 So, last year I noticed an article that came out online that really caught my eye, and the headline of the article read as follows. Branch Davidians still exist in 2018, 25 years after David Koresh's death. Now, David Koresh was a leader of a group called the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. It was an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventists. He was a very charismatic preacher, and he had memorized much of the Bible. He was a self-proclaimed prophet, and he claimed to be a modern-day biblical Cyrus. He claimed to be a modern-day manifestation of the biblical character Cyrus, who was the head of the Persian Empire, and sent the Jews back to build the temple in Israel. He taught much about the end times, about the eminence of the end times, and one of his activities that raised a few eyebrows was he took a number of, quote-unquote, spiritual wives. Some of them as young as 12 and 13, and he fathered numerous children with them. Authorities grew concerned that he was guilty of both polygamy, having sex with underage girls, and stockpiling illegal weapons. So in late February 1993, agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms of the FBI raided his Mount Carmel compound in Waco and demanded that he come out and that he release the people that are there. A gun battle ensued in which four federal agents were killed, as well as six of the Branch Davidians. Fifty-one days later, on April 20th of that year, I was at the Jewish Students' Union at the University of Toronto, where I was serving as its director. We had a large television screen in the lounge, and a student called me over. The FBI had inserted tear gas into the compound, and the Davidians sent off a fire. We watched in horror, I still remember this, watching with the students in horror as the blaze rapidly spread, killing 79 people inside, including 22 children, under the age of 17. Now, although some Davidians had left during the siege itself, and some escaped the fire, it seemed like lights out for the movement. And yet now, decades later, we're learning that assumptions about their extinction were actually unfounded. There are a few diehard members, a few dozen diehard members, still located at the Mount Carmel compound. And there may be over 100 followers of David Koresh still worldwide. Clive Doyle, who is one of their leaders, insists that one day, God is going to resurrect Koresh and the other martyrs from 1993. Now, our focus tonight is going to be on a similar personality who lived in the 17th century, but reverberations of his life are still being felt in the Jewish world today. Shoptaitzfi was born on August 1st, 1626, in Izmir, Turkey. In those days, it was known as Smyrna. And that day happened to be a Shabbat. And so his parents, like many other Jewish parents, when a child was born on Shabbat, they chose to name him Shoptait. That's the origin of his name. Now, his birth date might have also been significant because that year, the 1st of August, turned out to be Tisha Ba'av, the 9th day in the month of Av, which is the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. It's the solemn day of fasting that commemorates the destruction of both the 1st and 2nd holy temples in Jerusalem, as well as other catastrophes that took place with the Jewish people. According to Rabbinic legend, the Messiah will be someone who will be born on that date, on the 9th of Av. Shoptaitzfi's father and his two brothers became very wealthy working as commercial trading agents. Now, Shoptaitzfi was the studious one, and at 18 was ordained as a khakam, as a Sfaradi rabbi. Now, aside from his traditional studies in Talmud and Jewish law, he devoted himself to studying Talmud, I'm sorry, to studying Kabbalah from a very relatively young age. He was a very devoted student of the Jewish mystical tradition. Now, Shoptaitzfi was someone who made a very good impression, a very good 1st impression. He was good-looking, charming, charismatic, and a great conversationalist. And aside from being an accomplished Torah scholar, he knew several languages and wrote poetry, a bit of a Renaissance man. He was gifted musically, and he could sing and lead prayers beautifully. He was very inspiring. By all accounts, he was very kind and generous person. And of course, being wealthy and well-connected didn't hurt. And all of these qualities seemed to distract people from what later became clear as his darker side. In his late teens and early twenties, he began to exhibit strange and erratic behavior, swinging between euphoric exuberant highs and morose lows. Today, we recognize this as manic depression or bipolar disorder. He took on various practices of asceticism and piety, sometimes going for days without eating or sleeping. He practiced self-flagellation and often immersed in a ritual bath, and sometimes he'd wander off on his own with no one knowing where he was. Now, at the same time, he began to entertain grandiose ideas about himself, thinking that he might be a messianic figure, and he began to lead a group of admirers in the study of Torah and prayer sessions. He predicted that the exile would soon be coming to an end, and that vengeance would be taken out upon the enemies of Israel. Now, some people took his strange behavior as signs of madness, but his followers saw these as indications of his great holiness. In 1646, at the age of 20, Shabtai married but had absolutely no physical contact with his wife. Shortly thereafter, the marriage ended in divorce or was annulled, and almost immediately afterward, he married again for a second time with the exact same conclusion. During his manic periods, he began to engage in sinful behavior, and he violated Jewish law. He would pronounce the ineffable name of God, the four-letter holy tetragrammaton that we're not supposed to pronounce, and he would violate the prohibition of secluding himself with women that he wasn't married to. By 1651, the rabbinic leadership in Izmir, his hometown, had enough of his bizarre behavior and his flouting of Torah law, and so they expelled him from the city. Now, he was 25 years old, and Shabtai left Izmir and headed to Salonika, a very large Jewish community in Greece. Initially, as you could expect because of his qualities, he was