“For unto Us a Child Is Born, unto Us a Son Is Given”
The appointment of Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz to head the triple community of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek in September 1750 soon turned into a major scandal. When amulets that he had distributed to pregnant women in Metz, Frankfurt, and Hamburg were opened one after another (presumably after a number of the women had died in childbirth),Footnote 3 they were discovered to contain the name of Sabbatai Ẓvi, the messiah who converted to Islam. Rabbi Jacob Emden's public declaration on February 4, 1751, that an amulet attributed to the new rabbi was tainted with heresy was the opening salvo in what was to become the most volatile rabbinic controversy of the eighteenth century.Footnote 4
In an attempt to deflect the denunciations of his accusers, Eibeschütz provided two commentaries of his own for the amulets, claiming that the magical names were supposed to be read separately, and not as a connected text addressing Sabbatai Ẓvi. The first commentary, dealing with the amulet he had given to the wife of Altona's beadle, Michal Halberstadt Segal, he gave to Rabbi Shalom Buzaglo at the beginning of the uproar.Footnote 5 The second, for the “small amulet,” which he had given to Mordekhai Levi of Metz, “for his wife who had difficulty in childbirth,” he published in 1755 in his book Luḥot ‘edut (Tabulae testimonii).Footnote 6 As opposed to the laconic commentary that was given to Buzaglo, the commentary in Luḥot ‘edut describes the process of gestation and birth in detail, from the fetus's formation in the mother's belly to the womb's opening and the child's egress. However, Eibeschütz does not simply describe birth, but the birth of the messiah. The question of the messiah's identity in Luḥot ‘edut is fundamental, touching on Eibeschütz's Sabbatianism. Although the commentary was designed to clear his name, the text that R. Jonathan composed includes inklings not only of Sabbatai Ẓvi and Jesus,Footnote 7 but also of a flesh-and-blood messiah:
Jacob wanted to place his son [Benjamin] with Mitatron,Footnote 8 since he is the Shekhinah [“the divine presence,” i.e., the feminine aspect of the Godhead], all holy and good, not Metatron who is both good and evil …Footnote 9 therefore he called him Ben Yamin, “son of the right side.”Footnote 10 Even Moses, when he wanted to bring about the redemption, which is the secret of birth by the bite of the serpent, who is Metatron, the pain of birth pangs—changed from a serpent to a rod, towards ḥesed [the divine mercy]; as was told in the Tikkunim,Footnote 11 he flees from before it because he wanted to bring about the redemption through the Shekhinah.Footnote 12
I believe that Ben Yamin, the true messiah in this text, should be identified as Wolf Binyamin—Eibeschütz's youngest son, later to be known as Baron von Adlerstahl.Footnote 13 According to Emden's Sefer hit'avkut (1769), Wolf's followers called him Yemini ben David, “Yemini [i.e., Benjamin]Footnote 14 son of David” and ’ish yemini kadosh, “a holy right man.”Footnote 15 Wolf etched the name Binyamin on the entrance of his estate in Altona,Footnote 16 and used it when referring to himself in a book he composed in the style of the Zohar, which he called Darga’ Yemini (The grade of Yemini, 1760/1): “The calamity opened his mouth with gematria about himself [i.e., yemini = 120], as niglah kevod [ha-Shem] and ki pi [ha-Shem] [Isaiah 40:5] [= 120].Footnote 17 He also spoke of himself with the verse shev le-yemini [‘Sit at my right hand’ (Psalms 110:1)] and keẓ ha-yamin [‘the end of days’ (Daniel 12:13)].”Footnote 18 Though Emden's testimonies regarding the controversy should be taken with a grain of salt, in this case they appear to be preciseFootnote 19—Wolf's kabbalistic tract was identified by Yehuda Liebes among the collections in the National Library of Israel.Footnote 20
According to Emden's reports, around the year 1757/8 young Wolf was sent by his father to the Sabbatian communities in Turkey, Hungary, and Moravia to establish his leadership as the successor of Sabbatai Ẓvi.Footnote 21 At least in retrospect, Emden connected Wolf's messianic mission to the appearance of Luḥot ‘edut in 1755:
For in the year 5515 [1755] … the laughter of this fool began.… It so happened that when Eibeschütz saw that all his evil business was succeeding … he wanted to fulfill the vow that he made to Sabbatai Ẓvi through his prophet Leible Prostiẓ [Prosnitz], to establish the faith of Sabbatai with all his power and might.… And when he saw that he had aged and failed to accomplish his plots, he decided to set up his boorish son and crown him as his successor … and he let it be known that his son, the boorish lad who lacked all goodness, had won a large sum of money in a lottery and was traveling to distant lands to see the world. And before he left, the spirit of impurity had already sprouted in him and he had secretly revealed hints of Sabbatai's faith, may his name rot.Footnote 22
The publication of Luḥot ‘edut in proximity to Wolf's messianic mission indeed shines new light on Eibeschütz's commentary: it was not apologetics, but rather Sabbatian propaganda directed to believers’ eyes, and even more so, a messianic act. If we are to take Eibeschütz's commentary seriously, it can only mean that he is the “holy serpent” who bites the Shekhinah's womb in order to give birth to the messiah, his young son.
