ŠABBĒTHAJ ZĒBHĪ. – Jewish pseudo-messiah, born in Smyrna on 7 July 1626, died in Berat (Albania) on 30 September 1675. As a young man he devoted himself cabbala (v.), but soon showed signs of mental imbalance. In 1650 a deceiver led him to believe that he was the messiah, and later Abraham Nathan Benjamin Ashkenazi (known as Nathan of Gaza or Nathan the prophet) firmly rooted him in this conviction (if Š. was the messiah, Nathan was Elijah). The people were seized by fanatical enthusiasm for him, while the rabbis regarded him with suspicion, considering him mentally ill. Indeed, his extravagances went beyond all bounds, and the Turkish authorities arrested him. Unable to endure prison life, he denied that he was the messiah and converted to Islam.
Sabbatianism, the movement of Š.’s followers, threatened to drag Judaism into religious anarchy; it was the first case in which ideas of a cabbalistic character set about disintegrating its foundations. Since they had to justify Š.’s apostasy at all costs, the Sabbatians drew a clear distinction between inner reality and historical reality, between the inner and the outer world, entirely to the latter’s disadvantage. Whereas earlier cabbalism tended to present the outer world as the symbol of the inner world, an antithesis was now established between them. The historical fact of Š.’s apostasy lost all value when it was presented as the only act capable of saving the entire people from the fate of becoming Marranos (the name given in Spain to those who abandoned Judaism only outwardly, while remaining attached to it in their hearts). The messiah had been obliged to accept this sacrifice, since he was the only soul capable of enduring such a trial without suffering harm from II. The danger to Judaism was great, because the outer world devalued by Sabbatianism was represented by rabbinism; it came to be said that the Töräh had to dissolve, like the seed in the earth, in order then to reveal itself in all its messianic glory.
Š.’s success is to be sought in the intensification of messianic interest that followed the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Two currents emerged within Sabbatianism: one held that the messiah’s conduct was to serve as an example for everyone and maintained the sanctity of sin, which could be conquered only by plunging into it; the other held, instead, that Š.’s conduct was justifiable only in his own case. There were two cases of mass apostasy: one on the part of the adherents of the sect called by the Turks the Apostates, who converted to Islam in Salonica in 1683; and the other on the part of the Frankists (v. JACOB) in Galicia in 1759, who converted to Catholicism. The Frankist movement is connected with Sabbatianism and, because of its anti-rabbinical spirit, is regarded as the remote origin of the reform movement that arose in Germany in the eighteenth century.