T H E J E W I S H Q U A R T E R LY R E V I E W , Vol. 102, No.

4 (Fall 2012) 589616

The Allure of Forbidden Knowledge:

The Temptation of Sabbatean Literature
for Mainstream Rabbis in the Frankist
Moment, 17561761
MAOZ KAHANA

For that Sabbatai Zevicursed be his nameled astray a number of

the greatest men of the generation and outstanding scholars . . . they
left the fold and spoke evil regarding the Oral Law . . . but when a
Tsadik sweetens their words, he transforms their sayings back into
Torah.
Rabbi Nah.man of Bratzlav1
S E V EN T Y -F I VE Y EA R S after the death of Sabbatai Zevi in 1676 in
remote Albania, Sabbateanism remained an issue of major public concern
for Jewish society. By the eighteenth century, Sabbateanism had become
a catch-all for a broad family of beliefs ascribed to both groups and individuals throughout the Jewish dispersion. But no less disturbing was the
percolation of Sabbatean ideas into mainstream writings. In 1752, Rabbi
Jacob Emden (Yaavets) published a blacklist of suspected works: The
following books have absorbed the venom of this snake in certain concealed parts . . . for now it suffices to demonstrate the extent to which this
This study is an expanded version of a chapter of my dissertation From
Prague to Pressburg: Halakhic Writing in a Changing World: From the Noda biyehudah to the H.atam sofer, 17301839 (Hebrew; Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2010; (forthcoming version, Shazar Publication House, Jerusalem). The dissertation was generously supervised by Michael Silber. I want to thank him as
well as Yehuda Liebes, Jonathan Garb, and Gavriel Wasserman for their sensitive reading and significant comments.
1. R. Nah.man of Bratzlaw, Likute moharan (Warsaw, 1934), I, 207. Regarding
this source, see Yehuda Liebes, On Sabbateanism and Its Kabbalah (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1995), 24950.
The Jewish Quarterly Review (Fall 2012)
Copyright ! 2012 Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.
All rights reserved.

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impurity has spread throughout Israel, hidden away in secret places.2

Emdens index was intended to identify and draw attention to any covert
heretical ideas, those subversive hints and literary influences that might
escape the perusing eye. Thus the main purpose of this detective work
was not to uncover actual Sabbateans but to battle the widespread impact
of the literature generated by a diverse movement, some of whose teachings had been coopted by seemingly normative prayer books and homiletic works accepted by the mainstream public.
A great uproar arose in Poland in 1756 when the scandalous deeds of
Jacob Frank and his followers (who were drawn in part from dormant
Sabbatean cells) were exposed. The conversion to Christianity of a significant portion of the members of the sect in 1759 seemed initially to
solve the predicament posed by Sabbateanism by removing its adherents
from the community. Some Frankist and non-Frankist Sabbateans remained within the Jewish fold, but more important for my discussion
was the problematic parallel nature of the literary remains, which cannot
so easily convert out. Through these literary remains, Emden saw, poison remained in the Jewish bloodstream. He himself admitted, during
his heated attack on the Sabbatean heretical manuscript And I Came
This Day to the Fountain (Va-avo ha-yom el ha-ayin), that even upright
people of this country possess copies of it.3 For what reason did upright
people keep copies of such manuscripts? and, second, how would the
tempestuous controversy over Frank and his believers affect the status of
Sabbatean texts in the rabbinic library?
In this essay I will examine a particular aspect of this literary opacity
from the viewpoint of two Torah scholars who spent those years at a
certain distance from the center of eventsin Bohemia and Moravia
respectively. By dating and revisiting lost manuscripts and short fragments, merged with well-known disputatious polemics, I will attempt to
discover the basic attitudes of R. Ezekiel Landau of Prague and R. Pinh.as
Katzenellenbogen of Boskowitz toward kabbalistic and Sabbatean literature. I will closely examine several personal writings dating from 1752 to
1761 with the aim of tracing two opposing yet prototypical responses to
2. R. Jacob Emden, Torat Ha-kenaot (Altona, 1752), 71b72a. Regarding the
exact contents of this list, see Shnayer Z. Leiman, Books Suspected of Sabbateanism: Rabbi Jacob Emdens List (Hebrew), in Essays in Memory of Rabbi Moshe
Lifshitz, ed. R. Rosenbaum, (New York, 1996), 88594. On the contemporary significance of Rabbi Emdens literary endeavors, see J. J. Schacter, Rabbi Jacob
Emden: Life and Major Works (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1988).
3. Shevirat luh.ot ha-aven (Altona, 1757), 31b. See Bet Yehonatan ha-sofer
(Altona, 1763), 1b.

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591

the place occupied by Sabbatean literature on the kabbalistic-Lurianic

shelf of the contemporary rabbinic library.
HOLY WRITINGS OR HERETICAL W ORKS?

In 1752, at the height of the mounting polemic between Emden and R.

Jonathan Eibeschutz, R. Ezekiel Landau (171393) composed a letter of
compromise. The letter was sent from Yampol, Volhynia (where Landau
served as rabbi) to seven of the greatest Ashkenazic communities, where
the controversy had escalated into a series of mutual excommunications.4
In order to end the quarrel and make peace in the world, R. Landau
sought to suppress the supposedly Sabbatean amulets issued by R. Eibeschutz, yet at the same time to declare Eibeschutzs personal innocence
and clear him of all blame. At the conclusion of his convoluted efforts to
resolve the confrontation between the pair, Landau added an unambiguous and penetrating paragraph calling for an awakening:
I have come to awaken the hearts of all the great men of the land
regarding the books of magic and heresy that have been found in our
country . . . [that aim] to deny heretically the basic truths . . . to uproot
and remove all traces of the root of the belief of Israel . . . Believe me,
amongst all gentile faiths . . . I have not heard such heresy as this. I
will describe the writings and mention them by name . . . the first
begins with And I Came this Day to the Fountain . . . it denies the
Providence of the Eternal, a greater heresy than that of Aristotle and
his peers . . . saying that [the Creators] strength has diminished . . .
the second is a commentary on Song of Songs . . . [the third,] the
Scroll of Esther, while the fourth discusses mystical intentions for the
blowing of the rams horn. Therefore arise and stir yourselves! For
these writings have spread throughout almost the majority of the
regions of Podolia, where they are considered holy writings. Arise and
ban each pamphlet by name, and excommunicate the first author to
produce such writings, as well as all those who possess and copy such
writings in order to learn from them . . . issue a printed proclamation
of a severe excommunication, to vilify and curse its author . . . and
4. The letter was addressed and sent to an extensive audience: The heads and
leaders of the congregations of Jeshurun . . . in the lands of Ashkenaz (i.e., Germany), France, Moravia, and especially to the seven great communities, which
he lists as Frankfurt am Main, Altona, Hamburg, Wandsbek, Metz, Nikolsburg,
and Amsterdam (Josef Prager, Gah.ale esh, vol. 2 [Hebrew; Oxford MS Mich.
107], 118b). On the polemic and its ramifications, see, e.g., Schacter Emden,
370498; Pawel Maciejko, The Jews Entry into the Public Sphere: The
Emden-Eibeschutz Controversy Reconsidered, Jahrbuch des Simon-DubnowInstituts 6 (2007): 13554.

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those who study and possess them, and send instructions in print to
this end to all communities of Israel in every country . . . Ezekiel.5
R. Landau saw the turbulence surrounding Eibeschutz and his handful
of amulets as a minor issue relative to the far greater problemthe spread
and attraction of Sabbatean writings, which the masses viewed as holy
writings. This literature, partly associated with the acclaimed figure of
Eibeschutz,6 boasted numerous copiers and possessors among the
Jews of Podolia. Its circulation was not limited to members of the Sabbatean sect proper, and its success necessitated a sharp contravening move
of separation. Thus, Landaus approach was to oppose Eibeschutz himself
only by moderate means, and even to turn a blind eye to his peccadilloes.
At the same time, heretical literature (including Eibeschutzs attributed
composition) should be fought unambiguously. In this way, he hoped
that Eibeschutz would come to disavow his own heretical writings, thus
weakening the link between the rabbinic establishment and the Sabbatean literature. He urged bans against this literature in order to reestablish the recently blurred boundaries between acceptable and inadmissible
writings. A whole genre perceived by many Podolian Jews as holy writings was in fact heretical! It was this aspect of the ongoing controversy
that Landau, the Rabbi of Yampol, sought to emphasize.
European Sabbateanism in the mid-eighteenth century was frequently
a diverse, shadowy phenomenonan open secret, whose existence was
known but not always exposed and analyzed. Sabbateanism occurred in
the environs of the traditional community; typically it was neither publicly
nor sharply distinguished from the correct faith. The Sabbatean manuscript, like the Sabbatean believer himself, exploited the widespread dissemination of kabbalistic-Lurianic culture. It was not easily differentiated
from holy writings based on R. Isaac Luria (the Ari) and his followers,
which at the time were at the height of their popularity.7 This blurring
5. Gah.ale esh, Part 2, 132a133a. Other, printed versions and translation are
mentioned below.
6. They attach themselves to a great person . . . (Gah.ale esh, Part 2,
125b); for secret matters came from him (ibid., 133b).
7. See, e.g., Jacob Elbaum, Openness and Insularity: Late Sixteenth-Century Jewish Literature in Poland and Ashkenaz (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1990); Yosef Avivi, Kabbala Luriana (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2008); Zeev Gries, Printing and Publishing:
Printing and Publishing before 1800, in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern
Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Printing_and_Publishing/Print
ing_and_Publishing_before_1800 (accessed July 18, 2010); Moshe Idel, Mysticism and Mystical Literature, YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. http://
www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Mysticism_and_Mystical_Literature (accessed July 18, 2010). Sabbateanism itself, as Gries and others have argued, played
an important role in this popularity.

