A NEW BOOK ON SABBATEANISM is reviewed in the Forward:

False Messiahs and Whirling Dervishes:
A Scholar's Fresh Take on an Old Topic
By Allan Nadler
July 9, 2004

The Sabbatean Prophets
By Matt Goldish
Harvard University Press, 240 pages, $39.95.

The following dire, revolutionary proclamation issues forth from a charismatic provocateur in Gaza:

"None will be saved from these tribulations except those dwelling in this place. The [very] name of the place [connoting strength] expresses her nature. And with the advent of her redemption, strength will spread and the people of Gaza will act in this strength."

The response of the leader of the Gazans' enemy, both to this message and to those Jews residing in Gaza, is to remind them that Gaza is a place unworthy of triggering apocalyptic violence, since it is "technically outside the borders of the [biblical] Land of Israel."

At the same time, in a nearby Arab country, classified information, laden with potentially devastating secrets, is conveyed via a shady Middle Eastern businessman named Chelebi.

The latest news from Israel and Iraq? Hardly!

The proclamation from Gaza was issued not by a leader of Hamas, but rather by the 17th-century Jewish kabbalist Nathan of Gaza, who in 1665 became the major prophet of the infamous false messiah from Izmir, Shabbetai Zevi. The proclamation's rebuke was not part of Ariel Sharon's argument for evacuating Jewish settlers from Gaza, but of a ruling by Rabbi Jacob Sasportas, the most outspoken and tireless opponent of the Sabbatean messianic outbreak. And the Chelebi in question was not the now-disgraced White House confidant, Ahmed Chalabi, but rather Raphael Chelebi, an Egyptian Jewish businessman who was the first outsider to whom Nathan of Gaza revealed the "secret" that the messiah had arrived.

Matt Goldish traces these tidbits and many other riveting developments in his new book, "The Sabbatean Prophets," a fresh scholarly re-evaluation of the events that led to the wildfire-rapid spread across the Jewish world of belief in Shabbetai Zevi as the Jews' long-awaited king and savior.

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