The Infamous Shabbetai Tzvi by Rabbi Dovid Rossoff
Jewish history has its list of heroes and villains. Many of the latter have been forgotten over the course of time, perhaps for the betterment of all. However, one of the most treacherous culprits of the last thousand years to have aspired to stand up against God was a man by the name of Shabbetai Tzvi. Unfortunately, his name has been enamoured with a false mystique of some esoteric righteousness hidden behind acts of blatant sacrilege. There is no doubt, however, that he caused one of the greatest uproars within the Jewish rank and file. And it is sadly true that he caused large numbers of fellow Jews to apostatize and thereby forfeit all the eternal gifts awaiting every faithful Jew in the world to come.
This is not the place to unravel the complex historical and ethical parameters concerning Shabbetai Tzvi as a false messiah. Instead, we shall take a brief look and what brought him to the road of disaster. [...]
Jewish history has its list of heroes and villains. Many of the latter have been forgotten over the course of time, perhaps for the betterment of all. However, one of the most treacherous culprits of the last thousand years to have aspired to stand up against God was a man by the name of Shabbetai Tzvi. Unfortunately, his name has been enamoured with a false mystique of some esoteric righteousness hidden behind acts of blatant sacrilege. There is no doubt, however, that he caused one of the greatest uproars within the Jewish rank and file. And it is sadly true that he caused large numbers of fellow Jews to apostatize and thereby forfeit all the eternal gifts awaiting every faithful Jew in the world to come.
This is not the place to unravel the complex historical and ethical parameters concerning Shabbetai Tzvi as a false messiah. Instead, we shall take a brief look and what brought him to the road of disaster. [...]
slifkin says that r yonnoson eybshitz probably was a shabbzai tzvi nick
ReplyDeleteso did Rav Yaakov Emden and other gedolim
ReplyDeleteA Jew today has no right to take a position that has been rejected by the Gedolei Yisroel (virtually since that time), such as the first comment described above.
ReplyDeleteJoseph said...
ReplyDeleteA Jew today has no right to take a position that has been rejected by the Gedolei Yisroel (virtually since that time), such as the first comment described above.
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Where does it say such a rule? We are talking about historical reality - either he was or he wasn't. This is not decided by a majority vote of contemporary gedolim - even if there was such a vote - which there hasn't been.
I'm sorry but what is excepted mesorah cant be decided as wrong by some y.u. proffesors research. we may as well say there is no conclusive evedence that G-d created the world
ReplyDeleteR. Eidensohn:
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what you're getting at; perhaps we are miscommunicating. The first poster indicated Slifkin C"V says Rav Y. Eybeschutz was a heretic (i.e. a Shabsai Tzvi supported [even after ST converted], which was the accusation against R. Eybeschutz.)
The fact is the Gedolim accepted R. Eybeschutz as one of the Gedolim. That Rav Yaakov Emden held R. Eybeschutz to be a Sabbatean was not accepted by the gedolim, as R. Eybeschutz is accepted by them as a godol.
And I've seen you too acknowledge the point that we must go by the gedolim on another issue -- the authorship of the written Zohar - which is also a matter of "historical reality". You've written (over 10 years ago) about the historical reality regarding the authorship of the Zohar "As far as my research as shown, gedolei Torah have not accepted the Yaavetz's conclusions. Before anyone can assert that the Yaavetz is a valid minority opinion - it is first necessary to cite those post Yaavetz gedolim who agree with him."
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol02/v02n168.shtml#20
So here too, despite R. Emden's opinion, since post-R. Emden gedolim don't accept the Sabbatean accusation against Eybeschutz, it is not a valid minority opinion.
It's probably not worth arguing about this, since ideologically based opinions about facts are somewhat hard to change...
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of the story of a physics professor who had a horseshoe on his wall for good luck. His students asked - You're a master of reason, surely you don't think there's such a thing as luck? To which he responded - The luck is there whether I believe in it or not!
Facts are facts. We can act however we like, and mesorah tells us to act as though the Zohar is tannaic, and R' Eybeshitz was not a follower of Shabbesai Tzvi. But whether we believe it or not, the Zohar is likely not tannaic, and R' Yonasan Eybeshitz was likely at least influenced by Shabbesai Tzvi.
