Asking a Rabbi About His Fear: Shared Intention in an Early Modern Jewish-Christian Interaction

Abstract

This paper explores the intentionality of a captivating Jewish-Christian encounter in Amsterdam during the spring of 1657. It features Rabbi Nathan Shapira ha-Yerushalmi and a group of millenarian Christians led by the mystical chiliast Peter Serrarius. Rabbi Shapira, a renowned Kabbalist from the circle of Jacob ben Hayyim Tsema?, was on a mission to raise funds for the beleaguered Ashkenazi Jewish community of Jerusalem. He was convinced that their collective woes were the dramatic overture to the Messiah's grand debut. Meanwhile, the Collegiants – a radical Protestant Christian group – were eagerly awaiting apocalyptic events around 1656. Richard Henry Popkin famously described this meeting as a “touching moment” in Jewish-Christian relations, particularly noting the Rabbi’s surprisingly “philo-Christian” presentation of rabbinic texts. This study examines the source text by contextualisation and redaction. It shows that there was a shared intention, even if different agents participated for different reasons based on their own distinct religious tradition.