very well received, but one day he invited everyone in the town to his wedding. The community showed up and were shocked to see that Shabtai was going to marry a Torah scroll that he had wrapped in a wedding dress. In short order, he was thrown out of this city as well. He wandered around Athens and other communities in Greece and Albania for about five years and finally returned home to Turkey in 1658, settling in Istanbul, which back then was known as Constantinople. Now, here his strange behavior began to escalate. One day, he dressed up a large fish in baby clothing and wielded around the city in a baby carriage, explaining that this fish symbolized the need for the Jewish people to be redeemed from their exile. One day, he announced that he was going to celebrate all of the Jewish festivals in one week, and so he did. He observed Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot with all of their prayers and all of their attendant observances over the course of seven days, and he explained he was doing this to atone for the sins of the Jewish people throughout history who had not properly observed these holidays. When this week was over, he revealed to the public a new blessing that he was going to institute, and he said that this new blessing should be recited whenever someone would sin as an act of devotion to God. Now, one of the blessings we recite each morning is ברוך אתה אשם הלוקינו מלך הולה, מטיר אסורים. Blessed are you, Hashem King of the Universe, who releases those who are bound up. מטיר אסורים. But Shabtai distorted the phrase, מטיר אסורים, into מטיר אסורים. He who permits that which is forbidden. And so before a large crowd, Shabtai's feet recited his new blessing and proceeded to eat a piece of pork. And he explained that they were now living in a new age and that this act would bring about great spiritual rectifications and blessings. Obviously, the rabbinic leadership of Istanbul was having none of this and they had him flogged and excommunicated. So he returned to his native city of Izmir and he laid low for basically three years. In 1662, he apparently regained his stability and he felt it was time to move on and he decided to travel to Israel, but he stopped off on the way first in Cairo, Egypt. He made a very strong connection there with the community leader, Rafael Yosef. After several months in Egypt, he headed up to Jerusalem and he seemed as well to have made a good initial impression there and stayed for about a year. In 1663, the leadership of the Jewish community in Jerusalem knowing that he had wealthy connections down in Egypt sent him as an emissary to raise funds in Egypt for their struggling community. Now is where the story begins to get strange. The Shabtai's fee story doesn't emerge out of a vacuum. There are several streams that flow into it. One of the most significant was the terrible massacres of Jews in Poland and Ukraine by Cossack hordes between 1648 and 1649. This took place in the midst of a revolt by Russian Orthodox peasants against their Polish Catholic overlords and Jews were caught up in the middle and tens of thousands, possibly up to 100,000 were tortured and butchered in the most horrible ways. There was a young Jewish girl who was orphaned in these pogroms and raised by Christians from the age of six. Her name was Sarah and the people that were raising her wanted to marry her off to their son. According to one account, the night before the wedding her father appeared to her in a dream and told her that she will become the Messiah's wife. She immediately ran away and she was found wandering around the Jewish cemetery. She ended up wandering around Europe first going to Amsterdam and then to Italy presumably to try to find her family. Sarah was a very beautiful young woman and had a reputation for being extremely promiscuous. Some say she was a prostitute and apparently the reputation of this strange beautiful young woman who was both promiscuous and yet claimed that she would one day marry the Messiah, it spread. And apparently Shoptite's fee heard about her and so he sends for her to come to Cairo and marry Sarah in 1664 at the home of the communal leader, Raphael Josef. Now Raphael Josef was probably also aware of Shoptite's strange side and told him that there's someone named Nathan who is in Gaza who had a widespread reputation of being a visionary and a soul healer. And Nathan was a brilliant young scholar and a student of Kabbalah who led a very holy life. He had mystical visions and was able to read people. He could see into people's souls. And Nathan would have remedies. Apparently Shoptite was told for what was plaguing him and tormenting him. Shoptite himself was probably aware that he was going through occasionally dark periods of depression. He probably didn't feel totally comfortable violating Jewish law even though he did it. And so when Raphael Josef suggested to him that maybe you should go visit this Nathan in Gaza maybe he'll have a remedy for your soul. And so Shoptite travels to Gaza to see Nathan. Instead of providing Shoptite's fee with a remedy for his soul Nathan immediately falls into a trance. And upon awakening he excuses himself. He apologizes to Shoptite's fee for waiting to have Shoptite's fee come to him. He says, I'm sorry I should have come to you because I know that you were the promised Messiah. And he explains to Shoptite's fee that his depressed and sinful states were caused by his soul fighting against very dark spiritual forces and that he was suffering for the sins of the Jewish people. Now Shoptite was incredulous because even though he had entertained the idea that maybe he's a messianic figure he didn't quite accept immediately Nathan's proclamation that he is the Messiah. And so Nathan spent three intense weeks arguing with him and trying to convince him that he actually is the Messiah. He finally convinced Shoptite's fee that they should travel together to the holy cities of Hebron and Jerusalem in Israel. And all the while they're traveling Nathan of Gaza is trying to convince Shoptite's fee that he is the Messiah. They returned to Gaza shortly before the holiday of Shavuot. And during the holiday at the synagogue Nathan fell into a trance at the synagogue and upon awakening he publicly