Sabbatai Tzvi and the Doenmeh
Friday, May 18th, 2007An article in the Forward by Jay Michaelson discusses the anticipated destruction of Sabbatai Tzvi’s former residence in Turkey and, more surprisingly, the reaction of the doenmeh, who continue to see the house as a shrine:
Far away from the eyes of the Jewish mainstream, in modern-day Turkey there live hundreds, if not thousands, of crypto-Jews — and today, one of their most sacred shrines is in danger.
Tzvi chose to convert, and most of his followers lost hope — but not all of them. Many saw the conversion as a heroic act of tikkun, or repair, and followed their messiah’s lead by outwardly becoming Muslims while secretly maintaining their messianic Jewish faith. They were called doenmeh, meaning “turncoats”— a pejorative term not unlike marrano (“pig.”) Among themselves, they were called ma’aminim, “believers.” Sabbateanism did not die out in 1666, or even 10 years later when Tzvi himself died. There were subsequent messiahs — largely forgotten men like Baruchiah Russo and Jacob Frank — and, as recent scholarship has shown, Sabbateanism greatly influenced the 18th-century emergence of Hasidism. And then there are the doenmeh, who live on until the present day, in secretive communities, at first primarily in Salonika and today almost entirely in present-day Turkey.
[….]
Barry Kapandji is one of the few doenmeh descendants willing to openly acknowledge his ancestry — and even he wouldn’t use his real name (“totally out of the question,” he said). Kapandji, 33, was told by his father that he was a doenmeh when he was nine years old. Since then, he has been fascinated by his heritage. Kapandji first contacted me a few months ago, when he learned that the house in Izmir (formerly Smyrna) in which Tzvi is believed to have lived was slated for demolition by the municipality to make way for a park. No one would help him: The doenmeh he knew were afraid of going public, and the Jewish community wanted nothing to do with this sect of heretics.
“This is a crime against culture, history and my heritage,” Kapandji told me. “The Jewish community elders do not want the house turned into a museum.… They would like Sabbetai’s name to be eradicated from history.”
[…]
Surely, though, if this house is what Sisman and Kapandji believe it to be, it is an important relic of a key episode in Jewish history. Of course, as shown by Israel’s many Crusader tombs doubling as the supposed burial places of prophets and rabbis, the fact that a place is venerated by believers does not mean that it is what they believe it to be. Then again, there are reasons to think that this instance might be different. The doenmeh, after all, have lived in the same place, continuously, since the time of Tzvi himself, and have maintained a secret tradition of belief, liturgy, ritual, even recipes. Kabbalah scholar Avraham Elqayam recently published an article describing the mystical significance of a newly unearthed doenmeh cookbook, and Zeek, an online journal of which I am an editor, is publishing translations of Sabbatean hymns and first-person accounts of Tzvi at prayer, compiled by David Halperin, professor emeritus of religion at the University of North Carolina….
I do not know much about the history and current practices of the doenmeh, but they offer an excellent theoretical example of the complexity of Jewish identity. They appear to be embedded within larger, “mainstream” Jewish communities while at the same time maintaining additional traditions of belief and ritual. It will be interesting to see these new translations.