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of boundariesthe ramifications of which bedevil Sabbatean and Hasidic

research to this day8was also a troublesome issue for the scholars of the
time, of course in relation to their own set of concerns.9 Landau attempted
to divert Emdens zealous advocacy of segregation away from the specific
figure of Eibeschutz toward the diffuse Sabbatean literature, whose pamphlets had been copied time and again, and which had spread throughout
almost the majority [!] of the regions of Podolia.10
The letter of compromise received much attention. Both antagonists
printed it in their respective books,11 and, as Landau had feared,12 each
8. The book H.emdat yamimits sources, composition, and ways in which it
was acceptedoffers an instructive example of this vagueness. There is a vast
literature about this book. See among others Avraham Yaari, Talumat sefer
(Jerusalem, 1954); Isaiah Tishby, Netive emunah u-minut (Ramat Gan, 1964), and
the detailed research survey in M. Fogel, The Sabbateanism of the Book H.emdat
yamim: A Reconsideration, ed. R. Elior, The Dream and Its Interpretation (Hebrew;
Jerusalem, 2001), part 2, 365422.
9. By the mid-eighteen century this concern already had a long history, typified by the stormy conflicts regarding Neh.emiah H
. ayon, Abraham Cardozo, and
Moses H
. ayyim Luzzatto. The specific arena of R. Landau and Katzenellenbogen,
discussed here, is one more instantiation of these affairs. See, for instance, Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Hersey: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies (New York, 1990) 75256.
10. Gah.ale esh, Part 2, 132a133a. For an analysis of Emdens modus operandi and his Weltanschauung, see Schacter, Emden; David Sorotzkin, The
Timeless Community in an Age of Change: The Emergence of Conceptions of
Time and the Collective as the Basis for the Development of Jewish Orthodoxy
in Early and Late Modern Europe (Hebrew; Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University, 2007), 15890.
11. It was first incorporated by Eibeschutz in Luh.ot edut (Altona, 1755), 41.
Emden claimed that the former had omitted and/or distorted all inconvenient sections of Landaus missive (Edut be-yaakov [Altona, 1756], 27b) and proceeded to
publish a more complete version in his book Petah. enaim (Altona, 1755), 78, with
the parenthetical additions of his own highly disputatious barbs. The form of the
letter as it appears in Gah.ale esh, the source of my quotation, is the most reliable
and complete of these versions. Shnayer Z. Leiman plans to publish a reconstruction of the original Hebrew letter based upon several versions in the forthcoming
Simon Schwarzfuchs Festschrift. In the meantime, an English translation has now
appeared in Shnayer Z. Leiman, Rabbi Ezekiel Landau: Letter of Reconciliation,
Tradition 43.4 (2010): 8596. See also David Kahana, A History of Sabbatean and
Hassidic Kabbalists, Based on Old and New Sources (Hebrew; Odessa, 1926); M. A.
Perlmutter, Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschutz and His Attitude toward Sabbateanism: New Studies
Based on the Manuscript of the Book Vaavo Hayom el HaAyin (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1947),
4851; and Shnayer Z. Leiman, When a Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy: R. Ezekiel
Landaus Attitude toward R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz in the Emden-Eibeschuetz
Controversy, in From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox,
ed. J. Neusner, E.S. Frerichs, and N. Sarna (Atlanta, 1989), 3:17994.
12. Gah.ale esh, 130a; 131b.

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used it to his own advantage. Conversely, the call for a literary ban had
a limited effect. The rabbis of the Brody kloyz assembled in September of
the same year (1752). They rejected the proposition of their colleague,
the Head of the Court of Yampol; they preferred an indulgent attitude
toward the amulets in question, although they did issue a ban on the
pamphlets listed in his letter.13 Beyond this local declaration by Landaus
hometown bet midrash,14 no move toward the exclusion of these texts
was undertaken at this point in time by any of the great people of the
land whose support the impassioned writer had hoped to enlist.
TO MEND A F ENCE

A different statement of Ezekiel Landaus is recorded in an undated responsum in the first volume of Noda bi-yehudah, published in Prague in
1776. The following paragraph was written in connection with a seemingly run-of-the-mill halakhic discussion regarding the correct written
form of certain letters in a Torah scroll. Earlier discussions of this topic
had cited the Zohar among other sources of halakhah and customsa
not unusual occurrence.15 Surprisingly, Landau interrupts his analysis of
the case in order to comment on a worrisome state of affairs:
Now, regarding the words of the Zohar, I do not wish to speak at
length. How I am angered by those who study the book of the Zohar
and the Kabbalistic literature in public. They remove the yoke of the
revealed Torah from their necks, and chirp and make noises over the
book of the Zohar, thus losing out on both, causing the Torah to be
forgotten from Israel. Furthermore, since our generation has seen an
increase in the heretics of the sect of Sabbatai Zevi, may his bones rot,
it would be proper to mend a fence and prohibit the study of the Zohar
and the Kabbalistic texts . . . in any case, we do not rule halakhah from
the Zohar.16 I do not wish to speak at length regarding the meaning of
13. Gah.ale esh, 140b; Aspaklarya ha-meirah (Altona, 1752), 95a; Petah.
enayim 15a.
14. Landau was a member of the kloyz between 1732 and 1745, at which point
he left for the position he held at the time, Rabbi of Yampol.
15. See, e.g., the Responsa of the Maharshal, 73; R. Menahem Lonzano, Or
Torah (Berlin, 1745), section Behaalotkha and others. These two sources are
cited by Landau in his responsa.
16. This expression is a paraphrase of the well-known statement of Shemuel
in yHag 1.8: Rav Zeira [said] in the name of Shemuel: we do not teach [Halakhah] from mishnah, nor from legends, nor from additional teachings, but only
from Talmud. Landau rephrases the saying to fit his rejection of the Zohar as a
source.

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595

the Zohar, as I do not deal with hidden secrets17 but merely reflect on
that which has been permitted to me.18
He agitates here against two different groups. The heretics of the sect of
Sabbatai Zevi form an external, remote opponent. However, this
polemic is not aimed directly at them; rather, they serve as a warning to
those who do not belong to the sect. Landau claims that their amateurish
involvement with the Zohar (they chirp and make noises), and their
folksy public lectures in esoteric kabbalistic homiletics, though not heretical per se, threaten to lead them toward the rejection of the true law.
Despite the distinctness of the two addressees, the paragraph links
them together rhetorically: it is the existence of the heretical group that
gives the catastrophic meaning to the activities of the normative. At this
particular juncture (due to the increase in the heretics of the sect of
Sabbatai Zevi), the decisive action of mending a fence is required in
order to meet this threat. This proposition is, of course, addressed only
to the second, internal, group, the only one of the two that might pay
attention to the rabbinical authority.
It can be assumed that there is also another, less theoretical reason for
this pointed amalgamation between the two groups: in the day-to-day
reality reflected here, familiar to all readers of the time, there was no
sharp differentiation between a recognized magid or kabbalistic preacher,
on the one hand, and a hidden Sabbatean heretic, on the other.19 The
polemical argument offered by Landau attempts to distinguish the two by
means of denunciations and prohibitions. The bearers of Jewish tradition
struggled with the various manifestations of the Sabbatean perversion
precisely because of this elision: they were not dealing with a band clearly
set apart but with one snugly integrated within majority culture.
The worldview reflected here is reminiscent of the one encountered
earlier in Landaus letter of 1752. However, the passages differ in two
significant ways: first, the mending of a fence mentioned is a far cry
from the ban and excommunication which he called for in the previous
section. Second, in this responsum, Landaus censure is no longer
17. This phrase comes from the well-known saying of Ben Sira, quoted in both
Talmuds (bHag 13a; yHag 2.1): Search not the things that are too wonderful for
thee, And seek not that which is hid from thee. What thou art permitted, think
thereupon, but thou hast no business with the secret things.
18. Noda bi-yehudah Responsa, part 1 (Hebrew; Prague, 1776) Yoreh Deah
74.
19. This forms the background for the dozens of exposures of Sabbateans,
documented in the writings of Emden, among others. See, e.g., Sefer Hitavkut
(Altona, 1762), 24246; Kahana From Prague to Pressburg, 2021; 28; 77.

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directed against particular Sabbatean pamphlets that had successfully

infiltrated legitimate mystical texts but against the Zohar and kabbalistic literature as a whole. The escalation of heretical activities necessitates
a clear renunciation of kabbalistic literature in all its varieties. The living
bearers of its traditions (magidim of all types) must be removed, like their
literary sources, from both the public realm and halakhic writing.
The common thread in both of Landaus reactions is his literary sensitivitythe cultural sources of the heretical Sabbatean sect disturbed him
more than any fleeting controversy. The struggle to configure a legitimate
library was an important part of his battle against the Sabbateans. Yet
although Landau first names and then seeks to ban the Sabbatean holy
writings, he subsequently demands a broad public enactment that would
proscribe the entire kabbalistic tradition by prohibiting all study of the
Zohar and kabbalistic texts. The reason for this intriguing discrepancy
between the two pronouncements is not immediately apparent.
WINTER 1756

While the date of the responsum is omitted from the printed editions of
Noda bi-yehudah, a copy can be found in the notebooks of its addressee,
R. Pinh.as of Boskowitz.20 The manuscript enables us to establish the date
as Friday, 19 Adar I, 5516 (February 20, 1756). This dating clarifies the
urgency and the harsh tone that holds sway over what should have been
a normal halakhic exchange. On 1 Tevet (December 1, 1755), Jacob
Frank had crossed the Dniester into Poland. During his ostentatious
campaign through Podolia, he had openly solicited groups of Sabbatean
believers, occasionally clashing with the rabbinical establishment.21 Two
months later, on the eve of 26 Tevet (January 28, 1756), Frank and his
supporters were discovered in Lanckorona conducting a Sabbateannihilist ritual ceremony. This incident snowballed into arrests, hearings,
persecutions, and eventually into a frontal confrontation on a vast scale.
As it ran its convoluted course (lasting roughly three years), the clash
between the rabbis of the region and the Frankist groupunder the partisan patronage of the local bishop, Dembowskyescalated into two
dramatic public debates (in Kamieniec Podolski and Lwow), an extraordinary blood libel which featured counteraccusations between Jews and
the burning of the Talmud (in the wake of the first debate) and culmi20. Katzenellenbogen, Derashot ve-h.idushim, Oxford University Bodlean
Library, MS Heb. E. 13, 12a12b.
21. See M. S. Balaban, Le-toldot ha-tenuah ha-frankit (Tel Aviv, 1926), 1217;
and Dov Ber of Bolechovs Divre binah, in Studies in Galician Jewry, ed. A.Y.
Brawer (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1956), 214.

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597

nated in Franks baptism, along with the conversion of many hundreds

of his devotees to Christianity.22
Landaus responsum coincides with the early stages of these developments, whose denouement was certainly not envisioned at the time. R.
Pinh.as of Boskowitzs innocent question regarding the laws of letters in
a Torah scroll caught Landau in the middle of the maelstromless than
three months after Franks return to Poland, and within three weeks of
the incident at Lanckorona.
It appears that the increase in the heretics in this particular period
imbued an ordinary halakhic discussion concerning scribal duties with a
sense of impending crisis, thus leading Landau to react with such intensity. As the newly installed rabbi and head of the court in Prague, who
had only recently departed Volhynia in the summer of 1755, Landau
appears to have reacted swiftly and harshly to the unfolding of events in
the provinces of his youth.23
This increase in the heretics in this specific context should not be
taken as a factual account of a surge in the number of the various Sabbatean groups scattered throughout the Habsburg Empire and the kingdom
of Poland in the eighteenth century. The exposure of a dormant Sabbateanism to the public eye, carried out by Jacob Frank with much fanfare,
entailed an increase of heretics that went beyond a correction of the earlier rabbinical refusal to recognize the strength of the sects beliefs in the
hearts of seemingly mainstream Jews. The Frankist disclosure of various
Sabbatean groups throughout Europe also provided a solution of sorts to
their existence, which was often indistinct and confusing in their own
eyes as well: they were now the subjects of clearly defined, separate cultish beliefs, an unambiguous heresy in the eyes of the majority. In any
case, Landaus reaction goes beyond the usual denunciation of a heresy
and the concomitant call to excommunicate it. The broad fence he wished
to erect would serve to designate a community purified from both the
actual heretics and from the source material shared by the rabbinical
community and its Sabbatean rival: the Zohar and the kabbalistic texts.
This expanding literary exclusion apparently reflects two stages of an
internal modification in Landaus basic attitude toward kabbalistic litera22. See Balaban, Tenuah ha-frankit, 1217; Pawel Maciejko, The Development
of the Frankist Movement in Poland, the Czech Lands, and Germany (1755
1816) (Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, 2003), 1960 (cf. his book based on
the dissertation The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 17551816
[Philadelphia, 2011]). On the different sources regarding the precise number of
converts, see ibid., 4445.
23. For more on the extent of his knowledge of contemporary affairs, see
Kahana, From Prague to Pressburg, 22, n. 48.

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ture and its preachers. Various sources attest to his earlier acceptance of
and personal involvement in the circulation of printed works of Kabbalah
and the kabbalistic magidim throughout his many years at the Brody kloyz
(173245) and the Yampol rabbinate (174555).24 This positive outlook
is in keeping with his active objection to any perverted Kabbalah that
was clearly Sabbatean in nature, as seen from his 1752 declaration.
By contrast, the statement he issued in the halakhic ruling, which I
have dated to early 1756, expresses a negative view of the very standing
of Kabbalah in contemporary Jewish culture. At this particular juncture
he loudly and roundly rejects its public study, proposing a collective public veto on any type of Kabbalah study, whether of the acceptable kind
or otherwise. It is in this context that the representative character of the
wandering (or stationary) magid is transformed into a menacing figure.
From this point on, R. Landaus letters of approval to homiletic works
include warnings and attach conditions on wandering preachers and
revealing of secrets, even when no Sabbatean influence was identified.25
The almost forty years he was to spend in Prague (1755 to 1793) only
served to entrench and deepen his hostility to Kabbalahthis in a man
who himself had grown up, been educated, and had been unconditionally
active in an environment saturated with it.26
Due to the intensity of ongoing events, Landaus call on this occasion
received a speedy and noteworthy response. Three months later, after the
conclusion of the rabbinical courts investigations in Satanow into the
Lanckorona affair, a number of rabbis (including friends and relatives of
Landau) gathered in Brody and promulgated a writ of excommunication
against the Frankists. Yet, unlike previous bans issued against Sabbateansim, this excommunication was not only directed outward in an effort to
isolate the proscribed group but also erected a surprising fence facing
the community left inside, exactly in accordance with Landaus words
and intentions in his communication to Rabbi Katzenellenbogen. This
fence mandated that the minimum age for the study of the Zohar was
24. See Kahana, From Prague to Pressburg, 7388, and compare an alternative, important attitude: Sharon Flatto, The Kabbalistic Culture of EighteenthCentury Prague: Ezekiel Landau (the Noda Biyehudah) and his Contemporaries
(Oxford, 2010), 11189.
25. See Mendel Pierkarz, The Beginning of Hasidism: Ideological Trends in Derush
and Musar Literature (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1978), 14547; Kahana, From
Prague to Pressburg, 47; 83.
26. Kahana, From Prague to Pressburg, 7388; Maoz Kahana and Michael
K. Silber, Deists, Sabbateans and Kabbalists in Prague: A Censored Sermon of
R. Ezekiel Landau 1770 (Hebrew), Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 21 (2010): 37178; and cf. Flatto, Kabbalistic Culture, 97232.

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thirty; in regard to the writings of the Ari and the rest of the kabbalistic
literature, the requisite age was forty.27
Two months later, this excommunication, titled The Double-edged
Sword, was partly ratified at the gathering of the Council of Four Lands
in Konstantynow28 and henceforth became the official policy of the leadership of Eastern European Jewry.29 At this stage Landaus earlier
request was also grantedthe excommunication included not only the
believers in Sabbatai Zevi and Nathan of Gaza but also anyone who
possessed the Sabbatean pamphlets mentioned in his 1752 warning. The
relevant clause read, and the excommunication shall apply to anyone
who owns the aforementioned impure books, unless he burns them,
including the names of God they contain.30
The 1756 Frankist outbreak was not the only factor that led Rabbi
Landau to adapt a combative approach to the kabbalistic cultural
supremacy of his surroundings,31 but its contribution was clearly decisive
in his efforts to formulate an alternative. In opposition to the Zoharite
Sabbatean-Frankists, who rejected the Talmud (Contratalmudists, as
they were known at the time), Landau presented the mirror-image of the
rabbinic talmudist, whose knowledge is purified from kabbalistic dross.
A contemporary confrontation had thus served to redefine, and sharply
reshape, the boundaries of rabbinic culture.
R A B B I PI N H
. A S K AT Z E N E L L E N B O G E N
KABBALAH AND SABBATEANISM

The aforementioned fence had indeed been constructed, but official decisions, of course, merely present a narrow view of actual reality. A differ27. The writ of excommunication was printed in proclamations, reprinted by
Y. Cohen-Tzeddek, Otsar h.okhmah (Lwow, 1859), 1:2228. A corresponding
description of the excommunication was printed in 1758 by Emden (Sefer shimush
7b), which provides the source for The Records of the Council of the Four Lands,
compiled and annotated by I. Bartal, Y. Halperin, and S. Ettinger (Hebrew;
Jerusalem, 1990), section 753. Regarding the link between Landaus letter and
the Brody excommunication, see Kahana From Prague to Pressburg, 22, n. 50.
On the development of the different traditions regarding the limit of Kabbalah
study to age forty, see Moshe Idel, On the History of the Interdiction against
the Study of Kabbalah before the Age of Forty, AJS Review 5 (1980): 1*20*.
28. The distinguished backgrounds, contexts, and contents of Brody and Konstantynow bans can be traced through Pawel Maciejko, Baruch Yavan and the
Frankist Movement: Intercession in an Age of Upheaval, Jahrbuch des SimonDubnow-Instituts 4 (2005): 33354.
29. Halperin, The Records, sections 75153.
30. Ibid.
31. See Kahana and Silber, A Censored Sermon.

