Sabbatai Zevi at Prayer

Sabbatai Zevi (1626-76) was the most notorious Jewish Messianic claimant since Jesus of Nazareth. Born in Izmir, on the western coast of Turkey, he declared himself Messiah at age 21. He repeated this proclamation, intermittently, for the next seventeen years. But only in the spring of 1665, when Sabbatai’s claims were echoed by the young Kabbalistic prodigy Nathan of Gaza, did anyone start to pay attention. Then, it seemed, the whole world listened. For the next sixteen months, the Messianic movement headed by Sabbatai and his “prophet” Nathan swept the Jewish Diaspora like a brushfire. From London to Poland, from Hamburg to Yemen, Jews believed in perfect faith that Sabbatai Zevi was the promised Redeemer, about to lead them back to the Holy Land and rebuild the Temple.

In September 1666, when the excitement was at its height, Sabbatai Zevi was brought as prisoner before the Turkish sultan Mehmed IV. He saved himself by converting to Islam. He lived ten years longer – a strange double life, practicing Islam and Judaism together, surrounded by an entourage divided between the Jewish “turban-wearers” who had followed him into Islam, and those who stayed faithful to their Judaism. The Messianic hope faded. Yet, throughout the Jewish Diaspora, thousands remained convinced that their “Mehmed Effendi,” formerly known as Sabbatai Zevi, was still the true Messiah.

His death in 1676 shook the faith of many of his followers. But not all. Down to the end of the twentieth century, the Turkish remnants of the nominally Muslim sect of the “Dönmeh” continued to pray, in their archaic Judaeo-Spanish, “Sabetai, Sabetai, esperamos a ti” – “Sabbatai, Sabbatai, we wait for you.” Some, perhaps, are still waiting.

The story of Sabbatai Zevi has been told many times, most definitively by the master scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom G. Scholem. Soon English readers will be able for the first time to experience Sabbatai’s life directly through the eyes and minds of his contemporaries, in the texts I have translated for my book Sabbatai Zevi: Testimonies to a Fallen Messiah – to be published this month by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.

Following this introduction are two extracts from these translations, adapted for publication in Zeek. The first is from the text called “the Najara Chronicle,” an eyewitness, diary-like account of Sabbatai Zevi’s post-conversion life in 1671, as a minor functionary in the sultan’s court at Adrianople. The author, Jacob Najara, was a Gazan rabbi, grandson of the famous liturgical poet Israel Najara. In the spring of 1665, when Sabbatai Zevi was first proclaimed Messiah by Nathan in Gaza, Najara was Sabbatai’s host. Almost six years later, at the end of January 1671, the still-faithful Najara arrived in Adrianople to pay his former guest a visit of his own. His narrative of his experience, preserved in one Dönmeh manuscript, provides a close-up view of the enigmatic Messiah that is without equal in the contemporary literature.

The picture is not pleasant. We see Sabbatai Zevi as a disloyal, self-pitying husband and a brutally oblivious father. When this extract begins, Sabbatai has just divorced his wife Sarah, depicting their seven-year marriage as a term of slave labor, blaming her for his persistent sense of being a leper and outcast. (Later he will take her back, and she will follow him loyally into exile.) His son Ishmael, born two years after Sabbatai’s conversion, was – in accord with the alleged dictates of Ottoman Islamic law – placed with his mother.Yet, here we find that the boy is removed from Sarah’s custody and handed over to Sabbatai through the machinations of his patron Vani Effendi, the Ottoman court preacher.

The child, as a child, is invisible to his father. All Sabbatai can see is the boy’s symbolic role, through his name “Ishmael”/“Israel,” as a fusion of Sabbatai’s Islamic and Jewish identities, and as the imagined partner-Messiah (“Messiah ben Ephraim”) to Sabbatai’s “Messiah ben David.” And so the helpless three-year-old is hustled into an assembly of his father’s enthusiasts, there to have his foreskin slashed away. Hymns and prophecies, unintelligible to the child, are chanted over him, while his body is made into a prop in one of his father’s dramatic performances.

