The annals of
Jewish history have their villians, but none more hilarious than the
false messiah Shabtai Zvi.
Shabtai Zvi was born to an
Ashkenazi family in
Ismir (
Smyrna),
Turkey and received a tradition
Talmudic education. His mental gifts were recognized and he was designated to study to be a "chacham", a member of the
rabbinic elite, a post to which he was appointed when he was 18. He had a handsome appearence and a fine voice, and he loved to sing, alternating holy
psalms with lewd Spanish
romanzas.
As a young man, Zvi embarked on
Kabbalistic studies and practiced
asceticism. Between 1642 and 1648 he lived in semi-seclusion and began to display a clear case of
bipolar disorder, alternating profound
depression with spiritual
exhaltation. In Ismir in 1648, when reached by the news of the tragic
Chmielnicki massacres he began to pronounce the
tetragamemnon, the full name of God, which according to
Jewish law must go unpronounced. At this time he also pronounced himself the
Messiah, but for the most part he was considered a lunatic in his hometown and his antics met with compassion. Between 1646 and 1650 he contracted two marriages in Ismir, but both were unconsummated and ended in divorce. His compulsive violation of Jewish law, his imagined experiences of
levitation, and his repeated claims to be the Messiah led the Rabbis of Ismir to expel him around 1653.
Zvi wandered for several years through
Greece and
Thrace, staying for a long time in
Salonika. At times he acted irrationally, once pushing a fish around in a baby carriage, an act which symbolized his fathering a Messianic age. His stay in Salonika ended when in 1658 he celebrated a nuptial service with a
Torah scroll and was expelled. He then went to
Constantinople, where he spent nine months. During this period he attempted to rid himself of
demonic possesions through
practical Kabballah. He also celebrated the three festivals of
Passover,
Pentecost, and
Tabernacles in one week. He was expelled again, and returned to Ismir until 1662, going through a period of profound melancholy.
In 1662 Zvi travelled to
Jerusalem via
Cairo and
Rhodes. He arrived in Jerusalem in the summer of 1662, completely anonymous, and quietly became a part of the community. He made a good impression as a scholar, spent a good deal of time
fasting in seclusion, and would often wander in the
Judean hills, meditating. After
Rosh Hashana and
Yom Kippur) of 1663, the
Sephardic community asked him to go to
Egypt and collect charity from the Jewish community there. They chose him because he had stayed in Cairo before coming to Jerusalem and had become friendly with the wealthy and influential
Rabbi Raphael Yosef, who held the post of
Chelebi, the highest post a Jew could hold in the Egyptian court. Shabtai Zvi accepted the appointment.
On his way to Cairo, Shabtai Zvi passed through
Hebron and stopped at the
Cave of Machpelah, where the Hebrew
Patriarchs are buried. He prayed there with tremendous fervor, attracting much attention. A group stayed up all night with him, mesmerized by his tremendous
charisma. One of them,
Avraham Conki, became one of Zvi's most dedicated followers. During his extended stay in Egypt, Shabbetai Zvi collected close to four thousand
rials, a significant sum. He lived in the courtyard of the Chelebi and continued his close relationship with Rav Raphael Yosef. While in Cairo, Zvi's messianic fancies returned and he decided to marry Sarah, an Ashkenazi girl from
Italy with a disreputable past and a reputation for
promiscuity. They married on March 31, 1664.
At this time Zvi asked God once again to rid him of his
psychological abnormalities, and he entered into an extended normal state. In the spring of 1664, news reached Cairo of a young
seer in
Gaza named
Natan Ashkenazi, who was reputed to have the ability to see into peoples'
souls. Rav Raphael Yosef sent some students to investigate the authenticity of the supposed visionary, and the report he received was very positive. He related his findings to Shabtai Zvi, who decided to travel to Gaza and meet him in person. He told Rav Raphael Yosef that he was going to the seer to request a
tikun, a spiritual rectification for his soul.
