Sabbateans

The Sabbateans (or Sabbatians) were a variety of Jewish followers, disciples, and believers in Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676),^[1]^[2]^[3] a Sephardic Jewish rabbi and Kabbalist who was proclaimed to be the Jewish Messiah in 1666 by Nathan of Gaza.^[1]^[2]

Not to be confused with Sabbatarianism.

Vast numbers of Jews in the Jewish diaspora accepted his claims, even after he outwardly became an apostate due to his forced conversion to Islam in the same year.^[1]^[2]^[3] Sabbatai Zevi's followers, both during his proclaimed messiahship and after his forced conversion to Islam, are known as Sabbateans.^[1]^[3] Part of the Sabbateans lived on until well into 21st-century Turkey as descendants of the Dönmeh.^[1]

Sabbatai Zevi[edit]

Sabbatai Zevi was a Sephardic ordained rabbi from Smyrna (now İzmir, Turkey).^[4]^[5] A kabbalist of Romaniote origin,^[6] Zevi, who was active throughout the Ottoman Empire, claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. He was the founder of the Sabbatean movement, whose followers subsequently were to be known as Dönmeh "converts" or crypto-Jews.^[7]

(1572–1662) was especially known for having been the teacher of Zevi and for having afterward excommunicated him.^[23]

Joseph Escapa

(1590–1674) was the rabbi at Smyrna in 1665, when Zevi's movement was at its height there. He was one of the few rabbis to oppose and excommunicate Zevi. Zevi and his adherents retorted by deposing him and forcing him to leave the city, and his office was given to his colleague, Hayyim Benveniste, at that time one of Sabbatai's followers. After Sabbatai's conversion to Islam, Lapapa seems to have been reinstated.

Aaron Lapapa

(1610–1698) was one of the fiercest opponents of the Sabbatean movement. He wrote many letters to various communities in Europe, Asia, and Africa, exhorting them to unmask the impostors and to warn the people against them. He documented his struggle in his book Tzitzat Novel Tzvi, the title being based on Isaiah 28:4. He wrote a number of works, such as Toledot Ya'akob (1652), an index of Biblical passages found in the haggadah of the Jerusalem Talmud, similar to Aaron Pesaro's Toledot Aharon, which relates to the Babylonian Talmud only; and Ohel Ya'akov (1737), a volume of halachic responsa which includes polemical correspondence against Zevi and his followers.

Jacob ben Aaron Sasportas

(1620–1674) was one of Zevi's chief opponents, who put him under the ban. About 1673 Hagis went to Constantinople to publish his Lehem ha-Panim, but he died there before this was accomplished. This book, as well as many others of his, was lost.

Jacob Hagis

(1649–1718) was a kabbalist who was tricked into giving an approbation to a book by the Sabbatean Nehemiah Hayyun. Provided with this and with other recommendations secured in the same way, Hayyun traveled throughout Moravia and Silesia, propagating everywhere his Sabbatean teachings. Cohen soon discovered his mistake, and endeavored, without success, to recover his approbation, although he did not as yet realize the full import of the book. It was in 1713, while Cohen was staying at Breslau (where he acted as a rabbi until 1716), that Haham Tzvi Ashkenazi of Amsterdam informed him of its tenets. Cohen thereupon acted rigorously. He launched a ban against the author and his book, and became one of the most zealous supporters of Haham Tzvi in his campaign against Hayyun.

Naphtali Cohen

(1654–1728) was the haham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in London. He waged war untiringly on the Sabbateans, which he regarded as dangerous to the best interests of Judaism, and in this connection wrote his Esh Dat (London, 1715) against Nehemiah Hayyun (who supported Zevi).

David Nieto

(1656–1718) known as the Chacham Tzvi, for some time rabbi of Amsterdam, was a resolute opponent of the followers of Sabbatai Zevi. In Salonica he also witnessed the impact of the Sabbatai Zevi movement on the community, and this experience became a determining factor in his whole career. His son Jacob Emden served as rabbi in Emden and followed in his father's footsteps in combating the Sabbatean movement.

Tzvi Ashkenazi

(1671- c. 1750) was born in Jerusalem and waged a campaign against Sabbatean emissaries during 1725-1726.

Moses Hagiz

(1697–1776) was Talmudic scholar and leading opponent of the Sabbatians. He is best known as the opponent of Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, whom he accused of being a Sabbatean during The Emden-Eybeschütz Controversy.

Jacob Emden

Crypto-Judaism

Frankism

Islam and Judaism

Jewish schisms

Johan Kemper

List of messiah claimants

Messianism

Behr Perlhefter

Joshua Heschel Zoref

Cengiz Sisman, "The Burden of Silence: Sabbatai Sevi and the Evolution of the Ottoman-Turkish Donmes", New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

by Sabbatean leader Jacob Frank. Edited, translated, annotated and with an introduction by Harris Lenowitz.

The Collection of the Words of the Lord

Archived 2010-12-05 at the Wayback Machine

The Dönmes: Crypto-Jews under Turkish Rule

The Donmeh: True Believers, Jewish Heretics or Untrustworthy Moslem Converts?

Baer, Marc. (2007). "Globalization, Cosmopolitanism, and the Dönme in Ottoman Salonica and Turkish Istanbul". Journal of World History. 18 (2): 141–170. :10.1353/jwh.2007.0009. JSTOR 20079421. S2CID 143494298.

doi

A Messianic Epiphany: The Conversion of the Dönme Sabbateans

Sisman, Cengiz (2007). . In Robert G. Ousterhout (ed.). Studies on Istanbul and Beyond. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9781934536018.

"The History of Naming the Ottoman/Turkish Sabbatians"

MacIejko, Pawel (2007). . Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook. 6: 135–154.