Sabbatai Sevi – The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676 (Bollingen Series, 60) - Softcover

Scholem, Gershom Gerhard; Werblowsky, R. J. Zwi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 069101809X ISBN 13: 9780691018096

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1992

Synopsis

A richly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. The twentieth century produced a galaxy of extraordinary Jewish historians. Gershom Scholem stands out among them for the richness and power of his historical imagination. Born in Berlin in 1897, Scholem became a Zionist as a young student in a revolt against his family's bourgeois and assimilated life. He learned Hebrew and studied Kabbalah, the world of mystical teachings that had become marginalized--indeed stigmatized--within the mainstream rationalist Jewish tradition. In 1923, Scholem emigrated to Palestine and eventually joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, publishing groundbreaking studies in the field of Jewish mysticism. In the 1930s, Scholem's scholarship turned to an obscure kabbalist rabbi of seventeenth-century Turkey, Sabbatai ?evi, 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 ?evi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A Bollingen Foundation grant enabled Scholem to complete the original Hebrew edition of his biography in 1957. Bollingen also supported R. J. Zwi Werblowsky's masterful English translation. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, Sabbatai ?evi stands out for its combination of philological and empirical authority and for its passion. It is widely esteemed as one of Scholem's masterworks. The author himself always regarded the Princeton/Bollingen edition as a highlight of his scholarship.

About this title

Review:

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
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

"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"

From the Back Cover:

Messianic longing and expectation, always rife throughout Jewish history, have often found expression in movements prompted by messianic pretenders, forerunners, or prophets.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 069101809X
• ISBN 13: 9780691018096
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 1032