Background
Although born in Cracow, Poland, he took his surname from the Moravian town (Eibenschitz or Invancice) where his father held office as rabbi.
Although born in Cracow, Poland, he took his surname from the Moravian town (Eibenschitz or Invancice) where his father held office as rabbi.
An infant prodigy, Eybeschutz was destined to become a celebrated Talmudist.
During the first half of the 18th century, there were still many Jews who retained an undercover allegiance to the heretical false messiah, Shabbetai Tzevi. As a student in Prostejov, Eybeschutz was first influenced by the local Shabbatean “prophet” and, even after his move to Prague (1715), where he became head of the rabbinic academy and a member of the rabbinical court, his crypto-Shabbateanism seems to have persisted.
On the one hand, Chief Rabbi David Oppenheim was infuriated by his subordinate’s attempt to publish an “expurgated" edition of the Talmud, while Eybeschutz was also rumored to be the true author of a scandalously heretical kabbalistic work. On the other hand, Eybeschutz had acquired such prestige as a Talmudist that no one dared to accuse him of heterodoxy, not least in view of the fact that the Prague rabbinate’s anti-Shabbatean ban (September 1725) bore his signature.
Ruled out as Oppenheim’s successor, Eybeschutz left Prague to serve as a rabbi of Metz (1741 -1750) before attaining his final post with the Triple Community. There, he encountered a resentful heresy-hunter, Jacob Emden, who may have had the new chief rabbi on his list of Shabbatean suspects. An unforseen development played into Emden’s hands. At the request of pregnant women, Eybeschutz had distributed amulets to ward off the evil eye; after deciphering their kabbalistic formulas early in 1751, Emden pronounced them, and their author, to be unmistakably Shabbatean. Eybeschutz promptly denied the charge of heresy, and the ensuing conflict spread far and wide.
Whereas many opponents of Eybeschutz in the German rabbinate sided with Emden, the lay leaders of the Triple Community, as well as leading Polish, Bohemian, and Moravian rabbis, gave their support to the apparent victim of Emden’s witch-hunt. Violent confrontations were reported in the German press, both Hamburg’s senate and the Danish authorities in Altona were forced to intervene, and Eybeschutz had his status as chief rabbi reconfirmed. He then launched a belated counter-attack, publishing messages of support from rabbinical authorities together with an unconvincing explanation of the kabbalistic formulas that he had written. Most Orthodox Jews who stood by him were presumably unaware that some Christians, as well as crypto-Shabbateans in Central Europe, believed Eybeschutz to be one of their own.
Except for periodical rejoinders by Emden, it seemed that Eybeschutz was a wronged man, entitled to spend his last years in tranquillity. As far as the eminent Talmudist’s Shabbatean sympathies are concerned, modern scholarly opinion remainsdivided. Some insist on hiscomplete innocence of the charge, others maintain that he severed his links with the underground movement in Prague (c. 1725); still others contend that Eybeschutz was an artful dissembler whom Emden quite rightly unmasked. Those in the last group point out that Eybeschutz was denied the chief rabbinate of Prague (1736) because of the controversy surrounding him; that he refused to explain himself before an assembly of rabbis when the amulets dispute still raged; that his own son and grandchildren proved to be followers of the Shabbatean hercsiarch, Jacob Frank; and that there is an undeniably striking resemblance between the heretical work ascribed to him and the only kabbalistic book by him to be published ("Shem Olqm", 1891).