T S W D H S: J E ' A - S P C: Shai A. Alleson-Gerberg

AJS Review 43:1 (April 2019), 23–46
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© Association for Jewish Studies 2019

doi:10.1017/S0364009419000011
T HE S ABBATIAN W HO D EVOURED H IS S ON : J ACOB

E MDEN ’ S A NTI -S ABBATIAN P OLEMICS OF
C ANNIBALISM
Shai A. Alleson-Gerberg
For Matar, my firstborn
‫ְקָצת ָּדם‬
‫ַרק ְקָצת ָּדם ְלִקנּו ַּח ַהְּדַבׁש‬
A little blood
Just a little blood for honeyed dessert
—Yona Wallach, Yonatan1
To begin then, let us suppose that you were eating a Mohammedan; you were changing
him into yourself! Is it not true that when digested that Mohammedan becomes a part
of your flesh, a part of your body, a part of your sperm?
—Cyrano de Bergerac, Voyage to the Moon2
Abstract: In an era when cannibalism occupied the European imagi-

nation and became a political weapon that could be effectively aimed
against the Other within or elsewhere, as well as a test case for the
concept of humanity, it is hardly surprising to find similar rhetoric in
internal Jewish discourse of the early modern era. This article shows
Rabbi Jacob Emden’s contribution to this discourse in the eighteenth
century, and extends the boundaries of the scholarly discussion
beyond establishing Jewish-Christian proximity. Emden’s halakhic
position on the question “Is it permissible to benefit from the
cadaver of a dead gentile?” (She’elat Ya‘avez.) connects cannibalism
and theological heresy springing from an overly literal reading of
the rabbinical canon, as well as ties it to the concept of the seven
Noahide laws. For Emden, the consumption of human flesh, literally
and particularly metaphorically, distinguishes between the sons of
Noah and heretics, as well as between humanity and savages.
Emden advanced this concept in his polemical writings against the
Sabbatian heresy in the 1750s, when he became embroiled in contro-
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
versy with Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz and the Frankists.
This research was made possible by the generous fellowships I received from the Jack, Joseph
and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, the Hebrew University of Jeru-
salem, and the European Research Starting Grant TCCECJ headed by Paweł Maciejko.
1. Yona Wallach, Devarim (Jerusalem: ‘Akhshav, 1966), 3.
2. From the unpublished translation of Leon Schwartz.
23
“F OR UNTO US A C HILD I S B ORN , UNTO US A S ON I S G IVEN ”

The appointment of Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz to head the triple commu-
nity of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek in September 1750 soon turned into a major
scandal. When amulets that he had distributed to pregnant women in Metz, Frank-
furt, and Hamburg were opened one after another (presumably after a number of
the women had died in childbirth),3 they were discovered to contain the name of
Sabbatai Z.vi, the messiah who converted to Islam. Rabbi Jacob Emden’s public
declaration on February 4, 1751, that an amulet attributed to the new rabbi was
tainted with heresy was the opening salvo in what was to become the most volatile
rabbinic controversy of the eighteenth century.4
In an attempt to deflect the denunciations of his accusers, Eibeschütz pro-
vided two commentaries of his own for the amulets, claiming that the magical
names were supposed to be read separately, and not as a connected text addressing
Sabbatai Z.vi. The first commentary, dealing with the amulet he had given to the
wife of Altona’s beadle, Michal Halberstadt Segal, he gave to Rabbi Shalom
Buzaglo at the beginning of the uproar.5 The second, for the “small amulet,”
which he had given to Mordekhai Levi of Metz, “for his wife who had difficulty
in childbirth,” he published in 1755 in his book Luh.ot ‘edut (Tabulae testimonii).6
3. Jacob Emden, Sefer hit’avkut (Altona, 1769); references here to Sefer hit’avkut (Lwów,
1877), 5b–6a.
4. On the controversy and its significance, see for example Gershom Scholem, “Bikkoret ‘al: M.
J. Cohen, ‘Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy,’ Philadelphia 1937,” Kiryat sefer 16 (1939): 320–38;
Moshe Rosman, “The Role of Non-Jewish Authorities in Resolving Conflicts within Jewish Commu-
nities in the Early Modern Period,” Jewish Political Studies Review 12 (2000): 53–65; David Horowitz,
“Fractures and Fissures in Jewish Communal Autonomy in Hamburg” (PhD diss., Columbia Univer-
sity, 2010); Paweł Maciejko, “The Jews’ Entry into the Public Sphere: The Emden-Eibeschütz Contro-
versy Reconsidered,” Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 6 (2007): 135–54; Sid Z. Leiman, “When
a Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy: R. Ezekiel Landau’s Attitude toward R. Jonathan Eibeschuetz in the
Emden-Eibeschuetz Controversy,” in From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of
Understanding, Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, vol. 3, ed. Jacob Neusner et al. (Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1989), 177–94; Leiman, “When a Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy: The Stance of the Gaon of
Vilna in the Emden-Eibeschuetz Controversy,” in Me’ah She‘arim; Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiri-
tual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, ed. Ezra Fleischer et al. (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001), 251–63;
Leiman, “When a Rabbi Is Accused of Heresy: The Stance of Rabbi Jacob Joshua Falk in the
Emden-Eibeschuetz Controversy,” in Rabbinic Culture and Its Critics: Jewish Authority, Dissent,
and Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Times, ed. Daniel Frank and Matt Goldish (Detroit, MI:
Wayne State University Press, 2008), 435–56; Leiman, “Rabbi Ezekiel Landau: Letter of Reconcilia-
tion,” Tradition 43, no. 4 (2010): 85–96; Sid Z. Leiman and Simon Swarzfuchs, “New Evidence on the
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
Emden-Eibeschuetz Controversy: The Amulets from Metz,” Revue des études juives 165 (2006): 229–
49; Shmuel Ettinger (Jacob Barnai, ed.), “The Emden-Eibeschuetz Controversy in the Light of Jewish
Historiography” [in Hebrew], Kabbalah 9 (2003): 329–92.
5. The commentary given to Shalom Buzaglo was published and discussed in Gershom
Scholem, “‘Al kami‘ ’eh.ad shel Rabbi Yehonatan Eibeschütz ve-pirusho ‘alav,” in Meh.kare shabeta’ut,
ed. Yehuda Liebes (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 1991), 707–33.
6. Jonathan Eibeschütz, Luh.ot ‘edut (Altona, 1755), 63a–71a. See also [Jacob Emden?], Sefat
’emet ve-lashon zoharit (Altona, 1752), [6a, 15a]. A similar amulet was given in Hamburg to Moses son
of Uri Feibisch. Ibid., [p. 3a].
24
The Sabbatian Who Devoured His Son
As opposed to the laconic commentary that was given to Buzaglo, the commentary
in Luh.ot ‘edut describes the process of gestation and birth in detail, from the
fetus’s formation in the mother’s belly to the womb’s opening and the child’s
egress. However, Eibeschütz does not simply describe birth, but the birth of the
messiah. The question of the messiah’s identity in Luh.ot ‘edut is fundamental,
touching on Eibeschütz’s Sabbatianism. Although the commentary was designed
to clear his name, the text that R. Jonathan composed includes inklings not only of
Sabbatai Z.vi and Jesus,7 but also of a flesh-and-blood messiah:
Jacob wanted to place his son [Benjamin] with Mitatron,8 since he is the She-
khinah [“the divine presence,” i.e., the feminine aspect of the Godhead], all
holy and good, not Metatron who is both good and evil …9 therefore he
called him Ben Yamin, “son of the right side.”10 Even Moses, when he
wanted to bring about the redemption, which is the secret of birth by the
bite of the serpent, who is Metatron, the pain of birth pangs—changed from
a serpent to a rod, towards h.esed [the divine mercy]; as was told in the Tikku-
nim,11 he flees from before it because he wanted to bring about the redemption
through the Shekhinah.12
I believe that Ben Yamin, the true messiah in this text, should be identified as Wolf
Binyamin—Eibeschütz’s youngest son, later to be known as Baron von Adler-
stahl.13 According to Emden’s Sefer hit’avkut (1769), Wolf’s followers called
him Yemini ben David, “Yemini [i.e., Benjamin]14 son of David” and ’ish
yemini kadosh, “a holy right man.”15 Wolf etched the name Binyamin on the
7. Shai Alleson-Gerberg, “The Way of a Man with a Maiden; The Way of a Serpent upon a Rock
—R. Jonathan Eibeschütz’s View of Christianity in And I Came This Day unto the Fountain” [in
Hebrew], in And I Came This Day unto the Fountain, by R. Jonathan Eibeschütz, ed. Paweł Maciejko
(Los Angeles, CA: Cherub Press, 2014), 278–300.
8. Here Mitatron appears as the primordial messiah. On the mythical figure of Metatron in Sab-
batianism, see ibid.; David J. Halperin, “Sabbatai Zevi, Metatron, and Mehmed: Myth and History in
Seventeenth Century Judaism,” in The Seductiveness of Jewish Myth: Challenge or Response?, ed. S.
Daniel Breslauer (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 271–308.
9. “[T]his Angel is known by two names: sometimes he is called Metatron [‫]מטטרון‬, and some-
times Mitatron [‫ ]מיטטרון‬with a [letter] yod. And the meaning is that, when this Angel is the garment
[levush] of the Shekhinah, and the Shekhinah conceals herself within him and demonstrates her
actions through his agency, then his name becomes Mitatron with a yod [gematria: 10], to indicate
the Shekhinah that is constituted of ten [sefirot].” Moses Cordovero, Pardes rimonim, sha‘ar
’ABI‘A, chap. 4 (Kraków, 1592), 93b–94a.
10. See also Natan Note Spira, Sefer megaleh ‘amukot (Kraków, 1637), va-’eth.anan, ’ofen 140;
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
Jonathan Eibeschütz, Sefer ’ahavat Yehonatan (Hamburg, 1766), 18a.

