23508143the Son of The Messiah

The Son of the Messiah: Ishmael Zevi and the Sabbatian Aqedah
Author(s): David J. Halperin

Source: Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. 67 (1996), pp. 143-219
Published by: Hebrew Union College Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23508143
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The Son of the Messiah : Ishmael
Zevi and the Sabbatian Aqedah
David J. Halperin
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
The early Sabbatian exegetical text preserved in MS Budapest, Kaufmann 255,1s a

commentary on Sabbatai Zevi's distinctive liturgy for the midnight vigil (tiqqun hasot).
The manuscript seems to be, as Gershom Scholem surmised, the writer's autograph.
Irregularities in its handwriting may thus be used as indicators of the stages in which
the author composed his work.
Close examination of this text's allusions to Sabbatai Zevi's son Ishmael, who was
regarded for a time as his father's Messianic successor, will provide a solution to the
long-standing mystery of what became of the boy. (It will be shown that he died as
a child.)
The commentator's Messianic expectations for Ishmael Zevi, moreover, were
bound up with his distinctive reading of the Aqedah story in Genesis, as well as with
his perceptions of Islam. His fantasies about Ishmael Zevi thus reflect the powerful
but ambiguous role of Islam in the imaginings of Sabbatai Zevi's followers. They pre
sent us also with a remarkable "Aqedah of Ishmael"— Ishmael son of Hagar as well
as Ishmael Zevi — which demands its place within the history of that ancient and
pivotal motif of Jewish thought and experience that we call the Aqedah tradition.
1. Introduction
And so they [Sabbatai Zevi and Sarah] were married.Yet

love to her until after he had set the pure turban on his he
she bore him a son and a daughter. But all this we shall rela
with God's help. _ , 1‫ז‬ "
— Baruch ol Arezzo, Memor
One of the more intriguing myst

rounds the young son of the would
or 1668, within two years after his
turban on his head"). He was raised
batai's death in 1676, Ishmael bec
of some at least of Sabbatai's follo
( 1 ) Aharon Freimann, cInyanei Shabbetay Se

dessen Anhànger ( Berlin, 1912), p. 46.
143
144 DAVID J. HALPE RI N [2]
status equal to his father's. Yet, apart from

pears entirely from the historical record
DônmeDônme tradition claims that Ishmael d
impossible. All now agree, for reasons we
that Ishmael survived his father. Yet his
history of Sabbatianism has suggested to
is essentially correct, that he indeed die
pointed out that he played no role what
that followed the great apostasy at Salonik
that he was dead by then. An allusion to Ish
Scholem interpreted to mean that he was
death between 1681 and 1683. But, when
other allusion to Ishmael must be dated
himself baffled.2 And Benayahu went o
nious hypothesis according to which Ish
after all. Rather, he returned to Judaism
symbolically appropriate fashion to'Tsaac Z
man of that name who served as rabbi o
This article is a study of the figure of Ish

Sabbatian text which Scholem designate
mizmoreimizmorei tehillim)and attributed to
solve the mystery of Ishmael Zevi's disapp
indeed died as a child,although a fewyea
"Commentary on Psalms," which Schole
source for the millenarian expectations th
be understood as also bearing silent wit
that event had on the writer's Messianic f
must subject the text, and its allusions
than it has so far received.
Will we know more, when we are finished, about Ishmael Zevi as a human
being? Hardly. This unfortunate child is barely allowed to exist — in our
(2) Scholem,"Perush mizmorei tehillim mi-hugo shel Shabbetai Sevi be-Adrinopol," in Alei
Ayin:Ayin:Ayin: The Salman Schocken Jubilee Volume. . . (Jerusalem, 1948-52), pp. 157-211 ; reprinted in Re
searches searches in Sabbatianism( Hebrew; Yehuda Liebes [éd.] [Tel Aviv, 1991]), pp. 89-141. The 1991 edi
tion of the article includes marginal notes subsequently added by Scholem, plus important
comments and references contributed by Liebes. In the following notes, I will cite the page num
bersbers of both editions, indicating the 1991 edition as "Liebes? The discussion of Ishmael Zeviison
pp. 172-73(Liebes, pp. 105-07); the Dônme tradition is cited in n.54; Scholem's response to
Benayahu is contained in a marginal note published in Liebes, p. 107.
(3) Benayahu, The Shabbatean Movement in Greece (Hebrew; Sefunot 14; Jerusalem, 1971-77),
pp. 163-78.
[3] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH !45
sources, at least — other than as a vessel for the

fantasies of the adults who surrounded him. We
tasies.tasies. We can infer much from them about th
being, litde about the person onto whom they
Three motifs will emerge from our study. The
ancholy theme of Messianic expectation batte
ment, transforming itself again and again, but w
itself of its fundamental addiction to illusion. Th
ambiguous role of Islam in the imaginings of
subject, perhaps expressed more or less openly
many other Jews of their time.
The third is the Aqedah, as envisioned by at
Its victim-hero is now an Ishmael instead of —
like his Biblical prototype, he indeed perishes i
ily forgotten by those who once venerated him.
it emerges from the early Sabbatian sources, thu
cient and perdurable tradition that marks one of
religious thought and experience.
The significance of the Aqedah theme — for Ju
entire human experience — has been the subje
tion 'tion ' In such meditations, the Aqedah of Ishm
into account. No less than the other, more con
the Aqedah tradition, it has its role to play in ev
ing of the whole.
Our procedure will be as follows : We will begi

for Ishmael Zevi's life,down to 1680, provided by
mentary on Psalms'.'We will then turn to the com
its structure and purpose — we will see in this co
is not altogether appropriate — and establish h
work changed in the course of writing. These cha
are closely linked to his expectations concerni
frustration of these expectations.
As we proceed, the author's perceptions of Is
(4) Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling is of course the classi

of a scholarly character, include Shalom Spiegel, The Last T
portant introduction byjudah Goldin); David Shulman, The
and Devotion and Devotion (Chicago, 1993); Jon D.Le\enson,The Death
Transformation Transformation of Child Sacrifice infudaism and Christia
old friend, Professor Marc Bregman, for sharing with me th
ing the Aqedah and its implications, and his plans for a te
thinking on the subject.
146 DAVID J. HALPF.RIN [4]
come into our view, and will become so t

ure of Ishmael Zevi that we will need to c
of the argument will oblige us to undert
commentary's Aqedah exegesis.
I will then examine certain data that s
mael Zevi was dead by 1680, and will off
data. We will consider what became of the Messianic faith of the author of the
"Psalms Commentary,"once its focus was gone. And we will take a last look at
the figure who stands at the center of the Sabbatian Aqedah, and reflect on
what it means to be hero and victim of so dreadful and pathetic a drama.
2.The Life of Ishmael Zevi
Our data about Ishmael Zevi are sparse and uncertain. Earlier
Sabbatianism — Scholem, Benayahu, Yehuda Liebes — have g
discussed the key testimonies? Let us examine them once aga
The earliest surviving hagiography of Sabbatai Zevi, written
by one Baruch of Arezzof claims that he first made love with hi
ter his conversion to Islam' and that "she bore him a son. He him
cised him on the eighth day, reciting aloud the blessings over th
view of the Turks. He named him Ishmael Mordecai. Afterwards she bore a
daughter, and he called her name"— and, where the daughter's name ought
to be, the text is unaccountably blank.8
Baruch's account of "Ishmael Mordecai's"circumcision, which is obviously
intended to show that the rite took place according to Jewish rather than Mus
lim practice, is contradicted by the more reliable contemporary narrative of
Jacob Najara? Ishmael was circumcised, according to this account, in Adri
(5) Above, sec. 1, nn. 2-3 ; Scho\em,Sabbata1 Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (Princeton, 1973), index,
s.v."Sevi, Ishmael Mordecai"; Liebes,"Yahaso shel Shabbetai Sevi le-hamarat dato" Sefunot n.s.
22 (1983) 273-74; reprintedin On Sabbateaismandits Kabbalah: CollectedEssays( Hebrew; Jerusalem,
"995)>PP-277-78•
(6) Zikkaron livnei Yisra'el, published in Freimann,cInyanei Shabbetay Sevi, pp. 43-78.
(7) Ibid., p.46.
(8) Ibid., p. 63. The mysterious lacuna where the daughter's name ought to be is present in
all the manuscripts of Zikkaron livnei Yisra'el I have consulted (in the Institute of Microfilm He
brew Manuscripts, National and University Library, Jerusalem): J TSMic.35go; Jerusalem, Ben
Zvi 2264; Cambridge Or. 804; London, British Museum 1061 ; Warsaw LI V and LV (formerly
MSS Schwartz 141,21 and 141,21a of the Vienna Jewish community). I have no idea how it might
be explained. — Nathan of Gaza, writing early in 1672, mentions the birth of a daughter to Sab
batai in the preceding year : Abraham Amarillo,"Tecudot shabbeta'iyyot mi-ginzei Rabbi Sha'ul
Amarillo','Se/unot5(1g61)262; cf. Scholem,Sabbatai Sen!,p.851.
(9) The"Najara chronicle"is published in Amarillo,"Tecudot shabbeta'iyyot,"pp. 254-62;
[5] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 147
anople on 8 Nisan ( 9 March ) 1671, the day after Sa

him from Sarah, whom he hadjust divorced. (He r
ward.)10The boy was now three years old, Sabb
therefore must be circumcised in accord with Lev
shall shall it be uncircumcised to you.. . but in the fourth
of praise.of praise. Sabbatai found it significant that he
on 7 Nisan,the day when Elishama prince of the
his offering to the tabernacle (Numbers 7:48-53
anagram for"Ishmael"and his status an allusion
Ishmael was given the Jewish name" Israel" for th
It is evident from Najara's account that this ecce
amid considerable Messianic excitement. We can
the three-year-old child, snatched from his moth
ering of enthusiasts who pronounced over him
intelligible to him, while they cut his penis.12
It will follow from Najara's chronology that I
1668. This date entirely suits Baruch of Arezzo's s
important piece of evidence that can be taken to s
ous year.14This is a letter written by Nathan of G
ers, evidendy early in 1667, which prophesies that
summarized in Scholem, Sabbatai Seui, pp. 846-51. The acco

PP■ 256-57•
(10) Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p. 851.
(11) Najara: ve-niqra shem ha-mahul be-yisra'elyisra'el.
( 12 ) We may get some idea of the trauma inflicted by reading accounts of the circumcisions,
in traditional societies, of older boys who have the advantage of being prepared for the opera
tion and knowing why they are being made to endure it : Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java,
Chicago & London, i960, pp. 51-53; Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom : The Autobiography of
Nelson Nelson Mandela, Boston ,1994, pp. 2 2 -2 7. ( I owe the latter reference to my colleague Professor Ya
akov Ariel.) It is not clear from Najara's account how many people attended the circumcision.
On 8 Nisan, he says, Sabbatai sent invitations to the Muslim notables of Adrianople, knowing
that they would falsely assume that the ritual was scheduled for the next day. (Clearly, pace Ba
ruch of Arezzo, Sabbatai was concerned that the Muslims not know just what was done at the
circumcision.) Najara himself performed the circumcision — again contradicting Baruch of
Arezzo — and Joseph Karillo acted as sandaq. But there were clearly other Jews,or at least Jew
ish apostates, present. One of them"had a ten-year-old son who had not yet been circumcised;
he had vowed, while Ami rah was in the'tower of strength' [that is, when Sabbatai Zevi was being
held in the fortress Gallipoli,in 1666],to circumcise him only in the presence of King Messiah.
Amirah then commanded the afore-mentioned rabbi [Najara] that he circumcise him with
the afore-mentioned blessings, and he called his name Ishmaeir
( 13) The Dônme tradition similarly recalls that Ishmael was circumcised at age three : Moshe
Attias and Gershom Scholem, Shirot ve-tushbahot shel ha-shabbeta'im (Tel Aviv, 1947), p.46.
(14) Liebes (above, n. 5) summarizes the arguments for 1667 vs. 1668 as the year of Ishmael's
birth. He inclines to the earlier date.
148 DAVI D J. HALPE RI N [6]
apostasy, presumably] a son is to be born to

He will be born circumcised, and will under
thirteen. Of him the Bible says ,Only let Ish
and and he will be a wild ass of a man,his hand in
inasmuch as by his hand shall the Gentile
annihilation, [God] not wishing the destr
very much as if Ishmael's birth is immin
that the child Nathan anticipates is neces
actually born and given the name Ishmael. T
or may not have been Sarah17— may have m
in infancy; it may have turned out to be a
have been born the following spring.
Nathan's allusions to the Biblical Ishma
17:25, according to which Ishmael was ci
oed in a letter that Sabbatai himself wrote
day of th epidyon ha-ben of "my first-born
17:20] and shall /we [17:18]['is said to have t
rah portion containing Lev 25:26, Should a m
yet yet attain that hefind the wherewithal for hi
tojob, the man of sufferings who well knows i
(15) Translated in accord with Nathan's evident un

(16) Quoted byjacob Sasportas, Sisat navel Sew ; Isaia
( 17) Sasportas, writing to the Moroccan rabbis in th
spring of a Muslim wife or concubine of Sabbatai's (S
August 1669; cf. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, p.685). How
portas was hardly an unbiased observer, and the Gen
have suggested to him that, like his Biblical model,
jara, moreover, explicitly represents Sarah as Ishm
eral years later, Sabbatai refers to Ishmael as the son
(see below). If Ishmael was in fact the son of a non-J
the Jewish perspective, no wife at all — we can easi
might have adopted the convention of describing him
Jewish wife happened to be. A Dônme hymn speak
other women" in addition to his four "official" wive
came forth from him" (Attias and Scholem, Shirot ve-tu
bilitybility that Ishmael's mother — and, if my recons
falsely expected to become Ishmael's mother — ma
Sisat Sisat novel Sevi, p. 327, where the Moroccan rabbi
in 542g (1668-69), seems disposed to deny the auth
birth, as though there were something discreditable
(18) Amarillo,"Tecudot shabbeta'iyyot," pp. 266-6
pp. 267-307. The letter is itself undated, so the date
judge Ishmael to have been born in 1667 or 1668.
(19) Ve-ish ki loyihyeh 10 go'el ve-hissigah yado umasa
[‫ ]ל‬THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 149
you you that your right hand can saveyou[]oh 40:14

allusions, we can discern that Sabbatai(who regular
the suffering Job)20expects the first-born son
deemed"to be his"right hand','and to turn out t
The sources quoted so far permit the speculati
lowers saw Ishmael as embodying in his small pers
new life as simultaneously Muslim and Jew; and, t
as rescuing him and his followers from this i
names, as recorded by Baruch of Arezzo, may b
and defining his intended role. As"Mordecai," h
less against his will at the center of Gentile power
the collective representation of that power.
It is the tip of Ishmael's penis, above all else, that
The Sabbatians,it seems,could hardly mention hi
circumcision22circumcision22 which functions to unite Ju
also to symbolize the choice that must be made
cannot be circumcised as an infant of eight day
Nathan finds an ingenious way to escape this ch
rash, Ishmael will be born circumcised.23 In this r
Zevi disappointed his elders.
At the beginning of 1673, Sabbatai Zevi was banish

Sarah and Ishmael went into exile with him; we
markable vignette has been preserved of their
their exile.24
batai's evident understanding of the verse, which hinges on the association oiyadomthyeminekha
in Job 40:14.
(20) Cf. the index to Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, s.v. Job.
(21) This will supplement, not exclude, Scholem's view that the child was named after his
grandfather Mordecai Zevi(Sabbatai Sevi, p.826).
(22) A statement that remains true of the Dônme hymns dedicated to Ishmael (Attias and
Scholem,Scholem, Shirot ve-tushbahot, pp. 45-47).
(23) Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, III, 468, V, 399 (cf. V, 273-74). I do not know if
Nathan might also have been influenced by the Muslim tradition that Antichrist (Dajjal) would
be born circumcised : DavidJ. Halperin ,"The Ibn Sayyad Traditions and the Legend of al-Dajjal"
Journal of the American Journal of the American Oriental Society 96(1976)224 n. 100. The Sabbatian Abraham Cardozo,who
was born to a Marrano family in Spain and resumed his Judaism upon fleeing to Italy at age 2 2,
claimed to have been born circumcised, which seems to me tantamount to admitting his ene
mies'mies'accusations that he was never circumcised at all: Isaac R.Molho and Abraham Amarillo,
"Autobiographical Letters of Abraham Cardozo" [Hebrew],Sc/unof 3-4(1960)220-21; Yosef
Hayim Yrrushalmi. From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto (New York, 1971), p. 202.
(24) Assuming, with Scholem, that the matronita whose death is mentioned in the "Com
150 DAVID J. HALPERIN [8]
SabbataiSabbatai then married (1675) the

Filosoff. Several months before his death
he promises to visit him in the company
sons Ishmael and Abraham'.'25 Let us lea
us leave aside, also, the problem of wh
the son of his new wife.26 Benayahu's in
was bringing his sons to Salonika to p
thoroughly plausible.27
On Yom Kippur, 1676, Sabbatai died.
widow and children back to Adrianople
Gandoor, as quoted in a subsequent let
( 2 5 October 1677)?8The widow apparen
lonika, and Benayahu thinks it a fair ass
But there is no evidence for this.
The widow seems still to have been in Adrianople in 1681. Abraham Car
dozo reports her to have travelled from there to Rodosto at the end of that
year, seeking his hand in marriage. So, she told him, her late husband had di
rected her; and the impending Messianic redemption would depend upon
their union. Cardozo urged her to wait until after the redemption, which he
had predicted for Passover 1682,had taken place; whereupon she went back
to Adrianople.29 Ishmael Zevi is wholly absent from this narrative. Cardozo
mentions, as did Gandoor, that after Sabbatai's death Elijah Zevi "went to
bring the widow to Adrianople'.' But unlike Gandoor he says nothing of any
children having been present.
Why the silence about Ishmael? We must admit that Cardozo was writing
some twenty years after the events, and that he might well have neglected to
mention any but the most important participants. Yet, given the intense Mes
sianic hopes that we shall see to have been attached to Ishmael not long
raentary on Psalms" (below, sec. 6) is Sabbatai's wife Sarah, and not the daughter of Aaron Majar,
whom Sabbatai had planned to marry in 1671 and again in 1674 (and whose name was also Sarah).
For Scholem's view, see Sabbatai Sevi, p.885;"Perush mizmorei Tehillim',' p.170(Liebes,p.103),cf.
"Peraqim apoqaliptiyyim u-meshihiyyimcal Rabbi Mordekhai me-Eizenshtat"(in Liebes,p.55t).
Amarillo("Tecudot shabbeta'iyyot," pp. 240-41) proposes the alternative identification of the
matronita,matronita, which he seems to attribute to Scholem. Cf. Avner Falk,"The Messiah and the Qelip
poth: On the Mental Illness of Sabbatai Sevi "Journal of Psychology and Judaism 7(1982)19-23.
(25) In Baruch of Arezzo ; Freimann,cInyanei Shabbetai Sevi, pp. 67-68.
(26) But see above, n.17.
(27) Sabbatean Movement in Greece, p. 167.
(28) IsaiahTishby,"R.Meir Rofe's Letters of 1675-80 to R. Abraham Rovigo" [Hebrew],Sefunot
3-4(1960)113-14; cf. Scholem, Sabbatai Scut, pp. 918-19.
(29) Molho and Amarillo,"Autobiographical Letters,"pp. 200-01. On the episode,cf. Bena
yahu, Shabbatean Movement in Greece, pp. 80,250.
[9] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 15!
before 1681, it is hard to imagine that he could h

tor in any scheme of his stepmother's to fulfill h
most natural inference is that by the end of 1
the scene and had been, for all intents and pur
amnesia which will become familiar to us before
therefore briefly looked to Cardozo as a fresh can
afterward, she turned her attentions to her y
who would prove a more satisfactory Messianic
or Cardozo.)30
We must defer to section 9 our examination of tw

erences to Ishmael Zevi.by Abraham Yakhini an
an excursus, Benayahu's brilliant (but, in my o
tion of Ishmael's long and successful post-Sabb
conclude this section with a slightly earlier bit o
dealing with the Messianic role of Mordecai Eis
1679, which explains the necessity for Sabbatai
"profaned among the Gentiles. He needed to m
mael that had emerged from Abraham ; that was
son called Ishmael. . . . Ishmael's [that is, Islam's]
year 5436 [1675-76, at the end of which Sabba
they deserved to be wholly annihilated. That w
and called his name Ishmael, in order to mix w
merit, preserve that [Muslim] nation from annih
This testimony rounds off the scanty data abou
already examined. He was born (probably) in N
ter his father's conversion to Islam, and given
Islamic world as seen through Jewish eyes. He wa
Muslim, and was still so regarded in 1679. Sabbata
redeemer, and (at least by 1671) as the Messiah be
to emerge circumcised from the womb; that a
was abruptly made to undergo circumcision at ag
he was exiled with his parents to remote Albania.
his mother died when he was five or six. His fath
He seems still to be alive, still to be a Muslim, at
letter of Nathan of Gaza, written before his birth
(3<‫ )נ‬Ibid., pp. 84-101 ; Scholem,"The Crypto-Jewish Sect o

key," in The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York, 1971), pp. 1
(31) Scholem,"Peraqim apoqaliptiyyimrin Liebes,Research
Liebes's appendix on pp. 562-63.
expected of his thirteenth birthday. Yet,not l

to have vanished from the Sabbatian collec
With this background, let us turn to exami
expresses the greatness expected of the Me
the most light on his mysterious slide into o
3. MS Budapest, Kaufmann 255: A Commentary

on the Sabbatian Liturgy for the Midnight Vigil
In 1940, Gershom Scholem discovered in the David Kauf

(Budapest) a hitherto unknown Sabbatian text. It was a comm
seemed to be a random assortment of Biblical Psalms, wit
sages mixed in, e.g., the story of the manna in Exodus 16, th
ments,ments, the Aqedah. Scholem published a detailed article o
years later, and printed a few extracts from it in an appendi
edge, it has not otherwise been published ; nor have further
come to light; nor has it been subjected to independent st
mally having been content to quote or cite it via Scholem's ar
ful to the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (an
Dr. Istvan Ormos, Keeper of the Kaufmann Collection) fo
me with a set of excellent photographic prints of the manusc
Scholem found it easy enough to fix the approximate da
was composed. Almost from its beginning, it presuppos
death (discreetly called his "disappearance" ),and represen
for the faithful?3 On the other hand, it repeatedly refers to
one who is still alive. It follows that the text must have been written after Sab
batai's death had become widely known, and before the author might be ex
pected to have learned of Nathan's. It cannot be earlier than 1677,or later
than 1680?4
The author was a loyal disciple and scribe of Nathan's, and it appears from
one story he tells (below) that he lived at least for a time in Nathan's sometime
headquarters of Kastoria in Macedonia. These data, combined with a strong
hint in the text that his name was"Israel"(see below, n.52),encouraged Scho
lem to identify him with one'Tsrael Hazzan of Kastoria"mentioned by the Ital
ian Sabbatian Benjamin Kohen. Scholars have followed Scholem's lead,and
(32) See above,sec. i,n. 2.

