A.D. 1600-1700.
THE JEWS IN THE EAST.—SABBATHAI SEVI.
The condition of the Jews in the East during this century does not
call for much remark; indeed, little has been recorded respecting
it. The treatment they received at the hands of the Mussulmans, both
princes and people, was curiously different from that which they
experienced from the Christian populations of Europe. The first named
did not regard the Jews with any particular favour or respect,—in
fact, the disdain they evinced for them was even greater than that
entertained by their Christian contemporaries,—but there was no
_active_ enmity. They looked on with scornful indifference while the
Israelites plied their busy trade, aware though they might be that
the wealth they accumulated was in a great measure drawn from their
own coffers. They would spit in contempt as they passed a Jewish
synagogue, but they would not raise a finger to cause its demolition
or prevent any number of worshippers from crowding into it. All over
Turkey, Arabia, and Persia, some Jews were to be found in every town,
where they were allowed to live and thrive, unless they broke some
law or offended some faithful Islamite. But if they did either of
these things, they were apt to experience scant ceremony and sharp
punishment.
The reader has heard, in a previous chapter, of the massacre
perpetrated by Shah Abbas II., which appears to have occurred about
A.D. 1666. It is said to have lasted three years, and to have almost
exterminated the Jews in his dominions. It is, however, involved
in great obscurity, the dates given by different writers varying
considerably. But in this year, 1666, not the Jews of the East only,
but all over the world, were greatly excited by the appearance of the
most persistent and successful impostor that had arisen among them
from the time of Barchochebas. Sabbathai Sevi, a native of Smyrna,
and son of a poulterer in that city, was born in 1625. He was sent
to school, where he made such rapid progress that he was appointed
a Rabbi when he was only eighteen years of age. He early attracted
attention and had many followers, who believed in the pretensions
which, even then, he put forward, of being the expected Messiah. At
the age of twenty he married a woman of great beauty and rank; but
the marriage was only a nominal one, as he lived entirely apart from
her. He was compelled to give a divorce, and soon afterwards made a
second similar marriage, with the same result. He practised strict
asceticism, fasting six days in every week, and bathing continually
in the sea at midnight. At twenty-four, his reputation had increased
so greatly, that he ventured to put forth publicly his pretensions to
be thought the Messiah, and, in proof of these, ventured to pronounce
publicly the name of Jehovah, which is absolutely forbidden to the
Jews. The Rabbins were horror-struck at his impiety, and declared him
to be worthy of death. He was compelled to fly from Smyrna, and took
refuge in one city after another, until in Gaza he made an important
proselyte, the celebrated Nathan Benjamin. This man, a person of
position and influence, professed to have seen in a vision the Lord
Himself; who informed him that the promised Deliverer had come in the
person of Sabbathai Sevi, and that he, Nathan Benjamin, was the Elias
who was to herald his coming. The reader will remember that this
is the exact repetition of the imposture of Barchochebas and Rabbi
Akiba, fifteen hundred years before. Aided by this ally, Sabbathai
preached in Jerusalem, and resided for thirteen years in that city,
continuing to gain proselytes and bearing down all opposition.
The imposture was aided by the remarkable fact that, according to the
interpretation of some eminent Cabalists of a passage in the book
of the prophet Daniel, the Messiah would make His appearance about
the year 1675. One of Nathan Benjamin’s first steps, when he felt
himself strong enough to take it, was to assemble the Jews resident
in Jerusalem, and inform them that, by virtue of the authority
committed to him from on high, he abrogated the fast which would
otherwise be observed in the ensuing June, because the time of the
coming of the Messiah was a festal one, inconsistent with mourning
of any kind. He then brought Sabbathai out to them, who, he said, in
the ensuing November would go forth in power and destroy the Ottoman
empire. He encountered determined opposition from the wiser among
his countrymen, who perceived that his pretensions were not only
without foundation, but were likely to bring the gravest calamities
on the Jews everywhere throughout the Sultan’s dominions. They even
went so far as to try him as a rebel and an impostor, and condemn him
to death. His adherents, however, were too many and too powerful to
permit of this sentence being carried into effect, and he continued
to reside without molestation in the city.
