Both contemporary sources and modern academic scholarship disagree on the true meaning and real effect of the bans of excommunications. Gershom Scholem has emphasized that the text of the 1670 ban was the first instance of the appearance of the term “sect of Sabbatai Tsevi” (which, in his view, proved that four years after Sabbatai’s conversion to Islam, the Polish rabbis already saw the Sabbatians as an organized group) and that it was unusually harsh in tone (which demonstrated that the Sabbatians were recognized as a strong and dangerous force). On the other hand, Scholem noted that the pronouncement of the herem had little practical consequence: a few weeks after drafting the text of the ban in another document, the same scribe referred to Sabbatai Tsevi as the messiah.80
According to Scholem, the first excommunications “did not work for the simple reason that the Sabbatians did not recognize the authority of the rabbis.” From the Sabbatians’ perspective, the rabbinic bans were invalid, since their authors, rather than those targeted, were the “mixed multitude,” “heretics,” and “enemies of the faith of Israel.”81 Later excommunications were said to have more impact, and a few contemporary testimonies claimed that in consequence of the series of bans, “the wicked sect was uprooted in the entire country of Poland.”82 Some scholars have accepted this uplifting conclusion; others have argued that the very frequency with which the excommunications were repeated proves the contrary and only demonstrates the strength of the Sabbatians. It has also been pointed out that the repeated and indiscriminate use of the bans led to the weakening of their authority: “the force of the herem diminished with frequent use, and the image of rabbinic contentiousness was heightened. . . . By the late eighteenth century their use—by any authority—was a formality with very little real impact.”83
While agreeing with the analyses noting the inflation of the power of the herem, I wish to emphasize another aspect of the issue. I believe that prior to the eruption of the Frankist affair, there was no organized effort to eradicate Sabbatianism in Poland. Scholars who have described the systematic rabbinic “persecution” of the heretics took rhetoric for reality: the harshness of the language of the bans should not overshadow the fact that there is no evidence of any attempt to put them into force (and, while we are on the subject, even the harshness of language so emphasized by Scholem should not be overestimated and might be largely attributed to the formulaic character of the herem; the 1671 ban against the Sabbatians is in no way “harsher” than a ban against common thieves coming from the same period).84
I would suggest further that this failure to enforce was not due only to the “crisis of authority” and the limits of the rabbinic power but also stemmed from the very nature of the anti-Sabbatian excommunications: with the sole exception of the 1705 ban against Hayyim Malakh, no herem issued in Poland mentioned any Sabbatian by name. Essentially, the Polish rabbis’ anti-Sabbatian excommunications fell into two broad categories: those imposed on books and other writings; and those against the unspecified “people of the sect of Sabbatai Tsevi.” The first might have signified attempts to stop the spread of Sabbatian propaganda but might equally well have been intended to appease the general Jewish opinion: we have ample evidence that despite the excommunications, forbidden writings were in the possession of many rabbis, including some of the signatories of the bans.85
As for the latter, as long as “the people of the sect of Sabbatai Tsevi” remained unnamed and did not purposefully provoke the rabbinate, they could go untroubled by the authorities. Within the framework of crypto-Sabbatianism, this amounted to a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy; in the case of the more overt Sabbatianism of Podolia, it signified a shaky balance of power where some localities were effectively outside the control of the rabbinic bodies (and, in some cases, under the control of Sabbatian rabbis). The Satanów testimonies and the confession of Samuel of Busk might sound shocking, yet it is clear that they depict a state of affairs that had existed in Podolia for a long time (Samuel of Busk goes back twenty years for his account, while Joseph of Rohatyn, author of the longest testimony, described events that took place nine years before the Satanów investigation). The famed Frankist “orgies” were, in fact, the custom of sexual hospitality, which was not a singular ritual but a daily practice; according to the testimonies, it was upheld by the Sabbatians for years before Frank’s appearance in Poland and was in no way connected to his activity. It is highly unlikely that none of this had come to the attention of the rabbis prior to the Lanckoronie incident; even less likely is that it would not have came to their attention had they really wanted to pursue the matter.
As for the specific practices involved, stories about a Sabbatian who wanted to “copulate with a married woman while she was menstruant” and another one, who publicly masturbated in the study hall, had already emerged in 1725; the concerned congregants went to their rabbi who “replied that he knew of many worse acts” and did nothing.86 None of the earlier cases gave rise to a public investigation like the one in Satanów; in none of them were the Sabbatians forced to describe their misdeeds in public.
Before the Lanckoronie incident, the Polish rabbinate’s standing policy toward Sabbatianism was to let sleeping dogs lie. There seems to have been a tacit agreement between the Sabbatian and anti-Sabbatian factions within Polish Jewry, and even the anti-Sabbatian rabbis clearly thought that open scandal was not a price worth paying for the eradication of heresy. This agreement was broken only if one side failed to keep to the bargain. Until the eruption of the Frankist affair, the so-called anti-Sabbatian campaigns were, in fact, individual campaigns of zealots such as rabbis Moses Hagiz or Jacob Emden. During Hagiz’s campaign against Hayon, the Council of Four Lands refused to get involved and did not answer his pleas for Hayon’s condemnation.87 During Emden’s controversy with Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz, the council put much more effort into silencing Emden than into censuring Eibeschütz: the October 1753 herem of the council targeted not so much Sabbatian manuscripts as it targeted Emden’s anti-Eibeschütz pamphlets. The council’s explicit intention was to hush up the quarrel and to avoid spreading public discord among the Jews; silence, not loud condemnation, was seen as the most appropriate response to heresy.
The very first known event involving Frank, the Lanckoronie incident, shattered the status quo between the Sabbatians and the rabbinate and caused the abandonment of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, preferred up to that point by most Polish rabbis. The question remains as to why, in this particular instance, the Polish rabbinate discarded its standard (and largely successful) policy of appeasement, embarked upon a public investigation in Satanów, and reported the Sabbatians to the Catholic Church. I suggest that at least some of the rabbis recognized that the Lanckoronie rite had transgressed the boundaries not only of normative Judaism but also of earlier Sabbatian antinomianism. This, I believe, was not due to the sexual element of the rite: as noted, the sexual misdeeds of the Sabbatians had been known before and never caused such an upheaval.
What really troubled the rabbinate was the use of Christian symbols in the ritual: regardless of the Frankists’ intention (be it antinomian or syncretistic), the use of a cross in a Jewish rite put all the Jews in danger and exposed them to Christian charges of desecration and blasphemy. The participation of several communal rabbis in the rite further complicated the situation. While rabbis (and even prominent rabbis) had previously been accused of Sabbatianism, the illusion of the unity of the Jewish religious establishment in opposition to heresy remained. Both halakhah and widespread practice were reluctant to excommunicate rabbinic scholars: the accused rabbis loudly denied any involvement in heresy and quickly made appropriate anti-Sabbatian gestures. Yet, in contrast to the earlier cases of banning the unspecified “people of the sect of Sabbatai Tsevi,” the post-Lanckoronie rabbinic reaction targeted five specific communities: Lanckoronie,