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in 1665, a Jewish man stood up in the middle of a synagogue in Ottoman Turkey and announced that he himself was the Messiah. And across the Jewish world, thousands had given up everything because they believed him. From North Africa to Europe, Jews began selling their homes and preparing to follow him to the Holy Land. Rabbis who doubted him were afraid to say it out loud. Even the secretary of the Royal Society of London had to reckon with this movement. And then, only a year later, the Jewish Messiah converted to Islam. This is the life infamous Sabbath Zevi. He started one of the most extraordinary mass religious movements in history. And the movement he started didn't collapse when he converted. And in some ways it actually got stronger. But more than that, this is a story about what suffering does to people and what hope looks like when it's been completely weaponized and how belief actually works, how does it spread, how does it hold and how does it bend rather than break, no matter the evidence against it. So sit back, relax, and welcome to Religion Camp. What's up, people? And welcome back to Religion Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in the tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from every religion from around the world, from all time, forever. Yes, that is what we do here in the tent. This is my attempt to understand what everybody believes. I try to understand the best I can, my fellow human being living on this planet. And I truly think the best way you can understand human beings is by understanding the God that they worship, how they orient their lives lives around the divine, where they think we're going, and ultimately where they think we came from. Now, today Is is no different. We're going to be jumping into one of the most controversial figures in all of religious history. This guy is truly fascinating and I think you will be very intrigued by this tale. It kind of ties in the Holy Land, to Islam, to Judaism, and everything in between. And there's even lasting effects from this guy's legacy and how he almost tore apart an entire religious sect. I mean, truly crazy stuff. But before we jump in, I just want to say thanks so much to you for clicking on this video. For real, dude, every time you click on an episode and support the show, it truly makes my dreams come true. It helps me, you know, support my family and obviously it helps support Christos insane online spending habit. Love you guys. Yeah, Christos, what was the last thing you purchased online? Some. I don't want to talk about it. That's fine. You know what, and I'm not going to push you there because this is religion camp and I'm going to turn over a new leaf and turn the other cheek. Now, today's episode is. Is a deep dive. It's fascinating. Now I just want to say, like, how I preface every episode. I did not grow up Jewish. I did not grow up Muslim. And so if there's anything I'm missing here, please don't hesitate to correct me. Furthermore, this analysis of Sabbatai Zevi, a few things. I think people have kind of used his legacy to like, promote some hateful stuff about religions, which this channel exists to promote the good things and, you know, to really look at the crazy things about religions. And I think there's beauty in all religions. And yeah, that's kind of the. I just want to preface that up top. And secondly, this is a little bit more of like a history slash religion deep dive than purely religious theory. But it's such a crazy story that I was like, we got to talk about it this on religion camp. So who was Sabotage Zevi and what was the world like when he was born? Well, we're going all the way back to the 1600s, and the 1600s things were bad. Historians often talk about the 17th century as an age of crisis. Specifically in Europe and broadly speaking, like the northern hemisphere, you have climate change and plagues and civil wars and violence, and it's all overlapping in different waves across basically all the known world. And the suffering was sustained over decades. I mean, famines and instability and revolutions. It was a pretty awful time. Needless to say, I would not have liked to have lived in that time. And it basically touched everyone in Europe Western Europe, the Middle East. And it was dramatically changing the psyche of the people that were, you know, alive. Now, for Jewish communities, it was even worse. I mean, there's centuries of, you know, persecution and forced exile and massacres and all sorts of trauma that kept on building. And then came 1648. You have a wave of brutal massacres that sweep through Poland and Ukraine, led by a Cossack commander named Khmelnytsky. And he basically wiped out an entire Jewish community overnight. Jewish traditions would call These decrees of 1648 and 1649 the Gezrae Res taqvite. Again, I don't speak. Speak perfect Hebrew or Yiddish, so I apologize if I missed some of these words. And some historians of these specific massacres estimate that tens of thousands of Jews, possibly even more, were just completely wiped out. I mean, entire towns just completely vanished overnight because of this massacre. So by the mid-1600s, you have generations of people who never really knew real safety, never knew a home that couldn't just be taken. And the question kind of hangs over all of them, when does this end? When is our Messiah coming? Now, a few decades earlier, a Jewish mystic named Isaac Luria had given people a framework for all of that suffering. His teachings, the heart of what became known as Lurianic Kabbalah, essentially said that their persecution wasn't random. It was a part of a cosmic plan, that the world was broken in a very specific way and that there are sparks of holiness that are trapped in darkness and that human action could actually help repair it. We actually did an entire episode on the theology and the philosophy behind Kabbalah, if you're interested in learning more about that. But basically, this is kind of existing in the background of people's minds. The suffering of exile, he suggested, meant that the Messiah was just getting closer and that the pain had a purpose, that there was going to be a, you know, a time where this ends. There's going to be a payoff, and the more persecution that we're feeling, eventually we will be released from this. And by this point, the Jewish people had been waiting for a Messiah for centuries. According to their faith, a descendant of King David would rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and gather the Jewish exiles back into their land in the 16th and 17th centuries, specifically in Kabbalistic circles like those that were, you know, kind of helped shaped by Isaac Lauria and his teachings. Those hopes were layered with vivid cosmic imagery and allegory and a sense that history itself was