The messianic figure of Ben Yamin reappeared four years later in a sermon given by Eibeschütz on the seventh of Adar 5519 (March 6, 1759), only a few months before Wolf returned from his first journey abroad.Footnote 23 According to Bet Yehonatan ha-Sofer (1763), the sermon on the verse “On the seventh [of Adar] Moses was born, on the seventh he died”Footnote 24 really dealt with the death and rebirth of Sabbatai Ẓvi, and Eibeschütz “foretold the coming of the messiah within a number of years.”Footnote 25 Our interest is in the comment that was added to this testimony in Sefer hit'avkut: “When [on this occasion] he announced the advent of the messiah within thirty years, whose name would be Binyamin, he certainly meant by this his son, the foolish [ha-kesil, gematria: yemini] lad … and it was already known that he intended to rule from 5485 [1725],Footnote 26 when the accursed cult of Sabbatai Ẓvi had chosen him to rule over them, and when he saw that his end was nigh, and that his plot would not succeed, he decided to participate after his death with his son.”Footnote 27
The identification of Wolf Eibeschütz as the reincarnation of Sabbatai Ẓvi can be found in another source. In a letter written by Pesaḥ ben Joshua to Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, we read that “the spirit seized this wolf [ha-ze'ev] and he conceived another spirit within him [vi-yekabel ruaḥ ’aḥeret bo] … Indeed, the Holy Spirit rests upon him … and he signs his name as Yemini ben David, since he is the chariot [merkavah] for Sabbatai Ẓvi and in two or three years he will reveal himself in a proper way.”Footnote 28
“And He Eats the Flesh of the Tender Child”
Emden's answer to Luḥot ‘edut was not slow to arrive. Shortly after its publication he composed Shevirat luḥot ha-’aven (The breaking of the evil tablets), in which he rejected Eibeschütz's claims one by one. Emden showed his book to several people after it was completed, but only published it in 1759 or 1760.Footnote 29 Towards the end of the work (pp. 53a–54b) can be found one of the most biting and dazzling satires ever written against Sabbatianism, in which the writer “scoffs at the amulet's commentary,” as Gershom Scholem mentioned in his own hand in the margins of his copy.Footnote 30 Emden's version follows Eibeschütz's commentary in a stepwise fashion, yet describes a reverse process of turning the fetus to stillborn. Emden uses sophisticated metaphorical language when he presents a number of overlapping alternatives. While he compares Eibeschütz's “small amulet”—which was given to women in labor and contained the messianically charged verse from Isaiah 9:5 (6), “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given”Footnote 31—to his small child,Footnote 32 it seems that Emden also alludes to Eibeschütz's youngest son: “He is the beloved son, his lastborn, whose pieces he arranged here, and his soul is bound up in his soul [ve-nafsho keshurah be-nafsho] so he crowned his skeleton.”Footnote 33 The allusion to Genesis 44:30, which expresses Jacob's bond to his youngest son Benjamin,Footnote 34 and to 1 Samuel 18:1, speaking of Jonathan's bond to David,Footnote 35 indicates that the identity of the messiah in Lu ḥot ‘edut did not elude Emden's observation.
Moshe Idel suggests that the strong affinity of Sabbatai Ẓvi to Saturn (kokhav Sabbatai) played a significant role in his public acceptance. Even Sabbatai's self-perception crystallized under the influence of astrological speculations regarding Saturn that connected the planet with melancholy and the messiah, such as those found in Sefer ha-peli'ah, which he had studied in his youth.Footnote 36 Even though Idel did not discuss Emden's commentary in Shevirat luḥot ha-’aven, Emden clearly reflects on the negative aspects of Saturn, especially its connection to heresy and incest:
And now hear the charm of his deeds, to make the child [yeled] weak [dali],Footnote 37 “like the legs of a lame which hang limp [dalyu], so is a parable in the mouth of fools” [Proverbs 26:7]. In vain to circumcise the boy when his father is Sabbatai [i.e., Saturn] the large and high wandering star [kokhav ha-nevukhah]Footnote 38 whose zodiac sign [mazalo] sinks into a bottomless pit, brings him down and does not raise him up [morido ve-lo ma‘aleh],Footnote 39 as if the child was the soul of the heretic [min],Footnote 40 and when he was in Aquarius [d e li], his name became ’eled [“I will give birth to”] … And know that he was not content until he spilt his blood.Footnote 41
There is no doubt that Emden identified Saturn in the Magen David (Star of David) symbol,Footnote 42 which appears on many of Eibeschütz's amulets, including his “small amulet” from Metz.Footnote 43 According to Eibeschütz's explanation in Luḥot ‘edut, the Magen David is a tried and true charm for women who have trouble giving birth, and is the secret of Metatron, who comes into being as the messiah, as he egresses from the “seventh seal” of the six-pointed star, the Shekhinah's “lower mouth.” In his own words:
Magen David which is a charm and the best talisman of all for every misfortune … especially for those in childbirth, has 7 points [including the hexagon in the middle] … and 7 times 7 equals mem tet [49] which is Metatron, and therefore he is called “Great Fish” [dag, gematria: 7] because he is included 7 times 7 … as it is written, “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah” [Jonah 2:1]; he [the fish] is the secret of Metatron that Jonah descended into him. And he also hints at childbirth, that the fetus is Jonah who descended “from the presence of the Lord” on high, “and flees to Tarshish” [1:3], which is this world, as it is written in the Zohar,Footnote 44 “The ship was like to be broken” [1:4] and Metatron saved … and in this picture of Magen David there are 7 openings [zayin nekavim], and the middle one is the “mouth,” and the “lower mouth” [peh de-lematah] is against the upper mouth [peh de-lema‘alah, which whispers the magical names into a woman's ear], as is known, and therefore these names come as a cure, to open the “lower mouth.”Footnote 45
On the other hand, Emden expresses the belief that children who are born under Saturn are misshapen of body.Footnote 46 In order to press the point that Eibeschütz caused the deaths of children yet to be born with his amulets, he evokes the myth of Kronos-Saturnus, the terrible god who devoured his sons, which appears in his description as the planet Saturn “swallowing” Aquarius (דלי), one of its zodiac constellations and an anagram of the Hebrew word yeled (ילד), “child.”
