Eli Shai - Messiah of incest; The unique hand colored signed copy by the author

Description

A real collector's item; This is
The unique hand colored signed copy by the author with many historical illustrations gracefully colored by hand and personally signed, there is no entirely similar copy to be found.
The most special copy of
Messiah of incest; New and Uncensored History of The Sexual Element in Jewish Mystical Messianism
, by Eli Shai [
משיח של גילוי עריות
] published in its first
Hebrew
edition in
Yedioth Ahronoth
Publishing house, Tel-Aviv, is the first attempt to rewrite the biographical narrative of the life of Shabbatai Zvi ever since the publication of Scholem classical and monumental masterpiece -
'Shabbetai Zvi  and the Shabbetaian Movement during his lifetime
' - which first appeared in Hebrew edition in
Am Oved
publications in 1956 and was later  translated by R.J. Zwi Werblowsky and published in Princeton University Press under the title -
The Mystical Messiah
, 1973, 1000p. as part of the Bollingen series XCIII.
Scholem most notable research opened a new field in Jewish studies and inspired an intensive research in Jewish mystical tradition and specially in the history of Shabbetaian movement. Scholem himself published several books on Shabbetaianism, but never completed his plan to add a third vol.
to his main book
in which he hoped to follow the continuation of the movement after the death of its founder.
There are three
major books published after his death on the subject;
Researches in Sabbateanism
which is a collection of his articles published in Am Oved 1991,
On Sabbateaism and its Kabbalah
- Collected Essays by his prominent pupil and recently
The Sabbatian Movement and Its Aftermath; Messianism, Sabbatianism and Frankism
, published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2001 in two vols.
Those three books contain brilliant research, but all of them are constructed as collections of articles and none of them can offer a new biographical narrative to the life of Shabbatai Zvi, nor do they present a totally alternative concept of the inner dynamic of the movement.
The purpose of the present book is to offer a different perspective to the personality of Shabbatai Zvi and to the esoteric dimension of his messianic movement.
At the core of the book is the theory of the 'secret of the burning'
as the key to the personality of Shabbatai Zvi and the psychosexual thesis as the answer to the major question which Scholem posed at the beginning of his book; "What exactly were the decisive factors that brought about the messianic outbreak?"
Although the book contains detailed research it is not aimed solely to the inner circles of researchers, but to the larger general intellectual public. The book is written as a biographical narrative and an historical novel and so it gives the reader a gradual introduction into the subject. The deeper secrets of the Messiah and his movement are reveled to the reader in a manner of dramatic detective story which contains
murder plot and forbidden love story. Special care was given to the illustrative part that is designed in such a way as to give the reader the possibility to be introduced to the subject by a synthesis of textual and visual means.
The book had received wide media
attention including 5 p. of a magazine article in Israel biggest newspaper (
7 days
magazine of
Yedioth
)
.
Israel's top critic of art and culture - Adam Barouch reviewed it enthusiastically in
Ma'ariv
daily emphasizing it shouldn't be limited just for experts in the field, but should be aimed for the wider public.