(33) E.g., fol 16v("they do not budge from their faith. . . even after the disappearance [he-[he
c&m]"),20r ("the great objection that our opponents raise to us . . .'he is dead and buried, what
more can you hope from him?'").
(34) Meir Rofe's letters to Abraham Rovigo show that Sabbatai's followers were kept in the
dark about his death until well into 1677; SchoXem,Sahbatai .S'««,pp.918-19.
[11] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH I53
it will be convenient for us to speak of the autho

tification,tification, however, does not contribute a gr
writer. We have no other information on Israel
life; although Meir Benayahu and David Tamar h
texts that suggest that from 1692 onward he was
munity of Kastoria as a respectable and indeed a
was still alive in 1720?5 If Israel Hazzan was the au
he must have been a fairly young man at the tim
Now, Hazzan's commentary has a great deal to
about his Messianic role. Scholem excerpts some
and puts them in the context of what we know
not, however, attempt to evaluate them within
tary itself, or to trace the development of Hazzan
an aspect of the evolution of his overall project
omission. For it must be understood that the state
no means evenly distributed through the commen
mael first makes his appearance more than two-th
text, dominates much of the next eleven folio p
suddenly as he came, never to be heard of again
this curious proceeding — which will be essent
what Ishmael Zevi meant to Israel Hazzan — it will behoove us to take a closer
look at the structure and development of Hazzan's composition.

To this end, I will proceed to establish at least the probability of three as
sertions. First, Scholem was mistaken to believe that Hazzan selected his Bib
lical texts without any predetermined plan, guided only by his inspiration at
each juncture. The sequence of texts Hazzan expounds is in fact based on
the distinctive liturgy for the midnight vigil (tiqqun hasot)that Sabbatai Zevi
formulated no later than 1665.Where Hazzan diverges from the original se
quence — as he does, in significant ways — we must seek some particular mo
tivation on his part. Second, Scholem was right to suspect that MS Kaufmann
2 55 is Hazzan's autograph.Third, the enormous variations in the manuscript's
handwriting, to which Scholem called attention, may be used as markers of
the stages in which the commentary was composed, and the points at which
the author quite literally laid down his pen. The bearing of these assertions
on our examination of Ishmael Zevi will presently become clear.
In his widely circulated letter to Raphael Joseph (September 1665),Nathan of

Gaza admonished that"the meditations (kawwanoth) which the great master
(35) Benayahu, Shabbatean Movement in Greece, pp. 241-43,24511; Tamar, Mehqarim be-toledot
ha-Yehudimha-Yehudim be-eres Yisrael u-ve-arsot ha-mizrah (Jerusalem, 1981), cited by Liebes, Researches in Sab
batianism, p. 139.1 have not seen Tamar's book.
154 DAVID J. HALPERIN L12J
Isaac Luria had revealed are no longe

worlds are now [on a] different [mystica
the Lurianic devotions today] would b
to a weekday on a Sabbath!'36 In parti
was to be discarded — or, rather, dra
rite was to raise the divine Female(the
pie her with the divine Male ;37and, acc
by 1665 already begun her ascent."He
perform the tiqqun and weep over th
do, but the tiqqun that Am i rah38ordain
What was"the tiqqun that Amirah or
note to this passage, that it is no longer
served that it is set forth in detail by t
and preacher Abraham Miranda, in t
temporary relevance of the Lurianic kav
These kavvanot, says Miranda (echoin
and the Lurianic tiqqun hasot is no long
following tiqqun, preferably while sta
with a melodious voice, clear enunciat
of of the unity of the Blessed Holy One, etc.
the the entire world in your glory, etc" Th
recited(see below),concluded by the st
arranged by Am i ra h."
The liturgies for tiqqun laylah, distrib
in numerous editions throughout 166
(36) Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 271-72. The gl

R.J. Zwi Werblowsky. The original text is in Saspo
(37) On the development of the rite, see Schole
York, 1965), pp. 146-50. The classic statement of
Vital'sVital's Shacar ha-kawanot, Derushei ha-laylah,
1988], vol.1 [Sidrat kolkitvei ha-Ari, vol. 8], pp. 3
is published by Seraiah Dablitzky, Seder Tiqqun
(38) The standard Sabbatian designation for S
phrase adonenu meshihenu yarum hodo "our Lord
(39) Derush ha-tanninim, in Scholem, Be-ciqvot m
p. 250.
(40) Inserted by Miranda into a bulky antholog
out out (MSBen-Zvi, Amarillo 2 262).The relevant
ment ment in Greece, pp. 405-08 ; on Miranda himself
(41) In opposition to the standard Lurianic prac
the ground; cf. below, n.48.
(42) Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 290-92, and th
pp.g36-3g.I have consulted four editions, the fir
Miranda.There are, to be sure, some variations.Two

suited, for example, add Psalm 31 (which does n
list) after Psalm 28,with the preface :"Psalm 31 isa
and for that reason I have included it as well for the benefit of the reader who
wants to recite it and be rewarded for it'.'43 Miranda notes three additional
psalms psalms (45,15,71)44in the margins or between the lines of his manuscript;
none of these three appears in the printed editions. But the rule is that lec
tions that are missing from Miranda are in some way flagged as uncertain in
the editions,and vice versai5 There is no lection listed in the body of Miranda's
text that is not found in all of the editions I have consulted; nor is there any
lection printed without prefatory reservations that fails to appear in Miranda.
The order of readings is identical in all sources. On the essential content of
the Sabbatian liturgy for tiqqun hasot, in other words, Miranda and the 1666
editions are in complete agreement.
This liturgy turns out to be a very much expanded version of the Lurianic
"rite of Leah" {tiqqun le'ah).The Lurianic tiqqun hasot had been divided into
a"rite of RacheT'and a"rite of Leah!' In this division,"RacheP'represents that
aspect of the divine Female that has been exiled and degraded(and therefore
requires rescue),"Leah" the aspect that is about to engage in the sacred cou
pling with the Male (and therefore requires preparation and assistance).46
of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the fourth by the Princeton University Library, The
Hebrew Union College editions are those printed l."at the press and behest of David de Castro
Tartaz,"Amsterdam (Scholem's no. 30), 2."at the behest of. . .Joshua Sarphati at the press of
David de Castro Tartaz,"Amsterdam (Scholem's no. 31), 3. "at the press and behest of Isaac ben
David de Castro Tartaz," Amsterdam (evidently corresponds to Scholem's no. 32, but, unlike the
book Scholem describes, has no frontispiece). The volume loaned me by Princeton University
Library is apparently a relatively recent reprint. It includes no fewer than six title pages, one of
them in Spanish (Scholem's no. 34, Plate IV), another corresponding to the frontispiece de
scribed by Scholem (and reproduced by him as Plate III). The first two title pages both claim that
the book was published in Amsterdam,"at the press and behest of David de Castro Tartaz"; the
second corresponds to Scholem's no. 30, the first is similar to nos. 31 and 32 but identical with
neither. The liturgy itself, with its variants, closely corresponds to that printed by Isaac ben David
de Castro Tartaz( Scholem's no. 3 2 ).The pagination (85 leaves) does not correspond to any of the
editions listed by Scholem,but it is fairly close to no. 31.The publication history of Nathan's tiqqun
is clearly more complex even than Scholem's bibliography would suggest,and I do not have the
library resources to pursue it further.
(43) Ed. Isaac ben David de Castro Tartaz, and the Princeton edition.
(44) Psalm 45 after Psalm 40, Psalm 15 after Psalm 112, Psalm 71 after Psalm 51.
(45) Miranda puts Psalm 126 at the very end of his list(after Prov 31:28-31),with the note,
"In other manuscripts I did not see this psalm? Two of the editions (cited in note 43, above) in
elude Psalm 126 — introduced, however, by the words,"Some recite this psalm after the tiqqun."
These editions thus agree with Miranda that Psalm 126 is a doubtful element of the liturgy. I
have therefore omitted it from the list of tiqqun hasot readings that follows.
(46) The liturgy of tiqqun rahelconsists of Psalms 137 and 79, Lamentations 5, Isa 63:15-18,
Once the Female has been raised from

ing to Sabbatian theory, some years pr
tiqquntiqqun rahel loses its point. Tiqqun le
fore, to find otherwise conservative peop
sianic excitement, their recitation of tiq
le'ah1Hle'ah1Hle'ah1H It will surprise us still le
new tiqqun hasot of his own, taking six o
Psalm 67) as his starting point?9
Now, when we compare the sequence

tiqqun tiqqun hasot with the sequence of p
mentary, we will find their relationship
Tiqqun hasot Tiqqun hasot MS Kaufmann 25
Psalms 42 42 Psalms 21 21
43 43 26 26
24 24 27 27
19 19 28 28
20 20 88
f>4 :y6-9 :2:64:7-11,

verse from the la
Hebrew Hebrew Hebr
according according
the esoteric meanin
this and from oth
with an eye towar
veys divine efflu
passages are trans
vol.1, pp. 393-96,
his opening psalm
(47) Scholem,"Ha
bateanism,bateanism, pp. 1
(48) Moses Zacuto

Lurianic kawanot
dawning, he decid
on the ground,as
Look Look from h
of psalms"— that
Rabbi Mosheh Zak
bataibatai Sevi, pp
stantially to influ
(49) Cf. n.46 with
are from tiqqun le
Tiqqun hasotTiqqun hasotTiqqun hasot MS Kaufmann 255 Tiqq
Psalms 77,68 Isaiah 51:9-11 51:9-11,43

34 Song of Songs 8:8-10 8:8—10
37 Proverbs 31:28-31 31:28-29
40
Psalms 34
63
37 (Ishmael)
111
[40]
112
[63]
51
[111]
72
112 (Ishmael)
Aqedah (Gen 22:1-19) 51
Manna Manna (Exod 16:4-36) Manna 72 (Ishmael)
SZ's baqqashah50
Aqedah (Ishmael)
Job 28:12ff
Job 28:3-11 ,Jer 31:6-10
Ten Commandments Ten Commandments [I Samuel 2:1-10]
(Exod 20:2-14)
Psalms 142:1-2, Song 4:8
Psalms 46 102
47
Daniel 2:19-23
Deuteronomy 10:12-21 30:lff

Psalms 142:3-8
30:1-10 10:12-22
143
Micah 7:18-20 7:18-20 17:1-7

Psalms 118:5-25 118:5-21 5
Numbers 21:17-20 21:17ff 17:7-15
Psalms 80 86
Job 38f, Psalms 69 90
I have based my list of the texts expounded by

Scholemf1 but have altered it slightly on the basis
the manuscript. Where two passages appear on t
that Hazzan has wandered into an exposition of the
work of his commentary on the first. Where Ishm
mentary to a given passage, I have noted this fact
Four passages in my list are in brackets. Hazzan
(50) That is,the liturgical poem beginning le-macanekha ve-lo la

son son, Thesaurus, vol .3, p.54 ),which Hazzan(fol 47V) represents
Zevi's, and which he expounds as though it were one of his B
cance to the fact that two of the sources Davidson gives for
editions of tiqqun hasot ?)
(51) "Perush mizmorei tehillim" pp. 158-60 (Liebes, pp. 90
these texts, but only notes that either he

mented on them?2 Remarks of this sort a
sume that Hazzan was working with a fix
these passages. He might add commentary
the liturgy, but he did not want to omit
without explaining the omission.
It seems to me entirely clear that Israe
commentary on the Sabbatian tiqqun haso
himself significant liberties with his sour
tion of one or two Biblical passages here a
Psalm28,Psalms46and47aftertheTen Co
a variant text of the tiqqun. But it is very
placement of the entire series of passa
dah to after Proverbs 31; or the introd
sages, which have no counterparts in the
Only one hypothesis will seem to me
ments. At some point prior to undertakin
Hazzan conceived the idea of making the A
the climax of his composition. His comm
preceding the Aqedah were to lead up to t
sequence for last and skipped over it for
Psalm 2 8 to the manna story. All of the com
within, within, and dominate, this displaced sequence
But something went wrong. At some poi

define that point — Hazzan realized th
conclusion after all. He therefore cont
bounds he had originally set for it, to c
liturgical sequence that I have not yet b
(52) Hazzan notes on fol g8v that theyihudim of

than "in the book of his holy writings that I copie
respectively; while he has himself expounded Psalm
refers the reader to"page 85"for an interpretation
is also to the otherwise unknown Emunei Yisrael, s
The very low folio numbers of the lost "book"of N
morei tehillim','p. 160 and n. 6; Liebes, p. 92) temp
sisted of what were originally the first six folios o
begins with fol ‫ך‬r (see below). But six folio pages s
(53) Hazzan's cross-reference to his exposition of
working with some pre-existing sequence of texts,
quence bears no resemblance whatever to the Sabba
after the morning service, as this is represented i
tionsare Gen 1:1-2:3,Deut 5:6-18,32:1-43, the first
on the melancholy strains of the Ninetieth Psalm?4

Scholem,Scholem, as I have already remarked, was incl
mann 255 is Israel Hazzan's autograph. Its scrip
century Sephardic,written"by a single scribe whose
itself on many pages from a precise and exacti
rapid and careless that they look like two differ
these sudden changes to "the writer's level of we
It is very possible that the scribe was himself the a
which corrections are made in a number of places w
Scholem gave no examples to back up his last asser
On fol tigr-v Hazzan gives an interpretation, in
writings, of the words boded cal gag in Ps 102:8. Its
batai Zevi has fused the two dalets of boded into the
closed off the structures of holiness against the
forces of chaos. Having made this point about v
verse 9 : "Let us return to our passage. The text goes
mocked mocked me" But he puts two dots — evidently a
of the last five words (amar cod kol ha-yom herfuni ),
understand in this way another Biblical text, spoke
11:1-12:5,Jer 30:1-31:39■ 33:10-26, Prov 31:10-31.) Is it perh

shomerimshomerim la-boqer groups, who since the 1570s had made it th
voluntary prayer rituals? (See Elliott Horowitz,"Coffee, Coffee
of Early Modern Jewry,"/t/.S Review 14(3989] 17-46.) The fact th
put put an end to darkness, might conceivably point in this direct
consult any edition of these liturgies ( e.g., Aaron Berechiah of
must for the present leave this as speculation.
(54) I see no reason to suspect, as Scholem does, that any pag
the manuscript.The last page is in poor condition, but it carries
of Psalm go, and ends amen ve-amen. ( It is not true that this
Scholem claims.The even lines that appear to mutilate the last
impression of having been made by knife or scissors, are in fa
rather ineptly, the tattered sheet into the volume. The same is
script, which seemed to Scholem to have been cut so that "a fe
letters were covered with tape, and can often be dimly made
son to suppose that the beginning of the text is missing, were
brew numeration of the folio pages begins at 7. (It ends at 136
n. 52, above, I offered one possible explanation for this peculiar
dence in it. In citing the manuscript, I follow the Hebrew page nu
using Arabic numerals).There is also a sequence of Arabic nu
ginning with folio 1, ending with 128), but it is useless : the sa
two different pages, and the sequence gives rise to a horren
thirds of the way through the manuscript, where a cluster of
ume upside-down so that the last page comes first. In preparin
(55) "Perush mizmorei tehillim',' p. 158 ; Liebes, p. 90.
160 DAV I D J. HALPE RI N [18]
the true Messiah, namely Ami rah." The te

the two dalets of le-vadad may similarly be e
theory of the closed mem. Hazzan spends abo
sage. He then resumes his quotation of Ps 102
on to explicate it.
It is difficult to imagine a scribal error, or s
have created this text. Assume that the manu
all is clear. Hazzan, having applied Nathan's
the next verse. Immediately after writing th
him that the theory will shed fresh light als
for a time, presumably while he thought t
slightly smaller and neater after the words a
tends to after the writer has taken a break; s
he made his point about the Micah passage
cise manner possible, his interrupted discu
A scribe, copying a text that originated in t
surely either have deleted the words amar co
ted to mark them for erasure. The text as we have it best makes sense if we
suppose it comes straight from its author's hand.

This assumption will allow us our best explanation of a peculiar feature
of the manuscript. Of the forty-four units of content into which the text can
be divided (above),no fewer than fifteen — that is, slightly over one-third of
the total — begin at the very top of the page (more often a verso than a recto)?6
This tendency is particularly strong at the beginning of the manuscript: of
the first ten units, seven begin at the top of the page. There is no way this fea
ture can have come about by chance. A copyist could have created it only by
leaving a blank space at the bottom of the preceding page, or by writing very
large or very small on the preceding page ;but the writer of the manuscript
has done neither. Only an author, in full control of his or her prolixity, could
have achieved this effect?7
It follows that Hazzan was not only the author of the text but also the
writer of the manuscript, and that, for one reason or another — presumably
aesthetic — he was initially ready to take pains to insure that his units of con
tent corresponded to the tops of his pages. He eventually grew less inclined
(56) Psalm42 (fol 7r),Psalm43(241‫)־‬,Psalm 24(24v),Psalm 1g(25v),Psalm 26(311•),Psalm 27

(33v),Psalm 88 (37v),Exod 16:4-36(4^),Psalm 46(541‫)־‬, Deut 30:iff (59V),Psalm 30(70v),J0b
38-39 (72V), Psalm 112(991•),Ps 142:3-8 (124V), Psalm 143(125v).
(57) This is perhaps what Scholem intended by his cryptic remark that "the manner of writ
ing and the ordering [siddur] of the pages strengthen the impression that we have before us the
author's own autograph"("Perush mizmorei tehillim"p. 158; Liebes, p.90).
[1g][1g] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 161
to make this effort, which is why the feature fades aw

progresses.
I do not claim to have presented absolute proof that our manuscript is an
autograph. I intend, however, to have created a presumption in favor of that
view, and thereby to dispose the reader to accept the interpretation I am about
to offer of another feature of the manuscript: the very considerable fluctu
ations, observed by Scholem, in the quality of its handwriting. This seemingly
trivial detail will prove to have weighty implications for our understanding
of the Sabbatian Aqedah, and of the fate of Ishmael Zevi.
There is a certain regularity in the fluctuations. The first page of the manu
script is written in a small, very neat, really beautiful script.The script gradu
ally slides downhill over the next dozen or so folio pages, becoming slightly
larger and considerably more sloppy. And then a new feature begins to assert
itself. The writer periodically gets hold of himself, as it were, and begins to
write again with his original neatness. This happens over and over. Unfortu
nately for the reader, the script again degenerates fairly rapidly. It becomes,
overall, more and more slovenly as the manuscript progresses, so that the con
trasts between the writer's "fresh starts"and the scrawl into which they quickly
decline become, in the second half of the manuscript, very striking.58
If we are prepared to grant the probability that Israel Hazzan is himself the
writer of our manuscript,a very natural interpretation of these shifts will sug
gest itself. They reflect the tension between Hazzan's wish to write legibly, and
his need to get on paper the ideas that bubbled up from his mind. He nor
mally writes rapidly and carelessly because the force of his inspiration will
not allow him to do otherwise. He leaves his writing for a time, then returns.
He begins the new session writing neatly and carefully. (These are the "fresh
starts.") But literary inspiration soon wins out over scribal care ; soon he is once
again scribbling down his ideas as fast as they come to him.
If this is correct, it has a consequence. The"fresh starts "observable in the
manuscript's handwriting will serve as markers of the stages in which Hazzan's
commentary was composed — which do not necessarily (or even normally)
correspond to its units of content. We can distinguish at least some of the
points at which Hazzan stood up from his desk, to resume his work at some
later time.
If we were to suppose that the stages of composition followed rapidly upon

one another, this might be a matter of small importance. There is evidence,
however, that they were spaced widely enough that significant events might
(58) The clearest examples of the"fresh starts"are on fols41r-v, 6gv, 73V, 78V, 86r, g3v-g4r,
104r, liov-mr, 112r, 116v-n7r, 123V, 134r.
happen between them.On fol 18v,Hazza

tour de force, involving Sabbatai Zevi's na
less sage, the excellent judge, the rabbi
teacher Rabbijacob Ashkenazi, nr-v"'39He
are his words, which I heard from his holy
nr-vnr-vnr-v (netareh rahmana ufarqeh," the M
like) shows clearly that he believes Ashke
A second passage of this sort appears on
"I heard from the holy mouth of the div
Jacob Ashkenazi, nr-v" ; but concludes,"T
li-vrakhah,'li-vrakhah,' may his memory be a bl
be spoken of as living (nr-v) at the beginn
less than four lines later.
Scholem calls attention to the anomaly, but does not try to explain it. The
most reasonable explanation seems to me that Hazzan received the news of
Ashkenazi's death between writing fol 18r and fols g yv-gbr. (At least one"fresh
start" intervenes between the two passages, on fohç)r,and there is perhaps an
other on fol 2 tr.) As he began the second passage, he wrote nr-v after Ashke
nazi's name, out of habit. He did not erase this expression or mark it for era
sure, perhaps out of a feeling that a blessing ought not to be effaced. But at the
end of the passage he corrected it with the more appropriate blessing, z-l.
To be sure, this peculiarity will not by itself prove that MS Kaufmann 255 is
Hazzan's autograph. The shift in the blessing after Ashkenazi's name might
well have originated as I have suggested in Hazzan's original composition,and
(59) Ashkenazi is the only Sabbatian ideologue, other than Nathan, whom Hazzan quotes by
name.The obscurity that now surrounds the man is itself something of a mystery, since there is
evidence that he was regarded in the 1670s as one of the movement's leading intellectuals. Writ
inging shortly after 1701,Cardozo relates a story that he supposedly heard (in 1682) from aman who
had visited Sabbatai Zevi two weeks before his death. Sabbatai allegedly represented Cardozo
to his visitors as a man of stature comparable to Ashkenazi's, to Nathan's, even to Sabbatai's own
(Molho and Amarillo,"Autobiographical Letters,"pp. 217-18).Obviously,Cardozo had a motive
to invent this story. But what motive would he have had to introduce Ashkenazi's name in this
context, if he had not at one point been regarded by Sabbatians as a thinker second only to Na
than himself? The story contains another detail that suggests its authenticity. Cardozo mentions
"Mullah"Mullah cAli"as Sabbatai's messenger from Dulcigno to Adrianople; and"MullahcAli"appears
also in Israel Hazzan's commentary (fol 107V),again in the role of messenger (see below). It seems
best to assume that Cardozo's story, like Hazzan's commentary, preserves an accurate reflection
of the Sabbatian world of the 1670s, as seen from the Balkans. Cardozo tells a remarkable story
about his own encounter with Jacob Ashkenazi, which may perhaps provide a clue as to why the
Sabbatians preferred to forget him :"When the rumor arrived that Sabbatai Zevi had died in
Alkum [Dulcigno],I was in Edirne [Adrianople].I went to the great scholar Rabbi Jacob Ashke
nazi and I said to him, Sabbatai Zevi is dead; what says Your Worship to that? He replied, If Sabbatai
Zevi is dead to you, go find another God" ("Autobiographical Letters," pp. 203-04).
then been unthinkingly reproduced by a copyist. B

to the possibility that the stages in the creation of t
mirror the changing events in Hazzan's environm
ments of his own thought.
In particular, it will prepare us for the possibility
start','within the section of the manuscript that
108r), marks a major crisis of faith for Israel Hazzan
transformed his expectations for Ishmael Zevi an
Aqedah itself. For, in the interval between Hazzan
and his returning to it, he learned that his young M
4. A Messiah is Born
We have already seen that all of the text's allusions to Ishmael, without any
exception, occur within its commentary on what I have called the"displaced
sequence": those nine Biblical passages,beginning with Psalm 34 and ending
with the Aqedah, that Hazzan chose to shift from the middle to the end of the
tiqquntiqqun hasot liturgy. He first appears in the commentary on the second of these
passages, Psalm 37.
I I have been a lad and have grown old, says 3 7:2 5 ; y et I have not seen the righteous
forsaken forsaken or his seed [zarco] seeking bread. The righteous, Hazzan interprets, may
have left the Jewish people ; he may be among the qelippot. Yet he is never for
saken by the Shechinah, who has been with him always since his soul was ere
ated; that is, since before the creation of the world. He is, needless to say,
Sabbatai Zevi.
Hazzan has made this point,or a similar one,a dozen times over. The notion
that Sabbatai Zevi and the Shechinah are inseparable companions, together
doomed to dress in alien garb and enter the"great abyss "of the qelippot, is one
of the recurrent themes that bind his commentary together from its begin
ning to its end. (So is the idea of a trinity composed of the Blessed Holy One,
the female Shechinah,and their "beloved son'Sabbatai Zevi.) But this time he
adds something new. "HA seed : this is our Lord Ishmael, may his majesty be
exalted exalted ?0Seeking bread: this means, seeking theTorah... he does not seek it,
for it is always with him, and never leaves him or his holy seed." When the next
verse of the psalm adds that his seed [zarco]is a blessing, Hazzan takes this to
mean that Ishmael will join his father in blessing those Jewish souls who had
become ensnared in"the depths of the great abyss"(fol 97V).
Hazzan leaves Ishmael for the time being, and develops his familiar theme
of holy souls being oppressed among the qelippot (fols 97V-98V). But he evi
(60) Yr-h,yarum hodo; the familar Messianic blessing formula of the Sabbatians, normally ap
plied to Sabbatai himself. Hazzan's uses of this formula will engage our attention as we proceed.
164 DAVID J. HALPER1N [22]
dently wants to get back to him as soon a

he skips over the next three psalms of th
that he or Nathan has already dealt with t
This allows him to move straight to Psalm
zarcozarco in its very second verse; and, in
Messiah's son.
The true man ivho fears the Lord (Ps 112:1),Hazzan says, is Sabbatai Zevi "His
seed shall be mighty on the earth seed shall be mighty on the earth [verse 2]: this isourLordlshmael,may his majesty
be exalted, who will sit on his throne on the earth. Ami ram is to ascend to a
rank that is beyond the comprehension of any created being; but his seed shall
be be mighty on earth and he is our lord. Ami rah called him thus; he said to us,
This is your lord"(fol ggr-v).
Hazzan seems to imply that, in the presence of him and other people, Sab
batai Zevi had declared Ishmael to be "your lord." He indeed seems to have
known Sabbatai, at least from a distance?1 But the claim he makes here is more
than a little doubtful. If Sabbatai had in fact formally announced to the be
lievers that his son was to be their lord (after his death, presumably), it is hard
to believe that Hazzan — who has been wrestling throughout the commen
tary with the problem of the Messiah's death — should only now have thought
to mention it. The notion of Ishmael as Sabbatai's successor and vicar on
earth is evidently a novelty, to which Hazzan expects some resistance.

