59 min listen
Yaacob Dweck, "Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas" (Princeton UP, 2019)
Yaacob Dweck, "Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas" (Princeton UP, 2019)
ratings:
Length:
54 minutes
Released:
Sep 8, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
In 1665, Sabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah with a mass following throughout the Ottoman Empire and Europe, announced that the redemption of the world was at hand. As Jews everywhere rejected the traditional laws of Judaism in favor of new norms established by Sabbetai Zevi, and abandoned reason for the ecstasy of messianic enthusiasm, one man watched in horror. Yaacob Dweck's new book Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas (Princeton University Press, 2019) tells the story of Jacob Sasportas, the Sephardic rabbi who, alone among Jewish leadership, challenged Sabbetai Zevi’s improbable claims and warned his fellow Jews that their Messiah was not the answer to their prayers.
The story of a lone voice against the crowd, the story of a lonely man of faith who insisted on reason in the face of mass passion, Dissident Rabbi is the revelatory account of a spiritual leader who dared to articulate the value of rabbinic doubt in the face of messianic certainty. It is a revealing examination of how Sasportas’ life and legacy were rediscovered and appropriated by later generations of Jewish thinkers.
Although his name may not be widely known, Sasportas’ impact continues in Jewish life today.
Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for the nationally syndicated TV program, The Armstrong Williams Show. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com or tweet @embracingwisdom
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The story of a lone voice against the crowd, the story of a lonely man of faith who insisted on reason in the face of mass passion, Dissident Rabbi is the revelatory account of a spiritual leader who dared to articulate the value of rabbinic doubt in the face of messianic certainty. It is a revealing examination of how Sasportas’ life and legacy were rediscovered and appropriated by later generations of Jewish thinkers.
Although his name may not be widely known, Sasportas’ impact continues in Jewish life today.
Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for the nationally syndicated TV program, The Armstrong Williams Show. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com or tweet @embracingwisdom
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion
Released:
Sep 8, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Lori Meeks, “Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan” (University of Hawaii Press, 2010): Scholars have long been fascinated by the Kamakura era (1185-1333) of Japanese history, a period that saw the emergence of many distinctively Japanese forms of Buddhism. And while a lot of this attention overshadows other equally important periods of J... by New Books in Religion