The Sabbatean Prophets

68 The Sabbatean Prophets
ever saw this manuscript, 37 it is surely from there that Nathan quotes a passage
concerning the messiah so critical to his later thought: “It is furthermore
found in the manuscript work of the words of the maggid of our
teacher Rabbi Taytatzak of blessed memory that when the Sages say ‘The
Son of David [the messiah] will not come until the kingdom turns to heresy,’
they refer to the Kingdom of Heaven. In the future the Shekhinah will dress
in the clothes of an Ishmaelite.” 38
Nathan’s father also owned a visionary record of R. Eliezer Azikri, one of
the most important authors among the Safed kabbalists; Nathan had made
his own notes in the margins of this work shortly before he began to prophesy
about Shabbatai. 39 Finally, the most famous story emanating from the
Sefer ha-Meshiv circle was the legend of Rabbi Joseph della Reina, who tried
to bring the messiah by incapacitating Satan according to prophetic instructions
he had received. This tale became known through a work of Rabbi Solomon
Navarro, Elisha Ashkenazi’s partner in their long fund-collecting mission
through Europe as emissaries of the Palestine Jewish community. 40
Nathan thus grew up in an atmosphere steeped in these sixteenth-century
remembrances.
Around the time Solomon Alkabetz reported R. Karo’s maggidic possession
in the epistle quoted above, Alkabetz himself left for Palestine, and in
1536 the maggid told R. Karo to join his friend there. Upon his arrival in
Safed, R. Karo became involved in another messianic enterprise, the attempt
of R. Jacob Berab to reintroduce semikhah. This was the form of ordination
passed down from Moses to generations of biblical leaders, the continuity
of which had long been lost by R. Karo’s day. A way was found to
renew the tradition, which would allow the formation of a Sanhedrin, a
Jewish supreme court that was empowered to anoint the messiah. R. Karo
was one of four rabbis ordained with semikhah before the enterprise collapsed
under heavy criticism. 41 He remained associated with Alkabetz, and
was later active in the circles of Rabbis Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria.
Not only were maggidim and possessions of various types common in these
groups, but the mystical theology explaining their meaning was developed
there. 42
R. Karo’s writings are not imbued with acute messianic sentiments, but it
is clear that his legacy in Jewish hagiography was permanently associated
with messianic persons and enterprises: the Taytatzak circle, prophetic maggidism,
the messianically charged semikhah controversy, and the Luria pe-