Book
Dweck, Yaacob. Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
Abstract
In 1665, Sabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah with a mass following throughout the Ottoman Empire and Europe, announced that the redemption of the world was at hand. As Jews everywhere rejected the traditional laws of Judaism in favor of new norms established by Sabbetai Zevi, and abandoned reason for the ecstasy of messianic enthusiasm, one man watched in horror. Dissident Rabbi tells the story of Jacob Sasportas, the Sephardic rabbi who alone challenged Sabbetai Zevi's improbable claims and warned his fellow Jews that their Messiah was not the answer to their prayers.
Yaacob Dweck's absorbing and richly detailed biography brings to life the tumultuous century in which Sasportas lived, an age torn apart by war, migration, and famine. He describes the messianic frenzy that gripped the Jewish Diaspora, and Sasportas's attempts to make sense of a world that Sabbetai Zevi claimed was ending. As Jews danced in the streets, Sasportas compiled The Fading Flower of the Zevi, a meticulous and eloquent record of Sabbatianism as it happened. In 1666, barely a year after Sabbetai Zevi heralded the redemption, the Messiah converted to Islam at the behest of the Ottoman sultan, and Sasportas's book slipped into obscurity.
Dissident Rabbi is the revelatory account of a spiritual leader who dared to articulate the value of rabbinic doubt in the face of messianic certainty, and a revealing examination of how his life and legacy were rediscovered and appropriated by later generations of Jewish thinkers.
Yaacob Dweck's absorbing and richly detailed biography brings to life the tumultuous century in which Sasportas lived, an age torn apart by war, migration, and famine. He describes the messianic frenzy that gripped the Jewish Diaspora, and Sasportas's attempts to make sense of a world that Sabbetai Zevi claimed was ending. As Jews danced in the streets, Sasportas compiled The Fading Flower of the Zevi, a meticulous and eloquent record of Sabbatianism as it happened. In 1666, barely a year after Sabbetai Zevi heralded the redemption, the Messiah converted to Islam at the behest of the Ottoman sultan, and Sasportas's book slipped into obscurity.
Dissident Rabbi is the revelatory account of a spiritual leader who dared to articulate the value of rabbinic doubt in the face of messianic certainty, and a revealing examination of how his life and legacy were rediscovered and appropriated by later generations of Jewish thinkers.
Dweck, Yaacob. The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
Abstract
The Scandal of Kabbalah is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as Yaacob Dweck argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it.
Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides.
The Scandal of Kabbalah examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack--a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past--and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. Dweck argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.
Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides.
The Scandal of Kabbalah examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack--a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past--and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. Dweck argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.
Book Chapter
Dweck, Yaacob, and Yosef Kaplan. “Jacob Sasportas and Problems of Discipline in the Ets Haim Yeshiva.” Religious Changes and Cultural Transformations in the Early Modern Western Sephardic Communities. Vol. 54. Leiden: Brill, 2019. 383–392. Print.
Dweck, Yaacob et al. “Jacob Sasportas and Jewish Messianism.” Formations of Belief: Historical Approaches to Religion and the Secular. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. 41–66, 254. Print.
Dweck, Yaacob, and James T. Robinson. “Maimonideanism in Leon Modena’s Ari Nohem.” The Cultures of Maimonideanism. Leiden: Brill, 2009. 211–244. Print.
Dweck, Yaacob, and Ra’anan S. Boustan al. “A Hebrew Book List by Leon Modena.” Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Vol. 2. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. 1165–1204. Print.
Dweck, Yaacob, and Richard I. Cohen al. “A Jew from the East Meets Books from the West.” Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of David B. Ruderman. Pittsburgh and Cincinnati: University of Pittsburgh Press and HUC Press, 2014. 239–249.
Dweck, Yaacob. “Introduction to the New Princeton Classics Edition.” Gershom Scholem, Sabbetai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. xxix-lxv.
Journal Article
Dweck, Yaacob. “Editing Safed: The Career of Isaac Gershon.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 16 (2009): 1–12. Print.
Dweck, Yaacob. “What Is a Jewish Book?.” Association of Jewish Studies Review 34.2 (2010): 367–375. Print.
Dweck, Yaacob. “Gershom Scholem and America.” New German Critique 44.3 (2017): 61–82.
Abstract
This article traces the connections between Gershom Scholem and the United States. It opens with a narrative history of Scholem's visits to the United States before and after World War II and then discusses the reception of his postwar writings in the United States. Finally, it turns to his reflections on American writers and scholars in the final third of his career.
Miscellaneous Section
Yizhar, S. “[Translation With Nicholas De Lange] Gila.” Common Knowledge 2010: 571–578. Print.
Yizhar, S. “[Translation With Nicholas De Lange] Khirbet Khizeh.” Ibis Editions 2008: n. pag. Print.
Sabato, Haim. “[Translation] The Dawning of the Day: A Jerusalem Tale.” Toby Press 2006: n. pag. Print.
Sabato, Haim. “[Translation] From the Four Winds.” Toby Press 2010: n. pag. Print.