coming to an end, that they felt in that time that the end times were upon them. And by the 1600s, the Luria's teachings weren't just amongst, like a small group of people or like a fringe thing. It became a central pillar of Jewish mystical thought, especially across the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Europe. And they were. It began to really influence how ordinary Jews talked about their own lives and really thought about their own suffering that they were experiencing in this part of Europe. And this means that by the time Sabbatai Zevi was born in 1626, there's a massive, widely dispersed group of people that have been theologically primed for generations to believe that their suffering was coming to an end, that all of this pain and misery and, you know, persecution and massacres, it all was going to stop and they were going to be on the lookout for the Messiah that they were hoping for. I mean, if you think about what that does to a community over time, it's like, you know, they have a theological priming that there's a Messiah that's going to come. And there's this idea that as the persecution ramps up, that the Messiah is just getting closer. So they are now seeing signs and everything. And that moment is close, that this generation might finally be the one where Moshiach actually returns. So for generations, this pressure is building up and in the background of all of the suffering and, you know, grief and then hope and then prophecy and expectation, it creates a Messiah. And his name was Sabbatai Zevi. Now, Sabbatai Zevi was born in Smyrna. This is in modern day Turkey, in a town that we call izmir. And in 1620, he's born into a regular Jewish merchant family. And from a young age, he's immersed in traditional Talmudic study and newer currents of Kabbalah that were circulating in the Ottoman world. And right off the bat, his entrance into the world already felt significant to people around him. According to later traditions, he claimed to be born on Tisha B'Av. This is the anniversary of the destruction of both ancient temples in Jerusalem, which many Jewish traditions also associate with the prophesied birth date of the Messiah. Whether that's exactly true about Sabbatai Zevi, it's difficult to confirm. But this idea followed him everywhere and definitely gave a lot of legitimacy. Even his name, Sabbatai, actually reverences Shabbat and could be given messianic resonance by those inclined to see it. Now, before I'd even done anything, the symbolism around him and his birthday and his name are already kind of matriculating. And then, of course, you have the guy himself. By all accounts he was charismatic from childhood and he apparently had a remarkable memory. By the time he was 20, he had already received rabbinic ordination. The leading scholars in Smyrna, which for that age was, I mean, remarkable rabbis are typically much older. So at 20 years old, to be actually ordained as a rabbi is, it's like unheard of. He's handsome, he had a great singing voice and had the kind of presence that made people just like, kind of stop and like listen to him. But he was also a little off. He showed cycles of behavior that a lot of modern scholars would cite as basically being like a version of bipolar. He of course understood it through the lens of his religion that he would have these manic phases, that fel moments of, you know, illumination where God was speaking to him and he was connected to God. And then he would have these depressive periods where he felt like God was hiding from him and he was banished for, you know, torment and that this was a test. So when he was low, he just withdrew completely, sometimes for weeks. And when he was high, well, things were getting crazy. Now during the high states, he felt compelled to violate Jewish law. He would do things like perform these strange rituals. He would publicly pronounce the tetragrammaton, which is the sacred, unspeakable name of God, and he would speak it out loud in a synagogue. Now this is something that only the high priest in the ancient temple was ever permitted to do, and only once a year, on the holiest day of the year. But yet you have this guy, Sabbatai Zevi, who just did it out in the open. So to all the other rabbis and the religious people of his town, this was unheard of. I mean, this is crazy. To the people that were kind of listening to him and into his message, it looked like something else entirely. Now remember this. The world that he's born into shaped a lot of the people around him as well as himself. So obviously you have Isaac Laura's teachings and you know, generations of trauma, and that sets up the framework for people to believe that unusual boundary breaking behavior is actually a sign of divine purpose. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I just want to state the obvious. You're not going to hire a chiropractor to do brain surgery. And if you're going to go fight in the octagon, you wouldn't hire a guy that watches a lot of ufc. And if you have a personal injury case, you're not going to just like hire your buddy that's good with contracts because you know that when you're hurt, it's because someone else was negligent. You don't want just, you know, lawyer vibes. You want real lawyers. And that's where Morgan Morgan comes in. They are America's largest injury law firm with over 100 offices nationwide and more than 1,000 lawyers. Crazy thing, they've recovered over $30 billion for over 500,000 clients. They've got a real track record of fighting to get people full and fair compensation. So if you are ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan and their fee is free unless they win. Yes, free. You literally don't pay anything unless they win your case. That's how confident Morgan Morgan is that they can get compensation for you and your injuries. So for more information, go to for the people.com gagon that is fo the people.com g n o n or dial pound law that is pound 529 and let them know that you got sent by the people here at the campsite. Also, this is a paid advertisement. Now let's get back to the show. So the later circles influenced by Luronic ideas, basically the thought emerged that the Messiah might have to operate beyond the law. Now, of course, many, you know, rabbis and rabbinical Jews are very much focused on the law and they're constantly trying to understand what the law really means. So to see someone that comes in that's breaking the law is unheard of. Now, Sabbatai Zevi had this idea that by breaking the law and pushing into dark places, he could actually redeem them. So by Sabbatai's time, some of the followers could interpret this erratic rule crossing behavior not as disqualifying, but actually as a hint of some higher mission. He didn't just read Lurianic Kabbalah, he really lived it. He fasted for days at a time. He bathed in