398 A History of Judaism
Jerusalem and then Cairo, known for unpredictable and sometimes dra-
matically antinomian behaviour, which involved ostentatious public
flouting of religious norms, and notorious for claims, over seventeen
years, that he was the Messiah – went to the city of Gaza, at this time
ruled by Musa Pasha, the last of the Ridwan dynasty to govern Gaza
and Jerusalem on behalf of the Ottoman state, to seek ‘peace for his
soul’ from a certain Abraham Nathan b. Elisha Hayim Ashkenazi.
Nathan, a remarkable holy man, had already at the age of twenty estab-
lished a reputation for his expertise in Lurianic kabbalah, through
which he had received visions of angels and deceased souls. The visitor
was Sabbetai Zevi. But instead of disabusing him of his fancies, Nathan
informed him that he had himself experienced around the time of Purim
a prolonged vision, in which he had witnessed the figure of Sabbetai
engraved on the divine throne, and that there could be no doubt that
Sabbetai was the Messiah. This endorsement by a prophet widely
admired among the Jewish population of the land of Israel was to start
a tumultuous period of eighteen months in which the equilibrium of
Jewish communities from Poland and Russia to Yemen and Kurdistan
was shattered, with consequences for generations to come.^28
The implications took a while to sink in for Sabbetai himself, as he
got to know the young man and to appreciate his prophetic expertise.
But on 19 May, at the festival of Shavuot, the truth became public in a
dramatic scene in the house of Jacob Najara, rabbi to the Gaza com-
munity, as Baruch of Arezzo, author of the earliest biography of Sabbetai
Zevi, recorded, just over a decade later:
When the Shavuot festival arrived, Master Nathan invited the rabbis of
Gaza to spend the night studying Torah with him. About midnight, Master
Nathan went into a deep trance. He stood up, walked back and forth in
the room, recited the entire tractate Ketubot by heart. He ordered one
rabbi to sing a certain hymn, then did the same to another. While this was
going on, all the rabbis became aware of a pleasant aroma, wonderfully
fragrant, like the smell of a field the Lord had blessed. They went looking
in the surrounding houses and alleyways for the source of the aroma, but
found nothing. All the while [Nathan] was jumping and dancing around
the room. He stripped off one piece of clothing after another, until he was
down to his undergarment. Then he made a great leap and fell flat on the
floor. When the rabbis saw this, they tried to help him to his feet. But they
found him lifeless as a corpse. The honourable Rabbi Meir Rofé was pres-
ent, and he felt his wrist the way physicians do and announced to us that