Private Devotion

Greetings from Angelus by Gershom Scholem (translated by Richard Sieburth). Archipelago Books, 2018, $14.00 paper.

IN 1648—the year, according to the , destined to usher in the messianic era—a Smyrnan Jew by the name of Shabbatai Tzvi received a miraculous heavenly vision: as the patriarchs anointed him with the perfume of Eden, the voice of God announced that he was destined to redeem the children of Israel. In the years that followed, Tzvi drew masses of zealous devotees as reports of his heretical behavior seemed to betoken a radical new order for the age to come: the pronunciation of God’s name (forbidden in orthodox Judaism), the conversion of fasts into feasts, the formulation of an antinomian doctrine known as “sacred sin.” But in 1666, threatened with execution by the Ottoman