rabbi, a history question about the false messiah of the 1600s, shabbetai tzvi.
in 1665 a kabbalist from izmir was proclaimed moshiach, with nathan of gaza as his prophet, and within a year huge parts of the jewish world, including the ashkenazi communities of poland and germany, believed the geula had begun. people sold property and prepared to move to eretz yisrael. then in 1666 the sultan gave him a choice and he converted to islam, and the movement collapsed overnight, with splinter groups lasting for generations.
1. where were the rabbis? some opposed him early, some got swept up, and most ordinary jews heard it all through letters and rumor, not from any central address. what does that show about how rabbinic authority actually worked before modern media?
2. after the collapse, did anything change structurally? did rabbanim become more suspicious of kabbalah, of mass movements, of charisma in general? is there a straight line from 1666 to how the rabbinic world later received chassidus?
3. halachically, what does the episode say about the bar for believing a moshiach claim? the rambam sets criteria in hilchos melachim: a king from beis dovid who learns torah, fights the wars of Hashem, builds the beis hamikdash, gathers the exiles. were the people who followed shabbetai tzvi naive by those standards, or did the standards only get sharp after the failure?
bottom line, basically: what did 1666 do to rabbinic authority, and is the jewish world’s immune system against false messiahs a product of that failure?
Thank you Rabbi, thank you very much.
Shabbetai Tzvi was certainly one of the most spectacular false-Mashiach episodes in Jewish history, but I would be careful about treating it as though Judaism had never encountered this problem before and suddenly had to invent an immune system in 1666.
There have been messianic claimants and messianic expectations throughout Jewish history. Sometimes foolish people believed them, sometimes very learned people entertained the possibility, and sometimes the claim disappeared very quickly. That possibility is actually built into the Rambam’s discussion of Mashiach.
The Rambam says something remarkable about Rabbi Akiva and Bar Kochba. Rabbi Akiva, one of the greatest chachamim who ever lived, believed that Bar Kochba could be Mashiach. The Rambam says that Rabbi Akiva and the chachamim of his generation regarded him that way until he was killed. Once he was killed, כיון שנהרג נודע להם שאינו, they knew that he was not Mashiach. They had not demanded miracles from him. (Hilchot Melachim 11:3.)
That already gives us a very important perspective. Believing that someone may be Mashiach is not necessarily foolish. The question is what evidence exists at that point and whether he actually continues accomplishing what Mashiach is supposed to accomplish.
The Rambam then gives the practical progression. A king from Beit David who is immersed in Torah and mitzvot, leads the Jewish people in Torah and fights the wars of Hashem can reach the status of בחזקת משיח, presumed Mashiach. If he succeeds, builds the Beit HaMikdash and gathers the Jewish exiles, then הרי זה משיח בודאי. If he fails or is killed, the process has answered the question. (Hilchot Melachim 11:4.)
That was written roughly five hundred years before Shabbetai Tzvi. So the standards were not invented after 1666 because everybody had been burned.
By those standards, I think much of the enthusiasm for Shabbetai Tzvi was clearly premature. People were responding to Kabbalistic interpretations, predictions, reported wonders, letters, charisma and an extraordinary atmosphere of messianic expectation. He had not built the Beit HaMikdash. He had not gathered the exiles. He had not completed the work the Rambam describes. In fact, during the movement he and his followers began altering fasts and other established practices, which itself should have been an enormous warning sign.
Where were the rabbis?
Everywhere, and they did not all agree.
Some rabbis opposed him very early. The rabbis of Jerusalem included important opponents. Rabbi Yaakov Sasportas became one of the strongest organized rabbinic voices against the movement and preserved much of his correspondence in Tzitzat Novel Tzvi. Other significant rabbis believed, or were at least sympathetic for a period, and still others remained cautious while the enthusiasm swept around them. The historical evidence shows how astonishingly quickly the movement traveled through letters, merchants, emissaries and communal networks from the Ottoman Empire into Italy, Amsterdam, Poland and elsewhere.
That does not surprise me.
As we discussed regarding the old kehilla system, there was never one worldwide chief rabbi whom every Jew had to call. Rabbinic authority was local and regional. A rav had tremendous authority in his own community, but news arriving from another country could reach different communities through different people with different levels of credibility. In 1665 and 1666, people could not open a website and watch Shabbetai Tzvi themselves. They received letters saying extraordinary things were occurring hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Sometimes the letters came from people they respected.
That can move an entire community.
Then came the apostasy.
In September 1666, Shabbetai Tzvi converted to Islam under Ottoman pressure. For the overwhelming majority of Jews, that destroyed the messianic claim. The movement as a mass Jewish movement collapsed, although it did not literally disappear overnight. Nathan of Gaza and other believers developed Kabbalistic explanations claiming that the conversion itself was part of the messianic mission, and Sabbatean groups continued underground for generations. The Dönmeh even developed as a separate crypto-Sabbatean community within Islam.
Did the rabbinic world learn from it?
Of course.
For several generations there was tremendous sensitivity to anything that smelled Sabbatean. That became even stronger because Sabbateanism did not disappear completely, and later Jacob Frank created another major messianic-heretical movement in the eighteenth century.
That suspicion unquestionably affected the atmosphere in which Chassidut was later received. When Chassidut began spreading rapidly in Eastern Europe, some of its opponents were worried that another charismatic, mystical movement might conceal Sabbatean tendencies. Historical studies of the opposition to Chassidut specifically identify fear of renewed Sabbatean heresy as one factor.
But I would not draw a straight line and say, “Shabbetai Tzvi caused opposition to Chassidut.”
There were many arguments about Chassidut: changes in nusach, new forms of prayer and behavior, the authority of the tzaddik, Kabbalistic practices, changes in the traditional communal structure, and other issues. Sabbateanism was part of the background that made people suspicious, not the entire explanation.
Nor did 1666 cause the Jewish world to reject Kabbalah. Obviously it did not. Kabbalah remained enormously important afterward, and eventually Chassidut itself spread Kabbalistic ideas to huge portions of the Jewish world. What happened instead was that rabbis became more suspicious, at least temporarily, when Kabbalah was being used to announce that ordinary Halachah had now been suspended because the messianic age had arrived.
And that is a healthy reaction.
The Torah system is actually designed to repair itself.
A charismatic person may appear. People may become excited. Great rabbis can even believe that perhaps this is the person. There is nothing wrong with hope.
But eventually reality has to meet Halachah.
Did he accomplish what Mashiach is supposed to accomplish?
Did he remain faithful to Torah?
Did he build the Beit HaMikdash?
Did he gather the exiles?
If he dies before accomplishing the job, then, exactly as the Rambam says about Bar Kochba, כיון שנהרג נודע להם שאינו. Now we know.
That is why I don’t think the lesson of Shabbetai Tzvi is that Jews should never believe anybody who might be Mashiach. Rabbi Akiva himself proves otherwise.
The lesson is not to confuse “perhaps this is Mashiach” with “Mashiach has definitely arrived.”
There is a process.
1666 certainly hurt. It embarrassed communities, destroyed people’s hopes, created heretical splinter movements and left several generations particularly sensitive to messianic and Kabbalistic claims.
But Judaism recovered.
The rabbis went back to learning Torah. Communities went back to ordinary Halachah. Kabbalah continued. New movements arose. Jews continued waiting for Mashiach.
So I would not say that our modern resistance to false messiahs was invented in 1666.
The Rambam’s system was already there.
And perhaps that is the most important lesson: don’t make Mashiach more complicated than necessary. If somebody appears who seems capable of being Mashiach, wonderful. Let him do the job.
We will know soon enough.