announced to the entire congregation that Shoptite's fee was the Messiah and that he would conquer the Sultan without an army and he would go to the Sambat Yodan River and lead the 10 tribes, 10 lost tribes of Israel back to their homeland. It was a week later that Shoptite's fee finally accepted Nathan's vision and embraced his destiny as Israel's Messiah. That summer, a number of weeks later, one of the first things he did was to abolish the fast on the 17th day of Tamuz. Three weeks before Tisha Ba'av, our national day of mourning, we begin with a more minor fast. And Shoptite's fee said that we will no longer fast on this day, it's going to be a holiday and we're going to rejoice. And the entire community of Gaza embraced him and feasted on the fast day of the 17th of Tamuz celebrating with music, with dance and with song. The next community to embrace Shoptite's fee was the community in Khebron. However, when he tried going back to Jerusalem, things did not go as smoothly because the people in Jerusalem had already had a taste of who Shoptite's fee was. And while they were comfortable sending him as an emissary to go to Egypt to raise money, they weren't quite ready to accept him as the king of Israel. So the leadership in Jerusalem came out against him and they even accused him of skimming some of the funds that he had collected in Egypt for their community. And so the court case went to an Ottoman court and Shoptite's fee was exonerated. And to celebrate his acquittal, he threw himself a huge party. And at the celebration, he again recited his controversial blessing, that God is matir is surim, that God permits that which is forbidden and he ate a nice big piece of non-kosher meat. Now this again was too much for the leadership of the Jerusalem community and they promptly excommunicated him and Nathan and kicked them both out of the city. At this point, Nathan went back to Gaza and Shoptite's fee began visiting various communities to proclaim himself as the Messiah. And Nathan assumed his role as the propaganda minister of Shoptite's fee. The reality is that without Nathan of Gaza, Shoptite's fee would have faded into oblivion. Shoptite's fee already had a little bit of a following and he probably would have remained for the rest of his life just a strange bird. But what ultimately led to his success was the fact that he had a brilliant writer that was working feverishly to promote him. And so Nathan sent out letters to communities throughout the world extolling Shoptite's fee explaining that he had a bona fide prophecy. He claimed that he himself was a prophet and he received a bona fide prophecy from God confirming that Shoptite's fee was the Messiah and his dramatic letters were extremely effective. Now ultimately, Shoptite headed back to his hometown of Izmir and word began to spread about him throughout the town. And wherever he went on the way to Izmir, he was welcomed very enthusiastically. Even though he did strange things, this was overshadowed by the euphoria of Jewish people who believed that finally the one who was going to redeem Israel from their terrible exile had arrived. Nathan was continuing his aggressive propaganda campaign and he called for mass repentance throughout the Jewish world in order to pave the way for the redemption. He cited numerous Torah sources to prove that Shoptite was the Messiah and he spread glowing reports of mystical visions and prophecies as well as supernatural miracles that were taking place. And these dramatic reports coming out of Nathan's pen were actually very well received and it just built the excitement that was growing. What Nathan did was to paint very dramatic pictures about the glories that awaited the Jewish people that captured the imagination of its readers. He presented his prophecies and he wrote that a supernatural fire was going to come down and protect all the holy cities in Israel from their enemies and that instantaneously churches and mosques would vanish in a flash from the face of the earth. Another role that Nathan of Gaza assumed was to explain away and to justify Shoptite's strange and aberrant behavior and he appealed to cabalistic teachings in order to do this. In September of 1665, Shoptite arrives back in his hometown of Izmir. There were some who opposed him, probably remembering his early days, including the chief rabbi, Chaim Ben-Veniste. But many people in Izmir embraced him enthusiastically. On Shabbat of December 12th, Shoptite led a mob of followers to rabbi Ben-Veniste's synagogue. Now they had locked the doors of the synagogue to keep out intruders, but Shoptite smashed the door down with an axe, obviously again an act that would be prohibited on the Sabbath. He came in, he interrupted the services, he pronounced the divine name of God and he began reading the Torah from a printed book rather than from a Torah scroll. He then announced that he was going to appoint one of his brothers to be the new Sultan of Turkey and his other brother as the Emperor of Rome. And then he began to ask rhetorically, why is it that Jesus was such an outcast from Judaism? And he proclaimed that under his new leadership, Jesus would be venerated as a holy Jewish prophet. He then predicted that the redemption of Israel would take place next year on the first day of Passover. At that point, Shoptite's the and the rabbi, Rabbi Ben-Veniste, started to verbally attack each other and argue back and forth, threatening to excommunicate each other and both sides, supporters and detractors of Shoptite's fee joined in the melee. Incredibly and unexplainably, just a few days later, Rabbi Ben-Veniste changed his course and became an enthusiastic supporter of Shoptite's fee. Now this swung the tide of the entire city to join the movement behind this would-be Messiah. Again, with the aid of Nathan's PR campaign, Jewish communities worldwide were whipped into a messianic frenzy. The movement spread throughout Greece, Turkey, Italy, Syria, Holland, Germany, Russia, Poland, North Africa, the whole world was abuzz. It's estimated that about half of Swartic Jewry, follow Shoptite's fee, and about a third of European Jewry backed him. Even Christians got into the act and Christians began translating some of the letters of Nathan of Gaza into Italian, into