For he anticipates a complaint :"Have we then labored in vain ?. . . Our wish
is to see our king !"That is, the believer's love and expectation is for Sabbatai
Zevi himself, not his son. He therefore finds in the end of Ps 112:2 an assur
ance that it will be Sabbatai himself who will give us the perfect blessing. He
is still superior to his son, but less immediately present to the believer. Even
as he recedes into incomprehensible exaltation, Ishmael is lord on earth.
Hazzan finds nothing more about Ishmael in this psalm, or in the psalm
(51) that follows. But, when he turns to Psalm 72,Ishmael appears through
out.This psalm announces at its beginning that it is"Solomon's!' We may guess
that, as Hazzan understands the"David"who speaks in most of the psalms to
be a"type"of Sabbatai Zevi, so he imagines David's son to be a"type"of Sab
batai's son. The subject of Psalm 72 is therefore Ishmael Zevi.
He does not make this point explicitly. In standard Kabbalistic fashion, he
identifies the"Solomon"of the beginning of the psalm with the sefirah Tif'eret.
We have not long to wait, however, before Ishmael makes his appearance.
"Give"Give your judgments to the king [verse 1 ] : this is Am i raii. And your righteousness
to to the king's son: this is our Lord Ishmael, may his majesty be exalted. He shall
judge your people in righteousness: this refers to the king's son. . . . He will not
(61) Scholem,"Perush mizmorei tehillim"pp. 162-75, especially the story quoted on p.165
from fol !or (Liebes, pp. 93-110, esp. p. 97).
need witnesses; for, thanks to his Creator's wisd

both witness and judge"(fol 102r). Acting on God
the oppressed and insulted "poor "(that is, the Sabb
community leaders, and bring them forth into the
He next appears in connection with the opening
the kingdom of our Lord Ishmael, who is our Messi
the the righteous one — Am i rah, that is — will blossom
out of the concealment [heclem\ into which he disa
see him with our own eyes"(fol 102v).Hazzan has
phrase dor dorim, in verse 5, to mean that three ge
the proclamation of Sabbatai's kingdom (that is, 166
true light','when he will reappear to reveal the mys
batai will then make peace among the Jewish people
down from the upper sefirot to the lower; he will
will receive the obeisance of Gentile and demonic
even as he dominates them (fols 102v-103r).
Hazzan evidendy conceives Ishmael's Messianic r
toward the final, full Messiahship of his father, wh
decades into the future. We are again assured th
pear in person."Do not say that you have already
ing, that he is dead. Do not be afraid; he himself w
Yet, even while assuring us that Ishmael will not u
Hazzan suggests that he will do just that — in these
understands the cryptic words pissat bar at the beg
hand hand hand of the son6} The"son" in question is"the belov
phrases (from Jer 31:20, Exod 4:22) are signific
again applied them to Sabbatai Zevi — "beloved so
and his Shechinah — but now transfers them to Sabbatai's own"beloved son"
Ishmael.'Thus shall [the power of the hand of]63 the son of Zevi be upon the
earth,earth,ruling the whole world. Am i rah, through his exaltation,shall be in the
supernal realms, while his son is in the lower realms ... at the head of all the
saints. ... He will make all the kingdoms tremble... he will also resurrect
the dead" (fol 103V).
(62) In support of this interpretation, he calls attention to the phrase nashequvar in Ps 2:12;
which, following the Zohar {Racya Mehernna, 11,120b; cf. Ill, 1g1b),he understands to mean,ter
the the son.
(63) The bracketed words (fcoaAyad, in the original ) are inserted between the lines of the text.
They are obviously based on Hazzan's interpretation of pissat bar. It is difficult to imagine how a
copyist would have accidentally omitted them ; easy to imagine that Hazzan himself, all afire with
thoughts of the future glory of the son of Zevi, might have left them out and later returned to
correct himself.
And, in expounding 72:17,Hazzan seem

superior to his father.
May May his name endure for ever, before t

his father, and before him. [There follow
ing ha-shemesh," the sun" wi th Sabbatai Ze
shemoshemo lecolam,"may his name endure
be before his father, Sabbatai Zevi. May h
sun,sun, his name is "yinnon"; which has th
the son shall be before the father [fols 1
What does Hazzan mean by saying that

(lifnei(lifnei ha-av yihyeh ha-ben)} Perhaps t
modest temporal sense, that his Messian
is supported by fol 102b, where ve-lifnei
mean that the believers "held to their f
supernal sun [Sabbatai Zevi],while [their] l
comes before [lifnei] the sun."
But we must not forget that Hazzan is li
the lenses of the well-known Talmudic
him 54a.The former passage infers fromy
is actually"Yinnonrwhile the latter argues
ah's name existed before the creation.
Sabbatai Zevi's soul existed before the crea
tion.) Now, by equating yinnon with Sabb
batai himself, he elevates Ishmael to an
existed the world, the son pre-existed the
To judge from the carelessness of the h

high excitement as he wrote his interp
terward(fol to4r),the script becomes s
gested above, he left his composition for
The exposition of Psalm 72 concludes w
(fol 104r-v).
In the mean time, we have seen Ishmael's star,emerging from obscurity,ex
plode into something like supernova proportions. He is the Messiah. He is
the divinely appointed and inspired judge, to whom the harassed and humil
iated community of believers may look for vindication. He will rule the saints
(64) Derivingyinnon from nin ve-nekhed(Isa 14:22).

(6g) The insertion of koah yad between the lines of fol 103V (above, n. 63) may have been
done upon his return.
on earth as his father rules in heaven. He will terro

father will later "mend"?). He will resurrect the de
spect, his father's prowess (see below). He has beg
ties of "beloved son','" first-born son!'And, if I hav
end of the passage, he has trumped his father's p
How much of this development did Hazzan hav
made the decision to postpone the Psalm 34-Aqe
his commentary? It is impossible to say. His absolut
the fifty or so folio pages that contain his expositi
Exodus 16 through Proverbs 31 — which, according
have composed after he made this decision — sugge
idea of the importance that Ishmael was soon to
speculate that rumors from Adrianople, where I
had apparently been living since shortly after Sa
ulated Hazzan's hopes and his imagination far b
nally anticipated.
These hopes,and the entire Messianic saga of Ish
constructed, were to reach their climax in the A
5. Aqedah, Ishmael, Islam (I)
What did the Aqedah mean to Israel Hazzan? If

perspective, we must first clarify what the Aqedah
to mean to any Jew, Sabbatian or non-Sabbatian,
enteenth century. Given the Sabbatians' particul
must clarify as well the role played by the Aqedah
troversy of the preceding thousand years.
Our answers to both questions must be provisio
amounts of territory; little systematic research
Many scholars, to be sure, have written about the A
But their concerns have normally been with aspects
those that now require our attention. Scholars
wanted to know about the implications of Genes
cient Israel, particularly with regard to child sacrif
ment and early Christianity have wanted to know w
traditions might have had on Pauline Christology —
The role of the Aqedah in the Jewish martyrolog
(66) These two topics are the focus of Jon D. Levenson's Death
Son.Son.Son.The literature on the Aqedah and early Christianity is
in Frédéric Manns, The Sacrifice of Isaac in the Three Monothei
lightening in themselves,are also useful bibliographic resour
sades has attracted some attention ; this was,

lom Spiegel's classic The Last '/,««/.67Stude
have explored the impact of the Aqedah them
But comparative interest in the role of th
tions has normally been focussed on the peri
verged from one another; that is, the early c
Islamic eras.69And no one, to my knowledg
shape of the Jewish Aqedah tradition in th
concerns us: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Before turning to Israel Hazzan's Aqedah, therefore, we must consider how

the Aqedah figured injewish-lslamic polemics in the centuries that preceded
him. We will then examine the Aqedah as it is represented by three early mod
ernern Jewish authors: Isaac Abarbanel,Isaiah Horowitz,and Hayyim Kohen of
Aleppo. Their portrayals of the Aqedah, as we will see, shade together into a
common picture. We have reason to suppose, moreover, that these authors
are likely to have exercised direct or indirect influence on Hazzan. It there
fore seems afair assumption that the common picture that emerges from their
works is likely to have been the starting point of Hazzan's own thinking about
the Aqedah; and that, by contemplating that picture, we will have a context
and perspective in which to view Hazzan's highly original contributions.
The Qur'an,as is well known, tells the story of the Aqedah without specifying
which of Abraham's two sons was the intended victim (Surah 37:99-113).
Early Muslim traditionists debated the question of whether the honor be
longed to Isaac,as the Jews and the Christians claimed; or to Ishmaefwhom
the Arabs were coming to regard as their ancestor. By the ninth or the tenth
century, the"Ishmael"school had won out (although it could never claim
unanimous support)?0Muslims preferred to dismiss the claims on Isaac's be
to Professor Marc Bregman,who contributed a particularly stimulating paper to this collection,

for providing me with the reference to it.)
(67) Cf. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor:Jewish History andJeunsh Memory (Seattle and Lon
don,1982),pp.37-39.
(68) Michael Brown,"Biblical Myth and Contemporary Experience: The Akedah in Modern
Jewish Literature;'/«da«m 31 (1982)99-111; Edna Amir Coffin,"The Binding of Isaac in Modern
Israeli Literature,"Michigan Quarterly Review 22(1983)429-44; cf. Jo Milgrom.TAe Binding of
Isaac: The Akedah — Isaac: The Akedah — Isaac: The Akedah — A Primary Symbol in Jewish Thought and Art (Berkeley, CA,1g88).
(69) Above, n.66;Reuven Firestone Journeys in Holy Lands :The Evolution ofthe Abraham-lshmael
Legends Legends in Islamic Exegesis (Albany, 1990), pp. 105-51; "Merit, Mimesis, and Martydom: Shi'ite
Identification with Abraham's Sacrifice in Light of Jewish, Christian, and Sunni Tradition"pa
per delivered at the 1995 meeting of the American Academy of Religion. I am grateful to Pro
fessor Firestone for having provided me with a copy of his so far unpublished paper.
(70) Firestone,Journeys in Holy Lands■,cf. William M.Brinner (tr.),TheHistory of al-Tabari:Vol
umell, Prophets and Patriarchs (Albany, 1987), pp. 82-97; Gordon Darnell Newby, The Making of the
[27] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 16g
half as a Jewish fabrication, motivated by jealousy

scholar,converted to Islam,was supposed to have to
(caliph 717-20) : "The Jews know that [Ishmael was th
they are envious of you, O Arabs, because it was your f
God's command and to whom God ascribed such merit for his steadfastness
in obeying God's command. They reject that and claim that it was Isaac be
cause Isaac was their father."71
The story of cUmar and the Jewish scholar would suggest that that the iden
titytity of the Aqedah victim was a fairly significant issue between Jews and Mus
lims in the first century after the Hijrah,and that the"Ishmael" identification
may have marked an important step in the process of Islam's defining itself
over against the older Abrahamic traditions.The issue seems to have retained
some importance for medieval Qur'an commentators and tellers of "tales of
the prophets.'Tt perhaps took on fresh significance in the hands of non-Arab
Shi'ites, who, if Reuven Firestone is right, may have tried to resurrect the
"Isaac"identification as a tool in their controversy with Sunni Islam(2
For Muslim writers engaged in extramural controversy, by contrast, the
question of whether Isaac or Ishmael belongs in the Aqedah story seems to
have lost whatever interest it once had. I have not found a single Muslim po
lemicist against Judaism — or Christianity for that matter, although I cannot
claim to have made any systematic examination of anti-Christian polemic
— who so much as mentions this issue, even where the context would seem
to invite discussion of it.
Two examples :cAli Tabari's ninth-century treatise against Christianity de

votes an entire chapter to praising Ishmael and defending him against his de
trac trac tors!'' Nowh ere does the author think to mention that Ishmael,not Isaac,
was the intended sacrifice.(He quotes Gen 22:16-18,as" the saying of the Most
High God to Abraham, when he offered his son for sacrifice"But he shows no
interest in the question of which son was involved.) Similarly, a fourteenth
century Morisco polemic against Judaism includes a defense of Hagar and
Ishmael against, e.g., the charge that Hagar was a mere concubine(4 But (to
judge from the summary provided by Miguel Asin Palacios) the writer makes
no mention in this context of Ishmael's having been intended for sacrifice(5
Last Prophet :ALast Prophet :ALast Prophet :A I&constructionofthe Earliest Biography of Muhammad y1qHg),pp. 8‫ך‬-6‫ך‬.
(71) Brinner, op. cit., p.88.

(72) Firestone,"Merit, Mimesis, and Martydom" (above, n.6g).
(73) Translated in A.Mingana,771e Book of Religion and Empire. ( Lahore, n.d.), pp. 77-84; the
passage quoted below is on p. 80.
(74) Miguel Asin Palacios,"Un Tratado Morisco de Polémica Contra Losjudios," in ObrasEs
cogidas,cogidas,cogidas, vol. I I/I 11 (Madrid, 1948), pp. 247—73.
(75) He does refer to the Aqedah,but in a very different context : in support of the abrogation
It is evident that, for most Muslims i

times, the Aqedah had nothing at all com
Judaism?6ThevirtuesofIshmael,as Arab
be maintained. But Ishmael's near-sacrifi
these virtues.The Aqedah was an interest
Perhaps reflecting this Muslim indiffer
ers who undertook to combat the claims of Islam seem to have been little con
cerned with the identity of the Aqedah victim. The best informed and most
careful of them,Sacd ibn Mansur ibn Kammuna(1280)78does not mention the
question at alfi'Simeon b. Semah Duran, in his critique of Islam (142 3), touches
upon it as lightly as might be imagined. At the end of a list of Islamic distor
tions of Biblical stories, he notes that the Muslims "claim that the Aqedah was
for Ishmael, that it took place in Mecca, and that [people] have seen there [in
Mecca] the horn of the primordial ram'.'80 He adds, however :"They have diver
gent opinions on this matter, some saying that it was Isaac who was bound."81
of the Torah, he invokes evidence from the Torah itself, including the fact that"Dios manda a
Abraham sacrificar su hijo Isaac,y en seguida désisté de su mandato"(ibid,., p.254).If the writer
saw any significance in the intended victim's being Isaac instead of Ishmael, Asin Palacios does
not convey it.
(76) Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertzvined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton,
1992), 1992), mentions the Aqedah only in connection with the abrogation issue (see the preceding
note ),not the identity of the victim.The issue has perhaps regained some importance for Mus
lims in recent times, possibly sparked by the requirements of dialogue with both Jews and Chris
tians:cAmer Yunis,"The Sacrifice of Abraham in Islam','in Frédéric Manns ,The Sacrifice of Isaac
(above, n.66), pp. 147-57.
(77) Al-Rabghuzi, who wrote a book of prophet-stories in Eastern Turkish about the year
1300, takes for granted that Ishmael is the intended sacrifice. He remarks that the Jews say dif
ferently,"because the Jews and Christians are all Isaac's descendants." But he seems quite unex
cited about the issue, and at one point suggests that both Ishmael and Isaac were at different times
intended for sacrifice : Al-Rabghuzi :The Stories of the Prophets, H.E.Boeschoten, M.Vandamme, and
S.Tezcan,(ed./tr.)(Leiden,1g95),vol.2,pp. 121-29.
(78) Moshe Perlmann,/An Kammuna's Examination of the Three Faiths (Berkeley, 1971).
(79) Nor is there any reference to itin Moritz Steinschneider's exhaustive survey of the sources
and themes of Jewish anti-Islamic polemic : Polemische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer
S/rracAe (originallyS/rracAe (originally published Leipzig, 1877; reprinted Hildesheim,1g66),pp. 244-388.
(80) Moshe (Moritz) Steinschneider,"Setirat emunat ha-yishmacelim mi-sefer qeshet u-magen

le-rabbi Shimcon ben Semah Duran"Ozar Tob:hebraischeBeilage zumMagazinfiirdieWissenschaftdes
JudenthumsJudenthums 8(1881)6. The Muslim belief that the horns of Abraham's ram were once visible in the
Kaaba is reflected in Brinner, op. cit., pp. go, g4•
(81) hoc. cit.) cf. Firestone, fourneys in Holy Lands,p. 241, which reports on Edward Wester
marck's authority that some Moroccan Muslims still believed in 1933 that Isaac was the intended
sacrifice. Duran elsewhere makes the interesting remark that, among his borrowings from Ju
daism, Muhammad "retained the festival of Passover, asserting that it commemorates the Aqe
dah.and conflating all this with the Day of Memorial [Rosh Hashanah], which [really] commem
orates the Aqedah"(in Steinschneider, p. 14). I do not know Duran's basis for this claim, which
[2g] the son of the Messiah 171
A different tone is perhaps audible in Isaac

Genesis 2 2, written some eighty years later.82
as thine only son(yehidekha, verse 2)83is peculiar,
only only son but obviously not Abraham's.'Ttwas
stupidly advanced their claim that the one who
before Isaac's birth, he was the only son both of
There is nothing particularly implausible a
Muslims used Gen 22:2 to prove that Ishmae
though I have seen no direct evidence to supp
lemicists made plentiful use of Biblical quotat
pose to do so.) The very fact that he goes out of
suggests that, in Jewish if not Muslim consciou
dah victim had begun to assume new importance
faiths.This is perhaps linked to Abarbanel's subse
particular care he has devoted to the exegesis of
the entire strength [qeren] of Israel, and their m
ther in heaven.That is why we regularly use it in
It is at least thinkable that,for Abarbanel, the M
tim as Ishmael had come to seem an assault, su
rejecting, on the qeren and zekhut of the Jewish
Let us take Abarbanel's commentary as a startin

question : how did Jews view the Aqedah, and pa
during the nearly two hundred years that separ
of Israel Hazzan?86
seems to reflect a remarkable recapitulation, within Islam

whether the Aqedah was to be connected with Passover or
Death Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, pp. 173-83).
(82) Don Isaac Abaxb?1ne\,Perushcalha-torah(Jerusalem,
Abarbanel's commentary on Genesis to the first half of 15
Philosopher(Philosopher(Philosopher(Philadelphia, 1953),p. 288 n.16.
(83) In quoting passages from Genesis 22, in this and the

lation of the Jewish Publication Society.
(84) Prior, that is, to the twentieth century. cAmer Yun
indeed invoke Gen 22:2 in support of the Muslim positio
(85) I assume Abarbanel is referring to the recitation of
shahar.shahar.
(86) We may gauge the impact Abarbanel's exegesis is lik

erations,not only from its obvious influence on Hayyim K
the substantial presence of his Pentateuch commentary on
the end of the sixteenth century. Of430Jewish families liv
of Abarbanel's commentary (Shifra Baruchson, BooAs and R
Jews at the Close of the Renaissance [Hebrew; Ramat-Gan, 1
For Abarbanel, Isaac's sacrifice represent

ural aspect. This, despite the impression God
only sacrifice that was really intended; and
The result of Adam's sin had been that hum
sires, particularly the sexual. Now, by "com
command and thus vanquishing his corpo
offspring from bondage to this primordial
ers that control natural activity.8'The as
"binds"va-ya/tavosA)is figuratively to be un
mer:mer: by that act of "binding," Abraham su
It is in this sense, says Abarbanel, that we
that claims Abraham's ass to have been th
(Exod4:20)and that the Messiah will som
ing the Torah, Moses took the next step i
teriality; and the Messiah will bring this pr
tion of Abraham's ass with the Messianic be
literally, is thus allegorized to make the Aq
of Messianic salvation. Given Isaac's pivot
cellent sense that Abarbanel should have
mael as a threat to be warded off.
A similar metaphysical exaltation is credited to Isaac in Isaiah Horowitz's

widely influential Shenei luhot ha-berit(completed in 1623, first published in
1648)!)0Isaac here becomes a second Adam, replicating Adam's state before
the sin and providing a"mending "for his prototype's failing.91 This"mending "
with the Pentateuch commentaries of the ever-popular Rashi (owned by 118 families) or Bahya
ben Asher (owned by 91 ). But, in an age of expensive books, it seems a more than respectable
distribution.
(87) Abarbanel, Perush cal ha-torah, vol. 1, pp. 265-78. To express this liberation from what
Christians would have called "original sin','Abarbanel uses such expressions bo[be-yishaq]yifdehelo
him him et zarco min yeser lev adam rac mi-necurav, and she-tusar mimmennu zuhamat ha-nahash she-hittil
calcal havvah. . . bacavur tocelet kelal ummatenu (p. 266). The expression "gates of death" occurs on
p. 276, where Abraham is the actor: be-haggico oto cad shacarei mavet be-misvat ha-elohim.
(88) In Pirqei de-Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 31.
(89) Abarbanel, pp. 269-70: ve-zakheru [hazal] elleh ha-sheloshah avraham u-mosheh u-mashiah
lihyotamlihyotam rosh emsaci ve-takhlit li-shelemut emunato.
(90) Commentary onparashat vayyera ; in Sefershenei luhot ha-berit ha-shalem(Jerusalem, 1993),

vol. 4, pp. 73-90. The popularity and influence of Shenei luhot ha-berit is not in dispute. It is most
powerfully attested, for the end of the seventeenth century, by Gliickel of Hameln's moving ac
count of her husband's last hours, much of which is spent in perusing "the works of the learned
Rabbi Isaiah Hurwitz": Marvin Lowen !half tr.), The Memoirs ofGliickel ofHameln ( New York, 1977),
p.151.
(91) Ve-yishaqhube-cerekh adamha-rishonqodemshe-hata. . . be-hasaratha-orlahshe-hiha-qelippah
is bound up with Isaac's circumcision92— we th

the Sabbatians attached to the circumcision of Is
foundly with his sacrifice at the Aqedah.
Following the venerable Jewish tradition that
come back to life in the course of the Aqedah?3
soul as having left him and "the holy spirit from
place. Isaac is thus a new creation ( beri 'ah hadashah
life-essence life-essence (hayyut he-hadash or ha-s heni), the
not created from sperm (she-lo nosar mi-tippah)9.4
and returned to him other than it had been. . . . T
Isaac who had been born of sperm ceased to be
holy flesh."95In this sacrifice, Isaac had"become ho
offering, a pleasant smell for the Lord"; and had b
other saints could be only after their deaths — a s
the celestial high priest Michael?6
All of this is very redolent of Christianity. So is
Horowitz : of linking the Aqedah with the meal th
Abraham prepared for his three visitors. Abraham
shadows the eschatological feast that God will pr
he restores the world to the pristine state that it
not sinned, and when materiality [homer] becomes
Isaac's birth was announced at this feast [of Ab
cause of this [eschatological feast]."97One can ha
Last Supper, and of the eschatological overtones
Luke 22:15-18.
Let us follow Horowitz's argument yet one step f
the passage I have just quoted, Horowitz invokes
tiqqentiqqen te-adam she-hatas'rz-l[she-ameru rabbotenu zikhronam li-

