Season 2: Episode 9 - The False Messiah

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It is no doubt true that our image of what a Messiah might look like may keep us from recognizing the real thing when it stands before us, says Ralph Nathan Lopez Cardozo. And he goes on, one of the dangers of taking the statements and speculations of our sages as literal truth is the distortion of our expectations. Now, I don't know what exactly to expect when that great day comes, let it be soon, let it be now, but I can tell you that I am waiting quite expectantly. Because I'm Rav Mike Feuer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 9, The False Messiah In the autumn of 1648, some righteous Christians pulled a weeping six-year-old orphan girl from the rubble of her smoking house. She was only six years old, far too young to understand the tsunami of devastation that had swept through eastern Poland and Ukraine that year, destroying hundreds of small Jewish communities like her own.

They took her, and they sent her to a convent for care. And we'll come back to the rest of her story shortly. But it is important to understand, for our story going forward, that as a war orphan, this girl Sarah was hardly unique. War consumed Western and Central Europe in the first half of the 17th century. The major excuse was religion, and the Thirty Years' War was at its heart. Maybe you know, maybe you don't, but as the rise of Protestant movements destabilized the religious political order of Europe, the German states first, and then the great powers of Europe, began to slaughter each other back and forth across the continent, for, you guessed it, 30 years. They'd wage war until winter set in, find some city to loot and occupy, and then pick up the bloodletting when the fall came.

And their battle for religious supremacy between Catholic and Protestant officially ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Not that war ended. And it's worth it for us just to put our finger on that Treaty of Westphalia to note that by accepting multipolar Christianity, and by affirming the existence of states whose power would ultimately transcend religion, this treaty marks a major step in the shift of primary social identity from religion toward nationality in Europe. And as such, it's an important piece in the birth of the secular nation-state, which is going to occupy quite a bit of our future. Pun intended. The Jews had their peace in the misery of the Thirty Years' War. Trust me, it was so bad for all of Europe.

that even the Jews, though, can't claim to have had it worse than others. And in fact, there is a story of how the court Jews of the Thirty Years' Ward turned the situation to their advantage and to that of their people. That's a discussion for another episode. For now, just know that war, whether over religion, economics, boats or something else, is the context of our time. And without question, the deepest devastation came to European Jewry in 1648, but not through the Treaty of Westphalia. It was a destruction, so sudden and powerful, that it would stand as the high-water mark of European Jewish misery until the Nazis came along and took the prize for all time. Throw your minds for a minute, back to Poland.

Back to episode one, actually, in the series. Po-lin. Here, we shall stay. The Jews migrated eastward to Poland from classic Ashkenaz in the German lands because life was better for them there. And as the Polish kingdom itself expanded eastwards, the Jews followed in its wake. Not just in its wake, actually. They were often the pioneers of this new hinterland of the plains and forests of eastern Poland and what we know as the Ukraine. Just to give you a sense of how good it was as Poland expanded, in 1500, Jews were less than a half a percent of the Polish population. By mid-17th century, where our story takes place, they're pushing 2.5%. And almost three-quarters of them lived in a broad north-south bet, from Lithuania up north, through Belarusia to Ukraine and down to Rafania.

These were lands, by the way, that were open to settlement in the second half of the 16th century, as Poland and Lithuania began a union that was going to dictate much of the dynamics of Central Europe over the centuries to come. And the Jews became the colonists of the new Polish state. They were everything from tinker to tailor, innkeeper to pawnbroker. And they were managers as well, the arendators. They were the managers of the estates of the Polish nobility, large and small, which were carved out of these eastern lands. Now the nobles themselves preferred to live back west off the prophets, and the Jews were happy to help them. The real backbone of Jewish economy, top to bottom, was a license that was held by so many to distill and brew alcohol of all kinds.

Do you hear the trouble coming? The local populace in eastern Poland and Ukraine was by and large Orthodox Christian, and they did not love the Catholic Poles, who quickly began to lord themselves over everything and everybody. And certainly, they had no love for their agents, the Jews. I mean, you have to start with the foundational Christian Jew hatred, which was so vicious and widespread in their day. But now, the Jews were actually the face and the active arm of their political and economic oppressor. So it didn't take many decades for this situation to explode. And the Chemelnitsky uprising of 1648 was more than simply a tax revolt, which had happened repeatedly over the last decade. In part, that was because Bogdan Chemelnitsky wasn't just another Cossack with a talent for stirring up his brothers into anger by playing on their desire to free the Ukraine from their foreign impressors.

He was actually an able enough leader to overcome more than a century of hatred between the Orthodox Christian Cossacks and the Muslim Tartars. And as allies, they added a cavalry force to the powerful Cossack infantry, which finally gave them a fighting chance against the Polish army. And it was different because the Jewish agents of the hated Poles were so easy at hand, and all but defenseless, which is what made it the Chmelnitsky massacres as well as the uprising. Now, there's an ongoing historiographical battle about the number who actually died in the conflagration that finally erupted, and I'm not going to weigh in on it. The Jewish chronicles of the time mentioned 100,000 dead and more than 300 communities erased.

The real numbers may have been closer to tens of thousands, as if that's okay, but numbers are less important to me than the impact of these events on our story. Polish historiography refers to the uprising as the Potop, which I'm sure I'm mispronouncing, the period of the Deluge, when, so to speak, the barbarians poured in from the East. The Jews called it Gzero Tachvetat, the decrees of the years 5408 and 09, which are the years in the Jewish calendar. And the Pinchas Midianat Lita, the community ledger of the Jewish community of Lita, records that, quote, the blow struck at the whole house of Israel when the hand of God went out against us and many myriads of Israel fell. And they were strewn over the fields as prey for the birds of heaven and were not even buried.

