Was Casanova an antisemite, a believer in Kabbalah — or both?
Born 300 years ago, the legendary libertine had a utilitarian relationship to faith
Comte Max de Pourtales wears a costume modeled after a portrait of Casanova, for the 1928 Regency ball. Photo by Getty Images
By Benjamin Ivry January 15, 2025
According to Margarethe Weissenstein, the Vienna-born Jewish author of The Power of the Charlatan, Casanova — who was born 300 years ago in 1725 — was an itinerant charlatan who manipulated credulous nobles and other moneyed clients through 18th century Europe with promises about numerology, supposedly derived from the Kabbalah.
Historian Pawel Maciejko notes that Casanova studied some Hebrew, encountered European Jews although sometimes unhappily, and at age 16 defended a doctoral dissertation on the subject Whether the Hebrews can build new synagogues.
He was also an aspiring Kabbalist. One letter survives from what was apparently a longer correspondence, in which Casanova wrote to the daughter of Jacob Frank, the Polish Jewish religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi.
Just over a year after her father’s death, Casanova reminded Eve Frank of his devotion to Arabic numerology, more precise than Kabbalah, he claimed, which “allows only a more or less inaccurate glimpse into divine secrets.”
Yet biographers have uncovered hundreds of numerological calculations, implying that he took Kabbalistic activities at least half-seriously. Casanova even once claimed that his knowledge of Kabbalah helped him to win at cards and romance.
As for Jews, to Casanova they were pawnbrokers, money lenders, furniture and clothing dealers. They also appear in his memoirs as wealthy rivals for the attentions of young Christian women.
This utilitarian view of religious identity was shared by others among Casanova’s contemporaries. The Count of Bonneval, a French army officer who entered the service of the Ottoman Empire, eventually converted to Islam. Casanova quoted the former count as admitting to mercenary motives: “If the Jews had offered me the command of an army of fifty thousand men, I would have gone and besieged Jerusalem.”
Also exploiting the craftsmanship of Jews in creating talismans for love rituals, Casanova hired a Jewish woman embroiderer to fashion a memento from the hair of one inamorata. Alert to the ethnic roots even of apostate Jews, Casanova observed that an art maven named Guarienti, traveling with his brother, was a “converted Jew” hired by the King of Poland to acquire masterpieces.
This close attention to family identity is mirrored in another anecdote from the memoirs, about one night in a Vienna street, when Casanova, busy urinating against a wall, was asked to move along because a woman living in an apartment above had a telescope trained on him and “could have told whether I was a Jew or a Christian.”
Questions of circumcision apart, Casanova sometimes described a role reversal in which he adopts a certain Yiddishkeit. So on one occasion he acted as a pawnbroker to a Venetian Jew, lending him money in exchange for some books. Similarly, Casanova seemed to assume a fleeting Jewish appearance when in jail, a fellow prisoner assumed he was Jewish and might require explanation of Christian prayer.
However, Casanova’s persistently negative image of Jews is epitomized by his account of imprisonment in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, for “public outrages against the holy religion.” At one point, his cellmate is a Jew. This vignette is far more incisive than any pen portrait by Casanova of a female Jewish object of his affection.
Casanova introduces the reader to Gabriel Schalon, “known for his ability to find money for young people by getting them to do bad business deals.” When Schalon complained that imprisonment would ruin his reputation, Casanova assured him that his notoriety was such that jailing could not worsen it, “and he took that for a compliment.”
Casanova depicts Schalon as a “Talmudist, like all modern Jews,” who claimed to be devout, but smiled when Casanova asserted that he would “forswear Moses if the Pope would make him a cardinal.” A rabbi’s son, Schalon knew about Jewish ritual.
Later betraying Casanova’s escape plans, Schalon was described by his cellmate as “the accursed Jew.” In the Hague, Casanova likewise mixed societal messages on Jews and Judaism. After being hosted by a Jewish banking family, he was informed by a Christian nobleman that having made his acquaintance, Casanova should henceforth shun Jews socially.
Nevertheless, the nobleman, like Casanova himself, revered the supposed utility of Jewish lore, claiming acquaintance with a Jew who “made an immense fortune” through Kabbalah.
The nobleman’s daughter is introduced to the use of condoms by Casanova, and both agreed that Jews were likely the inventors of this device that flouted the Vatican ban on contraception. If so, the Jewish inventors deserved corporal punishment and not just fines, they concurred.
At times, Casanova personally inflicted corporal punishment on Jews, like a Berlin tailor whom he considered insolent, and a Polish Jewish customs official. And Casanova arranged for the beating of an opera manager who failed to grant a starring role to a teenage favorite of Casanova’s. The last-mentioned observed that this disappointing opera house manager bowed deeply to him, “which is not often a proof of sincerity, especially among Jews.”
Casanova’s notorious resolve in carnal matters was matched by a Jewish woman named Lia, daughter of a Turin horse dealer who was deemed “as greedy as most Jews are.” Attracted by Lia, Casanova accepted her invitation to attend a Venetian Jewish wedding, since “several pretty girls would be present” and Casanova considered such events “very amusing,” despite “something at once solemn and ridiculous about the ceremony.”
He tried to persuade a different Jewish woman, also named Lia, to eat shellfish, purportedly because breaking the laws of kashrut might be a first step to further dissipation.
During a carriage trip to Ancona, Italy, Casanova at first protested that he wanted to share the space with no one, “much less a Jew,” trying to reject a Jewish traveler who asked the reason for his dislike. Casanova replied that Jews are taught to “hate men of all other religions, especially Christians,” and think they have done well “when you have deceived us.” Jews are “usurious, unmerciful, our enemies,” Casanova concluded.
Nevertheless, his interlocutor invited him to attend synagogue to hear the congregation “pray for all Christians, beginning with our Master the Pope.” Casanova supposedly retorted in Hebrew with Old Testament passages in which “Jews are bidden to do all possible harm to the Gentiles, whom they were to curse every day.” Yet he agreed to attend shul with the new acquaintance, and concluded that “Jews go to the synagogue to pray, and in this respect, I think their conduct worthy of imitation by the Christians.”
Casanova’s complex, paradoxical rapport with Jews and Jewish history was such that he could accept hospitality from adversaries and then accompany them to a house of worship, while profiteering from pseudo-Kabbalistic lore, and lusting after their daughters.
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