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...]
Best Book in the Bible – Akiba, Ingersoll, and the Song of Songs
Here's a riddle for you: What did Akiba ben Joseph, the great rabbi of the 2nd century CE, and Robert Ingersoll, the great agnostic of the 19th century about whom I posted last week, have in common? Answer: they both thought the Song of Songs (a.k.a. "Song of Solomon") was the best book of the … [Read more...]
