History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)Graetz, Heinrich
History
History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)
Graetz, Heinrich
Jews -- History
But Eibeschütz did not derive complete satisfaction from his
scholarship; it only served to sharpen his wits, afford him amusement,
and dazzle others. His restless nature and fiery temperament could
not content themselves with this, but aspired to a higher goal. This
goal, however, was unknown even to himself, or was only dimly shadowed
before his mind. Hence his life and conduct appear enigmatical and
full of contradictions. Had he lived in the age of the struggle for
reform, for the loosening of the bands of authority, he would have been
among the assailants, and would have employed his Talmudical learning
and aggressive wit as levers to upheave the edifice of Rabbinical
Judaism, and oppose the Talmud with the weapons it had supplied. For
he was easy-going, and disliked the gloomy piety of the German and
Polish Jews; and though impressed by it, he lacked fervor to yield to
its influence. He therefore found mysticism as interpreted by the
followers of Sabbataï very comforting: the Law was to be abolished by
the commencement of the Messianic era, or the spirit of the Kabbala
demanded no over-scrupulousness with regard to trifles. Nehemiah Chayon
appears to have made a great impression on young Eibeschütz in Prague
or Hamburg. With the Sabbatian Löbele Prosnitz, he was in constant,
though secret intercourse. He studied thoroughly the works of Abraham
Michael Cardoso, though they had been publicly condemned and branded
as heretical. Eibeschütz had adopted the blasphemous tenets of these
and other Sabbatians--namely, that there is no relation of any kind
between the Most High God, the First Cause, and the Universe, but
that a second person in the Godhead, the God of Israel, the image
and prototype of the former, created the world, gave the Law, chose
Israel, in short governs the Finite. He appears to have embraced also
the conclusions deduced from this heretical theory, that Sabbataï
Zevi was the true Messiah, that the second person of the Godhead was
incorporated in him, and that by his appearance the Torah had ceased to
have any importance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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