This detailed and authoritative account of the mystical Sabbatian movement which swept through Europe with devastating effect, also provides a major contribution to the general history of messianic movements and their theologies.

Sabbatai Zevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-76

History

Scholem, Gershom Gerhard

World

The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press

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 Ṣevi, 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 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 Ṣevi 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.

Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (Bollingen Series, No. 93)

Princeton University Press

One of the most important scholars of our century, Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) opened up a once esoteric world of Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah, to concerned students of religion. The Kabbalah is a rich tradition of repeated attempts to achieve and portray direct experiences of God: its twelfth-and thirteenth-century beginnings in southern France and Spain are probed in Origins of the Kabbalah, a work crucial in Scholem's oeuvre. The book is a contribution not only to the history of Jewish medieval mysticism but also to the study of medieval mysticism in general and will be of interest to historians and psychologists, as well as to students of the history of religion.

Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton Paperbacks)

Origins of the Kabbalah

Sabbatai Ṣevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676 (Bollingen Series, 60)

Biographies & Memoirs

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.

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

Historical Study & Educational Resources

With the publication of The Origins of the Kabbalah in 1950, one of the most important scholars of our century brought the obscure world of Jewish mysticism to a wider audience for the first time. A crucial work in the oeuvre of Gershom Scholem, this book details the beginnings of the Kabbalah in twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France and Spain, showing its rich tradition of repeated attempts to achieve and portray direct experiences of God. The Origins of the Kabbalah is a contribution not only to the history of Jewish medieval mysticism, but also to the study of medieval mysticism in general. Now with a new foreword by David Biale, this book remains essential reading for students of the history of religion.

Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton Classics)

The Messianic idea in Judaism and other essays on Jewish spirituality

Religion & Spirituality

Religious Studies

Schocken Books

The author traces his friendship with the philosopher and critic, Walter Benjamin, from their youth in Berlin to Benjamin's death in 1940 and includes selections from their letters

Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship (English and German Edition)

Jewish Pubn Society

Les Grands courants de la mystique juive: La Merkaba, la gnose, la kabbale, le "Zohar", le sabbatianisme, le hassidisme (Payothèque) (French Edition)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

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