Havaya de-Rabanan [Wandsbeck: Israel ben Abraham] 1725

1 sheet (12 1/2 x 8 3/4 in.; 316 x 222 mm). Strengthened at gutter; minor tears at creases expertly repaired; residual light staining. Modern blind tooled goatskin; title stamped in brown ink on upper board.

Vinograd Wandsbeck 6; Gershom Scholem and Y.D. Wilhelm, "The Havaya de-Rabanan Circulars against the Sect of Sabbetai Zvi," Kiryat Sefer 30 5715, p. 99. (in Hebrew); Shmuel Feiner, The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe, p.69. Marvin Heller, "Israel ben Abraham, his Hebrew Printing Press in Wandsbeck and the Books he Published," Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book, 2013. pp. 169-193.

 

 

A single broadside comprising the texts of three separate proclamations, printed side by side, against the Sabbatian Moses Meir of Kaminka who arrived in Germany from Zolkiew in the summer of 1725. The proclamations were issued by the congregations of Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Altona. The text at right is from Amsterdam; it is the only one of the three to actually provide the date it was issued, July 11, 1725. The text at left is from Altona, a part of the triple-community (AH'U) which included nearby Hamburg and Wandsbeck.  The central text, from Frankfurt is an admixture of Yiddish and Hebrew and refers obliquly to the fierce invective spewed by Moses Meir, calling it too awful to record on paper. From other sources, however, we know that during a search of his belongings, in Frankfurt, explicit Sabbatian writings were discovered. One of the antinomian instructions found among his possessions stated: ''He who has fasted on the Ninth of Av will not be redeemed unless he lies with another man's wife and, if possible, does so on Yom Kippur, all the better.''

Havaya de-Rabanan was loosely translated into Hebrew and reprinted by Jacob Emden in Torat ha-Kanaut, in 1752 as part of his ongoing battle with Jonathan Eyebeschuetz . The text was reprinted yet again as a monograph, with Latin translation by the Danish scholar Johann Ludwig Christian Pontoppidan, the only Hebrew work ever printed in Sorø, exceptionally rare and extant in only two copies.