The Messiah Who Rode A Flying Matzoh To Jerusalem

1. The Glad Tidings
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Hebrew University religion professor Gershom Scholem deemed kabbalistic literature to be essential to understanding the history of the Jewish people.

Half-articulated muttterings about mystical secrets, symbols and images, all rooted in the world of esoterica and in the abstruse speculations of the kabbalist, became transformed, in my eyes, into invaluable keys to an understanding of important historical processes and into matters worthy of profound analysis and serious discussion. (x)

Gematria (numerology), astrology, alchemy, prophecy, psychic travels to the heavens: they have all played a role in Jewish mysticism through the ages. But the most powerful mystical phenomenon throughout the ages was messianism.

The maamin (believers) in a messiah would meet in darkened rooms in front of bimahs (podiums) of gold. The most extensive of these movements, the Sabbatians (followers of the Turkish rabbi Sabbatai Zevi, 1626-1676) had followers high up in the rabbinical establishment generations after Sabbatai's death. Rabbi Jonathan Eybechutz, a noted talmudist of the 18th century and a secret Sabbatian, may have had in his possession a document which revealed the names of his fellow Sabbatians in Amsterdam and the influence they had over Jewish life there.

The Sabbatian sect of the Donmeh, secret Jews who pretended to be Muslim, would meet in their darkened halls and send telepathic messages to Jews on the outside, both Sabbatian and Non-Sabbatian. They thus continued to influence history right up to the time of their dissolution in the middle of the 20th century.


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