Re: "With Shabtai tzvi, he was actually coming to undo the halacha as some kind of G-d-like figure and make Jews transgress the Jewish laws - the exact opposite of a real messiah. "
This is an incorrect reading of the events surrounding Shabtai Tzvi, in which the writer is looking back on history and judging the entire life of Tzvi based on what we now know to be the end results of his being declared Moshiach by Jewish rabbis during his day.
That's not true.
He was advising people to break the halacha based on complicated novel pilpulim he was making in the kabbalistic literature. He was permitting that which had been forbidden. The rabbis mistakenly fell for it, but that is partly due to the widespread influence of the kabbalah at that time (and at our time, since it has already gained that foothold long ago), and it took very serious scholarship within the kabalah to prove his renderings false (if they even were false within that system)... Many great rabbis were even fooled into thinking that his "scholarship" was the logical continuation of the kabbalistic tradition which had come before him, and the logical conclusion of those sources. However, not all rabbis agreed to that.
I forget which chacham right now off the top of my head, but there was a famous chacham who famously remarked that it took him an entire year to figure out why Shabtai Tzvi's kabbalistic "scholarship" was wrong.
There is an signed and dated legal document on record, signed by the leading eminent rabbis of Shabtai Tzvi's day, which states their unanimous conviction that Shabtai Tzvi is Moshiach with assurance.
I never denied that. I confirmed that. Did you read my post?
This document exactly resembles the one signed recently by Chabad Rabbis stating their unanimous conviction that their Rebbe M. Schneerson is Moshiach with assurance.
Not surprising.
Tzvi didn't just one day show up and announce his mission as one of an iconoclast.
Actually, a major kabbalist by the name of Nathan of Gaza went around proclaiming him as such and he gradually developed a following. A huge following.
His personality literally mesmerized and transfixed his Jewish contemporaries, and all declared that never in history had such a vibrant Torah scholar appeared.
The rabbis and cantors of his day described Shabtai Tzvi's singing of Psalms as something possible only by angels, as if his soul had opened the Gates of Heaven.
What are you saying that contradicts what I wrote?
And it is also a matter of documented record that Jews everywhere on the planet packed their bags with all their belongings and waited at their front doors for their announced Moshiach to miraculously carry them away to Eretz Yisrael.
Ok, now you're exaggerating, but it is true that a majority of the Jews at that time were swept up in this fervor and thought it was real, including many major rabbis. However, there were some rabbis who were against it from the beginning, and some Jews who never ran after this.
There was already a longstanding belief among Torah scholars that Moshiach's rule may well overturn many of the legal statutes under which we now live, and this belief continues in our time.
Nope, that's the so-called "chiddush" of Nathan of Gaza's kabalah in tandem with Tzvi's "scholarship." Mistaken views of what exactly the moshiach is, contributed to this view's acceptance, but to claim that there is a basis for this notion in Jewish halachic sources is far from correct.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe M. Schneerson taught that pork might become kosher in the coming Messianic Era.
No comment.
This is why those Jews who became convinced that Shabtai Tzvi was their long awaited Moshiach would have followed his every utterance without question, exactly as we today witness hundreds of Lubavitcher Rabbis worldwide with unshakable belief that their deceased Rebbe was, and is, the Jewish Moshiach.
And I would like to add here that we have yet to fully witness what damage might or might not be caused to the Jewish People by the hundreds of "true believers" in Rabbi Schneerson who've fanned out across the planet and keep their true beliefs "silent" among themselves. I have personally been told by several of them how "at 770 holy miracles flowed like water...", and how "...when Rabbi Schneerson prayed with fervor it was as if he had left his body and been transported directly into Heaven!...".
In every historic era, the Jewish world has been filled with completely imbalanced Torah disciples - wild eyed fanatics - so out of touch with anything but their own desires and hopes that they give their complete allegiance to almost anyone who demonstrates uncommon charisma combined with profound knowledge of Torah.
As for the longstanding Jewish "Tradition" that in each generation there is someone ready to be the Moshiach if only the generation is ready to accept him...
That's all well and good - a very nice thing to teach little children and talk about in Hebrew class, but as for me I'll wait until there's no question of Moshiach's being here before I pack my bags, because I happen to harbor grave doubts about the Jews of NY City and Tel Aviv being "ready" for Moshiach when I daily watch them embracing homosexuality, crime, and national suicide.
This just shows how widespread are these mistaken notions that lead to Jewish folly. It not only leads to an incorred "straw-man" view/framing of the messiah, but it also leads to a reactionary folly against that straw man view in which good Jews are deterred from returning home!
According to HALACHA, which is the real foundation of Jewish law, (none of these mystical speculations about moshiach have anything to do with how we're supposed to Act in the world), we are supposed to "pack our bags" and return home to Israel regardless of whether moshiah is here or not. Uncomfortable for some people but true. The halacha is what guides Jewish life, not kabbalistic diyukim or mystical speculations about how ready people are, or how many flowers grow in 770, or who is here or isn't here and hasn't done anything yet.
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