5426 AM · 1666 CE

Shabbetai Zevi and the False Messiah

For a year almost the whole Jewish world believed the Messiah had come. When the 'messiah' embraced Islam, hope turned into the gravest spiritual collapse of the modern era.

Shabbetai Zevi was born in Izmir, by tradition on the Ninth of Av 1626. Gifted and evidently unstable, he swung between black withdrawal and elation in which he did forbidden things — pronouncing the Divine Name aloud, declaring fasts abolished.

The turn came in 1665 in Gaza, where a young kabbalist, Nathan of Gaza, announced a revelation: Shabbetai was the Messiah and he himself the prophet. The world believed. A generation that had survived Chmielnicki and read Luria on gathering the sparks rose as one: in Amsterdam and Hamburg, Livorno and Morocco, Yemen and Poland people repented, fasted, sold their houses and prepared to sail for the Land of Israel. Rabbis who objected were outnumbered.

In early 1666 Shabbetai went to Constantinople and was arrested. In September he was brought before Sultan Mehmed IV and given a choice: prove his prophecy or die. He put on a turban, accepted Islam and took a court salary as Aziz Mehmed Effendi.

The blow was devastating. Most awoke in shame; some followers explained the apostasy as the messiah's descent into the husks and remained loyal, producing the Turkish Dönmeh and, a century later in Poland, the Frankists. The rabbinate answered with caution: Kabbalah study was restricted by age and preparation, and messianic enthusiasm drew suspicion for two hundred years.

📜Sources

The chief contemporary opponent was R. Yaakov Sasportas, whose Tzitzat Novel Tzvi collects the movement's letters and documents. Further testimony comes from Leyb ben Ozer of Amsterdam and communal chronicles. The later Sabbatian suspicion controversy runs through the correspondence of R. Yaakov Emden and R. Yonatan Eybeschütz.

👤People and places

Arizal · Shabbetai Tzvi · Glikl of Hameln · Ramchal — Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto · Baal Shem Tov · Mesilat Yesharim · Kabbalah · Hasidism · Mashiach

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