11. Tikkune Zohar 108b.
12. Eibeschütz, Luh.ot ‘edut, 65b.
13. On Wolf Eibeschütz, see Paweł Maciejko, “A Portrait of a Kabbalist as a Young Man: Count
Joseph Carl Emmanuel Waldstein and His Retinue,” Jewish Quarterly Review 106, no. 4 (2016): 521–
76, esp. 561 ff.
14. In Biblical Hebrew yemini describes a member of the tribe of Benjamin. For example, see 1
Samuel 9:1, 21.
15. Emden, Sefer hit’avkut, 27b, 29a.
25
entrance of his estate in Altona,16 and used it when referring to himself in a book he
composed in the style of the Zohar, which he called Darga’ Yemini (The grade of
Yemini, 1760/1): “The calamity opened his mouth with gematria about himself [i.e.,
yemini = 120], as niglah kevod [ha-Shem] and ki pi [ha-Shem] [Isaiah 40:5]
[= 120].17 He also spoke of himself with the verse shev le-yemini [‘Sit at my right
hand’ (Psalms 110:1)] and kez. ha-yamin [‘the end of days’ (Daniel 12:13)].”18
Though Emden’s testimonies regarding the controversy should be taken with a
grain of salt, in this case they appear to be precise19—Wolf’s kabbalistic tract was iden-
tified by Yehuda Liebes among the collections in the National Library of Israel.20
According to Emden’s reports, around the year 1757/8 young Wolf was sent
by his father to the Sabbatian communities in Turkey, Hungary, and Moravia to estab-
lish his leadership as the successor of Sabbatai Z.vi.21 At least in retrospect, Emden
connected Wolf’s messianic mission to the appearance of Luh.ot ‘edut in 1755:
For in the year 5515 [1755] … the laughter of this fool began.… It so happened
that when Eibeschütz saw that all his evil business was succeeding … he wanted
to fulfill the vow that he made to Sabbatai Z.vi through his prophet Leible Prostiz.
[Prosnitz], to establish the faith of Sabbatai with all his power and might.… And
when he saw that he had aged and failed to accomplish his plots, he decided to
set up his boorish son and crown him as his successor … and he let it be known
that his son, the boorish lad who lacked all goodness, had won a large sum of
money in a lottery and was traveling to distant lands to see the world. And
before he left, the spirit of impurity had already sprouted in him and he had
secretly revealed hints of Sabbatai’s faith, may his name rot.22
16. “The external wall of the house that faces the street … he [Wolf] rebuilt it high and very
beautiful, covered with hewn stones above, and his name engraved on the image of a wolf and a
lion; ‘the border of Benjamin [gevul Binyamin] at Z.elz.ah.’ [1 Samuel 10:2].” ibid., 19b.
17. “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed … for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
18. Emden, Sefer hit’avkut, 47a.
19. On Emden’s credibility as a historical source, see Sid Z. Leiman, “Mrs. Jonathan Eibe-
schuetz’s Epitaph: A Grave Matter Indeed,” in Scholars and Scholarship, ed. L. Landman
(New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1990), 133–43.
20. Yehuda Liebes, “H.ibur bi-lashon ha-Zohar le-Rabbi Wolf ben Rabbi Yehonatan Eibeschütz,
‘al h.avurato ve-‘al sod ha-ge’ulah,” in Sod ha-’emunah ha-shabeta’it (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1995),
77–102. Also see the account of Issachar Beer in Toledot bene Yehonatan: “The youngest son of the
Gaon R. Jonathan Eibeschütz was the noble R. Binyamin Ze’ev, known as Wolf. He was born in
Prague in 1740 … and I heard that already in his childhood he composed a treatise on concealed
matters and called it Gevul Binyamin [The border of Benjamin] or in some similar fashion. It was
not printed. Being still very young he travelled to Vienna and there he joined wanton men and
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
showed desire to rule. And he made himself the messiah and wore Turkish robes and went to
Hungary. And many followed him.” Published in Emmanuel Bondi, Mikhtave sefat kodesh (Prague,
1857), 78. On this source, see Dov Brilling, “Introduction to the History of the Sons of Jonathan,
1853–1854” [in Hebrew], Tarbiz 24 (1954): 102–9.
21. The exact dating of Wolf’s journey is uncertain. For example, see Nathan of Altona’s letter
to Samuel Sobil, February 4, 1761 (5521): “It has been two or three years since Wolf son of R. Jonathan
Eibeschütz travelled from here.” Emden, Sefer hit’avkut, 51a. See also 23b.
22. Ibid., 23b. Italics mine. See also 18a, 19b; Jacob Emden, Bet Yehonatan ha-sofer (Altona,
1762), 19b, no. 158.
26
The publication of Luh.ot ‘edut in proximity to Wolf’s messianic mission indeed

shines new light on Eibeschütz’s commentary: it was not apologetics, but rather
Sabbatian propaganda directed to believers’ eyes, and even more so, a messianic
act. If we are to take Eibeschütz’s commentary seriously, it can only mean that he
is the “holy serpent” who bites the Shekhinah’s womb in order to give birth to the
messiah, his young son.
The messianic figure of Ben Yamin reappeared four years later in a sermon
given by Eibeschütz on the seventh of Adar 5519 (March 6, 1759), only a few
months before Wolf returned from his first journey abroad.23 According to Bet
Yehonatan ha-Sofer (1763), the sermon on the verse “On the seventh [of Adar]
Moses was born, on the seventh he died”24 really dealt with the death and
rebirth of Sabbatai Z.vi, and Eibeschütz “foretold the coming of the messiah
within a number of years.”25 Our interest is in the comment that was added to
this testimony in Sefer hit’avkut: “When [on this occasion] he announced the
advent of the messiah within thirty years, whose name would be Binyamin, he cer-
tainly meant by this his son, the foolish [ha-kesil, gematria: yemini] lad … and it
was already known that he intended to rule from 5485 [1725],26 when the accursed
cult of Sabbatai Z.vi had chosen him to rule over them, and when he saw that his
end was nigh, and that his plot would not succeed, he decided to participate after
his death with his son.”27
The identification of Wolf Eibeschütz as the reincarnation of Sabbatai Z.vi
can be found in another source. In a letter written by Pesah. ben Joshua to
Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, we read that “the spirit seized this wolf [ha-ze’ev] and
he conceived another spirit within him [vi-yekabel ruah. ’ah.eret bo] … Indeed,
the Holy Spirit rests upon him … and he signs his name as Yemini ben David,
since he is the chariot [merkavah] for Sabbatai Z.vi and in two or three years he
will reveal himself in a proper way.”28
23. There is a certain ambiguity about the date of Wolf’s return. Compare ibid., nos. 121, 124,
pp. 17b–18a; Emden, Sefer hit’avkut, 21b.
24. B. Kiddushin 38a.
25. Emden, Bet Yehonatan ha-sofer, 19a.
26. In this year the controversy broke out surrounding his book Va-’avo hayom ’el ha-‘ayin.
27. Emden, Sefer hit’avkut, 27b. Italics mine. See also 24a. Some of the sermons that Eibeschütz
gave on the 7th of Adar were published in his collection of sermons, Ya‘arot devash (1798–99),
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
although not the one to which Emden refers, which begins with the verse “Ha-z.vi Yisra’el ‘al bamo-
tekha h.alal” (2 Samuel 1:19). It seems that both Eibeschütz and Emden were well familiar with the Sab-
batian tradition according to which Sabbatai Z.vi himself is known as Ben Yamin, the “ravenous wolf.”
For this, one should look at the commentary on Psalms composed by Israel H.azan of Kastoria, the
scribe of the Sabbatian prophet Nathan of Gaza, about the secret of Sabbatai’s conversion to Islam.
See Israel H.azan, Commentary on Psalms [in Hebrew], ed. Noam Lefler (Los Angeles, CA: Cherub
Press, 2016), 250.
28. From Pesah. ben Joshua’s letter to Ezekiel Landau, December 3, 1759. In Emden, Sefer
hit’avkut, 28b–29a.
27
“A ND H E E ATS THE F LESH OF THE T ENDER C HILD ”

