CHAPTER VII THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY A. THE BACKGROUND Messianic speculation suffered no abatement in the seventeenth century. This century also witnessed its most tragic consequences. As the year 1648 approached-the Anno Mirabilethe great year heralded by the Zohar and many subsequent teachers, the national fever mounted. Fantastic hopes engulfed the whole of Israel, from Safed to London, from Morocco to Poland. The Rabbis of Palestine sent an encyclical prayer to be recited at dawn and in the evening in all the lands of the Diaspora, the recitation to be accompanied by lamentation and penance, asking for the restoration of the Kingdom of David and for the remission of the travail-pangs of the Messianic times.1 Another pastoral letter was dispatched from Palestine to the Diaspora, urging upon all men to forego strife and dissension and to cultivate peace and good will, in preparation for the imminent advent of the Messiah. Numerous pamphlets on the correct practice of repentance, based on the tradition of Luria, were widely circulated and read. Men prayed and castigated themselves, knowing that the great day was at hand. 3 In Amsterdam, Manasseh ben Israel, believing that the end was nigh, petitioned Cromwell to permit the return of the Jews to England, in order that their universal dis 1 See Kahana, 18, p. 46, first printed by R. Aaron Berahia, of Modena, אנה ה' כתבנו לגאלה.. כתבנו לישועה והקל חבלי משיח מעלינו (see pay, ed. Wilna 1922, pp. 122-124). 2 Seep, ed. Frankfurt, a. M., 1709, Chap. XV, pp. 33b-34a. ,הלכות תשובה under שליה ibid.). See the) אבן נגף persion might thereby be accomplished-a condition precedent to their Redemption. The Zohar was assiduously studied, for the merit of such study hastened the end. Vital wrote in the introduction to his 'Ez Hayyim that in these days it is a religious duty and a great joy to God to have Kabbala widely made known, for through the merit of such study the Messiah will come. Abraham Azulai, a contemporary (d. 1643), writing in Gaza, likewise declared: "This book (the Zohar) will be revealed in the days of King Messiah in order to give support to the Shekinah, and all those who will be favored by this revelation will also merit Redemption. Verily this service (the study of the Zohar) which is all too rare in our day is more important than all “the rams of Nebaioth "5 which were sacrificed in the days when the Temple existed." The Hebrew presses were busily engaged in turning out numerous commentaries on this work which had now taken its place alongside of the Bible and the Talmud. In the seventeenth century the stage was set for a great Messianic movement. Politically the conditions were propitious for such a movement. Mystically the people had been prepared for it. Even the Christian world was in the grip of a millennial frenzy. I. The Political Situation The outstanding political events of the century were the Thirty Years' War, which closed in 1648, and the Cossack Rebellion, which began in 1648; the former unsettled the life of German Jewry and impoverished it; the latter crushed and decimated Polish Jewry in one of the most horrible tragedies in history. אבל בדורות הללו מצוה ושמחה גדולה לפני הקב"ה שיתגלה החכמה הזאת שבזכותו יבא משיח 4 (see "ny, ed. Shklov, Intro. p. 3b). The origin of the belief is in the Zohar itself; cf. w' p. 124b: דעתידין ישראל למטעם מאילנא דחיי דאיהו האי ספר הזהר ויפקון ביה מן גלותא ברחמי .(p. 76b תקוני הזהר Failure to study Zoharitic Kabbala delays the coming of the Messiah (see 5 Is. 60.7. 67 70, ed. Lemberg, 1860, p. 6b. The first half of the seventeenth century is a tragic and bloody period in the annals of German history. It begins in seething unrest, religious conflicts, political rivalries and economic decline and terminates in the Dance of Death-the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). The Hanseatic League had begun to disintegrate, commerce was fast decaying and the monetary system of the country was depreciating to an appalling degree. The Thirty Years' War, which was the culmination of a century of bitter religious struggles and hatreds, brought unutterable ruin and devastation upon the Empire, and left it broken and bleeding. Out of an estimated population of sixteen million only six million were left when the Treaty of Westphalia was finally signed. Five-sixths of all the towns and villages were destroyed. In Bohemia alone, where the war first broke out, only 6000 villages out of 35,000 remained. The successive invasions of the country and the endless sieges and occupations disorganized the social and economic life of the country, disturbed trade, ruined agriculture, impoverished peasant and burgher and left disease, desolation and anarchy in their wake. The Jews could not but feel the effects of such a prolonged struggle and such an economic upheaval. It is true that they fared no worse than their German neighbors. In