the sea, like in the actual, like ocean water in the winter. He pushed his body to extreme acts of spiritual discipline. He was inclined to deep solitude. He married twice in his early years and both marriages ended because he just never talked to his wives. Like, he just like, kind of like just married them and like bounced. And they eventually requested a divorce. And this wasn't someone with a normal social life that decided to start a movement. This was someone who was wired differently from the start that potentially had underlying mental health issues that was born into a religious, you know, period filled with trauma that really incited this entire perfect storm. And that storm really happened late, like 1640s. Now this is around the same period when the Kalnitsky massacres were tearing through Jewish communities in Poland and Ukraine. Sabbatai began making quasi messianic declarations. So at times he stood before his followers and hinted, or just straight up said that, yo, I'm the Messiah. And to back it up, he pronounced the Tetragrammaton out loud. It was like a declaration. It was like very in your face. And he was like, I'm going to prove it to you. I. Only the high priest can do this. Watch. I'm going to do it. Now. The rabbis of Smyrna, as you can imagine, they were not impressed. They excommunicated him. They had him expelled from the city. Now, here's something that people don't always, like, look at with this story. Sabbatai's whole life almost ended there. I mean, he spent Most of the 1650s just kind of wandering from city to city, going to different villages. He was expelled from another town called Salonica. He was expelled from Constantinople, always for the same reasons. He violated Jewish law and performed what people would call strange acts. And of course, the religious people of the town and just the average, you know, Jewish person living there was like, hey, this is crazy. Like, he's not building a global movement. He's just getting, like, bounced from city to city. But the thing is, he always had a handful of people that kind of this kind of believed him. Wherever he went, someone would see something in him. Like he was never starting from zero. He'd go to a town and he'd get like three followers. Go to another one, get like 10 more, and they would kind of like be like, okay, we're listening. So by the early 1660s, you have this, you know, very smart, very charismatic, deeply strange, mentally ill, intense dude who had been wandering around for a decade, excommunicated and expelled, but still was building a little bit of a following. And he had the charisma, he had the symbolism, he had the story that he was saying. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. He got people to believe. But even still, that wasn't enough. So for over a decade, he never became a movement. He just was an issue. Which means that the thing that actually changed history wasn't Sabbatai Zevi. It was someone else who decided that he was worth it. And that man's name was Nathan of Gaza. Now, Nathan was born in Jerusalem around 1643. So when all of this unfolds, he's in his early 20s. He was a scholar and a cabalist. Already developing a reputation as someone who was very spiritually inclined and, you know, very connected to God. People came to him for guidance. He was known in a lot of circles as like a. Like a guru or like a spiritual physician, someone that you went to when, like, your soul was in a difficult spot. And this is exactly why Sabotage Zevi came to him. Now, right off the bat, this is not how you would expect the story to go. Sabotage didn't come to Nathan as a messiah. He came, like, humbly, kind of as, like a patient. This is suspected to have been in one of, like, the depressive periods where he was, like, very low and he wasn't there to make any proclamations. He was there because he was really struggling. Now, according to Nathan's later account, after experiencing a very powerful vision, he looked at Sabbatai and said, you're not broken, you're chosen. Now, what's crazy is that when Nathan of Gaza actually suggested that Sabbatai was the Messiah, he didn't accept it. He was kind of like, I don't know, this seems a little crazy. Like, again, he's in that depressive state. If you never met anyone with bipolar, when you're at the bottom, you are low. And he's like, no, there's no way. But after a few days of, like, intense conversations, Nathan actually convinces him to accept his identity fully. And that detail was really important because it wasn't just Sabbath deciding, like, I'm the Messiah. I'm. I'm going, you know, I'm going to unite all of us. I'm going to rebuild the temple, all that stuff. It took someone else, someone with credibility that had, like, a lot of theological backing, a lot of, like, you know, spiritual trust in the community to actually really start it. And once it got started, things took off and the roles then were kind of split up. Sabbatai taught his doctrine to a close inner circle, while Nathan handled all the public stuff. You see, Nathan was extraordinarily good at this. He declared himself the reincarnation of Elijah, the prophet of the Old Testament, who in Jewish tradition was prophesied to appear immediately before the Messiah. So in Christian tradition in the New Testament, this person would be John the Baptist. So now the people don't just have a Messiah. You have a Messiah and the prophetic front runner. You see what's happening here. You have a guy that's born allegedly on the birthday of this major, you know, Jewish festival that, you know, commemorates the building and destruction of these temples. That is very significant for the Messiah. He's has the right name. His name's Sabbath. It's connected to the Sabbath. And now you have another guy that everyone trusts that's now saying that he is Elijah and that he's coming right before the Messiah. You see what's happening? So now Nathan started to write. He sent letters, detailed, theological sophisticated letters from Gaza and other Ottoman cities to the most important Jewish communities across Europe and the Middle East. And these are not like vague announcements. They're not like, cryptic. The letters are packed with kabbalistic reasoning, scriptural arguments, and a very clear framework for the Messiah. And he explained, not just that Sabbath, I was the Messiah, but why he's a Messiah. Using the very same Lurianic language that those communities had already been reading and immersed in for decades. I mean, the suffering, the exile, the countdown to the Messiah. Nathan reframed all of it as proof. Everything that had happened to the Jewish people, even Sabbatai's strange behavior and, you know, breaking the laws was all a part of the plan. And maybe most importantly, he gave the movement a deadline. In 1665, Nathan announced that the Messianic Age would begin in 1666 