Indeed, the most striking aspect of Emden's commentary is his extensive use of cannibalistic imagery to illustrate Eibeschütz's claim that the holy names in his amulet were supposed to be read apart, and not as one piece. Dismantling the amulet and manipulating the names in order to lead the public astray is described as a ruthless, bloodthirsty orgy: after he slept with a Lilith-like demonic woman, murderess of children, the father draws out the fruit of her womb, dissects the fetus into pieces, flays it and finally, “‘opens his mouth in slaughter’ [Ezekiel 21:27] … and eats the flesh of the tender child [ve-’okhel besaro shel yeled rakh]”Footnote 47 under the melancholy light of Saturn.Footnote 48 The bestial debauchery and frenzy for human flesh reflect the true object of Eibeschütz's lust:
His appetite did not abate, he is like a hungry dog with a carcass. He was not satisfied until he had slept with Ẓilah, the mother of demons, whose name he cried out. And he said: “Understand that this name [Ẓilah] comes from the verse, zeh ha-sha‘ar la-ha-Shem, ẓadikim yavo'u vo [‘This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter it,’ Psalms 118:20].”Footnote 49 He entered additional wisdom [binah yeterah]Footnote 50 into this woman, and from this we learn that he slept with her and she bore him Ẓvi, who is hinted at in an acronym ẓadikim yavo'u vo.Footnote 51
Emden's satire is composed of a long chain of allusions to Scripture, including references to parents who eat the flesh of their own children, demonstrating the ultimate revenge of the deity on his wayward nation. Not only does Emden's cannibalistic imagery pervert the biblical pattern—after all, Emden speaks of iniquity but not punishment—it is in fact unmatched in anti-Sabbatian literature. However, it is remarkably similar to descriptions of cannibalism that first appeared in Mundus novus (The new world, 1503) by Pseudo-Vespucci,Footnote 52 and De orbe novo (Decades of the new world, 1511) by Peter Martyr of Anghiera,Footnote 53 early accounts of America. The two works were widely distributed and in short order translated into all the principal European languages.Footnote 54 They also found their way into Hebrew reports on the New World.Footnote 55 According to these, melancholic cannibals of the recently discovered countries would copulate with and impregnate their women to eat the fruit of their wombs.Footnote 56
Although, to the best of my knowledge, Emden does not explicitly mention the cannibals of the West Indies in any of his works, he could have been introduced to them through the “gentile books” and gazettes that he read in German, Dutch,Footnote 57 and possibly in English,Footnote 58 “to understand all the views of people around the world in matters of their faiths and religious customs … [and] the original ideas of those who write about the lands, oceans, rivers and deserts and those who describe their conditions”—as well as through conversations with others.Footnote 59 He was certainly familiar with the most popular novel about cannibals of his time. In his book Mitpaḥat sefarim (1768) Emden mentions that he read, “in that place in which it is forbidden to think on matters of the Torah [the latrine],”Footnote 60 a novel called D‘ehnsher (Adventure) Robinson, which is The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe.Footnote 61
“One Should Eat Human Prey and Their Blood”
The cannibalistic imagery introduced by Mundus novus and De orbe novo that played a major role in colonial propaganda also reappears shortly afterwards under completely different circumstances. Jean de Léry, a Huguenot pastor, described a period he spent in the New World about twenty years earlier in Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, autrement dite Amérique (History of a voyage to the land of Brazil, also called America, 1578). In this work, he recruits cannibalism to undermine the “papist” dogma of transubstantiation as it was argued by Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, the leader of French colonial interests in Brazil. In de Léry's eyes, the bread and wine of the Eucharist were purely symbolic, since “Scripture is accustomed to calling the signs of the Sacraments by the names of the things signified.”Footnote 62 Therefore, the steadfast persistence of Catholics and Lutherans in their literal understanding of Jesus's words, “This is my body … this is my blood,” turned them into cannibals, who desired not only to eat the flesh of Filius hominis “grossly rather than spiritually,” but what was worse, “like the savages named Ouetaca … they wanted to chew and swallow it raw.”Footnote 63 De Léry, who was introduced to the cannibalistic customs of the Tupinambá, hurled cannibalism back at Christendom when he turned it into a metaphor for the “corporeal” reading of Scripture.Footnote 64
In 1737, Benjamin Wolf Ginzburg, a Jewish student of medicine at Göttingen University and a former disciple of Emden, asked his teacher whether it was permitted to perform a postmortem anatomical dissection on the Sabbath. In his answer, which was published in the responsa She'elat Ya‘aveẓ (1749),Footnote 65 Emden discusses the principle of the matter—and a question he was not asked: Is there an interdict against deriving benefit from the cadaver of a gentile? Of interest to us is the following comment:
In my youth, twenty-five years ago, I saw a responsum of the Gaon, our teacher Rabbi David Oppenheim, of blessed memory, who sent a few pages from his book which he wanted to publish in Amsterdam but changed his mind. I still have some memory of it. It was about whether using human skin is permitted [‘al ‘esek hana'at ‘or ’adam ’im mutar]. And I remember that he rejoiced that he had found clear evidence in the Gemara, chapter lulav ve-‘aravah: “There were once two minim [heretics], etc. R. Abbahu said [to Sason, one of them]: A water-skin will be made of your skin, and water will be drawn with it”Footnote 66… He [Oppenheim] could also have added the verse, “Behold, a people (etc.) [rises like a lioness, and as a lion it lifts itself]; It shall not lie down until it devours the prey and drinks the blood of the slain” [Numbers 23:24]. This verse talks of slain idolaters and clearly says that one should eat human prey and drink their blood [she-yokh'al teref ’adam ve-dam ḥalalim yishteh]. Using his reasoning, this verse is better. Even their meat and blood is permitted for eating like game [she-’afilu ha-basar ve-ha-dam shelahem hutar la-’akhilah ke-basar ẓvi ve-’ayal] (therefore, even more so to use their skin).Footnote 67
