The Promise of Fire

In the years before he came to the Land of Israel, Rabbi Yosef Karo met one of the most extraordinary figures of the age: Shlomo Molcho. Born a New Christian in Portugal, Molcho had returned openly to Judaism, preached redemption across the Ottoman lands and Italy, and even sought an audience with the Pope and the Emperor. In 1532 he was burned at the stake in Mantua, refusing to the end to renounce his faith.

The Maggid spoke to Karo about Molcho, and made him a promise: that he too would merit to sanctify God’s name in public, to be offered up like a burnt-offering on the altar, in the Land of Israel. The diary returns to the promise more than once.

It never came to pass. Rabbi Yosef Karo lived to about eighty-seven and died peacefully in Tzfat, honoured by the whole Jewish world. Every other great promise of the Maggid was fulfilled — the Land, the books, the light they would give to all Israel. This one was not.

Scholars have puzzled over it, and so have the pious. Some see in it a reminder that even the highest inspiration speaks to a human being in his own time and longings — and that the generation of the expulsion, which had seen so many martyrs, longed to give itself completely. Others have said that Karo did offer up his whole life, not in one hour of fire but in fifty years of study, sleepless nights and service; that his books are the offering on the altar. The diary, faithfully, kept the promise anyway — and so it is told here.