Horowitz's reference is to BT Sanhédrin 38b.
(92) See the previous note, and p.82, where Horowitz find
got Isaac after he had himself been circumcised.
(g3) Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved S
The The Last Trial.
(94) Horowitz,pp.81-82. Horowitz represents Isaac as parall

rificed in his place, which was a special creation formed in
{Avot{Avot{Avot 5:6).
(95)(95) Ibid.,p.8j.
(96) Ibid., pp.85-86.The phrase"pure burnt-offering"(^/«/! temimah)is not Biblical; its use as
a designation for Isaac goes back to Gen. R. 64:3, and occurs in Rashi to Gen 25:26, 26:2.Cf.
Martin A.Cohen (u.),Samuel Usque's Consolations for the Tribulations o//sr«c/( Philadelphia, 1965),
p.p. 51 : ". . . my father Isaac, who was a sacrifice without blemish!'
(97) Horowitz, p. 81.
rash(BT Shabbat 8gb) which represents

as the zealous and effective defender of t
judgment. We will look at this midrash m
we consider what Israel Hazzan does w
witz picks up on the incongruity, from t
mud's representing the benevolent patriar
of strict judgment) and not Abraham {H
planation, he says, is that the world's e
turn to the state it was in before Adam's
which thus proves to be the greatest m
justice is effectively the begetter of Abra
is therefore greater than the father's. Yafe
ha-dinha-din ha-zeh gorem be-esem ha-rahimim.
We perhaps hear an echo of this form
discussed at the end of section 4, that "th
the father"(/«/^« ha-avyihyeh ha-ben)W
shall find there a parallel to the observ
his argument: that the name'Tsaac," curre
the eschaton manifest its more genial ove
The third writer we shall consider, the K

eludes his Aqedah exegesis within a hom
1654 as part of his Torat hakhamm Kohen
Abarbanel (whom he occasionally cites e
source) and the Shenei luhot ha-berit.This
as something of an authority in Sabbatian
in his letter tojoseph Zevi,100and Cardozo
in Egypt!01 We may therefore presume,
Israel Hazzan may have been familiar w
The homily is extremely prolix and di
clear summary of its argumen t. Its overa
(g8) Venice, 1654; reprinted Brooklyn, 1992. Th

37c~50b (on parashat vayyera).
(gg) In col. 42a (with reference, however, to I Sa
icizes Abarbanel's interpretation of Isaiah 53. Ko
beneficiaries of the Aqedah (the one testing, the o
the top of col. 43c, seems to be drawn directly fro
(100) In Sasportas, Sisat novel Sevi, pp. 261-62.
(101) In his treatise Ani ha-mekhunneh\C.2s\o Be
ham Cardoso's Biography,"JQRN.S. 18(1927-28)1
[33] the son of the Messiah 175
to become a favorite of Sabbatian ideologue

tive sufferings of the righteous m2cn{sadd
ample.102 In the tortuous course of develop
ward a host of subordinate propositions,103se
study of the Aqedah.
One of these is that the"great feast"mention
ing of the great eschatological feast (cols. 3
vokeTalmudic authority for this claim: BT
Gen 21:8 to mean that the Lord will make a
future date when" he shows his kindness to the seed of Isaac!'But he carries
the Talmud's hints to extreme lengths. The Jews, he says, are properly called
"the seed of Isaac" inasmuch as Isaac, through his Aqedah, is their savior and
defender. They have survived in this world thanks to the merit of the Aqedah,
"the ashes of Isaac that are heaped upon the altar"(col. 38d,cf-3gd, 48b)!04
Isaac's name points to their future joy, as represented by the eschatological
feast(col.3gd ).Isaac even performs a"harrowing of hell'bn their behalf : those
Jewish souls whom Abraham could not prevent from entering hell, Isaac de
scends there to rescue.105
Kohen's linking of the Aqedah to a special meal, that takes place in the
(102 )(102 ) He announces the theme by beginning his homily with Gen. R. tj$:2,a.petihah that takes
its starting point from Ps 11:5, adonay saddiq yivhan.In cols. 48a-b, he makes what is perhaps his
most explicit statement that the saddiqim stand ready to offer themselves as atoning sacrifices on
the world's behalf, and that the Aqedah is to be put in this category. (And note his reference to
Metatron offering the souls of the saddiqim on the celestial altar, which echoes a remark I have
earlier quoted from Horowitz.) At the bottom of col. 46b, moreover, Kohen applies Isa 53:5 (a
favorite verse of the Sabbatians) to the atoning sufferings of the righteous: yissurin. . . ha-nim
sa'imsa'im ba-saddiqim kedei le-khapper cal cadat yisra'el.
(103) E.g., that the saddiq often does things that seem bizarre or immoral to outsiders (David
with Bathsheba,cols. 38b,390,460; Abraham and Sarah, cols. 3gd,40d-41a). Kohen's formula
tion in col-40d is particularly striking: kol macasav shel avraham afcal gav she-hayu nir'im lecenei
basarbasar shehem darkhei ish. . . ve-enam mehugganim lifnei ha-qadosh barukh hu be-zeh eno ken afillu dark
heihei ish zeh avraham lefi shehu ish casato hem resuyim lifnei ha-qadosh barukh hu. All of this must have
been music to Sabbatian ears; and we might conjecture that Kohen's repeated invocation of
Hos 8:12, kemozar nehshavu(cols.40d,41b),foreshadows Sabbatai Zevi's macasim zarim.
(104) For the rabbinic sources of this expression, see Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of
the the Beloved Son, pp. 194-98; Spiegel, The Last Trial, pp. 28-44.
(105) Col. 39a, bottom. Kohen claims to have seen this in "our sages'comments on the verse
For you For you are our father [Isa 63:16]" but I have not been able to locate any rabbinic source for it. The
opening of Kohen's alleged quotation,ve-yishaq le-hekha azal, is very suggestive of Gen. R. 67:7,but
its continuation bears no resemblance whatever to the midrashic text. The conclusion to Mid
rash rash Vayyoshac quotes Isa 63:16 in the context of God's redeeming the Jews from hell (in Adolf
Jellinek,Jellinek, Bel ha-Midrash [reprinted Jerusalem, 1967],vol. 1, p. 57); but Isaac here plays no part
whatever. Isa 63:16 is, as we will see, the key text in BT Shabbat 89b.
distant past but foreshadows the eschat

Horowitz (and, of course, of the Last S
Genesis 18 to Genesis 21, no doubt results
for Rosh Hashanah!06Again like Horowi
port of Isaac's role as savior par excellence
Marks of Abarbanel's exegesis are also
Abarbanel, Kohen quotes Pirqei de-Rabbi E
mar mar was also the one ridden by Moses
as Abarbanel did.Hamar is to be underst
represents the subjugation of materiali
ality will in the future be as pure as in th
up up death forever"101
But Kohen spells out the eschatological im

Aqedah.in considerably more detail than
Eliezer goesEliezer goes on to say that Abraham'
mael and Eliezer) quarreled over Abrah
what may have been implicit in the origin
and Islam, who quarrel over the land th
build their sanctuaries in it. ("The comm
"have built the Temple for themselves.") H
here here (Gen 22:5), thereby permitting the
time as the Messiah comes riding his as
we we will come back to you (Gen 2 2:5), t
ing BT Sanhédrin 98a, Kohen professe
tion will take place in a generation that is
guilty (col. 47c).
One seemingly minor feature of Koh
considerable importance in connection
relatively brief section of the homily tha
(cols. 47a-48d) — and not, as far as I can s
Kohen makes very heavy use of the midr
What this means is that the word et, whi
a marker of the accusative, can be midras
ence of some additional, unstated object o
( 106) Genesis 21 is the Torah reading for the firs

second.
(107) Col. 47b; quoting Isa 25:8, a favorite catch-phrase of Kabbalistic eschatology.
(108) Cam and af can function in the same way :etimgamim ribbuyim 'the words et and gam are
terms indicating inclusion [of that which is unstated]' (Gen. R. 1:14; Theodor-Albeck[ed.]p. 12);
ha-ribbuyha-ribbuy be-shalosh kshonot et gam ve-af there are three terms for inclusion [of the unstated], et,
gam, and af' (Midrash ha-Gadol, preface to Genesis; Margaliotfed.] p. 23). (if. H.G.Enelow, The
[351 THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 177
one example of this technique : the phrase et YHVHeloh

would normally be understood to mean ,you shallfear th
Talmud represents Rabbi Akiba.with whom the princip
associated, as expounding the et to mean that scho
along with God as objects of reverence!09
Kohen resorts to this principle again and again in int
In 22:2,et binekha'[take] thy son] is understood to i
mother along with Isaac (col. 47a; Kohen's point is n
put obstacles in Abraham's way). In verse 4, etha-maqom
eludes not only the"place"in a literal sense but God as w
Abraham Abraham bound Isaac his son (verse 9),the et of el yi
Abraham himself: "as if Abraham had bound himself."
eludes the heavenly princes, who were bound at the Aq
col. 48b.) Kohen finds no fewer than two such inclusion
ham ham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay
y ado [hisy ado [his hand) is there to convey that Abraham
against his fingernail and his finger;111 while the et t
son'conveys that Abraham saw himself as killing, not I
future offspring God had promised him."For [Isaac]
unique son ; Ishmael was not called his son, inasmuch a
of a Gentile slave woman. That was why God had called
son,son, thine only sow" (col. 48b).112
Of the twenty-seven occurrences of the word et (o
Kohen thus interprets five as ribbuyim. This seems an e
centage, and suggests that, for reasons about which
hen had come to regard this mode of exegesis as pec
the Aqedah!13 We shall see in section 8 thatlsrael Hazza
MishnahMishnah of Rabbi Eliezer; or, TheMidrash of Thirty-two Hermeneutic R

H. L. Strack and G. Sternberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midr
( 109) BT Pesahim 2 2b ; quoted,with two other examples,in Midra
(110) Rabbinic texts habitually refer to God as ha-maqom.
(111) In accord with BT Hullin 17b.
(112) Abarbanel had given a similar explanation of why Isaac was
[son],Ishmael,was no longer, since he had been driven from [Abrah
he had never been. Isaac thus remained his father's only son and h
calcal ha-torah, p. 268).This is Abarbanel's answer to what he repres
ment,from Gen 22:2, that the intended sacrifice was Ishmael.
(113) I am not aware of any precedent. One Zoharic exegesis o
pears at first sight to involve a ribbuy, the et understood to signify
with Abraham ( Zohar, 1,119b). But, as Cordovero points out (in Ab
[Jerusalem, 1876 ; reprinted in Israel, n.d.],vol. 1, col. 99c), an altog
volved : et, normally used in the Zohar for the sefirah Malkhut, is he
178 DAVID J. HALPERI N [36]
footsteps; and, in this connection, the last

very special interest.
On the basis of these authors, I would offe

dah as it was perceived in seventeenth-ce
actor in the Aqedah is Isaac, not Abraham.
as Horowitz puts it.) Not only is he a willin
Levenson has made in connection with th
uity114— but he has become a superhum
measure modelled after the Savior of Chris
complished. In the course of that sacrifice,
qualitatively different sort of creature. As
power not only to defend his offspring
them from the torments of hell, but even
deed the entire creation, into something
they had been.
This transformation is bound up with
themes are most obviously linked by Ab
the ass to be ridden by the Messianic king (
for which Isaac is the effective cause, and
cal feast of the righteous.
We may note,finally, that both Abarbane
toward toward "Ishmael's"encroachments up
nel records, and repudiates, Muslim claims
been Ishmael rather than Isaac. Kohen notes that the Ishmaelites have rebuilt
the Jerusalem Temple, but for their own religious use ; he promises that they
will be judged and ejected ; he rejects the possibility that Ishmael might prop
erly be called Abraham's son at all.116
Thus far the legacy that Hazzan received. What does he himself do with
the Aqedah? And what role is played in it by Ishmael Zevi?
6. Aqedah, Ishmael, Islam (II)
Let us begin by observing that Hazzan expounds the Aqedah not once but
twice. His first exegetical essay on the subject lies near the beginning of his
work(fol 14V),in the course of a detailed exposition of the Zoharic myth of the
he is currently resident in that.se/traAand not in his own proper sefirah( that is to say,Gevurah).
(114) The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, pp. 187-92.
( 115) It seems possible, though by no means certain, that Horowitz's disparaging reference to
the seemingly "insane"Arab practice of prostrating oneself to the dust on one's feet (Shenei luhot
ha-berit, vol. 4, p. 75; following BT Bava MesPa 86b) is an indirect jab at Islam. Cf. below n. 219.
[37] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 17g
hind!16 This initial treatment of the topic bear

what he was subsequently to write, once he had dis
Ishmael Zevi.
In the earlier passage,Hazzan had focused his attention on Gen 22:3-4:

And And Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his ass, and took two of his young
men men with him, and Isaac his son; and he cleaved the wood for the burnt-offering, and
rose rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abra
ham ham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. The morning, as he understood
it, represents the eschaton. (This equation, which recurs throughout his com
mentary, is practically the only element of his original interpretation to sur
vive into his subsequent discussion of the Aqedah.) The figure of Abraham
stands for the Kabbalistic sefirah of Hesed 'Grace! "Isaac" is the sefirah Gevurah
'stern judgment! to be exercised against the Gentiles.The third day alludes to
the resurrection (in accord with Hos 6:2); the ass, to the beast that the Mes
siah will ride (Zech 9:9); the cleaving of the wood, to the sinners — the Gentile
nations, to judge from Hazzan's citation of Isa 33:12 — who are destined for
burning.
Abraham's two young men (necarav) are Metatronmand Sabbatai Zevi. The
latter is indicated, not by name, but by successive citations of Isa 9:5 (a child
[yeled[yeled] is born unto us, a son [ben] is given to us) and Hos 11:1( when Israel was a lad
[nacar] )!18 What is significant here is that Sabbatai, the center of Hazzan's at
tention, plays a secondary and perhaps even marginal role in the eschatolog
ical drama of the Aqedah. Hazzan regularly speaks of him as'son! or as'be
loved son' (ben yaqir, fol gv and frequendy)!19 But, remarkably, he does not
think to equate him with the beloved son of Gen 22:2, still less with the fa
ther who is going to sacrifice him. He remains essentially faithful to the Zo
har's reading of the Aqedah (I,11ga-120b),in which the sefirotic symbolism
predominates; but he overlays it with eschatology.120
Turning from here to Hazzan's formal exposition of the Aqedah,which be
gins on fol 104V, we at first imagine that he is resuming the sefirotic line of
interpretation. He prefaces his Aqedah exegesis with a heavily glossed and
(116) In his commentary on Psalm 42 ;see above, n.46.
(117) Whose standing designation is nacar 'youth!
(118) Hazzan marks the word Israel with a double slash, to indicate that he is attributing a spe
cial significance to it. He uses Israel and son throughout the commentary to designate Sabbatai
Zevi; e.g., fols gv, 10v-11r.
(119) Following Jer 31:19.
( 120) We recall from Abarbanel and Kohen the association of Abraham's donkey with that of
the Messiah.We recall, also, that the sefirotic symbolism of "Abraham"and "Isaac" was practically
absent from the writers we considered in the preceding section ; only Horowitz made any use of
it at all.
expanded version of the prayer zokhrenu

God to "remember," to the benefit of the
tities. God is to remember, also, the Aqed
has just equated with the sefirah Hesed)
the hidden reference being to the dinim
ity] that he is going to sweeten and to m
But no sooner does he begin to expoun
takes an altogether different tack. Abrah
alted father'( av ha-ram) and ‫ ז‬h e ' b i Iter
tai Zevi, most supremely exalted and ye
nesses of the children of Israel."(This is an
the profane realm of Islam.)122And th
other than
our Lord Ishmael. He is called"Isaac"in that he was born in a time in
which the dinim had the upper hand over the hasadim]23in the epoch of
the turban!24 He came into the world turban-wearing [that is, a Muslim],
for the dinim were powerful at that time. He is"Isaac,"moreover, in that
Israel will have all its laughter125 and joy through him [fols 104v-105r].
This transformation of "Isaac"into"Ishmael"— which at once brings to mind

the Muslim reading of the Aqedah — is remarkable enough. Its immediate
sequel is yet more remarkable. Hazzan goes on to make clear that the religion
symbolized for him by the"turban"is near the center of his own understand
ing of the Aqedah ; and not merely in the negative sense (which we saw in his
earlier treatment of Genesis 22)that the Muslims are Gentiles to be punished
(121) Derived originally from the zikhronot of the Rosh Hashanah musaf, but functioning as
liturgical introduction to the reading of the Aqedah in the daily birkhot ha-shahar■. Philip Birn
baum, Daily Prayer Book (New York, 1949), pp. ig-20; A.Z. Idelsohn ,Jewish Liturgy and Its Develop
ment(ment(ment(New York, i960), p. 78.
(122) She-kol merirut beneiyisra'el nitmarer bahem[\] be-sod ve-hu mehullal mi-peshacenu.Hazza.ris
citation of Isa 53:5 guarantees that he is referring to Sabbatai's apostasy, for Sabbatian expositors
from Nathan of Gaza onward regularly understood the Biblical verse to refer to the"profanation"
entailed by that action (see, for example, Nathan as quoted by Sasportas, Sisat novel Sevi, pp. 261
6262 ). Hayyim Kohen applies the same verse to the suffering saddiq ; above, n. 102.
(123) That is, the punitive aspects of divinity, represented in Kabbalistic symbolism by the hg
ure of Isaac, had gotten the upper hand over its gracious aspects.
(124) Be-hemshekh zeman ha-misnefet.The use of the word misnefet for 'turban' is rare in this text.
Senif,Senif, used in the next sentence, is Hazzan's normal designation.
(125) Sehoq, from the same root as the name"Isaac."Cf. Horowitz's reflections on Isaac's name,
summarized in the preceding section.
in the eschaton. Rather, he reads the Biblical

into the land of Moriah] Gen 22:2) as thoug
doubled'going.'Abraham and Isaac — that
go by two paths, the path of Truth [Judaism
This is what Scripture means when it says that
[Ps 85:11]."
This last observation leads Hazzan into a l
105r-107r).The central theme of this excursus
with Islam — or, more accurately, the penetr
justification and praise of those"pious ones
etration.(They are called God's'pious ones'
tered tor at hesed, which is Islam; fol 106r.)B0
and those Jews who have remained within
ents of the divineshalom(Ps 85:g).But,says H
assure the"pious "apostates that they shall not
main within Islam, that "path of fools and
sional act of "mending"that is unfortunately
of God's throne (fol to6v, following Isa 16:5).
To understand what this means for Hazzan, w

has meant for him up to this point.
Let us make no mistake. His talk of "Grac
titude toward Islam is hardly one of ecum
reference to Islam, up to this point in th
(126) Hazzan, like other Sabbatian writers,regularly u