Dutch, into German, into English, and it just helped spread the hype. There were incredible rumors that were being spread that in Scotland, people had seen huge boats with Hebrew writing on the boats, indicating that these would attend lost tribes of Israel heading back to their homeland. And these kinds of rumors about seeing huge armies that were comprised of the 10 lost tribes were spreading all over the world. People were really believing that this was gonna happen imminently. Just to illustrate how much of a frenzy people were whipped into, I wanna share with you the diary entry of probably the most famous Jewish diary ever written. It was written by Gluckl of Hamel, who was a Jewish business woman. She was born in 1646 and died in 1724, a wealthy woman. She had, I think, 23 kids, a lot of children, and she writes the following. Does she live during the Shoptite's fee episode? She says, our joy when the letters arrived, I mean the letters from Nathan of Gaza arrived, is not to be told. Most of them were addressed to the Svarden, who as fast as they came took them to their synagogues and read them aloud. Young and old, but the Ashkenazim too ran to the Svardic synagogues. The Svardic youth came dressed in their best finery and decked in broad green silk ribbons, the gear of Shoptite's fee. With timbrels and with dances, they won an all troop to the synagogue and they read the letters of Nathan forth with joy, like the joy of the Feast of the Water Drawing, the most joyous Jewish holiday. Listen to this. Many people sold their homes and their land and sold all of their possessions. For any day they hoped to be redeemed. My good father-in-law left his home in Hamel, abandoned his house and lands and all his goodly furniture, and he moved to Hildesheim for the old men expected to sail any moment from Hamburg to the Holy Land. This fever was gripping the entire Jewish world. The movement continued to spread and anyone that was opposing Shoptite's fee or didn't accept him were persecuted and harassed by the believers. Now, even though Shoptite's fee routinely violated normative Jewish law, many rabbinic leaders passively acquiesced to it because it seemed to them that it was at least, this movement was at least leading the masses to take Judaism more seriously. As a way of hastening the redemption, many Jews that never went to synagogue before, who went very rarely, became very religious going to synagogue all the time, giving a lot of charity, forgiving each other, doing less business, studying a lot more Torah. And so rabbi said to himself, look whether this Shoptite's fee is the Messiah or not, who cares? Look what's happening in the Jewish world. With all of my sermons for the last 20 years, I couldn't move Jewish people to do much at all. And this strange person, look what he's doing. There's a revolution taking place. However, some rabbis very bravely faced the growing tidal wave and strongly opposed the movement to great risk themselves. Rabbi Yaakov Sasportas was a Sephardic rabbi and a major opponent of Shoptite's fee who challenged the claims of the movement. Very simple challenges. It's a hard to believe no one raised these. First of all, he asked the question, did any Jewish court verify that Nathan of Gaza was a legitimate prophet? Or was it just his claim to be a prophet? And then he asked another obvious question. We have in our literature in October, in the Tanakh, descriptions of what's supposed to be happening with the advent of the Messiah. And so Yaakov Sasportas asked, why has none of this been happening? Nothing that's supposed to take place with the coming of the Messiah is taking place. Now at this stage, Shoptite was sensing the rising wave and he believed it was now time to bring his messianic mission to the doorstep of the Ottoman Empire. And so he traveled from Izmir to Constantinople in 1666, early 1666. The Jewish community there in Constantinople, present day again, Istanbul, grappled with how to handle his arrival. What are we going to do? Many believe that he could be the Messiah, but they realized that to proclaim him as the Messiah could put them in great danger in terms of the government because this could be seen as treason, as behavior. On the other hand, if he really was the Messiah, how could they ignore him? And so it really presented a tremendous dilemma to the Jewish leadership of the community. Some of the leaders of the Jewish community got together with the leaders of the Ottoman government and explained that we're gonna be having a problem in this city. And so on February 5th, when Shoptite's ship approached the harbor, the Sultan's soldiers boarded the ship and had him arrested. Now he was thrown into a prison, but he was actually treated quite well and he was able to receive visitors. And the fact that he was treated well and was able to dress in royal garments and receive visitors was something that strangely confirmed his messianic status in the eyes of his supporters. Before Passover, he was transferred to a royal fortress in Gallipoli and his devotees started traveling hundreds and hundreds of miles to visit him in his new residence. Guards were bribed and he was able to have significant freedom while he was in custody. On Passover that year, he offered up the Paschal lamb and he ate from the forbidden fats of the animal, which is a very grave sin in the Torah. As in the previous year, he again abolished the fast of the 17th of Tamuz and he announced that in three weeks we're gonna also abolish the fast of Tisha Ba'av. The 9th of Ba'av this year, he said, it's gonna be a major holiday. Now those who had the eyes to see should have realized that Shaptai's predicted date of redemption had already passed months before. He had predicted in 1665 that the redemption would take place on the first day of Passover in 1666. And it's now way after Passover. People should have seen that something was up. They should have also noticed that this would-be Messiah is locked up in prison and it doesn't seem that anything that's gonna be good for the Jewish people is happening anytime soon. In addition, there were reports coming out that he was carrying on with young women that were being provided to him by the prison staff. Now Nathan of Gaza had to explain