Shabtai and Sarah moved to the coastal town of Gaza around 1663. When Shabtai Zvi entered Natan's house, Natan fell at his feet and begged forgiveness for not coming to visit him first. Natan revealed to him their respective appointments as messiah and
prophet. The Jews of Gaza soon fell under the spell of these two charismatic figures, and the momentum of their movement quickly began to spread to the rest of the Jewish world. Natan compensated perfectly for Shabtai's emotional
instability and lack of
initiative,
proslytizing fervently and using Kaballah to invent
theological justifications which would come to sanctify Shabtai's strange actions and even his blatant
sins.
Shabtai and Natan travelled to Hebron, and arrived there soon before the fast of 17
Tamuz. Natan sent letters to the major cities in
Palestine announcing a decree to annul the fast. This would be the beginning of the
redemption, he announced. In Gaza the Jews rejoiced on the fast day and sang
Hallel, a song of praise to God typically recited on holidays. Many people in Hebron also followed the decree.
Natan, Shabtai Zvi, and their entourage then travelled to Jerusalem, but they did not get an enthusiastic reception there. Children taunted Zvi with the chant, "You left as a
shaliach (messenger), but you returned as a
mashiach (messiah)." Audaciously, Zvi planned to offer sacrifices on the
Temple Mount, something which hadn't been done since the destruction of the second temple, and chose one of his Gazan followers to be
High Priest. When the rabbis of Jerusalem heard of this, they rent their garments. They feared such an act, could incite the politically dominant
Moslems to react with force and punish the entire Jewish population. A message was dispatched demanding that Zvi not follow through with his plan. The messiah acquiesced, saying, "Woe, just when we were about to do this mighty thing, it was denied us."
Rabbi
Moshe Galante, one of the leading rabbis of Jerusalem at the time, later recalled this period: "In the beginning, although I did not believe in him, I was not outspokenly against him. It was only after I saw a letter he wrote to one of his followers that I realized how dangerous he really was. He signed the letter, 'I am the Lord your God, Shabtai Zvi' - spelling God's Name as it is written in a Torah scroll." Next, Zvi openly declared that the formerly forbidden
chelev fats were now
kosher, or permissible to eat. He composed a special blessing to be recited before eating them: "Blessed are You our Master, our Lord the King of the Universe, who permits the forbidden." He also annuled the four major fast days which had commemorated the destruction of the
Holy Temple. Claiming that he came to usher in the light of the redemption, and not to perpetuate the darkness of
exile, he said that they were no longer necessary.
The Rabbis now openly attacked Shabtai Zvi, going before the civil authorities and accused him of embezzling some of the funds which he had collected. Furthermore, they claimed that by calling himself the messiah, he was rebelling against the
Sultan. The
Kadi, a judge or magistrate who exercised the judicial authority of the Sultan, brought these charges against Shabtai Zvi, but later dropped them under the spell of the accused's
magnetic personality. The messiah and his followers were ecstatic with the news, calling it an open
miracle. According to one report of the time, the Kadi permitted Shabtai Zvi to be led around the city on horseback, a privilege no Jew was permitted under Turkish law. While this and even more unbelievable reports of Zvi's growing political power are innacurate at best, the
rumors which spread of Zvi's miraculous nature were a powerful factor in consolidating his influence over Jews in the Ottoman Empire and worldwide.
Rabbi
Yaakov Chagiz, another Rabbi of Jerusalem, under whom Natan had studied, now threatened the prophet and the messiah. The rabbis of Jerusalem declared a
cherem (decree of
excommunication) on the pair. They were banished from Jerusalem, never to return, in the summer of 1664. Although Shabtai Zvi heeded the rabbis' injunction, he was infuriated by it and cursed them. Later, however, when he met a group of Jewish
pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, he sent an apology. Rabbi Chagiz was unmoved. "See how empty this messiah is!" he said mockingly. "He obeys my cherem and is afraid of me."
Immediately after issuing their proclamation, the rabbis sent letters to all the world's major Jewish communities, warning them of the false messiah. However, despite the strong wording of their eyewitness report, the force of this messianic movement was very difficult to arrest. The local populations throughout the
Ottoman Empire, including some rabbis, were swept away by the turbulent happenings. Soon, news of the messiah and his prophet had spread throughout the world. Not only did Shabtai Zvi gain
militant adherents in his native Turkey and in the
Near East, but even in such cosmopolitan European cities as
Venice,
Livorno, and
Amsterdam leading rabbis and sophisticated men of affairs were caught up in the messianic frenzy.
