Description

At a time when cannibalism captured European imagination and was used as effective propaganda against the ‘other’ within or elsewhere, as well as a test case for the concept of Natural Law, it is hardly surprising to discover similar rhetoric in internal Jewish discourse of the early modern era. R. Jacob Emden’s halachic writing on the subject of modern medicine and his tenacious battle against Sabbateanism, provide illuminating examples of the use of cannibalistic imagery, as this had crystalised in colonial literature from the new world and in religious polemics on the Eucharist. Emden’s halachic position on the question ‘is it permissible to benefit from the cadaver of a dead gentile’ (She’elat Y‘aveẓ, 1739), makes the clear connection between cannibalism and theological heresy springing from an overly-literal reading of the scholarly canon on one hand, and the concept of the seven Noahide Laws on the other. In Emden’s opinion, the point about consuming human flesh, literally and particularly metaphorically, is what distinguishes between the sons of Noah (that is to say, Jews and Christians) and heretics, as well as between humanity and savages. This concept received significant impetus in Emden’s polemical writings against the Sabbatean heresy in the 1750s, when he became embroiled in controversy with R. Jonathan Eibeschütz and the Frankists.

Start Date

17-8-2015 12:00 AM

Location

Ohio State University, Columbus

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Aug 17th, 12:00 AM

The Sabbatean who devoured his Son: The Emden-Eibeschütz Controversy and Cannibalism

Ohio State University, Columbus

At a time when cannibalism captured European imagination and was used as effective propaganda against the ‘other’ within or elsewhere, as well as a test case for the concept of Natural Law, it is hardly surprising to discover similar rhetoric in internal Jewish discourse of the early modern era. R. Jacob Emden’s halachic writing on the subject of modern medicine and his tenacious battle against Sabbateanism, provide illuminating examples of the use of cannibalistic imagery, as this had crystalised in colonial literature from the new world and in religious polemics on the Eucharist. Emden’s halachic position on the question ‘is it permissible to benefit from the cadaver of a dead gentile’ (She’elat Y‘aveẓ, 1739), makes the clear connection between cannibalism and theological heresy springing from an overly-literal reading of the scholarly canon on one hand, and the concept of the seven Noahide Laws on the other. In Emden’s opinion, the point about consuming human flesh, literally and particularly metaphorically, is what distinguishes between the sons of Noah (that is to say, Jews and Christians) and heretics, as well as between humanity and savages. This concept received significant impetus in Emden’s polemical writings against the Sabbatean heresy in the 1750s, when he became embroiled in controversy with R. Jonathan Eibeschütz and the Frankists.