Grace") to refer to Islam, as opposed to torat emet ("Tor
(fol.31v)that"the Ishmaelite religion is called torat he
only that which their ancestors transmitted to them . .
don the practice of their ancestors." He implies that this
less counted to them as a virtue (teed), which casts par
ing disloyalty to their own sacred tradition.(This interp
interpretation of Prov 14:34, hesed le'ummim hattat, f
zan's generally contemptuous attitude toward Islam,
low),Scholem seems justified in refusing to infer from
batian writers perceive Islam as a"religion of grace'/su
863~64;"Perush mizmorei tehillim','pp.181-83(Liebes,
"Yahaso shel Shabbetai Sevi le-hamarat dato','pp. 301-05(
33).Yetwe shall see that Hazzan evidently felt envy as w
crisis of faith, he found himself wondering if God and
hesed hesed ) did not in fact prefer the Muslims over the J
contained within it some implication of Muslim supe
ian writers normally preferred to keep out of their co
hostile. Islam is a "twisted" religion1,27a "

sential blackness is belied by the white tur
prefigured by the unclean reptiles of L
whose name (saw) is numerically equal to
. .. who became a heretic and fell into e
{ha-mishtaggecim{ha-mishtaggecim be-datam) spou
use to build firmaments of chaos!31 As
for its patron, so Islam has the demon
of Ps 104:11 ,who think to quench their s
(Sabbatai Zevi) that has gone forth from
blood will instead become drink for the b
At first glance, this seems a picture of p
occasionally possible to detect another
zan's allusions to Islam."W%0 set the mid
Ishmael, whom Scripture calls a wild as
free? And who has opened the bonds of th
flesh flesh is like asses'flesh [Ezek 23:20] —
bonds; for they are forbidden to us, an
. . . Their entire religion and legislatio
and they have no foundation upon whi
Job 3g:7-8)"they mock and ridicule us
( 127) Torah ha-caqummah, fol 48a.
(128) Dat ha-hevel, fol 33V; cf. 31V, quoted in n. 126
(129) Dat shehorah, fol 50V.
(130) Fol 50V: ha-meshuggacshellahem . . . she-nehefa
is a familiar designation for Muhammad among Je
undund apologetischeLiteratur, pp.302-03; cf. p.359
of Leviticus's list of unclean reptiles). Sav and Muh
Hazzan aware that Muslim writers often called attention to the numerical value of Muhammad's
name,equating it thereby with bi-me'od me'od in Gen 17:20, which predicts Ishmael's future great
ness [ibid., p. 327, cf. p. 364; Perlmann, Ibn Kammuna's Examination of the Three Faiths, p. 139]? It
is impossible to say.) In the same passage, Hazzan explains Leviticus's "mouse" (cakhbar) as "this
Turkish king, for so he is explicitly called among the Jews in all regions of Constan tinople."(Per
haps a play haps a play on Arabic akbarî) He was soon to speak more respectfully of the sultan, as we will see.
(131) Fol 31V, following Zohar, 1,5a. On Islamic religious practices, including the fast of Ra
madan, cf. fols 74r~75v.
(132) Fols 94r, 107V (discussed below); cf. fol 21r-v, which gives a partial quotation from the
Zoharic passage that is the source of these identifications (III, 246b,Racya Mehemna).Cf. also
Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische Literatur, p. 318.
(133) Fol 57r-v; Hazzan linkspera'im (Ps 104:11) with the well-known Biblical description of
Ishmael as pereadam (Gen 16:12; see below). With Hazzan's representation of Muslims as beasts,
we might compare the tendency of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century polemical writers to apply
to them the phrase of Ps 50:10, behemot be-harerei alef(Steinschneider, pp. 371,382).
( 134) Cf. fol 71a,expounding Ps 80:7 :"our neighbors" who are also "our enemies!' ridicule us;
gone into exile. . . .With every mouth he [Job's wild

lectivity of the Muslims] devours Israel, and slan
to graze upon them and to devour their money. . . .
gold . . . [demanding] that it be measured out and
Even as Hazzan scorns what he perceives as the
of the Muslim religion, he envies its potency — e
given the context of Ezek 23:20,is blatantly sexu
fortune. It represents to him a world of security an
remains banned, not so much by the Muslims the
gious convictions."They are forbidden to us, and
mitted?"His implied answer seems to be: Sabbata
A few pages before Ishmael first appeared o
sketched a fantasy of how Sabbatai might bridge th
Islam, entirely to Judaism's benefit. Isa49:22-23,
Gentile kings and their princes will become nurses
Hazzan — to the mighty works of Sabbatai Zevi.
celestial princes that are in charge of [the Gentil
they will turn to you in great love and will nurse y
nificance of the mysterious "man" who, accordin
by night with the patriarch Jacob. The"man" is Sam
tron of the Muslims. The victorious "Jacob" is Sabb
me me off136 [Gen 32:26] ; meaning, I am your slave
your emissary"(fol 94r-v).
This is, of course, fantasy. But not absolutely so
and from Hazzan himself, that Sabbatai had at le
certain"MullahcAli," whom he in fact used as his em
In his commentary on the Aqedah, in connection
the the woodfor the burnt-offering (Gen 2 2:3),Hazzan
of of Sabbatai's life in his Albanian exile. In 1674, evi
Mullah Mullah cAli as his messenger to the believers
them) en route to his prospective father-in-law
told us about the passing of the Lady [matronit
they declare that they are in the right, for (they say)"Surely the
(135) Fol 82a. Hazzan's zahav yeraqraq, based on Ps 68:14, expo
(Job 39:8). Medocl ve-have is taken from the exegesis of Isa 14
overall portrait is somewhat suggestive of the very hostile acco
Bene, Kisse'ot le-vet David — published in Verona some thirty yea
is summarized in Steinschneider, Polemische und apologetische
had access to Del Bene's book itself.)
(136) Shalleheni, more usually taken to mean "let me go!'
(137) Scholem, Saéiatat Scut, p. 885.
Sarah],138and about how he had brough

among the things he told us was that he
of wood, and give the small pieces to our
The details of this sketch, and the interp
fer of Sabbatai's behavior — he was train
"shatter and subdue the qelippot" in the
now) less important to us than the role
transmitted by Cardozo confirms Hazzan
shortly before his death, Sabbatai sent M
( Adrianople) to summon two of his followe
The mythic act that Hazzan attributes t
mighty angelic patron of Islam into his sub
the actual role of Mullah cAli within Sabbatai's inner circle. We cannot be
sure whether Hazzan built his myth upon his observations of Mullah cAli's
behavior; or whether, as often tended to happen — the tragic story of Ish
mael Zevi is an obvious example — Sabbatai had managed to turn his im
mediate surroundings into a mirror of his Messianic fantasies. Either way, the
rhetorical question that Hazzan had asked, in connection with Job 39:5, is
now answered. The once"forbidden"Muslims have now become"permitted."
Thanks to Sabbatai, they can be part of a new (and largely imaginary) "Jewish
Muslim symbiosis,"140 in which the power relationships of the real Jewish
Muslim symbiosis have become reversed.
(138) Following Scholem, against Amarillo (above, n.24). The distinguished title matronita,
long hallowed by the Zoharic practice of using it for the divine Female, would be entirely appro
priate for Sabbatai's wife of many years. It is far less suitable for Majar's daughter, whom Sab
batai twice planned to marry but who remained"his betrothed"(Jar«s(2to)at the time of her death
(Tishby,"R. Meir Rofe's Letters,"p. 97).
(139) Molho and Amarilio,"Autobiographical Letters" pp. 217-18. Scholem quotes and dis
cusses the text from Hazzan in"Perush mizmorei tehillim" pp. 169-71 (Liebes, pp. 101-03). Ap
parently, however, he did not notice that Hazzan gives the Mullah's name. (The initial letter
cayincayin is clearly visible; the lamed andyod, though covered by the tape used to bind the manu
script, can be read with certainty.) He therefore omits "cAli"from his quotation ; and this is why,
as far as I am aware, subsequent scholars have failed to observe the important correlation be
tween Hazzan's account and Cardozo's.The reference to Sabbatai's having"brought a dead per
son back to life" is baffling. A letter written in the summer of 1675 quotes Sabbatai as having
promised "soon" to bring his deceased ex-fiancee ( Majar's daughter) back to life, and Isaiah
Tishby suggests that the mullah now reports the promise as having been fulfilled :"R. Meir Rofe's
Letters,"Letters," pp. 96-97. This hypothesis, which requires us to date the episode a year or two later
than Scholem did and to interpret its significance differently, does not seem to me compelling.
Sabbatai's followers believed him to have resurrected many dead people ( Isaiah Sonne,"New
Material on Sabbatai Zevi from a Notebook of R. Abraham Rovigo" [Hebrew], Sefunot 3-4(1960]
55), and we have seen that Hazzan expected Ishmael Zevi to do the same. On the role of the mul
lah, cf. also ibid., p.62.
(140) I use the familiar phrase of S.D.Goitein.
Jacob Jacob/Sabbatai's triumph over his nocturnal ant

resents a stage beyond his earlier achievement of "b
These latter were won by 'deceit' (mirmah) ; specifical
the turban. Now, however, Samael proclaims Jacob/
own free will, without compulsion.That is why, acc
victor is no longer"Jacob"but"Israel"(fol 94V).
Hazzan reiterates much of this argument when he

85, and thereby to define and describe the dual J
Sabbatai and Ishmael have been obliged (by the co
tread. He explains that the psalmist speaks of Sabba
of the 'ruse' (coqvah) and 'deceit' (ramma'ut ) with whi
gelic patrons of the Gentiles, as his Biblical prototy
Prov 25:21-22 instructs us to give our enemy food
stroy him ; as God once ordered the Israelites to p
mon Azazel as a ruse to deceive him;142so"the Light
enter into this testing,"in the profane realms of Islam
We are given one particularly striking example of
volves. Hazzan quotes Prov 31:26 — She opens her mou
hesedhesed is on her tongue — which he takes as referrin
often reveal, through his astounding wisdom, the m
ity, which had not been revealed even to the Princ
concurrently, chant torat hesed — that is to say, the
nation. . . two Torahs together" (fol îoyr)!44 "Grace" a
and torat emet, Islam and Judaism — have thus met t
The effect is that righteousness and peace have kiss
stands, in Kabbalistic terms, to mean that the fema
vinity have coupled. Thereupon"Truth" (Judaism),w
(141) Ps 85:2 reads (according to the Qere) shavta shevit yacaqov.

is an anagram for shabbetai, and interprets: she-ha-el be-rahamav
batai"and"Jacob"are thus equated.
(142) So the Zohar's interpretation of the rite of Leviticus 16 (Isa
Zohar: AnZohar: An Anthology of Texts [London and Washington, 198
had used this illustration, as well as the citation of Prov 25:21-22
fol 94V. The thought processes underlying fols 94V and 105r-v ar
(143) Since he is, as Hazzan often tells us, the inseparable com
which standard Kabbalistic exegesis applies this verse.
( 144) Najara reports much the same : One Sabbath morning in
a sermon in a synagogue in which he"made known that many diff
in the sayings of our sages are entirely unintelligible and insolub
that he set forth. ... He extended this sermon for about two hou
from the Quran, in order to show that the whole point of his sermo
faith[ Islam ]"(Amarillo,"Tecudot Sh abbeta' iyyot " p. 2 5()).
wan wan ting,1145 will spring from the earth

batai Zevi, will look forth from heaven (
(fol 107r).
The triumphalist quality of Hazzan's expectation is evident. Plainly enough,
the Jewish-Islamic synthesis embodied by Sabbatai is no experiment in inter
faith harmony, but rather a necessary trick used against a repellent and de
spicable enemy. But here Hazzan finds himself caught in a paradox. For the
trick to work — for "Jacob"eventually to vanquish the demonic patron of Is
lam, so that the latter freely confesses his victory — Sabbatai must mold his
Judaism in accord with the enemy faith. So must his son: his partner and vie
tim in the new Aqedah.
So So must Hazzan himself. In the act of reshaping the Aqedah, he opens it to
the Islamic encroacher. The Jewish ancestor Isaac has practically vanished
from Hazzan's reading of Genesis 22, leaving behind him little more than
the symbolic implications of his name. In his place stands a"turban-wearing"
Muslim Ishmael.
Not, of course, the Muslim Ishmael. The Ishmael Zevi of Hazzan's Messi
anic fantasy is still fundamentally identified with the Jewish people; he will
emerge, no less than in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers we
considered in the preceding section,as Israel's advocate and savior; the Mus
lims will be targets, rather than beneficiaries, of the salvation he will bring.
So Hazzan anticipated.
But, midway through the Aqedah, Hazzan must change course. Ishmael
Zevi will himself vanish. He will be replaced — not by the Jewish Isaac, nor
even by the sefirah Gevurah — but by the figure that Hazzan and his contem
poraries regarded as the embodiment of Islam : Ishmael son of Hagar. Torat
hesedhesed and torat emet will thus have met, on the former's terms; and the Aqe
dah',46no less than Sabbatai Zevi himself, will have entered the realms of Islam.
We shall examine this impending development in sections 7 and 8. Let us

conclude the present section by comparing the Aqedah exegesis with which
Hazzan began his midnight-vigil commentary (fol 14V; see above) with the
new line of interpretation which, carried away by enthusiasm for the Messiah
ship of Ishmael Zevi, he now unfolds.
A few details have remained the same. The morning of Gen 22:3 is still the
eschaton; the third day still alludes to the future resurrection. Abraham's ass
is still, as in Abarbanel and Kohen, the beast to be ridden by the Messiah
(Zech 9:9). But now it is further interpreted as"the prince of the nation"—
(145) Following Mishnah Sotah 9:15.

(146) Which Abarbanel (above) had described as"the entire strength of Israel, and their merit
before their Father in heavenr
the Muslim nation, presumably — and the Messiah'

ing his triumph!47 The wood that Abraham cleaves no
sinners readied for punishment, but (perhaps along
lippotlippot that the Messiah must shatter and subdue.(S
Mullah Mullah cAli.)
But the most important elements have shifted en

"Isaac,"earlier the sefirot Hesed and Gevurah, now h
Ishmael Zevi. Sabbatai has thus changed, as we saw a
section, from"beloved son" to "exalted father" (or, p
The two young men, earlier Metatron and Sabbatai him
the" two high princes "who are to serve the Messiah
types served Abraham. (They are later explicitly ide
of Ishmael and Samael prince of Esau ; that is, the an
of Islam and Christendom.)
There are some new details. Commenting on 22:2
land ofMoriah is the ,Holy Land' [that is, the seftrah Mal
(147) "And he saddled his ass. This is the ass that he rode upon an
with the hidden meaning of poor, riding on an ass [Zech 9:9]; this
is explained in the Zohar, Ki Tese, in Racya Mehemna, in connectio
I have I have an ox and an ass [Gen 32:5]"( fo 1107V). I have not been a
passage to which Hazzan refers. Several passages understand the ox
entities that Jacob had in his power (1,166b, II, 64b); or — a slight
the divine power of harsh judgment (th esefirah Gevurah) and the ass
6a, III, 86b-87a). Ill, 207a, identifies the ass with the totality of th
Zech 9:9 to show that "King Messiah is destined to rule over it."
tiqqunim,tiqqunim, printed as an appendix to the Zhitomir edition of T
printed Jerusalem, 1974), identifies the ox and the ass with"the p
whom the two Messiahs will ride and dominate . . . that is whyjacob
for he dominated them. . . ."All of these passages are plainly relev
last particularly so, since it seems to warrant an equation of the as
(This last interpretation of Gen 32:5 is followed by Israel Sarug, Sef
1850; reprinted Jerusalem, 1972], cols. 8c-d: Jacob intended to c
mael [ass] were subject to his power.) None of them, however, occ
Tese.(Tese.(Tese.(Zech 9:9 is twice quoted in this section — III, 276a and 2
sages suits Hazzan's allusion here, although the second shows consi
sianic thought in other parts of the commentary.) It is striking th
that expound Gen 32:5 also expound Deut 22:10 (the prohibition of
ass together)in the same context; Ra'ya Mehemna on Ki Tese (D
fore be a logical place to look for a discussion of the ox and the ass. B
is evidently incompletely preserved, for it begins only with Deut 2
text at his disposal? Or did he regard the passage in III,86a-87a as h
of Racya Mehemna on Ki Tese, as the printer's note on III, 275b
indicate ?
(148) This symbolic use of "Holy Land"occurs throughout Hazzan's commentary. (Indeed,
I have found only one passage where Hazzan seems to take an interest in the actual land of
["Abraham"= Sabbatai Zevi] will ascend. And c
cause his son Ishmael,who is our Lord, may
upon upon one of the mountains which I will tell
God will give him"(fol 107r-v).
Hazzan's inspiration here is perhaps the P
ben Asher, which interprets le-colah in 2 2:
fer Isaac to"the tenth sefirah, which ascends
to offer him, that is, to Malkhut}M If so, H
cant new twist. It is no longer Isaac who is
to Malkhut, but Abraham/Sabbatai who w
reference is surely to Sabbatai's"disappea
tion. Isaac/Ishmael, by contrast, is to rece
calahcalah ha-celyonah) ; which, in the light o
dawning Messianic glory (above, sec. 4),
with his future as savior, judge, and ruler o
Writing these words, Hazzan no doubt i
Messianic elevation to unfold, on paper, a
the midnight-vigil liturgy to its triump
expected them, no doubt, to unfold in reali
7. A Messiah Disappears
This denouement was never to arrive, even in the commentary's own fantasy
world. Instead, Ishmael Zevi was to vanish from its pages (and presumably
from its author's hopes), and the commentary was to extend itself well be
yond the Aqedah. Why?
A"fresh start"is evident in the handwriting, in the tenth line of fol 108r.
The content also changes at this point, more subtly but still perceptibly. Haz
Palestine: fol 86v.)The goal of raising Malkhut to the higher sefirot — first to her "husband'' Tif'
eret,eret,eret, with whom she couples; then with him to realms higher yet — is a Kabbalistic commonplace.
( 149) This is a thinkable understanding of ve-hacalehu sham le-colah, inspired by such Zoharic
passages passages as II, 238b-23ga (Tishby, Wisdom of theZohar, vol. ;.;,pp. 923-27).The more usual trans
lation is of course "offer him there for a burnt-offering."
(150) Bahya ben Asher, Midrash Rabbenu Bahya (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 108-og. Bahya goes on
to find allusions to Malkhut in the altar of verse 9 and the ram of verse 13 (yesh bo remez li-keneset
yisra'elyisra'el she-niqret ayyelet ha-shahar, p. no). Shifra Baruchson's research suggests that, at the end of
the sixteenth century, Bahya's Pentateuch commentary was second only to Rashi's in popularity
(above,(above, n. 86). It is therefore plausible to imagine that Hazzan is likely to have been acquainted
with it.
( 151 ) Hazzan is emphatic that it is Sabbatai alone who will ascend with Malkhut: eres ha-moriy
yah hi eres ha-qedoshah attah tifalleh cimmah.
[471 [47] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 189
zan backtracks, goes over ground he has just finished coverin

but significant alterations. He is uncharacteristically halti
himself. For the first time in his commentary, he shows
ence for Islam and the Turkish sultan; not on the ground
thier of respect than he once believed, but on the ground th
recipients of God's and Sabbatai's favor. Ishmael Zevi is still p
"fresh start'.' Indeed, his elevation proceeds apace. But this el
effect of declaring him equivalent to his dead father, and of
to the heights of the Kabbalistic pleroma; in which rarifi
disappears.
My hypothesis is that, during the break in his composition
"fresh start',' Hazzan learned that Ishmael Zevi was dead. The
follows are consequences of this unwelcome intelligence.
The text itself is the best argument for this hypothesis. I tr
nent text, before and after the "fresh start','calling attention
lar features ; and trusting that the reader will be struck, as I
much more naturally it reads once my hypothesis is granted.
I begin with Hazzan's exegesis of Gen 22:5 (fol 108a).
Then Abraham said unto his young men, who have been ment
Abide ye Abide ye here with the ass. Our sages have interpreted thi
pie pie resembling the ass153,' which corresponds to what I have
esoteric meaning of [the Messiah's being, according to Z
riding riding on an ass.154
And And I and the lad will go yonder [cad /»/ij. This is the sef
which is called koh'J"
(152) And identified as the supernatural patrons of Christendom and

(153) cAm ha-domim la-hamor; drawing upon a widespread midrash that r
though it were cam ha-hamor, and consequently disparages Abraham's ser
(e.g., Gen.Rab. 56:2,Levi. Rah. 20:2,BT Yevamot 62a; cf. Yosef Heinemann
velopmentvelopment [Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1974], pp. 12 2-29). In the light of the co
cation of the two "young men" as Eliezer and Ishmael (e.g., Levi.Rab. 20:2
ch. 31, cited by Hayyim Kohen),it is possible to see in Hazzan's commentar
Ishmael, which raises him from the company of the"ass-people"to the centr
(154) That is to say, the Messiah is to dominate (ride upon) the"ass-like"p
tiles. The triumphalist quality of Hazzan's exegesis — prior to the"fresh s
marked. Cf. above, n. 147.
(155) Cf. Bahya ben Asher's identification of ha-mizbeah, in verse 9, w
n. 150). Both koh and mizbeah are familiar Kabbalistic representations f
Moses Cordovero, Pardes rimmonim (Munkacz, 1906; reprinted Jerusalem,
ha-kinnuyim; Eliyahu Peretz, Macalot ha-Zohar: mafieah shemot ha-sefirot (Je
igo DAVID J. HALPERIN [48]
And And And we will prostrate ourselves. This

[the Talmudic definition, according to w
stretching out of the arms and the legs.156
And And we will come back to you. This is th
Israel prostrated Israel prostrated himself upon the head o
And And And Abraham took the wood of the bur

son son [Gen 22:6].Thatis, he gave him some
earlier been described,158 and set them up
[the qelippot] and subdue them.
And And And he took in his hand the fire. This
firah of judgment], which he needed at th
(156) BT Berakhot 34b, Megillah 22b,Shevu'ot 16b

ment is very unclear; see the following note. Does
tions characteristic of Muslim worship, performed
on fol 126r, apropos of Ps 143:6, that Muslims typica
the verb used is paras, as opposed to pishshut here.
(157) It is very unclear what Hazzan has in mind. W
often in his commentary, he intends "Israel" to be u
word with two dots, showing he attaches some specia
that he understands the bed (ha-mittah) as Malkhut; se
Jacob Jolies, Sefer qehillat yacaqov (Lemberg, 1870), s
therefore belong together and must be interpreted
ing to the Zohar's exegesis of Gen 47:31 (1,225b, 226b
rah rah Malkhut, the head of the bed to be Yesod, and upo
Sabbatai Zevi, in Hazzan's reading — thus prostrates h
"IsraeP'is a designation for Tif'eret (that is, he worship
tation). But then why is the comment attached to ve-n
ve-nishtahavehve-nishtahaveh ? Alternatively, Hayyim Kohen's
us to suspect an allusion to an eschatological "retu
Gen 47:31 in BT Megillah 16b, which assumes that J
Bahya ben Asher, ad loc.: kedei lahaloq kavod la-malk
will then be : Sabbatai and Ishmael go to Malkhut, w
mael; and the two of them thus return, in the living
execute judgment upon the Gentiles and the qelippot
explained Hazzan's allusion to the Talmudic definit
without any confirming evidence, that Hazzan is cov
qov] raglavqov] raglavqov] raglav el ha-mittah, which seems to d
and the legs"will then mark a reversal of this proces

zan credits both Sabbatai and Ishmael with the abilit
scribed a feat of this sort on the immediately preced
of the position the prophet Elisha assumes while r
Elisha was at least once proposed as a"type"of Sab
Commentary on Lekh-Lekha (Genesis 12-17)" [Heb
tent presumably lies somewhere within this network
(158) In Mullah cAli's story (above).
(159) Presumably, the time of the destruction of th
[49] the SON OF THE MESSIAH 1g1
Lord Lord shall go forth like a mighty man[gibbor], like a

[Isa[Isa 43;13]•160
And And the knife: alluding to the hidden meaning of

shall shall devourflesh[D eut 32:42].
And And And they went both of them together■, meaning
be elevated to a rank equal to his father's.161
And Isaac spoke unto Abraham his father [GenAnd Isaac spoke unto Abraham his father [GenAnd Isaac spoke unto Abraham his father [Gen 22:7] . . .
["fresh start": Hazzan has received the news of Ishmael's death]
. . . This means that Isaac has now become equivalent in rank to his fa
ther Abraham ;162 these being Am i rah and his son. That is why the text
puts them on the same footing: And Isaac spoke unto Abraham his father.
And And he said, My father. This means : I already perceive myself to be my
father [ani margish be-casmi she-ani avi]. His father answered the very
same thing : He said, Here am I, my son — my rank is yours, my level of ele
vation is yours. For it seems to me that, at the time of the revelation]63 the
rank of our Lord Ishmael will be equivalent to Amirah's rank at the
time he was anointed.164 May the Lord show us marvellous matters out
of his holy Torah! This is what I said in my analysis of the passage, And
they they went both of them together.
(But it is not precisely what Hazzan had said in his analysis of the passage,
And they went both of them together. There he had represented Ishmael's
elevation as a future event. Now it is an accomplished fact. Why? Because
Ishmael, like his father, is dead. Like his father, he is marvellously exalted
in the next world; but, also like his father, singularly unhelpful in this one.)
It is also possible to say as follows: And Abraham said unto his young men
[Hazzan backtracks to 22:5]: these are Rahab prince of Ishmael and
Samael prince of Esau, as I have already explained. Abide ye here with the
ass:ass: a. people indeed resembling the ass, as explained above; in accord with
the hidden meaning of ox and ass}65 And I and the lad, both of us together,
( 160) Hazzan presumably understands the conclusion of the verse,"he shall triumph over his
enemies [cal oyvav yitgabbar] 1 to refer to Sabbatai Zevi's victory over the qelippot.
(161) She-yitcalleh gam ken be-macalah ha-shavah le-aviv.Note the tense: the elevation is to take
place in the future.
(162) She-Cattah hayah shaveh be-macalah yishaq el avraham atro.The elevation is now an accom
plishedplished fact.
( 163) Ha-gilluy; presumably the coming revelation of Sabbatai Zevi in his full glory and power.
(164) On the"anointing"of Sabbatai Zevi, which the commentary places in the year 5418
(1657-58),see Scholem,"Perush mizmorei tehillim','p. 163 (Liebes, pp.94-95).
(165) That is, the ox and ass of Gen 32:6 are demonic entities, patrons of Christendom and
1g2 DAVID J. halperin [50]
will go yonder will go yonder [cad koh] : we shal

is called koh; just as I have explained a
(But this is not quite as he had explain

would ascend with Malkhut, and that he
to that sefirah. But that the two of them
khutkhut is something new.)
The hidden meaning of the passage, And

will will come back to you, is that we will
means that they will yet again be oblig
we we will come back to you, until the t
God's wisdom has elapsed.
(The point seems to be that Sabbatai and

— will reappear as Gentiles even at th
diction contrasts sharply with Hazzan'
lam is merely a temporary expedient, pa
For, in my own opinion, the Turkish

spark of Ishmael son of Abraham — wil
even after the Revelation [that is, th
attend him and minister to him; bless
ourselves heard that Am ira h did not
tan] ; and, at all events, it appears that
some measure of rank with Ami rah.
For the time being, at least, Hazzan h

sented Islam as organized lunacy, tha
stanstantinople Jews' derogation of the su
(above, n. 130). He now seems disposed
religion; favored, indeed, above Juda
21:17 to mean that Ishmael, Abraham's f
serves the double portion — not only i
tion of Am i rah's kingdom, inasmuch as
Islam, of whom Jacob/Sabbatai has made himself

(166) "They"is presumably Sabbatai and Ishmael,
men" the patrons of Christendom and Islam.
(167) Ha-zeman ve-ha-memshalah; which I take t
Gentile) dominion.
entered and abided by his religion, honoring it

missions.. . . This is the meaning of and we will com
plained above : he is going to exalt their power e
[! ha-hitcallemut],in accord with that which the Lor
grant them"(fol 108v).
The reference to"Occultation"— the normal Sa
Sabbatai's death — is strange. Surely Hazzan mea
tion" as he did earlier. His Freudian slip reflects
that Ishmael Zevi, too, has"disappeared."
Only now is Hazzan able to return to the point fro
after his"fresh start,"and to take up the rest of Gen
wood;wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering? T
still the sefirah Gevurah. But the wood is no longer
mael had been learning to chop up, but the Gentiles
now disappearing from the picture, Hazzan is beg
terpretation of 22:3 he had given near the begin
(fol 14V; above, sec. 6). As in his earlier exegesis,
burning burning "dried-up trees" (ces1m yeveshim), and
to them.
As for the lamb for a burnt-offering (colah, the root meaning of which implies
"ascent"), it is the Jewish people, who do not seem to have any visible merit
by which they might be raised to the appropriate rank. God, therefore, will
provide for it (Gen 22:8). The sefirah Binah, now appropriately "mended" by
Sabbatai Zevi's powers, will be willing to redeem Israel on account of the
Messiah's deeds and not their own.
This is the meaning of the lamb for colah my son [22:8]. The lamb, which is
Israel, will be raised on my account and yours; this is the meaning of my
son.son. (Similarly, Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai said [to his son Eleazar] : You and
I are sufficient I are sufficient to maintain the world.)16* So they went both of them together, mean
ing that Israel will be redeemed by the merits of both.

And And they came to the place [2 2:9] : the two of them, fused together [yahad[yahad[yahad
be-yihudam],be-yihudam],be-yihudam], came to that place that is covertly indicated in the passage
Blessed Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place [Ezek 3:12]. [fol 108v]
Hazzan expounds the rest of verse g to refer to Binah's crowning of Sabbatai

Zevi, his building up the structure of Malkhut (altar), his deciding which of
the Gentiles (wood ) deserve to be burnt up and which may survive as Israel's
servants (fols 108v-10gr).
(168) BT Shabbat 33b.
And And he bound [va-yacaqod] Isaac his son

inexpressible heights of the well-known W
him him, upon the altar, meaning that he w
[fol îogr].
These words are Hazzan's valediction to Ishmael Zevi. Equal to his father in
merit, inseparably fused with him — which is to say, dead like him — Ishmael
is honorably dismissed to the inexpressible heights of the sefirotic domain.
He still exists as a supernatural entity, and if he could be in some way distin
guished from his father (which he cannot) he might still be of some interest.
As a human being, he is of no interest whatever. Even while describing Ish
mael's last and loftiest exaltation, Hazzan does not call him by name. He will
not mention him again.
8.The Redemption of Ishmael
Who, then, is the little boy on Abraham's altar? Hazzan pro
And Abraham And Abraham stretchedforth his hand, and took the knife to slay h
Gen 22:10]. [The word] et designates a ribbuy of beno [that is

thing else is intended, along with beno, as object of the verb l
reference being to Ishmael,who is Isaac's ribbuy [which we m
freely, as'Tsaac's double"or"Isaac's shadow"].170
His [Abraham's] intention was to say, [Ishmael] has already
consumed his world, now let him perish from the world. An
the the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Ab
twice; meaning, You are father to both of them!. . . And he
thy thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing [me'umah] un
Do not inflict a blemish [mum]111 on the kingdom of the ho
which must rule over all the nations and all seventy of their
( 16g) Isaiah Tishby provides a concise discussion of the colam ha-aqudim

the complexities of Lurianic Kabbalah : Torat ha-rac ve-ha-qelippah be-qabbala
usalem,1g84),pp.28-29.These details do not affect Hazzan's essential point,
Isaac"really signifies the dispatch of Ishmael Zevi to the heights of the sef
( 170) Et leshon ribbuy shelbeno ha-kawanah calyishmaCDelshe-hu ribbuyo shel
pie of ribbuy, see sec. 5, above. (BT Pesahim 2 2b, which I offered as an example
n. 109,is actually quoted by Hazzan on fol 63a.) In Gen 22:!o,according to
object of lishhot is Ishmael, Isaac's ribbuy, that is to say, the one whose inclu
is signaled by the word et.
(171) Based on Gen.f?.56:7(Theodor-Albeck[ed.],p.603).
(172) And which would therefore be blemished if Ishmael(the Muslims)
existence.
in order that all may acknowledge the supernal unif

of of [Sabbatai Zevi's] faith be made ruler over all cr
For For now I know that thou art a God-fearing man, seeing
thy thy son Ishmael, thine only son (for he is Isaac's ribb
now been perfecdy mended by Isaac, who is Ami r
to be called your sons, and your name is to be united
[fol 109a].
One stands in awe at the extraordinary boldness of this exegetical move. Hay
yim Kohen, as we have seen, had made heavy use of the ribbuy technique in
interpreting Genesis 22. Like Hazzan, he had included lishhot et beno among
the chapter's ribbuyim. But Kohen had turned this"inclusion"into an indirect
exclusion exclusion of the encroacher Ishmael :"[Isaac] was [Abraham's] single, solitary,
unique son ; Ishmael was not called his son, inasmuch as he was the offspring
of a Gentile slave woman!'Any Muslim claim on the Aqedah was thereby re
pelled. Now, in what can be read only as a stunning and unprecedented ca
pitulation to Islam, Hazzan draws precisely the opposite inference from this
ribbuy ribbuy : "You are father to both of them !... Both of them are to be called your
sons, and your name is to be united with them!'
We may presume that "Abraham's" initial intent, to annihilate the Muslims
once they had completed their enjoyment of their worldly prosperity (kevar
hishlimhishlim le'ekhol colamo), corresponds roughly to Kohen's expectations of the fi
nal judgment. It corresponds fairly exacdy to the more extreme revenge fan
tasies of Hazzan's own triumphalist eschatology.174Now this intent is repudi
ated. Ishmael son of Hagar, in whom the world of Islam is represented, has
become the hero and focus of Hazzan's Aqedah.
The"Isaac"of Genesis 2 2 thus undergoes a series of dazzling transforma
tions.Up to this point, he has been understood to stand for Ishmael Zevi.He
very briefly (in the passage just quoted) represents Sabbatai Zevi, by whom
Ishmael / Islam is"perfectly mended"(nitqan tiqqun shalem)Vb Later on, he will
come to stand for the Jewish people, an equation that seems natural and ap
propriate for a Jewish commentator. And, in several crucial passages of Haz
zan's Aqedah commentary, he is transformed into his brother Ishmael.
(173) Yityahed, a play on the text's yehidekha.

(174) Fol 57r-v; above, n.133. Hazzan subsequently comments that Sabbatai Zevi became
like the Gentile desert and its qelippot that he had wanted to destroy (fol 118v, apropos of
Ps 102:7); this confirms that Hazzan assumed Sabbatai's original purpose was to destroy "Ish
mael."(The comparison of the Gentiles to dry trees links Hazzan's exegesis of Psalm 102 [fol118v
top] to that of the Aqedah [fols 14V, 108v].)
(175) The equation of Sabbatai with Abraham, however, remains in place throughout Haz
zan's Aqedah commentary.
196 DAVI D J. HAI.PE RI N [54]
We recall that, in Isaiah Horowitz's readin

be" (nitbattel) in be" (nitbattel) in be" (nitbattel) in be" (nitbattel) in the course of the sacrifice, and was in effect replaced by anew
and holier creature from on high. We may set Hazzan's Aqedah parallel to
this. Ishmael Zevi similarly "ceases to be"— so we may regard his unexplained
and permanent disappearance — and is replaced by the prototypical Mus
lim Ishmael.
It is clear, in any case, that the climax of Hazzan's Aqedah is the redemp
tion of Ishmael ; who is normally (though not always)176 put on terms of equal
ity with Isaac. Abraham/Sabbatai, who had initially planned to annihilate
him, instead slaughters and burns up a harsh and persecuting people (the
Ukrainian Cossacks, evidently) who are represented by the"ram'.'177By this
act, Ishmael is redeemed (padah bo et yishmac'el).
Because Because thou hast done (meaning, you have mended . . . )mthis thing, and
hast hast not withheld (meaning, you have not allowed to walk in darkness)179
thy thy son, thine only son (the ribbuy of your son, the ribbuy of your only son, this
being Ishmael) — as reward for this, with a blessing I will bless thee: two
blessings, one for the one [Isaac, the Jews], one for the other [Ishmael,
the Muslims]. And in multiplying I will multiply — two times — thy seed,
whichever seed of yours it may happen to be, both of them being equally
good. As the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is upon the seashore:
the holy seed will be as the stars of the heaven ; and the second, which has
entered beneath the Shechinah's wings, will be as the sand which is upon
(176) In the passage quoted above, Hazzan represents Ishmael as one of the seventy nations
to be ruled by the house of David.
(177) Hazzan does not name this "harsh nation','although he later refers to it symbolically as
"Amalek"(fol togv). His allusions to the Bible (Dan 8:5-8) and the midrash (Gen. R. 2:4 and par
allels, especially Pesiqt.R. 33:11) suggest that he equates it with the Greeks. He cannot thereby
intend Christendom as a whole; since both Edom and Ishmael (represented by Abraham's two
"young men") later find their redemption. Contemporary sources, however, use yevanim to des
ignate Greek Orthodox Christians; that is to say, the Ukrainians who perpetrated the horrors
of 1648 (Jacob Katz,"Beyn tatnu le-tah-tat," in Halahhah and Kabbalah: Studies in the History ofJew
ishish Religion, its Various Faces and Social Relevance [Jerusalem, 1984], pp.31 ]-30, esp. pp. 322-24).
This would suit Hazzan's description of the'harsh nation"as persecuting and indeed proscrib
ingjudaism ; as well as Nathan of Gaza's influential prophecy that, at Sabbatai's glorious advent,
"there will be no slaughter among the uncircumcised"except in"the lands of Ashkenaz,"by
which Poland and Russia are evidently meant (Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 273,287-88, quoting
Nathan's 1665 letter to Raphael Joseph ; cf. Joseph Halevi's reference [February 1667; in Sas
portas, Sisat novel Sevi, p. 248] to nevu'at satan ashkenazi she-be-azzah she-amar she-hu yinqom niqmat
harugeiharugei polony a).
(178) Hazzan supports his interpretation of casita by citing Gen 12:5, ha-nefesh asher casu,
which the midrash had explained as referring to the"souls"converted to Judaism by Abraham
and Sarah (e.g., Gen. Rab. 39:14).
(179) Playing on hasakhta 'withheld'and hoshekh 'darkness.'
[55] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 1g7
the the the seashore. . . . And in thy seed shall all the nat
this is what I said earlier, that all the rest of the
lek [Ukrainians] excepted, shall be mended an
true faith] on account of Am ira H and his act
then that Abraham returned unto his young men,
his his young men, who have earlier been discusse
patrons of Christendom and Islam] to their Fat
rose rose up and went together, all of them as one, to
pounding Gen 22:16-1g].
The modern reader can hardly fail to be moved

near-universal salvation and harmony, with Isaa
in the divine blessing. For Hazzan himself, however
brought little but pain and grief. Never had he wis
vellous a prospect for Islam — that "twisted," "v
whose adherents"mock and ridicule us . . . devo
He expresses his bitterness in an intense prayer, an
with which he closes his commentary on the A
The prayer in question is a glossed and expande

binedbined : the ribbono shel colam prayer, recited in t
ter the Aqedah[81 and Isa 63:15-16. It will be rec
was a part of the Lurianic tiqqun rahel, and one wh
Sabbatian believers continued to recite even at t
enthusiasm of 1666.182 In his more somber momen
Hazzan might turn for inspiration to the sorro
edly outmoded tiqqun rahel.
As the prayer unfolds, Hazzan reminds the de
ished the Jews by making them jealous with a non
3232:21 ),whom he has brought near to himself and
compelled the Jews to enter. (They deserve to be d
Hazzan says — divinely appointed though it is, tiqq
naval naval 'vile nation' is the gay lavan 'white nation
ban that is its marker.183 Now, he implores, let th
(180) Above, sec. 6.

(181) Birnbaum, Daily Prayer Book, pp. 21-24. Hazzan's Aq
duced and concluded by the two prayers (zokhrenu be-zikkaro
frame the liturgical recitation of the Genesis passage; see abo
(182) Above,nn.46,48.
(183) Interpreting this passage in accord with f0150v (above
spelled backwards.
launch an attack upon that turban!84God

his great name; which, with the Messia
among the nations ?185He surely cannot h
his people?
For God — says Hazzan, quoting Isa 63
left to the Jews .'Abraham does not know
Ishmael's behalf, till [or, perhaps,"while"]
through the painful trials inflicted on us
lical text of course does not mention Is
—— but even Abraham the merciful does n
pain of bringing up children, does not re
"Israel," as often in Hazzan's comment
Zevi.187"Abraham"is perhaps also Sabba
haps the sefirah Hesed (which is the focu
lical patriarch himself. Most likely, he is
realizes to his sorrow — as many Jewis
have realized to their sorrow — this "Abraham" seems oblivious to the an
guish of his faithful. His thoughts and prayers are for Ishmael alone!88
(184) Ve-Cattah yagollu pe[rush] ha-senif ha-megulgal ke-galgalyitgolel calav middat ha-rahamim ve
zehuyagolluzehuyagollu rahamekha cal middotekha — a brilliant and nearly untranslatable series of plays on the
root gll. ( Hazzan's starting point, the words yagollu rahamekha cal middotekha, are quoted from the
ribbonoribbono shel colam prayer.) I understand yitgolel cal in accord with Gen 43:18; cf. Eliezer Ben Ye
huda, A Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew ( Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1948), vol. 2, p.783.
( 185) Following Isa 63:15,and indicating Sabbatai's conversion with a brief allusion to Isa 53:5.
(186) Following Ps 44:26.
(187) The remark that'Tie knows the pain of bringing up children" (yadac be-v/ar giddul
banirh),banirh), though taken almost verbatim from the Talmudic passage that plainly served as Hazzan's
inspiration (BT Shabbat 89b; see below), may be an oblique allusion to Ishmael Zevi.Cf. Gen.R.
55:1, which commends Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his son ahar kol ha-sacar ha-zeh;
that is, the pain of begetting a child at age one hundred. (I quote the text of the standard edi
tion, which is the text Hazzan is likely to have known,in preference to that of Theodor and Al
beck.) But it is worth remembering that, according to Jacob Najara, Ishmael Zevi was given the
name"Israel"at his circumcision (above, sec. 2).
(188) There is perhaps an anticipation of this point in Hayyim Kohen's Torat hakham (vol. 1,
col.col. 39b), which seems to maintain that it is Abraham's prayers that bear the responsibility for
Islam's triumphs. Kohen starts from BT Pesahim 119b, which represents Abraham as refusing to
say the blessing at the eschatological feast, on the ground that'Tshmael came forth from mer He
explains this by misquoting BT Shabbat 8gb, to the effect that the Jews do not want to turn to
Abraham"who prayed 0 that Ishmael might live before you! [Gen 17:18]. . . .You told God that I
should not say the blessing because I prayed for Ishmael ... it was [thus] on account of me that
the nature of Ishmael {tiv^o shelyishma"el\ the Muslim religion, presumably] went forth into the
world: on account of that prayer of mine ... it was written, !have blessed him and multiplied him
very greatly [bi-me'odvery greatly [bi-me'odvery greatly [bi-me'od meod; 17:20]. So how can I say the blessing now [at the eschatological feast]?"
(All this is original with Kohen; the passage he invokes from Shabbat 89b represents the Jews
as avoiding Abraham for entirely different reasons.) We may note in this connection that Sab
[57] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 1gg
And what of Isaac? Isa 63:16 speaks only of "Abraha

Isaac out. If we are to appreciate Hazzan's treatment
must read it against the midrash on this verse in BT
Rabbi Samuel bar Nahmani said in the name of Rabbi J

the meaning of the text, For you are our father. For Ab
us us and Israel does not recognize us. You, Lord, are our fath
name name has existed eternally.
God is going to say to Abraham,"Your children h

me." And [Abraham] answers him,"Master of the un
wiped out for the sake of your name's holiness."
[God] says,"Let me speak to Jacob, who has had th
up children. Perhaps he will seek mercy for them'.'An
"Your children have sinned."And [Jacob] answers him,
verse, let them be wiped out for the sake of your nam
[God] says,"Old men have no sense ; litde ones have n
says to Isaac,"Your children have sinned against me.
"Master of the universe!" [Isaac] answers."Are they
not yours? When they gave precedence to we will obey
[Exod 24:7],you called them my firstborn son [Exod 4:
are my children and notyours ? How much sinning ha
over? How long does a person live ? Seventy years. Subtr
years, for which one is not punished, and fifty remai
five years for night-times, and twenty-five remain. Su
half years for time spent praying and eating and sittin
twelve and a half remain. Will you yourself bear all [t
Splendid! If not, then give me half and you take ha
me to bear all of them — I sacrificed my very life to y
[The Jews] burst out, You [Isaac] are our father! Isaac
stead of praising me, praise God." And Isaac indicates G
his eyes.189 Whereupon they lift their eyes to heaven
are our father and redeemer;your name has existed eternal
batai Zevi's followers attached particular significance to the bless

Jacob Najara represents Sabbatai as twice quoting it in the sultan's p
ducingjews to convert to Islam ( Amarillo"Tecudot shabbeta' iyyot m
illo," pp. 255,259-60). Abraham Cuenque, writing about 1690, tells a
sultan puts his finger on that verse in Sabbatai's copy of the Bible,
it to him."That" says Sabbatai,"represents your power of survival. It is
that you [plural] have obtained dominion'.' Sabbatai explains the v
sultan bursts into tears (Jacob Emden, Torat ha-qena'ot [Amsterdam
1971 ],p. 20a).Muslim controversialists had in fact made substanti
out that its words bi-me'od me'od have the gematria value of Muham
(189) Translating beceneh in place of becenayho; cf. the reading of
Hazzan was certainly familiar with the Ta

cob's"pain of bringing up children'all bu
His predecessors, Isaiah Horowitz and Ha
their own homiletics (above, sec. 5). Th
Talmud's assurance that Isaac is not indi
when the Jews are threatened by God's ju
audacious and witty defense that rests ult
at the Aqedah.
But Hazzan will have none of this. The
timism of the Talmudic aggadah,and the f
rash, could not be sharper. For Hazzan,
because there is not even a shadow of hop
GevurahGevurah might show mercy.
We recall that an earlier "Isaac"of Haz

said to have been called"Isaac"because"he was born in a time in which the
dinimdinim had the upper hand over the hasadim" and therefore "came into th
world turban-wearing."Is it too much to imagine that Hazzan's reflection,
the disappearance of Isaac from the Isaiah verse, may be his last look bac
at his vanished child-Messiah — the unredeemed and now forgotten victi
of the Sabbatian Aqedah?
9. The Evidence ofYakhini and Cuenque
I am aware that my interpretation of the"fresh start"on fol 108a,as I have laid

it out in the past two sections, has involved considerable speculation. Some
readers may therefore hesitate to accept it. But I would remind those readers
that it is not speculation that Ishmael Zevi appears unexpectedly in Hazzan's
commentary, rapidly swells in importance until he becomes a Messianic fig
ure overshadowing Sabbatai Zevi himself, and then abruptly vanishes, never
to be mentioned again. (Approximately one-fifth of the commentary remains
after the Aqedah is finished.) To account for this phenomenon, we have no
choice but to posit that Ishmael disappointed Hazzan's expectations in some
manner so drastic and terrible that Hazzan could find no way to speak of it,
and therefore chose silence.191 An adult, perhaps, might have accomplished
(igo) He may also, of course, have been aware of On./f.f>7:7 (Theodor-Albeck [ed.J.pp. 76:2
73 ) ; which,unlike the Talmud, represents Isaac's absence from Isa 63:16 in a very unsympathetic
light. The fact that he preferred a negative understanding of Isaac's absence, over the positive
interpretation with which he was certainly familiar, continues to demand explanation.
(191) We may compare the Sabbatians' initial reaction to the news of Sabbatai's death:
Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 918-19.
[59] the son of the Messiah 201
this by publicly and vehemently repud

upon him. But what could a ten- or eleve
have had such an effect, other than to di
Once one grants that Hazzan must hav
course of writing his commentary, one c
slight irregularities in Hazzan's writing —
well as his discourse — may be clues to
ery must have had on his thinking.
This proposition, of course, can be ea
discover a single unambiguous and relia
after 1680, my entire reconstruction w
ing our brains for some other solution
commentary.
If Meir Benayahu is right that Ishmae
Zevi are one and the same, my view at
has shown that Isaac Zevi lived at least
no direct evidence for his identificatio
is, it suffers from a number of implausi
to accept. (See the Excursus.) The longe
relevance to us.
There remain two pieces of post-1680 evidence: an allusion to Ishmael

