- After the Jews of Eastern Europe
were ravaged in the worst massacre
since the destruction of the Second Temple,
a charismatic mystic, Shabbetai Tzvi,
claimed he was the new savior of the Jewish people.
While his followers eagerly awaited redemption,
his opponents feared the dangers
of having blind faith in a false Messiah.
[upbeat music]
In the mid 17th century,
Jews were reeling from the Chmielnicki massacres,
a bloody series of pogroms
that devastated the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.
The barbarity of this tragedy,
combined with the rise of a new form of mysticism,
called Lurianic Kabbalah,
stirred hopes of a long prophesied messianic era.
Lurianic Kabbalah developed by rabbi Issac Luria
in the mid 16th century,
taught that a portion of God's essence had fractured
into many tiny sparks hidden in the material world.
He saw the scattering of the Jewish people as a divine plan
to elevate the world's hidden sparks
through the performance of God's commandments.
Rabbi Luria taught that most of these sparks
had already been redeemed
and that Israel would soon be restored.
The stage was set for the coming of the Messiah.
In 1648, a small band of Jews
living in the Aegean coast of the Ottoman Empire
began to follow a young charismatic scholar
and mystic named Shabbetai Tzvi.
Known for his multi-day fasts, cold water immersions,
and elaborate expositions of mystical texts,
Shabbetai Tzvi longed to receive revelations
of mythic proportions.
The local rabbis wearily watched the 22 year old leader
engaged in strange practices,
like attempting to make the sun stand still at mid day.
He even publicly pronounced a name of God,
which was only allowed to be said by the High Priest
in the Temple of Jerusalem
on the most sacred holiday, Yom Kippur.
By 1651, Shabbetai's antics grew more brazen,
and the rabbis banished him from his hometown.
For 14 years,
Shabbetai Tzvi wandered through the Ottoman Empire.
Jewish communities generally welcomed the handsome scholar,
but inevitably Shabbetai's odd behavior,
likely due to a combination of depression and mania,
alarmed his new neighbors.
When he landed in Thessaloniki in the mid 1650s,
he invited the local rabbis to his wedding
where he married a Torah scroll.
Eventually he made his way to Constantinople,
but was kicked out in 1658
when he celebrated three holidays in one whirlwind week.
By 1665, Shabbetai's depression had become so debilitating
that he sought a well-respected mystical faith healer
known as Nathan of Gaza.
What was Nathan's diagnosis?
Instead of healing him,
he proclaimed him to be the true Messiah.
Shabbetai rejected the notion,
but Nathan claimed to have prophetic powers
and persuaded Shabbetai to accept his role as Messiah
and end the terrible exile.
Together, they gathered a group of believers
and made a grand proclamation in Jerusalem.
The rabbis quickly ex-communicated him,
but this time, his followers too passionate to be squashed.
Nathan wrote letters to Jews across the world
describing how Shabbetai would depose the Ottoman Sultan
who ruled Jerusalem
and lead his people triumphantly
back to the kingdom of Israel.
The letters generated a messianic fever
and Jews across the world packed their belongings,
ready to travel to Jerusalem at a moment's notice.
But the local Jewish leaders were torn.
Some authorities, like Rabbi Jacob Sasportas,
were sure Shabbetai was a fraud.
Sasportas sent warning letters against the false Messiah
to Jews around the globe,
but Shabbetai's following was so impassioned
that most opposition was suppressed by threats of violence.
In the winter of 1666,
Shabbetai sailed to Constantinople
to play out Nathan vision and take the Ottoman throne.
Turkish authorities caught wind of this plan
and arrested him upon arrival.
Instead of being killed or even tortured,
bribes transformed his prison sentence into a regal stay
at what became known as the Tower of Strength.
Thousands flock to his tower, both to pay homage
and to investigate his legitimacy.
Rabbinic authority David HaLevi Segal
sent two emissaries to sniff Shabbetai out,
but they couldn't determine
whether Shabbetai was a true or false Messiah.
Finally, the mystic, Rabbi Nechemia ben Kohen,
challenged Shabbetai to a three-day debate,
determined he was a fraud,
and convinced the Ottomans
that Shabbetai's ambitions for the throne
would put their empire at risk.
The Sultan gave Shabbetai an ultimatum,
convert to Islam or die.
His followers awaited a miracle with bated breath.
The next day Shabbetai appeared in a turbine,
took a Muslim wife,
and changed his name to Aziz Mehmet Effendi.
He wrote that it was God's will he become a Muslim.
Nathan of Gaza justified the conversion
as a final plunge into the forbidden,
in order to elevate the last hidden sparks of God.
Nearly 300 families also converted
and became known as the Dönmeh,
a sect of hidden Jews that continued into the 20th century.
Shabbetai Tzvi's story
became an embarrassing stain on the Jews.
Most of his followers admitted their mistake,
but for a long time, an underground following persisted.
Rabbinic authorities toiled to weed out Shabbetain views
from mainstream Judaism.
Many Jews became jaded in the process,
losing faith in themselves,
as well as the rabbis
who had been blind to Shabbetai's delusions.
As Chaim Potok summed up the events,
there had been numerous false Messiahs in Jewish history.
None had so affected the total people as had the movement
led by Nathan of Gaza and Shabbetai Tzvi.
[gentle music]
- Coming up,
a wise mystic seeks to rescue the downtrodden
and revitalize Judaism.
[gentle music]