on the role of the Zohar in making legal decisions might have posed special problems in the context of the debate about the current advent of the messiah, but it was, in itself, firmly grounded in accepted tradition. Unbridled kabbalistic speculation not directly linked to the mastery of halakhah also had precedents within normative Judaism and was by no means necessarily objectionable: in the sixteenth century, Rabbi Hayyim Vital argued for placing limitations on the study of the Mishnah and Talmud so that students could devote themselves more fully to esoteric lore. Not only was, in his view, a command of Jewish law unnecessary for dealing with the kabbalah; it also deprived the student of the time needed for exploring higher secrets.66
The polemics against Sabbatianism put an end to this relative laxity and the tolerance toward esoteric pursuits. Four out of six extant anti-Sabbatian bans pronounced in Poland between 1670 and 1753 forbade the dissemination of esoteric manuscripts (megillot setarim) and placed severe restrictions on printing kabbalistic works.67 Mishaps such as the Vienna disputation made the matter urgent: in the eighteenth century, anti-Sabbatianism was increasingly taking the shape of a battle against all kabbalah. Following the arrest of the participants of the Lanckoronie ceremony, the rabbis of Satanów confiscated many subversive and heretical books and manuscripts.
In the course of its investigation of the case, the Kamieniec consistory issued an order to present the sequestered writings for inspection by the episcopal court. We do not know if this order was carried out by the rabbis, and we have no information concerning the titles or even the general character of the works in question. What we do know is that the consistory dispatched priests (sometimes accompanied by converted Jews who acted as interpreters)68 to interview the suspected Sabbatians in loco. One of these priests was the Bernardine Gaudenty Pikulski, who later composed the most comprehensive Christian account of early Frankism. When recounting his meeting with Sabbatians in Lanckoronie in 1757, Father Pikulski wrote: “The tenets of [Sabbatai’s] belief were described by his followers in their books. And the books are: first—Or Izrael, which means “the light of Israel.” Second—Hemdas Cwi. Third—Keyser Josef. Fourth is the book published some seven years ago in Amsterdam by Emmanuel Chay Riky, and it is titled Joser Leywawa.”69
Or Izrael (Or Yisrael) was a commentary on the Zohar and Lurianic dicta published in 1702 by Israel ben Aaron Jaffe. Hemdas Cwi (Hemdat Tsevi) was a work on Tikkune ha-Zohar by Rabbi Tsevi Hirsh Hotsh, published in Amsterdam in 1706. Keyser Josef (Keter Yosef) was a kabbalistic prayer book by Rabbi Joseph ben Moses of Przemyńl, first published in Berlin in 1700. Finally, Joser Leywawa (Yosher Levav), by Raphael Immanuel Ricchi Hai, appeared in Amsterdam in 1742 and dealt with the mystery of tsimtsum as well as Lurianic kavvanot. Two of the four books mentioned by Pikulski had already aroused suspicions in the first half of the eighteenth century. Or Yisrael was found to be “tainted by Sabbatianism and pervaded with confusion” by Moses Hagiz70 and qualified as a “heretical book” by Jacob Emden.71 Keter Yosef was similarly condemned by Hagiz,72 while Emden claimed that without its author’s knowledge, the printers had added Sabbatian elements based on the writings of Nathan of Gaza.73 Yet Sabbatianism was alleged only with regard to these two of the four items and only by the most ardent heresy hunters such as Hagiz or Emden. None of the books in question was unreservedly condemned by the majority of the rabbis; all of them were printed with rabbinic approbations and were not generally regarded as contrary to accepted beliefs. What all four books had in common was not Sabbatianism (or at least not overt Sabbatianism) but their authors’ pronounced tendency to disseminate and popularize kabbalah among the wider strata of Jewish society. This was especially true about Tsevi Hirsh Hotsh:74 in addition to Hemdat Tsevi, he was the author of the first adaptation of the Zohar in Yiddish, Nahalat Tsevi; in the introduction to the latter work, he asserted that “everyone should study kabbalah according to his perception and comprehension.”75
