He had been strange and solitary from childhood, this saintly son of
the Smyrniote commission agent. He had no playmates, none of the
habits of the child. He would wander about the city's steep bustling
alleys that seemed hewn in a great rock, or through the long,
wooden-roofed bazaars, seeming to heed the fantastically colored
spectacle as little as the garbage under foot, or the trains of
gigantic camels, at the sound of whose approaching bells he would
mechanically flatten himself against the wall. And yet he must have
been seeing, for if he chanced upon anything that suffered--a child, a
lean dog, a cripple, a leper--his eyes filled with tears. At times he
would stand on the brink of the green gulf and gaze seawards long and
yearningly, and sometimes he would lie for hours upon the sudden plain
that stretched lonely behind the dense port.
In the little congested school-room where hundreds of children
clamored Hebrew at once he was equally alone; and when, a brilliant
youth, he headed the lecture-class of the illustrious Talmudist,
Joseph Eskapha, his mental attitude preserved the same aloofness.
Quicker than his fellows he grasped the casuistical hair-splittings in
which the Rabbis too often indulged, but his contempt was as quick as
his comprehension. A note of revolt pierced early through his
class-room replies, and very soon he threw over these barren
subtleties to sink himself--at a tenderer age than tradition knew
of--in the spiritual mysticisms, the poetic fervors, and the
self-martyrdoms of the Cabalistic literature. The transmigrations of
souls, mystic marriages, the summoning of spirits, the creation of the
world by means of attributes, or how the Godhead had concentrated
itself within itself in order to unfold the finite Many from the
infinite One; such were the favorite studies of the brooding youth of
fifteen.
"Learning shall be my life," he said to his father.
"Thy life! But what shall be thy livelihood?" replied Mordecai Zevi.
"Thy elder brothers are both at work."
"So much more need that one of thy family should consecrate himself to
God, to call down a blessing on the work of the others."
Mordecai Zevi shook his head. In his olden days, in the Morea, he had
known the bitterness of poverty. But he was beginning to prosper now,
like so many of his kinsmen, since Sultan Ibrahim had waged war
against the Venetians, and, by imperilling the trade of the Levant,
had driven the Dutch and English merchants to transfer their ledgers
from Constantinople to Smyrna. The English house of which Mordecai had
obtained the agency was waxing rich, and he in its wake, and so he
could afford to have a scholar-son. He made no farther demur, and even
allowed his house to become the seat of learning in which Sabbataï and
nine chosen companions studied the Zohar and the Cabalah from dawn to
darkness. Often they would desert the divan for the wooden
garden-balcony overlooking the oranges and the prune-trees. And the
richer Mordecai grew, the greater grew his veneration for his son, to
whose merits, and not to his own diligence and honesty, he ascribed
his good fortune.
"If the sins of the fathers are visited on the children," he was wont
to say, "then surely the good deeds of the children are repaid to the
fathers." His marked reverence for his wonderful son spread outwards,
and Sabbataï became the object of a wistful worship, of a wild
surmise.
Something of that wild surmise seemed to the father to flash into his
son's own eyes one day when, returned from a great journey to his
English principals, Mordecai Zevi spoke of the Fifth Monarchy men who
foretold the coming of the Messiah and the Restoration of the Jews in
the year 1666.
"Father!" said the boy. "Will not the Messiah be born on the ninth of
Ab?"
"Of a surety," replied Mordecai, with beating heart. "He will be born
on the fatal date of the destruction of both our Temples, in token of
consolation, as it is written; 'and I will cause the captivity of
Judah and the captivity of Israel to return, and will build them, as
at the first.'"
The boy relapsed into his wonted silence. But one thought possessed
father and son. Sabbataï had been born on the ninth of Ab--on the
great Black Fast.
The wonder grew when the boy was divorced from his wife--the beautiful
Channah. Obediently marrying--after the custom of the day--the maiden
provided by his father, the young ascetic passionately denied himself
to the passion ripened precociously by the Eastern sun, and the
marvelling _Beth-Din_ (House of Judgment) released the virgin from her
nominal husband. Prayer and self-mortification were the pleasures of
his youth. The enchanting Jewesses of Smyrna, picturesque in baggy
trousers and open-necked vests, had no seduction for him, though no
muslin veil hid their piquant countenances as with the Turkish women,
though no prescription silenced their sweet voices in the psalmody of
the table, as among the sin-fearing congregations of the West. In vain
the maidens stuck roses under their ear or wore honeysuckle in their
hair to denote their willingness to be led under the canopy. But
Mordecai, anxious that he should fulfil the law, according to which
to be celibate is to live in sin, found him a second mate, even more
beautiful; but the youth remained silently callous, and was soon
restored afresh to his solitary state.
"Now shall the _Torah_ (Law) be my only bride," he said.
Blind to the beauty of womanhood, the young, handsome, and now rich
Sabbataï, went his lonely, parsimonious way, and a wondering band
followed him, scarcely disturbing his loneliness by their reverential
companionship. When he entered the sea, morning and night, summer and
winter, all stood far off; by day he would pray at the fountain which
the Christians called _Sancta Veneranda_, near to the cemetery of the
Jews, and he would stretch himself at night across the graves of the
righteous in a silent agony of appeal, while the jackals barked in the
lonely darkness and the wind soughed in the mountain gorges.
