We talked about William Blake, a little bit. We talked a little bit about Jacob Frank, the 18th-century Polish-Jewish cult leader who carried the faith of the long-dead and even longer-discredited Messiah Sabbatai Zevi into previously undreamed of territories of weirdness and erotic … [Read more...]
Conspiracy Theories Revisited – The Strange Case of Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz (Part 3)
(This is part 3 of a three-part post. For part 1 click here; for part 2 click here.) In last week's post, I began to describe the scandalous book of Kabbalah that surfaced in Germany in 1725, with the title Va-avo ha-Yom el ha-Ayin, "I Came This Day to the Spring." Rumor had it that the book … [Read more...]
Conspiracy Theories Revisited – The Strange Case of Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz (Part 2)
(This is part 2 of a three-part post. For part 1, click here.) “I came this day to the spring of wisdom … and now I shall enlighten you with words of understanding.” This is the beginning of what may have been the most controversial Jewish book of the 18th-century. It was a book of … [Read more...]
Conspiracy Theories Revisited – The Strange Case of Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz (Part 1)
"By this time it is quite obvious that Shloimele was a secret disciple of Sabbatai Zevi. For even though the False Messiah was long dead, secret cults of his followers remained in many lands. They met at fairs and markets, recognized each other through secret signs and thus remained safe from the … [Read more...]
Madonna’s Kabbalist – Philip Berg and the Kabbalah Centre (Part 2)
(Continuing my blog post from last week.) My first encounter with Philip Berg's Kabbalah Centre wasn't in Los Angeles, to which the organization's headquarters eventually migrated. It was in a subway station in New York City. It was hot there, and noisy; and a pretty young Israeli woman was … [Read more...]