many instances they fared even better. They were not involved in the religious disputes, and the contending forces relied upon Jewish capital to help finance their military expeditions. In the hope of obtaining loans, the warring governments occasionally furnished protection to the Jews. It may be assumed that some Jews profited financially from the war; but the rank and file could not but be effected unfavorably by the general disorganization and impoverishment of the land. Throughout the first half of the seventeenth century the Jews of Germany were subjected to all the irksome and humiliating restrictions of the dark ages of Europe. The Middle Ages were still on. The Reformation had availed them little. The German Jews were still huddled in ghettoes, branded with the yellow badge, victimized by excessive taxation and subjected to the menace of frequent popular outbursts and riots. A bitter economic struggle between German merchant and craft guilds and the Jews marked this period. The Jews of course were not admitted to membership in these guilds. They therefore carried on their trades and crafts without regard to the standards and traditions of these guilds, and perhaps with greater skill and aggressiveness. The Jewish communities of Frankfort-on-the-Main and Worms suffered most from this economic rivalry. In Frankfort an infuriated mob, led by the baker, Vincent Fettmilch, broke into the ghetto on the eleventh of September, 1614, and plundered, robbed and destroyed. Close onto 1400 Jews were compelled to flee the city. The Jews of Worms, too, were compelled by the menace of a mob, led by the lawyer Chemnitz, to flee the city (April 20, 1615). Upon their departure the mob destroyed the ancient synagogue of the city and desecrated the cemetery. It was nine months before the Jews of Worms were permitted to return, and more than a year before their co-religionists of Frankfort enjoyed a similar privilege. Ruppin summarizes the period accurately when he states: "The period of the Thirty Years' War marks the time when Judaism had reached its lowest ebb." Hence the nigh incredible eagerness with which they received the Messianic reports of Shabbetai Zebi. Glückel von Hameln (1645– 1719) wrote in her Memoirs: "It is difficult to describe the joy with which the letters (from the East telling of Shabbetai Zebi) were received in Hamburg. Most of these letters were received by the Sephardim, who thereupon went to their synagogue and had them read. There they were joined by the Ashkenazim, young and old. The young Portuguese would dress themselves in their best garments. Each one wore a wide green band of silk (the livery of Shabbetai Zebi), and dancing and singing as if it were the Feast of the Drawing of the Water, they would go to their synagogue to read those letters. Some of them, 7 Arthur Ruppin, The Jews of Today, Eng. trans. Margery Bentwich, New York, 1913, p. 32, unfortunately, sold all they had-house, land and possessions-hoping to be redeemed any day." She narrates further that her own stepfather, who lived in Hommel, departed for Hildesheim, leaving everything he had behind him except some possessions which he sent on ahead to Hamburg, expecting any day the Messianic summons which would take him from Hamburg to the Holy Land.' The Cossack uprisings in the middle of the seventeenth century broke the back of Polish Jewry. A contemporary, Shabbetai Sheftel Horowitz, son of the author of the Shelah, in his ethical testament, speaks of this catastrophe and calls it "The Third Destruction," alike in enormity to the earlier two.10 With the seventeenth century Poland entered upon a period of swift decline. The close of the Yaghello Dynasty (1386-1572) terminated the era of Polish national unity and inaugurated the age of Shlakhta rivalries and animosities, which culminated in the tragic events of 1648 and in the ensuing partitions. With Polish decadence came Jewish decadence. The internal strife and the hostile invasions which brought ruin and desolation upon Poland undermined the economic, political and cultural life of Polish Jewry almost beyond repair. In the sixteenth century Polish Jewry had reached its high-water mark of autonomous development and cultural achievements. Comparative security, economic affluence and strong internal organization gave to Polish Jewry an almost unique and enviable position among the Jewries of the Diaspora. The Jews of Poland enjoyed almost complete social autonomy in the sixteenth century. The Kahal was the unit of communal organization. By the Charter of Sigismund Augustus (August 13, 1551) the Jewish communities were confirmed in their autonomy and self-government. 8 Die Memoiren der Glückel von Hameln, ed. Kaufmann, Frankfurt, a. M. 1896, pp. 81-82. • Ibid., p. 82. היות כי ידוע החורבן השלישי שנעשה בימים בשנת ת"ח לאלף הששי...ממש היה דומה לחורבן 10 *71 11877 (see onnax n’7a, ed. Warsaw, 1878, App., p. 31). |