Kabbalah · R' Nechemiah Chiya ben Moshe Chayun · 18th c. · Berlin · Printed Book · Sabbatean · Banned Book · Lost & Banned Books · Controversy

עוז לאלקים — מאת נחמיה חיא בן משה חיון

Oz l'Elokim — the banned Sabbatean work of Nechemiah Chayun (Berlin, 1713)

Berlin, 1713 · The National Library of Israel

Oz l'Elokim — one of the most famously banned books in Jewish history. Nechemiah Chiya Chayun (c. 1655–1730), a Sabbatean Kabbalist who had wandered through Italy, the Balkans, and Eretz Yisrael, arrived in Berlin in 1713 and somehow secured haskamot from the local rabbi Aaron ben Benjamin Wolf to print this work. Inside, Chayun developed a doctrine of the Godhead that other rabbis read as veiled Sabbateanism — coming uncomfortably close, in their reading, to a Christian-style trinity. The reaction was immediate. Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi (the Chacham Tzvi) of Amsterdam led the cherem against it, joined by his son Rabbi Yaakov Emden and the elder Rabbi Yaakov Sasportas; communities everywhere were called on to seek out and burn every copy. Almost all were destroyed. The surviving copy reproduced here — with several inserted handwritten owner's notes from later readers — is held at The National Library of Israel. A downloadable PDF facsimile is also available.