The hand of the enemy also prevailed and they stretched out their hands against the synagogues. Pinchas also says, that at its meeting of 1650, the Council of Lithuania decreed three years of mourning in the wake of these massacres. There were prohibitions on wearing elaborate clothes or jewelry, and a declaration that no musical instrument be heard in the House of Israel, not even at weddings, for a full year. Rav Natan ben Moshe Hanover was a historian, Talmudist, Kabbalist, and an eyewitness to the uprising. And he chronicled its event in his work Yevon Mitzula, The Abyss of Despair. It kind of says it all, huh? In the late 20th century, Yevon Mitzula would come under serious criticism for the claims that he severely overstated the numbers of casualty suffered by the Jews of the Ukraine.

But in my opinion, this criticism misses the point. Aside from the fact that if he hadn't made the numbers so large, it's unlikely we'd be still feeling their pain now. Yavin Mitzulah is not a history book, though it is highly valued for the vivid picture of Jewish life in Poland he offers, and his description of the relationship between Poles, Jews, and Cossacks in the 17th century. It's quite unique in that respect. But it's not history. It's continuation, in fact, a culmination of the martyrologies of the Crusades, which played such a formative role in the emergence of Ashkenazi culture. you can go back and listen to the episodes in Season 1. And if the Crusades were when the smile went out of Ashkenaz, then the Chmielnitsky maskers were when the notion of it's hard to be a Jew became their mantra.

Yevon Mitzvah, by the way, was an intergenerational bestseller. It was translated into Yiddish in 1687, German in 720, and even ultimately into French. And as such, it became the literary centerpiece for a broad folk culture of devastation and despair, focused on Gzerot Tachvetat, the decrees of 08 and 09. And really, perhaps the most powerful description was given by Rav Shabtai Sheftel Horwitz, son of the Holy Shalah, for those of you who know, who described it as the third destruction which occurred in the year 408 of the 6th millennium, that's 1648, which was just the same as the first and the second destruction. Meaning, in the eyes of the Ashkenazi Jews of their day, this was the equivalent of the loss of the first and second temples.

And that's what's critical for us to take away. Regardless of death counts and population statistics, the Hamelnitsky massacres were experienced and incorporated into the Jewish story as an event which could only be compared to the origins of exile itself. Now there is more to this story than despair. Because the massive relief efforts triggered by a tragedy of this scale can actually serve as a window on a key piece of the Jewish story in early modernity that we have not yet touched, and that's communal development. But before we come to this, what became of the orphan girl Sarah? Well, after ten years, she escaped that convent in which she'd be placed for shelter. It seems the nuns were not content with simply saving her body.

They were after her soul as well. Later, she would claim her escape was actually miraculous, and that she'd receive divine assistance in ultimately making her way to Amsterdam. But life for a poor orphan girl was not simple. And eventually she moved on to the Italian port city of Livorno, where, according to reports, she led a life of prostitution. And it was at this point that she began to tell people that she was destined to be the bride of the Messiah, who was soon to appear. But we're not there yet. So communal development. We mentioned the power of the committee who ruled communal affairs in Amsterdam. The Mahamad is what they were called. The original Mahamad of Amsterdam was constituted, of course, by the wealthy international merchants who made up the core of the community and paid the bulk of its taxes.

This was oligarchy at its finest. The statutes, or haskemot, of the Mahamad actually provided that each outgoing committee elect the incoming one, thus making it a process which was entirely self-perpetuating. And, further they state clearly, I quote, The Mahmud shall have authority and preeminence in all matters. No person may defy the resolutions made by this Mahmud, and those who do so shall incur the penalty of the ban. And Amsterdam was hardly unique in this respect. On the contrary, their Haskamot, their conditions, were actually modeled on those of older Sephardic port communities like Venice and Livorno. And aside from simply noting that communal institutions reached a new level of organization across the board in the early modern era, which we'll really see when we peek over at Ashkenaz, what's critical for us is the power that these leaders claim.

Hear that phrase, have authority and preeminence in all matters. No person may define them. In general, large communal governmental structures would privilege lay authority over rabbinic authority, which had been privileged in the medieval era. The wealthy merchants that dominated leadership paid the bulk of the communal taxes, which were still a critical point of contact between Jewish and non-Jewish society at this point, and they paid the salaries of an increasingly professionalized and institutionalized rabbinate. Since Gracia Nassia Mendez's failed attempt back in an earlier episode to rally the rabbis behind her boycott of the port of Ancona, we've seen the rise of this new power base. And nowhere is the shift in balance of power between wealthy and rabbinic authority more evident than in the statement and those who defy the Mahamad shall incur the penalty of the ban.

Here, these merchants have taken for themselves the ultimate tool of communal punishment. and one traditionally that lay entirely in the hands of the rabbis. Now, this is just a warning shot. The rise of lay leadership is only one factor in the erosion of rabbinic authority. Add to the other, as we've already mentioned, democratization of knowledge, increased mobility of the time, a rising tide of skepticism, which we will soon see flower in coming episodes. And our story of a failed messiah will add another piece The rise of communal infrastructure in the lands of the Ottoman Empire was even more impressive during this period. Recent scholars actually argue that the Ottoman Empire never legally recognized the Jewish community or its law courts, but at least de facto, they were flourishing.

