Why the Donmeh and the Shatz Had NOTHING To Do With Judeo-Sufism
Sometimes people ask me why i don’t like the Donmeh or the Shatz (Shabbatai Tz’vi)… Read the following from his and NoG’s manifesto and tell me if you would be stoked on a dude saying this shit and then crapping out when push came to shove:
“Hear ye, brethren in Israel that our Messiah is come to life in the city of Ismir and his name is Shabbetai Zevi. Soon, he will show forth his kingdom to all and will take the royal crown from the head of the Sultan and place it on his own. When nine months have passed, our Messiah shall vanish from before the eyes of Israel, and no one should be able to say if he is alive or dead. He will cross the river Sambatyon, which as all men know no mortal has ever crossed. There, our Messiah shall ride forth through Jerusalem, with Moses and all the Jews of old mounted on horses. He himself shall ride on a dragon, and his bridle rein shall be a snake with seven heads. On his way, he will be attacked by Gog and Magog, the enemies of Israel, with a mighty arm. But the Messiah with the breath of his nostril shall he rout them, and by his word alone, shall he utterly destroy them. And when he is entered in Jerusalem, God will send down a temple of gold and precious stones from heaven, and it will fill the city with its brilliance. And on that day shall the dead throughout the world rise from their graves. I hasten to tell you these tidings.”
The Shatz was not Judeo-Sufi AT ALL at any time. He pledged to be exclusively “Muslim” as the Caliphate understood it, when he was threatened with death. He didn’t return to fight another day, asserting that his comments were taqiyyah nor that he had an enlightened view of “Islaam” different from the Caliphate regimes. Instead, he just basically agreed to back off and to tell everyone to be good little Muslim boys and girls.
The real disappearance of Judeo-Sufism, and records of the `Issuniyim trace to his betrayal of the hopes of Israel (the historical name for the Jewish people, for those Muslim brothers and sisters who are unaware). After his betrayal, you couldn’t talk about ideas that were common in Judeo-Sufism, or the `Issuniyyah. That’s when these ideas, that were never the majority, became impossible to talk openly about without being wrongly associated with the Donmeh.
The Shatz is almost single-handedly responsible for the splintering of Jewry into the notion that Jewish means cut off any connection with Islaam, with things Muslims do, Judeo-Arabic, etc. The vacuum that he left in the hopes and dreams of redemption in the Jewish communities who had invested in him, would not be filled until the emergence of the Besht (Ba`al Shem Tov) and the “Chasidut” Movement he brought; aptly taking the name of the Judeo-Sufi pietism (the first Judeo-Sufis were called Chassidim).
More at some future date. Just thoughts right now.