I've enjoyed the historical analysis of this series, but a couple of the halacha vs kabbalah claims you make I have some questions. Too much for a comment, I'll respond via article
Those Cardazo quotes are wild. What's entertaining to me is that for the Christian Gnostics like the Cathars or Bogomils, they come to a similar conclusion of the OT God being a lesser Demiurge, and there being an absolute divinity like the First Cause or The One. But where they diverge from these Sabbatean types is they conclude that they need to bypass God and strive towards The One.
But the Sabbateans were like hell yes we love the Demiurge. The Sabbateans really do seem to arrive at Neoplatonist-style Gnosticism, but then are like we love the Cave, the Cave is awesome, look at this nice hole Yaldabaoth made for us with such pretty shadows, don't worship anyone except Yaldabaoth.
The thing is that Zoharists and later Sabbateans did actually overlap in terms of timeline and geography with these Gnostic Christian heretical movements -- the Cathars in Iberia and the Bogomils in the Balkans. I've questioned in the past if there was any sort of cross pollination, but while their cosmology is extremely similar, their conclusions are wildly different. The Cathars would be horrified I think by a movement that consciously declines worshipping The One to instead worship the Demiurge.
Also, Rav NonZionism, have you explored much the relationship between the Sabbateans/Frankists and the Bektashi Sufis? While interactions between Zoharists and Christian Gnostics is a matter of speculation, the relationship between the Sabbateans and Bektashis is more concretely documented.
As dour as the Salafis are and as harsh as Attaturk could be, when I look at the exuberant heresy that abounds in Israel, maybe shutting down Sufi lodges and shunning Sufism was the right move for any secular or religious Islamic authority.
I've ignored the possible connections with mystical and gnostic gentile movements for two reasons. First of all, all the scholarship is still very much in the realm of suggestion. Group X were in this place at this time, and it stands to reason that Jews would have been exposed to these ideas. But there is no mechanism for actually explaining how this happens, and why it would happen here and not there. Perhaps it's just beyond the bounds of what the historian can discover, or perhaps someone in the future will find a method of properly investigating it. But in the meantime, I ignore it.
Secondly, even if it's true, I think it distracts from the main issue, which is that Zoharism, regardless of its origins, grew into a fully Jewish form of theurgy that ate up Jewish law from the inside. We have to look into ourselves for the cure, rather than blaming outsiders, or trying to find a Jewish belief system by means of simple subtraction of foreign elements.
Agree about Salafis. They are the good guys, but it's a shame they are so violent and philistinical.
Essentially, the ancient Israelite system was Temple theology more akin to Orthodox Christianity. Zoharism is essentially taking temple theological concepts (metatron, two powers in heaven etc ) amongst other things, out of its Temple context and shoving it into a Talmudic monistic framework that doesn't accept the law of non-contradiction and thus you have literal sorcery, luciferian sex magic and evil "descent for the sake of heaven" by Rabbinical arbitrary legal fiction redefined as "emanations of the divine and splendid tikkuns".
The girsa in Sanhedrin is certainly wrong; it should be קיסר. I believe the same is true of Rashi on 90a and it should say מין or similar. I found a clear example of this in the Rif on Niddah where we find כופר in place of עבריין. It seems this is a more than usually incompetent type of censorship that was mostly corrected in later printed versions, but less so in mefarshim. It seems likely that the Sabbateans took this term from printed texts available at the time.
Good find in Sefer haIkkarim though. That would appear to be the first use of the term in this sense.
Not interested in wading into deep waters, but i think it is despicable to compare chayavei Krisos, and yahreg v'a yavor to a gezeira drabanan which the rishonim already say the reason is no longer applicable (especially on a day which you admit taht the Maharit already says that we found leniences for Kvod haTorah).
'The rishonim' don't say this, Tosefos do. The Tur doesn't mention it, and the Beit Yosef rejects it. Based on this, at the very least, Sephardim can't dance. I actually thought of a trolling campaign for normies claiming you can only dance on ST if you don't eat kitniyos.
So, a machlokes rishonim about a drabanan, at a time when then the Maharit says the minhag is to be maikil for kvod haTorah, is worse than חייבי כריתות and יהרג ואל יעבור.
Never said it was worse. I said that you can choose your own limits for antinomianism, but you don't get to choose other people's limits for antinomianism. You think it's a tremendous tikkun to do chilul shabbos (because it's 'only' a d'rabanan) and someone else thinks it's a tremendous tikkun to have a threesome. It's all made up, so it just comes down to preference.
The difference between a drabanon and a chiyuv misa, יהרג ואל יעבור, is not made up at all, and the rest weren't either made up by the 'Zoharists' but by some of the greatest poskim many years before them.
And by the way, was the sefer really originally called אנשי כנה"ג? Never saw it called that before? And, isn't it ironic that the one psak of his you highlighted was to strongly limit the reliance of Zohar in halacha?