These courts had extensive power within their localized kahal system, their community system, Each community basically functioned as an entity unto itself, managing administrative, social, judicial functions, and benefiting from the benign neglect of the Ottomans, rather than a grounded legal reality, but they produced highly functional communities. And the Khanals were generally led by a merchant class, as in Europe, but by and large, perhaps from cultural, perhaps from economic reasons, there was less friction between the oligarchs and the rabbis. Though the merchants still pay the taxes and the bills, more or less the status and power of the Marbitz Torah, one who spread Torah to the Jews, which is what they called their sages, or simply a Chacham, a wise man, was much greater amongst the Jews of the Ottoman Empire than that of their contemporaries in Europe.

So that's Amsterdam and the Ottoman Empire, but the true crown jewel of communal development in the early modern era was the Council of the Four Lands. Since the first endorsement of Jewish courts by King Sigmund I of Poland back in 1533, there was a clear mutuality of interest between the Polish nobility and the Jewish elites who ran their communities. In essence, in return for playing a driving role in the economic development of the towns and estates owned by the nobility of the king, the Jews were granted a broad autonomy which was integrated into the legal system of Poland. and Jewish life flourished, as we know, in 16th century Poland, and local communal structures developed a pace. First, what became clear is that there was a need for coordination of legal standards between the various courts in all these communities.

And then, eventually there was a recognition of the need for a representation of Jewish interests beyond the local level. These two together led to the creation of a larger territorial organization known as the Council of the Four Lands. And they were Greater Poland, Little Poland, Ruthenia, and Wohania. So, legally, the Council was a meeting place where rabbis and judges could articulate a uniform stance on various questions of Jewish law, ranging from sumptuary laws, to weights and measures, to standards of dietary law. Politically, it was led by a small number of Jewish notables who served the governments of Poland and Lithuania largely as tax collectors for the Jews, and for whom the Council was basically a federative parliament.

And throughout the 17th century, communities from all four lands sent their representatives twice annually to meetings. Before the Passover holiday, they gathered at the Great Trade Fair in Lublin, and before the high holidays in the fall, at the fair in Yaroslav. At its height, the Council of Four Lands was a governing body that dealt with millions of people taking care of matters of law, education, social services, as well as representing Jewish interests to the non-Jewish authority. They even had official intercessors, shtadlanim, essentially ambassadors of the Jews in the courts of kings and the houses of noblemen. You should know that word shtadlan will have to return to it as a discussion. It's a model of leadership, which is quite disparaged in the Zionist-Israeli discourse today, but was an effective means of a people who officially had no power, but nevertheless wielded quite a bit of clout, being able to get their way.

The great Jewish historian Simon Dubnow called the Council of the Four Lands the quintessential model of Jewish autonomy in all of Jewish history. For me, the rise of the Council of the Four Lands, really in the late 16th century, but certainly reaching its height at our point in the 17th century, signals the transition of Am Yisrael from an exiled people to a nation in exile. They became basically a state within a state, and not coincidentally just as the nation-state is emerging as the model of organization for Europe. in addition by the way to the socio-political benefits which emerged from this level of communal organization there was an incredible flowering of Torah in the four lands as well we spoke about in many places the two critical factors which in my eyes are required for the Torah to flourish number one geographic concentration you gotta have a lot of Jews and number two relatively autonomous course they have to be left to their own devices and Poland had them both in abundance.

Through the council, greater rabbinic authorities could adjudicate law on a scale perhaps never before seen and Am Yisrael did not lack the great personalities prepared to do so. These sages were known as the Nosei Keilim of the Shulchan Arach, literally his armor bearers or perhaps his cup bearers if you want to use a less militant metaphor. They took Rav Yosokaro's foundational work of codification and built upon it a living world of Torah law. Names like Rabbi Yehoshua Falk, Sefer, author of the Sefer Meir De Naim, Rabbi Mordechai Yofi, author of the Levush, Rabbi Shabtai Ben Meir Cohen, also known as the Shach, and perhaps greatest amongst them all, Rabbi David Halevi Segal, author of the Turei Zahav, the Taz.

Rabbi Segal's life reads like the classic story of a Torah sage. Born into a rabbinic family, he's genius, a parent from a young age, In the beginning, his chief teacher was actually his older brother, Yitzchak. But when he came of age, of course, he was married off to the daughter of another famous sage, Rav Yol Serkis of Bres, who was known as the Bach. And he continued his studies under his father-in-law. Moving on to the big city, to Krakow, he filled minor rabbinic posts in several small Polish towns, and, of course, lived in terrible poverty. Until in 1641, he became rabbi of the ancient community of Ostrog. and there he established a yeshiva whose fame was soon to grow throughout the four lands because it was here that Rav Segal wrote his commentary on the section of the Shulchan Aruch called Yore Deah which is basically on the permitted and the forbidden published in 1646 it was known as I said as the Turei Zahav the Rose of Gold and was quickly accepted as one of the highest authorities on Jewish law in its day.

From that day forward Rav Seigal became simply known as the Taz. It was common at this point in rabbinic history that people became their books. And in light of his great works, the Council of the Four Lands eventually would declare his authority to be greater than that of any of his contemporaries. They did it posthumously, but it's impressive nonetheless. Now two years after the publication of his commentary, the sweetness of success in Torah was tempered by the bitter reality of exile as the Taz and his family fled Mechmelnitski massacres. And like so many other Polish Jews, he returned when the wave of violence subsided. And the Taz would play an important role in rebuilding communal life in the wake of that tragedy.

