HERESIOLOGY

Tunisian Muslim community turns to AI to save heritage

Djerba (Tunisia) (AFP) – In an unassuming house on the Tunisian island of Djerba, Said al-Barouni embarked on a mission to safeguard his Muslim community's little-known heritage, using technology and AI to save age-old religious manuscripts.


Issued on: 05/06/2024 -

Said al-Barouni prepares to scan old manuscripts at his library © FETHI BELAID / AFP

The 74-year-old librarian and member of the Islamic offshoot Ibadism took up the reins of his family's six-generation library in the 1960s and has been in a race against time to preserve whatever Ibadi manuscripts he can find.

"Look at what Djerba's humidity has done to this one," he said, his gloved hand bearing a tarnished piece of paper inside a climate-controlled room.

Today, the library holds over 1,600 ancient Ibadi texts and books on various topics, including astrology and medicine, dating from as early as 1357.

But Barouni is still on a quest to gather more literature, which has been scattered for centuries among families after they resigned themselves to practising their faith in secret.

After disagreeing on the succession following the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD, Ibadis were considered Kharijites, an early divergent branch of Islam whose adherents were labelled heretics.

They fled to remote areas in modern-day Oman -- where most Ibadis today live -- as well as Libya, Tunisia and Algeria.

In North Africa, they established a capital in Tihert, today's Algerian city of Tiaret, but their newfound peace was short-lived when the Shiite Fatimid dynasty swept through the region in the 10th century and chased the Ibadis out of their main urban hubs.

'Invisibility'

"In order to preserve their existence, Ibadis took refuge on the island of Djerba, in the desert in Algeria, or in the difficult (to access) Nafusa mountains in Libya," Zohair Tighlet, an author and expert on Ibadism, told AFP.

They were faced with two options, he added, "to take on a never-ending war and disappear, like other minorities, or accept a state of invisibility and use it to begin a cultural rebirth".

The manuscripts are dusted and scanned for digital copies, which Barouni believes is "today's only solution" to preserve the old texts 

© FETHI BELAID / AFP

Today most of their manuscripts are held in family libraries, said Barouni.

"All families in Djerba have libraries, but a lot of the manuscripts were sold or exchanged among different people."

In the small conservation room, heaps of weathered books stand amid the humming of ozone generators, which help mitigate paper deterioration by preventing harmful organisms such as mould from taking hold.

The manuscripts are dusted and scanned for digital copies, which Barouni believes is "today's only solution" to preserve the old texts.

Because old Arabic cursive is challenging to modern readers, Barouni also started using Zinki, an AI software able to read and simplify the ancient writings.

For Feras Ben Abid, a London-based Tunisian software engineer who founded Zinki, the tool enables access to a myriad of manuscripts the average reader couldn't decipher.

It is also a way to "change misconceptions some have had on certain topics", like Ibadi heritage.

'Against tyrants'

Ibadism has historically incurred the wrath of both Sunni and Shia rulers, such as the Umayyad and Fatimid dynasties respectively, by adhering to the idea that any Muslim, regardless of lineage, can become the next leader after the death of the prophet.

"They call us Kharijites, as if we were against the religion," said Al-Barouni. "But no, we were against tyrants."

Presenting themselves as "democrats of Islam", Ibadis have a tradition of entrusting a council of elders to oversee the community's social and political issues "with the goal of preserving Ibadite society", said Tighlet.

That system was brought to an end under the French protectorate of Tunisia.

Those in present-day Tunisia found safety in Djerba -- a haven for minorities that was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites last year for its unique settlement pattern.

Barouni uses AI software able to read and simplify the ancient writings 

© FETHI BELAID / AFP

The resort island is also home to a Christian Catholic group and one of the region's biggest Jewish communities outside of Israel, with over 1,500 members of the faith.

Nestled on their Mediterranean island, the Ibadis settled for a new and quiet life, contributing to its modern-day cultural kaleidoscope and accounting for two-thirds of its population, said Tighlet.

Ibadis "brought a particular urban theory, which was among the reasons the island was listed in UNESCO's World Heritage Sites," added the expert.

They adopted an unpretentious and frugal way of living, often reflected in their architecture with white-washed, nondescript mosques, small minarets, and no outward-looking windows.

Some of their mosques were built underground, "both for safety and symbolic reasons", whereas other temples rim the island's shore in order to remain on the look-out for enemy ships.

© 2024 AFP

HERESIOLOGY

Over 100 members of persecuted religious minority held at Turkish border

Members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light seeking asylum in the European Union have been detained in Turkey since May.

Members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light arrive at the Turkish-Bulgarian border on May 24, 2023. Photo courtesy of Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light

September 13, 2023

By 

Kathryn Post

(RNS) — On May 24, 104 members of a minority religious group arrived at the Turkish-Bulgarian border expecting to find asylum. Instead, they were met with clubs and gunfire.

“They started getting attacked by the Turkish border guards. They started beating them with batons,” said Alexandra Foreman, a United Kingdom-based member who was at the scene. “And it was very much like a war zone. There was blood everywhere.”

Almost four months later, the asylum-seekers — including more than 20 children — are still being detained in Turkey, hoping to make their way into the European Union. The asylum-seekers say they left their countries of origin due to religious persecution. They are members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, a small minority religious group with thousands of members from around the world, many from a Muslim background. 

Members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, which was established in 1999, see their faith as an extension of Islam. They believe one of their leaders, Abdullah Hashem Aba Al-Sadiq, is the “Mahdi,” a messianic figure and divine messenger who will bring salvation.

