The Romantic Messiah

The Jews of the Ukraine had escaped by thousand to the communities of Turkey, Italy, Holland, Germany, Austria and even Bohemia. With them spread the report of the awful chastisement God had visited upon the Jews of the kingdom of Poland. The Hebrew world was horrified at the number of victims and the cruelty of their persecutors.

In their sermons the Rabbis cried: “Woe upon us, for we have sinned”-and they called the people to repentance.

But there were many Jews, both learned and ignorant, to whom the doubtful explanation of meri# punishment seemed scarcely enough to app# their sufferings. Their punishment seemed out of proportion to their transgressions, and they looked rather to the future than to the past for the key to these inexplicable events. They did not accept them as punishment, but rather as heavy sacrifices of propitiation. They hoped to perceive in the blue mists of the present the beams of an approaching dawn, and turning to the books of the mystics for an answer to the question which troubled them, they found one

Before her triumph, Israel must drink to the dregs the cup of suffering and humiliation. The Messiah would not come forth until the rocks and the beasts of the desert cried out to Heaven.

Not only in the book of the Prophet Daniel, but in the Zohar, and in the spoken traditions of the Kabbalists they found veiled indications and proofs positive that the struggle of the Poles and Cossacks was that very war of Gog and Magog which was to precede the advent of the Messiah. Signs, numbers, and passages, assembled, compared, interpreted by the most erudite of the Kabbalists, left no doubt that this present generation of Jews would witness the accomplishment of all prophecies.

Groups of watchers, seeking sings of imminent miracles, found them in dreams, in the deliriums of the sick, in the babblings of chidren. The earth and the heavens were full of mysterious sounds and the silence of the night itself vibrated with warning.

Young men went into the forests alone to commune with themselves. Older men left their business during the day and hastened to the tomb of their ancestors, where, with ears close to the ground, they begged their fathers to reveal the near and secret future. The ecstasy of prayer was no longer sufficient for troubled souls; many of them scourged themselves with leather whips. Prophets grew in numbers and visions became the food of those who weakened their bodies by fasting.

in Smyrna, in a small synagogue on the outskirts of the town, a group of young Kabbalists met. The group was small but single of purpose. Three men were the prime movers: Moses Pinheiro, who was all curves-his body, his head, his beard, his way of walking, his gestures-while his hands were heavy with tapering fingers; Samuel Primo, his antithesis in physical appearance, long, thin, sharp of feature and movement; and Sabbatai Zevy, the youngest.

They were studying the Kabbala together, forgetting everything else in long nightly talks about the Zohar and discussing the emotion the approaching advent of the Messianic kingdom.

Moses Pinheiro was preoccupied with questions of a celestial order. To him the coming Messiah meant a return to the lost paradise, the resurrection of the dead and the union of the impoverished river of Israel with the ocean of past generations. All the splendors of the past-Patriarchs, Judges, Kings, the Psalm Singer, the great Koganes, the Levites, the Prophets, the Talmudists, the Gaons-all, separated by numberless centuries, would fuse in one immortal generation! He caught his breath at the prospect! He, Moses Pinheiro, would see Abraham and Moses, the magnificent Joseph and David, the Maccabees, the Prophet Isaiah and the Rabbi Poet Jehuda-ben-Halevy assembled, and above them in his supreme glory the Lord of Sabbaoth and the Messiah.

When that undearably bright vision appeared to Moses Pinleiro, he would spring to his feet, and clasping his head between his hands as if it might hurst apart, he would reel in cestasy until, overcome, he would collapse on the floor of the synagogue.

The kingfom of the Messiah appeared differently to Samuel Primo. His mysticism was mixed with a sharp and clear perception#pact with the people of Israel. He had given the Torah to the Jews and commanded them to obey it. The people of Israel had carried the holy scriptures through the fire of the Inquisition and for it they had suffered countless torments. Alone among all the people of the earth they bore aloft the inextinguishable flame. The universe was supported by the droning voices of Jewish children studying the Torah in the Heders. The poeple forsaken by God had become the target of His enemies.

No, the time was coming. God must fulfill that promise he had given on Mount Sinai, and men conceived in his image are vile with passion and crime.

But concealed behind this external anti-thesis Sabbatai felt there was somthing more secret still and more terrible. In inaccessible majesty above God, En-Sof the Infinite reigned. Mystery of Mysteries, Light of Lights, Cause, Limit and Form of all that is; everything receives breath through his thought. Nothing exists below nor can exist in flesh which has not been conceived upon this higher plane. Thus evil, sin, impurity, as well as virtue and sanctity are emanations of his divinity.