and that Sabbatai would conquer the world. Not through war, but just through divine authority from God. No bloodshed, just, hey, we're coming through and we're winning because God said so. And that year, 1666, this was already circulating in both Jewish and Christian prophetic traditions as a very significant date, in part because of 666, the biblical number of the beast, which really loomed in the imagination of Christians as a very significant and, you know, potentially scary time. So Nathan locked into it, and he made it the finish line. Now a deadline changes everything in terms of psychology. Suddenly this movement isn't like an abstract thing. It's like, hey, this guy that we all trust is setting a very clear timeline. And the countdown is on. And countdowns have a real way of creating urgency. So within a short time, despite a lot of opposition from a lot of rabbis and, you know, religious authorities, Jews from Morocco to Northern Europe were basically reacting to Sabbatai and Nathan's claim, some of them with enthusiasm, some were terrified. And just as like a real quick little thing, that geographic range is worth noting. This is the 1660s. There's no telegraph, there's no printing press in every town, just letters and merchants and word of mouth moving along trade routes. And yet the news reaches basically all of the known world. Jews from every little small village along the known world were hearing about this idea. Like, oh, there's apparently There's a Messiah here. He's got all the right things. He's born on the right days. Nathan of Gaza, this other guy, he's promoting it. So now the word's getting round. And by autumn of 1665, Sabbatai finally returned to his hometown of Smyrna, the city that had once expelled him. And he formally proclaimed himself the Messiah. And he didn't just do it like on the corner of a street, he did it in the synagogue of Smyrna. And the crazy thing is that they accepted him. Think about that. This guy was just kicked out from the town, like, a few years before, and now he goes back and says the same exact thing that got him kicked out, like, hey, I'm the Messiah. And he does it in a synagogue. And they go, thank goodness he's here. The crowd literally chanted from the historical record, long live our King, our Messiah. The whole city went into, like, this frenzy. Women and children all swept up at once. People began selling their homes and basically preparing for a departure to the Holy Land. The movement that Nathan built through these letters was now, like, embodied. They had a real movement collected in a real synagogue in Smyrna, and the whole thing was now taking off. And by the time that Sabbatai actually stands in Smyrna and declares himself the Messiah, the decision's already done, not by him, but by the thousands of people that are believing it, including Nathan. And letters are getting sent out, and this is the point of no return. And what happens next isn't like the movement catching on. It's the world just completely exploding. By early 1666, this isn't just like a local thing anymore. This is now way bigger than that. Nathan's letters had done their work. I mean, the shofar proclamation in Smyrna had been talked about, written about, told to everyone. I mean, Jewish communities all over the world were now like, hey, there's a Messiah. He's here. And everyone in Smyrna is convinced that it's him. So at the very least, they're curious. Now, acts of faith in Sabbatai were recorded in Poland and Germany, the Papal States, Morocco, Yemen. And that list alone would stop you in your tracks. Like, hey, you have people from all these different countries, not neighboring towns. These are communities separated by thousands of miles, different languages, different rulers, all catching the same wave. Now the news spread all over and assimilated Jews repented and returned to religious observance. And wildly enough, descendants of Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity in Spain and Portugal many generations earlier, people who had spent their entire lives hiding any trace of their Jewish identity, began openly returning to their roots. I mean, think about that. These are families that buried their Judaism for generations, are now digging it back up, because they believe that the moment that their people and that their ancestors have been waiting for is finally here. The Messiah returned. And in many regions, almost every synagogue had Sabbathized initials, like, on the walls. In some way, prayers for him were inserted into services. His picture appeared in prayer books, like next to King David, literally, like maybe the most important king in all of Jewish history. People turned away from traditional study and threw themselves into this mystical practice. And in communities like in Hamburg, for example, people began praying for him not just on the Sabbath, but Mondays and Thursdays. And those who doubted him were now pressured to say Amen out loud anyway. And that last detail is crazy. There was social pressure building in some of these communities to actually accept sabotage. Once a belief reaches the majority of the community, doubt becomes its own risk. Like, you don't want to be the guy on the outside. Like, if this really is the Messiah, you don't want to be the one that's denying it. So now, as a result, all these people are getting on board. And once you hit a tipping point, even the most ardent skeptic is going to, at the very least, be like, maybe. So all these people, even the ones with serious doubts, are now getting on board. And once you've gone, you know, public, like, once you've stood in the synagogue and said amen, it becomes that much harder to walk back, because if he's not the Messiah, all the people that got duped are going to be like, oh, my bad. So now they're all. They're all committed. You can see how this is, like, building up like a real cult. You know, there were even rabbis who had private doubts, but they didn't want to say anything because they were afraid that their own congregations would potentially, you know, rebel. Now, at the same time, there were powerful rabbis elsewhere that were issuing fierce written condemnations and bans, warning that this movement is dangerous, it's heretical, it's not Jewish, it's not under the law. This is something completely different. So some were able to stay critical and, you know, took a stance on it, but a lot of others were swept up in the hope and the belief and even the fear of their own congregations. But what happens next takes the movement to a different level. So Henry Oldenburg, a German scholar who became the first secretary of the Royal Society of London, wrote to the philosopher Baruch Spinoza literally Spinoza, about the whole Sabbatai thing. His letters described this rumor that the Israelites were returning to their country. And he said that, you