406 A History of Judaism
them. If we are deserving, he will return to redeem us immediately after the
seven days of his wedding celebrations. But if not, he will delay there until
we are deluged by terrible calamities. Only then will he come to avenge us
of our enemies and of those who hate us. A certain rabbi from the land of
Morea saw our Lord in the town called Malvasia. That very week, [our
Lord] told him, he would be on his way to Great Tartary, which is the
proper route to the River Sambatyon.The apparent failure of Sabbetai signalled by his death was explained
by claiming that he would reincarnate and complete his work in another
body, or that he was away gathering the lost ten tribes, or that he had
gone into the spirit world to achieve there the redemption he had com-
pleted on earth. Some, like Moshe David Valle (see p. 412), argued that
Sabbetai had been the Messiah son of Joseph and would be followed by
the Messiah son of David, who would signal the end of time.^41
Nathan’s recognition in 1668 of Sabbetai’s status as Messiah had
reflected a long- held conviction of Sabbetai himself, which had been
confirmed in 1664 when he contracted his third marriage to Sarah, a
beautiful but troubled bride of Polish origin. She was described in scorn-
ful terms after Sabbetai’s conversion by Jacob Sasportas, who had
known her in Amsterdam in 1655, as ‘a witless girl who used to deliver,
to the general amusement, demented speeches about how she was going
to be married to King Messiah. She went off to Leghorn [Livorno],
where, as Rabbi Joseph HaLevi writes me, she made a practice of going
to bed with anyone and everyone.’ For Baruch of Arezzo, the signifi-
cance of the marriage lay only in its confirmation that Sabbetai was the
Messiah, relating that her protector in Cairo, Raphael Joseph Chelebi,
had ‘wanted to marry her to one of his friends and settle great wealth on
her’. The two were duly wed, but, according to Baruch, ‘he never made
love to her until he had set the pure turban on his head.’ The marriage
had been intended as a prelude to the redemption, not to settled family
life.^42
The impact of Sabbetai across the Jewish world can be explained
only by a confluence of causes. Memories of the Chmielnicki massacres
in Poland in 1648– 9 which had destroyed Sarah’s entire family and
driven her into exile may help to explain the extraordinary enthusiasm
of Polish Jews for Sabbetai’s promise of redemption, but such sufferings
cannot explain the equal enthusiasm of the Jews of Amsterdam, who
were living a Jewish life in comfort and security. It is probable that
Christian expectation in England, Holland and Germany that the