Inspired by the Jewish tradition that the coming of the messiah would be preceded by horrendous catastrophes, a group of rabbis established a community in Ẕefat (Safed), Palestine, where, in anticipation of the new dawn, every aspect of life was conducted on principles of saintliness and mystical contemplation. Under the leadership of Jacob Berab, the ancient practice of ordination (semikha) was reinstituted in 1538 to form the nucleus of a revived Sanhedrin that would administer ritual procedures requiring fully ordained authorities. Although the effort failed because of rabbinic opposition, it reflected the temper of the times and further fanned messianic hopes sparked shortly before by the campaigns of Solomon Molkho (c. 1500–32) and David Reubeni (died after 1532) in Italy; Molkho was burned at the stake by the Christian authorities, and Reubeni died in prison. In Ẕefat itself, Kabbalism soon entered a new phase under the inspiration of Isaac Luria (1534–72) and Ḥayyim Vital (1543–1620), who confided to their disciples that the calamities of Israel were but a mirror of the captivity into which many sparks of the Godhead itself had fallen. Liturgical innovations and a novel mystical theology were formulated to redeem the imprisoned elements of divinity and thus restore creation to the harmony intended for it.
That the Almighty himself was not quite omnipotent, at least with respect to the fate of his chosen people, was cautiously hinted in a Hebrew work of history (1550) by Solomon ibn Verga (1460–1554), who regarded the Jewish problem as a sociopolitical one to which theological answers were futile. Such guarded rationalism was entertained by a number of courageous thinkers in 16th-century Italy, where, despite the policy of ghettoization (the segregation of the Jewish community in a restricted quarter) begun by Venice in 1516 and soon extended to all major Italian cities, the spirit of the Renaissance and the passion for historical criticism had captivated many Jews. Catholic scholars and prelates occasionally employed rabbis to instruct them in the Hebrew language and in the secrets of the Kabbala, which some Christians believed actually verified the postulates of their own faith. Contacts with Christian scholars in turn introduced Jews such as Azariah dei Rossi (c. 1513–78), whose Meor ʿenayim (“Enlightenment of the Eyes”) inaugurated critical textual study of rabbinical texts, to new bodies of literature that had been lost to the Jewish community, such as the works of Philo and Josephus.
Such phenomena, however, were comparatively rare and isolated. The spread of dogmatic Kabbalism eventually led to the widespread acceptance of the views of the pseudo-messiah Shabbetai Tzevi (1626–76). Most of European and Ottoman Jewry was swept into near hysteria in the belief that the end was now finally at hand. When Shabbetai converted to Islam after being apprehended by the Ottoman government, all but his most faithful followers were despondent, though some tried to explain the apostasy of the pseudo-messiah as a form of voluntary crucifixion for the sake of the Jews. A witch hunt on the part of traditionalists to uncover the remaining cells of heresy unsettled Jewish communities everywhere.
The following century (to c. 1750) was the darkest in the history of Rabbinic Judaism. Scholarship declined and popular religion became mechanical to an extent that Jews had never before experienced. Polish Jews suffered terribly during the Deluge, a period of peasant revolts and war involving Poland, Russia, and Sweden that began in 1648. The Jews were slaughtered by rebels and professional soldiers during the war, which was fought mostly on Polish soil, and many survivors were sold as slaves in Turkey. The massacres and impoverishment of Polish Jewry after 1648 brought a pall over the growing eastern European centres of Jewish life. Antinomian eruptions of extreme Shabbetaians under the leadership of the self-proclaimed messiah and later Catholic convert Jacob Frank (1726–91) alarmed Gentile authorities almost as much as they did Jews. But the fossilization referred to above was only apparent. Beneath the surface many were restlessly searching for new avenues of faith, and the 18th century saw fresh responses that set the history of the Jews and of Judaism in new directions and marked the beginning of a new era. Gerson D. Cohen Modern Judaism (c. 1750 to the present) The new situation
The criteria used to identify dividing points in the history of the Jews and Judaism are especially notable when it comes to the start of the modern period. Historians of thought traditionally place this point in the late 17th century, with the appearance of those who abandoned, in part or in toto, their inherited Jewish faith but continued to regard themselves—and to be regarded by others—as Jews. Some Israeli scholars prefer a date of about 1700, with the first stirrings of the emigration from the Diaspora to the Holy Land, which culminated in the mid-20th century in the creation of the State of Israel. Political and social historians put the start of the modern period in the second half of the 18th century, when the American and French revolutions eventually resulted in the emancipation of Jews from discriminatory and segregative laws and customs, their attainment of legal status as citizens, and the freedom of individual Jews to pursue careers appropriate to their talents. These varying approaches have one thing in common: the view that the start of the modern period is marked by the end of the doctrine of the exile, whereby Jews saw themselves as a people waiting out centuries of woe in alien lands until the moment of divine redemption. Jewish modernity for most scholars is characterized by the end of a passive waiting for the messiah and the beginning of an active pursuit of personal or national fulfillment on this earth and preferably in one’s own lifetime.
World distribution of Judaism.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Although the 18th century Haskala (Enlightenment) among the Ashkenazim of central and eastern Europe is often taken as the starting point of Jewish modernity, the process of Westernization had begun a good deal earlier among the Sephardim in western Europe and in Italy. The Marranos who went to the Jewish communities of Amsterdam and Venice in the 17th century to declare themselves Jews carried with them the Western education that they had acquired while living as Christians in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the habits of criticism that had kept them from assimilating into the majority during their Marrano years. Some, such as Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza (1632–77), a son of Marranos, applied these skills to all of the biblical tradition, including especially their own religion. In Italy there was an older Jewish community that had never been sealed off culturally from the influence of its environment; some of its figures were influenced by, and participated in, the main currents of the Renaissance.