know, if it were confirmed, it might bring a revolution in all things. So this was not like a fringe rumor amongst, like, Jewish communities. This was now, like, on the desk of, like, the leading intellectuals of Europe that were basically talking, like, hey, this. Whether this is a real Messiah or not, like, there's a real collective movement happening amongst this religious and ethnic minority. We have to be aware of this and remember, this is now the year that Nathan said is the deadline. This is 1666, the year that everything's supposed to happen. Then Sabbatai made a move that even raised the stakes more. So the Jewish people have certain days that they fast out of mourning for the destruction of the ancient temples in Jerusalem. And sabbathai officially abolished those fasting days, declaring that since the Messiah had arrived, there was nothing left to mourn. He announced that within a year, the temple would be rebuilt. I mean, this is an extraordinary declaration. Hey, in a year, we're rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. And it goes so far as to reach the ears of the Ottoman Sultan. Now, from the Sultan's perspective, this was not a spiritual story. This is a man whose followers believed that he was about to reclaim Jerusalem and deposed the Sultan and overturned the Ottoman Empire. Like, keep in mind, the Ottoman Empire is now in control of the Holy Land. So this is now a massive political threat. So In February of 1666, as Sabbatai sailed toward Constantinople, the Ottoman Grand Vizier ordered his immediate arrest. He was imprisoned, but even that imprisonment didn't stop people's belief. I mean, obviously you can imagine the, like, if your main guy gets imprisoned, you're like, oh, this is. This is even greater sign. Like, the authorities are afraid of him. Like, this is more real. So his followers interpret this, you know, his relatively lenient treatment as a sign that even the Ottomans on some level, understood they were dealing with the real Messiah. Nathan kept sending dispatches claiming that miracles were happening inside the prison. So pilgrims were traveling to the fortress and at Gallipoli just to be near him in his prison cell, like, through the wall. They just wanted to be around the prison because they felt like the Messiah was in there. I mean, that's like, it's not naivete. It's not people that are, like, you know, duped. This is what happens when you have generations of suffering colliding with a perfectly timed promise and, like, great PR and good propaganda and, like, a really good writer. And a charismatic leader. It's just like a perfect storm. And as a result, this movement had now taken on a whole new life. The belief that Sabbatai had now basically passed the point where any one person could stop it. At this point, the movement had almost even outgrown him because now it's self sustaining, it's reinforced by the community, it's protected by Nathan of Gaza and his theology. And there's just nothing you can really do to stop it. Like, even if you get rid of them, it's like the movement's just going to grow. So if it's going to break, it's not going to be from the outside. It's going to come from sabotage. Zevi himself. Hey guys, we're take a break real quick because I got to tell you something that I'm actually stoked about now. If you know me, you know I love coffee, I love caffeine. I was also ripping nicotine pouches all the time, like sometimes going through like a pack a day. And honestly I started to notice I was like a little wound up, like my heart was racing. I was like kind of on edge, not sleeping great. I was like kind of anxious. And if you're into, into like, you know, wellness and biohacking like I am, that's your body trying to tell you something. And that is why I love Ultra pouches. I reached out to them because I love the product. And before you ask, no, these are not a nicotine product. There's zero nicotine, technically, no caffeine. What they are is a pouch loaded with nootropics and adaptogens. Stuff like Alpha GPC for mental sharpness, L Theanine for this calm focus. And Infinity px which gives you this clean, smooth energy that doesn't make you feel like you're gonna explode. I still get like the ritual that I love. Like I just love taking a pouch out and trying it. Watermelon is actually my favorite flavor. But you don't get the anxiety spike or the withdrawal like you do with nicotine. And my sleep was actually, it's gotten a lot better. Which if you know anything about recovery is the most important thing. I mean, these are legit. I keep them on the desk. I actually have one in right now. And if you've been thinking about, you know, maybe using a little bit less nicotine or you just want like a cleaner energy source than nicotine, you got to check out Ultra and you're going to do it@takeultra.com and you're going to use the code camp C A M P for 15% off. That's take ultra.com camp and when they ask you about how you heard about us, tell them the good people at Camp Gagnon sent you. It really helps out the show. Now, let's get back to it. So let's zoom out. Sabbath is in prison, right? And somehow the movement is still growing. Pilgrims are traveling from across the world to be nearby. Nathan is framing every development as a miracle. He's saying that crazy stuff's happening inside the prison. And the Sultan's own prison had become like the throne room of their king. But behind the scenes, things are starting to unravel. So there's a Polish cabalist named Nehemiah Hakohen, and he traveled for three months to reach Sabbatai in prison to actually talk to him and interview him. He came as like a legit investigator, open to the possibility that the claims were real, but still having a healthy skepticism. And the meeting did not go well. After his conversation with Sabbatai, Nehemiah declared that he was an imposter, that he was a false messiah. Some of Sabbatai's followers apparently wanted to kill him for saying this. So instead, Nehemiah slipped away to Constantinople and told the Ottoman authorities exactly what Sabbatai's followers believed that he was planning. And this was effectively a political revolution to take the Sultan's throne. And of course, this is the last straw for the Sultan. Sabbatai was moved from a prison to Adrianapal, where Sultan Mehmed IV and his court were based out of. And he was brought before the Sultan on charges of fomenting sedition. The Ottomans had run out of patience. And this wasn't just like a quirky religious thing anymore. This was a guy disrupted trade and mobilized pilgrims from Poland to Morocco and whose followers genuinely believed that he was going to overthrow the Sultan. And they don't even want to have the battle. So when Sabbatai appears before the Sultan, he's in one of his depressive states. He denied ever making Messianic claims. The man who had said, hey, I'm