Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz and the Jesuit Art of Lying

• In Event: Sabbateanism, Anti-Sabbateanism, and Historiography

Abstract

Jonathan Eibeschütz was arguably the greatest - and certainly most contentious - rabbinic scholar of the 18th century. The best known debate concerning Eibeschuetz was that about his alleged Sabbatianism. Yet in the eyes of many contemporaries the most important controversy concerning Rabbi Jonathan was not the dispute surrounding the heterodox writings attributed to him, but rather the outrage engendered by his vivid contacts with the Jesuits. This paper aims to examine Eibeschuetz's contacts with Jesuits, focusing on his acquaintance with the Jesuit doctrine of Mentalis restrictio, mental reservation. The doctrine was formulated to enable the speaker to mentally add a qualification to the words which he utters thus allowing him to tell the literal truth while simultaneously keep a secret. I shall examine Eibeschuetz's writings pertaining to the issues of lying and dissimulation and compare them to contemporary Jesuit works on the subject. I shall argue that on the basis of Jesuit sources Eibeschuetz developed his own concept of mental reservation that allowed him to preserve a double identity of a normative rabbi and a heretical thinker. The paper is based on published works of Eibeschuetz as well as on the archival material from Národní archiv, Prague and the Vatican Secret Archives.

author

• Pawel Maciejko, Hebrew University of Jerusalem