Sabbatai Ṣevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676 (Bollingen Series, 208)

by Gershom Gerhard Scholem

Publisher:

Princeton University Press

, 2016

Overview

Gershom Scholem stands out among modern thinkers for the richness and power of his historical imagination. A work widely esteemed as his magnum opus, Sabbatai Ṣevi offers a vividly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. Sabbatai Ṣevi was an obscure kabbalist rabbi of seventeenth-century Turkey who aroused a fervent following that spread over the Jewish world after he declared himself to be the Messiah. The movement suffered a severe blow when Ṣevi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, Sabbatai Ṣevi details Ṣevi’s rise to prominence and stands out for its combination of philological and empirical authority and passion. This edition contains a new introduction by Yaacob Dweck that explains the scholarly importance of Scholem’s work to a new generation of readers.

Key Features

• Offers a detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world
• Stands out for its combination of philological and empirical authority and passion
• Contains a new introduction by Yaacob Dweck that explains the scholarly importance of Scholem’s work

Contents

• The Background of the Sabbatian Movement
• The Beginnings of Sabbatai Ṣevi (1626-1664)
• The Beginnings of the Movement in Palestine (1665)
• The Movements up to Sabbatai’s Imprisonmen (1665-1666)t
• The Movement in Europe (1666)
• The Movement in the East and the Center in Gallipoli Until Sabbatai’s Apostasy (1666)
• After the Apostasy (1667-1668)
• The Last Years of Sabbatai Ṣevi (1668-1676)

Praise for Sabbatai Ṣevi

Scholem’s scholarship betrays an alert presentness. . . . No great textual scholar, no master of philology and historical criticism commands a technique at once more scrupulously attentive to its object and more instinct with the writer's voice. That voices reaches and grips. . . . [M]agisterial.

—New Yorker

Immensely important and fascinating. . . . A monumental work of historical scholarship, which recounts in minute detail a moving tragedy of vast dimensions.

—The New York Review of Books

Comprehensive. . . the last word on an astonishing episode of Jewish history.

—Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

• Title: Sabbatai Ṣevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676
• Author: Gershom Gerhard Scholem
• Series: Bollingen
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Print Publication Date: 2016
• Pages: 1096
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• ISBNs: 9780691172095, 9781400883158, 0691172099, 1400883156
• Resource ID: LLS:SBBTVMS16261676
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-09-26T20:03:39Z

About Gershom Gerhard Scholem

Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) was one of the most important Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century and the father of the academic study of Jewish mysticism. He was a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Yaacob Dweck is associate professor of history and Judaic studies at Princeton University. He is the author of The Scandal of Kabbalah (Princeton).