the Messiah in front of a synagogue full of, you know, shofar blowing believers, now stands before the Sultan and says, I did nothing to do with this. That wasn't me. This is a misunderstanding. That's what they said. Da, da, da. And it doesn't matter what he said to the Sultan. He was the guy in charge of the movement, so he needed to deal with the consequences. And according to later accounts, there was a stark choice that was given to him. Basically, you can face death, maybe by arrows, maybe by impalement. Or here's an. Or you can convert to Islam. I mean, it's a pretty wild. It's a pretty wild offer. Like, hey, we're either going to kill you or. Or you can just convert to Islam and we'll call it a day. And I can see it from the Sultan's perspective. Like, the charitable, like, effect here is like, hey, you're actually a Muslim. Like, you're all supposed to. Everyone's supposed to be Muslim. So I'm going to give you a chance now to just revert to Islam, take Shahada, move on. There's another part that's like, hey, you. You claim to be the Messiah. Like, let's see how Messiah you are. Like, calling his bluff. Like, I'll give you two options. You can die for this, or you just convert to Islam, have a good life. You know what I mean? Fast during Ramadan and call it a day. So Sabbatai chose conversion. And on September 16, 1666, he appeared before the Sultan. He removed all of his Jewish garments and placed a Turkish turban on his head. He was given a new name, Aziz Mehmed Effendi. He was also given a paid appointment in the Ottoman court and a pension. This same man who was supposed to dethrone the sultan was now, like, working for the Sultan. And the news got around. And unlike the hopeful rumors that spread in the previous year, this one had no positive spin. The Jewish Messiah that was supposed to free and liberate all of the Jews, bring them back to their holy land, rebuild the temple, stop all their suffering, had converted to Islam and is now working for the Muslim ruler. I mean, for many, it was done, like, okay, the movement's over. Like, it's like, yeah, beyond this is like Tom Brady goes to play for the New York Jets. The New York jets. Imagine that. TB12. Nope. It just would dash all your hope now. The devastation in the Jewish communities is profound. Muslims and Christians kind of mocked all of them. They were like, you really believe this? Look at this guy. He's a Muslim now. People who literally sold their homes and stopped their businesses, like, packed everything up, preparing to go to Jerusalem, now had nothing to show for it. And they were publicly humiliated, and it was crushing. There's actually a story passed down in later traditions that captures just, like, how difficult this was. According to the story, as Sabbatai was basically becoming Muslim, he whispered to himself that he would convert only as long as his soul stayed in his body. And then when he walked out of the sultan's court, he released a bird that was hidden under his garment and said, now the soul is released from the body. And this is basically a way to, like, put, like, a metaphor, like an allegory to sedate that, like, oh, it wasn't actually him that converted. It was actually a different person. It was the soul, like. And it's probably not historically true and was probably invented by one of his followers to make sense of this incomprehensible thing, but it tells you just how much people were trying to rationalize what happened on that day. And the craziest detail of all. And this really talks about just how profound this man believed in himself and how many people believed in him. His private letters from the years that follow suggest that Sabbata never fully abandoned his own messianic conviction. He lived another 10 years outwardly as a Muslim, but quietly continuing a lot of Jewish rituals in private. The Ottomans eventually exiled him to a small town on the Adriatic coast of the Ottoman Balkans, often identified as Ulchin, where He died in 1676, still performing the rites of the faith that he had formally renounced. He was wild and brilliant and convinced until the very end. Now, what just happened should have destroyed everything, right? I mean, this guy that's the Messiah gets all these people fired up, words going all over Europe, and then he converts to Islam and works for the Sultan. That should be it. All the prophecies are done. There's no new temple, every sacrifice exposed. But for thousands of people, it's still not the end. The real story here isn't how Sabbatai Sevy's movement collapsed. It's like it survived in spite of this. Now you think that the story is going to like this tragic ending. The Messiah converts to Islam, the sultan wins. Everything's done right. But this is not how it works. And it's not unique even to the 1600s. So when people give everything to a belief, the disproof of that belief doesn't just land and get accepted. 100 like, all right, this is done. It has to go somewhere. And the mind is very creative about how we deal with these things. So for a significant number of sabotage Zevi's followers, the conversion isn't the end. It's just a puzzle. It's like Qanon, and they had to try to solve it in the way that they could, and they made it a part of the messianic plan. And their argument was basically like this. The Messiah had to descend into the depths of impurity before he could ascend to ultimate holiness. His conversion to Islam isn't betrayal. It's necessary to basically have, like, this big redemption. This is a mission into, like, the enemy territory, the darkest moment before dawn, this hidden divine plan. And if you knew your Kabbalah well enough, you could build a case for this. And Nathan, still believing, did exactly that throughout this entire thing. Nathan of Gaza, the guy that literally staked his whole career on this guy being the Messiah, never abandoned the cause. When doubts arose, he had answers. When Sabbatai did something shocking or erratic, Nathan had an explanation ready to go. When miracles weren't really there, Nathan's position was very clear. The Messiah had to be believed without evidence, and that true faith meant believing anyway. He spent the rest of his life constructing this framework, and he essentially turned the absence of proof for Sabbatai into a test of devotion. If you need a miracle to believe, then maybe you're not even a believer in the first place. That was the idea, and it kind of worked. And the idea actually acquired a name, this. This idea of a sacred sin. And the theory kind of works like this that outer acts could be spiritually irrelevant or spiritually necessary as long as the inner devotion was intact. That's all that really matters. That the rules governing ordinary people didn't apply to the Messiah, whose mission required going places and doing things that no one else could follow him into. So