Now there's one more interesting note which ties the Taz into where our story is headed, into the false messiah, in more than just a background fashion. Because in 1666, right at the end of his life, and at the height of the excitement around the advent of the Messiah, the Jews of Poland sent an embassy to investigate this man who claimed to be the Redeemer. And the two scholars chosen were the remaining sons of the Taz. They returned quite impressed, and bearing a gift from the Messiah for their Holy Father, a white silk robe, and a letter promising to avenge the wrongs of the Jews of Poland. So, who is this Messiah of whom we speak? Shabtai Tzvi was born in the thriving port city of Izmir, in Ottoman-ruled Greece, in the year 1626.

Tradition is recorded that he came into the world on the 9th of Av, but like so much else in his life, it's impossible to know if this is true, or it's just an attempt to make his life conform with that of the long-awaited Redeemer, who our sages thought would indeed be born on the same day on which the temple had been destroyed. His father, Morin Chaitzvi, became wealthy in Izmir as it emerged as a critical port in the 17th century. It's a story unto itself. It's worth it to check down the history of that city. His two brothers, Elijah and Yosef, were wealthy with their father, but young Shabtai was destined by his family to become a Chacham, a member of the rabbinic elite. And indeed, he received rabbinic training.

And in all the bitter detractions that were written about him later, he's never called an ignoramus. And it also seems, at this point, that he had taken to the mythic world of the Zohar and what he encountered of the new Torah coming out of Sfat. He had a compelling voice, apparently was a wonderful singer, a beautiful face, and a strangely charismatic personality. A circle of young admirers had gathered around him to study, even before he officially left the yeshiva. Now we know from the records that his early life was marked by periods of profound depression, alternating with absolute heights of exaltation and euphoria, and there were extended periods of just calm normalcy in between. These alternating states are going to be documented throughout his whole life, and would ultimately play a role in how his followers interpreted all of his actions.

During these periods of illumination, as he called them, he often felt impelled toward strange violations of law and bizarre rituals. He later came to call these acts ma'asim zarim, strange or foreign actions. But one thing slowly but surely became a steady constant in his exalted states. His desire to renounce the four-lettered name of God aloud, something which was forbidden except to the high priest when he came out of the Holy Holies in the temple in its day. now at some point in these early days he began to give legitimacy to his compulsion to violate the law with repleted claims to his admirers that he was the long awaited Messiah and they don't seem to have denied him now that may sound a bit strange to you and I but let's recall that Shabtai Tzvi lived in a time when redemption was in the air and if after all the Messiah is coming somebody has to be the one You'll recall, I hope, from last episode, about Menashe ben Israel's enthusiasm.

Fired by the supposed discovery of the ten lost tribes in the New World, he fought to return the Jews to England, not just as a refuge, because he felt that that move would finish the process of exile and trigger redemption. And by 1665, when the Sabbatean heresy was well underway, his work, The Hope of Israel, had been published in seven different languages. By the way, one early repent was made in Izmir, and we know that among its more avid readers were Shabtai Tzvi and his circle of young friends. Furthermore, expectation had been rising throughout a subset at least of the Christian world for the hoped-for second coming, and many of these Christian millenarians fixed the date of his coming in the year 1666.

these rumors would have surely reached the Jews of an international port city like Izmir add to this the devastation of the 30 years war culminating in the horrific Hamil Nitski maskers that certainly fit the bill of the birth pangs of the Messiah which tradition taught would wrack the world in the days before his arrival and it's critical to remember that many of the people surrounding Shabtai in the early years as well as in the exciting days to come were conversos. And we spoke about how the return of these people to Judaism had been driven by a powerful belief in imminent redemption. And how like Uriel da Costa, many were religiously tormented, unsatisfied with the difficult process of reintegration into rabbinic Judaism.

Arcane visions of imminent messianic salvation were both familiar and appealing. And finally, we cannot discount the teachings of the Holy Arizal. According to the great scholar Gershom Shalom, what made the Ariz Torah a dynamic factor in Jewish history in general, and a critical factor in the Sabbatean movement in particular, was its declaration that by this time, the process of restoration was nearly complete. The final redemption was just around the corner. And anyone who engaged the new Kabbalistic teachings, radiating from Tzfat, was left with the feeling that only the last stages had to be passed through, and that these last stages to redemption lay in our hands. Now we'll revisit how such a large portion of the Jewish world was so quickly swept up in the wave of Messianism to come.

But for now, let's tell the story. Somewhere between 1651 and 54, Shabtai Zvi's eccentric behavior and messianic claims finally led the rabbinic authorities to intervene. Some say the last straw was when he pronounced the divine name and his blessing over the Torah in the synagogue on Shabbat, but no matter how it happened, they banished him from the city of Izmir. He moved on to another major port city, Salonika, and quickly gathered many friends and admirers. But this stay also ended in disaster when, gripped by one of his manic states, he celebrated a wedding under the chuppah with a Torah scroll. Expelled by the rabbis once again he moved on to Constantinople Here he went so far as to declare the abolition of all the commandments and to pronounce the blasphemous blessing which was soon to become his trademark to the one who is Matir Isurim, who permits the forbidden, as opposed to the one who is Matir Asurim, who looses the bound.

