forms specifying the duration of the punishment from the outset and limiting the harshness of the sanctions imposed) as well as different levels of formality in its imposition. The most rigorous form, called “the great herem,” “the solemn herem,” or “the herem of Joshua son of Nun,” encompassed an elaborate ritual that demanded the presence of the entire congregation and included sounding the ram’s horn, extinguishing black candles, and blowing hoses made of animal intestines until they burst with a bang; such a herem was imposed for an indefinite period. The sanctions of the great herem amounted to the civil death of the excommunicated: other Jews were prohibited to associate with him or to benefit him or benefit from him in any way; he was not be counted among the ten men necessary for the performance of a public religious function; his sons were not to be circumcised; his bread and wine were to be considered nonkosher; and after his death, he was not to be accorded any honor due to the dead.
In the words of the most comprehensive study of the herem in premodern Poland, “from the historical point of view, excommunication formed the very basis of communal organization of Old Poland’s Jewry.”70 In addition to its function as a punitive measure in cases concerning both religious and secular matters, herem (or the threat of a herem) was invoked in guaranteeing contracts and in the execution of judicial verdicts, and it was tantamount to an oath in legal proceedings.
From the sixteenth century onward, the kings of Poland recognized in the herem the prime means for implementing the tax regime among the Jews and therefore granted the rabbinic authorities an unparalleled measure of bracchium saeculare: only one month after the pronouncement of the ban, the delinquent who failed to repent was to be delivered to secular authorities and executed, and all his property was to be confiscated (in the case of Christian excommunication, similar measures were to be implemented only after a year).71 This ultimate step was virtually never applied; however, rabbinic courts often called on Polish secular authorities to enforce their bans, and excommunication remained the most powerful tool of social control accessible to the Jewish establishment. Writing in 1797, the maskil Jacob Calmanson still described the use of the herem as “the most efficacious measure used by the rabbis [doktorowie żydowscy] to keep the people in slavish subjection and to reinforce the command they had usurped over the people’s minds.”72
Most rabbinic bans of excommunication did not target religious dissenters, but instead targeted those who violated community ordinances, those considered disruptive to communal discipline, or even common criminals. The first herem against the Sabbatians in Poland was issued in 1670. In September of the following year, the Council of Four Lands announced that “a great herem with sounding of the ram’s horn and extinguishing the candles” was pronounced upon the “criminals and reckless people belonging to the sect of Sabbatai Tsevi.” The council ordered—on pain of a heavy fine—the reading of the text of the ban in all the synagogues of Podolia and gave the leaders of the provinces and individual communities the authority to persecute the Sabbatians and to punish them with “infamy, fines, jail, and even to deliver them to the justice of the Gentiles [afilu ba-dine amim].” The delinquents should be expelled from every community and every province for all their days, they should not be assisted in danger, and all the curses of the Torah should fall upon them.73
In 1671, the council forbade the dissemination of manuscripts said to contain Sabbatian secret lore;74 in 1687 or slightly earlier, it placed restrictions on the printing of homiletic works that might have contributed to spreading the heresy.75 In 1705, on the request of Jerusalem rabbis, the body pronounced a ban on Hayyim Malakh. The 1670 herem was renewed by the council in 1722.76 In October 1753, the rabbis ordered the burning of the writings generated by the Emden-Eibeschütz controversy, including the latter’s allegedly Sabbatian writings.77 In the same year, “the sages of Brody” banned the “secret writings” of the Sabbatian Leibele Prossnitz78 as well as manuscripts ascribed to Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz: Va-avo ha-yom el ha-ayyin, commentaries on the Song of Songs and the Book of Esther, and the kavvanot accompanying the blowing of the shofar.79
Both contemporary sources and modern academic scholarship disagree on the true meaning and real effect of the bans of excommunications. Gershom Scholem has emphasized that the text of the 1670 ban was the first instance of the appearance of the term “sect of Sabbatai Tsevi” (which, in his view, proved that four years after Sabbatai’s conversion to Islam, the Polish rabbis already saw the Sabbatians as an organized group) and that it was unusually harsh in tone (which demonstrated that the Sabbatians were recognized as a strong and dangerous force). On the other hand, Scholem noted that the pronouncement of the herem had little practical consequence: a few weeks after drafting the text of the ban in another document, the same scribe referred to Sabbatai Tsevi as the messiah.80
According to Scholem, the first excommunications “did not work for the simple reason that the Sabbatians did not recognize the authority of the rabbis.” From the Sabbatians’ perspective, the rabbinic bans were invalid, since their authors, rather than those targeted, were the “mixed multitude,” “heretics,” and “enemies of the faith of Israel.”81 Later excommunications were said to have more impact, and a few contemporary testimonies claimed that in consequence of the series of bans, “the wicked sect was uprooted in the entire country of Poland.”82 Some scholars have accepted this uplifting conclusion; others have argued that the very frequency with which the excommunications were repeated proves the contrary and only demonstrates the strength of the Sabbatians. It has also been pointed out that the repeated and indiscriminate use of the bans led to the weakening of their authority: “the force of the herem diminished with frequent use, and the image of rabbinic contentiousness was heightened. . . . By the late eighteenth century their use—by any authority—was a formality with very little real impact.”83
While agreeing with the analyses noting the inflation of the power of the herem, I wish to emphasize another aspect of the issue. I believe that prior to the eruption of the Frankist affair, there was no organized effort to eradicate Sabbatianism in Poland. Scholars who have described the systematic rabbinic “persecution” of the heretics took rhetoric for reality: the harshness of the language of the bans should not overshadow the fact that there is no evidence of any attempt to put them into force (and, while we are on the subject, even the harshness of language so emphasized by Scholem should not be overestimated and might be largely attributed to the formulaic character of the herem; the 1671 ban against the Sabbatians is in no way “harsher” than a ban against common thieves coming from the same period).84
I would suggest further that this failure to enforce was not due only to the “crisis of authority” and the limits of the rabbinic power but also stemmed from the very nature of the anti-Sabbatian excommunications: with the sole exception of the 1705 ban against Hayyim Malakh, no herem issued in Poland mentioned any Sabbatian by name. Essentially, the Polish rabbis’ anti-Sabbatian excommunications fell into two broad categories: those imposed on books and other writings; and those against the unspecified “people of the sect of Sabbatai Tsevi.” The first might have signified attempts to stop the spread of Sabbatian propaganda but might equally well have been intended to appease the general Jewish opinion: we have ample evidence that despite the excommunications, forbidden writings were in the possession of many rabbis, including some of the signatories of the bans.85
As for the latter, as long as “the people of the sect of Sabbatai Tsevi” remained unnamed and did not purposefully provoke the rabbinate, they could go untroubled by the authorities. Within the framework of crypto-Sabbatianism, this amounted to a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy; in the case of the more overt Sabbatianism of Podolia, it signified a shaky balance of power where some localities were effectively outside the control of the rabbinic bodies (and, in some cases, under the control of Sabbatian rabbis). The Satanów testimonies and the confession of Samuel of Busk might sound shocking, yet it is clear that they depict a state of affairs that had existed in Podolia for a long time (Samuel