To Vani Effendi and the rest of the Turkish authorities, Sabbatai is a Muslim. Over and over Najara assures us that the Turks witness Sabbatai and his followers behaving as Jews, and do nothing about it. (Yet Sabbatai takes care that the Turkish grandees are not watching too closely while he circumcises his son.) Throughout the Najara Chronicle, one has the strong sense that Islam, and the act of converting to Islam, do play some essential role in Sabbatai’s private eschatology—but not the role that Vani Effendi, or Vani’s master the sultan, would have imagined for them.

Something of Sabbatai’s real feelings toward his new religion comes out when he orders his “turban-wearing,” nominally Muslim followers to recite the Alenu prayer “in a loud voice along with the Jews … paying no attention to the Gentiles who watched them.” The Alenu, in its original uncensored form, praises God for having made the Jews different from “the nations of the world,” who “bow to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god who cannot save.” As recited by Sabbatai and his “turban-wearers,” it is a shout of defiance—understood by them, incomprehensible to the watching Muslims—against the religion to which they had converted.

If the Najara Chronicle gives an indisputably authentic first-hand picture of Sabbatai Zevi, the second text translated here displays something of the golden afterglow of Sabbatai’s charisma. It is taken from an untitled hagiography of Sabbatai Zevi, written in 1692 in Frankfurt-am-Main by Abraham Cuenque, itinerant agent for the Jewish community of Hebron. Cuenque was at the time winding up a ten-year fund-raising tour of the European continent. He wrote the hagiography at the urging of his German-Jewish hosts, who had a fascination with the great Messianic event that convulsed the Jewish world a generation earlier, and whom it suited Cuenque to titillate with hints of inside knowledge.

The story told in this extract will have taken place in 1663, when Sabbatai—not yet an international celebrity—was an ascetic in Jerusalem, who might be sent as emissary from the Jerusalem community to the Egyptian-Jewish magnate “Joseph Raphael,” to persuade him to intercede on the community’s behalf with the Ottoman government. (The name of this dignitary was actually Raphael Joseph Chelebi.) On his way to Egypt, Sabbatai allegedly made a stop in Cuenque’s home town to worship at the shrine of the patriarchs in the cave of Machpelah; there Cuenque allegedly encountered him. In this passage Cuenque relates, with the literary skill for which he was famous in his time, his memory of his meeting with the Messiah.

Memory? Or invention? Throughout the Sabbatai Zevi hagiography, Cuenque emerges as a wildly dishonest writer for whom historical truth was at best a springboard to launch him toward his (normally self-interested) goals. His claims are seldom to be trusted. Yet perhaps his account, even if literally untrue, nonetheless conveys something of the extraordinary and still unexplained charisma that surrounded Sabbatai Zevi. Perhaps, even as fiction, it has its light to shed on the enduring mystery of what made this weak, confused, peevishly brutal man so irresistibly attractive to so many, and for so long.

1. The Messiah Circumcises His Son (translated from the “Chronicle” of Jacob Najara by David J. Halperin)

On the fifth of Nisan [16 March 1671], [Sabbatai Zevi] went to the Gentile archives and divorced his wife. He applied to himself the Biblical verse, “Six years shall [the slave] labor … and in the seventh year [he shall go out free; Exodus 21:2],” for on that day a full seven years had elapsed since he had married her. He made considerable effort to take his son Ishmael into his custody, but she did not want to let him go. For the boy was young, and the [Muslim] laws require that a child remain with his mother the first seven years.

