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Sabbateanism

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Origin from 1648

Sabbateanism is the position, arising among some Jews in the mid seventeenth century, that Sabbatai Zevi, a Sephardic rabbi active from the 1640s, was the promised Jewish messiah, a claim that gathered wide popular support across Jewish communities from the Ottoman Empire to Poland before Zevi conversion to Islam under threat of execution in 1666 threw the movement into crisis. Some believers abandoned the claim after the conversion; others, following the theological reworking of Zevi own prophet, Nathan of Gaza, held that the messiah descent into apparent apostasy was itself part of a hidden redemptive process, a reading that let a minority sustain messianic belief in Zevi for generations, including the crypto Jewish Donmeh community that outwardly practised Islam while preserving Sabbatean belief. Mainstream rabbinic authorities pronounced Zevi and his continuing followers under religious ban, and Sabbatean belief was treated as heretical by normative Judaism from soon after the conversion onward. Gershom Scholem scholarship on the movement is the standard modern academic account of both its theology and its aftermath.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
from 1648 1
Held By
A position arising in the mid seventeenth century among some Jews, holding Sabbatai Zevi to be the promised messiah even after his 1666 conversion to Islam, sustained afterward chiefly through Nathan of Gaza reinterpretation of the conversion as part of a hidden redemptive process; placed under rabbinic religious ban soon after the conversion and not held by any recognized branch of Judaism today, though the crypto Jewish Donmeh community carried a form of it forward for generations. 1
Defining Moment
Sabbatai Zevi conversion to Islam in 1666 under threat of execution by the Ottoman authorities split the movement and prompted rabbinic authorities to place continuing believers under religious ban; the crypto Jewish Donmeh community preserved a form of the belief for generations afterward. 1
Position Profile
Principal Proponent
Sabbatai Zevi himself, and, for the belief survival after his conversion, his prophet Nathan of Gaza, whose theological writings reframed the conversion as part of the messianic process. 1
Opposing Position
That Sabbatai Zevi conversion to Islam under threat of execution disproved any messianic claim on ordinary grounds, and that continued belief in him afterward compounded the original error with a further departure from normative Jewish practice and law, the position of the rabbinic authorities who placed him and his followers under religious ban. 1
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Rejected, or not held, within this tradition 1Tradition: Judaism
Doctrinal Category
Messianism and Redemption 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
That Sabbatai Zevi was the promised Jewish messiah, and, for those who sustained the belief after his 1666 conversion to Islam, that the conversion itself was a hidden stage of the messianic process rather than a disproof of his claim. 1
Learn More
A Messiah Who Converted, and the Belief That Survived Him

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Sabbatai Zevi began making messianic declarations in the late 1640s, in the Ottoman city of Smyrna, and the claim might have remained a local curiosity had Nathan of Gaza not taken it up in 1665 and begun promoting it with a prophet's own conviction. Word spread quickly through Jewish communities from the Ottoman lands to Poland, encouraged by the desperation many communities felt after the Khmelnytsky massacres two decades earlier.

The movement collapsed, at least on its surface, in 1666. Brought before the Ottoman sultan and given the choice between conversion to Islam and execution, Zevi converted. For most of his followers, the conversion was simply a disproof: a messiah who becomes a Muslim under threat of death is not the messiah.

Not every believer read it that way. Nathan of Gaza, and later Sabbatean theologians, reworked the conversion into the movement's own doctrine: the messiah's descent into apparent apostasy was itself a necessary stage of a hidden redemptive process, gathering the sparks of holiness that Lurianic kabbalah held were scattered even in forbidden places. That move let belief survive the event that should have ended it, sustained for generations by a minority, including the Donmeh, a community in Ottoman lands that outwardly practised Islam while preserving Sabbatean belief privately.

Rabbinic authorities did not treat the survival gently. Continuing believers were placed under religious ban soon after the conversion, and Sabbateanism was named heresy by normative Judaism from that point onward, a verdict Gershom Scholem's landmark scholarship, the standard modern academic account of the movement, has not overturned.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Donmeh, New Religious Movements
Sabbatai Zevi, Historical Figures

Belongs to Tradition

Judaism, Religions
Sources
1. Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626 to 1676
Gershom Scholem, Princeton University Press, 1973Sabbatai Zevi, the 1666 conversion, and the movement's theological aftermath
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