Emden’s answer to Luh.ot ‘edut was not slow to arrive. Shortly after its pub-
lication he composed Shevirat luh.ot ha-’aven (The breaking of the evil tablets), in
which he rejected Eibeschütz’s claims one by one. Emden showed his book to
several people after it was completed, but only published it in 1759 or 1760.29
Towards the end of the work (pp. 53a–54b) can be found one of the most biting
and dazzling satires ever written against Sabbatianism, in which the writer
“scoffs at the amulet’s commentary,” as Gershom Scholem mentioned in his
own hand in the margins of his copy.30 Emden’s version follows Eibeschütz’s
commentary in a stepwise fashion, yet describes a reverse process of turning the
fetus to stillborn. Emden uses sophisticated metaphorical language when he pre-
sents a number of overlapping alternatives. While he compares Eibeschütz’s
“small amulet”—which was given to women in labor and contained the messiani-
cally charged verse from Isaiah 9:5 (6), “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son
is given”31—to his small child,32 it seems that Emden also alludes to Eibeschütz’s
youngest son: “He is the beloved son, his lastborn, whose pieces he arranged here,
and his soul is bound up in his soul [ve-nafsho keshurah be-nafsho] so he crowned
his skeleton.”33 The allusion to Genesis 44:30, which expresses Jacob’s bond to
his youngest son Benjamin,34 and to 1 Samuel 18:1, speaking of Jonathan’s
bond to David,35 indicates that the identity of the messiah in Luh.ot ‘edut did
not elude Emden’s observation.
Moshe Idel suggests that the strong affinity of Sabbatai Z.vi to Saturn
(kokhav Sabbatai) played a significant role in his public acceptance. Even Sabba-
tai’s self-perception crystallized under the influence of astrological speculations
regarding Saturn that connected the planet with melancholy and the messiah,
such as those found in Sefer ha-peli’ah, which he had studied in his youth.36
29. I am grateful to my colleague Zvi Kunshtat for drawing my attention to the actual date of
publication. On the circumstances of its composition, see Jacob Emden, Megilat sefer, ed. David
Kahana (Warsaw: ’Ah.i’asaf, 1896), 181–83. “I quickly grab an inkstand with my right-hand and
answered him … [and] I did not leave even one of his letters without exposing his audacity and
showing his shameful stupidity and ignorance … I called my answer to him: Shevirat luh.ot
ha-’aven, and I only worked for several weeks to finish it … and after four weeks some people saw
it.” Ibid., 183.
30. “Mitloz.ez. ‘al perush ha-kamea‘.”
31. [Emden?], Sefat ’emet ve-lashon zehorit [6a, 15a]. In the amulet that was given to Aaron son
of David and his wife Idel, “who had no sons,” and in the one that was given to Gabriel of Alsace, the
verse refers to Sabbatai Z.vi. See ibid. [8a, 9b].
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
32. “And this darling tender [‫ ]ר״ך‬child [gematria: ‫קמי״ע‬, “amulet,” 220] amuses him daily.”
Jacob Emden, Shevirat luh.ot ha-’aven (Żółkiew [Altona], 1756 [1759?]), 53a.
33. Ibid.
34. “Now therefore, when I come to your servant my father, and the lad is not with us; seeing
that his soul is bound up with the lad’s soul [ve-nafsho keshurah be-nafsho].”
35. “[T]he soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David [ve-nefesh Yehonatan niksherah
be-nefesh David], and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”
36. Moshe Idel, “Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi: A New Approach to Sabbateanism,” in Towards
the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Schäfer and Mark R. Cohen
28
Even though Idel did not discuss Emden’s commentary in Shevirat luh.ot ha-’aven,
Emden clearly reflects on the negative aspects of Saturn, especially its connection
to heresy and incest:
And now hear the charm of his deeds, to make the child [yeled] weak [dali],37
“like the legs of a lame which hang limp [dalyu], so is a parable in the mouth
of fools” [Proverbs 26:7]. In vain to circumcise the boy when his father is Sab-
batai [i.e., Saturn] the large and high wandering star [kokhav ha-nevukhah]38
whose zodiac sign [mazalo] sinks into a bottomless pit, brings him down and
does not raise him up [morido ve-lo ma‘aleh],39 as if the child was the soul of
the heretic [min],40 and when he was in Aquarius [deli], his name became
’eled [“I will give birth to”] … And know that he was not content until he
spilt his blood.41
There is no doubt that Emden identified Saturn in the Magen David (Star of David)
symbol,42 which appears on many of Eibeschütz’s amulets, including his “small
amulet” from Metz.43 According to Eibeschütz’s explanation in Luh.ot ‘edut, the
Magen David is a tried and true charm for women who have trouble giving
birth, and is the secret of Metatron, who comes into being as the messiah, as he
egresses from the “seventh seal” of the six-pointed star, the Shekhinah’s “lower
mouth.” In his own words:
Magen David which is a charm and the best talisman of all for every misfor-
tune … especially for those in childbirth, has 7 points [including the hexagon
in the middle] … and 7 times 7 equals mem tet [49] which is Metatron, and
therefore he is called “Great Fish” [dag, gematria: 7] because he is included
7 times 7 … as it is written, “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to
swallow up Jonah” [Jonah 2:1]; he [the fish] is the secret of Metatron that
Jonah descended into him. And he also hints at childbirth, that the fetus is
(Leiden: Brill, 1998), 173–202. Idel, Saturn’s Jews: On the Witches’ Sabbat and Sabbateanism
(London: Continuum, 2011), esp. 47–83.
37. ‫ דליו שוקים מפסח ומשל בפי כסילים״‬,‫ דלי‬,‫ ״לעשות מן ילד‬Emphases in the original.
38. “All seven wandering stars [kokhve nevukhah] alternately rise and distance themselves from
the globe or the centre of the Earth, and then draw near and descend to it.” David Gans, Sefer neḥmad
ṿe-naʻim (Yessnitz, 1743), cap. 163, p. 50b. For the affinity between Saturn, melancholy, and confusion
of mind (mevukhah), see Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy:
Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art (London: Nelson, 1964), 131, 225.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
39. Compare to the description in Sefer ha-peli’ah, according to which Saturn/sefirat Binah
“causes to ascend on high” (hu’ ha-gorem leha‘alot lema‘alah), above the six lower planets/sefirot.
See Idel, Saturn’s Jews, 112.
40. Possibly an acronym: morenu Yehonatan, “our teacher Jonathan.”
41. Emden, Shevirat luh.ot ha-’aven, 53a.
42. In Renaissance iconography Saturn is often depicted as a six-pointed star. Klibansky et al.,
Saturn and Melancholy, plates 30, 37, 38, 40, 47.
43. “In this amulet, he had distributed the verse ‘For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is
given’ in five of the [Magen David’s] corners.” [Emden?], Sefat ’emet ve-lashon zehorit [6a, 15a].
29
Jonah who descended “from the presence of the Lord” on high, “and flees to
Tarshish” [1:3], which is this world, as it is written in the Zohar,44 “The ship
was like to be broken” [1:4] and Metatron saved … and in this picture of
Magen David there are 7 openings [zayin nekavim], and the middle one is
the “mouth,” and the “lower mouth” [peh de-lematah] is against the upper
mouth [peh de-lema‘alah, which whispers the magical names into a
woman’s ear], as is known, and therefore these names come as a cure, to
open the “lower mouth.”45
On the other hand, Emden expresses the belief that children who are born under
Saturn are misshapen of body.46 In order to press the point that Eibeschütz
caused the deaths of children yet to be born with his amulets, he evokes the
myth of Kronos-Saturnus, the terrible god who devoured his sons, which
appears in his description as the planet Saturn “swallowing” Aquarius (‫)דלי‬, one
of its zodiac constellations and an anagram of the Hebrew word yeled (‫)ילד‬,
“child.”
Indeed, the most striking aspect of Emden’s commentary is his extensive use
of cannibalistic imagery to illustrate Eibeschütz’s claim that the holy names in his
amulet were supposed to be read apart, and not as one piece. Dismantling the
amulet and manipulating the names in order to lead the public astray is described
as a ruthless, bloodthirsty orgy: after he slept with a Lilith-like demonic woman,
murderess of children, the father draws out the fruit of her womb, dissects the fetus
into pieces, flays it and finally, “‘opens his mouth in slaughter’ [Ezekiel 21:27] …
and eats the flesh of the tender child [ve-’okhel besaro shel yeled rakh]”47 under
the melancholy light of Saturn.48 The bestial debauchery and frenzy for human
flesh reflect the true object of Eibeschütz’s lust:
His appetite did not abate, he is like a hungry dog with a carcass. He was not
satisfied until he had slept with Z.ilah, the mother of demons, whose name he
cried out. And he said: “Understand that this name [Z.ilah] comes from the
verse, zeh ha-sha‘ar la-ha-Shem, z.adikim yavo’u vo [‘This is the gate of
44. Zohar 1:199a; Tikkune Zohar 35b, 53a, 108b.

45. Eibeschütz, Luh.ot ‘edut, 71a. When Eibeschütz’s commentary on the Magen David is read
in light of his Va-’avo hayom ’el ha-‘ayin, it appears to speak about the Shekhinah’s anus or urinary
meatus rather than her vagina. For more detail, see Alleson-Gerberg, “Way of a Man with a
Maiden,” esp. 282–94.
46. Klibansky et al., Saturn and Melancholy, 195.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
47. Compare to Ecclesiastes 4:5. “The fool [ha-kesil] folds his hands and eats his own flesh.”
48. Emden, Shevirat luh.ot ha-’aven, 53a–b. It is interesting to compare Emden’s commentary to
the words of Jacob Sasportas, the great seventeenth-century adversary of Sabbatianism. In his polem-
ical anti-Sabbatian book, Z.iz.at novel Z.vi (whose short second printed edition was published by Emden
in Altona in 1756, in close proximity to the composition of Shevirat luh.ot ha-’aven), Sasportas
describes Sabbatai Z.vi in the image of Kronos-Saturnus. However, as opposed to Emden’s description,
he preferred to downplay the cannibalistic aspect of the myth, contenting himself with the mention of
infanticide, since Sabbatai-Saturn is “the planet which indicates blood and murder, and murders his
sons.” Jacob Sasportas, Sefer z.iz.at novel Z.vi, ed. Isaiah Tishby (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1954), 100.
30
the Lord, the righteous shall enter it,’ Psalms 118:20].”49 He entered addi-
tional wisdom [binah yeterah]50 into this woman, and from this we learn
that he slept with her and she bore him Z.vi, who is hinted at in an acronym
z.adikim yavo’u vo.51
Emden’s satire is composed of a long chain of allusions to Scripture, including ref-

erences to parents who eat the flesh of their own children, demonstrating the ulti-
mate revenge of the deity on his wayward nation. Not only does Emden’s
cannibalistic imagery pervert the biblical pattern—after all, Emden speaks of iniq-
uity but not punishment—it is in fact unmatched in anti-Sabbatian literature.
However, it is remarkably similar to descriptions of cannibalism that first appeared
in Mundus novus (The new world, 1503) by Pseudo-Vespucci,52 and De orbe novo
(Decades of the new world, 1511) by Peter Martyr of Anghiera,53 early accounts of
America. The two works were widely distributed and in short order translated into
all the principal European languages.54 They also found their way into Hebrew
reports on the New World.55 According to these, melancholic cannibals of the
recently discovered countries would copulate with and impregnate their women
to eat the fruit of their wombs.56
Although, to the best of my knowledge, Emden does not explicitly mention
the cannibals of the West Indies in any of his works, he could have been introduced
to them through the “gentile books” and gazettes that he read in German, Dutch,57
and possibly in English,58 “to understand all the views of people around the world
in matters of their faiths and religious customs … [and] the original ideas of those
who write about the lands, oceans, rivers and deserts and those who describe their
conditions”—as well as through conversations with others.59 He was certainly
familiar with the most popular novel about cannibals of his time. In his book Mit-
pah.at sefarim (1768) Emden mentions that he read, “in that place in which it is
49. See Eibeschütz, Luh.ot ‘edut, 64b.

50. An illusion to B. Berakhot 57a: “One who fornicates with his mother in a dream, may hope
for wisdom [binah].”
51. Emden, Shevirat luh.ot ha-’aven, 53a. Emphases are mine. Compare to Nathan of Gaza’s
treatise, Nevu’ah mi-sefinah de-Yonah: “Zeh ha-sha‘ar la-ha-Shem—this is our righteous Messiah;
z.adikim yavo’u vo—this is Z.vi.” Gershom Scholem, Be‘ekvot meshiah. (Jerusalem: Sifre Tarshish,
1944), 68. According to Emden, the verse z.adikim yavo’u vo was included in a Sabbatian prayer
said in antinomian rituals led by Wolf Eibeschütz. See Emden, Sefer hit’avkut, 46b.
52. Amerigo Vespucci, Mundus novus, Letter to Lorenzo Pietro di Medici, trans. George T.
Northup (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1916), 6.
53. Peter Martyr, De orbe novo, the Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D’Anghera, trans. Francis
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
A. MacNutt, vol. 1 (New York: Putnam, 1912), 63.

54. Frank Lestringant, Cannibals, the Discovery and Representation of the Cannibal from
Columbus to Jules Verne (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 21–31, 115–24.
55. Limor Mintz-Manor, “The Discourse on the New World in Early Modern Jewish Culture”
[in Hebrew] (PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2011), 34–109.
56. On melancholy and cannibalism, see Lestringant, Cannibals, 70, 86–93.
57. For example, see Emden, Sefer hit’avkut, 32b.
58. Jacob Emden, ‘Ez. ’avot (Amsterdam, 1741), 2a.
59. Emden, Megilat sefer, 96–98.
31
forbidden to think on matters of the Torah [the latrine],”60 a novel called

D‘ehnsher (Adventure) Robinson, which is The Life and Strange Surprizing
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe.61
“O NE S HOULD E AT H UMAN P REY AND T HEIR B LOOD ”

The cannibalistic imagery introduced by Mundus novus and De orbe novo
that played a major role in colonial propaganda also reappears shortly afterwards
under completely different circumstances. Jean de Léry, a Huguenot pastor,
described a period he spent in the New World about twenty years earlier in Hist-
oire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, autrement dite Amérique (History of a
voyage to the land of Brazil, also called America, 1578). In this work, he recruits
cannibalism to undermine the “papist” dogma of transubstantiation as it was
argued by Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, the leader of French colonial interests
in Brazil. In de Léry’s eyes, the bread and wine of the Eucharist were purely sym-
bolic, since “Scripture is accustomed to calling the signs of the Sacraments by the
names of the things signified.”62 Therefore, the steadfast persistence of Catholics
and Lutherans in their literal understanding of Jesus’s words, “This is my body …
this is my blood,” turned them into cannibals, who desired not only to eat the flesh
of Filius hominis “grossly rather than spiritually,” but what was worse, “like the
savages named Ouetaca … they wanted to chew and swallow it raw.”63 De
Léry, who was introduced to the cannibalistic customs of the Tupinambá,
hurled cannibalism back at Christendom when he turned it into a metaphor for
the “corporeal” reading of Scripture.64
In 1737, Benjamin Wolf Ginzburg, a Jewish student of medicine at
Göttingen University and a former disciple of Emden, asked his teacher
whether it was permitted to perform a postmortem anatomical dissection on the
Sabbath. In his answer, which was published in the responsa She’elat Ya‘avez.
60. See Emden’s instruction on lavatory conduct: “And I heard that Nah.manides was wont to
read books in foreign languages by scholars of the nations in the latrine, so as not to ponder there on the
holy words of the Torah … and this was also the custom of the Gaon, my honored father, may God rest
his soul.” Emden, She’elat Ya‘avez., vol. 1 (Altona, 1738 [1749]), responsum no. 10, p. 31b.
61. ‫ ״רומאן הנקרא דעהנשר ראבינסאן״‬Emden, Mitpah.at sefarim (Altona, 1768), 29b, (Lwów, 1870),
75. The first translation into Yiddish (either from French or German) was published in Metz in 1764, by
the printer Joseph Antoine, under the title Beshreibung d’ash l‘ebnsh … fun Ribins’ahn Kriz’ah. Moritz
Steinschneider, “Hebräische Drucke in Deutschland,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
Deutschland 2 (1892): 156; Zeev Gries, The Book in the Jewish World, 1700–1900 (Oxford:
Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 99. It is possible that Emden was familiar with this
edition, though he clearly refers to the original English title.
62. Jean de Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, trans. Janet Whatley (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), 41.
63. Ibid.
64. Lestringant, Cannibals, 64–65, 68–80; Scott D. Juall, “Of Cannibals, Credo, and Custom:
Jean de Léry’s Calvinist View of Civilization in Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil (1578),”
French Literature Series 33 (2006): 51–68.
32
(1749),65 Emden discusses the principle of the matter—and a question he was not
asked: Is there an interdict against deriving benefit from the cadaver of a gentile?
Of interest to us is the following comment:
In my youth, twenty-five years ago, I saw a responsum of the Gaon, our

teacher Rabbi David Oppenheim, of blessed memory, who sent a few pages
from his book which he wanted to publish in Amsterdam but changed his
mind. I still have some memory of it. It was about whether using human
skin is permitted [‘al ‘esek hana’at ‘or ’adam ’im mutar]. And I remember
that he rejoiced that he had found clear evidence in the Gemara, chapter
lulav ve-‘aravah: “There were once two minim [heretics], etc. R. Abbahu
said [to Sason, one of them]: A water-skin will be made of your skin, and
water will be drawn with it”66… He [Oppenheim] could also have added
the verse, “Behold, a people (etc.) [rises like a lioness, and as a lion it lifts
itself]; It shall not lie down until it devours the prey and drinks the blood of
the slain” [Numbers 23:24]. This verse talks of slain idolaters and clearly
says that one should eat human prey and drink their blood [she-yokh’al
teref ’adam ve-dam h.alalim yishteh]. Using his reasoning, this verse is
better. Even their meat and blood is permitted for eating like game [she-’afilu
ha-basar ve-ha-dam shelahem hutar la-’akhilah ke-basar z.vi ve-’ayal]
(therefore, even more so to use their skin).67
To Emden, Oppenheim’s approach was unacceptable in principle because law

cannot be studied “from allegories and fables, whether from the Torah or Kabba-
lah, or from the sayings of the sages and their puzzles … God forbid that we
should understand things literally [h.alilah lehavin devarim ke-mashma‘an] and
twist the words of the living God. Far be it from our sages of blessed memory
from doing so!”68 Those who prefer literal rather than figurative reading of
texts that are not supposed to be read literally at the outset subvert the basic
truths of the Law,69 and—if they were to carry their principle to its logical conclu-
sion, as did Emden in his reductio ad absurdum—are destined to end up with
cannibalism.
Although these words were written within the framework of a halakhic dis-
cussion on a specific question, I believe that they were intended to stand as a
warning sign against the dangers of heresy inherent in overly literal understanding
of Scripture. This emerges from Emden’s interpretation of R. Abbahu’s response
to Sason, the min who in hyperliteral reading (quite similar to that of Wolf
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
65. Emden began printing the book in 1739 but only published it in 1749. The date on the title
page is the first day of Kislev 5499 (November 13, 1738). See Emden, Megilat sefer, 161. I am grateful
to Zvi Kunshtat for drawing my attention to this detail.
66. B. Sukkah 48b.
67. Emden, She’elat Ya‘avez., vol. 1, responsum no. 41, p. 69a.
68. Ibid.
69. For general discussion on “literal” and “nonliteral” approaches to the legal text, see Thomas
C. Grey, “The Constitution as Scripture,” Stanford Law Review 37, no. 1 (1984): 1–17.
33
Eibeschütz), twisted Isaiah’s words to himself:70 “This is nothing but ridicule of a

heretic … by answering him in his own way.”71
Uriel da Costa’s Exame das tradições phariseas (Examination of Pharisaic
traditions, 1624) can serve as representative example of this type of heresy a few
generations before Emden’s time. Through a close philological examination and
textual criticism, da Costa rejected the belief in the immortality of the soul and
called into question the continuity between true biblical tradition and contempo-
rary rabbinic Judaism, which led to his excommunication by the Amsterdam
Jewish community and the burning of his book. Interestingly enough, in his argu-
ment against the immortality of the soul, da Costa accuses his opponent, Samuel
da Silva, of cannibalism, on the grounds of distorted reading of Scripture: “Let
garments … be rent for your saying that it is not forbidden by the Law to
consume human blood. Such a declaration … can only have been uttered by
some indecent savage, a cannibal living in the jungle, who is accustomed to
such barbarities and who is as gross as you are, you who have such a poor under-
standing of the Law.” Later on, da Costa explains: “So, his [da Silva’s] saying …
that there is no equivalence between the blood and the [human] soul, shows up our
adversary as a wrester and distorter of Scripture, who takes literally the metaphor-
ical and allegorical passages, figuratively those which are clear and obvious in
meaning.”72
The accusation of overly literal reading was directed also against Sabba-
tians. It is remarkable indeed that in his late response to the Frankists’ claim
that the anthropomorphisms in the Bible and Zohar indicate that “God becomes
corporeal in the body like the rest of humanity,” Emden used exactly the same lan-
guage with which he attacked Oppenheim’s ruling a quarter of a century earlier:
“There is no need to understand things literally, as flesh and blood [she-’en
z.orekh lehavin devarim ke-mashma‘an, be-vasar va-dam], but the truth stands
with our sages who said that Torah has spoken in the language of men.”73 It
would seem that a similar apprehension lay in the background of the attempt to
limit the study of Kabbalah, as manifested in the h.erem (ban) placed on Sabbatian
believers in the synagogue of Brody in 1756,74 after the incident that came to be
known as “the terrible deed in Podolia.”75 On the night of January 27–28, 1756,
70. “The min [heretic] by the name of Sason said to R. Abbahu: In the world to come you [the
Jews] will draw water for me, as it written: ‘And with joy [be-sason] shall you draw water [out of the
wells of salvation]’ [Isaiah 12:3]. He [R. Abbahu] said to him: If it was written le-Sason [for Sason], it
would be as you said, but since it is written be-Sason [with Sason], a water-skin will be made of your
skin, and water will be drawn with it.” B. Sukkah 48b.
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71. Emden, She’elat Ya‘avez., 69a. Italics mine.

72. Uriel da Costa, Examination of Pharisaic Traditions, trans. H. P. Salomon and I. S. D.
Sassoon (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 309, 362. Italics mine. For da Silva’s discussion, see pp. 447–50.
73. Jacob Emden, Sefer shimush (Amsterdam [Altona?], 1762), 54a.
74. The ban, named H.erev pifiyot, was spread through pamphlets and eventually reprinted in
Joseph Cohen-Z.edek (Kohn), ʾOz.ar h.okhmah (Lemberg, 1859), 22–29. A parallel version of the
h.erem was printed in Emden, Sefer shimush, 7b.
75. Emden, Sefer shimush, 78b–79a; Ma‘aseh nora’ be-Podolia’, in Jacob Emden, Sefer
ha-pedut ve-ha-purkan (Altona, 1769), 27b–28a; Ms. Heb. 8°7507, the National Library of Israel,
34
Jacob Frank and a dozen of his followers were discovered in the town of
Lanckoronie during what seemed to be a Frankist version of a mystical marriage
with the Torah, a ceremony familiar to the kabbalist tradition, except that “partic-
ipants in the Lanckoronie ritual,” as Paweł Maciejko put it, “replaced the Torah
with a naked woman … the true word of God descended into palpably material
female flesh.”76 Identical treatment of the Holy Text can be seen in testimony
taken at the rabbinical court in Satanów in the wake of the Lanckoronie affair,
where a “true believer” described his attempt to fornicate with H.aya Shorr, the
daughter of “Old” Elisha of Rohatyn, one of the Podolian Sabbatian leaders:
“Once I demanded that she transgress with me. She answered me: Have you
studied the Song of Songs today, as I did? How can you be allowed to carry
out this sanctity?!”77 The Podolian Sabbatians insisted on total literal or antialle-
gorical (“cannibalistic,” so to speak) identification of Scripture; hence, after their
reckless sexual abandon became public,78 the Jewish authorities in Poland
declared: “We deem it necessary to place restrictions … [on those who] try to
climb the merkavah79 … and attempt to gather the secrets of the Torah without
knowing first how to read it, and have no brain to understand [terem yadu’
likrot … ve-shum sekhel lehavin] either its literal meaning [peshat] or the
Gemara.”80
When around 1759 news of Wolf Eibeschütz’s messianic pretensions
reached Ezekiel Landau, the chief rabbi of Prague attempted to warn R. Jonathan
in the same manner: “And since it is not my way to add to the controversy, I there-
fore approach in peace and hereby address a letter to R. Jonathan himself that he
warn his son … and that he decree that there be no Zohar nor Kabbalah studied by
those younger than age forty.”81 The attempt to limit the study of Kabbalah,
evident both from the ban as well as Ezekiel Landau’s letter,82 responded to the
Jerusalem, Ber Birkental of Bolechów, Sefer divre binah (Bolechów, 1800), 190–91. For a Frankist
depiction of the Lanckoronie affair, see MS BJ. 6969, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Kraków, Zbiór słów pań-
skich w Brünnie mówionych, vol. 3, no. 1311, p. 185. For Christian sources, see for example, Konstanty
Awedyk, Kazanie po dysputach Contra Talmudystow w Lwowie, w Kościele Katedralnym Lwowskiem
… (Lwów, 1760), 13–16.
76. Paweł Maciejko, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–
1816 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 27.
77. Testimony of Shmuel Segal. Emden, Sefer shimush, 5b.
78. Ibid., 5b–7a.
79. The “divine chariot,” a term that represents the mystery of the divinity.
80. H.erev pifiyot, 26. Emden’s claim that the ban also applied to “he who wrote impure amulets”
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
(Sefer shimush, 7b), finds no support in the copy of the h.erem found in ʾOz.ar h.okhmah.
81. From his answer to Pesah. ben Joshua, in Emden, Sefer hit’avkut, 29b.
82. On the h.erem of Brody and Landau’s approach towards the study of Kabbalah, see Maoz
Kahana, “The Allure of Forbidden Knowledge: The Temptation of Sabbatean Literature for Mainstream
Rabbis in the Frankist Movement, 1756–1761,” Jewish Quarterly Review 102, no. 4 (2012): 589–616;
Kahana, From the Noda BeYehuda to the Chatam Sofer: Halakhah and Thought in Their Historical
Moment [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2015), 35–60. See also Moshe Idel, “On
the History of the Interdiction against the Study of Kabbalah before the Age of Forty” [in Hebrew],
AJS Review 5 (1980): xiii–xvi. On the Sabbatian context of Emden’s literary criticism of the Zohar,
35
danger of theological error perceived as inherent in wrong modes of reading. From

this perspective, the boundaries of the literary canon and hermeneutic modes
applied to it were a central element of the rupture in eighteenth-century European
Jewry.
“T HE S CHOLARLY C HIEF OF THE B UTCHERS … H E I S A B EAR LYING IN WAIT,

A L ION IN H IDING ”
Both cannibalism and the Noahide laws are crucial elements in Emden’s dis-
cussion in She’elat Ya‘avez.:
“These are the thirty commandments which the sons of Noah took upon them-
selves but they [the nations of the world] observe three of them, namely, they
do not weigh flesh of the dead in the market.”83 And Rashi explains: “[The
flesh of a] dead man.” … This doubtless means that there is an interdict
against benefitting [from corpses] … and even that there is another interpre-
tation of Rashi’s [i.e., “flesh of the dead: meat of a dead animal”], the first
is definitely the principal one … For this reason, it is forbidden to use
corpses [of Christians] who are sons of Noah, because if they observe the
seven Noahide laws they are not in error … and are not like beasts
[ve-’enan domim le-behemah] whose soul is completely lost.84
Through Rashi’s commentary, Emden reads the ambiguous words of the Talmud
as referring to cannibalism: eating human flesh is a universal taboo that the sons of
Noah were commanded to obey, both Jews and Christians; hence Emden’s antian-
thropophagic ruling on the controversial question of benefitting from the cadaver
of a dead gentile.85 Since cannibalism is strictly forbidden, lesser uses of corpses
are also proscribed by Jewish law.
Perhaps the parallel drawn by Emden between anatomical dissection and
cannibalism is less surprising considering the historical context in which it was
written. It was common practice in early modern Europe to swallow human
flesh (mummy), fat, blood, and bones as “corpse medicine,” which flourished
until the second half of the eighteenth century.86 Thus, in criticism rare for its
see Oded Yisraeli, “Ha-pulmus be-she’elat kademuto shel Sefer ha-Zohar be-heksherav
ha-Shabeta’iyim: Le-magamotav shel Sefer Mitpah.at Sefarim le-R. Ya‘akov Emden,” El Prezente:
Journal for Sephardic Studies 10 (2016): Hebrew section, 61–71.
83. B. H.ullin 92a–b.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
84. Emden, She’elat Ya‘avez., no. 41, pp. 68b, 70b. Emphases are mine.
85. In this regard, see “goy,” in Talmudic Encyclopedia: A Digest of Halakhic Literature from
the Tannaitic Period to the Present Time [in Hebrew], ed. Shlomo Y. Zevin, vol. 5 (Jerusalem: Talmudic
Encyclopedia Institute, 1953), 358–59; Ariel Toaff, Pasque di sangue. Ebrei d’Europa e omicidi rituali
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007), 105.
86. See Richard Sugg, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine
from the Renaissance to the Victorians (London: Routledge, 2011). For Jewish use of and positive atti-
tudes towards corpse and blood medicine, see H. J. Zimmels, Magicians, Theologians and Doctors:
Studies in Folk-Medicine and Folk-lore as Reflected in the Rabbinical Responsa (12th–19th Centuries)
36
time, Montaigne attacked European hypocrisy when he compared the cannibalism

of the New World with common contemporary medical practice in his essay “On
Cannibals” (1580): “And the physicians scruple not use of human flesh every way,
either inwardly or outwardly for our health.”87 When, in 1612, the Protestant min-
ister Daniel Featley participated in a religious dispute with the Catholic Richard
Smith on the Eucharist, he quoted from Augustine: “If the scripture seeme to
command a sinne, or an horrible wickednesse … [then] the speech is figurative;
for example: ‘unlesse you eate the flesh of the Sonne of man’ [John 6:53].”
Featley hereby raised the polemical claim that literally swallowing Christ,
which supposedly occurs during the Catholic Mass, is a cannibalistic act, and
therefore opposed to divine law. For his part, Smith simply answered “that it
was no horrible, nor wicked thing to eat man’s flesh, since we usually eate it in
Mummy.”88 An illuminating example from eighteenth-century Jewish popular
medical literature can be found in Sefer bet David (1734) by David Tebl. For a
remedy “against a snake [worm?] … in man’s body, one should give him a
liquor with bread and honey to eat for entire two days, and in the third day,
one should add a bone from a brain [skull] of a man that was executed by the
Christian authorities [‘ez.em min moah. shel ’ish she-neherag ‘al yade pesak din
shel ’umot], and pound it to powder and add it to a liquor.”89 While Emden
does not discuss such practices, he writes in his responsum that when anatomy
teachers “finish dissecting a human corpse, they distribute its skin among the
surgery students since they consider it to be a proven talisman” (keshe-gamru
lenateah. met ’adam, meh.alkin ‘oro le-lomede ha-nituah. ba-’asher mah.zikin
’oto li-segulah yedu‘ah).90
Emden’s negative attitude to the art of surgery and his positive view of ther-
apeutic medicine, as expressed in his halakhic work ’Iggeret bikkoret (1739), have
been discussed at length by Maoz Kahana: “For him modern surgery symbolized
materialistic medicine in general, which is entirely based on the empirical ‘wisdom
of nature.’ … It is a theory that accuses the new science of revolutionary preten-
sion and thus entails theological heresy while denying Jewish traditional
(London: E. Goldston, 1952), 126–28; Raphael Patai, “Indulco and Mumia,” The Journal of American
Folklore 77, no. 303 (1964): 7–10; Abraham O. Shemesh, “Tissues of Human Body as a Source of
Ancient Materia Medica: Medicine and Halakhah” [in Hebrew], ‘Assia: A Journal of Jewish Ethics
and Halakhah 69–70 (2002): 140–55; Shemesh, Medical Materials in Medieval and Modern Jewish
Literature: Pharmacology, History and Halakhah [in Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
Press, 2013), 52–66; Toaff, Pasque di sangue, 93–109; Hagit Matras, “Hebrew Charm Books: Contents
and Origins (based on books printed in Europe during the 18th century)” [in Hebrew] (PhD diss., The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997), 166.
87. Michel de Montaigne, “Of Cannibals,” in The Essays … translated into English [by Charles
Cotton], the seventh edition…, vol. 1 (London, 1759), 241.
88. Daniel Featley, The Grand Sacrilege of the Church of Rome … (London, 1630), 293. Italics
mine.
89. David Tebl, Sefer bet David (Wolmersdorf, 1734), 39a.
90. Emden, She’elat Ya‘avez., no. 41, p. 66a.
37
knowledge and hierarchies.”91 Emden similarly compares anatomical dissection