Even the
Pope in Rome sent a delegation to Jerusalem to get a firsthand report about Zvi. By the time his representatives arrived there, the messiah and his prophet were long gone. However, the strong impression they had made on the city lingered. The local priests told the
papal nuncio that Shabtai Zvi and Natan were men who performed miracles. The two of them claimed that they would return and build the Temple, and that the time of redemption of the Jewish people had come. If so, continued the churchmen, they (the Christians) would have to leave Jerusalem. The priests were manifestly afraid of a Jewish messianic age and feared its ultimate consequences for Christians.
When he left Jerusalem, Shabtai Zvi travelled through
Safed to
Aleppo, and arrived back in Ismir in September 1665. At first the rabbis of that city neglected to enforce the Jerusalem rabbinate's excommunication against him and by the time they realized the effect that his ecstasies and strange acts were having on the local Jews it was too late. On one of the first days of
Hannukah Zvi appeared in a synogogue in royal dress. About this time a delagation arrived from Aleppo to greet him officially as the Messiah of Israel. He had a wide following among both poor and wealthy Jews, and among many Rabbis as well, though following the failure of Zvi's movement these would do their best to revise recent history in order to create the appearance of their having
protested strenuously all along.
Three members of Ismir's rabbinic court debated the wisdom of opening proceedings against Shabtai Zvi. In reaction, on December 11, 1665 Zvi led a mob which broke into the
Portugese synogogue there. He read a Torah portion from a book instead of the customary scroll and, ignoring
Priests and
Levites, called up regular men (and women!) to read from it too. He distributed kingdoms to them and demanded that they pronounce the forbidden tetragememnon in their blessings. Then he launched into a
diatribe against the traditional rabbis who doubted him, comparing them to unclean animals. He once again proclaimed himself the annointed son of God and set the date for the redemption as June 18, 1666. He promised to seize the crown of the "Great Turk" (the Sultan) at that time.
Instead, on February 8, 1666, Shabtai Zvi was arrested by Turkish officials. He was imprisoned in relative comfort, though later accounts made his condition out to be miserable. On Sebtember 15 of that year, he stood before the Sultan and was presented with a choice between apostasy to
Islam and
death. He chose to apostatize, assuming the name
Aziz Mehmed Effendi, and he was granted the title of
Kapici Bashi, "keeper of the palace gates" and was given a royal pension. His wife Sarah was brought to Ismir and coverted, too.
Even this shocking news did not completely extinguish the existing Sabbatean fervor. With characteristic
audacity, Zvi claimed that his conversion was merely a climactic stage in the redemption process, hinted at in the holy books. Many Jews converted to Islam with him, including his old benefactor, Rav Raphael Yosef. Natan, the original prophet, continued to visit Shabtai Zvi and to proclaim him the true Messiah, announcing a number of forcasted dates for the redemption. Zvi lived in
Adrianople and sometimes in Constantinople until 1672, living as a Muslim but performing some Jewish rituals secretly. The Jews who followed him and converted to Islam became known as the
Donmeh and their movement remained active on for another few hundred years. Later on, a group of Sabbateans under the leadership of
Jacob Frank converted to
Catholicism. In his last years Shabbtai Zvi continued to claim contact with the divine and to act erratically. He died suddenly on September 17, 1676.
Adapted from...
Encyclopedia Judaica
www.jewishmag.com/17mag/zvi/zvi.htm
www.ufomind.com/people/s/
www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/Zvi.html
My A.P. Medieval Jewish History class. (Thank you Mrs. Feinberg.)
Scholem, Gershom. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676. Princeton University Press, Princeton: 1973.
At 900 pages, this book is a meticulously slow read. That said, it's an invaluable study of the Sabbatean context, especially its genesis in Lurianic Kaballism. The author admirably resists the biographical urge to attribute to his subject more credit than is due, exchanging the simplistic storytelling for a well-resoned study of the historical necessities from which theologies arise.