Now, such a blessing may sound strange in our ears, but it was powerfully resonant amongst the far-flung converso communities who lived a life where compulsion was matir-i-surim. They were permitted to do the forbidden when they were being oppressed by the Inquisition until God had come and saved them to be matir-a-surim, who had released them from their captivity. And who knows if in the darkness of Eastern Europe, which had been overrun by both the Poles and the Russians in the years since the Hanifki maskers, that the notion of a god served in paradox and darkness didn't make quite a bit of sense. In 1662, Shabtai Tzvi settled in Jerusalem seemingly in a quiet fashion. At least until a year later when, having been sent by the community on an emergency mission to Cairo, he revealed himself there as the Messiah once again.

A new circle quickly formed around him, and soon they brought to their master reports of a young refugee girl from the Chayonitski maskers who was wandering the ports of the Mediterranean, claiming to be the bride of the Messiah. It was our young friend Sarah. Further rumors, which hinted of her immoral behavior, came as well, but they only reinforced his purpose, and he sent for her at once. And Shantai Tzvi married the orphan girl Sarah in Cairo on March 31, 1664. He explained to his followers that such a wife had actually been promised to him by God in a dream, because he, as the Messiah, must begin his mission by following in the footsteps of the prophet Hosea, who also was commanded to take a prostitute as wife.

All were duly impressed. But the real turning point in Shabtai Tzvi's messianic career came with the news that a man of God had appeared in Gaza. You should know by the way that at this point Gaza was a major Jewish community. someone who, like the Arizal before him could disclose the secret root of his soul and give each person the particular tikkun that their soul required now it seems from some of the early documentation that our young visionary actually originally went to Gaza in order to find a restoration and a fixing and peace for his soul and finally get out of this manic depressive state that was torturing him into believing he was the Messiah But, instead of curing Shab Tetzvi, Nathan of Gaza looked at his soul and affirmed for him that he was indeed the true Messiah.

Imagine his surprise. According to one report, it happened when they were celebrating the night of Shavuot in Nathan's house along with a group of rabbis, all the leaders of the community. Nathan fell into a trance, and when he awoke, he suddenly announced that Shabtai Tzvi indeed held the high rank of Messiah before the entire assembly. And this public acclamation was all Shabtai needed to hear. On the 17th of Sivan, he declared himself publicly as the Messiah and swept with him the entire community of Gaza, including its rabbi, Yaakov Najarah. The news spread like wildfire throughout the Holy Land, as you would think it must, but it quickly encountered strong opposition from the sages of Jerusalem.

So Shabtai Tzvi gathered his people and rode up from Gaza to Jerusalem followed by the masses. In kingly fashion, he circled the holy city seven times, dressed in white on horseback, winning over some of the rabbis inside with nothing but his majestic presence. And though he was ultimately allowed in, the majority of the sages stood against him and soon banished him from the city. This slowed nothing down. Nathan was now both prophet and Elijah, announcing Shabtai Tzvi as the Messiah to the world. He began to send out letters to the surrounding communities, calling for a mass movement of repentance, which would smooth the way for the coming redemption. Now, this was both powerful and clever, because there was no better way of winning the hearts of the faithful while disarming the opposition and other rabbinic authorities at the same time.

He couldn't protest a repentance movement. And not to mention, it might have actually helped bring the world a little bit closer to redemption, depending on what kind of repenting was actually being done. He proclaimed the fast of the 17th of Tammuz to no longer be a fast, but rather a day of joy in Gaza and Hevron. And more letters went out to the broader Mediterranean world, telling of the wondrous deeds of the Messiah and his prophet. The most outrageous rumors began to circulate amongst the Jews of Europe. One even claimed that the lost ten tribes were actually marching at that moment under the command of a saintly man of God aiming to conquer Mecca. In September 1665, Nathan addressed a much longer letter in two parts.

The first announced the spiritual revolution which had taken place in the hidden worlds with the arrival of the Redeemer. He informed the Kabbalists that the Kavanot, intentions or meditations of the Holy Ari, were no longer valid because there were no holy sparks left under the dominion of the powers of evil. The time of redemption had come and a new Torah was called for. The second part of the letter detailed the course of events from the present moment until complete redemption would be achieved. Shabtai Tzvi would take the crown from the Turkish Sultan without war and make the Sultan his servant. After four or five years, he would proceed to the river of Sambation to bring back the ten lost tribes and to marry Rebekah, the 13-year-old daughter of the resurrected Moses.

During this period, he would put the Turkish Sultan in charge, but the latter would rebel against him in his absence. This would be the period of the birth pangs of Messiah, a time of great tribulation from which only those dwelling in Gaza would be exempt. And between the present time and the start of the actual messianic events, there would be an interval of one year and several months which should be used for doing penance all over the world. For that purpose, Nathan composed his own liturgies, which were also sent out to Europe and the Near East as letters. Now just imagine, an enthusiast bursts into shul, be it in Amsterdam or Krakow or wherever. He's carrying letters from a prophet, declaring the advent of the Messiah and calling for mass repentance.