To Emden, Oppenheim's approach was unacceptable in principle because law cannot be studied “from allegories and fables, whether from the Torah or Kabbalah, or from the sayings of the sages and their puzzles … God forbid that we should understand things literally [ḥalilah lehavin devarim ke-mashma‘an] and twist the words of the living God. Far be it from our sages of blessed memory from doing so!”Footnote 68 Those who prefer literal rather than figurative reading of texts that are not supposed to be read literally at the outset subvert the basic truths of the Law,Footnote 69 and—if they were to carry their principle to its logical conclusion, as did Emden in his reductio ad absurdum—are destined to end up with cannibalism.
Although these words were written within the framework of a halakhic discussion on a specific question, I believe that they were intended to stand as a warning sign against the dangers of heresy inherent in overly literal understanding of Scripture. This emerges from Emden's interpretation of R. Abbahu's response to Sason, the min who in hyperliteral reading (quite similar to that of Wolf Eibeschütz), twisted Isaiah's words to himself:Footnote 70 “This is nothing but ridicule of a heretic … by answering him in his own way.”Footnote 71
Uriel da Costa's Exame das tradições phariseas (Examination of Pharisaic traditions, 1624) can serve as representative example of this type of heresy a few generations before Emden's time. Through a close philological examination and textual criticism, da Costa rejected the belief in the immortality of the soul and called into question the continuity between true biblical tradition and contemporary rabbinic Judaism, which led to his excommunication by the Amsterdam Jewish community and the burning of his book. Interestingly enough, in his argument against the immortality of the soul, da Costa accuses his opponent, Samuel da Silva, of cannibalism, on the grounds of distorted reading of Scripture: “Let garments … be rent for your saying that it is not forbidden by the Law to consume human blood. Such a declaration … can only have been uttered by some indecent savage, a cannibal living in the jungle, who is accustomed to such barbarities and who is as gross as you are, you who have such a poor understanding of the Law.” Later on, da Costa explains: “So, his [da Silva's] saying … that there is no equivalence between the blood and the [human] soul, shows up our adversary as a wrester and distorter of Scripture, who takes literally the metaphorical and allegorical passages, figuratively those which are clear and obvious in meaning.”Footnote 72
The accusation of overly literal reading was directed also against Sabbatians. It is remarkable indeed that in his late response to the Frankists’ claim that the anthropomorphisms in the Bible and Zohar indicate that “God becomes corporeal in the body like the rest of humanity,” Emden used exactly the same language with which he attacked Oppenheim's ruling a quarter of a century earlier: “There is no need to understand things literally, as flesh and blood [she- ’en ẓorekh lehavin devarim ke-mashma‘an, be-vasar va-dam], but the truth stands with our sages who said that Torah has spoken in the language of men.”Footnote 73 It would seem that a similar apprehension lay in the background of the attempt to limit the study of Kabbalah, as manifested in the ḥerem (ban) placed on Sabbatian believers in the synagogue of Brody in 1756,Footnote 74 after the incident that came to be known as “the terrible deed in Podolia.”Footnote 75 On the night of January 27–28, 1756, Jacob Frank and a dozen of his followers were discovered in the town of Lanckoronie during what seemed to be a Frankist version of a mystical marriage with the Torah, a ceremony familiar to the kabbalist tradition, except that “participants in the Lanckoronie ritual,” as Paweł Maciejko put it, “replaced the Torah with a naked woman … the true word of God descended into palpably material female flesh.”Footnote 76 Identical treatment of the Holy Text can be seen in testimony taken at the rabbinical court in Satanów in the wake of the Lanckoronie affair, where a “true believer” described his attempt to fornicate with Ḥaya Shorr, the daughter of “Old” Elisha of Rohatyn, one of the Podolian Sabbatian leaders: “Once I demanded that she transgress with me. She answered me: Have you studied the Song of Songs today, as I did? How can you be allowed to carry out this sanctity?!”Footnote 77 The Podolian Sabbatians insisted on total literal or antiallegorical (“cannibalistic,” so to speak) identification of Scripture; hence, after their reckless sexual abandon became public,Footnote 78 the Jewish authorities in Poland declared: “We deem it necessary to place restrictions … [on those who] try to climb the merkavah Footnote 79 … and attempt to gather the secrets of the Torah without knowing first how to read it, and have no brain to understand [terem yadu ’ likrot … ve-shum sekhel lehavin] either its literal meaning [peshat] or the Gemara.”Footnote 80
When around 1759 news of Wolf Eibeschütz's messianic pretensions reached Ezekiel Landau, the chief rabbi of Prague attempted to warn R. Jonathan in the same manner: “And since it is not my way to add to the controversy, I therefore approach in peace and hereby address a letter to R. Jonathan himself that he warn his son … and that he decree that there be no Zohar nor Kabbalah studied by those younger than age forty.”Footnote 81 The attempt to limit the study of Kabbalah, evident both from the ban as well as Ezekiel Landau's letter,Footnote 82 responded to the danger of theological error perceived as inherent in wrong modes of reading. From this perspective, the boundaries of the literary canon and hermeneutic modes applied to it were a central element of the rupture in eighteenth-century European Jewry.