with idolatry in the final words of his long respnsum to his erstwhile student:
“Beware of the sword in the hand of your inclination, the scholarly chief of the
butchers and surgeons [he-h.akham sar ha-tabah.im ve-ha-menath.im], ‘He is a
bear lying in wait, a lion in hiding’ [Lamentations 3:10] … Therefore my son,
if you have to flay the carcass and observe its dissection [la‘ayen be-nituh.ah],
to engage in pagan work [la‘avod ‘avodah she-hi’ lekha zarah], strengthen your-
self, don’t throw out the words of Torah, fear your God and serve him.”92
“T HEY A RE L IKE B EASTS OF THE F OREST … D O N OT R ECOGNIZE T HEIR O WN

S EED ”
Emden also applies the dichotomous division that he drew with medicine to
the concept of universal morals, which he bases on the Noahide laws. According
to his argument, both cannibalism and dissection of human bodies are inhumane,
not because they are opposed to reason, but because they defy the divine law of the
Testament. As he wrote years later, “Righteous among the nations have a share [in
the world to come]. Therefore, they should observe the seven Noahide laws
because they are the laws of God, not because reason decrees it.”93 Hence,
Emden’s stance on the nature of humanity differs from those of the political think-
ers of his age: according to Hobbs, it is reason that raises mankind from its natural
state of brutishness to civilization by means of the law of nature,94 while Rous-
seau’s ideal of the noble savage is the peak of humanity.95 According to
Emden, in contrast, the godless philosopher and the savage are the same barbarous
Janus-faced figure. He who has no part in God’s Law has no place in the society of
men nor in the world to come:
91. Maoz Kahana, “An Esoteric Path to Modernity: Rabbi Jacob Emden’s Alchemical Quest,”
Modern Jewish Studies 12, no. 2 (2013): 7; See also Kahana, “The Scientific Revolution and the Encod-
ing of Sources of Knowledge: Medicine, Halakhah, and Alchemy in Hamburg-Altona, 1736,” Tarbiz
82, no. 1 (2013): 165–212. Compare Noah J. Efron, “Nature, Human Nature, and Jewish Nature in
Early Modern Europe,” Science in Context 15, no. 1 (2002): 29–49. On the attitude of Emden and
his contemporaries about rationalistic philosophy and the new science, see for example David
B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1995), 256–72, 210–331; Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization
in 18th-Century Europe, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011),
85–101.
92. Emden, She’elat Ya‘avez., no. 41, p. 74a.
93. Haim Borodianski, Moses Mendelssohn: Hebräische Schriften, vol. 3 [Moses Mendelssohn:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
Gesammelte Schriften, 16] (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1929), no. 155, p. 180. Emphasis is mine.
94. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Eccle-
siastical and Civil [Hobbes’s Leviathan reprinted from the edition of 1651] (Oxford: Clarendon, 1909),
esp. chaps. 14, 15, 31.
95. Jean Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among
Men,” in Rousseau, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Goure-
vitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 114–88. See also Irit Idelson-Shein, Difference
of a Different Kind: Jewish Constructions of Race during the Long Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 75.
38
If man’s mind could possibly imagine that there is no need for the fear of
heaven, as the heretics [pokrim, that is Deists] contend, God forbid, then
why do they need all this bother and for what do they trouble their souls
with these investigations? What benefit can they find in them? Surely, it
would be sufficient for them to live like beasts of the forest [ke-behemot
ya‘ar], as their beastly soul [ha-nefesh ha-behemit] would teach them. Who
would tell them what is proper and what is indecent? There are many
people like the Tartary dwellers96 and whole nations on the edge of India
who consider robbery, adultery, and similar deeds to be fine and proper acts
… and their species will remain as beasts of the field [ve-yisha’er minam
ke-h.ayat sadeh].97
It also fundamentally differs from the rational approach of Rabbi David Nieto in
his controversy with the Sabbatian theologian Neh.emiah H.iya’ H.ayon, as it
appears in his book ’Esh dat (1715). This book was known to Emden because
of his father’s own involvement in the dispute and personal friendship with
Nieto.98 Despite its different stance, I believe Nieto’s book was a significant
source for Emden’s perception of theological heresy (both Sabbatian and Deist)
as savagery. After rightfully accusing H.ayon of turning the God of Israel into a
“secondary cause” (sibah sheniyah),99 that is to say, depriving God of his omnip-
otence, Nieto presents the following fictional dialogue between Dan (an acronym
for David Nieto) and Naphtali:
N.: There is no need for additional proof [of God’s unity, infinity, and provi-
dence] since this principle clearly appears in the Torah. What do we need an
intellectual proof for, then?
D.: To silence those who say that there is no divine law and no supreme Judge
[leyt din ve-leyt dayan] … And since they do not accept the intellectual
96. In European literature, Tatars were depicted as cannibalistic. For example, see the descrip-
tion in Chronica Majora (1243) by the Benedictine monk Matthew Paris: “The Tartar chiefs, with the
houndish cannibals, their followers, fed upon the flesh of their carcasses, as if they had been bread, and
left nothing but bones for the vultures.” Cited in Allison P. Coudert, “The Ultimate Crime: Cannibalism
in Early Modern Minds and Imagination,” in Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early
Modern Age: Mental-Historical Investigations of Basic Human Problems and Social Responses, ed.
Albrecht Classen and Connie Scarborough (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 527. See also Pseudo-Vespucci’s
description of the inhabitants of the New World: “Their appearances may be that of the Tartar.”
Amerigo Vespucci, Letter to Piero Soderini. Gonfaloniere. The year 1504, trans. George T. Northup
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(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1916), first voyage, 5.

97. Jacob Emden, Birat migdal ‘oz (Altona, 1748), 104a, (Berdyczów, 1836), 102b.
98. On H.ayon’s controversy, see Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses
H.agiz and the Sabbatian Controversies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 75–159.
99. “Christians’ opinion is closer to ours than his [H.ayon’s], since like us, they believe that God
is the ‘first cause’ and infinite [’en sof ve-sibah rish’onah]’ … but in his opinion, God is a ‘secondary
cause’ … and if they would know that this is his opinion, they would burn him undoubtedly, because
this is absolutely against the principles of their religion.” David Nieto, ’Esh dat … be-sifre Neh.emiah
H.iya’ H.ayon … (London, 1715), 17a.
39
argument [te‘anat ha-sekhel], which cannot be dismissed and refuted, one

should conclude that they do not belong to the human race [she-’enam
mi-min ha-’enoshi], but are mindless as horses and mules.
N.: Is there any one at all who believes that there is no divine providence, God
forbid?
D.: Indeed, there are two sects. The first because of the brutishness of their
mind [me-rov gasut sikhlam] caused by ignorance, such as the people of
America, who are like beasts of the field and wild animals [harbeh mi-yoshve
ha-’Amerika’ she-hen ke-behemot ve-h.ayot ha-sadeh]. The second sect are
people who heard and read in books about the eternal God, the creator of
heaven and earth, who rules and looks after [the world], but since they do
not know how it is possible that He has no beginning, they deny it
altogether.100
In spite of his tolerance towards Christianity, Emden’s concept of universal morals