mainstream rabbinic authorities saw this as extremely heretical, and this was a direct threat to Jewish laws and theology. And it was a remarkably intellectual move. It essentially transformed this catastrophe into confirmation. And for a lot of people, it actually worked. So there's a group called the Dunme that formed from Sabbath's most committed followers, people who, like him, converted to Islam outwardly, but privately kept Sabbatian rituals and beliefs alive in secret for generations. They developed their own internal theology, their own hidden practices, their own communities, and over time, their inner beliefs diverged significantly from both, you know, mainstream Judaism and mainstream Islam. And they became their own distinct, kind of, like, hybrid tradition. On the outside, Muslim, but on the inside, Jewish. And wildly enough. Today, there are estimates for how many Donme descendants there are in Turkey, and some say that there's potentially tens of thousands. But of course, this, like, kind of tacit secrecy makes putting an actual number on it really difficult. The movement that looked like it was done in 1666 produced a community that is technically still here to this very day, maybe watching this episode, and psychologists even have a name for what makes this possible. This is belief, perseverance. And the core thing is this. Once we've invested heavily in an idea or a belief or, you know, any type of movement, maybe financially, we don't just abandon it because the evidence goes against us. We just change the evidence. We shift the goalposts, we reframe the failures as actually a secret success that you just don't understand. The investment itself becomes a reason to keep going because the alternative is just, you know, more painful than finding a new explanation. I really think like QAnon is like maybe the closest thing to this. I talked to a, a great, like cult journalist, this guy Jennings Brown, you remember that episode? And he told me something that I always think about. He's like, the way these cults operate, specifically like doomsday cults, where it's like, hey, on this date the world will end and then the world doesn't end. And they look at everyone and go, we weren't ready, we weren't pure enough. And we need to try again this time next year. And some of the people leave, but the people that stay are actually the most devout. And as a result, over time you create an even more devout core. And this isn't just like a thing that happened back then, this happens now with regular cults and regular movements. I mean, you donate money to some cause and you find out that cause was, you know, completely bs. It's easier for you to be like, ah, that's propaganda or oh, you don't understand then you know, to believe that you got tricked, right? What does Mark Twain say? It's easier to trick a man than convince a man he's been tricked. Now, Sabbath zevi died in 1676, exiled to that small town on the Adriatic, still privately lighting Shabbat candles, and was generally forgotten by the rest of the world. But this isn't just a story about the 1600s, because everything that we've gone over, the build up and all that stuff, it happens again and again. So let me put it this way. Sabbata Zevi's story is sometimes told like about mass gullibility and how, you know, when desperate people get the right con man that they can be tricked. And I think what that misses is that what's actually happening here is that the people that believed in him weren't foolish and they weren't even just desperate, they were a mixture of desperate and faithful, right? They had this theological priming that made all of this make sense. They were surrounded by communities in which belief had become the price of belonging and that you had to believe, or else you'd be exiled. They had invested too much at a certain point to ever turn back without losing something fundamental about themselves. And that's just. That's just life. I mean, we're doing that all the time. Think about a political candidate that gets involved in a scandal, you know, someone that you love that betrays you, like, getting conned by, like, some financial scheme. We are all, in some sense, primed by the worlds that we're born into and by the countries and the cultures that we exist in. We all have frameworks that tell us what different things mean and how we can trust people and what kind of story we're living in. And so when someone comes along that checks all the boxes, it's very hard to be skeptical. When someone comes along to give you a cure to all the pain and suffering you're dealing with, it's hard to be skeptical. And the rabbis who saw through Sabbath Zevi weren't necessarily smarter. They were, in a lot of cases, less desperate or maybe less alone or had, you know, just by circumstance, more distance from the framework that made him feel, you know, that made Sabbatai a lot easier to see through. You know, that means, like, the question here is, like, not how do they believe? It's like, what am I being primed to believe right now? Like, what framework do I have in the world that I live in that I'm just buying into without really thinking about it? And if the story of Sabotage Zevi tells us anything is that there's always a groundwork for someone else to come along. And the question is, are we able to learn from the story and predict it before it gets here? And that is the life and times of Sabotage Zevi. I mean, fascinating that one guy can come along and just, like, kind of manipulate the story, have his own manic mental health issues, and create such a big movement where thousands of people are like, oh, yeah, this is going down. We're doing this. And then it all falls apart. And then even still, people are kind of, like, down for it. I would say also, it's kind of a clever move by the sultan. How so? Because the sultan doesn't have to kill him. If the sultan kills him, then you have a martyr. You have a martyr. The movement lives on. If the sultan can get him to renounce everything that he's ever believed, all of a sudden the movement's dead. Like, nothing from the outside can really be done to stop it. You need him, himself to renounce everything, and you can't just have him Renounce it. Like, like at first I remember when I was going through some of the research on this, like why would he have him like in his court? But it makes total sense. You can't let him out in the world. Like if you put him in prison, you potentially foment a rebellion. So you put him in like a really cushy position where you basically say, hey, you're taking care of the rest of your life. Just stop this revolution, stop this movement and you can like, we'll buy you out basically. Really clever, I would say actually from the souls person that's like a really like high level political move because it just stopped his entire revolution like in his