Why is it he evoked ecstatic hope and excitement instead of mockery and scorn? You know, Gershom Shalom was convinced that it was Lurianic Kabbalah which paved the way for the Sabbatean explosion. By transforming the world into a cosmic redemptive drama with religious actions of the individual as the primary driver of the process, the Holy Ari essentially placed the keys to redemption in the hands of man. Shabtai Tzvi himself spoke mainly in hints and metaphors about his theology, but Nathana of Gaza was quite explicit, and so it's to him that we have to look to get any clear notion of what these compelling Sabintian mysteries were. What he did was develop an elaborate system of thought that combined his version of Lurianic Kabbalah with his own original ideas about the role of the Messiah in the new cosmic order.

In Natan's mind, the Ari's doctrine of tikkun, of cosmic restoration, which Israel is meant to achieve through the strength of the Torah, applies only to part of reality. There's a lower portion of existence, what he calls the deep of the great abyss, which remains formless and unreconstructed until the coming of the Messiah, who is the only one that can perfect it. There's a darkness that only he can reach. And this Messiah represents to him something utterly new. He's an authority not subject to laws minding in the state of cosmic and historic exile that we've lived in up until now. And that's why he alone can enter into the deep abyss and bring light to places of absolute darkness. This was the doctrine that enabled Nathan not only to defend each and every strange act of the Messiah, including his ultimate apostasy, but to transform them into a positive aspect.

Shab Taitzi became the mystical counterpart of the red heifer. He purified the unclean, but in the process became impure himself. That's nice. And Shalom put this type of Torah at the centerpiece of the revolution. But in my eyes, ideas are not enough. We have to answer the question of why such ideas take hold in so powerful a fashion. Overnight, whole communities became believers in this insane Messiah who blessed the God for permitting the forbidden. The poor sold their possessions. The wealthy booked ships to the land of Israel. People stopped working. Waves of repentance and rejoicing swept the entire Jewish world. It's hard for me to believe that most of these people were familiar with the Torah of the Rizal at all, much less of nothing the heretics reworking.

Recent scholars have begun to draw a deep connection between the Sabatine movement and the converso experience. On the most basic level, every letter which nothing of Gaza sent out found instant widespread circulation, mostly through the international commercial network that these men had built up in the preceding century. Certainly, the cities where his personal presence made the biggest impact, Izmir, Salonika, Istanbul, were all centers of converso life. And, as we saw in the last episode, when Aaron Halevi Montezinos testified under oath to the Mammon of Amsterdam that he'd found the lost tribe of Reuven in the mountains of Ecuador, once the word of a man of the Portuguese nation was established, it carried quite a bit of weight with all of the others.

On a deeper level, it seems to me that a doctrine of redemption built on the premise that the final stage of tikkun, of fixing, was to enter into the darkest forbidden places would resonate with the people who they themselves had lived as the Catholic Other, often for many generations. Just imagine how the following statement of Natanz, made after his Messiah's conversion resonated with the conversos. The prime secret to which we are obligated by the Torah is that all of us must become anusim, forced converts, before we leave the exile. As is written in the Torah, you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. Another part of how such a revolution took place was also certainly the depressed state of so much of the nation.

So many had suffered for 200 years under the Inquisition. So many were trampled by the wars of religion and ultimately consumed by the conflagration of the Chemelnitski massacres. And after all this suffering, was it really so unreasonable to believe that the end was at hand? I mean, the people have been saying, because of our sins, we were exiled from our lands for well over a thousand years. And if exile was meant to atone for our sins, hadn't we had enough of it at this point? And then, there was this undercurrent of enthusiasm that seemed to be running through European culture at this point, Christian and Jewish alike. Because in my mind, if you always stick with the sane and rational, then redemption can never come.

the task of the Redeemer of Am Yisrael as a whole and really of conscious humanity is to connect the finite and the infinite and you have to be a bit crazy to reach for the infinite I mean, if you want to reduce what could be to your ability to grasp what is you'll always be stuck in the world that you already inhabit you know, scholars love to note the Sabbatine movement was the largest messianic upwelling in Am Yisrael since Jesus of Nazareth. Now, I'm not about to wade into theological controversies, but those of you who have been with me since the beginning of this story will remember that the advent of Christianity came together with no less than three revolts by the Jews against Rome. And the last one, the Barcoho revolt, was explicitly messianic.

The people refused to allow their experience of what is to dictate what could be. So, I guess, as a last thought, I would add to the factors of the deep tour of the Ari, of the converso experience, of the crushed state of the people, the very fact that in order to maintain a messianic vision, sometimes it simply has to overflow. So the new Messiah, rejected in the holy city, moved on. When he passed through Aleppo, a great commotion flared up with the first appearance of what was known as Sabbatean prophecy. An account is provided for us by Rav Raphael Supino, who joined the ranks of the Sabbateans. I quote, The spirit of the prophets and prophetesses has been established outside the land of Israel.

I saw with my eyes a young student who recited biblical passages, and while speaking, lost use of his limbs and was almost without pulse. Then he said, Shabt Ha'etzvi is our king and our savior, the righteous teacher, crowned with the most high crown. He will rule over all the land and the hosts of heavens. He went on. At the end he says, A person may lie about all things but with a pulse nobody can deceive a revivalist atmosphere gripped from Aleppo down to the land of Israel Reports of the appearance of the prophet Elijah became commonplace A fund was actually set up to care for those who would be affected by what was assumed to be a widespread halt to all commercial activity. Meanwhile, Shabtitesvi returned to his hometown of Smyrna.

