[Avodah] The Rabbi, the Rebbe, and the Messiah

[Professor L. Levine via Avodah]

The article with this title at


http://seforim.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-rabbi-rebbe-and-messiah.html


is not primarily about RMMS.  It focuses on another rebbe who some thought to be the messiah. The article is long and scholarly and well worth the read, IMO.  The second paragraph of this article is


"Messiahship was a chasidic and mystical phenomenon, with chasidic rebbes; R' Yisrael Ba'al Shem Tov[2], R' David of Tulna[3], R' Yisrael of Ruzhin[4], R' Nachman of Breslov[5], R' Yitzchak Isaac Safrin of Komarna[6], R' David Moshe of Chortkov[7], and mystics; R' Chaim Vital[8], R' Chaim ibn Attar[9], R' Moshe Chaim Luzzato[10], Shukar Kuchayil I[11], and Shukar Kuchayil II[12], and more recently Yisrael Dov Odesser[13], all being labeled one way or another as the Messiah[14].  Despite the characterization of these individuals as the Messiah, most lived on without any scandal associated with the eschatological attribution.  There is one instance however, which unfortunately did cause a great uproar.  I refer to you the case of R' Menachem Mendel Hagar, the scion of the Vizhnitz chasidic dynasty, and the Transylvanian town of Borsa."


Please see the above URL for much more about a chapter in Jewish history that I was not at all aware of.  And, of course,  after the entire incident there was an attempt to suppress knowledge of it just as there was after the Shabbatai Tzvi affair.


YL
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