tracks. And whether or not they were actually going to be able to foam into revolution like reclaim the Holy Land. Probably not, but it was going to cause a headache, it was going to cause a skirmish, maybe some terrorism, some death. And this Sultan was able to basically avoid all that, that. Now there's another guy that's connected to Sabotage Zevi and his name is Jacob Frank. Now this guy Jacob Frank is fascinating. We got to do a whole episode on him. But just as like a teaser to kind of set this up. Jacob Frank basically comes a century after Sabbatai Zevi and exists within like the aftershock of Sabbatai, like his whole movement. And basically he comes around like the 18th century in Eastern Europe and he leads this Jewish sect later known as the Frankus and his teachings like break all the traditional Jewish laws and he starts promoting like what they call antinomian ideas. This is the idea that like religious laws can and should be overturned and incorporating elements from like Christian culture and like all the surrounding cultures. There are even allegations that he was performing like these wild like sexual rituals to like break laws in order to be closer to God, that by violating laws there's actually like a spiritual purification that happens. So there was like accusations like these wild like sex orgies and stuff like that. Now Frank gained a following in Poland and then in the Ottoman Empire where he was basically invoking Sabotage Zevi and he would have these like shocking boundary pushing practices that drew a lot of followers but like a lot of opposition as well. So Jacob Frank basically invokes Sabotage Zevi and claims that he's actually Zevi's successor or like the reincarnation of Sabotage Zevi and basically starts to push the Sabbatian ideas even further. Especially the idea that breaking religious norms is actually a part of spiritual transformation. And in that sense like Frankism can be understood as like this Radical offshoot of the Sabbatian movement, taking, like, the mystical and kind of, like, controversial foundations about, like, Messiah and all that kind of stuff, and, like, a lot of, like, the Kabbalah stuff and putting into, like, a more extreme, distilled level. Level. And so now people sometimes will talk about, like, Sabatine Franks, and they're basically talking about, like, this specific offshoot followers from, like, you can imagine, like, Judaism to then, like, Kabbalistic Judaism into Sabbathian Judaism into Frankist, like, Sabbatian Frankish Judaism. And it's like a completely heretical, crazy offshoot that, like, no Jews believe, really, but it still exists kind of, like within the cultural psyche because it's such a crazy story. So you could say Sabotage Sevy walked so that Jacob Frank could run. Quite literally that. Quite literally that. But it's just wild. I mean, it's really, like, kind of shocking how many people can get on board with an idea when they've kind of bought in, you know, when they want it to be real. Like, they can make it real. It's pretty, like, shocking to me. But like I said, I've mentioned Qanon a few times. It's like, how many people were like, trump is a good guy. And they got completely wrapped up in Trump. And then he started doing things that didn't align with them. Like, he's not training the swamp. He's not, you know, arresting Hillary Clinton. He's not doing all the stuff that he kind of said that he was going to do. And then they rationalize it. So they find this message board, and all of a sudden the message board is like, look for this sign. This thing's going to happen. We're going to take back the country, yada, yada, yada. And people just rolled with it. And it's like, that happens all the time. And it's easy to point a finger and, like, jeer and, like, laugh and, like, mock people that go bored, like, on board with these things. But we're all kind of going on board with it, like, depending on, like, one thing or another, who knows what it is. But I think it's. If there's anything you take from this episode, it's, like, worth taking a step back and really reflecting on your life, being like, what am I primed for? What do I believe? Just because I believe it, you know, like, again, I'm not saying you need to reevaluate your whole life, but, like, really kind of taken through a comb, being like. Like, for example, people, like, we believe, like, there's all this, like, political corruption that happens, like, in Russia, but we don't think it happens here. You know what I mean? Like, I heard people say, like. Like, you know, these scientists are dying, and people are like, oh, what are we, Russia? And I'm like, there's a chance America killed more. More people than Russia. You know, I mean, like, we're saying that we're like, Russia is obviously the worst, but it's like, why are we primed to believe that? Like, that's probably just like, a remnant of, like, Cold War, like, communist ideals that, like, oh, these guys are obviously bad. Everything they do is bad. Same with China. Like, of course these governments do terrible things. I'm not suggesting, like, they're perfect. But just to believe that it happens there and not here is just so funny. Like, I mean, I think, like, a lot of the Patriot act, like, NSA disclosure stuff kind of proved this to people, but they were like, america doesn't spy on their, you know, their citizens. That's something the Russians do. It's like, we do it. It's what you're looking for when you deploy propaganda. Precisely. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it's just something to be aware of. You know what I mean? Like, these people that followed Sabotage Zevi, they weren't dumb. They were just a little desperate. They were a little theologically primed. And, yeah, they were ready for it to happen, and they started buying in a little bit. And once you buy in a little bit, it's hard to turn back. But anyway, did I miss anything? Please let me know if you grew up Jewish, if you're familiar with the story, if you're a scholar and Sabotage Zevi and you've researched, I would love to know what you think. Please drop a comment. I read all of them. I love seeing what you guys have to say, especially if there's interesting contributions. I just think it's great. Furthermore, if you're interested in history content, great news. We have history camp. That's where we talk about everything that's ever happened. If you want to know what's going on now, and you want rabbit holes and deep dives and all sorts of conspiracy stuff, well, we have Camp Gagnon where I do exactly that. And if you just like the religious vibe, where we talk about all things of the divine, what people believe, the nature of belief from all religions from around the world, well, that's what religion camp's for. God bless you all, and I will see you next time. Have a blessed Sunday. Peace be with you.