The Sabbatean Prophets

196 Notes to Pages 72–73
to refer to the experience of xenoglossia or automatic speech by the power of a
maggid. This ties the Vision of R. Abraham back to Nathan’s public maggidic
possession on Shavu’ot night, and to his link with the Karo tradition.
53. As Scholem notes (Sabbatai àevi, 225), these are untranslatable puns, but I have
added them here to make clear the reference to Moses and his father, Amram,
redeemers of the Jews from Egyptian exile.
54. Scholem (ibid., 225 n72) comments that this figure in the vision is “Based on
the denigrating description of Pharaoh given in the Talmud (B. Mo’ed Qatan
18a). In Nathan’s paradoxical symbolism the messiah is the true Pharaoh.”
This is borne out by Nathan’s commentary to the vision.
55. Here Scholem adds a note (ibid., 226; and see 110–11) that this refers to R.
Moses Pinheiro, Shabbatai’s childhood friend, and their teacher, R. Isaac de
Alba, in Izmir. The Hebrew text refers to hanhagot (ritual practices) associated
particularly with Luria, which suggests to me that the passage may still be referring
to him on some level.
56. Scholem (ibid., 226 n. 83) identifies these by a passage in the Zohar as demons
born of nocturnal emissions.
57. Scholem, ibid., 224–26, with minor additions.
58. Elqayam, “The Mystery of Faith,” ch. 2. Elqayam follows the path set out by
his teacher, Yehuda Liebes. See Liebes, “Sabbatean Messianism,” and “Sabbatai
Zevi’s Religious Faith,” in Yehuda Liebes, Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish
Messianism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 93–113.
59. See Scholem, Sabbatai àevi, 225 n25.
60. See Liebes, “Sabbatean Messianism,” 106. My understanding takes a somewhat
different direction and is of course heavily influenced by Scholem’s convincing
analysis of Nathan.
61. See Scholem, Sabbatai àevi, 227 and n84.
62. The passage in question is translated in Lenowitz, Jewish Messiahs, 117–9; from
Aescoli, Jewish Messianic Movements, 398–400. Aescoli quotes from his own edition
of Molkho’s book, and his comments on 400–01 are invaluable.
63. Ha-Levi, Shloshah Ma’amare Ge’ulah, 2. On this work see, e.g., J. Dan, “Concerning
the Episode of Nevu’at ha-Yeled,” Shalem 1 (1974): 229–34.
64. Ibid., 9. On young Jewish visionaries and wonder-children in the early modern
world, including several cases which bear on Nathan’s vision, see David B.
Ruderman, “Three Contemporary Perceptions of a Polish Wunderkind of the
Seventeenth Century,” Association for Jewish Studies Review 4 (1979): 143–63. It
is highly noteworthy that R. Jacob Sasportas, the great opponent of the
Sabbateans, was aware of the Gródek case at the center of Ruderman’s article,
and that unlike R. Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, he tended to believe supernatural
forces were at work. See Jacob Sasportas, Sefer Zizat Novel Zvi, ed. I Tishby
(Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1954), 147.
65. See Anthony Grafton, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 56.
66. Scholem, Be-Iqvot Mashi’ah, 55.