Reviewing: “Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas,” by Yaacob Dweck. Princeton University Press. 2019. Hardcover. 504 pages. English. ISBN-13: 978-0691183572.
The year 1665 was a crazy time for Jews. Rumors of the imminent arrival of the Messiah spread like wildfire from Holland to Yemen. Rabbis and laymen alike began to prepare themselves with fasts and penitence being undertaken everywhere Jews lived. Enthusiasm and unbridled joy were palpable.
In all of this ruckus stood one man alone. He was not aloof or apathetic not by any stretch of the imagination. The possibility of Sabbatai Tzvi being the long-awaited Messiah seemed to have gnawed at him initially. Calling Tzvi “a respected rabbi,” Rabbi Sasportas, an Algerian-born Talmudist of Sephardic origin, urged restraint and caution. He was mostly alone in this in the initial phase of the Sabbatean movement. Shabbetai’s groupies in Turkey were beset with zeal and sometimes responded with violence toward those who refused to acknowledge the messiahship of Tzvi. Sasportas was a man of letters. In a furious exchange of letters between him and many of the rabbinic and lay leaders of large Jewish communities across Europe and North Africa, Sasportas gave voice to his doubts and skepticism. When the much-vaunted Messiah finally submitted to Islam in 1666, Sasportas felt vindicated and his tone become more agressive and strident.
In his detailed study of the affair, Princeton University Professor Yaacob Dweck fleshes out a portrait of a brilliant and complicated man. “Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas” is a dispassionate biography of a remarkable man of the 17th century.
A deeply traditional man well schooled in the halls of Talmud, Halacha and Kabbalah, Sasportas gazes with fear and trepidation at the uprooting and turning over of social order. His letters reflect a fear of social chaos. Jewish fealty should be to Halacha-established normative Jewish law; unbridled spirituality has its place but only within the confines of the former.
The flurry of exchange of letters between Sasportas and Jewish leaders (some of them former students and colleagues) regarding Shabbetai and his followers would be preserved by Sasportas in manuscript form and titled “Zisat Novel Zvi,” literally the whithering of the flowering of Tzvi. The book, Dwek informs us, never appeared in print during his lifetime. This should give one pause. Dwek floats several theories as to why this was. One theory points to the will of rabbis to put the affair behind them. The trauma was such that it would not do anyone any good to have it printed and disseminated. Another interesting theory regards “the aristocratic contempt for print as a vulgar medium.” Be it as it may, the book did not appear in print until after his passing, and even then in severely truncated form as an appendix to his book on responsa.
An interesting aside, Dweck seems to take a side in the oft-cited controversy regarding the deciphering of the signature consisting of the letters samech tet ס”ט. Jacob, like many Sephardic rabbis, appended this designation to his name. Dweck translates it as “pure Sephardi” (p. 51). Interestingly enough, Dr. Lawrence Schiffman is likewise adamant that that is what the acronym stands for and “all the other explanations are apologies by those who don’t understand the pride felt by the Sephardim who had left Spain rather than profess Christianity.”
Some glimpses into the correspondence affords us a look into the brain of a deeply learned man who could have written a book on Jewish philosophy, a contemporary Guide for Perplexed, but chose to limit his writing to works of legal scholarship. For instance, in a letter to his interlocutor (and kindred spirit) Rabbi Joseph Halevi of Livorno, he writes, “Whoever heard such a thing that while matters are still unclear we should set aside the words of Torah and tradition and hasten on hearing the one who says “thus sayeth the lord” [a reference to Shabbetai’s false prophet Nathan of Gaza], to sentence me to death for not believing in him [a belief] which God had not commanded.”
Although Dweck devotes an entire section to the interface between Sabbatean ideals and Christianity in the thinking of Sasportas, I am surprised that he did not notice the obvious (at least to me) reference here to Christinaity (i.e., damnation as a result of lack of belief).