the imprisonment as Khevle Mashiach as the birth pangs of the Messiah. Our sages tell us that just as the birth of a baby is preceded by tremendous pain that the mother goes through, so our sages say that the messianic redemption will be preceded by terrible suffering. And so Nathan said that all of these terrible things that are happening to Shaptai Tzvi, these are examples of the Khevle Mashiach, the birth pangs of the Messiah. Now while he was imprisoned in Gallipoli, there was a cabalist from Poland named Nihemiah Kohin and he came to the prison to check out Shaptai Tzvi and he wanted to challenge Shaptai Tzvi's claims to being the Messiah. And one of the things he told Shaptai Tzvi was how can you be the Messiah when our literature tells us that before the coming of the Messiah, Mashiach Ben David, the Messiah, the son of David is going to be the appearance of the Mashiach Ben Yosef, the Messiah son of Joseph who would die in battle. And so Nihemiah Kohin said, where was this Mashiach Ben Yosef if you're the Messiah? So Shaptai insisted that actually a student of his named Abraham Zalman who was killed in the Khmelnitzky massacres, he was the Mashiach Ben Yosef. At that point, Nihemiah Kohin said, that's impossible because Mashiach Ben Yosef. So the two had a huge debate and for days they didn't go to sleep and they argued for days and days and days and finally Nihemiah denounced Shaptai Tzvi as an imposter and as a danger to the Jewish people. But he realized that he had at that moment put his life in danger because the followers of Shaptai Tzvi were very intolerant of people that opposed their movement and he sensed that his life was in danger so he came up with a strange but brilliant way out of his dangerous situation. He called for the guards in the prison to come and he said, I want to convert to Islam. Now it was probably a fake conversion as we'll see but it was a clever maneuver in order to save his life. But more than that, he used this as a way to basically inform on Shaptai Tzvi and he denounced Shaptai Tzvi to the government as a traitor to the government, to the Ottoman Empire and as a dangerous revolutionary. Afterwards Nihemiah Kohin returned to Poland and from what we know he resumed his life as a normative, normal, traditional Jew. By this time the Sultan finally had enough of the whole charade and he transferred Shaptai once again to another prison where he himself was based. When Shaptai came to the prison, the Sultan and his advisors including his physician who was a Jewish convert to Islam came to ask him about his messianic pretensions. Shaptai Tzvi played dumb and he said, I have no idea what you're talking about. Me, the messiah. Now they countered by saying, look, you've got a huge movement that's going crazy insisting that you're the messiah and we're afraid that a rebellion's gonna break out. Now previously Shaptai Tzvi had promised his followers he would remove the turban from the Sultan and place it on his own head. Now this might have been said as a way of bragging about how he was gonna rule the world but it may have been an unintended prophecy as we'll see. The physician advised that Shaptai be given a choice of embracing Islam or being beheaded. In a heartbeat, Shaptai Tzvi removed his head covering, his Jewish head covering, spit on it and railed against Judaism and declared that now he was a Muslim. He was given a special turban by the Sultan as well as a new name, Aziz Mehmed Effendi and he was appointed the gatekeeper of the palace and given a generous salary. Now as you can imagine, the followers of Shaptai Tzvi were stunned, absolutely stunned. And initially they simply denied reports. They insisted that the reports of his conversion were a lie. It wasn't true they insisted but the truth began to emerge as people saw him publicly walking around as the palace guard and as a Muslim. This shock, as you can imagine, was extremely painful for the Jewish people. Number one, because it was so incredibly unexpected, it went totally against the grain of everything they expected and were hoping for but there was something else that was going on. Many Jewish people who expected imminent redemption began taunting their non-Jewish neighbors that they would soon be payback for all of the misery that they caused the Jewish people. Now these same Jewish people have egg on their faces. Some Jewish people converted to Islam. It's reported that 300 families followed Shaptai Tzvi into Islam. Some converted to Christianity and some committed suicide. That's how terrible this shock was. Many Jews ended up just simply giving up their faith in the coming of a Messiah who would redeem them. It just seemed like this was a bad belief to harbor. And so the faith and the belief in the coming of a Messiah to redeem the Jewish people weakened among the Jewish people. As well, there was a weakening of traditional Judaism in the wake of this catastrophe. People began to believe that they will have to be the ones to bring about the redemption on their own. And so rather than relying on God and relying on God sending the Messiah to save the Jewish people, there was a growing movement saying that no, we will be the ones to bring about the redemption. And you have here the roots of what we would refer to as secular Zionism. Zionism, as you know, in a way is a messianic movement. Now Nathan of Gaza went into extreme damage control at this point and numerous theories were churned out to explain away what happened. Some said that the person who converted was not really Shaptai Tzvi. He's a lookalike or a phantom. And that the real Shaptai Tzvi ascended up to heaven and he will soon return to redeem us. Now years ago, many of you are aware that downtown we have a historic synagogue called Anshe-Minsk synagogue. It's a very old synagogue and it receives visitors from places outside of Toronto who come to the city and they wanna visit a place like the congregation there. And the Rabbi Rabbi Shmuel Spiro takes people, tourists on tours of the synagogue. So one year he called me up and he said, look Rabbi, go back, I'm gonna be away, but there's a group coming from Nebraska of high school students from a Christian high school and they're coming to Toronto and they wanna see a synagogue and they