The Zohar certainly is Tannaic, and R' Yonasan Eybeshitz certainly did not accept anything Sabbatean. These are facts.
ReplyDeleteThose are opinions, not facts. Get real.
ReplyDeleteI fail to see a halakhic question one way or the other. We know from Rabbi Meir's continuing to hear shiur from Elisha ben Abuya after the latter's apostasy that divrei Torah ayn meqabelim tumah. So if R' Yonason Eibeschutz was a Sabbatean, well then why should his masora & lamdus be any the worse? His works never encouraged anyone to do anything heretical, and had he, "the Gedolim"--as has been pointed out a little add nauseam, given the vagueness(!) of said group--would have squashed it/him.
ReplyDeleteSo please stop bringing raiyos from his hekhsher, because it so happens that it's a question BEST left to the scholars (i.e., the YU crowd, who's not so implicitly being targeted here).
Argument from ignorance--isn't there a name for such a fallacy? (Oliver Wendell Holmes on "absence of evidence" is the best I can do.)
Considering R' Yonason Eibeschutz is an accepted godol amongst the gedolim from his time to ours, it is clear that he was no Sabbatean (the YU or Gershom Scholem apikorsum to the contrary notwithstanding.)
ReplyDelete"Master" makes an interesting point: Gedolim by definition can't be heretics; rather, they seem instead to raise them.
ReplyDeleteRemember that R' Eybeshitz' son outed himself as a Sabbatean after his father's death.
I'm not certain of his son's history, but it would be irrelevant. The son is not the father. And indeed there are cases of children of great men going off the derech. (As their have been cases of evil men having children who became great men in Judaism.)
ReplyDeleteNo one is suggesting he is responsible for his son, but obviously it is something of a raiyoh; drifting off of a proper religious derekh is not atypical & sadly not so improbably, lo aleinu. But that is not the case with coming to subscribe to the most discredited heresy of the day. The son of a gadol megadolei hador becoming an open Sabbatean is a VERY unusual occurrence and could well be suggestive of the father's true leanings, given the accusations and that they came from the Yaavetz. (Do recall as well that we're talking about an amulet-writing household.)
ReplyDeleteIf the above was not clear from my phraseology, that's because I was being snide.
It's no more a raya, than the faults of any other tzadik's son who became a heretic (as has unfortunately happened in other cases) is a raya against the tzadik.
ReplyDeleteI think it best here, as in other cases, to reflect on the following comments of ModOx Prof. Marc Shapiro:
ReplyDelete"As for the argument that since he was a leading rabbi we must therefore assume that he couldn’t have done such a thing, this is disproven by all the recent examples of well-known rabbis who were involved in a variety of types of improper behavior. Before they were exposed, no one could ever have imagined what we learnt, and everyone would have been 100% sure that these rabbis could not possibly have been involved in such activities. This simply shows that just because someone is a well-known rabbi we don't have to automatically conclude that he is innocent no matter what the evidence says.
"In many of the recent cases, at least the ones dealing with sexual abuse, the rabbis no doubt suffered from some sort of mental illness, as I can’t imagine that men who did so much to influence people positively and help them were complete frauds. I think that [the forger in question] must also have had some psychological issues, and this is actually the best limud zekhut. For once we assume this, it means that we don’t have to view the rest of his illustrious career and achievements as fraudulent. In short, he had a problem and it manifested itself in his forgeries."
That line of thinking, applied here to sexual abuse & to forgery, seems to me also applicable to heresies, esp. of the Sabbatean variety.
We'll likely never know, but need not dismiss it on halakhic grounds, as many chiming in here would like to pretend.
I don't put much into anything Shapiro says.
ReplyDeleteMOrthodox Spokesman and Master - that is why I originally wrote that it's impossible to change an ideologically based opinion. In truth, there doesn't need to be a crisis of faith if R' Eybeshitz was a Sabbatean. There are lots of historical facts that superficially contradict mesorah, but it doesn't matter, because mesorah is not always concerned with historical facts. Some early chassidic rebbes were charlatans. NOBODY had kosher sta"m by our standards until relatively recently. The second bais hamikdash stood for more than 420 years. The Maccabis were politicians as much as tzadikim, and may not have lit chanukah candles ever. Rabbeinu Hakadosh never measured his matza with a ruler, and probably not even with an olive.