did not satisfy Moses Mendelssohn.101 In his letter of October 26, 1773, to the
elderly rabbi who was then considered the leading halakhic authority in
Germany, the Berlin philosopher wrote: “To me these matters are more difficult
than a hard rock, that all the inhabitants of the earth from the rising to the
setting of the sun are doomed … unless they believe in the Torah … especially
concerning matters not at all explicit in the Torah [i.e., the Noahide laws] …
And what will those nations do upon whom the light of the Torah has not
shone at all?”102 In Jerusalem (1783), he phrases the problem even more suc-
cinctly: “Why must both the Indies wait until the Europeans are pleased to send
them some comforters, to bring them tidings without which they can, in the
latter’s opinion, live neither virtuously nor happily?”103 In response to the chal-
lenge posed by the savages, and by the influence of Rousseau’s Second Dis-
course, On the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men (1754),
which he translated into German and published incognito in 1756, Mendelssohn
enabled the savages, too, to be part of humanity, if they lived according to the
wisdom of nature: “The eternal truths, so far as they are of use for the welfare
and happiness of man … God teaches … by creation itself and its internal
100. Ibid., 33a–b. For additional parallels between H.ayon and the savages of West Indies,
Africa, and [New] Guinea, see ibid., 9a, 15b.
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101. On the correspondence between the two on this subject and their attitude towards gentiles,
see in detail Jacob J. Schachter, “Rabbi Jacob Emden: Life and Major Works” (PhD diss., Harvard Uni-
versity, 1988), 696–717; Schachter, “Rabbi Jacob Emden, Sabbateanism, and Frankism: Attitudes
toward Christianity in the Eighteenth Century,” in New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations,
ed. Elisheva Carlebach and Jacob J. Schachter (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 359–96; Jacob Katz, “Sheloshah
mishpatim ’apologetiyim be-gilgulehem,” Zion 23–24 (1958–59): 174–93.
102. Borodianski, Moses Mendelssohn, no. 154, p. 178.
103. Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem: A Treatise on Ecclesiastical Authority and Judaism,
trans. Moses Samuels, vol. 2 (London: Longman, Orme Brown and Longmans, 1838), 97.
40
relations [that is, through nature], which are legible and intelligible everywhere
and to all men.”104
The debate between Emden and Mendelssohn was part of a lively
eighteenth-century discourse on natural law.105 As Cătălin Avramescu writes,
“Nothing makes this law more visible than the extreme presence of the anthro-
pophagus.”106 Beside the traditional idea of natural law, where nature is consistent
with God’s laws,107 radical interpretations that appeared in the era of the great sea
voyages approved of the suspension of the taboo against cannibalism when faced
with self-preservation, which is obligatory in nature. Indeed, the different moral
attitudes held by the halakhic master and the philosopher reflect the paradoxical
relationship between cannibals and nature. On the one hand, cannibals are the
very men of nature, governed by its laws. On the other hand, by violating the
natural order of creation (which is but a reflection of Creator’s will), they
execute the most terrible crimes against nature.108 In this light, cannibals appear
as beasts in human shape, as described by the author of Mundus novus:
They marry as many wives as they please; and son cohabits with mother,
brother with sister … and any man with the first woman he meets. They dis-
solve their marriages as often as they please, and observe no sort of law with
respect to them. Beyond the fact that they have no church, no religion and are
not idolaters, what more can I say? They live according to nature [dica vivut
secundum natura] and may be called Epicureans rather than Stoics109 … and
among other kinds of meat, human flesh is a common article of diet with them.
Nay be the more assured of this fact because the father has already been seen
to eat children and wife [est patrem comedisse filios & uxorē] … [T]hey cover
no part of their bodies for the sake of protection, so like beasts [bestiis] are
they in this matter. We endeavored to the extent of our power to dissuade
them and persuade to desist from these depraved customs.110
104. Ibid., 95–96.

105. See the discussion in David Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism: An Historical
and Constructive Study of the Noahide Laws (New York: E. Mellen, 1983), 369–83.
106. Cătălin Avramescu, An Intellectual History of Cannibalism, trans. Alistair Ian Blyth
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 20.
107. For such an attitude, see Uriel da Costa’s argument: “Natural law teaches that one person’s
blood is not proper food for another person and, consequently, its consumption is forbidden. The divine
Law neither legislated against nor abrogated natural law. Therefore anything forbidden by natural law
remains forbidden by the divine Law … The divine Law … forbids … both the flesh and the blood of
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another human being.” Da Costa, Examination of Pharisaic Traditions, 366.

108. On the antique origins of these contrary images, see J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Reli-
gion: Barbarism, Savages and Empires, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005),
159–60.
109. In a Hebrew description indirectly based on Mundus novus, it is said: “They have no gov-
ernor nor ruler, nor law or deity, but only behave according to nature.” Abraham Farissol, ’Iggeret
’orh.ot ‘olam (Venice, 1586), 33a.
110. Vespucci, Mundus novus, 6–7. For the first Latin edition, see Alberic vespucci laurētio
petri francisci de medicis Salutem plurimaˉ dicit [(Paris, 1503), 6–7].
41
Emden’s concept of the Noahide laws was adopted by the Jewish establishment in
Poland (the Council of the Four Lands) in its campaign against the Frankists. To
quote Maciejko once again: “Not only did he [Emden] claim that Christian doc-
trines were congruent with the Noahide Commandments; he also argued that
the very essence of Jesus and the apostles’ mission was to establish a faith
based on Noahidism for pagans … From this perspective, Sabbateanism was a
kind of universal heresy, denying general human moral principles.”111 To this
observation, it can be added that Emden described Sabbatians as a perfect reflec-
tion of cannibals. When the Frankists accused the “Talmudists” of the ritual con-
sumption of Christian blood during the 1759 dispute in Lwów, rabbinic
representatives headed by Rabbi H.ayim Katz Rapoport used an argument
similar to Emden’s—only the other way around. In order to rebuff the charge of
cannibalism and turn it back to their accusers, albeit implicitly, they claimed
that even godless savages do not eat human blood, since “that is one of the
seven laws that were told to [all] human beings,” implying that the Frankists
and their supporters among the Catholic clergy, who are willing to spill blood
falsely in accusing the Jews of ritual murder, deserve to be called cannibals.112
What was merely alluded to in the dispute was said out loud when Emden refor-
mulated Rapoport’s answer in Sefer shimush (1762): “Until when will this iniqui-
tous belief be held in the hands of the priests of Poland, the land of darkness, those
who thirst for blood like wolves, and many times shed innocent blood, through
libelous falsehoods with no shred of truth … as if our nation needs human
blood.”113
Meteg la-h.amor, one of Emden’s anti-Frankist treatises included in Sefer
shimush, further reveals the cannibalistic imagery he employed:
How can you compare Christians to these heretics [minim] of Sabbatai Z.vi,
obstacles and thorns in the flesh, may their names rot. In my eyes they are
like beasts of the forest [ke-h.ayot ha-ya‘ar], and even this comparison is
not completely correct, because even beasts of prey do not cleave any more
to those who are not of their kind as they did in the generation of the
Flood. These abominations do not recognise their own seed [’enan makirim
zer‘am], and there is no need to say that they are worse than humans [she-
geru‘im hem mi-bene ’adam], whoever they are. … But Christians, if they
follow the seven Noahide laws, as they are commanded to do … then certainly
there is no reason to condemn them among the nations.114
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111. Maciejko, Mixed Multitude, 56.

112. See Birkental, Sefer divre binah, 304–5; Gaudenty Pikulski, Złość żydowska przeciwko
Bogu i bliźniemu prawdzie i sumieniu (Lwów, 1760), 296–97.
113. Emden, Sefer shimush, 18a–b. On the other hand, see the words of the Bernardine priest
Gaudenty Pikulski, who was personally involved in the dispute and composed the most comprehensive
Christian account on early Frankism: “There is no other nation in Asia, Africa, even not in America,
who would blaspheme the name of the incarnate God as the Jewish nation.” Pikulski, Złość żydowska,
115.
114. Emden, Sefer shimush, 24a.
42
By making the accusation that the Sabbatians “do not recognise their own seed,”
Emden refers not only to their deviation from Jewish law, but also—and perhaps
mainly—to the sexual practices that were common among the “true believers,”
such as sexual hospitality and orgiastic ceremonies.115 Unrestrained sexuality,
accompanied by consumption of ritually forbidden food,116 connected them
with savages, who besides eating their own kin also devour them sexually, as
was described by Pseudo-Vespucci: “[T]he greatest token of friendship which
they show you is that they give you their wives and daughters … and in this
way they practice the full extreme of hospitality.”117
Finally, the dehumanizing rhetoric of Emden’s reply to David Friedrich
Megerlin’s claim that Eibeschütz’s amulets disclose his hidden belief in Christian-
ity, as well as of his description of Jacob Frank, demonstrates once again the close
parallels he draws between Sabbatians and savages:
To innocent Christians we have all the respect, but lies, falsehood, and decep-
tion is hateful to anyone of human shape [le-kol mi she-yesh lo rak z.urah
’enoshit], to whatever nation they belong. There is nothing more repulsive
and revolting than that, if not he who has the shape of a man and a soul of
a beast [’adam be-z.urah ve-nefesh behemah], especially if he is of the true
seed. … He [Eibeschütz] acts hypocritically like a wicked man who cannot
be praised and honoured since he acts against human nature [she-mitnaged
le-teva‘ ha-’adam].118
While Emden describes R. Jonathan as someone who managed to mislead the

public by cloaking himself in culture, in his presentation of Frank, Emden strips
him of every vestige of humanity. Like Caliban, the monstrous figure of the
savage in The Tempest,119 Frank too is deprived of any virtue, language-less,
and lacking in human form, “a foolish lad, complete ignoramus, and a huge
boor, disfigured and empty. He is not in the image of man [’en lo demut
’adam], but his face is that of a demon. And with no mastery of language at all
[ve-lo’ ba‘al dibur ve-lashon kelal], just stuttering with the cheeping and
crowing of red roosters, completely indecipherable to all who are not very familiar
115. For example, see ibid., 5b–7a; Birkental, Sefer divre binah, 186.
116. “And it was also said that they were permitted to exchange their wives. And if one of them
comes to his friend’s house and does not finds the husband at home, he tells the wife that he is one of
their company. Then she gives him a piece of h.elev-fat from a suet candle, and if he eats it and fears not
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the most severe prohibition [karet] against consumption of h.elev, then she is ready for all his wants,
whoring herself.” Birkental, Sefer divre binah, 186.
117. Vespucci, Letter to Piero Soderini, first voyage, 10.
118. Jacob Emden, ‘Edut be-Ya‘akov (Altona, 1756), 20b.
119. “A freckled whelp hag-born—not honour’d with / A human shape … / Abhorred slave, /
Which any print of goodness wilt not take, / Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee, / Took pains to make
thee speak … when thou didst / not, savage, / Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like / A
thing most brutish.” William Shakespeare, The Tempest, act 1. sc. 2, ll. 283, 353–59. As literary critics
have observed, “Caliban” is Shakespeare’s anagram for “cannibal.”
43
with him.”120 And the men, like their master: “Wretched savages … surely you are
not included amongst the mankind [pera’im ’umlalim … ve-ha-lo’ ’enkhem ’afilu
bikhlal ha-beriyot], but with those who were created at dusk [ben ha-shemashot]
[i.e., demons] … and you are worse than the people of India, who worship the
Satan.”121
“A B IZARRE AND D ISGUSTING F IGURE ”

