12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The reverse of the medal, May 3, 2005
The crucial year is Anno Domini 1666 - Hegira 1067.
In that year "Jews in various part of the Middle East and Europe were taken by a messianic frenzy... began selling their goods... preparing for their joint return to the Holy Land".
A hectic exchange of letters span the Mediterranean, but also the New world is interested: in far away Brazil Portuguese Marranos talk about unfolding events, in Boston the sermons of reverend Cotton Mother wonder about the coming end of the Diaspora.
A sense that something important is going to happen grips the entire world. For a few months time seems to stop.
Oldenburg, the secretary of the British Royal Academy writes inquisitively to Spinoza, the ten lost tribes of Israel are reported to have put Mecca under siege, the anointed Messiah is coming to restore the Jewish nation to the promised land and will humble the infidel enemy.
The world upside down.
But the climax comes to a strange result: Sabbatai Sevi, the self appointed messiah, is forced by the Turkish authorities to abjure the Jewish faith and become a Muslim.
In a sense this is the turning point but not the end of the story, like one could be easily led to think: a definite change none the less. Because most of his followers kept their faith remaining in the Jewish religion (the still existing Sabbatian Jews), some joined him in the apostasy (the still existing Muslim Domne community), some of them, still faithful to his message, joined the Catholic Church (Yes! The picturesque Frankist community).
In the tumultuous unfolding of events we are guided by John Freely to the discovery of a vanished world: the many Jewish communities (Romaniotes, Sephardis, Askenazi, Karaites, Mustaribs,...) and the many cradles of the Diaspora (multinational Salonika, Alexandria, Cairo, Izmir, Istanbul, but also far away places like Amsterdam, Ferrara in Italy and the too many communities in Central Europe).
In a sense, this book can be read as well as a travel book: to search the material, Freely followed physically the footsteps of the Sabbatians and his effort to unearth that world is in itself a real pleasure.
Most of that world has gone, wiped by two world wars and by the mad specter of nationalism: the great Jewish communities of Greece are no more, gone the royal palace in Edirne, gone the Jewish quarter in Salonika, gone the Jewish quarters of Alexandria and Cairo, but sometimes a place has been able to defy time: Berat in Albania (truly gripping the description of the city), but also the valley of Nightingales in Istanbul.
A vanished world: a multinational empire where Greeks and Jews, Turks, Armenian and Arabs coexisted. A world that was apparently much more culturally global than our own and with an area that spanned from the new world to far away cities on the edge of India. A world in which many languages coexisted: the official Turkish and the semiofficial Greek, the multinational Ladino, Arabic and Yiddish...(it is curious that Sevi was not fluent in Turkish, notwithstanding his being born and lived most of his life in Izmir).
The story is framed and intersected by the relevant historic events of the time: the fall of Venetian Candia (Crete) to the Turks, the Chminielnicki massacres in Poland and Ukraine in 1648 (one of the first great scale pogroms), the birth of the first ghetto in Venice ("ghetto" is a Venetian word), the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492), up to the failed siege of Vienna that marks the beginning of the decline of the Turkish Empire.
I resolved to read this book after I first read about Sabbatai Sevi in the biography of Spinoza (Spinoza. A Life by Stephen Nadler). Many feature stimulated my interest, not the least the strange phenomenon of an unusual revivalist movement in the Jewish Religion, the fact that Freely is also author of respected travel books about Greece and Turkey, my passion for the Mediterranean heritage.
Possibly this book is a perfect blend of history, geography and religion. I enjoyed every page of it and cannot but recommend it.
I loved this book, and yet there are parts of it that are true cameos. Between the many, this anecdote of the late 50s is sure worth to be cited in full:
"While in the station in Edirne, Abraham Galanté (one of the leading authorities in the history of Turkish Jewry) waited for a train to take him back to Istanbul, he noticed an old woman who was sweeping up in the waiting room, and singing while she worked. When she came closer he could hear that she was singing in Ladino, and then to his astonish¬ment he realized that the song was one that the Donme sang together to keep up their hopes in the long centuries of waiting for Sabbatai Sevi to return:
Oh, my beloved's gone from me, God's chosen one, Sabbatai Sevi. Though fallen low and suffering smart, Yet he is closest to my heart. . .
Galanté questioned the woman, and learned that she was in fact a Donme - one of the very few who still remained in Edirne. He asked why she was cleaning up in the waiting room, and she explained that she did this every day to make sure that it would be spotless when Sabbatai arrived. The Messiah had gone to his rest in Albania she explained, and when he returned he would surely come by train, picking up his faithful followers on the way to Istanbul from where they would set sail for Jerusalem. She was waiting to join him, she said, and then excused herself to get on with her work, continuing her interrupted song."
(pag.241-242).
Three hundred years had elapsed but still someone was keeping the faith.