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ent vantage point can be found by way of a brief look at the notebooks
of Rabbi Pinh.as Katzenellenbogen, the addressee of Landaus 1756 responsum.
Pinh.as Katzenellenbogen (16911765), an eighth-generation descendant of Rabbi Meir (Maharam) of Padua, was a scion of a distinguished
and well-known family, whose offspring occupied many rabbinical posts
in eighteenth-century German lands and Poland. He was born in Dubno
in 1691. His father, Moses, served as the rabbi of Podhayce before falling
victim to a blood libel in 1699 and fleeing to Furth. Subsequently, Moses
served as rabbi of Ansbach and Zirendorf. Katzenellenbogen himself
stayed for a while with his grandfather, accompanying him to Furth as
well, where the latter served as rabbi of the community. Later, Katzenellenbogen studied in Prague, at the yeshivot of Rabbi David Oppenheim
and Rabbi Abraham Broda. He served later in the rabbinate in Wallerstein, Leipnik, and Markbreit before moving to Boskowitz in Moravia.32
It was from there in 1756 that he sent his query regarding scribal practices to Landau in Prague.
Happily, Katzenellenbogen was a near-obsessive recorder of his life.
Equally fortunate, ten of his notebooks had already reached the Bodleian
Library in Oxford by the nineteenth century.33 These notebooks, roughly
two thousand pages in total, contain an abundance of diverse material:
novel Torah ideas and insights into tractates he had studied, sermons
and eulogies, various calculations, halakhic responsa, and court rulings.
Alongside these, he also recorded dreams, visions, and encounters with
assorted mystics, as well as the advice he received from them, and many
other events of his life. In 1986 Rabbi Isaac Dov Feld published one of
these notebooks: Yesh manh.ilin (There Are Those Who Bequeath), containing Katzenellenbogens last testament, in addition to his life story.34
This book, together with the manuscripts, offers a unique glimpse into
the world of an eighteenth-century Ashkenazi rabbi of a medium-sized
community.
If Landaus words and actions embody the desire to draw a firm dividing line between those who chirp and make noises over the book of the
32. A detailed and accurate portrayal of his life and family history can be
found in Y. D. Felds introduction to Katzenellenbogens book Yesh manh.ilin, and
in the appendix added to the volume, H
. aluke avanim.
33. See Aharon Walden, Shem ha-gedolim he-h.adash (Warsaw, 1864); Maarekhet gedolim 80.
34. Katzenellenbogen, Yesh manh.ilin (Jerusalem 1986). On testament literature, see Zeev Gries, Conduct Literature (Regimen Vitae): Its History and Place in the
Life of Beshtian Hasidism (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1989), 5154.

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601

Zohar and the rabbinic masters, the writings of Katzenellenbogen provide the best demonstration of the nonexistence of any such demarcation.
His life and writings combine diligent study and uninterrupted study of
Talmud, the halakhic authorities, and novel teachings of Torah, alongside
his correspondence regarding Kabbalah, visionary dreams, the use of
kabbalistic and magical talismans, and dealings with various kabbalistic
Names, some of which he learnt from books, others from living mystics.
Naturally, his rabbinical service was not disconnected from his written
interests.35 A survey of his attitude toward Sabbateanism reveals the
extent to which his viewpoint differed from that of R. Landau.
Yesh manh.ilin, interestingly enough, was composed between 1758 and
1761, at the height of the Frankist confrontation discussed above. At the
beginning of this book of his testament, Katzenellenbogen recorded his
childhood relationship with two wondrous mystics in 17045, during the
period of his stay with his father in Furth:
A holy and pure man . . . his faith was in the hidden secrets of Torah,
and all the pious (H.asidim), including their most learned and ascetic,
would approach him in order to draw living waters from his well of
kabbalistic wisdom . . . My fathermy master, teacher and rabbialso
attended him . . . his name was the Sage, our Master, Abraham Rovigo,
may his memory be blessed, and let his merit be in our stead forever.
His student who served him, our Master Rabbi Mordecai from the
holy community of Lwow, he cleaved unto his masters Torah and
faith,36 until he merited . . . that a [heavenly] Magid was revealed to
him in the form of his perfectly wise rabbi (h.akham ha-shalem), the
same Master, Rabbi Abraham Rovigo. He studied the wisdom of the
Kabbala with him, and revealed secrets to him until he wrote a book on
several passages from the Zohar, called Eshel avraham after the Rabbi
[Rovigo] . . . since I know that our Master, Rabbi Mordecai, was not
learned enough to be versed in the Talmud, he must have obtained the
knowledge as a gift from Heaven for serving the great man . . . for I
have known him [Abraham Rovigo] from my youthhis countenance
35. See, e.g., Yesh manh.ilin, section 31.
36. By the recurring expression his faith Katzenellenbogen might be referring to Rovigos Sabbatean beliefs: in the faith of the righteous man; mistaken
in his faith. See Y. Tishby, Netive emunah u-minutmasot u-mekhkarim be-sifrut
ha-kabala ve-hashabetaut (Tel Aviv, 1964), 22930; Gershom Scholem, Shabethai
Zebi veha-tenua ha-shabtait bi-yeme h.ayav (Tel Aviv, 1957), 2:822 (index), maaminim.

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is like an angel of God, and his appearance is majestic . . . and every

Shabbat I would go to him to receive his blessing . . .37
It would be hard to find a more suitable example of Landaus 1756
comment regarding those who study the book of the Zohar and the
Kabbalistic literature in public38 than the portrayal of Abraham Rovigo
surrounding himself with the scholars of Furth. Similarly, Landaus complaint in a different responsum regarding those of his generation who
have abandoned the two Talmuds, the Babylonian and the Jerusalem
. . . each of them saying I am the seer and to me the Gates of Heaven
have been opened39 is perfectly exemplified by the figure of the student
Mordecai Ashkenazi and his magidic-prophetic work, Eshel avraham.40
Abraham Rovigo and his student Mordecai Ashkenazi were not, however, merely ordinary kabbalists. The pair played an important role at the
center of the dissemination of Sabbatean teachings in the early eighteenth
century.41 The question then arises: when he immortalized these two figures with such great affection at the outset of his testament in autumn
1758,42 was Katzenellenbogen aware of the nature of this faith of
theirs? A clear answer to this question can be found in a different volume
of his writings.
Katzenellenbogens diverse library included, among other kabbalistic
works, a manuscript of the Shulh.an arukh of the Ari.43 If we browse
37. Yesh manh.ilin, section 6.
38. Noda bi-yehudah Responsa, 141; Yoeh deah, 74.
39. Noda bi-yehudah Responsa, 141; Yoeh deah, 93. This famous responsa of 1776
was written in opposition to the kabbalistic formula for the purpose of the unification of the Name (le-shem yih.ud).
40. R. Mordecai Ashkenazi, Eshel avraham (Furth, 1701). The author
describes the magids revelation to him in the book itself: I also merited to see
[the magids] face, and it was most similar to the face of my teacher and rabbi,
our master and teacher Rabbi Rovigo; he could only be distinguished by his
dress, which was white as snow, and by his beard, clean as white wool . . .
(13a). Regarding the identity of the magid, Ashkenazi himself believed that it was
actually his master Rovigo himself who was nothing more than a spark from
this rabbi [the magid] who comes to study with me by night . . . they are as one
(27b). On the ignorance of the author, see ibid., 25a; 96a. Cf. R. Abraham Rovigos letter of approval, ibid., introduction, 6ab.
41. See, e.g., Gershom Scholem, The Dreams of Mordecai Ashkenazi (Hebrew;
Jerusalem, 1938); Y. Tishby, The First Sabbatean Maggid in Abraham Rovigos
Beth Midrash, Netive emunah u-minut, 16985.
42. This date is based on Yesh manh.ilin, authors prologue, sections 2526.
43. On the miscellaneous content of Katzenellenbogens library, see Yesh manh.ilin, 4151; Zeev Gries, The Book as Agent of Culture, 17001900 (Hebrew; Tel
Aviv, 2002), 6570.

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603

through the pages of this manuscript, which was also brought by the
exigencies of history to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, we will discover
an interesting composition, roughly fifteen pages in length, which includes the following lines: penitential rectifications (tikune teshuva) sent
from Gaza, instituted by our most dignified teacher, Rabbi Nathan
the Prophet Ashkenazi.44 Katzenellenbogen kept this manuscript
including the penitential rectifications of Nathan of Gazain his private
library for many years, dating back to his Furth period. On one summers
day in 175645 he added a comment of his own, identifying the copyist of
the writings he had brought from Furth as none other than Abraham
Rovigo.46
Just as the reference to Nathan of Gaza did not lead Katzenellenbogen
to burn the Sabbatean manuscript, or even remove it from his house, so
Rovigos affiliation with Sabbateanism, clearly established by the manuscript, failed to induce the author to repudiate his youthful relationship
with the latter. Nor did it have any noticeable effect on his reverential
portrayal of the holy, pure man,47 written in 1758, more than two years
after the outbreak of the conflicts between Frank and the rabbis in
Podolia.
Katzenellenbogens esteem for Rovigo belongs also to the realm of the
mystical. Like Mordecai Ashkenazi, the youthful Katzenellenbogen had
seen Rovigo in a dream, in which he taught him the relevant biblical verse
assigned esoterically to his name. Even when writing his comment on the
Sabbatean rectification, more than fifty years after this vision, Katzenellenbogen continued to recite that verse on a daily basis: since I merited
from heaven that he show it to me, and I heard it from that holy, pure
mouth.48 This leads to the inevitable question: was Katzenellenbogen
44. Shulh.an Arukh of the Ari and Other Kabbalistic Writings (Hebrew;
Oxford manuscript, MS Mich. 36), 214a. These lines are inserted between the
lines in pages 214b and 228b. This manuscript, mentioning the rectifications of
Nathan of Gaza, has been noted by Scholem, Shabbetai Zevi, 460, n. 1. On the
identity of the copyist and its implications for the dissemination of Sabbateanism
by Rovigo during his Furth days, see Tishby, who also mentions Katzenellenbogens aforementioned comments on this manuscript: Doctor Rabbi Meirs Letters to Rabbi Abraham Rovigo, 16751680 (Hebrew), Sefunot 2/3 (195960):
7784.
45. June 18, 1756. Interestingly, the Hebrew date was 20 Sivan 5516, the
same date as the Frankist excommunication in Brody.
46. Shulh.an Arukh of the Ari, 259a.
47. Shulh.an Arukh of the Ari, 259a; in the same year, using the same
expression, see Yesh manh.ilin, section 6.
48. Shulh.an Arukh of the Ari, 259a. With slight variations, he copied this
two years later into his testament; Yesh manh.ilin, section 6.

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who kept a Sabbatean manuscript in his home and who recorded his and
his fathers relations with Rovigo and Ashkenazi in unreservedly affectionate terms, was he a distinguished rabbi of a standard community, and
a secret believer in Sabbateanism at the same time?
Interestingly, it appears that troublesome thoughts of this kind actually
occurred to Katzenellenbogen himself. On November 17, 1758,49 roughly
two and a half years after writing his first comment,50 he added another
note, prominently positioned at the head of the binding of the Shulh.an
Arukh of the Ari (which included the aforementioned Sabbatean manuscript). This note was written in the course of his use of Nathan of Gazas
penitential rectificationshe had copied parts of it for he own purposes,
excellent words, as he put it.51 After praising Rovigo once again, Katzenellenbogen sought to rid himself of any suspicion:
Now I have observed in this book that he calls Nathan of Gaza a true
and righteous prophet . . . the same man who prophesied falsely
regarding Sabbatai Zevi, may his name be blotted out, who caused a
great stumbling-block. Lest anyone suspect me, God forbid, of being
one of them, far be it for [me] the seed of father, our holy teacher, may
his memory be blessed, and the faith of the righteous, may he live
forever. However, we do not criticize the lion [Ari], that Godfearing, righteous man; one should not be astonished even if he wrote
such things, for in those days, in the year 1666, most communities of
Israel believed in those strange matters. But their disgrace has since
been revealed, and no more need be said.52
The unease of the owner of the Sabbatean manuscript at the time is evident to anyone who glances at it. Alongside this note, at the head of the
binding, Katzenellenbogen scribbled a few short words of reservation
next to the praises of Nathan the Prophet, on the opening page of the
Sabbatean rectification itself. He added similar comments to the closing
page as well.53
49. Shulh.an Arukh of the Ari, 259a. The page was originally placed at the
head of the binding of the writings. It is dated Friday, on the eve of Shabbat
Parashat Vayyera, 16 H
. eshvan 5519 [1759].
50. Shulh.an Arukh of the Ari, 259a.
51. Shulh.an Arukh of the Ari, 259a. On the significance of penitential rectifications for Rabbi Pinchas, see Yesh manchilin, sections 3846; Kahana From
Prague to Pressburg, 4951.
52. Shulh.an Arukh of the Ari, 259a.
53. Shulh.an Arukh of the Ari, 214a (and his disgrace was revealed, for he
was a false prophet, as is well-known); 223a. Although these additions are
undated, they direct the reader to the earlier, more detailed comment, which
appears above.

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605

The timing of the addition of this comment, autumn 1758, is telling.

The excommunications of the Sabbateans in 1725 may have had no effect
on Katzenellenbogen, nor the ones issued in 1756 at Brody or by the
Council of the Four Lands at Konstantynow, nor even Landaus agitated
letter of the same yearbut the events of the following two years may
have finally affected him. The public debate between the Sabbateans and
the rabbis in Kaminiec-Podolsk under the supervision of the priests, and
the ensuing triumph of the Sabbateans, which culminated in the burning
of the Talmud in 1757, was followed by the iron letter of Augustus III,
king of Poland, in which the king granted Frank his protection upon his
return to Poland, in those very days of 1758.54
These spiraling events transformed the local unmasking in Lanckorona
into something else entirelya kind of representative medieval public
disputation that threatened to leave its mark on all communities of Israel
throughout the world. It is likely that these developments stirred Katzenellenbogen into the realization of a possible further manifestation, widespread in scale, of that great stumbling-block, in his words, caused by
Sabbatai Zevi years ago, long before his birth. The tensions of the past
had returned to shake up the present, demanding a reevaluation.
It is at this juncture that Katzenellenbogen felt the need to add a note
explaining his ownership of a proscribed manuscript. However, in the
process of deflecting any possible suspicion, he revealed his attitude
toward Rovigo and the Sabbatean movement as a whole, which in effect
remained unchanged: while Katzenellenbogen expressed reservations
over the praise of Nathan of Gaza, the false prophet cited at the start of
the rectification, he nevertheless retained his praise for the penitential
rectifications themselves (which he copied and considered of useful
value) as well as his affection for the figure of Rovigo, the source of the
writings.
He drew a shrewd distinction between the sociological meaning of the
belief in Sabbateanism for those who witnessed the events of those
days, the seventh decade of the seventeenth century, when it was a normative and perhaps even necessary faith, and its significance for an
eighteenth-century figure like Katzenellenbogen himself, far removed
from such a set of beliefs, once their disgrace had been exposed.55
The historical distance between then and now allowed him to retain
his adoration of Rovigo, the hero of his youth, despite the fact that in
54. See Balaban, Tenuah ha-frankit, 192200.
55. This expression is based on bH
. ul 56b. This term was frequently applied
to Sabbateanism, as in the aforementioned citation from Landau, and similarly
by R. Elazar Fleckeles (Teshuvah me-ahavah, part 1, 8), and many others.

