In search of followers of the false messiah [Shabbtai Zvi] - Thu., December 09, 2004

0 views
Skip to first unread message

mevle...@yahoo.ca

unread,
May 9, 2007, 8:35:01 AM5/9/07
to Conspiracy Archive
In search of followers of the false messiah
By Orly Halpern

Aubrey Ross is an unusual man with an unusual pastime. He's looking
for Jewish Muslims. In Turkey. With the help of the Internet. And he's
convinced he has found some.

In a book entitled "The Messiah of Turkey," due to be published this
winter by Frank Cass Publishers in Great Britain, Ross reveals that
there are a number of key figures in the present government of Turkey
who are Sabbateans - i.e., followers of Shabbtai Tzvi, a Jew who, in
the 17th century, claimed he was the messiah, God of Israel, and later
converted to Islam.

Ross, an Orthodox Jew from London who has lectured on mysticism at
Hebrew University in Jerusalem - but has university degrees in
economics and the history of political thought, and is an adviser on
pensions at the National Health Service in Great Britain - became
intrigued by the subject when he was reading the chapter about false
messiahs in Gershom Scholem's "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism."

"I was fascinated by a short sentence that said `many of them were
still around in 1970,'" he says.

Shabbtai Zvi was born in Izmir, Turkey in 1625 and became a Muslim in
the 1660s, Ross explains, when he was challenged by the sultan of
Turkey for declaring that his mission as messiah was to take back the
land of Israel, then under Ottoman rule. The sultan offered him three
alternatives: make a miracle and become the true messiah of the Jews;
be killed; or become a Muslim. Shabbtai Tzvi chose the latter.

"Shabbtai Tzvi embraced Islam," he says, "and that would be the end of
the story, but he claimed that his embrace was different than Jesus'
crucifixion: He was entering the `dark world' to bring life into it.
His followers called this the `sacredness of sin' and quoted Isaiah
53: `The messiah will suffer.'"

Adds Ross: "Anyway, most people say the messiah will suffer - leading
the Jewish people is not easy!"

After Shabbtai Tzvi's death, he relates, his family and followers
moved to Salonika. When Greece took it over in 1924, descendants of
that community returned to Turkey.

Underground kabbalist colleges

"I wasn't satisfied with the sentence about many of them being around
in 1970," Ross says. "I went to a lady professor of kabbala in London
who insisted [the Sabbateans] were a 17th-century phenomenon that
faded away in the early part of the 20th century. I said I don't think
they did. Then a friend introduced me to Naim Tucsin, a Turkish Muslim
professor of politics at London University, who told me he would
contact an editor of an Istanbul newspaper who is a Jew and ask him
about it. Six months later, I got a phone call from the editor, saying
`come to Istanbul.'"

He traveled to Istanbul and stayed at the Pier Palace Hotel. One day,
Ross "was taken to the office of a Muslim gentleman. I sat down, was
given coffee and he asked me, `What do you know about
`tiferet' [glory]?' The significance of the term represents an entire
kabbalistic structure in which tiferet is the God of Israel."

Ross, who is also warden of Hendon United Synagogue, one of the
largest in London, decided four years ago to write a book about his
discoveries. He began learning Turkish and traveled twice to Turkey:
"I penetrated the Sabbatean structure. I met with the president of the
Sabbatean community. They were at the point of showing me one of their
secret synagogues, but got scared."

He explains that "the Sabbateans believe that God is the creator of
the world, but has underneath his authority the God of Israel. I
discovered there are 50 `ogans' - spiritual leaders - of the Sabbatean
movement. They have trained in 12 kabbalistic colleges in Turkey,
which are underground. They are experts in the Zohar, in `Sefer Bahir'
and `Sefer Yetsira,' prominent kabbalistic works which are accepted
and respected by Orthodox Jews, but not revered [to the same extent].
They also know the Five Books of Moses, the Prophets and other
writings, but very little or no Talmud as this had been transcended by
Shabbtai Tzvi."

According to Ross, the secretive Sabbatean community, with an
estimated 20,000 members, is known to security forces in Turkey, but
not to the general public. Most of them live in Istanbul in large
blocks of luxury flats in the Shishli Jewish quarter - unbeknownst to
their neighbors.

"It's like a well-known secret. But the Sabbateans don't want to be
exposed. I have been asked by four members of the community not to
publish my book. They fear reactions from extreme Islamic elements."

To help substantiate his claims, Ross brought to Israel one of the
members of the community who was willing to "come out of the closet"
in order to be converted formally by rabbis: "Ilgaz Zorlu is his name.
But the rabbis [in Israel] said he can't be converted because he
doesn't accept all of the Talmudic law. They accepted that he knows
more kabbala than they do. He prays; he practices Conservative
Judaism. But, he's not bothered about Talmud so they said he had to do
a nine-month conversion."

Meanwhile, Zorlu, a young accountant from Istanbul, has written his
own book, which is mostly historical in nature. Entitled "Yes, I am a
Salonikan," it has been printed six times.

Ross believes that there are a number of secret Sabbateans who hold
key positions of influence in the Turkish parliament, legislature and
executive branches of government, including the foreign minister
himself. This, he observes, may help explain the close relations that
exist today between Israel and Turkey.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=181051

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages