The Sabbatean Prophets

From Mystical Vision to Prophetic Eruption 117
xenoglossia; amnesia; even prophecy. 86 It is clear that the style of Sabbatean
prophecy fits a very widespread contemporary trend with precedents in various
world religions; but we have little to go on concerning any causal connection
between these phenomena.
To understand the relation between Sabbatean lay prophecy and related
phenomena, the theory of universal mimesis, as explicated by Jean-Michel
Oughourlian, is extremely valuable. Oughourlian points out that imitation,
or mimesis, is the most basic and essential part of human nature. It is that
which allows human learning and continuity, to the point that the self is defined
in terms of the mimetic relationship with others. “It is mimesis, and
that alone, that makes one human, that constitutes the self, and that makes
possible one’s entry into the sphere of language. This means that from the
very start psychological actuality is to be found between individuals.” 87 Not
only behaviors, but even desires are developed mimetically. This is the case,
for example, with “adorcism,” the deliberate invocation of a possession—
the opposite of exorcism. 88 While Oughourlian goes beyond the dictates of
his own theory in analyzing possession, his essential concept of universal
mimesis is directly applicable to Sabbatean prophecy.
The provenance of dramatic possession prophecies in Sabbateanism is
perfectly clear. Nathan of Gaza is the key. Nathan learned the technique of
invoking a maggid from R. Joseph Karo, who appears to have learned it from
R. Joseph Taytatzak’s circle, which had a long secret tradition of such concepts
from Spain, ultimately connected with Sufi methods. Nathan’s technique
appears to have been absorbed mimetically by R. Moses Galante and
R. Daniel Pinto, who traveled through Palestine to Aleppo and Izmir as
Sabbatean prophets and propagandists. Shabbatai and Sarah themselves,
who also knew firsthand of the Shavuo’t night possession, may have been
conduits of information on this same route. Subsequently, incidents of prophetic
possession spread from there to other towns in Greece and Turkey.
And yet the proclivity of ordinary Jews to express messianic agitation in
this particular mode suggests an earlier awareness or even a predisposition
toward it. As we know from contemporary copycat crimes, mimesis does not
demand any more contact between the original actors and those imitating
them than a rumor, a story, a news article. In such merchant centers as
Aleppo and Izmir, filled with Europeans, it is hardly credible that news of
the Quakers, various Italian and French ecstatics, and other European prophetic
groups would not have reached the ears of the Jews. It is even more
certain that these Sepharadi exiles and escaped conversos, whose culture was