After a period of thirteen years from the date of this announcement
of his pretensions, he made an expedition into Egypt, where he
married, for the third time, the daughter of a Polish Jew, who
professed to have received a revelation that she was the destined
bride of the Messiah. But the marriage, like the two former ones,
was only a marriage in name; and Sabbathai returned to Jerusalem,
where he resided for three years more, and then publicly proclaimed
himself in one of the synagogues as the Messiah. This once more
roused the indignation of the Rabbins, who pronounced against him the
sentence of excommunication. This sentence he found too strong for
him to struggle against, and he fled to his native city, Smyrna.
The report of his condemnation had preceded him; but he was
nevertheless welcomed in his native city with almost regal honour.
Every evening he paraded the streets, accompanied by a train of
followers, carrying banners, and singing hymns in his praise. All
resistance offered to him proved vain. A Jew of high rank, named
Anakia, attacked him in the market-place, branding him as an
impostor. But his fate did not encourage others to pursue the same
course. He returned to his home, and had scarcely entered it, when he
suddenly fell from his chair a corpse. The reader will not require to
be told that Sabbathai’s friends declared this to be God’s judgment
on the blasphemer!
His pretensions now rose higher.[197] He assumed the state of a
monarch. He divided the kingdoms of the earth among his partisans.
He named his two brothers sovereigns of Judah and Israel, while he
himself took the title of ‘the King of the Kings of the Earth.’
He ordered the name of the Sultan to be removed from the prayer
offered up for the sovereign in the Jewish liturgy, and his own to
be inserted in its place. Embassies arrived from foreign communities
charged with rich presents and assurances of devoted loyalty. These
were sometimes kept waiting two or three weeks for an audience. His
picture was exhibited in public, surmounted by a golden crown; and
multitudes of prophets of both sexes thronged the streets, declaring
in the name of Heaven his approaching triumph. Some of these are said
to have acquired in a moment a miraculous knowledge of Hebrew!
It was not in Smyrna only, or in its vicinity, that the madness
prevailed. In those European cities in which the largest number of
Jews were to be found,—Hamburg, and Frankfort, and Amsterdam,—all
other topics of interest were postponed, and business was broken
off to discuss the doings of the newly risen Prophet of Israel. The
excitement was not less in the East, where the husbandmen are related
to have refused to do their ordinary work in the fields, because the
Deliverer of Israel had come. If Sabbathai had been really a man
of ability and courage, there is no saying what he might not have
effected. It is probable, however, that the extraordinary amount
of success to which he had attained now embarrassed, rather than
gratified, him. He felt that he could neither recede nor stand still.
His partisans insisted on his passing over to Constantinople, and
advancing his pretensions in the face of the Sultan himself. He made
the voyage accordingly, attended by a vast number of his adherents,
and was received by the Jews of Constantinople with the utmost
enthusiasm. The Sultan was at the time of his arrival absent, but
Sabbathai demanded an audience of the grand vizier. The latter sent
immediately to his master for instructions, and delayed giving any
reply until he received them. The Sultan’s reply was, that Sabbathai
was to be arrested and kept in safe custody until his return. First
one, and then a second officer of janissaries were accordingly sent;
but in the presence of Sabbathai they were so overpowered by awe
that they dared not execute their office. Once more, if Sabbathai
had had boldness equal to the occasion, he might have made himself
master of Constantinople. But he surrendered himself of his own
accord, and was kept in a kind of honourable captivity in the castle
of Sestos, where, however, his followers were freely permitted to
visit him. He put out a manifesto ordering that the fast which was
always strictly observed on the anniversary of the destruction of
Jerusalem should be suspended, and the day celebrated as a festival,
it being the birthday of the Messiah. At this juncture there arrived
a learned Cabalist, Rabbi Nehemiah, the head of one of the synagogues
in Poland, who took up his abode in the castle as Sabbathai’s guest.
A few days’ intercourse satisfied him that Sabbathai was simply an
impostor, and as such he denounced him to his followers. Roused to
fury, the partisans of the prophet would have killed him on the spot;
but Nehemiah snatched a turban from the head of one of the Turks, and
declared himself a Mussulman. The janissaries instantly interfered
to protect him, and he was conveyed to Adrianople where he had an
interview with the Sultan. The latter now returned to the capital,
and summoned Sabbathai to his presence. The impostor in the hour of
trial entirely lost the hardihood which he had hitherto displayed,
and, when the Sultan demanded of him whether he was the Messiah,
could not summon courage to reply. The Sultan proposed to test his
pretensions by shooting three poisoned arrows at him. If these failed
to wound or injure him, his title should be at once acknowledged;
if the result should be different, death or the profession of
Mahometanism must be his sentence. Sabbathai did not hesitate.