Zevi in Abraham Yakhini's Vavei ha-amudim{\681 )]92 which Scholem andBena
yahu understood to mean that Ishmael was still alive ; and the references to
Ishmael at the end of Abraham Cuenque's hagiography of Sabbatai Zevi.
These data now demand our attention.
Vavei Vavei Vavei ha-amudim survives in only one manuscript: the author's autograph,
MS Oxford Bodley Heb. c.2 (no. 2761 in Neubauer's catalog).193 It has never
been published, little studied. I cannot claim to have read more than a frac
tion of this sprawling text, and therefore must be somewhat tentative in my
interpretation of the passage that concerns us. I think it clear, however, that
the passage does not imply that Ishmael Zevi is still alive. It suggests, if any
thing, the opposite.
(192) Scholem argues for the date of the text as follows: On fol tir, col. 2, Yakhini gives the
current year as [5)441 (fe-s/1atta da de-saleq hushban purqanah [‫ ;)]הנקרופ‬and, on fol tov, col. 2,re
cords a dream which he dates to 25 Nisan. Hence the terminus a quo.The terminus ad quern is the
beginning of 5442 (autumn 1681),when Yakhini died. See Scholem,"Perush mizmorei tehillim,"
p.p.208,n.58(Liebes,p. 106,misrepresents Scholem's citation of the manuscript); cf.Scholem,
"Two New Theological Texts by Abraham Cardozo" [Hebrew],Sefunot 3-4(1960)248.
(193) I am grateful to the Bodleian Library (and particularly to Ms. Doris Nicholson, Senior
Library Assistant) for providing me with an electrostatic copy of the manuscript.
The central theme of Yakhini's book i

which seems at first glance a verbatim
three occurrences of the letter vav that a
This slight variation takes on weighty sig
midrash on Exod 25:3-6(Yakhini attribu
to which the oil for the light of verse 6 is
Yakhini infers that, following the sin of
three vav s to this text foreshadowing
explore every conceivable Biblical and
shed light on the mystery of the triple va
Among his myriads of possible associatio
the three vav s of Gen 16:15: nc^ Hagar b
the the name of his son, whom Hagar had born
There is a precious mystery here. For it

hehad[etkolasherlo]toIsaachehad[etkolasherlo]toIsaac [
Messiah, inasmuch as laughter for all th

gave to him [that is, to Sabbatai Zevi]
mael)ashermael)asher 10 (536, [the numerica
nique] of milluyf.:97 [That is, et kol asher
thus given a son whose name was Ishm
he [Ishmael] be mended through a supern
own eyes the mystery of the Mending o
Zevi through the light of Supernal Wi
This is the mystery of those three vav s
[Exod 35:8], mystery of the true Mess
of the lofty faith of our master, the mys
And And Hagar bore [Gen 16:15], will be w
Messiah [that is,Exod 35:8].
This is why the years of the life of Ishm
Torah. And in the aggadah he is called his
while Isaac is called his leaf [Ps 1:3] ; for
(194) Ve-shemen in place of shemen, u-vesamim in pl

neinei shoham( fol 31•, col. 2). La-ma'or and la-efod a
but Yakhini apparendy does not count these vavs
(195) Tanhuma, Terumah #7; Tanh.Buber, Terum
( 196) The three vav s are the opening letters of va-t
(197) That is, counting the total numerical value
(saddei, bet,yod) that make(saddei, bet,yod) that make up the name
537, not 536.

(198) That is,Ishmael is Abraham's timely fruit; following Gen. R. 61:1.
tery of light from the flame[s?] of Gevurah}.99 Bu

speak at length [fol 55r, col. 1],
Scholem quotes most of the first paragraph of this

verse on), and provides a reading of it very differe
sumed in my translation?00The last sentence of tha
calize it: ha la-mashiah ityehiv bar shemehyishmac'e[l] v
be-razabe-raza cillaah ki-de-hazinan le-aynin raza de-tiqq
taitai] s[evi] bi-nehiru de-hokhmeta cilla ah.The key wo
it, naturally enough, as sevi, and glosses it to mean t
Zevi." He would presumably have translated the
Messiah was thus given a son whose name was Ish
Scholem's reading has the obvious advantage th
that, in an explicitly Sabbatian text, the word ‫יבצ‬
some formidable disadvantages. Bar shemeh yishma
lessly verbose and awkward way of making the poin
Zevi. Why not just say,"a son whose name was Ishm
Yakhini, writing when Ishmael either was alive o
year or two, need to make this point at all? The de-
lem's reading of the text, very difficult to underst
ve-yittaqanve-yittaqan or ve-ihu yittaqan.
All of these problems disappear if we vocalize s

as the masculine singular participle of the verb m
"mending"— or perhaps we should understand,
(1gg) De-ihu raza de-or me-reshef [‫נ‬1‫ ]פשר‬gevurah.l am not certa

be read as singular or plural.The use of the medial j!« does not exc
Yakhini often (though not uniformly) uses medial pe at the en
often writes final yod as an unobtrusive hook attached to the pre
possible, although I confess that in this case the yod is so unob
plural reading better suits the content of the passage, since
alluding to Song 8:6 (reshafeha rishpei esh) and the Zoharic
245a; II, 114a; Tiqqunei Zohar 1 [Zhitomir, [ed.] p. 18a]). Assum
cation of esh with the sefirah Gevurah, and the equation rishpei
self naturally.
(200) "Perush mizmorei tehillim"p.173(Liebes, p. 106); foll
Movement Movement in Greece, p. 167.
(201) As in the Zoharic phrase savei le-memar (used several ti

ishtaddelaishtaddela be-khuUa(ll,fe,b). On the use of the participle to c
and in the following ki-de-hazinan, cf. Menahem Zevi Kaddari, Th
"Z0Aar"(Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1g57), pp.85-86.(Note that, a
from 11, îoga, Yakhini begins his sentence with perfect ityehiv)
earlier subject,cf.fol 8r,col. 2:. . . de-olef mosheh le-galla'ah razi
q[udsha] bferikh] h[u] de-galle leh razin illen ve-ihu olef Ion le-yisra'e
Zevi will then no longer be a future event

seems to have understood the passage), b
wishedwishedfor during his lifetime. He had per
ual, witnessed by Yakhini and others, in or
"through the light of Supernal Wisdom!'
the light that shines into this world throug
his understanding of Exod 35:8,is Sabbat
What shall we make of the allusions in Ya
clear understanding of Yakhini's Kabbali
sent possess,any interpretation is bound to
Gen 25:17, with which the paragraph begin
cal Ishmael ; and that Song 8:6, to which to
he speaks of "the flame[s?] of Gevurah" (ab
imagery. This will permit the conjecture
rashic exegesis of piryo yitten be-itto as r
that the Messiah yielded up the fruit of his
What prompted Yakhini to introduce t
mael Zevi? Recall that, according to our
Nisan 1668 (above, sec. 2); recall that the
age thirteen (Gen 17:2 5 ) ; recall that this t
enough to Nathan of Gaza that he proph
undergo a symbolic blood-drawing at that
of the Sabbatian faithful had great expe
fascinating subject of Ishmael's penis — of
of their Messiah turned thirteen.That mom
Nisan 1681,perhaps no more than a month
sage we have been considering.204 Only,
The calendar's reminder, of how the be
with ironic frustration, may well have evo
thoughts may well have turned to the one
be perfected through the sefirotic light th
like the fruit of Ps 1:3,had to be yielded u
(202) Cf. fol 31‫־‬,col. 1: Ve-shemen la-ma'orda mashiah

It seems reasonably clear from the context of fol 3r t
nical Kabbalistic sense of the sefirah Hokhmah.l am
tion between hokhmah cilla'ah and hokhmeta Hlla'ah
Ishmael, (she-hayah mehunnan) be-or ha-hokhmah ha-c
(203) Cf. the use of be-itto'm]ob 5:26.
(204) Above, n. 192.1 see no reason why Yakhini could
that separate the date "2 5 Nisan"from the Ishmael
has a hasty, ill-planned, stream-of-consciousness qua
[63] THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 2O5
This leaves the testimony of Abraham Cuenque.

at the very end of his account of the life of Sabbat
fanciful stories about Sabbatai's death, and about
drous death of Nathan of Gaza, Cuenque reverts t
Sarah,Sabbatai Zevi's wife,dwelt in the king's palace

Ishmael. The lad grew, and took his father's pla
the dignitaries of the kingdom, a young man like
heard from reliable sources that Ishmael is expert,
wisdom and knowledge. If the scholars are in do
they seek out his opinion and he responds to every
et pivet pivet piv u-meshiv le-khol shoel].
I saw with my very own eyes, while I was in the

iting the ga'on Rabbi Naphtali, nr-v (who curren
position in Posen)207that there was an importan
Rabbi Ephraim who had been born in Ostrog bu
rah in the Jewish metropolis of Salonika; and h
Ishmael Zevi's and his lofty reply, matters excee
with my own eyes; and there are many similar thi
There seems no doubt that Cuenque,writing abou

Zevi as still alive, hobnobbing with Ottoman dignita
and answering scholars' inquiries on the basis of
(The verbs yidreshu and meshiv might conceivab
in the past, but they are far more naturally render
Apropos of Ishmael's erudition, Cuenque describ
"Rabbi Ephraim"; who produced a document,evid
onika,onika, which purported to be a"query"of Ishma
{she'elah{she'elah mi-yishmac:>el sevi u-teshuvato ha-rama
counter to 1688 or 1689, and has identified the man
Kohen of Ostrog, whose biography Benayahu desc
What are we to make of this? It will not do to sup
Ishmael had died years before but that Cuenque w
(2c>5) Preserved in Emden, 70raf ha-qenaot, pp.16a-21b.The

(206) Using the language of Song 5:15.
(207) That is.Naphtali b. Isaac Katz( 1645-1719),who served a
1689, in Posen from 16go to 1704(Yehoshua Horowitz, in Encycl
vol. 10, col. 826).
(208) Shabbatean Movement in Greece, pp. 117-46.00 the con te
ten years of travel through Europe, raising money for his com
yahu,"Iggerot Rabbi Avraham Cuenque le-Rabbi Yehudah Br
he had never visited the Balkan regions

years for momentous news like Ishmael
batian grapevines.
Now, the reader will have already not
que's account. Sarah, who in reality die
sented as having oudived him.This is only
ing only a few years earlier, Baruch of A
that Sabbatai's journey to Albania at th
posed by the sultan; although, naturally
he could.211Not so Cuenque. It was Sabb
strike out on his own,far away from the
held to this purpose, despite the grovel
insists, moreover, that Sabbatai left Sarah
palace, where they remained after his dea
Yet he must have known better. Meir Ro
door) that Elijah Zevi had brought Sabbata
bania to Adrianople after Sabbatai's de
leagues in Hebron at the beginning of 168
(20g) "Barukhyah rosh ha-shabbeta'im be-Salon

p.p. 364 n. 144.
(210) Whether one accepts Scholem's or Amarillo

batai's marriages (above, n. 24).
(211 (211 ) Freimann,cInyanei Shabbetai Set«, p. 66. B
batai remarried; although he seems to date her de
and to connect it with Sabbatai's suit of Aaron Maj
woman.(He reports the event immediately after q
1672.) Since I follow Scholem's identification of H
am obliged to see this as an error on Baruch's pa
Baruch knew, i.that Sabbatai had originally sought
Adrianople; 2. that he was not married to Sarah
only before Sabbatai, but also before any subsequ
Majar's daughter. What Baruch did not know wa
vorced in 1671, and that this was when Sabbatai ha
Jacob Najara). He therefore conflated Sabbatai's
his resumption of it (1674), and drew the conclusi
died while Sabbatai was still in Adrianople. This
tirely different order of magnitude from the gro
(212) "He said to the king, I want to leave this pla
Won't Won't you tell me what you are lacking in my palac
Zevi replied: I do not lack anything, but I must tell yo
some some inactivity. Let me be on my own!" etc. (Torat ha-
(213) Above, n.28.
(214) When they appear together as signatorie
Levi to act as emissary collecting funds for the
enough for Cuenque to have obtained from Rofe —

some account of Sabbatai's last years that was closer to
surd tales of his hagiography. In retailing these storie
acting in good faith?13
We may assume, therefore, that he was writing delib
he wrote of Ishmael Zevi. He never says unambiguousl
he does not add after his name any formula like nr
tali Katz, his host in Ostrog) or yr-h ; he expresses no
Ishmael will step into his father's place as savior. He is
ways. The less well-informed among his readers, w
mael's death, will naturally assume that the Messianic
the Turkish court, and will take heart from that. Y
vague enough that those who know Ishmael is dead
vict him of a lie.
What of the document he allegedly saw in Ostrog? E

telling the truth, it is striking that he says nothing a
"query of Ishmael Zevi's and his lofty reply, matters
idently cannot remember what the query and reply w
not not thinkitis worth communicating. Whateveritw
boy exercise, dating from Ishmael's brief stay in Salon
Filosoff,Filosoff, which Ephraim Kohen had kept as a mem
to have made any great impression on Cuenque at t
rospect.ofrospect.of course,he is eager to play up its impor
follow him. Nor are we obliged to take this supposed d
Ishmael had become a great talmid hakhamim, or that
eleventh birthday.
We have thus weighed the two bits of evidence th
show that Ishmael Zevi lived into the 1680s, and have found both of them
wan ting. The first has been misinterpreted by modern scholars ; the second is
a deliberate falsehood.
The Sabbatians had remained silent about Sabbatai's death for as long as
they possibly could?16 When Ishmael died, their silence remained unbroken.
We find his death explicitly mentioned more than seventy years after the
event, in one of a long series of hostile glosses that Jacob Emden attached to
Cuenque's hagiography when he published it in his Torat ha-qena'ot (1752)?''
"R. Meir Rofe's Letters of 1675-80 to R. Abraham Rovigo" [Hebrew],Sefunot 3-4(1960) 127-28.
(215) Even if we suppose that Cuenque innocently misidentified Sabbatai's widow as Sarah,
he cannot possibly have stated without duplicity that she had never left the sultan's court.
(216) Scholerti,Sabbatai Sew, pp. 918-19.
(217) Scholem (ibid., p. 935) attributes these glosses to Moses Hagiz. But I believe this rests on a
misreading of Emden's statement,in his preface to Cuenque's narrative, that Hagiz had"noted a
208 david j. halperin [66]
Emden cannot let stand Cuenque's g

Not so, he tells us; rather, Sabbatai's o
pure pure birth died an Ishmaelite; and Sa
without without any survivor (p. 21 b ). E
jingle, patched together from severa
the utter and exemplary exterminat
This is, as far as I know, the earl
death. The child-savior's enthusiasts
oblivion, it remained for his enemie
10. After the Aqedah
And what will become of Israel Hazzan, now that Ishmael Zevi is gone? Im
mediately after the end of the prayer that concludes Hazzan's Aqedah (above,
sec.8),the handwriting marks a"fresh start"(fol 1 torj.The Aqedah,which Ha
zan had evidently planned to be the climactic ending of his commentary on
the Sabbatian tiqqun hasot, is past; Hazzan has been cheated of whatever sal
vation he had anticipated. After a hiatus of unknown length, he returns to his
composition, taking up a fresh series of Biblical passages that did not form
part of the tiqqun hasot.
Were it not for the fact that this portion of the commentary contains a
cross-reference to an interpretation of 1 Sam 2:1-10 (fol 114V) — which shows
that Hazzan felt obliged to say something about this text, but excused him
self on the ground that it had already been expounded elsewhere — I would
have assumed that these additional passages were of his own choosing. As it
is, I can only suppose that they are drawn from some other liturgical sequence
which I cannot now identify (above, n. 53). The series certainly begins appro
priately enough with Job 28:3, the context of which Hazzan takes as refer
ring to Israel's times of exile : He has put an end to darkness.
Hazzan's Messianic hope revives, though Ishmael Zevi is of course no longer
any part of it.Islam gradually slides from the amazing grace that,in the depth
of his despair, Hazzan had attributed to it. Not long after beginning this sec
tion of the commentary, he sets forth a remarkable theory, based on what
seems to be a misinterpretation of Nathan of Gaza, to the effect that the Mus
lims' purpose in washing their hands and feet before prayer is to use the wa
ter to knead the dust of their feet into agotem.They use this golem"to make a
few items"in the margins of the text,"and we have presented his statements, in his name,each
in its proper place"(70rat ha-Qena'ot, p. 16a).Sure enough, a few of the glosses are introduced by
Hagiz's initials (e.g., p. 18a, where Emden quotes a suggestion of Hagiz's and then offers a long
response to it, introduced by the words amar ha-meqanne).Where these initials are absent, as is
normally the case, we must assume that the gloss is Emden's own.
connection"— with supernal entities, evidently.218 T

than as saying, was Abraham's purpose in wanting to w
feet of his Arab visitors :"so that they could recline un
the Tree of Life, our holy Torah"(fols. nov-111v).219In t
(218) Fol 111r: ke-she-hem rohasim yedehem ve-raglehem le-sorekh ha-

tir'eh tir'eh she-adayin yedehem sheruyim be-mayim ve-hem macavirim otam cal
ha-avaqha-avaq she-cal raglehem she-ha-nir'eh be-vadday ha-gamur she-kawa

kedei kedei lacasoto golem le-hitqassher bo. ( On the use of namaz for Musli
shabbeta'iyyot,"p.255•) He goes on to quote Nathan as follows : gam per
ha-tehorimha-tehorim kavvanatah hi lihyot golem resonah le-hitqassher cim nesha
hayosherhayosher ahar she-modiaclahem koah celyon[koah ketercelyon, i.e. Sabba
shelomohshelomoh u-gedullat cillat ha-Mot lihyot hitcorerut le-taqqen ha-shevarim
she-hem she-hem sham has ve-shalom en tequmah le-yisra'el ligga'el. Nathan

does,for the chaotic and formless materials that dominate the lower
left by the contraction of the En Sof), where the light ray (qav ha-yosh
not penetrated.(See Scho\em,Sabbata1 Sevi, pp.299-312 ; Chaim W
shabbeta'itshel Natan ha-cA/ati" Keneset 8[ 1944(22 7-30.) It is this g
pears here to equate with Islam, that seeks connection with souls (in
that have been illuminated by the qav ha-yosher. Hazzan,by contrast,se
familiar sense of an artificial anthropoid. The verb gaval or gibbel (
another of Hazzan's quotations from Nathan)is significant in this con
a midrash that describes the creation of Adam as a golem (Lev. R. 2
texts that speak of the making of an artificial man (Moshe Idel, Gol
cal cal Traditions On the Artificial Anthropoid [Albany, 1990], pp. 34~3
golem golem for the purpose of making a connection (le-hitqasher); un
make clear with whom or what the connection is to be made. (It m
on the basis of this passage, Idel's tentative judgment that "the ant
Golem and the relation between the combination of letters and the
anthropos is not central in this [Sabbatian] version of Kabbalistic t
passage may also suggest a direction in which one might develop
remarks on Islam as golem, in Sabbatian thought:"Golem be-gematr
63[199°-91]1319•)
(219) U-mi-zeh tedac sod nifla mah hayetah kavvanat ha-araviyyim she
glehemglehem ve-avraham avinu hay ah mekhavven lirhos otam ha-raglayim le-h
le-hisshacenle-hisshacen tahat ha-ces ces ha-hayyim toratenu ha-qedoshah.The belie
Arabs prostrate themselves to the dust of their feet, is taken from

Horowitz, interpreting this seemingly "mad" practice (shiggacon —
connection with Islam), makes a suggestion that eerily foreshado
apostasy. Water,like Abraham himself,represents thesefirah Hesed•,
is that aspect of the sefirah that seeks to destroy the qelippot. Hesed is
8:7); yet at times mecat mayim needs to be taken from it,"in order t
and [thus] to subdue [it]" (aval pecamim be-hekhreah yuqqah na mecat m
u-le-hakhniac.u-le-hakhniac. . Jasmut ha-middah hi sod mayim rabbim umecat may
le-hakhnicah).Seele-hakhnicah).See Horowitz,Sefer shenei luhot ha-berit, vol.4,p

egesis of Gen 18:4, and his explanation of the need for the apos
particularly if we recall the Sabbatian use of tor at hesed for Islam.
lims are still the objects of benevolent con

where we are told that Sabbatai Zevi "en
store them and mend them and bring
chinah's wings!'220
But,by fol 126v,Hazzan's tone has chang
status as organized lunacy, rooted in" th
herents"bring into themselves an evil spiri
cause I did your will, and entered into this
that you are favorably disposed toward [Isl
sires sires wickedness, the bad shall not dwell w
tics [and] boasters shall not stand before th
the very end of the commentary — whi
of our discussion, sadly ironic — Hazzan re
the words of Ps 86:16: "Rescue the son of th
God forbid, as though [I were] son of the m
Did he manage to find a substitute Me
than of Gaza,on fol 128v, suggests that he
than, he attaches to his name the Messiani
(2 20) Hazzan's remarks on the preceding page (fol

that he is hinting at something he does not want to ta
vessel, as Hazzan has already said on the authority o
entering into it is comparable to the ritual of the sota
earthenware earthenware vessel (Num 5:17). This, says Hazz
One of Israel entered into. . . .The Supernal King de
ter waters; to bring the mystery of King Messiah
daughter of Ishmael [!] who [masc.] is an earthenw
page 125,"as applying Num 5:17 to"the mystery o
"This is the King's decree, and one cannot criticize
two other passages (fols 31r and îogr-v, cf. 48V) Ha
tation (III, 124b-125a) of the sotah ritual.The contex
ence to the Messiah as"the husband of Torah,"sugge
more usual bedat yishmxf'el) is correct, and that H
aspect of Sabbatai's apostasy: his having made love w
n. 17.1 must acknowledge that Hazzan sometimes wri
e.g., datam on fol 126r, line 3.) Joseph ha-Levi presu
letter in which he reports Sabbatai's apostasy to"th
went went to Ishmael, and took Mahalath to wife [Gen
SisatSisat novel Sevi, p. 174).Gen 28:9 describes Mahal
where only in Gen 36:3 — and it seems possible t
sage. Cf. the remarks of Rivkah Shatz-Uffenheimer
funotfunotfunot 3-4(1960)410.
(221) From Gen 16:10(ben ha-amah) ;but,in place of

a slash, which is presumably to be read ibn. He sure
that Sabbatai is not merely called "son of the maid-s
exalted." (We have already seen that Hazzan used

the very first time he mentioned him.) Scholem ass
less a slip of the pen for nr-w."222 But I think we n
ousness. Hazzan needed a present Messiah, here o
Sabbatai Zevi, if it could not be the now-discarde
Nathan might suit? But Nathan also was mortal. H
Hazzan perhaps learned shortly after he had prom
for he never mentions him again.
This conjecture, that Hazzan's hopes had begun

as he constructed them,will explain the extraordina
section. This is his exposition of Psalm 90,which see
when he was literally as well as figuratively runnin
He begins boldly enough : "A prayer of Moses the m
refuge refuge . . ."(Ps 90:1 ).But then he stops; and resu
start" of the manuscript (fol 134r).He begins, as
than he did before the hiatus. But the ink is fai
gressively grows so faint that by the end of the man
ble to read.
This last section of the commentary is the only one that is not dominated
by the figure of Sabbatai Zevi. He is, in fact, mentioned explicidy only at the
beginning, where Hazzan manages to find a numerical equivalence of tashev
(verse 3) with"Sabbatai."223He explains that the Messiah Sabbatai is to be"re
turned"at"the crushing of the soul (4'‫־‬at the end of all souls . . . when all hu
mans return to their dust and the earth returns to be renewed."
The earth then shall be made new and comforting. In it,we shall ourselves
be renewed. Each day there will be a thousand years ; all will be day; night will
turn into dawn. Sinless saints will enjoy this; also those whose souls have been
perfecdy mended and built anew. Their death will be a sleep,from which they
will awaken with renewed strength (fol 134V). At the end of each millenium
will come their "evening," from which they will be renewed again and again
like the phoenix. But they will not die, for God has swallowed up death for
ever (fol 135r).
(It is here that we have what may be one last reference to Sabbatai Zevi.
"These are the ones who believed in the Primordial Unique One [yahid ha
qadmon],whose faith in him was like a powerful love, who gave up their lives
(222) "Perush mizmorei tehillim,"p.174; Liebes,p. 108.