This conclusion was metaphysically undeniable. But Sabbatai’s simple and instinctive belief in God rebelled against it. For the absolutely pure and absolutely holy mind of God could not conceive all things, could not conceive the viper that strikes the child in its cradle, the sword that slays the innocent, the fire that devours the scrolls of the Holy Torah. One belief only afforded an escape from this enchanted cirele-the belief that the world was not complete, that creation still continued. In the ultimate incarnation of the world evil and sin would not exist, they existed only during its birth and were conditional and temporary. But on the day of ultimate perfection, the viper would lose its fangs, the sword its edge, and destructive fire would lose its fury. Light of the higher world would flood the lower.

Sabbatai had been persuaded to this belief by the Kabbalist, Rabbi Eliezer. Old, sturdy, and thick-set, his gnarled body reminded one of a huge stump. His heavy, saud-colored eyebrows drooped over sharp eyes whose glance stung like nettles. But his presence filled one wiht a strange happiness and the words he spoke were profound and orginal.

In the evening between prayers he often came to the small synagogue where Pinheiro, Primo, and Sabbatai met. He would sit down in a corner and rocking his body to and fro he would murmur confused words in a low, sing-song voice. The young Kabblists would gather round him to listen to his discourses.

Rabbi Eliezer opened his eyes and said:

“Are you here, my children? You, too, Sabbatai?”

He paused and began his talk.

“Tell me, why did God order the Prophet to take a sinner to wife? The Prophet and the Sinner? What does that mean? Is it not strange?”

He paused, laughing, showing his enormous black teeth. He laughed simply, like a child, happy that such difficult problems exist, and that he had been permitted from on high to resolve them so easily.

“A sinner for a wife!” he repeated. “Why should the Prophet wed a sinner?’

He paused again before continuing.

“Becausse, my children, it is the Prophet’s duty to do so. Why does God send His prophets upon the earth? Is there no place for them in heaven, in the vast, illimitable sky? They come upon this earth to sanctify it, and for that only. There lies the mission of the Prophet-sanctification. By him, his word, his breath, the world is purified. And for this reason God has said: ‘Prophet! Thou shalt take a sinner to wife. She who is covered with filth, rejected by all the virtuous of the world, take her and plunge her into that perfect holiness which is thine and Mine.’ The Proghet is without polution. He breathes and all is purified. “Take her to wife,’ saith the Lord.”

And agin, Rabbi Eliezer remained silent, as if crushed under the weight of the mystery he revealed. Then in a faraway voice he continued:

“And that is not all, my children. The earth itself is the sinner, the great sinner. But one day the Lord will take her to wife and she will thenceforth become sanctified. The earth will be wasched of her sins. That is the secret, my children, my Sabbatai.”

And after a silence, Rabbi Ehiezer strug#good-bye. In the twilight, the young Kabbalists reflected on the words of the Master. And Sabbatai Zevy knew that the day creation ended the Messiah would appear and be wedded to the people of Israel.

For this reason he dreamed neither of the glorious temple of Jerusalem nor of the sacrifices, nor the resurrection of the dead, but of the supreme miracle: the fusion of the worlds, the lower united to the higher, the establishment upon eartg if cekestial harmony, of the serpent without its venom.

Sabbatai was thirty years old. The youngest of the Kabbalists of Smyrna and of low origin (his father, Mordecai Zevy, sold fowls and eggs); nevertheless he was the leader of his group.

Yet nothing distinguished him from his comrades, neither knowledge-Moses Pinheiron was more learned-nor intelligence-Sammuel Primo was more intelligent-nor strength of will. He dominated his col-leagues through the mysterious charm of his personality.

His face was almost unpleasant. His fore head was narrow, his cheekbones high; his nose was slightly crooked, while his chin, which was a little too prominent, bore a reddish, unkempt beard. But this ugliness glowed with a strange animal attractiveness. And his eyes, profound, melancholy, and of a greenish hue, concealed and inner strength whose essence remained impenetrable to his friends. It seemed as if his eyes symbolized the duality of this world, that irreconcilability which tormented Sabbalai; they expresed the thirst for life and renunciation, for hope and suffering. Moreover they were always meditative. To be continued tomorrow