new certainties and new mysticism 405
When Purim was over he went to the home of the sage Rabbi Jacob Alvo,
and summoned the rabbi [Najara] along with six other men. In that same
courtyard was a janissary barracks; and [Sabbetai] prayed there with the
rabbis and welcomed the Sabbath with melody and with great joy, singing
aloud ... When it was daylight he went with his serving- boy to the Portu-
guese synagogue, where he recited a number of petitionary prayers ...
Afterwards he recited there the namas [Muslim prayers], and after that he
returned to [Alvo’s] house and prayed the morning service [for the Sab-
bath] ... Then he went home, bringing with him his bejewelled copy of the
Zohar. He arrived at sunset in a state of elation. When the Sabbath was
done, early in the night, he declared that all the believers be summoned to
him and that everyone who believed in him must take on the turban.
About a dozen men and five women agreed to do as he wished.^40
This was not the view of Nathan of Gaza, who remained convinced
of Sabbetai’s messianic role but had no desire himself to adopt Islam
and warned others to ‘stay away from Amirah when he is in a state of
illumination because he wants to convert everyone around him to
Islam’. Nathan’s explanation of Sabbetai’s action was theological. In
early November 1666 he announced that the mystery would resolve
itself in time and set out with a large group of followers from Gaza to
meet Sabbetai in Adrianople, gradually evolving as he went the ingeni-
ous kabbalistic argument that, now that the Jews had restored the
sparks of their own souls by tikkun, the Messiah had needed to descend
into Islam in order to lift up the holy sparks which were dispersed
among the gentiles. Sabbetai had taken upon himself the shame of
treachery as the final stage before he would appear in glory. With
endorsement from Sabbetai himself, Nathan travelled around Italy and
the Balkans spreading this doctrine, and frequent letters between Sab-
batian communities in North Africa, Italy and the Balkans had created
a powerful sectarian theology by the time that Sabbetai was exiled in
January 1673 to Dulcigno in Albania following accusations about his
behaviour by both Jews and Muslims.
After the blow of the apostasy, the death of the Messiah on the Day
of Atonement in 1676 was less difficult to absorb than might otherwise
have been the case. It was clear to the believer Baruch of Arezzo that
Sabbetai had not really died:
It became known afterwards that our Lord had journeyed to our Israelite
brethren, the ten ‘tribes of the Lord’ on the far side of the River Sambat-
yon, there to wed the daughter of Moses our Teacher who lives on among