It's a terrible sevara. People in Hazal's day weren't more boki in instrument tuning than in the middle ages, and, even if they were, it wouldn't be some principle that applies in all places and times. What if we become boki again today, does the prohibition kick in again?
Thanks. I meant to put this as a footnote, but I forgot.
The Maharik cites the teshuva of Rav Hai Gaon and uses it to argue for a kal v'chomer to justify the practice of the Ashkenazim of selling aliyos on Simchas Torah and/or Shabbos Bereishis. If Rav Hai Gaon permitted issurim gemurim, then it's surely OK to permit something that just seems a bit off. Many people quote him in support of dancing, but he doesn't know anything about a contemporary practice of dancing or contemplate reviving it. People just quote him 4th hand without reading his teshuva (actually 2 of them), which basically says never to change any minhag ever. Many such cases.
The Rema doesn't say anything about dancing, in fact he clearly says otherwise ועוד נהגו להקיף עם ספרי התורה הבימה שבבית הכנסת כמו שמקיפים עם הלולב. People just hallucinate that he did because that's what they do. Many such cases.
That probably gets your average baalabatish Ashkenazi schul in chul off the hook, but it doesn't absolve the Tzfatian practice which demands vigorous dancing for the tikkun to work (see e.g. the description in מעשה רב). If memory serves, Rav Moshe uses this heter, but it's just a classic example of Yeshivish incoherence. You dance on Yom Tov to get kabbalah points, but you don't dance properly to stay on the right side of halacha (maybe), thus losing the kabbalah points.
I've enjoyed the historical analysis of this series, but a couple of the halacha vs kabbalah claims you make I have some questions. Too much for a comment, I'll respond via article
Fantastic read, thoroughly enjoyed. In the words of America's greatest ever gaon, "Nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense is scholarship."
Those Cardazo quotes are wild. What's entertaining to me is that for the Christian Gnostics like the Cathars or Bogomils, they come to a similar conclusion of the OT God being a lesser Demiurge, and there being an absolute divinity like the First Cause or The One. But where they diverge from these Sabbatean types is they conclude that they need to bypass God and strive towards The One.
But the Sabbateans were like hell yes we love the Demiurge. The Sabbateans really do seem to arrive at Neoplatonist-style Gnosticism, but then are like we love the Cave, the Cave is awesome, look at this nice hole Yaldabaoth made for us with such pretty shadows, don't worship anyone except Yaldabaoth.
The thing is that Zoharists and later Sabbateans did actually overlap in terms of timeline and geography with these Gnostic Christian heretical movements -- the Cathars in Iberia and the Bogomils in the Balkans. I've questioned in the past if there was any sort of cross pollination, but while their cosmology is extremely similar, their conclusions are wildly different. The Cathars would be horrified I think by a movement that consciously declines worshipping The One to instead worship the Demiurge.
You should link the previous parts at the top, so we can more easily refresh our memories from stuff earlier in the sequence
Also, Rav NonZionism, have you explored much the relationship between the Sabbateans/Frankists and the Bektashi Sufis? While interactions between Zoharists and Christian Gnostics is a matter of speculation, the relationship between the Sabbateans and Bektashis is more concretely documented.
As dour as the Salafis are and as harsh as Attaturk could be, when I look at the exuberant heresy that abounds in Israel, maybe shutting down Sufi lodges and shunning Sufism was the right move for any secular or religious Islamic authority.
I've ignored the possible connections with mystical and gnostic gentile movements for two reasons. First of all, all the scholarship is still very much in the realm of suggestion. Group X were in this place at this time, and it stands to reason that Jews would have been exposed to these ideas. But there is no mechanism for actually explaining how this happens, and why it would happen here and not there. Perhaps it's just beyond the bounds of what the historian can discover, or perhaps someone in the future will find a method of properly investigating it. But in the meantime, I ignore it.
Secondly, even if it's true, I think it distracts from the main issue, which is that Zoharism, regardless of its origins, grew into a fully Jewish form of theurgy that ate up Jewish law from the inside. We have to look into ourselves for the cure, rather than blaming outsiders, or trying to find a Jewish belief system by means of simple subtraction of foreign elements.
Agree about Salafis. They are the good guys, but it's a shame they are so violent and philistinical.
Essentially, the ancient Israelite system was Temple theology more akin to Orthodox Christianity. Zoharism is essentially taking temple theological concepts (metatron, two powers in heaven etc ) amongst other things, out of its Temple context and shoving it into a Talmudic monistic framework that doesn't accept the law of non-contradiction and thus you have literal sorcery, luciferian sex magic and evil "descent for the sake of heaven" by Rabbinical arbitrary legal fiction redefined as "emanations of the divine and splendid tikkuns".
