Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676 (Princeton Classics) (Bollingen Series, 208)

by Gershom Gerhard Scholem (Author), Gershom Gerhard Scholem (Author), R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Author), Yaacob Dweck (Author)

New
Paperback
2016
$39.84

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 ?evi offers a vividly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. Sabbatai ?evi 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 ?evi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, Sabbatai ?evi details ?evi'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.

Synopsis

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 ?evi offers a vividly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. Sabbatai ?evi 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 ?evi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, Sabbatai ?evi details ?evi'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.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 1096
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 27 Sep 2016
ISBN 10: 0691172099
ISBN 13: 9780691172095

Media Reviews

Scholem's scholarship betrays an alert presentness... No great textual scholar, no master of philology and historical criticism commands a technique at once more scrupulously attentive to its object and more instinct with the writer's voice. That voices reaches and grips... [M]agisterial. --New Yorker Immensely important and fascinating... A monumental work of historical scholarship, which recounts in minute detail a moving tragedy of vast dimensions. --The New York Review of Books Comprehensive... the last word on an astonishing episode of Jewish history. --Times Literary Supplement A masterful mix of traditional Jewish scholarship and... original insight into the psychology of Judaism. --Boston Globe Undoubtedly one of the all-time masterpieces of scholarship and intellectual history. --Commonweal A major contribution not only to the study of messianic movements but also a study enlightening to the history of the Jewish people. --Jewish Press

Author Bio

Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) was one of the most important Jewish intellectuals of the twentieth century and the father of the academic study of Jewish mysticism. He was a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Yaacob Dweck is associate professor of history and Judaic studies at Princeton University. He is the author of The Scandal of Kabbalah (Princeton).