Following the example of Nehemiah, he placed a turban on his head and
exclaimed—‘There is but one God, and Mahomet is His Prophet!’
It is most extraordinary that this apostasy, evidently the result
of mere cowardice and imposture, did not provoke the contempt alike
of the Turks and the Jews. But by the Sultan he was loaded with
honours, and the Jews did not withdraw their belief in his miraculous
pretensions. With unabated impudence he put out a declaration to the
effect that God had changed him from an Israelite to an Ishmaelite.
He quoted the example of Moses, who dwelt for a time among the
Ethiopians, and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, where it is said
that the Messiah was numbered among the transgressors. For a long
time he continued to maintain his double character of the deliverer
of the Jews and the devoted believer in Mahomet. Some even declared,
after the fashion of the Gnostics in the early Church, that the true
Sabbathai had been taken up into heaven, and it was only his likeness
or phantom that had undergone degradation and apostasy. Great
numbers of Jews, indeed, were induced, by his example, to become
Mahometans; and at length the injury to the Jewish community became
so great, that they exerted all the influence they could command
with the grand vizier, who caused Sabbathai to be arrested and
banished into Bosnia. There, in 1676, ten years after his apostasy to
Mahometanism, and in the fifty-first year of his age, he expired in
a castle near Belgrade. According to some, he died a natural death;
according to others, he was beheaded in prison. The latter is the
more likely supposition. Though he endeavoured to persuade the Jews
that, notwithstanding his profession of another faith, he was at
heart a Jew, they entirely distrusted him; and it is likely that the
assurances to which they would lend no credit nevertheless caused
suspicion and uneasiness among true followers of Mahomet. Thus it
would be the interest of both parties to cut short his career.
In the long catalogue of impostors who have succeeded for a time in
blinding the eyes of those to whom they pretended a mission, the case
of Sabbathai Sevi seems the most extraordinary.
There have been innumerable false Messiahs, from the days of Judas of
Galilee almost to our own time; and to each of these in turn the Jews
of their day accorded, for the time at least, a ready welcome, which,
in almost every instance, ultimately gave place to a total disbelief
in their pretensions. In the instance of this man alone, the faith
placed in him was not exchanged for contempt and distrust. Yet he
was certainly the one among all the pretenders to a Divine mission
who most deserved such ignominy. Judas,[198] Barchochebas, David
Alroy—however unfounded their claims to be the Messiah—at all events
persisted resolutely to the last, and died with the same watchword on
their lips that they had uttered during life. But though Sabbathai
openly avowed his own imposture, his followers continued to believe
in him. More than one prophet arose after his death, and obtained
credence by affirming that Sabbathai had been translated into heaven,
as Enoch and Elijah before him, and would, after a stated interval,
reappear on earth. Sabbathaism, as it was called, became the creed of
a powerful and numerous sect, of which we shall hear in the ensuing
century. It is said that even now it is not extinct. This example
is one proof out of many that human credulity exceeds all bounds of
calculation.
Among those who continued to uphold Sabbathai after this fashion long
after his death, the most noted were Nehemiah Chajon and Abraham
Michael Cardoso. The plea urged by the latter in behalf of his
principal may safely be pronounced the most extravagant that has
ever been advanced. It was doubtless great wickedness, he said, to
apostatize to Islamism; but then it should be remembered that the
Messiah was not to come until mankind were all good or all bad. There
was no prospect of their all becoming good. So Sabbathai, by his
wickedness in accepting Mahomet, was helping on, like a true prophet,
the coming of the Messiah!
FOOTNOTES:
[197] He is said to have quoted Isaiah xiv. 14: ‘I will ascend above
the heights of the clouds,’ and to have appealed to his followers
to say whether they had not seen him so ascend; to which they made
answer that they had! It must be added, however, that, if he did
quote the passage in question as applicable to himself, he could
hardly have studied its context.
[198] Whether Judas himself ever claimed to be the Messiah is
doubtful. But a considerable section of his followers certainly
believed him to be such.