History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (Vol. 1-3). Dubnow Simon
and Posen, Naphtali Cohen (1640–1719), of whom the following curious incident is related. After settling in Frankfort-on-the-Main, he made the people believe that he had discovered a magic formula against fire. As luck would have it, a fire broke out in his own house, and destroyed a considerable part of the Jewish quarter. The ill-fated Cabalist was sent to jail on the charge of careless handling of fire during his pyrotechnic experiments (1711). After his release from prison Naphtali Cohen led the life of a wanderer, entering into suspicious relations with Hayyun, the notorious emissary of the Sabbatian sect, though afterwards, when Hayyun's heresy had been unmasked in Amsterdam, he renounced all connection with the heretic. During the contest which for many years was waged by Emden against Eibeshütz and his mysterious talismans,188 the majority of Polish rabbis sided with Eibeshütz. Evidently they found nothing objectionable in the attempt to cure diseases by means of cabalistically inscribed talismans.
3. The Sabbatian Movement
The mystical and sectarian tendencies which were in vogue among the masses of Polish Jewry were the outcome of the Messianic movement, which, originated by Sabbatai Zevi in 1648, spread like wildfire throughout the whole Jewish world. The movement made a particularly deep impression in Poland, where the mystical frame of mind of the Polish-Jewish masses offered a favorable soil for it. It was more than a mere coincidence that one and the same year, 1648, was marked by the wholesale murder of the Jews of the Ukraina and the first public appearance of Sabbatai Zevi in Smyrna. The thousands of Jewish captives, who in the summer of that terrible year had been carried to Turkey by the Tatar allies of Khmelnitzki and ransomed there by their coreligionists, conveyed to the minds of the Oriental Jews an appalling impression of the destruction of the great Jewish center in Poland. There can be no doubt that the descriptions of this catastrophe deeply affected the impressionable mind of Sabbatai, and prepared the soil for the success of the propaganda he carried on during his wanderings in Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt.
When, in the year 1666, the whole Jewish world resounded with the fame of Sabbatai Zevi as the Messianic liberator of the Jewish people, the Jews of Poland responded with particularly keen, almost morbid sensitiveness.
The Jews—says the contemporary Ukrainian writer Galatovski—triumphed. Some abandoned their houses and property, refusing to do any work and claiming that the Messiah would soon arrive and carry them on a cloud to Jerusalem. Others fasted for days, denying food even to their little ones, and during that severe winter bathed in ice-holes, at the same time reciting a recently-composed prayer. Faint-hearted and destitute Christians, hearing the stories of the miracles performed by the false Messiah and beholding the boundless arrogance of the Jews, began to doubt Christ.
From the South, the Sabbatian agitation penetrated to the North, to distant White Russia. We are informed by a contemporary monastic chronicler, that on the walls of the churches in Moghilev on the Dnieper mysterious inscriptions appeared proclaiming the Jewish Messiah "Sapsai."
In the course of the eventful year in which the whole Jewish world raved about the coming of the Messiah and deputations arrived from all over the Jewish world at the "Castle of Splendor," Sabbatai's residence in Abydos, near Constantinople, a delegation was also dispatched by the Jews of Poland. In this delegation were included Isaiah, the son of David Halevi, the famous rabbi of Lemberg, author of the Taz,189 and the grandson of another celebrity, Joel Sirkis.190 The Polish delegates were sent, as it were, on a scouting expedition, being instructed to investigate on the spot the correctness of the rumors concerning the Messianic claims of Sabbatai.