Three of the books mentioned by Father Pikulski appeared in the first decade of the eighteenth century and Hemdat Tsevi in 1711: during that period, the idea that every Jew should study kabbalah “according to his perception and comprehension” might have still slipped by rabbinic vigilance. By the 1750s, the situation had changed: regardless of whether all or some of the four books listed by Pikulski were indeed “tainted with” Sabbatian elements, in the minds of many rabbis the dissemination of kabbalah among the unlettered and statements about a plurality of readings had become unequivocally associated with heresy. This became immediately clear in the rabbinic responses to the discovery of the Lanckoronie ritual. For its participants, the ritual might or might not have had kabbalistic underpinnings; for the rabbinate, it was directly linked with the spread of kabbalah, the unauthorized and uncontrolled study of esoteric matters, and possible forgeries creeping into the accepted kabbalistic works. The letters of rabbis involved in formulating the bans against the Frankists placed special emphasis on the issue of heretical literature.76 The fullest expression of this tendency can be found in the closing section of the May 1756 herem of Brody:
We deem it necessary to place restrictions and create order with regard to those who . . . cast off the study of the Talmud and the codifiers and attempt to penetrate the deepest secrets of the Torah without learning first how to read its plain meaning and attaining the understanding of Gemarah. . . . And so we pronounce the ruling that we prohibit anyone to study these writings, even the writings that are certainly of the ARI’s [Isaac Luria’s] authorship. It is strictly forbidden to study them until one has reached the age of forty. The Zohar, the books Shomer emunim [of Rabbi Joseph Ergas], and Pardes rimonim77 of Rabbi Moses Cordovero alone may be studied by one who has attained the age of thirty, provided they are in printed form and not in manuscript.78
The idea of the prohibition of the study of kabbalah before the age of forty had a long history. However, never before did it receive the patronage and authority of a formal rabbinic assembly. Neither was it ever linked to the explicit demand that the mastery of halakhah must precede any kabbalistic inquiry.79 The Brody pronouncement thus bore extraordinary weight and—in an unprecedented way—combined both conditions. The stipulations of the May 1756 herem were repeated four months later in the ban issued by the Council of Four Lands in Konstantynów; the endorsement of the council meant that the herem was to shape the official policy of Jewish authorities in Poland. For the first time, the restrictions were imposed on the entire Jewish population of the country and not only on the suspected or actual Sabbatians. In order to attack Sabbatianism, the rabbinate attempted to formulate a general rule about the study of kabbalah by all Jews.80
The position taken by the rabbis was ultraconservative: virtually none of the great kabbalists of the past had refrained from studying kabbalah before attaining the age of forty (the most famous of all kabbalists, Isaac Luria, died at the age of thirty-eight). The strict adherence to the letter of the Brody herem would excommunicate most (or perhaps all) of the kabbalists active in Poland at that time, including quite a few signatories to the ban, many of whom belonged to one of the most important centers of kabbalistic study in the Commonwealth, the kloyz (house of study) of Brody. Hence, the Brody ban was probably not intended to be taken literally. Rather, it should be seen as an attempt to formalize the limits of the permissible in dealing with kabbalah and ensuring the rabbinate’s full supervision over esoteric pursuits.
More important than the exact age requirement demanded from would-be kabbalists was the fact that the rabbis offcially restricted kabbalistic studies to the recognized institutional framework: after the ban, members of the established institutions such as the kloyz of Brody would undoubtedly pursue their kabbalistic interests (almost certainly even before the age of forty), while those learning outside the pale of rabbinic supervision would be automatically excommunicated. The prerequisite of gaining full mastery of the Talmud before engaging in the study of kabbalah was meant to limit the latter to members of the rabbinic elite and to eliminate kabbalistic autodidacts and independent students who lacked the establishment’s formal seal of approval.
The