On the seventh day of Nisan [18 March], he was dining in his house with this rabbi [Najara] [1]when who should appear but his beloved son Ishmael. Vani Effendi, it seems, had sent to the boy’s mother, saying: “Send him to be with his father!” At this Amirah [2]rejoiced greatly. It was for this reason, he said, that he had tried mightily in days past to take the boy with him and rescue him, yet had met with no success – until this day, which was the day offering was brought by Elishama son of Ammihud, prince of the tribe of Ephraim. [3] The name “Elishama” is [in Hebrew] an anagram for “Ishmael”; this is an allusion to Messiah ben Ephraim. [4] “Tomorrow,” said Amirah to this rabbi [Najara], “I wish to circumcise him, for he is now a full three years old. This is in accord with the hidden meaning of the verse, ‘Three years it shall be to you “uncircumcised” […] and in the fourth year all its fruit shall be a thing holy, for the giving of praises.’ ” [5]

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So, on the eighth day of the month, he dressed his son in fine clothing and went to invite all the city’s dignitaries to his circumcision. They imagined it would take place according to their custom, by which the invitation is issued one day before the circumcision. Yet as soon as he had finished inviting them, he sent immediately for this rabbi [Najara] and ordered him to bring the implements for circumcision. [6]He set up the Chair of Elijah. [7] Then he himself sat on that chair for something like an hour, enwrapped in a mantle, in a state of intense concentration.

Afterward he rose and made the gentleman Rabbi Joseph Karillo sit as sandak. [8]Amirah recited the blessing, “[Blessed be You, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us] to enter this child into the covenant of Father Abraham” [Talmud, Shabbat 137b]. Then this rabbi [Najara] circumcised the boy. [Sabbatai] recited the blessing of Him “who has kept us alive” and told this rabbi [Najara] to recite the same blessing, having been privileged to perform so pious a deed. This rabbi [Najara] said the blessing of Him “who sanctified the beloved one” [Shabbat 137b] over the wine cup, and the newly circumcised child was given the Jewish name “Israel.”

There was a certain man present, a Jew who had apostatized years earlier, who had a ten-year-old son. The boy had not yet been circumcised, the man having vowed while Amirah was in the “tower of strength” [9] that he would not circumcise his son except in the presence of King Messiah. Amirah thereupon commanded this rabbi [Najara] to circumcise the boy, with the same blessings as before. He was given the name “Ishmael.”

On the Sabbath before Passover [10 Nisan = 21 March], Amirah prayed in the same house in a state of great elation, adding many liturgical poems to the worship service. At the time when the Torah should have been brought forth from the ark, he took out his printed Bible and read from it. The first passage he read was the text beginning, “This is the law of the leper on the day he is purified of his leprosy” [Leviticus 14:2]. [10] He explained this as an allusion to an evil wife, who is “like a leprosy for her husband.” [11] Thus our ancient sages tell us the Messiah’s name is to be “the White One of the master’s house” – which term [“White One”] Rashi glosses as “leper” [Talmud, Sanhedrin 98b].

He went on to read the passage beginning, “In the third month” [Exodus 19:1]. [12] This, he said, was an allusion to its being the third month of his state of illumination. [13] He commanded everyone present to stand up and to hear the Ten Commandments in trembling and dread, for that hour was just like the hour when Israel received the Torah at Mount Sinai.

He then read the entirety of the Torah portion Zav [Leviticus 6:1-8:36], and afterward feasted in great joy. Throughout all this the windows and doors were closed. At the time of the afternoon prayer he opened all the doors and all the windows, and, although a number of Gentiles were watching through the windows and doors, not one of them made any protest. When he came to the Alenu prayer, he told the turban-wearers to recite the prayer in a loud voice along with the Jews, facing eastward as they did so, and to pay no attention to the Gentiles who watched them. Thus they did.

Afterward [Sabbatai] sat down to eat the third meal of the Sabbath. He did not allow any of the turban-wearers to sit with him, but only this rabbi [Najara] and one other Jew. Then he took a full cup of wine in his hand, and he loudly and tunefully sang the hymn that begins, “The sons of the palace who yearn.” [14] This he followed with “A psalm of David, The Lord is my shepherd” [Psalm 23] and the blessing over the wine. Prior to the meal, and during the meal prior to the fruit course, he recited several chapters of tractate Shabbat [of the Mishnah], and the first chapter of tractate Berakhot. Afterward, at the time of the after-dinner grace, he again took a cup of wine in his hand and recited the hymn beginning, “Let us bless Him who sustains all the world.” [15] He then said grace in a loud voice, pronouncing each word distinctly.

