Jacob Sasportas and Jewish Messianism

This chapter focuses on Jacob Sasportas and Jewish Messianism. A rabbi in the Western Sephardic diaspora, Sasportas emerged in 1665 as one of the few opponents to the Jewish Messiah named Sabbetai Zevi. In his response to Sabbatianism, Sasportas held up a series of texts as sources of authority to counter the immediate religious experience of the Sabbatians. He repeatedly emphasized an imperative to doubt and beseeched the recipients of his letters to question the certainty of their messianic sensibility. Documents, not enthusiasm, were what counted to him, and, according to the Jewish textual tradition, Sabbetai Zevi was not behaving as a messiah should. When the Sabbatians answered back citing sources of their own, Sasportas took a closer, critical look and proved them fabricated.