Status
Available
Call number
Call number
RS
Publication
Princeton, N.J.] Princeton University Press [1973]
Original publication date
1973
Physical description
xxvii, 1000 p.; 24 cm
Local notes
Gershom Scholem stands out among modern thinkers for the richness and power of his historical imagination. A work widely esteemed as his magnum opus, Sabbatai Ṣevi offers a vividly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. Sabbatai Ṣevi was an obscure kabbalist rabbi of seventeenth-century Turkey who aroused a fervent following that spread over the Jewish world after he declared himself to be the Messiah. The movement suffered a severe blow when Ṣevi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, Sabbatai Ṣevi details Ṣevi's rise to prominence and stands out for its combination of philological and empirical authority and passion. This edition contains a new introduction by Yaacob Dweck that explains the scholarly importance of Scholem's work to a new generation of readers.
User reviews
LibraryThing member antiquary
I like Scholem's matter of fact attitude: the evidence is Nathan of Gaza could read minds, very well, he could, but that did not make Sevi a true messiah.