The Son of the Messiah: Ishmael Zevi and the Sabbatian Aqedah
The early Sabbatian exegetical text preserved in MS Budapest, Kaufmann 255, is a commentary on Sabbatai Zevi's distinctive liturgy for the midnight vigil (tiqqun ḥaṣot). The manuscript seems to be, as Gershom Scholem surmised, the writer's autograph. Irregularities in its handwriting may t...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
1997
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| In: |
Hebrew Union College annual
Year: 1996, Volume: 67, Pages: 143-219 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | The early Sabbatian exegetical text preserved in MS Budapest, Kaufmann 255, is a commentary on Sabbatai Zevi's distinctive liturgy for the midnight vigil (tiqqun ḥaṣot). The manuscript seems to be, as Gershom Scholem surmised, the writer's autograph. Irregularities in its handwriting may thus be used as indicators of the stages in which the author composed his work. Close examination of this text's allusions to Sabbatai Zevi's son Ishmael, who was regarded for a time as his father's Messianic successor, will provide a solution to the long-standing mystery of what became of the boy. (It will be shown that he died as a child.) The commentator's Messianic expectations for Ishmael Zevi, moreover, were bound up with his distinctive reading of the Aqedah story in Genesis, as well as with his perceptions of Islam. His fantasies about Ishmael Zevi thus reflect the powerful but ambiguous role of Islam in the imaginings of Sabbatai Zevi's followers. They present us also with a remarkable "Aqedah of Ishmael" — Ishmael son of Hagar as well as Ishmael Zevi — which demands its place within the history of that ancient and pivotal motif of Jewish thought and experience that we call the Aqedah tradition. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Hebrew Union College annual
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