Now the rabbis there remembered him, and they had received a warning letter from the rabbinate of Constantinople detailing our Messiah's excommunication in Jerusalem, but at first they took no action against him. It was only when, in a state of wild ecstasy, he began to whip the people up once again with his strange acts. They made an attempt to control him then, but it was too late. News of the Messiah began to stream out from Smyrna from Jewish sources, as well as through the English, Dutch, and Italian traders who filled the port. The presence of a critical mass of believers spurred Shabtite Tzvi'an, and during the week of Hanukkah he began to, quote, do things that seemed strange. He pronounced the ineffable name, ate forbidden fats, and did other things against the Lord and his law, even pressing others to do likewise.

Quickly, a deep rift developed between the believers, who are now a majority of the community in Smyrna, and those who he labeled as infidels. it was at this point that Ma'am-i-Nim, believers and Kofrim heretics, became the terms for those who adhered to faith in Shabtai Tzvi and those who opposed him and on Friday, December 11th the believers tried to storm the house one of the leading infidels and on the following day on Shabbat Shabtai Tzvi, accompanied by a large crowd proceeded to the locked doors of the Portuguese congregation which was the headquarters of the Kofrim that opposed him, taking up an axe he started to smash the doors when finally his opponents opened up and let him in. Rising to the pulpit, he made a furious speech against the unbelieving rabbis, comparing them to the unclean animals of the Bible, and then he proclaimed himself the anointed of God of Jacob, the Redeemer of Israel, and fixed the date of redemption for the 15th of Sivan, 54-26.

That would be June 18th, 1666. Immediately after Shabbat, he dispatched one of his followers of Constantinople to pave the way for the arrival of the Redeemer. Now, incredibly, an atmosphere of joy and enthusiasm actually filled the Jewish quarter of the capital in the coming days. Rather than thinking to take shelter from the coming storm, Jews from other Turkish communities streamed into the capital to join the movement. Once again, mass prophecy struck, and about 150 prophets arose in Izmir, among them Shabtai Tzvi's wife and even some of the daughters of his opponents. Trade came to a halt, dancing and festive possessions alternated with the penitential prayers prescribed by Nuff and the Prophet.

And Shamtayi's fee finally sailed to Constantinople on December 30, 1665, with the goal of taking the Sultan's crown. Excitement rose to a fever pitch in the city. Even the non-Jewish population got caught up in the movement, and satirical songs about the Messiah were sung by the Muslims in the streets. The Jewish masses were certain that miracles would take place immediately upon the Messiah's arrival, and they didn't hesitate to show their pride before the Muslims. Shabtai Tzvi did not make it to Constantinople, at least not as a free man, but his interception by boat and arrest only strengthened the faithful. He was brought ashore in chains, and ultimately our Messiah was transferred to the fortress of Gallipoli on the European side of the Dardanelles.

He took up his new quarters on April 19th, the day before Passover, marking the day with the sacrifice of Passover lamb, which he roasted with its fat, inducing his followers to eat that forbidden food and bless it with the now customary blessing of he who permits the forbidden. The fortress proved to be a comfortable home, where letters went out and visitors arrived daily. It became known by the faithful as Migdal Oz, the Tower of Strength, and was an instant place of pilgrimage. Meanwhile, the followers of this new Messiah in Israel, Egypt, Aleppo, Smyrna, and Constantinople poured out letters to the whole Jewish world. Messianic fervor took hold everywhere. Also, broadsheets and pamphlets about the Messiah written by Christians in English, Dutch, and German began to appear as well.

These were also avidly read by the Jews and often seen as independent sources confirming their own news. Millenarian circles in England, Holland and Germany, who had long expected the Second Coming would occur in 1666, did quite a bit to spread Sabbatean propaganda to what began to be many Christian followers. And what was happening in the communal power structures? Well, first of all, many lay leaders and rabbis were unabashed enthusiasts. From many places, delegations left to visit Shabtai Tzvi in prison, like the sons of the Taz. They often carried parchment signed by the leaders of the community, acknowledging him as the Messiah and King of Israel. A new era had begun. Letters, and we can even find some published books, were dated from the first year of the renewal of the prophecy and the kingdom.

Avram Pereira, the richest Jew in Amsterdam, and certainly a deeply devout man, gave his enormous prestige to the cause, and after publishing a book of morals for repentant sinners, he left with his entire household for the East to greet the Messiah. Even influential rabbis, who in their hearts were skeptical about the whole upheaval, had to be careful not to antagonize their communities, who were not shy of using violence to convince the Kofrim of the error of their ways. One stubborn opponent was Yaakov Sepoltas, former rabbi of the community in London, and now staying in Hamburg as a refugee from the plague. After the implosion of the Sabbatean movement, He assembled large parts of his anti-Sabbatean correspondence in a book he called Tzitzat Novel Tzvi.

I quote, everywhere. Many sold their houses and property to revive themselves for money for the journey of the Holy Land, while others made no such preparations, being convinced that they would be transported on clouds. Shabtad Zvi's imprisonment by the Turks did nothing to diminish his power. On the contrary, the very fact that he was only held captive and not killed, and furthermore, in an honorable state, seemed to confirm his mission. His correspondence in prisons was of such a great volume that he had to employ a scribe, and the new Messiah began to sign his pronouncements as the firstborn son of God, your father Israel, the bridegroom of the Torah, and other such titles. Even when he signed some of his letters, I am the Lord your God, Shabtai Tzvi, only a few of the faithful seem to have been shocked.