said, can we come to your synagogue? And I said, sure you can visit. And so he asked me if I would lead the tour that day. So I showed the students what the synagogue, I showed them here's the holy ark that has the Torah scrolls, there are the prayer books, there's the balcony of the women's section and I basically explained what happens in the synagogue and I didn't speak for that long and I just asked, are there any questions? And one young woman raises her hand and she says, I have a question. And I said, what's your question? She said, what does Judaism teach about false messiahs? And I have to remember this is a Christian high school and I felt a little bit queasy, what am I gonna say to them? So I told them the story of Shabtai Tzvi. I told them the story about this person who claimed to be the messiah, but at the end he ends up converting to Islam and his followers, some of them say, no the one that converted, it's not really Shabtai Tzvi, it's a double, but the real one went up to heaven and he's gonna come down to redeem us. The whole group of students started laughing, they broke out and laughed her. Their teacher said to them, what are you laughing about? That's how our religion got started. Other people explained that Shabtai Tzvi converted in order to redeem the fallen sparks. We believe that the messiah is to redeem the world from evil, but it was explained that in order for the messiah to redeem the world from evil he's gotta fight the evil and in order to fight the evil he has to go down into it and so his conversion was basically to go down into a very dark place spiritually in order to do battle with the dark forces. Some of Shabtai Tzvi's supporters, actually many of them were former conversos, people who escaped from persecution in Spain and Portugal by pretending to convert to Christianity while on the inside remaining loyal to Judaism. And these people believe that just like they underwent false conversions, they believe that the messiah himself would also go through a false conversion. So they believe that Shabtai Tzvi, that's the real Shabtai Tzvi and he did convert but he doesn't really mean it. Deep down inside he's still a loyal Jew. And others suggested that Shabtai Tzvi converted because of the sins of Israel. They explained that the Purim crisis, we're gonna have Purim just in two weeks and the Talmud says that the Purim crisis took place because the Jewish people at that time sinned by partaking in the party of King Achashverosh and that Esther who became the queen, this Jewish princess, had to live in the king's palace and according to one view in the Talmud she even had to eat non-coacher food and so just like Esther who was going to redeem the Jewish people had to live in this non-Jewish palace and eat kosher food so too Shabtai Tzvi, the redeemer of the Jewish people had to live in the non-Jewish palace of the Muslims and live a sinful life, not observing Jewish law. Now Shabtai maintained a mysterious profile after his conversion. In public he seemed to carry on as a religious Muslim but in private he maintained some Jewish practices and still claimed to be the Messiah. His wife Sarah converted shortly after he did but the Sultan finally caught on to his games. He was spotted observing certain Jewish practices and finally the Sultan had him banished to Montenegro in Albania or Yugoslavia and he lived the last 10 years of his life in isolation dying at the age of 50 on September 17th, 1676 which on that year was Yom Kippur. Even after his death Nathan of Gaza insisted that it was all an illusion and that he would be back. Just as Clive Doyle insisted that one day David Koresh will be back so Nathan of Gaza insisted that one day his sinful Messiah would come back as well. Nathan ended up dying four years later. Now one of the things that puzzles many, many people is how could the Jewish people have so deeply fallen for this whole thing? So many blame the terrible suffering that preceded the affair on rendering the Jewish people vulnerable to a messianic expectation and anticipation. First there was the expulsion from both Spain and Portugal between 1492 and 1497. That was an incredible uprooting of huge parts of the Jewish community. In 1516 the first Jewish ghetto was established in Venice, Italy. During the entire time period of the Middle Ages there was tremendous persecution by the church against Jewish people. Shortly before this Martin Luther who started the reform the Reformation initially looking to be friendly toward the Jewish people engaged after a number of years in their own terrible persecutions of Jewish people. And again shortly before Shoptaitz fees proclamation of himself as Messiah we had the Chemelnitsky pogroms which some people estimate wiped out one third of European Jewry. Then in 1655 there was the Russian Swedish War where tens of thousands of Jews perished as well. So some scholars insist that the reason Jewish people became so vulnerable to jumping on the bandwagon of someone claiming to be the Messiah was that after all of this terrible suffering and persecution they were desperate. They were desperate for someone to come and redeem them. Other scholars blame the widespread popularity and then abuse of Kabbalistic teaching in the middle of the 16th century. In Swat Israel, Ramosha Kordevero and the Arizal and the Chaim Vital and other scholars popularized what became known as Lurianic Kabbalah which dealt with many of the themes that we know later on were manipulated by Nathan of Gaza and Shoptaitz fee himself to justify the irregularities and the violations of traditional Judaism that their movement engaged in. And this spread of these Kabbalistic ideas was able to again justify the spread of this movement and give it a haksher, give it some credibility in the eyes of Jewish people. Lurianic Kabbalah dealt heavily with themes of exile and redemption. And so it helped spread a fever for anticipating redemption and the coming of the Messiah in the Jewish world which again fed into this tremendous messianic expectation. As well, there were many that predicted that based upon the passage in the Zohar there was an expectation that the Messiah would arrive in the year 1648. That was by the way the year that Shoptaitz fee began to speak