ReplyDeleteThe Right Wing reacts to these facts with outrage, assuming that these ideas are products of MO apikorsim who are desperate to undermine mesorah. The truth is, it doesn't undermine mesorah. Mesorah operates in its own little bubble. If everyone uses a particular sefer, it doesn't matter if the author was a closet mafioso. If halachos are interpreted today in a manner that makes yesterday's tefillin pasul, then with certain exceptions, todays tefillin need to meet the new criteria. Whether the Maccabim factually lit Chanukah candles does not affect whether I have to light them. And if you use poskim and mesorah to write history, then you're not likely to know much about history.
Chaim Z: The so-called "historical facts" you refer too, are neither historical nor facts.
ReplyDeleteConstitutionalist wrote:
ReplyDelete"His works never encouraged anyone to do anything heretical, and had he, "the Gedolim"--as has been pointed out a little add nauseam, given the vagueness(!) of said group--would have squashed it/him."
You mean like the way "they" squashed Shabtai Tzvi? Surely you are joking.
MO spokesperson: This is ridiculous. I know that you will not agree with any of them. But in order to disagree intelligently, you need to have some sort of explanation for why evidence exists for all of these things. I know that most apologists automatically assume that there's a conspiracy afoot, and that chazal did their best to participate in the conspiracy. That conspiracy is obviously why all the tefillin that have been discovered from zman bayis sheini look ridiculous by today's standards - only the pasul ones survived, of course. That is why there are teshuvos from current poskim explaining that we "grandfather" in sifrei torah that would have been pasul if written today - these poskim are also in on it. That's why Josephus seems never to have heard of Chanukah candles - he was a fraud, an ancient Marc Shapiro, deliberately distorting history in random inexplicable ways to make the right wing look bad.
ReplyDeleteI know we're at a dead end. This is the point. I can yap till I'm blue in the face, comb through blogs of anti-semitin and books that were pulled out of Eichler's, and present irrefutable evidence to all of my claims. But they will always run into the buzz saw of your "He was a tzaddik, it can't be" ideology.
There's no evidence, just assumptions built upon other assumptions based on flimsy things by these professors.
ReplyDeleteJosephus never mentioned Chanuka candles in his writings, so he must've never heard of it? Wow, what great evidence! And who elevated Josephus into THE expert anyways, other than his writings are one of the only historians that survived from that period?
"Irrefutable evidence"? Hardly even flimsy.
No, Dave, Josephus actually seems confused as to why Chanukah is called "The Festival of Light." He says, more or less "I don't know why they call it that". Also, our sources for the details of the Chanukah story are the books of Maccabees. Although they are both written with the express purpose of relating the story, neither mentions the miracle of the oil. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that "Al Hanissim" doesn't either, despite mentioning the neiros as part of the re-dedication. Of course, that's also part of the conspiracy; there's no way that Al Hanissim was composed by someone who didn't know about the candles. It was composed by the Anshei Knesses Hagedolah two hundred years BEFORE Chanukah - and of course they knew about the candles.
ReplyDeletehttp://daattorah.blogspot.com/2010/11/learning-from-heretic-is-prohibited.html
ReplyDeleteR' daas trah,i'm shocked.Don't you go to you rebbe r' sternbuch shlitah?!His mesorah is from the gra,and the gra held from the r' yonoson to the heavens so to speak.
ReplyDeleteOf course missing from yhis discussion is that he publicly banned all shabsi tzvnikis in public.So when you say he was one c"v ,your saying he was a cheap fraud as wll.
ReplyDeleteI don't get your post.Is he a r' yakkov emden or of that calbier ?!And his whole post was wrong.The yeshivah world accepts the hagaon yaavetz completly.His tshuvos and chidushim on shas are classics.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean there hasn't been a vote?Of course there has been one.If they held he was such a rasha ,his seforim wouldn't be qouted or used by them.And they have his seforim and use them.
ReplyDelete