Meanwhile, hundreds of prophets arose in Constantinople. As the fast of the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av approached, Shabtai Tzvi's madness mounted. He proclaimed the abolition of the fast, instituted new festivals in their stead. The 17th of Tammuz became the day of the revival of Shabtai Tzvi's spirit. The breaking point came from an unexpected quarter. A Polish compiless, Nechemia Cohen from Lwov, came to see Shabtai Tzvi on behalf of some Polish communities. Their meeting, however, didn't go well. It seems an argument erupted between them over Nehemiah's own role in the redemption, since he himself claimed to be the Messiah, son of Joseph, whose appearance would precede that of the Davidic Redeemer.

Needless to say, his host rejected this assertion. As the discussion deteriorated, Nehemiah suddenly turned to the Turkish guards and declared his willingness to immediately adopt Islam. He was whisked away to Adrinople, where the Sultan sat, where after his conversion, he denounced Shabtai Tzvi for inciting rebellion against the true religion and its keeper. From here, it was a quick journey to the end. Messengers arrive from Andrianople, and the Messiah was brought before the Council of State in the presence of the Sultan, who watched through the latticework of his chamber above the court. The Sultan's physician, an apostate Jew, handled the questioning. Shabtai denied ever having made any messianic claims, or of having the intent to overthrow the Sultan, and after a lengthy interrogation, he was given the choice, death or conversion.

And he chose to don the turban, rather than lose his head. And when the false messiah left the chamber of the Council of State, he was no longer Shabtai Tzvi, but rather Aziz Mehmed Efendi. For many of the Sabbatean enthusiasts and believers, their experience of Messianic awakening had taken on the nature of a new spiritual reality. For an entire crazy year, they had been led to equate their inner experience with an outward reality which seemed to be confirming it day by day. But now, with Shabtai's Fezapostasy, they were faced with a cruel dilemma. to admit that their most precious inner belief had been false and that the man that they had followed in the outside world as Redeemer was actually an imposter, or to hold fast to that precious inner reality of redemption and seek a way to justify what appeared to be its failure in Shabtai Svi's apostasy.

And when Nathan the prophet received the news in early November 1666, he immediately announced it was all a deep mystery which would resolve itself in due time. He lost no faith in his Messiah. In truth, he himself had already laid the foundation for transforming this last and greatest of the ma'asim zarim of the strange acts of Shabtai Tzvi into the Messiah's most profound message. His apostasy was presented by Nathan as the fulfillment of a mission to lift up the holy sparks that were dispersed even amongst the Gentiles. In his eyes, the task of the Jewish people had been to restore the sparks of their own souls according to the demands of the Torah, but, as we said, there were sparks which only the Messiah himself could redeem.

Nephen, and many others after him for more than a hundred years, searched the Bible, the Talmud, the Midrash, Kabbalistic literature, for references to the apostate Messiah, and lo and behold, they came up with a rich harvest of daring and often outright heretical reinterpretations of sacred texts. Once this basic paradox was accepted, everything seemed to fall in line. All the problematic acts of the biblical heroes, all the strange tales of the rabbinic Agarita, and many of the enigmatic passages of the Zohar. Everything seemed to point to the outrageous behavior of the Messiah. Meanwhile, after the bubble burst, the shame of the morning after set in, all over the Jewish world. I mean, they all had to show up in shul the next morning and look each other in the face.

Maminim and Kofrim alike. The rabbis and communal leaders, particularly in Turkey, tread very lightly. The primary policy was to hush the whole affair up. In fact, they wanted the calm excitement by pretending that little had actually happened. And people were happy to oblige. In their eyes, the best way to return to life in the normal state of exile was to ignore the whole course of events of the last year and let time cover over the wound. There was also an immediate active editing of certain events. We have found that in many communities of Italy, the pages of the communal records which recorded the events of this year were removed and destroyed, perhaps on the order of the rabbis. Official silence descended on literature published in Hebrew for many years.

We're just not going to talk about it. And this attempt to rewrite the story of the heretic Messiah would become more intense with time, not less. Because those who held fast, calling themselves Sabbateans, were gradually driven underground, but they were never actually excommunicated. And the borderline between them and those who remained normative Jews was often quite blurred. The movement had tapped something too deep to simply disappear with its leader. But that's a story we'll have to pursue in coming episodes. For now, Shabt Hetzvi himself lived on in Adrianapol. The Turks hoped he would draw many Jews to Islam, but the 200 heads of family converted with him were all secret believers, the Donmeh, who exist in Turkey to this day.

And he died quite suddenly, two months after his 50th birthday on the Day of Atonement, in 1676. But his prophet Nathan lived on, and immediately began to teach that Shabt Hetzvi had actually ascended into the Supernal Lights and that the hope for redemption had not died. I just want to thank a few people. I want to thank all people who give their hard-earned money to make this show happen. And I want to invite you to join them. You can go to my Facebook page at RobMikeFoyer and you'll find the information there. You can send me an email, robmikefoyer at gmail.com or you can go directly to Patreon. That's www.patreon.com to slash mfoyer. and you can hit the Patreon button to become a per-podcast supporter.

I want to thank the folks at the Land of Israel Network for providing such an amazing platform for me to reuse. I want to thank the Pardes Institute, that's p-a-r-d-e-s dot org dot i-l for allowing me to touch the hearts and minds of so many wonderful Jews. I want to thank Suom Yaakov, because it's my home, and I want to thank you for listening, especially to this extra-long episode. I'm Rav Mike Boyer, and this is The Jewish Story. .