(223) The three letters of tashev, when spelled out, have nine letters among them. Add this to
the numerical value of tashev itself, then add 1 for the word itself, and you get the value of "Sab
batai"(g+702 +1 = 712).
(224) Following the midrash of dakha 'm PT Hagigah 2:1,Ruth R.6:^,Eccl.R. 7:16.
for him'.' God will reward them according

fered into pleasures in the next world. It i
Unique One? Hazzan intends Sabbatai.Ye
batai; and it is at least as likely that Hazz
has in mind the martyrs of 1648.)
Hazzan continues to develop these ideas
his writing declines into illegible faintness
sent life is brief and toilsome, our present
"All our hope must be for those future day
for us"and we will fly (fol 135V). In this wo
are the targets of his rage. In the next, we
God(?) face to face, when the earth is fille
when the Lord is king over all the earth.
Writing with a melancholy lyricism th
uses his last psalm commentary to develop
in which all dreams come true and all pain
has marked Hazzan's Messianic expectatio
fades entirely away into the rosy glow of
fades fades away. After the first ten lines, w
sage (above),he is not mentioned at all.
dom on this earth,which has animated th
allowed to vanish.
Was this the swan song of Hazzan's Sabbatian faith? Perhaps. It certainly was
not the swan song of Hazzan himself.223Benayahu and Tamar have shown that
he lived for at least forty years more (at least until 17 20) ; and that, at least from
1692 onward, he played a respectable and indeed prominent role in the life
of the Jewish community of Kastoria (above, sec. 3).
We need not infer from this last datum that Hazzan had given up his allé
giance to Sabbatai Zevi. A person's holding Sabbatian beliefs, at the end of
the seventeenth century,did not in the least exclude that person's having con
siderable respect and influence among supposedly "normative"Jews; the ex
amples of Samuel Primo and Judah Hasid sufficiently demonstrate this. Yet
there is some tension between the commentary's recurrent complaints of rid
icule and harassment at the hands of the "opponents," and the respectability
its author seems to have enjoyed a dozen or so years later. Something seems
to have changed for Hazzan between 1680 and 1692. Perhaps he abandoned
(2 25) 1 continue to assume,as I have throughout this article, that Scholem was right in identi
lying Israel Hazzan as the commentary's author. If we should ever discover that he was wrong,
this paragraph and the next will turn out to be baseless. Everything else I have written about
the author will be unaffected, other than that we must stop calling him "Hazzan."
his Sabbatian commitments; perhaps he modifi

learned to be discreet about them.
In some such way Hazzan may have risen, like the phoenix of his eschato
logical fantasy, from the disillusionment and despair evident in his commen
tary's closing pages.
11. 11. Concluding Reflections
The beloved son is marked for both exaltation and for humiliation.
life the
In his life the two
two are
are seldom
seldom far
farapart.
apart. ___T99fi 92«
Ion 11 1 <70 ‫גז‬n crxn^■‫־‬
—— Jon D. Levenson
The story of Ishmael Zevi,as I have reconstructed it in the preceding

is overwhelmingly tragic. Its tragedy does not lie in his having died,
in his having died young. We all must die ; and,in the world of the sev
century, the death of a young child was an event hardly to be remark
we hope that while we live others will at least in some measure recogn
presence ; we hope that they will at least for a little while preserve o
ory after we die. Ishmael Zevi was deprived of both.
He was, to be sure, a celebrity. From his birth, and perhaps even be
concepconcep tionf27 he had been anointed savior of his elders. He would re
humiliation and betrayal of his father's apostasy. He would integra
solve the contradictory identities,Jewish and Muslim, of his father an
ther's believers. He would heal the dreadful incongruity that Jews ev
could see all around them : that God had given his promise to Isaac
given to Ishmael (and to Esau) the fulfillment of every promise worth
All these wondrous and impossible acts of resolution and integrati
be done by and through the small person of Ishmael Mordecai Zevi. W
person might happen to be in reality was a matter of no importance.
If we are to grasp the full impossibility of the task laid upon this c
must recognize a curious and paradoxical fact.The Muslim identity
tai Zevi, and of those Jews who followed him into apostasy, was (as far
tell) almost entirely devoid of Islamic content. The contrast betwe
tianity and Islam is in this respect very striking. Christianity actually
stantial imprint on Sabbatian doctrine, in such tenets as the necessity
in a suffering and rejected Messiah. Islam, considered as a religious
had no comparable impact on Sabbatian thought;228 indeed, seems
(226) The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, p. 59.

(227) Nathan's letter of early 1667; above, n. 16.
(228) We may point to a few possible traces of Shi'ite influence on Sabbatianism
batians'insistence on speaking of his death as a"disappearance" is reminiscent of t
tion"of the Shi'ite imam, and the religious duplicity practiced by Sabbatian converts
held for the Sabbatians only the smallest and m

was Islam that was the significant"Other"to Ju
were concerned.
Israel Hazzan, as we have seen, writes movingly of the Messianic task of

bringing the "path of Truth" and the "path of Grace" into consonance. But
what does he actually know of the Muslim path? He knows that they have a
"Qur an','which Sabbatai Zevi is capable of chanting (fol 107r).He knows that
they wash their hands and feet before prayer, and proposes a highly eccen
trie explanation for this practice (fol uov-111v; see the preceding section).
He knows that they spread their hands when they pray (fol 126r). He knows
"the well-known fast" (obviously Ramadan), and the Sufi practices of wearing
wool and repeating God's name a fixed number of times during prayer (fol
74v-75r).He knows, above all, the ever-fascinating symbolic turban. That is
all he seems to know; all, apparently, that he cares to know.
This indifference cannot mean that the Islamic path was unimportant to
Hazzan and to like-minded individuals. It was plainly very important indeed.
But its significance lay, not in what it actually was, but in the fact of its being
the path that was not theirs. It was most especially significant in that it was a
path that dominated much of the world, whereas their own Jewish way was
everywhere subservient.
It will follow that Ishmael Zevi was not expected to champion some rap
prochement between Judaism and Islam — the faith, that is, that Muslims ac
tually believed and practiced — nor yet to invent a new religious system that
might incorporate both. Such an expectation he might conceivably have sat
isfied. His task was to make it possible for a Jew such as Hazzan simultané
ously to be himself and the"Other"; himself and someone who was not him
self.229Obviously, no human being could accomplish such a task. Ishmael Zevi
must therefore cease to exist as a human being (not to mention, as a ten-year
old boy!) and become a mythic figure, acting out an archetypal drama that
Hazzan found scripted in the Bible.
In this sense,Ishmael Zevi does indeed perish in the Sabbatian Aqedah.By
this, I do not mean that the fantasies that Hazzan (and others, presumably)
suggests the radical Shi'ite doctrine of takiye (Scholem,Sabbatai Sm',p.314;"The Crypto-Jewish

Sect of the Dônmeh [Sabbatians] in Turkey," in The Messianic Idea in Judaism And Other Essays on
Jewish Spirituality Jewish Spirituality [New York, 1971], pp. 150-51,154). Both of these features may, as Scholem is in
clined to believe, represent independent developments within Sabbatianism.

(229) I have elsewhere made the case that the essential appeal of Sabbatai Zevi's Messianic
claims lay in his ability to offer an emotionally satisfying mythic resolution to the insoluble his
torical dilemma that confronted seventeenth-centuryjews, of how they might be themselves and
at at the same time something other than themselves :"Sabbatai Zevi,Metatron,and Mehmed: Myth
and History in Seventeenth-Century Judaism','in S.Daniel Breslauer (ed.), The Seductiveness of
Jewish Myth: Challenge or Response y (Albany, 1997) pp. 271-308.
projected upon the child actually caused his deat

lieve this was so, although it is easy enough to
have been shortened by the fantastic expectations
refusal to recognize the reality of one's human
the obliteration of the memory that one ever exis
of killing.
While Hazzan believed that Ishmael Zevi was still alive, he turned him into
an impossible synthesis of Isaac and Ishmael. In order to achieve the impos
sible merger of the paths of "Truth"and of "Grace," he bound this wonder
child to his imagination's altar. When he learned the child was dead, he made
a whole-offering of his memory, and let the mythical figures of Isaac and Ish
mael join in imaginary partnership in the empty space where the child had
been. He later returned to Messianic-fantasy-as-usual, seemingly forgetting
there ever had been an Ishmael Zevi.
".". . . the ancient, protean, and strangely resilient story of the death and res
urrection of the beloved son'.' So Jon Levenson calls it, in the very last sen
tence of his study of the Aqedah?30A theme so protean and so resilient must
reflect some enduring feature, normally latent and unconscious, of the cul
ture that creates and transmits it. Any manifestation of the theme is likely to
shed light on some aspect of the theme's essential meaning.
Levenson,working from the manifestations that surface in the Hebrew Bi
ble itself, stresses that the beloved son is marked both by "his exalted status
and the precariousness of his very life . . . marked for both exaltation and
humiliation'.'231 He may be betrayed to death by the parent who professes to
love him232and who at bottom prefers the blessing of faceless"progeny"over
the real child he is in the process of sacrificing.233 His sufferings may turn out
to be very much like those of the un-beloved child. Levenson argues persua
sively that the Hebrew Bible gives Ishmael an Aqedah of his own, whose fea
tures run parallel to those of Isaac's Aqedah:34The children of the beloved
Isaac, too, re-enact the sufferings of Hagar and Ishmael."The exaltation of the
(230) Death and Resurrection, p. 232.

(231)(231) /fef,p.5g.Levenson returns repeatedly to the theme of humiliation: pp. 87,96,128,152.
(232) Ibid.,pp. 148-50.
(233) Ibid., p. 161.1 am not sure that Levenson would be prepared to state the implication of
his observations as bluntly as I do. Cf. pp. 201-02:"The application to Jesus of the two not dis
similar Jewish traditions of Isaac and the suffering servant sounds an ominous note, easily missed
by those who interpret God's love in sentimental fashion: like Isaac, the paschal lamb,and the
suffering servant, Jesus will provide his father in heaven complete pleasure only when he has
endured a brutal confrontation with nothing short of death itself!' I do not think one has to be
a sentimentalist to regard this as a perverse and dreadful mode of parental "love."
(234) 7&!<f.,pp.82-110,124,132.
chosen brother. . . has its costs: it enta

ter reality of the unchosen's life. Such is
altation of the beloved son'.'235
If an "Aqedah of Ishmaef'is latent in t
made manifest in the pages of Israel
sionments, as recorded in his commen
scious of the ancient Aqedah complex act
alted, is worse than humiliated : he is
ignored,his reality unseen, his existence
ity intervenes to save him. The cruelty a
dah's worst and most archaic elements ar
century, upon the forlorn person of the
Adored for what he was not, unknow
made into a vessel for elaborate illusio
understand. The illusions endured, as illu
was abandoned to silence.
Excursus: Ishmael Zevi and Isaac Zevi
In his collection of studies, The Shabbatean Movement in Gr

Meir Benayahu proposed an ingenious and original solut
of Ishmael Zevi's disappearance. Emden and the Dônme w
not die in childhood, nor was he a Muslim at the time of
he returned from Adrianople to Salonika after 1677 to p
ucation, and there returned to Judaism at some time in
reconversion, he changed his name from Ishmael to Isaac
fied with Isaac Zevi, who served as rabbi of Sarajevo from a
until 1716.
What we know about Ishmael Zevi before 1690, and wh
Isaac Zevi after that year, fits together well enough. Their
roughly to correspond. So do their names. Even if the S
identified Ishmael Zevi with the Biblical Isaac (as Hazzan
could hardly imagine anything more suitable than the
taking the name Isaac upon his return to Judaism. Wh
Isaac Zevi, moreover, suggests a close link with Salonika and
it seems an inescapable conclusion that he studied ther
that Cuenque claims to have seen in Ostrog in 1688 or 1
rived from Salonika, and Cuenque's enthusiastic descript
(235) !M., p. 96.
Benayahu endorses as reliable beyond the smallest suspic

— suggests that Ishmael Zevi had become by age twen
9gA
some stature.
As for the Dônme tradition that Ishmael died as a child, this

plained easily enough on Benayahu's hypothesis. By returning t
their youthful Messiah turned his back on his father's example
trayed the expectations of his most devoted followers. He"died" to t
they got their revenge by declaring him literally to have died. (One
to imagine them"sitting shiva"for him.) The vindictive anti-Sab
den among them, were only too happy to believe them.
The circumstantial evidence, combined with Benayahu's havin
a neat solution to what otherwise might seem an intractable pr
stitute the strengths of his hypothesis. But it has very substantial
as well.
To begin with, Benayahu offers practically no evidence that is not circum

stantial. He points out that Isaac Zevi's son, Shem Tov Zevi (who died some
time before 1748),"invariably includes his father's name in his signature,
while his father invariably signs with his name only. Surely this is indicative!"
(p. 178). It is indeed interesting. But it is the only datum about Isaac Zevi, in
voked by Benayahu, that even begins to make better sense if we assume he
was Sabbatai Zevi's son than if we assume he was not.
This assumption, moreover, creates very formidable problems of its own.

It would not seem, on Benayahu's hypothesis, that Isaac Zevi was particularly
concerned to hide his original identity. If he were, surely he would have
changed his name more drastically, to efface all trace of his link with the most
infamousjewish figure of his time.But,without some serious effort on his part
to conceal his origins, how could they have failed to become widely known?
It cannot possibly have been a matter of indifference to his Jewish contempo
raries that the son of the false Messiah,who had spent at least the first ten years
of his life as a Muslim, was now functioning as a leader and teacher in Israel.
Even if the now-Jewish Ishmael/Isaac had tried to hide his background, it
is not clear he could have succeeded.The Dônme could easily have revenged
themselves on their "apostate" Messiah, making his life miserable by trailing
him and denouncing him to Jewish communities wherever he went — much
as some Sabbatian radicals, posing as orthodox heresy-hunters, took advan
(236) We must remember, however, that Benayahu could produce no direct evidence for
his assumption that Ishmael returned to Salonika after 1677. Nor does he observe that, if he is
right, then Cuenque must be wrong about Ishmael having grown up in the sultan's court after
Sabbatai's death. If Cuenque is unreliable on this point, why should we trust (as Benayahu does)
his account of the Ostrog document?
tage of their status within their communitie
as Cardozo.237 But it seems that Isaac Zevi did n
was. The Jewish world cannot possibly have
of the great deceiver was now Sarajevo's rabbi.
age, Muslim upbringing, and former Messianic
controversy in his rabbinic career?
For Isaac Zevi, as Benayahu depicts him, was n
criticism. His contract as marbis torah in Saraje
three years; and, some time early in 1714, the
renew it. On 17 Iyyar 5474(2 May 1714) his form
of Salonika,wrote on his behalf. The rank and f
claimed, had wanted to reappoint Isaac Zevi. But
any grounds whatsoever beyond malice and h
upright rabbi "in whom there was not the sm
over, not the first time Amarillo had had to in
What was the quarrel about? Beyond the clas
to trust Amarillo), we have no clue. The date
controversy surrounding Nehemiah Hiya Hay
summer. By 1714,crypto-Sabbatianism had be
munities throughout Europe.239 This might at
nayahu's hypothesis. Perhaps the opposition t
against his notorious father, and the suppose
tred"denounced by Amarillo was in fact moti
had continued to nourish heretical beliefs be
Given the anxieties about covert heresy that p
conceivable that any attack on Sabbatai Zevi's so
vation, should not have transformed itself in
father's true heir. Yet (at least as far as Benayah
nothing nothing of this. Amarillo's letter suggests a
has made himself a bit too popular with the ord
An argument from silence, indeed. But we c
jevo wasvery much in the background of the Ha
ily came from Sarajevo ; his enemies claimed he
married there in the 1670s. Of his two archenem
Hagiz and Hakham Zevi Ashkenazi, the latter
Zevi in the Sarajevo rabbinate. Hakham Zevi w
t688,as the result of a quarrel with two men clo
(237) Elisheva Carlebach ,The Pursuit of Heresy : Rabbi Mose

siessiessies (New York, 1990), p. 77.
(238) Shabbatean Movement in Greece, pp. 176-77.

(239) Carlebach, pp. 75-159.
[771 THE SON OF THE MESSIAH 21g
whom, he later believed, was Hayon himself).240 If Benay
correct, therefore, Hakham Zevi will have been forced o
by Hayon, as he thought — to be replaced a short time after
Zevi'sZevi's very own son.Did it never occur to him to make this
of his vendetta against Hayon? Can Isaac Zevi and his opp
have failed to become caught up in the Hayon controversy —
had anything in common with Sabbatai Zevi other than t
they had, is it conceivable that no hint of this should surviv
And is it conceivable that Hakham Zevi's son, Jacob Em
been so oblivious to Isaac Zevi's background that he could insi
Zevi's"offspring turned outjust like him ; the impure birth [
an Ishmaelite, and Sabbatai Zevi and his worthless lineage
out any survivor" (above, sec. 9)? Emden emphasizes this
whole string of Biblical texts such asjob 18:19, No offspring or
people,people, no remnant in his dwelling places. Yet Isaac Zevi su
1716; his son and successor, ShemTov Zevi, at least until 1
I will concede that Emden was writing in 1752, and that
nayahu) Shem Tov Zevi died before 1748. It is thinkable t
dren or nephews; or, if he did, that they and any children t
were all dead by 1752. Even on Benayahu's hypothesis, th
claim that Sabbatai Zevi's lineage was exterminated may
been correct?41 Yet what a very distorted picture it gives ! An
ham Zevi's ties with Sarajevo, it is very difficult to imagine
have known no better.
Our conclusion must be that Benayahu's hypothesis, alluring as it is, stag

gers under the weight of its implausibilities. Ishmael Zevi and Isaac Zevi were
two more or less contemporary individuals with little in common beside their
name.Ishmael's mysterious disappearance from the historical record must be
solved in some other way. In this article, I have presented what I believe to be
an appropriate solution.*
(24°) Ibid,., pp. 86,106-07.

(241) This will not apply to his assertion that "the impure birth died an Ishmaelite."
* I completed this article in the spring semester of 1997,during a leave provided by the
Institute for the Arts and Humanities,College of Arts and Sciences, U NC-Chapel Hill. I am
deeply grateful to the Institute, and to the Max Chapman Family Faculty Fellowship Pro
gram, for their support.

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The Son of the Messiah: Ishmael Zevi and the Sabbatian Aqedah

Author(s): David J. Halperin

The early Sabbatian exegetical text preserved in MS Budapest, Kaufmann 255,1s a

And so they [Sabbatai Zevi and Sarah] were married.Yet

One of the more intriguing myst

( 1 ) Aharon Freimann, cInyanei Shabbetay Se

status equal to his father's. Yet, apart from

This article is a study of the figure of Ish

sources, at least — other than as a vessel for the

Our procedure will be as follows : We will begi

(4) Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling is of course the classi

come into our view, and will become so t

2.The Life of Ishmael Zevi

anople on 8 Nisan ( 9 March ) 1671, the day after Sa

summarized in Scholem, Sabbatai Seui, pp. 846-51. The acco

apostasy, presumably] a son is to be born to

(15) Translated in accord with Nathan's evident un

you you that your right hand can saveyou[]oh 40:14

At the beginning of 1673, Sabbatai Zevi was banish

SabbataiSabbatai then married (1675) the

before 1681, it is hard to imagine that he could h

We must defer to section 9 our examination of tw

(3<‫ )נ‬Ibid., pp. 84-101 ; Scholem,"The Crypto-Jewish Sect o

expected of his thirteenth birthday. Yet,not l

3. MS Budapest, Kaufmann 255: A Commentary

In 1940, Gershom Scholem discovered in the David Kauf

(32) See above,sec. i,n. 2.

it will be convenient for us to speak of the autho

look at the structure and development of Hazzan's composition.

In his widely circulated letter to Raphael Joseph (September 1665),Nathan of

batianism, p. 139.1 have not seen Tamar's book.

Isaac Luria had revealed are no longe

(36) Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, pp. 271-72. The gl

Miranda.There are, to be sure, some variations.Two

Once the Female has been raised from

Now, when we compare the sequence

Tiqqun hasot Tiqqun hasot MS Kaufmann 25

f>4 :y6-9 :2:64:7-11,

(48) Moses Zacuto

Tiqqun hasotTiqqun hasotTiqqun hasot MS Kaufmann 255 Tiqq

Psalms 77,68 Isaiah 51:9-11 51:9-11,43

Deuteronomy 10:12-21 30:lff

Micah 7:18-20 7:18-20 17:1-7

Job 38f, Psalms 69 90

I have based my list of the texts expounded by

(50) That is,the liturgical poem beginning le-macanekha ve-lo la

these texts, but only notes that either he

But something went wrong. At some poi

(52) Hazzan notes on fol g8v that theyihudim of

on the melancholy strains of the Ninetieth Psalm?4

11:1-12:5,Jer 30:1-31:39■ 33:10-26, Prov 31:10-31.) Is it perh

the true Messiah, namely Ami rah." The te

suppose it comes straight from its author's hand.

(56) Psalm42 (fol 7r),Psalm43(241‫)־‬,Psalm 24(24v),Psalm 1g(25v),Psalm 26(311•),Psalm 27

to make this effort, which is why the feature fades aw

If we were to suppose that the stages of composition followed rapidly upon

happen between them.On fol 18v,Hazza