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retrospect he had been mistaken.56 Even at this stage, Nathans penitential rectification was not buried or consigned to the flames.
Katzenellenbogen, the recipient of Landaus 1756 letter, had indeed
fallen prey to the allure of forbidden knowledge. Just like the masses
of Podolia, he viewed Nathan of Gazas rectifications as holy writings,
and just like them, he denied being a Sabbatean adherent. Katzenellenbogens four personal comments scribbled on the back of the penitential
rectification manuscript appear to reflect a change of heart in the light of
current events. Between the initial revelation of the Frankist movement
and later its fateful denouement, he had to confront afresh the implications of a normative rabbi such as himself possessing a Sabbatean
manuscript. His response clearly displays a dialectical attitude toward the
Sabbatean phenomenon on the one hand and its literary productions on
the other. Katzenellenbogens public writings of those years also suggest
that he recoiled from some of his earlier opinions in light of the ensuing
events. In the winter of 1761, about three years after he had begun his
testament Yesh manh.ilin, he had completed one hundred and fifty pages of
the project. In the traditional manner, he sought to finish on a positive
note by mentioning the long-awaited redemption. At this point, more than
a year after the Frankist conversions began (September 1759), his troubled state of mind is manifest in the concluding paragraphs of his personal
testament:
According to the Tosafot57 . . . even Shmuel, who says the only difference between this world and the days of the Messiah is the subjugation
of the kingdoms alone,58 agrees that we will nonetheless possess the
Temple and the holy city of Jerusalem, may it be rebuilt speedily in
the days of the Messiah, in our days, with Gods help. And what shall
we do with those who believe in Sabbatai Zevi etc., and claim that he
has already arrived; may their name be blotted out? For if so, where is
the Temple in its glory? And Jerusalem, our holy city? In our sins, our
splendor has been removed from us.59
56. The first part of the quotation cited above includes a renewed account of
Rovigos praises (Shulch.an Arukh of the Ari, 259b).
57. The reference is to the comments of the Tosafot on bShab 63a, which he
had mentioned earlier in section 239.
58. bBer 34a.
59. Yesh manh.ilin, section 241. This section can be approximately dated to January or February 1761. In March 1760, Katzenellenbogen set aside the conclusion of the volume, due to the passing of his wife. In early November 1760 he
undertook to finish the work (Yesh manh.ilin, Everyday Events, 346). This he

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607

Here Katzenellenbogen confronts the Sabbatean faith, claiming that even

according to the minimalist positions put forth by the Talmud and its
commentaries, there can be no redemption without the building of the
Temple and Jerusalem. If the Messiah has already arrived, as the believers in Sabbatai Zevi claimed, where is the Temple, and why has Jerusalem not been rebuilt? Even our splendor, the dignity of the Jewish
community in its exile, has been taken away. Such were his sentiments in
the winter of 1761, roughly a year after the mass conversions of Franks
followers, a sizeable number stemming from Podhayce, the seat of his
father long ago. Alongside this bitter and emotional rejection, one can
still detect his basic approach beneath the pressures of the hour: even
after the blood libel and the Frankist conversions, the belief in Sabbatai
Zevi remains a kind of mistake, one that can be corrected by talmudic
argumentation. The praises of Rovigo and Zakendorf,60 with which the
author began his testament three years earlier, were not expunged from
the manuscript even at this stage.
L E A R N I N G T O R A H EV E N FR O M A H
. ER

An extract from the third volume of Katzenellenbogens writings might

aid our understanding of his complex stance toward the heretical movement, various manifestations of which he witnessed in his youth and old
age. To this end, let us return to autumn 1756, a few short months after
the bans issued at Brody and Konstantynow. Revealing an intriguing
sense of timing, Katzenellenbogen records in one of his notebooks61 a
frank description of the various stages of vacillation he experienced during the course of dozens of years of indecision caused by Or Yisraela
book which incorporated a clear expression of Sabbatean faith, as Katzenellenbogen discovered upon reading it. He wrestled with these misgivings for four decades:
achieved on the tenth of Tevet of that year, after which he wrote sections 235
through 241, which deal with the days of the Messiah and the redemption. His
rabbinical correspondence with son in Ettingen (sections 24244) form a kind of
appendix to the book.
60. Isaac Zakendorf was the synagogue attendant (shamash) at Furth. It was
he who copied the writings of Nathan of Gaza that Rovigo transferred to the
volume of writings later owned by Katzenellenbogen. For a description of his
praise (an upright, God-fearing, righteous man, of great piety) and Katzenellenbogens record of his copying work, see Yesh manh.ilin, section 32.
61. Pinchas Katzenellenbogen, Derashot ve-h.idushe torah (Oxford manuscript, MS Heb. E. 130) 24ab. The passage quoted below is part of a broader
survey of Katzenellenbogens overall attitude toward various kabbalistic texts,
and of his reaction to the different writs of excommunication of the period. I hope
to say more about the particular context of this passage on another occasion.

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When I was in the community of Markbreit,62 a book entitled Or

Yisrael came into my possession. I realized that this man63 was indeed
a great Kabbalist. I learned wonderful ideas from this book, which I
studied literally every day. However, when I came to realize from his
words that he was a believer in the faith of Sabbatai Zevi, may the
Merciful One protect us from such things,64 I realized that it was a
mitsvah to withdraw from the study of this book, so that I should not
be drawn into error, God forbid. I said that just as I will receive reward
for expounding it, so will I be rewarded for withdrawing from it.65
Subsequently, however, I retracted and said to myself: why should I
refrain from studying this book? It is entirely comprised of kabbalistic
explanations, elucidations of the Zohar, and clarifications of the words
of the Holy Ari, may his memory be blessed. All its teachings are
insightful, becoming, and in good taste. If he is in error regarding his
beliefs (emunato), I will make sure not to follow his mistake, just as R.
Meir learned Torah from Ah.er by eating the pulp of his words and
discarding the rind etc.66 I did not want to hold back from the book
any longer, but I was confused as to what to do; I would not read it on
a regular basis as before, but only occasionally, etc. [This remained the
62. Katzenellenbogen served as a rabbi in Markbreit from the summer of 1722
to the summer of 1750, before moving to Boskowitz. Regarding his unhappiness
as rabbi of this community, a role that took up all his time, see, e.g., Yesh manh.ilin,
section 182, as well as many other sources.
63. The reference is to the author of the book, R. Israel Jaffe (Uman 1640
Frankfurt an der Oder, aft 1702). The book was first published in Frankfurt an
der Oder in 1702, about twenty years before Katzenellenbogen read it.
64. The authors belief in Sabbatai Zevis messianic claims is in fact already
evident from the fourth page of the book. Thus Katzenellenbogens recollection
in 1756 that he had observed that the book was Sabbatean in nature already in
the early 1720s, some thirty years earlier than the first printed warnings to the
effect, which appeared in Emdens Torat ha-kenaot (1752). For a survey for the
books Sabbatean expositions, and the significance of the polemical controversy
surrounding it, see Kahana Sabbatean and Hassidic Kabbalists, part 2, 12629;
Yehuda Liebes, The Letter tsadi and the Attitude of the Vilna Gaon and His
Circle toward Sabbateanism (Hebrew), Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish
Mystical Texts 9 (2003): 225307.
65. A paraphrase of the comment by the tanna R. Shimon Ha-Amsoni in bPes
22b and elsewhere.
66. A paraphrase of the Talmuds statement regarding R. Meir, who learned
Torah from the heretical tanna Elisha ben Avuyah, known as Ah.er, the
Other. Regarding Elisha ben Avuyah and his talmudic portrayal, see Yehuda
Liebes, The Sin of Elisha: The Four Who Entered Paradise and the Nature of Talmudic
Mysticism (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1986).

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609

case] until one time, [a certain individual] appeared to me in a dream

and greeted me with peace, and I answered him with peace.67 I asked
him who he was, and he replied that he was Elijah the Prophet. Among
other things, he encouraged me to study the book Or Yisrael, praising
it highly. I awoke perturbed by this dream, and I said to myself: who
am I that Elijah the Prophet should reveal himself to me? This dream
must be a worthless message that the deceiving and destructive forces
have sent to mislead me, and perhaps he only says so, etc. After this
incident, which happened in about 5483 [1723],68 I withdrew my hand
from that book, only reading it on the ninth of Av [!], or the occasional
halakhah which cannot lead one astray, and even this only once or
twice a year.69 Several years passed during which I did not so much as
glance at it.
For this I must praise and give thanks to the Holy One, blessed be
he and blessed be his name, for inspiring the above abstention. Nonetheless, this last summer [1756]70 I have occasionally returned to the
67. The description of this dream (and perhaps the language of the dream
itself) undoubtedly alludes to the well-known chorus recited at the conclusion of
Shabbat: Happy is he who has seen his face in a dream [!]; happy is he who is
greeted by him with peace and responds to him with peace. Such revelations
of Elijah have deep and diverse cultural roots. For a mere sample, see the
sources collected by Meir Ish-Shalom, Tana de-ve Eliyahu rabah ve-zuta (Jerusalem, 1969), 2738, and the Maharals thematic discussions of this issue (Netsah.
Yisrael, chap. 28), as well as that of R. Joseph H
. ayyim of Baghdad (Responsa
Rav pealim (Jerusalem, 1970), part 2, section 4. The link between the teachings
of the Ari and a possible revelation from Elijah was likewise a key issue in discussions of the source of his authority.
68. Katzenellenbogen was living in Markbreit in 5483 (172223). Over the
following years Katzenellenbogen received additional support regarding various
issues in the form of further dreams. These dreams featured many important
rabbinic figures of his acquaintance, such as R. Naphtali Katz of Frankfurt am
Main (16601719), R. Jacob Katz (d. 1740, head of the court of Frankfurt am
Main, author of the responsa Shav Yaakov), and especially his late father-in-law,
R. Gabriel Eskeles (d. 1718), who served as head of the court in Prague, Metz,
and Nikolsburg. On these dreams in general, and the authors self-awareness
regarding the cultural role of the dreamer, see Yesh manh.ilin, section 6; 913;
see also sections 6566; 185; 189, and others.
69. The second part of the book (from page 77b onward) indeed gives the
appearance of a halakhic commentary, but it too clearly betrays a complex
kabbalistic bent, as indicated by its title: A mystical commentary on Orah.
h.ayim, along with a commentary on teachings of the Zohar, and talmudic
explanations . . . (Yesh manh.ilin 77b).
70. This date of this passage is November 29, 1756, as it appears at the head
of the lengthy section of which this forms a part (Oxford MS Heb. E. 130,
p. 22b). This past summer thus refers to the summer of 1756.