“The Scholarly Chief of the Butchers … He Is a Bear Lying in Wait, a Lion in Hiding”
Both cannibalism and the Noahide laws are crucial elements in Emden's discussion in She'elat Ya‘aveẓ:
“These are the thirty commandments which the sons of Noah took upon themselves but they [the nations of the world] observe three of them, namely, they do not weigh flesh of the dead in the market.”Footnote 83 And Rashi explains: “[The flesh of a] dead man.” … This doubtless means that there is an interdict against benefitting [from corpses] … and even that there is another interpretation of Rashi's [i.e., “flesh of the dead: meat of a dead animal”], the first is definitely the principal one … For this reason, it is forbidden to use corpses [of Christians] who are sons of Noah, because if they observe the seven Noahide laws they are not in error … and are not like beasts [ve-’enan domim le-behemah] whose soul is completely lost.Footnote 84
Through Rashi's commentary, Emden reads the ambiguous words of the Talmud as referring to cannibalism: eating human flesh is a universal taboo that the sons of Noah were commanded to obey, both Jews and Christians; hence Emden's antianthropophagic ruling on the controversial question of benefitting from the cadaver of a dead gentile.Footnote 85 Since cannibalism is strictly forbidden, lesser uses of corpses are also proscribed by Jewish law.
Perhaps the parallel drawn by Emden between anatomical dissection and cannibalism is less surprising considering the historical context in which it was written. It was common practice in early modern Europe to swallow human flesh (mummy), fat, blood, and bones as “corpse medicine,” which flourished until the second half of the eighteenth century.Footnote 86 Thus, in criticism rare for its time, Montaigne attacked European hypocrisy when he compared the cannibalism of the New World with common contemporary medical practice in his essay “On Cannibals” (1580): “And the physicians scruple not use of human flesh every way, either inwardly or outwardly for our health.”Footnote 87 When, in 1612, the Protestant minister Daniel Featley participated in a religious dispute with the Catholic Richard Smith on the Eucharist, he quoted from Augustine: “If the scripture seeme to command a sinne, or an horrible wickednesse … [then] the speech is figurative; for example: ‘unlesse you eate the flesh of the Sonne of man’ [John 6:53].” Featley hereby raised the polemical claim that literally swallowing Christ, which supposedly occurs during the Catholic Mass, is a cannibalistic act, and therefore opposed to divine law. For his part, Smith simply answered “that it was no horrible, nor wicked thing to eat man's flesh, since we usually eate it in Mummy.”Footnote 88 An illuminating example from eighteenth-century Jewish popular medical literature can be found in Sefer bet David (1734) by David Tebl. For a remedy “against a snake [worm?] … in man's body, one should give him a liquor with bread and honey to eat for entire two days, and in the third day, one should add a bone from a brain [skull] of a man that was executed by the Christian authorities [‘eẓem min moaḥ shel ’ish she-neherag ‘al yade pesak din shel ’umot], and pound it to powder and add it to a liquor.”Footnote 89 While Emden does not discuss such practices, he writes in his responsum that when anatomy teachers “finish dissecting a human corpse, they distribute its skin among the surgery students since they consider it to be a proven talisman” (keshe-gamru lenateaḥ met ’adam, meḥalkin ‘oro le-lomede ha-nituaḥ ba-’asher maḥzikin ’oto li-segulah yedu‘ah).Footnote 90
Emden's negative attitude to the art of surgery and his positive view of therapeutic medicine, as expressed in his halakhic work ’Iggeret bikkoret (1739), have been discussed at length by Maoz Kahana: “For him modern surgery symbolized materialistic medicine in general, which is entirely based on the empirical ‘wisdom of nature.’ … It is a theory that accuses the new science of revolutionary pretension and thus entails theological heresy while denying Jewish traditional knowledge and hierarchies.”Footnote 91 Emden similarly compares anatomical dissection with idolatry in the final words of his long respnsum to his erstwhile student: “Beware of the sword in the hand of your inclination, the scholarly chief of the butchers and surgeons [he-ḥakham sar ha-tabaḥim ve-ha-menatḥim], ‘He is a bear lying in wait, a lion in hiding’ [Lamentations 3:10] … Therefore my son, if you have to flay the carcass and observe its dissection [la‘ayen be-nituḥah], to engage in pagan work [la‘avod ‘avodah she-hi’ lekha zarah], strengthen yourself, don't throw out the words of Torah, fear your God and serve him.”Footnote 92
“They Are Like Beasts of the Forest … Do Not Recognize Their Own Seed”
Emden also applies the dichotomous division that he drew with medicine to the concept of universal morals, which he bases on the Noahide laws. According to his argument, both cannibalism and dissection of human bodies are inhumane, not because they are opposed to reason, but because they defy the divine law of the Testament. As he wrote years later, “Righteous among the nations have a share [in the world to come]. Therefore, they should observe the seven Noahide laws because they are the laws of God, not because reason decrees it.”Footnote 93 Hence, Emden's stance on the nature of humanity differs from those of the political thinkers of his age: according to Hobbs, it is reason that raises mankind from its natural state of brutishness to civilization by means of the law of nature,Footnote 94 while Rousseau's ideal of the noble savage is the peak of humanity.Footnote 95 According to Emden, in contrast, the godless philosopher and the savage are the same barbarous Janus-faced figure. He who has no part in God's Law has no place in the society of men nor in the world to come:
If man's mind could possibly imagine that there is no need for the fear of heaven, as the heretics [pokrim, that is Deists] contend, God forbid, then why do they need all this bother and for what do they trouble their souls with these investigations? What benefit can they find in them? Surely, it would be sufficient for them to live like beasts of the forest [ke-behemot ya‘ar], as their beastly soul [ha-nefesh ha-behemit] would teach them. Who would tell them what is proper and what is indecent? There are many people like the Tartary dwellersFootnote 96 and whole nations on the edge of India who consider robbery, adultery, and similar deeds to be fine and proper acts … and their species will remain as beasts of the field [ve-yisha'er minam ke- ḥayat sadeh].Footnote 97
It also fundamentally differs from the rational approach of Rabbi David Nieto in his controversy with the Sabbatian theologian Neḥemiah Ḥiya’ Ḥayon, as it appears in his book ’Esh dat (1715). This book was known to Emden because of his father's own involvement in the dispute and personal friendship with Nieto.Footnote 98 Despite its different stance, I believe Nieto's book was a significant source for Emden's perception of theological heresy (both Sabbatian and Deist) as savagery. After rightfully accusing Ḥayon of turning the God of Israel into a “secondary cause” (sibah sheniyah),Footnote 99 that is to say, depriving God of his omnipotence, Nieto presents the following fictional dialogue between Dan (an acronym for David Nieto) and Naphtali:
N.: There is no need for additional proof [of God's unity, infinity, and providence] since this principle clearly appears in the Torah. What do we need an intellectual proof for, then?
D.: To silence those who say that there is no divine law and no supreme Judge [leyt din ve-leyt dayan] … And since they do not accept the intellectual argument [te‘anat ha-sekhel], which cannot be dismissed and refuted, one should conclude that they do not belong to the human race [she-’enam mi-min ha-’enoshi], but are mindless as horses and mules.
N.: Is there any one at all who believes that there is no divine providence, God forbid?
D.: Indeed, there are two sects. The first because of the brutishness of their mind [me-rov gasut sikhlam] caused by ignorance, such as the people of America, who are like beasts of the field and wild animals [harbeh mi-yoshve ha-’Amerika’ she-hen ke-behemot ve-ḥayot ha-sadeh]. The second sect are people who heard and read in books about the eternal God, the creator of heaven and earth, who rules and looks after [the world], but since they do not know how it is possible that He has no beginning, they deny it altogether.Footnote 100
In spite of his tolerance towards Christianity, Emden's concept of universal morals did not satisfy Moses Mendelssohn.Footnote 101 In his letter of October 26, 1773, to the elderly rabbi who was then considered the leading halakhic authority in Germany, the Berlin philosopher wrote: “To me these matters are more difficult than a hard rock, that all the inhabitants of the earth from the rising to the setting of the sun are doomed … unless they believe in the Torah … especially concerning matters not at all explicit in the Torah [i.e., the Noahide laws] … And what will those nations do upon whom the light of the Torah has not shone at all?”Footnote 102 In Jerusalem (1783), he phrases the problem even more succinctly: “Why must both the Indies wait until the Europeans are pleased to send them some comforters, to bring them tidings without which they can, in the latter's opinion, live neither virtuously nor happily?”Footnote 103 In response to the challenge posed by the savages, and by the influence of Rousseau's Second Discourse, On the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men (1754), which he translated into German and published incognito in 1756, Mendelssohn enabled the savages, too, to be part of humanity, if they lived according to the wisdom of nature: “The eternal truths, so far as they are of use for the welfare and happiness of man … God teaches … by creation itself and its internal relations [that is, through nature], which are legible and intelligible everywhere and to all men.”Footnote 104
The debate between Emden and Mendelssohn was part of a lively eighteenth-century discourse on natural law.Footnote 105 As Cătălin Avramescu writes, “Nothing makes this law more visible than the extreme presence of the anthropophagus.”Footnote 106 Beside the traditional idea of natural law, where nature is consistent with God's laws,Footnote 107 radical interpretations that appeared in the era of the great sea voyages approved of the suspension of the taboo against cannibalism when faced with self-preservation, which is obligatory in nature. Indeed, the different moral attitudes held by the halakhic master and the philosopher reflect the paradoxical relationship between cannibals and nature. On the one hand, cannibals are the very men of nature, governed by its laws. On the other hand, by violating the natural order of creation (which is but a reflection of Creator's will), they execute the most terrible crimes against nature.Footnote 108 In this light, cannibals appear as beasts in human shape, as described by the author of Mundus novus:
They marry as many wives as they please; and son cohabits with mother, brother with sister … and any man with the first woman he meets. They dissolve their marriages as often as they please, and observe no sort of law with respect to them. Beyond the fact that they have no church, no religion and are not idolaters, what more can I say? They live according to nature [dica vivut secundum natura] and may be called Epicureans rather than StoicsFootnote 109 … and among other kinds of meat, human flesh is a common article of diet with them. Nay be the more assured of this fact because the father has already been seen to eat children and wife [est patrem comedisse filios & uxorē] … [T]hey cover no part of their bodies for the sake of protection, so like beasts [bestiis] are they in this matter. We endeavored to the extent of our power to dissuade them and persuade to desist from these depraved customs.Footnote 110