Cannibalism and savagery, not previously known as a category in anti-
Sabbatian polemics, emerge as such in Emden’s writings. He insinuates tropes
of cannibalism in his criticism of Sabbatianism and other forms of theological
heresy, and in Shevirat luh.ot ha-’aven these themes become explicit. In an era
when cannibalism occupied the European imagination and became a political
weapon that could be effectively aimed against the Other within or elsewhere
(be it Catholics, Jews, or aborigines), as well as a test case for the concept of
humanity, it is hardly surprising to find the same rhetoric among Jewish polemi-
cists. As Limor Mintz-Manor and Iris Idelson-Shein recently showed, in early
modern Jewish culture, savagery was a basic cultural category that served as a
means to establish close proximity between Jews and Christians.122 As the
latter put it, in his “cannibalistic, atheistic, and infanticidal behavior, the savage
… unites Jews and Christians in a mutual bond of civilized people, or
mentshen.”123 This article shows Emden’s important contribution to this discourse
in the eighteenth century, and extends the boundaries of the discussion far beyond
Jewish-Christian juxtaposition.
Scholars acknowledge that Emden’s positive attitude towards Christianity
formed during the 1750s, in the wake of his zealous campaign against Sabbatian-
ism. As Jacob Schechter and others demonstrated, in the face of the Frankists’
claim of Jewish persecution because of their affinity for Christian doctrine, and
in response to rumors about Eibeschütz’s hidden belief in Christianity,124
Emden attempted to turn the Christian authorities against Sabbatianism by claim-
ing that Judaism and Christianity share common morals, which are inconsistent
with the former.125 According to this paradigm, Emden allowed Christians to be
part of civilization only in order to drive Sabbatians out. However, as I have dem-
onstrated above, the roots of Emden’s stance are to be found in his third-decade
halakhic discussion on the question of whether it is permissible to make use of
120. Emden, Sefer shimush, 82b–83a.

121. Ibid., 47a, 51a.
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122. Mintz-Manor, “Discourse on the New World”; Idelson-Shein, Difference of a Different

Kind.
123. Idelson-Shein, Difference of a Different Kind, 43.
124. On this issue, see Maciejko, “Jews’ Entry into the Public Sphere,” 135–54.
125. Schachter, “Rabbi Jacob Emden, Sabbateanism, and Frankism,” esp. p. 388; See also
Maciejko, Mixed Multitude, 51–62; Maciejko, “The Peril of Heresy, the Birth of a New Faith: The
Quest for a Common Jewish-Christian Front against Frankism,” in Holy Dissent: Jewish and Christian
Mystics in Eastern Europe, ed. Glenn Dynner (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2011),
223–49.
44
a gentile’s cadaver. Emden’s argument in She’elat Ya‘avez. connects cannibalism

and the theological heresy that springs from an overly literal reading of the schol-
arly canon on the one hand, and the concept of the seven Noahide laws on the
other. In his opinion, the consumption of human flesh, either literally but particu-
larly in its metaphorical sense, as an erroneous method of reading and use of non-
traditional knowledge, is what distinguishes between the sons of Noah (i.e., Jews
and Christians) and heretics, as well as between humanity and savages. Emden
particularly advanced this concept in his polemical writings against Sabbatianism
in the 1750s, when he became embroiled in controversy with Jonathan Eibeschütz
and the Frankists. That is to say, from the very beginning of his long-standing
polemics against theological heresy—first against Deistic philosophy and materi-
alistic science, and later on against Sabbatianism—Emden’s attitude was cast in
the mold of the contemporary discourse about savagery and the boundaries of
humanity.
Sabbatianism’s transformation into heresy can be partially attributed to the
anti-Sabbatian crusade of individuals such as Moses Sasportas, Moses H.agiz,
H.akham Z.vi Ashkenazi, and Jacob Emden.126 Like his contemporary predeces-
sors, Emden (“a zealot son of a zealot,” as he called himself) strove to drive a dis-
tinct barrier between what he regarded as normative Judaism and what was a
dangerous perversion in his eyes; in other words, between what is “inside” the
communal body of Israel, and what is “outside” of it. At the same time, more
than anyone else, Emden recognized the strong syncretistic tendencies of
Sabbatianism.127 The growth of Orthodoxy and Sabbatianism’s inclination
towards religious hybridity both have to do with the construction, displacement,
and elimination of cultural boundaries, and as such are strongly related to the met-
aphor of cannibalism. This conceptual proximity between cannibalism and trans-
gression of physical and religious boundaries was masterfully depicted in the final
dialogue of Cyrano de Bergerac’s Voyage to the Moon (1656), which can be read
as a witty satire on Catholic Communion (that is, eating Christ and being eaten by
him)128 and the idea of bodily resurrection. What begins as a hypothetical assump-
tion that a moon dweller proposes to his earthly guest, “suppose that you ate a
Mohammedan …,” ends with denying the existence of an omnipotent and provi-
dent God. After the Muslim’s flesh was absorbed and incorporated by the Chris-
tian anthropophagus, he and his wife begot “a pretty little Christian,” “with the
seed drawn entirely from this Mohammedan’s body.” That being the case, what
126. Carlebach, Pursuit of Heresy, 1–16, 193–94; David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A
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New Cultural History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 146–55.
127. Paweł Maciejko, “The Dangers (and Pleasures) of Religious Syncretism” [in Hebrew],
Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 22 (2012): 249–78.
128. Compare to the words of Gerhoh of Reichersberg: “The entire Christ is eaten in the
mystery of the altar. The eater does not change him into himself, that is, into food for his flesh; but
he himself will be changed into him, so as to become a member of his body which is the one
Church, redeemed and fed by the one body of Christ.” Cited in Henri Cardinal de Lubac, Corpus Mys-
ticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, Historical Survey, trans. Gemma Simmonds
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 180.
45
would become of him on Judgment Day? For as a Christian he must be saved, but
as a Muslim he must be damned.129 “Then, if God wishes to be just, He must both
save and damn this man eternally.” Such a God, concludes the moon dweller, “is
either silly or malicious.”130 Perhaps Richard Sugg was thinking of this dialogue
when he defined cannibalism as complete annihilation of borders “as two individ-
uals are collapsed together by the act of consumption.”131 That is indeed the way
that Emden characterized Sabbatianism—neither Judaism, nor Christianity, nor
Mohammedanism, but a hybrid belief “all-devouring,” “a bizarre and repulsive
figure [z.urah meshunah u-megunah] … with three heads that are similar to each
of the three faiths.”132
Johns Hopkins University
129. Similar cases were raised by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and others. See respectively
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0364009419000011
City of God against the Pagans, trans. William M. Green, vol. 7 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1972), bk. 22, chap. 12, p. 271; Summa contra Gentiles, book 4, Salvation, trans. Charles
J. O’Neil (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), chap. 80, par. 5; chap. 81, par. 13.
130. Cyrano de Bergerac, Voyages to the Moon and the Sun, trans. Richard Aldington (London:
Routledge, 1923), 159–61.
131. Sugg, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires, 113. See also Maggie Kilgour, From Commu-
nion to Cannibalism: An Anatomy of Metaphors of Incorporation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1990), 3–19.
132. Emden, Sefer shimush, last page.
46

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AJS Review 43:1 (April 2019), 23–46

© Association for Jewish Studies 2019

T HE S ABBATIAN W HO D EVOURED H IS S ON : J ACOB

Abstract: In an era when cannibalism occupied the European imagi-

versy with Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz and the Frankists.

“F OR UNTO US A C HILD I S B ORN , UNTO US A S ON I S G IVEN ”

Jonathan Eibeschütz, Sefer ’ahavat Yehonatan (Hamburg, 1766), 18a.

The publication of Luh.ot ‘edut in proximity to Wolf’s messianic mission indeed

“A ND H E E ATS THE F LESH OF THE T ENDER C HILD ”

44. Zohar 1:199a; Tikkune Zohar 35b, 53a, 108b.

Emden’s satire is composed of a long chain of allusions to Scripture, including ref-

49. See Eibeschütz, Luh.ot ‘edut, 64b.

A. MacNutt, vol. 1 (New York: Putnam, 1912), 63.

forbidden to think on matters of the Torah [the latrine],”60 a novel called

“O NE S HOULD E AT H UMAN P REY AND T HEIR B LOOD ”

In my youth, twenty-five years ago, I saw a responsum of the Gaon, our

To Emden, Oppenheim’s approach was unacceptable in principle because law

Eibeschütz), twisted Isaiah’s words to himself:70 “This is nothing but ridicule of a

71. Emden, She’elat Ya‘avez., 69a. Italics mine.

danger of theological error perceived as inherent in wrong modes of reading. From

“T HE S CHOLARLY C HIEF OF THE B UTCHERS … H E I S A B EAR LYING IN WAIT,

time, Montaigne attacked European hypocrisy when he compared the cannibalism

knowledge and hierarchies.”91 Emden similarly compares anatomical dissection

“T HEY A RE L IKE B EASTS OF THE F OREST … D O N OT R ECOGNIZE T HEIR O WN

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1916), first voyage, 5.

argument [te‘anat ha-sekhel], which cannot be dismissed and refuted, one

In spite of his tolerance towards Christianity, Emden’s concept of universal morals

104. Ibid., 95–96.

another human being.” Da Costa, Examination of Pharisaic Traditions, 366.

111. Maciejko, Mixed Multitude, 56.

While Emden describes R. Jonathan as someone who managed to mislead the

“A B IZARRE AND D ISGUSTING F IGURE ”

120. Emden, Sefer shimush, 82b–83a.

122. Mintz-Manor, “Discourse on the New World”; Idelson-Shein, Difference of a Different

a gentile’s cadaver. Emden’s argument in She’elat Ya‘avez. connects cannibalism

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