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book, for he truly was a great and cherished kabbalist, all of whose
words are in good taste, and composed with perceptive understanding.
And if he was in errorI said to myselfnow that I have reached old
age71 [ . . . God] will assist me and teach me the way of truth, and until
the day of my death he will lead me in straight paths for the sake of his
true name, Amen, let it be his will.
This remarkable passage sketches out in clear terms Katzenellenbogens
spiritual tribulations, as his unequivocal rejection of Sabbateanism confronts his honest appreciation of the merits of the book and the pleasure
he takes in reading it. While its author is decidedly mistaken in his
faith, he remains a great and cherished kabbalist, all of whose words
are in good taste, and composed with perceptive understanding. The end
result of his confusion and misgivings is far from unambiguouseven an
explicit revelation of Elijah in favor of the book leads him to distance
himself temporarily from its perusal. This point is remarkable: Katzenellenbogen, who accepted Nathan of Gazas rectifications, was suspicious
of Elijah the Prophets visionary revelation! It is likely that the thenstandard association of prophecy with Sabbateanism caused Katzenellenbogen to doubt the validity of his own dream.72 The Elijah who
appeared in his dreams might actually be a lure from the Other Side
[Satan], as R. Isaiah Bassan feared might be the case in regard to the
identity of the otherwordly magid who visited his student Moses H
. ayyim
Luzzatto, suspected in his time of Sabbateanism.73 A similar concern was
expressed by the Gaon of Vilna when he ruled that now that the delinquents (Sabbateans) have increased . . . it is impossible for all the words
[of a magid] to be holy of holies without any dross.74
It will be recalled that in his youth a magid appeared to Katzenellenbogen in the form of the Sabbatean Rovigo, just as he featured in the dreams
of his Sabbatean student, Mordecai Ashkenazi.75 Although his admiration
71. Katzenellenbogen turned sixty-five in 1756.
72. See, e.g., Scholem, The Dreams of Mordecai Ashkenazi; Tishby, The First
Sabbatean Maggid. On the early stages of this phenomenon and its broader
European context, see, e.g., Matt Goldish, The Sabbatean Prophets (Cambridge,
Mass., 2004). For later ones, see Moshe Idel, On Prophecy and Early Hasidism, in Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements and the Babi-Bahai Faiths,
ed. M. Sharon. (Leiden, 2004): 4175.
73. S. Ginsburg, Rabbi Moses Haim Luzzatto and His Generation: A Collection of
Letters and Records (Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1937), 1:86.
74. Rabbi H
. aim of Volozhin, Sifra de-tzniuta im biur ha- Gra (Jerusalem,
1986), introduction.
75. See Shulh.an Arukh of the Ari, 259a.

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611

of Rovigo remained intact, Katzenellenbogen had also learned to suspect

the authenticity of the medium of the vision. Thus when Elijah the
Prophet appeared to him at night in order to encourage his continued
study of the problematic volume, Katzenellenbogen suspected a misleading emissary of the deceiver. Throughout those years Katzenellenbogen
did not withdraw from Nathan of Gazas rectifications but continued to
make use of them. It seems that in this case the use of traditional, clearly
defined texts, albeit clearly Sabbatean in origin, was to a certain extent
more straightforward than his own trust in his inner world and his
dreams.
At this juncture Katzenellenbogen appears to have triumphed almost
completely over his attraction to the book, only peering into infrequently.
Fascinatingly, he succumbed to this temptation on, of all days, the ninth
of Av. On the one hand, this is the date on which conventional Torah
study is forbidden; on the other, a dialectical analysis of Sabbatean material appears eminently suitable for the overtly disposable character of a
day of mourning for dashed hopes of redemption, one which the Sabbateans sought to annul. On regular days Katzenellenbogen would turn
only to the safer halakhic sections of the book, which presented no
danger.
Still, this tortuous effort to steer clear of the book was not the end of
the matter. It was only toward the end of the 1750s, safeguarded by the
divine protection and providence afforded to him by his old age, that
Katzenellenbogen felt free to read his cherished book as much as he
wished. In the liberty afforded him by his advanced years, Katzenellenbogen reminisced about the various changes in his attitude toward the volume over the previous four decades. He viewed its authors belief in
Sabbatai Zevi as an error that might contain edible matter, rather
than as a heresy that rendered the book simply as taboo. This coming to
peace with the work in question occurred toward the end of the summer
of 1756, when the uproar surrounding the Rabbinic-Frankist clash was
at its height. Only a few months earlier, Katzenellenbogen had received
Landaus reply regarding the increase in heretics and the need to erect
a fence around all study of kabbalistic works. In these last years of his
life, Katzenellenbogens inclinations tended in the opposite direction.
Katzenellenbogen was not a Sabbatean, but his objections to Sabbateanism were limited. While the great stumbling-block, as he calls it,
caused harm to the Jewish people, he did not perceive its human and
literary consequences as categorically negative. Within a Jewish tradition
that seemed in some ways to lack the necessary vocabulary and historical
experience for an understanding of the term heretic and the exclusion

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of those who fit the type,76 Katzenellenbogen argued for a rejection of

certain Sabbatean beliefs, but not the renunciation of all traditions and
homiletic material.
The respective attitudes of the correspondentsKatzenellenbogen and
Landautoward the events that began in 1756 appear to offer an almost
perfect contrast. While the head of the court of Prague attempted to
establish clear lines of demarcation between both Sabbateanism and its
kabbalistic sources, to the integral members of Israel (shelume emune
Yisrael), his addressee, the venerable rabbi from Boskowitz, refused to
acknowledge the existence of any such segregating boundaries.
In this exchange between descendants of distinguished Ashkenazi lineages, the young rabbi from Prague is the more innovative. The elder
rabbis more modulated approach issues from a sense of cultural continuity, in which the Zohar, its elucidation, and the writings of the Ari are
venerated disciplines that cannot be categorically removed from the tradition, notwithstanding any errors that might have tainted these sources.
In this light, Landaus aggressive and polemical arguments regarding the
true learning . . . our tradition . . . from the times of our teacher Moses
until now77 as extending no further than the Talmud and its commentaries78 would be seen by many as an attempt to establish a novel, even
revolutionary, clear tradition, well purified from its own traditional complexities.
Let us return to Landaus milieu. His older contemporarys private
writings were hidden, of course, from the prying eyes of his peers. Lan76. E.g., Moshe Carmilly-Weingerber, Book and Sword: Freedom of Expression
and Thought among the Jewish People (Hebrew; New York, 1966); intro.; 48185;
cf., for example, Francis S. Betten, The Roman Index of Forbidden Books (St. Louis,
Mo., 2009); Gigliola Fragnito, ed., Church, Censorship, and Culture in Early Modern
Italy (Cambridge, 2001). On the encounter between the censoring establishment
and the culture of Jewish printing, see Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, the
Editor, and the Text:? the Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the
Sixteenth Century, trans. J. Feldman (Philadelphia, 2007).
77. Noda bi-yehudah Responsa, part 1, Orah. h.ayim 62, dated September 1775.
The link between the date of this responsa, three years after the 1772 excommunication of the Hasidim, and its address, in Bedzin in the Cracow region, indicates
that its heated rhetoric is influenced by its anti-Hasidic context. For Landau, the
anti-Hasidic debate inherits the mantle of his kabbalistic polemics of two decades earlier. Cf. Flatto, Hasidim and Mitnaggedim: Not a World Apart, Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12.2 (2003): 99121.
78. Noda bi-yehudah Responsa, Part I, Orah. h.ayim 62, and in many other
places. Regarding the various aspects of Landaus literary purification movementcritical-philological-modern as well as polemicalsee Kahana, From
Prague to Pressburg, 14166.