Emden's concept of the Noahide laws was adopted by the Jewish establishment in Poland (the Council of the Four Lands) in its campaign against the Frankists. To quote Maciejko once again: “Not only did he [Emden] claim that Christian doctrines were congruent with the Noahide Commandments; he also argued that the very essence of Jesus and the apostles’ mission was to establish a faith based on Noahidism for pagans … From this perspective, Sabbateanism was a kind of universal heresy, denying general human moral principles.”Footnote 111 To this observation, it can be added that Emden described Sabbatians as a perfect reflection of cannibals. When the Frankists accused the “Talmudists” of the ritual consumption of Christian blood during the 1759 dispute in Lwów, rabbinic representatives headed by Rabbi Ḥayim Katz Rapoport used an argument similar to Emden's—only the other way around. In order to rebuff the charge of cannibalism and turn it back to their accusers, albeit implicitly, they claimed that even godless savages do not eat human blood, since “that is one of the seven laws that were told to [all] human beings,” implying that the Frankists and their supporters among the Catholic clergy, who are willing to spill blood falsely in accusing the Jews of ritual murder, deserve to be called cannibals.Footnote 112 What was merely alluded to in the dispute was said out loud when Emden reformulated Rapoport's answer in Sefer shimush (1762): “Until when will this iniquitous belief be held in the hands of the priests of Poland, the land of darkness, those who thirst for blood like wolves, and many times shed innocent blood, through libelous falsehoods with no shred of truth … as if our nation needs human blood.”Footnote 113
Meteg la-ḥamor, one of Emden's anti-Frankist treatises included in Sefer shimush, further reveals the cannibalistic imagery he employed:
How can you compare Christians to these heretics [minim] of Sabbatai Ẓvi, obstacles and thorns in the flesh, may their names rot. In my eyes they are like beasts of the forest [ke-ḥayot ha-ya‘ar], and even this comparison is not completely correct, because even beasts of prey do not cleave any more to those who are not of their kind as they did in the generation of the Flood. These abominations do not recognise their own seed [’enan makirim zer‘am], and there is no need to say that they are worse than humans [she-geru‘im hem mi-bene ’adam], whoever they are. … But Christians, if they follow the seven Noahide laws, as they are commanded to do … then certainly there is no reason to condemn them among the nations.Footnote 114
By making the accusation that the Sabbatians “do not recognise their own seed,” Emden refers not only to their deviation from Jewish law, but also—and perhaps mainly—to the sexual practices that were common among the “true believers,” such as sexual hospitality and orgiastic ceremonies.Footnote 115 Unrestrained sexuality, accompanied by consumption of ritually forbidden food,Footnote 116 connected them with savages, who besides eating their own kin also devour them sexually, as was described by Pseudo-Vespucci: “[T]he greatest token of friendship which they show you is that they give you their wives and daughters … and in this way they practice the full extreme of hospitality.”Footnote 117
Finally, the dehumanizing rhetoric of Emden's reply to David Friedrich Megerlin's claim that Eibeschütz's amulets disclose his hidden belief in Christianity, as well as of his description of Jacob Frank, demonstrates once again the close parallels he draws between Sabbatians and savages:
To innocent Christians we have all the respect, but lies, falsehood, and deception is hateful to anyone of human shape [le-kol mi she-yesh lo rak ẓurah ’enoshit], to whatever nation they belong. There is nothing more repulsive and revolting than that, if not he who has the shape of a man and a soul of a beast [’adam be-ẓurah ve-nefesh behemah], especially if he is of the true seed. … He [Eibeschütz] acts hypocritically like a wicked man who cannot be praised and honoured since he acts against human nature [she-mitnaged le-teva‘ ha-’adam].Footnote 118
While Emden describes R. Jonathan as someone who managed to mislead the public by cloaking himself in culture, in his presentation of Frank, Emden strips him of every vestige of humanity. Like Caliban, the monstrous figure of the savage in The Tempest,Footnote 119 Frank too is deprived of any virtue, language-less, and lacking in human form, “a foolish lad, complete ignoramus, and a huge boor, disfigured and empty. He is not in the image of man [’en lo demut ’adam], but his face is that of a demon. And with no mastery of language at all [ve-lo’ ba‘al dibur ve-lashon kelal], just stuttering with the cheeping and crowing of red roosters, completely indecipherable to all who are not very familiar with him.”Footnote 120 And the men, like their master: “Wretched savages … surely you are not included amongst the mankind [pera'im ’umlalim … ve-ha-lo’ ’enkhem ’afilu bikhlal ha-beriyot], but with those who were created at dusk [ben ha-shemashot] [i.e., demons] … and you are worse than the people of India, who worship the Satan.”Footnote 121
“A Bizarre and Disgusting Figure”
Cannibalism and savagery, not previously known as a category in anti-Sabbatian polemics, emerge as such in Emden's writings. He insinuates tropes of cannibalism in his criticism of Sabbatianism and other forms of theological heresy, and in Shevirat luḥot ha-’aven these themes become explicit. In an era when cannibalism occupied the European imagination and became a political weapon that could be effectively aimed against the Other within or elsewhere (be it Catholics, Jews, or aborigines), as well as a test case for the concept of humanity, it is hardly surprising to find the same rhetoric among Jewish polemicists. As Limor Mintz-Manor and Iris Idelson-Shein recently showed, in early modern Jewish culture, savagery was a basic cultural category that served as a means to establish close proximity between Jews and Christians.Footnote 122 As the latter put it, in his “cannibalistic, atheistic, and infanticidal behavior, the savage … unites Jews and Christians in a mutual bond of civilized people, or mentshen.”Footnote 123 This article shows Emden's important contribution to this discourse in the eighteenth century, and extends the boundaries of the discussion far beyond Jewish-Christian juxtaposition.