Dwek’s study is also instructive and informative as it relates to Sephardic Ashkenazic relations in the 17th century. Sasportas was a well-traveled man but limited most of his contacts with fellow Sephardim (although he was obviously familiar with early Ashkenazic literature and sometimes cites it authoritatively). In his indictment of Nathan of Gaza, he accuses the latter of preying and pandering to naive Ashkenazim. This stems from a “prophecy” via Nathan of Gaza wherein he foretold that the Sultan would crown Tzvi as the Messiah and then embark on a joint conquest. This military expedition would be bloodless with the exception of the Lands of Ashkenaz where many gentiles would perish.
“Why is Ashkenaz different from all other lands?” cries Sasportas. If this is because of the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-1649, still fresh in the minds of Jews, why then, asks Sasportas rhetorically, does he not recall “the many expulsions and persecutions in Aragon, Castille and Portugal. Rather it seems that his entire intention was to draw and entice the people of Ashkenaz and Poland to follow his lying words.”
This is a very interesting perspective, as the Sabbatean movement was dominated by Sephardim. Tzvi himself was partially Romaniote (according to one opinion of distant Ashkenazic origin) but thoroughly Sephardicized. The same holds true of the elite of the movement. The Sabbatean masses of Poland were little different than the masses of Amsterdam in everything but their social status. Nathan of Gaza himself was the son of Ashkenazi parents who had ascended to the Holy Land and had themselves assimilated to an extent within an overwhelmingly Sephardic mileu. Sasportas seems to put an inordinate focus on Ashkenazi gillibilty to Sabbateanism whereas most Sephardim saw through its farce. This seems hardly accurate.
Dweck rightly points out that the Sephardim outnumbered Ashkenazim in such important cities as Asmsterdam and Hamburg, and “if any Jews constituted the crowd [hamon, hamon am], it was the Sephardim.” Interestingly, later he would experience some run-ins with Ashkenazi rabbis when he resided in Hamburg. In a dispute between two Ashkenazic parties, one of the claimants turned to a court that included Sasportas. The other side refused to accede to the jurisdiction of a Sephardic court, with Sasportas appealing for common sense and cooler heads, claiming that “even if this had something to do with Sephardim we would remove ourselves and be judged by you…for we are all the sons of one man.” Dweck acerbically concludes that “Sasportas was perfectly capable of overlooking the condescension that characterized his description of the Ashkenazim in Hamburg during the messianic enthusiasm and appealing to the shared genealogy of Ashkenazim and Sephardim as children of one man.”
It’s difficult for us in the 21st century to comprehend why so many Jews were caught up in a movement that venerated a man who seemed entirely unremarkable. It’s hard to understand why many more didn’t see it Sasportas’s way. In a letter to the Saabtean Rabbi Refael Supino, Sasportas discusses parallels between Bar Kochba and Shabtai, pointedly exclaiming that in contradistinction to Bar Kochba (who comes under blistering criticism), the latter had fought wars and emerged victorious, yet Shabtai was a Messiah who achieved absolutely nothing in terms of politics. He waged no wars, established no sovereignty, and acquired no temporal power. His chief accomplishment, for Sasportas, consisted of public violations of the law.
In Chapter 7, Dweck points to the long-lasting effect of Sasportas and his work. If Sasportas’ fight was not appreciated during his lifetime, he became even more relevant in the century that followed him. Chapter 7 focuses on the mercurial and brilliant anti-Sabbatian fighter, the Ashkenazic Rabbi Jacob Emden. Emden looked at Sasportas as a kindred spirit and wrote about how much he felt he had in common with him. Emden eventually published a fuller edition of “Zizat Novel Zvi” (a book he claims he came across by accident) as part of his battle against those he considered neo-Sabbatians. Emden’s edition turned Sasportas into a book, Dweck concludes.
Chapter 8 focuses on Sasportas’ reception in maskilic as well as anti-maskilic circles. Sasportas would play a role in the struggle between Orthodox traditionalists and proponents of Wissenschaft. He would also play a role in the struggle between Zionists and religious anti-Zionists, particularly Joel Teitelbaum, the rabbi of Satmar, abundantly showing that the battles of yesteryear are often repackaged and rebranded to serve contemporary purposes.
The author runs Channeling Jewish History and is a writer, researcher and translator. He can be reached at [email protected].