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613

daus attack was not directed against Katzenellenbogen. It is his very

position as a legitimate correspondent, rather than visionary magid,
or chirper in publica position that made him likely (in Landaus
view) to agree with the latters argumentsthat serves to emphasize Katzenellenbogens very different cultural outlook.
In actual fact, Landaus exclusionary move is more dialectical in nature
than might be understood from his polemical declarations. In Prague,
where he spent forty years of his life, he had to maintain a tense but
stable coexistence with wealthy and well-known Sabbatean families who
were prominent in community life.79 Landaus consistent policy was to
issue harsh public pronouncements while deliberately and knowingly
turning a blind eye to his constituents.80 It seems that the clear barriers
unattainable in relation to the Prague Jewish community find magnified
expression and importance in his literary works.
WORDS O F TRUTH WITHIN LIES

I will tell you face-to-face: how could such a thing be, that words of
truth could be found within lies?! Hence whoever is wise should eat
the pulp and discard the rind, as Rabbi Meir did with Ah.ers teachings.
Moshe H
. aim Luzzatto81
I have attempted to trace, step by step, the parallel reactions of these
two correspondentsRabbi Pinh.as Katzenellenbogen and Rabbi Ezekiel
Landauto the tumultuous events, which they experienced from a certain distance, in the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia respectively.
However, this limited survey has wider implications with regard to the
conceptualization and exclusion of the Sabbatean movement in the latter
half of the eighteenth century and beyond.
The unambiguous compartmentalization of impure and pure, combined with the revelation and exposure of Sabbatean literature and
figures, was a discourse beloved by Emden, who made continuous use of
79. On the Sabbateans of Prague, see, e.g., Gershom Scholem, A Frankist
Document from Prague, in Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee, ed. S. Lieberman (Jerusalem, 1974), 2:787814; Scholem, Researches in Sabbateanism, ed. Y. Liebes
(Hebrew; Tel Aviv, 1991), see index; Maciejko, Frankist Movement, 23146;
Alexandr Putk, Prague Jews and Judah Hasid: A Study of the Social, Political
and Religious History of the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,
Judaica Bohemiae 38 (2003): 72105; ibid, 39 (2004): 5392.
80. On Landau and the Sabbateans of Prague, see Kahana, From Prague to
Pressburg, 7378.
81. Letters of the Ramh.al (Ginsburg, Letters and Records), 152.

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such rhetoric through many years of obsessive writing. The Sabbatean

heresy-hunters82 mindset, which has also on occasion infiltrated the
discourse of exposure which became familiar in historical research,
does not appear to accord with the actual consciousness of many of the
time. All the participants had to deal with an uncertain reality, in which
Sabbatean homiletics were interlaced with legitimate kabbalistic texts.
However, in contrast to Jacob Emdens purge campaign, Landau and
Katzenellenbogen deeply shared the sense that they were dealing with a
literary totality that resisted easy censorship.
The difference between the two is that whereas Landau sought to
negate this dangerous totality, to the extent that he attempted to formulate
a novel, insulated cultural path, one that would entail the complete exclusion of kabbalistic texts, the older Katzenellenbogen, like many of his
contemporaries, could not cut his profound ties to kabbalistic literature,
including its Sabbatean offshoots. Notwithstanding his many concerns
and scruples, he felt free to return to reading Or Yisrael and continued to
make use of Nathan of Gazas rectifications, which he kept in his library;
this despite his resolute opposition to Jacob Frank and his followers, and
in the face of all the letters, excommunications, and official decisions of
the Council of the Four Lands.
Katzenellenbogens loyalties to this material, however, does not prove
a secret leaning toward Sabbatean beliefs, nor is it due to any eccentricity
of character. In my opinion, his personal struggles are representative of
those of a large proportion of the rabbinic mainstream and their deepseated historical memory of the spread of Sabbateanism throughout
Jewry over the previous century. Add to this the pervasive Sabbatean
strain of the beloved kabbalistic sources, and one can see why it was so
difficult to embark on a campaign to remove this heresy and its sources
from Jewish literature.
The sporadic jottings of Katzenellenbogens forgotten manuscripts, by
my reading, have noteworthy implications for our understanding of one
of the marvels of contemporary Jewish literaturethe widespread appeal
of Sabbatean literature for the rabbinic elite, an attraction common to
Hasidim and Mitnagdim, Sephardim and Ashkenazim alike. It is precisely this sense of cultural continuity, as described in Katzenellenbogens
writings, that motivated the complex, dialectical confrontation with the
Sabbatean stumbling-block characteristic of so many at the time. When
82. In accordance with Emdens self-appraisal of his role: for it is the zealousness of God . . . and it is He who has decreed that I must conduct the hunt (Sefer
hitavkut [The Book of Struggle], 148a).

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615

viewed as an error and a stumbling-block of central importance to

the continued existence of Judaism and its literature, the study and scrutiny of Sabbateanism became almost compulsory, as the movement
demanded rectification and sweetening, and sometimes even acceptance and enrichment.83
This partly explains, I believe, the attraction of Sabbatean literature
and its various offshoots for so many different writers of the age, from R.
Luzzatto84 and R. Azulai (H
. ida)85 to R. Nah.man of Bratzlav86 and R.
Menachem Mendel of Shklov, student of the Vilna Gaon,87 each in accordance with his approach. Paradoxically, the same attraction was felt by
and motivated the life project of the faithful heresy-hunter himself, R.
Jacob Emden, who obsessively investigated any homiletical material and
numerological expositions of Sabbatean origin.88 Admittedly, a certain
portion of the Sabbatean limb was amputated from the Jewish body as a
result of the Frankist conversion of 1759, but its remaining appendages,
including a diverse and complex literary inheritance, posed a troubling,
yet fruitful and ongoing, challenge.
Fitting context for this important cultural phenomenon might be the
83. This is the meaning of the well-known rectification of the soul attempted
by the Baal Shem-Tov on behalf of Sabbatai Zevi, by connecting with him soul
to soul, spirit to spirit, essence to essence, as the legend has it. See Avraham
Rubenstein, In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1991), 26265.
A detailed account of a soul/spirit/essence rectification for Nathan of Gaza and
Sabbatai Zevi performed by R. Judah Petaiah in Baghdad in 1911 can be found
in his book Minh.at yehudah (Jerusalem, 1956), 7699. Anticipating these kinds of
rectifications, and in opposition to a tendency he (correctly) sensed in the writings of Moshe H
. aim Luzzatto, Emden compared Sabbateanism to that primeval
snake whose legs have been cut off, and which will not be mended even in the
future. Tsitsim u-ferah.im (Altona, 1768), 16b. See below regarding his realistic
approach. See also Haviva Pedaya, The Baal Shem Tovs Iggeret Hakodesh:
Towards a Critique of the Textual Variations, and an Exploration of its Convergence with the World-Picture: Messianism, Revelation, Ecstasy and the Sabbatean Background (Hebrew), Zion 70.3 (2005): 31155, 34849.
84. See, e.g., Tishby, Netive emunah u-minut, 16985; Jonathan Garb, Ramh.al: Experience, Messianism, and Power, http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/!jogarb//
ramhallecture.doc
85. See Tishby, Netive emunah u-minut, 22732.
86. Likute moharan (Collected Teachings of Our Teacher, Rabbi Nah.man),
part 1, 207 (cited partly at the top of the essay); Liebes, On Sabbateanism,
23861.
87. See Yehuda Liebes, The Vilna Gaon School, Sabbateanism and Das Pintale Yid (Hebrew), Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah 50/52 (2003):
25591; 198212.
88. See Y. Liebes, On Sabbateanism, 198212.

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literary genre of forbidden texts and their weighty influence on various

manifestations of modern European culture.89 Equally significant might
be the formation of the modern self in its individual and collective guises,
which develops by way of contrast with earlier, more diverse and obscure
identities.90 Yet it appears that for our purposes the more pertinent tradition is the internal Jewish one, at once ancient and relevant. Katzenellenbogen himself utilized this tradition in his conceptualization of his
persistent attraction to the forbidden texts. It is this tradition that tells of
the tanna R. Meir, who persisted in learning Torah from Elisha ben Avuyah, even after the latter became a heretic: he ate the pulp and discarded
the rind.91 Torah should be learned, it seems, even from the Other.

89. A parallel example, with many points of similarity and contrast, can be
found in Darntons study of philosophical literature in prerevolutionary
France; see Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France
(New York, 1995). In a Jewish connection, the kabbalistic writings of the Ramh.al himself form an integral part of any such discussion, as they were prohibited
and banned, while having a unusually wide influence, throughout the eighteenth
century.
90. Emdens long-term project of literary purification, including the typological conflict between himself and R. Jonathan Eibeschutz, can be helpfully viewed
from this vantage point as well, in the form of an encounter between a vague,
convoluted, multifaceted sense of self and a certain kind of modern, distinct, pure
identity. On these transformations, see Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern
Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven. Conn., 2006).
Wahrmans study focuses mainly on England, and to a limited extent France and
the United States. His work is partly a development of Taylors classic, more
general survey of European culture: Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making
of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 1989). The development of secret societies in the eighteenth century, such as the Freemasons, is also relevant to this
discussion. A similar approach to Emdens complex personality can be found in
Schacters study of his autobiography: Jacob J. Schacter, History and Memory
of Self: The Autobiography of Rabbi Jacob Emden, in Jewish History and Jewish
Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, ed. E. Carlebach, J. M. Efron,
D. N. Myers (Hanover, N.H., 1998), 42852. See also Sorotzkin, The Timeless
Community. On mixed identities in eighteenth-century Jewish society, including Sabbateanism, see David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural
History (Princeton, N.J., 2010), 15990.
91. bH
. ag 15a. Luzzatto used this exact same metaphor.