Isaiah Tishby as Editor: Jacob Sasportas's “Zizath Novel Zvi”

• In Event: "Messianism and Kabbalah Scholarship: The Life and Works of Isaiah Tishby"

Abstract

This paper will reconstruct Isaiah Tishby’s role as the editor of “Zizath Novel Zvi,” by Jacob Sasportas. Drawing on a range of archival material from the Schocken Library in Jerusalem and from Isaiah Tishby’s papers at the National Library of Israel, this paper traces the origins of Tishby’s project in the Research Institute for Kabbalah founded by Gershom Scholem and funded by Salman Schocken through its torturous path to publication by the Bialik Institute in 1954. In addition to reconstructing the social history of this scholarly project, this paper examines the role played by the Research Institute for Kabbalah in the study of Sabbatianism in the middle of the twentieth century.

Author

• Yaacob Dweck, Princeton University