about himself in messianic terms. Now another theory that was popularized by Professor Matt Goldish recently was that the main thing that propelled this movement forward were the incredible spectacles of seeing people falling all over in ecstatic prophetic trances. We know that Nathan of Gaza did this. He would collapse and he would froth at the mouth and he would writhe on the floor and he would speak in tongues and people that saw this were shocked and it was very dramatic. And what happened was that this kind of behavior actually took place in many parts of the Jewish world. And not just in the Jewish world by the way, when you think about it, this became very popular in many parts of the world. The shakers and the Quakers and Pentecostal Christians. It's not that unusual for people to manifest this kind of speaking in tongues and going into prophetic trances. But it's very dramatic. And so Professor Goldish suggests that the ecstasy and writhing on the floor with eyes rolled back into the back of their heads was extremely dramatic and it charged people to realize something must be going on here. Now the movement did not die out. Didn't die out in five years and 10 years. The Shabtai Tzvi, the Sabatian movement, lasted, it extended itself well over 100 years. Some Jewish people lived their lives as traditional members of the Jewish community but secretly maintained the belief that Shabtai Tzvi was the Messiah, which meant that you could be in a synagogue and there could be a holy rabbi sitting next to you and you think that this person is the holiest person in the city, but in private, he was praying the Shabtai Tzvi and he was praying that Shabtai Tzvi, the Messiah should return. As a result of this, you had people like Revyakov Emden who dedicated his life to ferreting out secret believers in Shabtai Tzvi. Decades after the debacle happened and he would sometimes point his finger at innocent people. One of the greatest Jews that ever lived, Ramoshechaim Ruzato from Italy, was accused of being a secret Sabatian. Think about it, not long after Shabtai Tzvi, you have a young, brilliant scholar, Ramoshechaim Ruzato, studying a lot of Kabbalah, gathering a group of followers and claiming that he's having visions of angels and the spirits of people like Elijah the prophet speaking to him. And immediately there were people who suggested this is just Shabtai Tzvi 2.0. One of the most tragic episodes in Jewish history was the incredible fallout which led to Revyakov Emden accusing the Godel Hador of his time, the greatest rabbinic scholar of his time as a secret Sabatian, Revyanneson Ibishitz. Now, if you can imagine, these two were just about the greatest rabbis of their time, two of the greatest rabbis of their time and they were embroiled in a bitter, horrible, disgusting feud that didn't just involve them. It involved the entire Jewish community. There were backers of Revyakov Emden, there were backers of Yoneson Ibishitz and it tore apart entire communities all as a result of Revyakov Emden suspecting that Revyanneson Ibishitz was a secret Sabatian. Apparently, Revyavishitz was a Kabbalist and he would write amulets for people to help heal them and there were accusations that these amulets, when you opened them up and you were able to decipher them, they contained prayers to Shabtitesfi. And you had expert testimony on both sides insisting that, yes, they are secret codes indicating Shabtitesfi and other great experts saying, no, not at all. And to this day, it's not clear if Revyanneson Ibishitz was or was not a follower of Shabtitesfi. It seems that most traditional Jews insist that he wasn't. We know for sure that his son was. One of his sons for sure was, apparently his son repented later in life. And some people will say, many scholars will say that indeed, Revyanneson Ibishitz himself was a secret Sabatian. There is a beautiful little story that brings a nice little closure to their terrible debate because when Revyanneson Ibishitz pre-deceased Revyakov Emden, when it came time for Revyakov Emden to be buried after he died, there was no other open graves in the cemetery except for one. And it just so happened that the place where Revyakov Emden was buried was literally right next door to his Bablukta, Revyanneson Ibishitz. And there are a number of tales that are told that he received messages later in life. Revyakov received messages that really cleared Revyanneson Ibishitz in his eyes. Again, these stories are not so clear, but this whole incident was a terrible, terrible fallout from the Shoptaitzfi disaster. One of the negative fallouts of the Shoptaitzfi catastrophe, as I mentioned, was that Kabbalah itself became somewhat suspect. And this wasn't entirely hard to understand, but it certainly wasn't healthy. Meaning the problem was not Kabbalah. The problem was the abuse of Kabbalah. And one of the problems was that there were students like Nathan of Gaza and like Shoptaitzfi who didn't study Kabbalah with a master. They studied on their own. And the word Kabbalah means that which is received. You have to learn Kabbalah from a master that teaches it to you. You can't just learn these difficult doctrines on your own because they're very, very easily misunderstood and distorted. And so one of the realities that we have to understand and we have this in the Jewish world today, there are plenty of strange people in the Jewish world today causing a lot of problems because they are so-called teachers of Kabbalah. As the Zen Buddhists would say, he who says doesn't know and he who knows doesn't say. Generally people who are great Kabbalists don't go around teaching it publicly. Now, there were many followers of Shoptaitzfi instead of remaining traditional Jews and secretly following Shoptaitzfi. There were many of his followers who publicly embraced Islam but secretly practiced Judaism. And this group was known as the Dunmet. And the Dunmet still exists to this day in Turkey. Some estimate between 4,000 and 100,000 of these Dunmet descendants are alive today. However, most of them have become pretty much secular, meaning there are probably very few if any died in the world real believers in Shoptaitzfi and followers of traditional Dunmet practices. But the Dunmet practices were very strange. We