When, in the summer of 1666, they were presented to Sabbatai at Abydos, they were deeply impressed by the sight of the thousands of enthusiastic admirers who had come from all possible countries to render homage to him. Sabbatai handed the Polish delegates an enigmatic letter, addressed to the Rabbi of Lemberg:
On the sixth day after the resuscitation of my spirit and light, on the twenty-second of Tammuz. … I herewith send a gift to the man of faith, the venerable old man, Rabbi David of the house of Levi, the author of Ture Zahab—may he flourish in his old age in strength and freshness! Soon will I avenge you and comfort you, even as a mother comforteth her son, and recompense you a hundredfold [for the sufferings endured by you]. The day of revenge is in my heart, and the year of redemption hath arrived. Thus speaketh David, the son of Jesse, the head of all the kings of the earth … the Messiah of the God of Jacob, the Lion of the mountain recesses, Sabbatai Zevi.
The gift referred to in the letter consisted of a shirt which Sabbatai handed over to Rabbi David's son, with the instruction to put it on his aged and feeble father and recite at the same time the words, "May thy youth be renewed like that of the eagle!"
Having learned from the delegates that a Cabalistic propagandist, by the name of Nehemiah Cohen, who predicted the coming of the Messiah, had appeared in Poland, Sabbatai added a postscript to his letter in which he asked that this "prophet," being the forerunner of the Messiah, be sent to him speedily. The omniscient Messiah failed to foresee that this invitation spelled ruin for him. It is generally conceded that the interview between Nehemiah, the Cabalistic fanatic, and Sabbatai was one of the causes that accelerated the downfall of the Messiah. After a Cabalistic argument with Sabbatai, which lasted three days, Nehemiah refused to acknowledge him as the expected Messiah. While in Adrianople he revealed Sabbatai's plans to the Turkish authorities, and this led to the arrest of the pseudo-Messiah and his feigned conversion to Islam.
The news of the hideous desertion of Judaism by the redeemer of the Jewish people was slow in reaching the Jews of Poland, and when it did reach them, only a part of his adherents felt it their duty to abandon him. The more credulous rank and file remained steadfast in their loyalty, hoping for further miracles, to be performed by the mysterious savior of Judaism, who had "put on the turban" temporarily in order to gain the confidence of the Sultan and afterwards to dethrone him. When Sabbatai died, Poland witnessed the same transformation of political into mystical Messianism which was taking place at the time in Western Europe.
The proximity to Turkey and to the city of Saloniki, the headquarters of the Sabbatian sect, lent particular intensity to the sectarian movement in Poland, fomenting a spiritual agitation in the Jewish masses from the end of the seventeenth down to the end of the eighteenth century. The main center of the movement came to be in Podolia, part of which had been annexed by Turkey, after the Polish-Turkish War of 1672, and was returned to Poland only in 1699 by the Peace Treaty of Carlowitz.
The agitators and originators of these sects were recruited partly from among the obscure masses, partly from among the Cabalists whose minds were befogged. At the end of the seventeenth century, a Lithuanian Jew by the name of Zadok, a plain, ignorant man, who had been an innkeeper, began to prophesy that the Messiah would appear in 1695. About the same time a more serious propagandist of the Messianic idea appeared in the person of the Cabalist Hayyim Malakh. Having resided in Turkey, where he had been in contact with the Sabbatian circle in Saloniki, Malakh returned to Poland and began to muddle the heads of the Jews. He secretly preached that Sabbatai Zevi was the Messiah, and that, like Moses, who had kept the Israelites in the desert for forty years before bringing them to the borders of the Promised Land, he would rise from the dead and redeem the Jewish people in 1706, forty years after his conversion.
Malakh's propaganda proved successful, particularly among the ignorant masses of Podolia and Galicia. Malakh was soon joined by another agitator, Judah Hasid, from Shidlovitz or Shedletz.191 Having studied Practical Cabala in Italy, Judah Hasid returned to his native land and began to initiate the studious Polish youths into this hidden wisdom. The circle of his pupils and adherents grew larger and larger, and became consolidated in a special sect, which called itself "the Pious," or Hasidim. The members of this sect engaged in ascetic exercises; in anticipation of the Messiah, they made public confession of their sins and inserted mystical prayers in their liturgy. Hayyim Malakh joined the circle of Judah Hasid, and brought over to it his Sabbatian followers. The number