Scholars acknowledge that Emden's positive attitude towards Christianity formed during the 1750s, in the wake of his zealous campaign against Sabbatianism. As Jacob Schechter and others demonstrated, in the face of the Frankists’ claim of Jewish persecution because of their affinity for Christian doctrine, and in response to rumors about Eibeschütz's hidden belief in Christianity,Footnote 124 Emden attempted to turn the Christian authorities against Sabbatianism by claiming that Judaism and Christianity share common morals, which are inconsistent with the former.Footnote 125 According to this paradigm, Emden allowed Christians to be part of civilization only in order to drive Sabbatians out. However, as I have demonstrated above, the roots of Emden's stance are to be found in his third-decade halakhic discussion on the question of whether it is permissible to make use of a gentile's cadaver. Emden's argument in She'elat Ya‘aveẓ connects cannibalism and the theological heresy that springs from an overly literal reading of the scholarly canon on the one hand, and the concept of the seven Noahide laws on the other. In his opinion, the consumption of human flesh, either literally but particularly in its metaphorical sense, as an erroneous method of reading and use of nontraditional knowledge, is what distinguishes between the sons of Noah (i.e., Jews and Christians) and heretics, as well as between humanity and savages. Emden particularly advanced this concept in his polemical writings against Sabbatianism in the 1750s, when he became embroiled in controversy with Jonathan Eibeschütz and the Frankists. That is to say, from the very beginning of his long-standing polemics against theological heresy—first against Deistic philosophy and materialistic science, and later on against Sabbatianism—Emden's attitude was cast in the mold of the contemporary discourse about savagery and the boundaries of humanity.
Sabbatianism's transformation into heresy can be partially attributed to the anti-Sabbatian crusade of individuals such as Moses Sasportas, Moses Ḥagiz, Ḥakham Ẓvi Ashkenazi, and Jacob Emden.Footnote 126 Like his contemporary predecessors, Emden (“a zealot son of a zealot,” as he called himself) strove to drive a distinct barrier between what he regarded as normative Judaism and what was a dangerous perversion in his eyes; in other words, between what is “inside” the communal body of Israel, and what is “outside” of it. At the same time, more than anyone else, Emden recognized the strong syncretistic tendencies of Sabbatianism.Footnote 127 The growth of Orthodoxy and Sabbatianism's inclination towards religious hybridity both have to do with the construction, displacement, and elimination of cultural boundaries, and as such are strongly related to the metaphor of cannibalism. This conceptual proximity between cannibalism and transgression of physical and religious boundaries was masterfully depicted in the final dialogue of Cyrano de Bergerac's Voyage to the Moon (1656), which can be read as a witty satire on Catholic Communion (that is, eating Christ and being eaten by him)Footnote 128 and the idea of bodily resurrection. What begins as a hypothetical assumption that a moon dweller proposes to his earthly guest, “suppose that you ate a Mohammedan …,” ends with denying the existence of an omnipotent and provident God. After the Muslim's flesh was absorbed and incorporated by the Christian anthropophagus, he and his wife begot “a pretty little Christian,” “with the seed drawn entirely from this Mohammedan's body.” That being the case, what would become of him on Judgment Day? For as a Christian he must be saved, but as a Muslim he must be damned.Footnote 129 “Then, if God wishes to be just, He must both save and damn this man eternally.” Such a God, concludes the moon dweller, “is either silly or malicious.”Footnote 130 Perhaps Richard Sugg was thinking of this dialogue when he defined cannibalism as complete annihilation of borders “as two individuals are collapsed together by the act of consumption.”Footnote 131 That is indeed the way that Emden characterized Sabbatianism—neither Judaism, nor Christianity, nor Mohammedanism, but a hybrid belief “all-devouring,” “a bizarre and repulsive figure [ẓurah meshunah u-megunah] … with three heads that are similar to each of the three faiths.”Footnote 132