If you've been so patient and kind to follow me so far, there can be a chance you share some of my passions and could be interested in other books I had the opportunity to read in the past about similar arguments:
Most specifically historical:
- Steven Nadler - "Spinoza. A Life" , more a survey of the age and times in which Spinoza lived than a specific biography of the great philosopher (see also my review)
- Dimitry Obolensky - "The Byzantine Commonwealth" an informed survey of the Byzantine legacy in Eastern Europe (see also my review)
More travel-related:
- Predrag Matvejevic - "Mediterranean. A Cultural Landscape". Nostalgia over the shores of the dark wine sea (see also my review).
- Ernle Bradford - "Mediterranean. Portrait of a Sea". Possibly the best book I read on history, culture and traditions of the Mare Nostrum.
- John Ash - "A Byzantine Journey". A poetic, fragile and luminous evocation of the Byzantine past.
- Ohran Pamuk - "My Name is Red" a fabulous novel (a must read for sure) that uses Bellini's portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror to illustrate the clash between the artistic tradition of the West (art like mirror of an ideal reality) and the Eastern tradition (art like symbol and not representation) - (see also my review).
You are truly welcome if you can suggest other readings or just share ideas and comments!
Thanks for reading.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A facinating book on a little known corner of Turkish history, April 11, 2007
The Donme are one of the most remarkable groups in the Middle East. A Jewish sect that had converted to Islam but still retained much of it's previous faith and practice, carried out in secret, they dont intermarry with other Muslims while have becoming influential in various political positions in the Muslim world (Ismail Cem and the Ipekci family for example).
This (and perhaps Bernard Lewis' book but I tend to avoid anything written by him) is perhaps the only decent study of the Donme sect and its founder Sabbatai Sevi. The term Donme is a Turkish word meaning 'turncoat' it seems from the book that they were never realy recognised as true Muslims (such examples are the fact that there were specific 'Donme Mosques' in Salonika, there were never for example 'Albanian' or 'Bosnian' Mosques even though they were a distinct group that had converted to Islam) But I have no idea why a previous reviewer chose to say that Sabbatai Sevi was forced to convert to Islam as the book itself makes no such claim.
Their history is remarkable and Mr Freely goes into great detail discussing the life of the founder Sabbatai Sevi and his main student Nathan of Gaza. How the group developed and the controversy they caused in the major cities of the Ottoman world such as Izmir and Istanbul, the leaders arrest and his conversion to Islam. The book then goes into some detail to suggest where he may be buried and then the mass conversion of his followers in Salonika, how they became greatly involved particually in politics such as the Young Turk movement and even the Mevlevi order in Salonika. The book then goes on to detail their expulsion from Greece (along with all other Muslims) to Turkey and their settlement in Istanbul. How even they have a sepperate cemetary from other Muslims and their gravestones are distinct from other Turkish Muslim ones. The book also covers the history of the followers of Sabbatai Sevi in Europe who did not convert to Islam but Catholicism particually in Poland and Eastern Europe and some of the famous descendents of that group.
It is even more interesting that at the same time this book came out a similar one in Turkish was published. It would seem that this is yet another small effort of Turkey comming to terms with its past.
Well worth a read for anyone with an interest in either Islamic studies or Jewish history.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
An apostate Messiah, December 4, 2009
In the 17th century, Rabbi Sabbatai Sevi called himself the so long awaited real Messiah. It was an apocalyptic time for the Jewish people. In Poland and the Ukraine one hundred thousand Jews had been slaughtered and three hundred communities destroyed in the Chmielnicki massacres.
Sabbatai Sevi was a manic-depressive person, alternating periods of `great illumination' with times of deep depression. His Messianic call was heard mainly by the downcast, the poor, the distressed and the troubled, which had in any case nothing to loose. By following the new Messiah, they could consider themselves as an elected (and selected) group of people who were chosen by the representative of God on earth and who would receive in the shortest of times eternal bliss.
Sabbatai Sevi called for an overthrow of all religious laws and of all human behavior (sexual taboos). He liberated women (who could read the Torah) and organized sexual orgies (`God permitted that which is forbidden'). But, his revolutionary ardor undermined the established power of the orthodox rabbis, who became his most ferocious enemies and who ultimately could organize (bribe) his downfall.
Confronted with a death penalty proclaimed by the reigning Sultan, Sabbatai Sevi converted to Islam (!) under the condition that he would persuade his followers to do the same. A big part of these followers didn't believe and couldn't accept his apostasy and their own downfall. They pretended that this apostasy was a disguise or that not the rabbi, but his shadow, had converted to Islam. Another part followed him and observed the Islamic laws in public, but they couldn't marry true Muslims. They were called the Dönme (the Turncoats). Some descendants of the Dönme became later members of the Young Turks.
John Freely delved deeply into the archives and did meticulous field work in order to evocate the life and times of an apostate Messiah, of his prophet and his staunch followers.
Not to be missed.
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