know that they would only marry themselves. They did conduct very ritualized sexual orgies and they did maintain some Jewish practices and a steadfast belief that Shoptaitzfi was the Messiah. One of the most grotesque developments coming out of the Dunmet was at a later time a movement that was started by Jacob Frank. Jacob Frank met some of the Dunmet and he came to believe that he was a reincarnation of Shoptaitzfi and he started a very, very depraved sect with his daughter Eva that practiced all kinds of sexual abominations. He ended up with his sect converting to Christianity and actually telling the Christian church that the blood libels are true and the Jews do kill Christian babies and use their blood for Passover matzah. Now the reaction of the Jewish community after the Shoptaitzfi incident was basically to sweep it under the rug and not deal with it. In 1977, I drove my car over a cliff in Pennsylvania and I was able to, you know, I survived that accident. I used to be 6'5", like Julius. But otherwise I walked out without a scratch and I forced myself to get back into the car to drive and I did and then many, many, many years later I started having panic attacks driving on highways and some person suggested to me that your problems go back is that when you went through that traumatic experience, you didn't deal with it. You basically buried it. You didn't go to a therapist. You didn't talk to anyone about it. You basically toughed it out and you made yourself drive and then it came back to bite you. And so the Jewish community basically did the same thing at the time of Shoptaitzfi. It was so traumatic. They just didn't want to think about it. They didn't want to deal with it. And so everyone tried to forget about it and move on and yet it's very hard to do that. There are some who suggest that the Baal Shem Tov and the Hasidic movement came as a corrective of the Shoptaitzfi movement. I just want to end with one final thought. There are many things that we can learn from the Shoptaitzfi incident. And I mentioned already the potential abuses of Kabbalah. But I want to just conclude by speaking about the potential dangers of the messianic idea in Judaism. When there is this belief that we will be redeemed by a messiah, it's not so strange that people who are phonies and charlatans will step into that slut. I've got a book at home that's called 50 False Messiahs in Jewish History. We've had many false messiahs, many of them. And normally these movements do not turn out good. Now it's not coincidental, I believe, that when we go through our Tanakh, we find very few references to the person of the messiah. You go through our entire scriptures. There may be only a handful, seven or eight, explicit references to a descendant of David who will one day assume the position of the king of Israel and he will rule at the time of the utopian future. But for the most part, our Bible doesn't focus on this person of the messiah. What our scriptures focus on is the messianic age. We have hundreds of prophecies in the Bible that speak about what the world will look like when the messiah is here. That's what's really important. What's important about the messiah is that he is going to be the catalyst and the leader of our people at a special time. And that time is what's crucial. And it's that time which basically certifies whether someone is or isn't the messiah. That was the problem with Jesus 2,000 years ago that none of the messianic prophecies came true in his day. And so in order to continue, the movement of Christianity had to redefine the concept of the messiah to basically say the messiah is supposed to die. He dies to atone for the sins of the world. And it's what led the saboteons to redefine the whole concept of the messiah to say the messiah was supposed to convert to another religion. That's why I believe what we have to focus on primarily is the messianic age is what the Bible focuses on. It's interesting that the Talmud says that at the end of our lives, we're going to be given a final exam. The tractate Shabbat 31A says that we're gonna have a number of questions that will be asked by the heavenly court. And one of the questions is gonna be, see, piece of Yeshua, did you expectantly await the coming of the salvation, the coming of the redemption? It doesn't say we're gonna be asked, did you await the coming of the messiah? It's really the same thing. But I think it's significant that what we're gonna be asked is specifically about, did you await the redemption? Did you await for a transformed world? And I think that's what we're being instructed to focus on. In Avotur of Nassan, Revyokhanah ben Zakkai taught, if you have a sapling in your hand and someone tells you the messiah has arrived, first plant the sapling and then go to welcome the messiah. We're supposed to live our lives. And what's important at foremost is to be obedient to God and to await the coming of the redemption that our Bible promises us. The messiah will be God willing, the catalyst that will bring that about. But ultimately what's primarily important is the redemption more than the redeemer. Okay, that's basically all I had to share for tonight. If there are comments or heckling or questions, I will do my best to entertain them. I wanna confess, by the way, I just wanna make another confession. Probably there are few people in Jewish history that are as well documented as Shoptite's Fee. The literature about Shoptite's Fee and the spin-off problems is immense, absolutely immense. And one of the reasons was, this was slightly after the printing press came out, everybody was writing about it, everybody wrote about it. And I told myself to prepare for this class tonight, I have to read the Bible on this topic, which is a 1000 page tome by Gershom Sholom, who is considered to be the leading academic scholar in both Kabbalah, so to speak, and especially the Sabatian movement. And while I had good intentions and I began the book, my problem was that I was taking very copious notes and it just became impossible to finish. I'm hoping in the near future to make a seum. But anyone interested in this topic, if you wanna really knock yourself out, Gershom Sholom's 1000 page monstrosity on Shoptite's Fee, The Mystical Messiah.