That night, at the close of the Sabbath, he recited the evening prayer in a most melodious fashion, and with great joy. Once the Sabbath was done he went riding on a horse, taking with him some thirty of the Faithful Ones who wore the turban. In his hand he carried the jeweled Zohar-book. [16] He went about the city, through the marketplaces and the streets, and all the dignitaries of the empire saw him going about with his troop of followers, the book in his hand. Not one made any protest.

On the first day of the month Iyyar [11 April], about eight men came from Ipsola, and he made them to wear the turban [i.e., converted them to Islam]. On 3 Iyyar he summoned this rabbi [Najara] and said to him: “Be aware that all the tribes I have made before this were part of the mystery of the World of Chaos, the mystery of ‘He built worlds and He destroyed them.’ [17] But now I am canceling all I have done, and now I swear this structure I am building is …”

[Here the text breaks off].

2. The Messiah Prays at Machpelah

(Translated from Abraham Cuenque by David J. Halperin)

At that time a decree was issued in the province of Egypt, and [the leaders of Jerusalem Jewry] did not know where they might turn for help. There was a high official in Egypt named Joseph Raphael, and they pondered whom they might send as their emissary to him.

Sundry proposals were offered. One of the group then said, “If it might be possible for Sabbatai Zevi to go on our mission, God will certainly grant us a favorable outcome. For the noble Joseph Raphael thinks the world of him.”

“But surely he will not agree to it?” they said.

Yet they said, “Whatever may come of it, let us importune him. Perhaps he will agree.”

So all the rabbis, who were at the time both numerous and notable, went and spoke with him. He replied: “I am prepared and ready. Well have you asked; timely have you spoken. I wish to depart this very day. First, however, I should like to go and pray at the cave of Machpelah in the holy city of Hebron.”

“Please,” said they, “spend the night here. Tomorrow you can go with a caravan.”

“No,” he said. “I will leave today. Do not hold me back; the Lord has already granted me success.”

That was what he did. He rode upon a horse, one man going before him, and he came to us [in Hebron] and stayed as guest of that most excellent of the scholars of his generation, the well-born Rabbi Aaron Abun of blessed memory. For so he had requested before entering our sacred precinct, [18] that he should be hosted by that rabbi and only that rabbi. This was the first time I had seen him. I was a regular visitor to Jerusalem, yet I never saw him until he came to visit us. I was awestruck at how tall he was, like a cedar of Lebanon. His face was very ruddy, a touch inclined toward swarthiness; his features were handsome, encircled by a round black beard; he was dressed in garments truly royal, and was altogether an exceedingly healthy and imposing person. From the moment he entered the sacred precinct – all the time he prayed the afternoon prayer in our synagogue, all the time he prayed the evening prayer in the cave of Machpelah along with the crowd that had flocked after him – I could not take my eyes off him. Nor could the human mind conceive where he might have hidden away all those tears he shed as he prayed, not like natural tears but like a vast flooding, or like streams that rush ever onward.

I spent most of that night in the vicinity of the house where he was staying, and I observed the acts he performed. All the dwellers in the sacred precinct, similarly – men, women, and children alike – found themselves unable to sleep all that night. They spent the night instead watching through the windows, peering through each crack.

He paced hither and thither through his house, which was filled in its entirety with torches, for so he had ordered. Throughout the night, until dawn broke, he recited psalms by heart in a voice that was loud and happy and joyful, most exceedingly pleasant and sweet to the ear. At dawn he went to the synagogue and prayed the morning prayer. I can attest that everything about him was such as to inspire dread, and that, among all the dwellers on this earth, he was in every way unique. I could not get my fill of watching him.

When the morning prayer was finished, about three hours afterward, he set forth by himself in a certain direction. He was accompanied six parasangs [roughly 20 miles] by a Jew who attended him. While he was with us [in Hebron] he did not eat a bite nor did he drink any water, nor did he sleep at all, not so much as a catnap. Fasting he came; fasting he departed. To this day I never saw him again, but only twice in my dreams – one of them in Hebron, the other in the darkness of my exile.