Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) was a charismatic, Turkish-born rabbi whose claim that he was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah attracted hundreds of thousands of followers across Europe and the Middle East. Eventually, though, Zevi’s erratic behavior and unorthodox beliefs aroused the ire of both the Jewish establishment and the Ottoman sultan, who had him imprisoned in 1666.
Zevi was born in Smyrna, a prosperous trading city on Turkey’s Aegean coast. He received a traditional Jewish education, was recognized as a gifted student of the Talmud, and became a rabbi at about age eighteen.
From an early age, Zevi’s bizarre antics began to alienate Smyrna’s religious authorities. He alternated between periods of ecstasy and deep depression; during his lows, Zevi often purposely violated Jewish religious and dietary laws. He also claimed to have experienced levitation, and, at age twenty-two, he claimed that he was the Messiah.
Finally, in 1651, Smyrna’s rabbis expelled him from the city. He traveled across the Mediterranean; various sources report that he traveled to Greece, Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt before settling in Jerusalem in 1662. In 1665, he again proclaimed himself the Messiah.
This time, the claim found a ready audience among Jews worldwide, who were suffering under a wave of renewed persecution that had begun in Poland and Russia in 1648. Within a few months, the Sabbatean movement had spread by letter throughout the Middle East and to Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, and other centers of Jewish life. Zevi claimed that the world would end the next year, 1666, with the restoration of Israel. Zevi explained his own scandalous acts by arguing that “outward” displays of religious propriety would be meaningless when the apocalypse came.
Worried by his rapidly growing power, the Turkish sultan Mehmed IV (1642–1693) ordered Zevi’s arrest in February 1666. Confined to the castle of Abydos, Zevi was offered a choice: He could convert to Islam or be put to death immediately.
To the dismay of many of his disciples, Zevi accepted Islam and remained a Muslim until his death ten years later. However, a smaller number of followers continued to insist that he was the Messiah and that his conversion was only an irrelevant “outward” display. Although he was denounced across the Jewish world, Zevi’s influence lingered for decades after his death.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- After his conversion to Islam, Zevi worked briefly as the sultan’s personal doorkeeper. He was arrested in 1672, however, and exiled to Dulcigno, Albania, where he died.
- A large community of Sabbateans, called the Dönme, still exists in Turkey. Members of the group outwardly embrace Islam but continue to practice Judaism in secret.
- In 1664, Zevi married Sarah, the daughter of one of the victims of the persecutions that had begun in 1648. After her death, he married Esther, the daughter of a rabbi.
