any of the Talmudic authorities they imagine that person standing alive in front of them, illuminated by the heavenly chariot … . When they emerge from their learning, miracles and wonders happen to them, just as in earlier generations, they heal the sick and bring down benevolence upon all Israel.
11