The Lost Messiah

by John Freely sketched

"Sabbatai Sevi was and remains one of history's most controversial and enigmatic religious figures. It was he, in the seventeenth century, who used the mysticism of the Kabbalah to convince vast numbers of Jews throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa that he was the long-awaited messiah. Many of his followers were dismayed, however, when, on threat of execution from the Turkish Sultan, Sevi converted to Islam - though many continued to believe in him. Even today there are a few Sabbatians who maintain the belief that their messiah will return and lead them to redemption.". "In The Lost Messiah, John Freely follows Sevi's trail across Europe and into Africa, tracing the cult that grew up around this "false messiah," as he is often called, and within Judaism. Freely evokes the vanished world of the seventeenth-century diaspora in the Ottoman Empire, as the narrative travels from Sevi's birthplace in Izmir, on the Aegean coast of Turkey, to the ghettos of Venice and Rome, the