Hi Maskil,
There are clear pre-Sabbatean examples of כופר used as a standalone noun:
Rashi, Sanhedrin 90a
כופר הוא … כופר גמור הוא
“He is a denier … he is a complete denier.”
R. Yosef Albo, Sefer Ha-Ikkarim 1:2 (15th century):
נקרא כופר
“He is called a kofer.”
Again, כופר functions independently as the classification. You see this all over medieval rabbinic literature.
Sanhedrin 39a (if you trust the girsa here..) repeatedly has:
אמר ליה כופר לרבן גמליאל
“A kofer said to Rabban Gamliel…”
So what do you mean that it was only used as a standalone phrase prior to Sabbateanism?
The girsa in Sanhedrin is certainly wrong; it should be קיסר. I believe the same is true of Rashi on 90a and it should say מין or similar. I found a clear example of this in the Rif on Niddah where we find כופר in place of עבריין. It seems this is a more than usually incompetent type of censorship that was mostly corrected in later printed versions, but less so in mefarshim. It seems likely that the Sabbateans took this term from printed texts available at the time.
Good find in Sefer haIkkarim though. That would appear to be the first use of the term in this sense.
Not interested in wading into deep waters, but i think it is despicable to compare chayavei Krisos, and yahreg v'a yavor to a gezeira drabanan which the rishonim already say the reason is no longer applicable (especially on a day which you admit taht the Maharit already says that we found leniences for Kvod haTorah).
'The rishonim' don't say this, Tosefos do. The Tur doesn't mention it, and the Beit Yosef rejects it. Based on this, at the very least, Sephardim can't dance. I actually thought of a trolling campaign for normies claiming you can only dance on ST if you don't eat kitniyos.
So, a machlokes rishonim about a drabanan, at a time when then the Maharit says the minhag is to be maikil for kvod haTorah, is worse than חייבי כריתות and יהרג ואל יעבור.
Thanks for enlightening me.
Never said it was worse. I said that you can choose your own limits for antinomianism, but you don't get to choose other people's limits for antinomianism. You think it's a tremendous tikkun to do chilul shabbos (because it's 'only' a d'rabanan) and someone else thinks it's a tremendous tikkun to have a threesome. It's all made up, so it just comes down to preference.
The difference between a drabanon and a chiyuv misa, יהרג ואל יעבור, is not made up at all, and the rest weren't either made up by the 'Zoharists' but by some of the greatest poskim many years before them.
You think it's OK to be antinomian as long as you stick to d'rabbanans?
And by the way, was the sefer really originally called אנשי כנה"ג? Never saw it called that before? And, isn't it ironic that the one psak of his you highlighted was to strongly limit the reliance of Zohar in halacha?
You're right. I had a brain episode.
I don't think it strongly limits it.
I didn't mean the rishonim pasken like that only that that they say this is the metzius.
And you are avoiding the real issue of your despicable comparison.
It's a terrible sevara. People in Hazal's day weren't more boki in instrument tuning than in the middle ages, and, even if they were, it wouldn't be some principle that applies in all places and times. What if we become boki again today, does the prohibition kick in again?
This is much better than most tenured profs could come up with.
Having buttered you up I'll ask:
Are you comparing Sabbateanism to modern political Zionism?
Patience! (The answer is no though).
Relieved.
Do you have a link to the screenshots about cardozo's god?
It's from the introduction to "Abraham Miguel Cardozo: Selected Writings" by D. Halperin. I got it on libgen.
I think you bothered to read the article's thesis all the while ignoring any of the support presented for that thesis. Very impressive!
Thanks. I meant to put this as a footnote, but I forgot.
The Maharik cites the teshuva of Rav Hai Gaon and uses it to argue for a kal v'chomer to justify the practice of the Ashkenazim of selling aliyos on Simchas Torah and/or Shabbos Bereishis. If Rav Hai Gaon permitted issurim gemurim, then it's surely OK to permit something that just seems a bit off. Many people quote him in support of dancing, but he doesn't know anything about a contemporary practice of dancing or contemplate reviving it. People just quote him 4th hand without reading his teshuva (actually 2 of them), which basically says never to change any minhag ever. Many such cases.
The Rema doesn't say anything about dancing, in fact he clearly says otherwise ועוד נהגו להקיף עם ספרי התורה הבימה שבבית הכנסת כמו שמקיפים עם הלולב. People just hallucinate that he did because that's what they do. Many such cases.
That probably gets your average baalabatish Ashkenazi schul in chul off the hook, but it doesn't absolve the Tzfatian practice which demands vigorous dancing for the tikkun to work (see e.g. the description in מעשה רב). If memory serves, Rav Moshe uses this heter, but it's just a classic example of Yeshivish incoherence. You dance on Yom Tov to get kabbalah points, but you don't dance properly to stay on the right side of halacha (maybe), thus losing the kabbalah points.