new certainties and new mysticism 399
he had no pulse. They laid a cloth over his face, as one does – God protect
us! – for the dead. But a short while later they heard a very low voice. They
removed the cloth from his face and saw that a voice was emanating from
his mouth, though his lips did not move. ‘Be careful’, [the voice] said, ‘of
My son, My beloved, My messiah Sabbetai Zevi.’ Then it went on: ‘Be
careful of My son, My beloved, Nathan the prophet.’ Thus did the rabbis
come to realize that the aroma they smelled had emanated from that same
spark of spiritual holiness that had entered into Master Nathan and spo-
ken these words.^29When on 31 May Sabbetai Zevi proclaimed himself in public as the
Messiah, Najara led his community in acknowledgement. Sabbetai Zevi
began immediately to behave in appropriately regal fashion, riding on
horseback and appointing his followers to lead the Twelve Tribes of
Israel.
The central actor of this drama was a curious personality. Sabbetai’s
followers referred to periods of depression alternating with ‘illumin-
ation’, when Sabbetai liked to commit ‘strange deeds’ calculated to
shock. The son of a wealthy merchant in Smyrna, he was recognized
when young for his talmudic knowledge and began study of the kabba-
lah as a teenager. He lived in ascetic seclusion in his early twenties,
becoming increasingly odd, with claims of an ability to levitate. He
failed to consummate either of the marriages into which he entered.
Between 1646 and 1650 it became clear that he believed himself des-
tined for higher things; according to later Sabbatian traditions, it was in
1648 that he first decided that he was the Messiah, in the year in which
he believed that, according to the Zohar, the dead would be resurrected.
By 1651 his behaviour had become too erratic for the local rabbis in
Smyrna to tolerate, and he was put under a ban. Expelled for some
years from Smyrna, he wandered to Salonica and later to Constantin-
ople, proclaiming from time to time his messianic status and creating
scandal by such acts as going through a wedding ceremony with a copy
of the Torah. Eventually he travelled in 1662 to Jerusalem, where he
was first spotted by the teenage Nathan.^30
The news from Gaza spread at speed to the other Jews in Palestine.
Not all were won over. In Jerusalem, the local rabbi had known Sab-
betai Zevi for many years, and a majority opposed him when he arrived
at the holy city followed by a large crowd. But some important figures
were persuaded, and the rest were cautious, banishing Sabbetai Zevi
from their own city but not counteracting the increasingly frenzied