But at times he would speak to his followers of the Divine mysteries
and of the rigorous asceticism by which alone these were to be reached
and men to be regenerated and the Kingdom to be won; and sometimes he
would sing to them Spanish songs in his sweet, troubling
voice--strange Cabalistic verses, composed by himself or Lurya, and
set to sad, haunting melodies yearning with mystic passion. And in
these songs the womanhood he had rejected came back in amorous strains
that recalled the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, and seemed to his
disciples to veil as deep an allegory:--
"There the Emperor's daughter
Lay agleam in the water,
Melisselda.
And its breast to her breast
Lay in tremulous rest,
Melisselda.
From her bath she arose
Pure and white as the snows,
Melisselda.
Coral only at lips
And at sweet finger-tips,
Melisselda.
In the pride of her race
As a sword shone her face,
Melisselda.
And her lips were steel bows,
But her mouth was a rose,
Melisselda."
And in the eyes of the tranced listeners were tears of worship for
Melisselda as for the Messiah's mystic Bride.
V
And while the silent Sabbataï said no word of Messiah or mission, no
word save the one word on the seashore, his disciples, first secret,
then bold, spread throughout Smyrna the news of the Messiah's advent.
They were not all young, these first followers of Sabbataï. No one
proclaimed him more ardently than the grave, elderly man of science,
Moses Pinhero. But the sceptics far outnumbered the believers.
Sabbataï was scouted as a madman. The Jewry was torn by dissensions
and disturbances. But Sabbataï took no part in them. He had no
communion with the bulk of his brethren, save in religious ceremonies,
and for these he would go to the poorest houses in the most noisome
courts. It was in a house of one room, the raised part of which,
covered with a strip of carpet, made the bed-and living-room, and the
unraised part the kitchen, that his next manifestation of occult power
was made. The ceremony was the circumcision of the first-born son,
but as the _Mohel_ (surgeon) was about to operate he asked him to stay
his hand awhile. Half an hour passed.
"Why are we waiting?" the guests ventured to ask of him at last.
"Elijah the Prophet has not yet taken his seat," he said.
Presently he made a sign that the proceedings might be resumed. They
stared in reverential awe at the untenanted chair, where only the
inspired vision of Sabbataï could perceive the celestial form of the
ancient Prophet.
But the ancient Talmudical college frowned upon the new Prophet,
particularly when his disciples bruited abroad his declaration on the
sea-shore. He was cited before the _Chachamim_ (Rabbis).
"Thou didst dare pronounce the ineffable Name" cried Joseph Eskapha,
his old Master. "What! Shall thy unconsecrated lips pollute the sacred
letters that even in the time of Israel's glory only the High Priest
might breathe in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement!"
"'Tis a divine mystery known to me alone," said Sabbataï.
But the Rabbis shook their heads and laid the ban upon him and his
disciples. A strange radiance came in Sabbataï's face. He betook
himself to the fountain and prayed.
"I thank Thee, O my Father," he said, "inasmuch as Thou hast revealed
myself to myself. Now I know that my own penances have not been in
vain."
But the excommunication of the Sabbatians did not quiet the commotion
in the Jewish quarter of Smyrna, fed by Millennial dreams from the
West. In England, indeed, a sect of Old Testament Christians had
arisen, working for the adoption of the Mosaic Code as the law of the
State.
From land to land of Christendom, on the feverish lips of eager
believers, passed the rumor of the imminence of the Messiah of the
Jews. According to some he would appear before the Grand Seignior in
June, 1666, take from him his crown by force of music only, and lead
him in chains like a captive. Then for nine months he would disappear,
the Jews meanwhile enduring martyrdom, but he would return, mounted on
a Celestial Lion, with his bridle made of seven-headed serpents,
leading back the lost ten tribes from beyond the river Sambatyon, and
he should be acknowledged for Solomon, King of the Universe, and the
Holy Temple should descend from Heaven already built, that the Jews
might offer sacrifice therein for ever. But these hopes found no
lodgment in the breasts of the Jewish governors of the Smyrniote
quarter, where hard-headed Sephardim were busy in toil and traffic,
working with their hands, or shipping freights of figs or valonea; as
for the _Schnorrers_, the beggars who lived by other people's wits,
they were even more hard-headed than the workers. Hence constant
excitements and wordy wars, till at last the authorities banished the
already outlawed Sabbataï from Smyrna. When he heard the decree he
said, "Is Israel not in exile?" He took farewell of his brothers and
of his father, now grown decrepit in his body and full of the gout and
other infirmities.
"Thou hast brought me wealth," said old Mordecai, sobbing; "but now I
had rather lose my wealth than thee. Lo, I am on the brink of the
grave, and my saintly son will not close mine eyes, nor know when to
say _Kaddish_ (mourning prayer) over my departed soul."
"Nay, weep not, my father," said Sabbataï. "The souls depart--but they
will return."