Jonathan Eybeschütz

Jonathan Eybeschütz (born c. 1690, Kraków, Pol.—died 1764, Altona, Den.) was a rabbi and religious scholar noted for his bitter quarrel with Rabbi Jacob Emden, a dispute that split European Jewry and ended the effectiveness of rabbinic excommunication during Eybeschütz’s time.

As a rabbi in a number of European towns, Eybeschütz became a celebrated master of the Talmud (the rabbinical compendium of law, lore, and commentary), and he attracted a large, fiercely loyal corps of disciples. He was also learned in Kabbala, an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism.

When Eybeschütz accepted the pulpit in the triple community of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek (then a domain of the Danish king), the women there hoped that his reputed mystic powers would save them from death in childbirth. He gave them amulets that were claimed to have contained, among other incantations, a prayer in cipher to Shabbetai Tzevi (1626–76), the most famous of the false Jewish messiahs, who had tried to abolish the Talmud. One of these amulets fell into the hands of Rabbi Jacob Emden, a strict follower of the Talmud, who publicly denounced the amulet’s maker (without specifying Eybeschütz) as a heretic.

The Polish rabbinate sided with Eybeschütz, the German with Emden. Charges and countercharges, appeals to the Danish king and to the civil courts, brawls between the adherents of each side, and excessive use by opposing rabbis of excommunication all figured in a dispute that masked a more fundamental opposition—between those who saw the pseudomessianic movement as a danger to Judaism and those who saw it as a fulfillment of Judaism. Eybeschütz succeeded in maintaining his rabbinic post, if not actually in triumphing over Emden. The quarrel in which he had played a leading role weakened rabbinic authority among the people, and repercussions were felt for a long time to come.