Abdullah Hashem Aba Al-Sadiq. Photo courtesy of Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light

The group is not connected with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a group of 10 million to 20 million believers called Ahmadis who have also been persecuted for their beliefs in Muslim-majority countries.

The asylum-seekers presented themselves at the Kapikule border crossing point hoping to gain entry into the European Union by way of Bulgaria, but were instead herded onto buses and taken to a Turkish police station. Witnesses, including Foreman, reported that at the station, several group members were beaten, and women and children were forced to stand outside — without sleep, and without sitting or lying down — for three days.

On May 29, the group was transferred to the Edirne migration center, where witnesses reported being crammed into rooms and having insufficient water and soap, no sanitary pads for women, poor food and inadequate medical care. Some reported beatings and sexual harassment.

Foreman, a freelancer who was at the border to create a documentary, was arrested along with the group and was released after two weeks.

“The weeks that I spent there was just so horrible. It was the worst experience I’ve ever been through. It was completely traumatizing,” said Foreman, who is now back in the United Kingdom. “We want to get them out and safe, somewhere they can be safe to practice their faith. It’s crazy that in 21st century they can’t practice faith peacefully.”

All but three of the members have been ordered to return to their countries of origin, including Thailand, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Algeria and Azerbaijan, as well as the Palestinian territories. However, experts say these places are unsafe for the faith members.

Turkish border guards use batons on members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light when at the Turkish-Bulgarian border on May 24, 2023. Photo courtesy of Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light

“These followers are from a number of Islamic countries, and some are particularly brutal toward apostates,” said Paul Diamond, a religious freedom lawyer in the United Kingdom. He told Religion News Service that regardless of how people view the religion or how small the group is, the believers at the Turkish border are “in a perilous situation” and “have a right to religious freedom.”

Staying in Turkey isn’t an option for the group either, according to Diamond. “They have no status in Turkey. And they don’t want to claim asylum in Turkey because that’s an Islamic country. It doesn’t solve the problem.”

Willy Fautré, director of the Brussels-based organization Human Rights Without Frontiers, has been advocating for the detained members to receive humanitarian visas in European countries. He plans to plead their case at the annual Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe human rights conference in Warsaw, Poland, next month.

“We will push day after day, week after week, so that they finally accept them as immigrants in need of special protection because of their religious practices,” Fautré told RNS.

On July 4, a group of U.N. experts, including Nazila Ghanea, special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and Felipe González Morales, special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, issued a statement asking Turkey not to deport the members.

“Since the inception of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light in 1999, its members have been labelled as heretics and infidels and are often subjected to threats, violence, and illegal detention,” the experts said. “They are particularly at risk of detention due to blasphemy laws, in violation of their right to freedom of religion or belief.”

In August, Turkish officials responded that deportation decisions had been conducted lawfully, though the deportation procedures have been halted pending an appeal of the decisions.

---

RELATED: Three anniversaries will force issues of religious persecution at the UN General Assembly

---

The group’s leader, Aba Al-Sadiq, published “The Goal of the Wise” in 2022, a book of teachings faith members view as their gospel. Many of the faith’s teachings, including its affirmation of reincarnation, the belief that we are living in the end times and an assertion that the Kaaba is in Petra, Jordan, are viewed by outsiders as controversial.

In an April 2023 sermon, Aba Al-Sadiq declared that he is the messenger sent by God to invite humankind into the final covenant with God, a covenant that would save them from the imminent punishment of humanity via illness, meteors and global wars.

Abdullah Hashem Aba Al-Sadiq preaches in April 2023. Video screen grab

Hadil El-Khouly, the human rights outreach coordinator for the group, said the faith is often perceived as being radical because of its progressive teachings, including that women are not mandated to wear a headscarf, members don’t need to do the five daily prayers and the group is open to LGBTQ people. (These beliefs are held by some members of mainstream Muslim groups as well.)

“I would say it is incredibly liberating, it is profoundly inclusive, and it’s everything that I, as a human rights activist and person who seeks justice and freedom and peace in the world, was looking for,” El-Khouly told RNS.

Foreman said that in Turkey, asylum-seekers were interrogated about teachings in “The Goal of the Wise,” and some were sexually assaulted on the grounds that the faith accepts LGBTQ members.

“The aggression was just so extreme,” she said, adding that LGBTQ people were among those detained.

Members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light community mingle around a bonfire. Photo courtesy of Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light

On Aug. 22, after the arrest of eight members of the faith in Malaysia who protested in favor of LGBTQ rights, Aba Al-Sadiq released a video statement explicitly welcoming LGBTQ people who “believe in what we believe” to the faith. He had previously argued for the inclusion of LGBTQ people in his 2022 book.

One U.K.-based LGBTQ member of the faith, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, told RNS that growing up, he’d been taught his sexual orientation doomed him to hellfire. Though he’s now been a member of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light for years, he was encouraged by the video announcement. “I know what many people go through, how alone they can feel, how hopeless. The rates of suicide testify to this. I was extremely happy to know that they can find out that they are welcome into religion and to God and into faith without compromising their own person.”

HERESIOLOGY

 Opinion

How a mysterious Indian religious figure united Hindus and Muslims

The life and words of Shirdi Sai Baba could prove to be an inspiration to those seeking to rebuild the bridges between followers of both faiths.

Shirdi Sai Baba in an undated image. Photo courtesy Wikimedia/Creative Commons

August 4, 2023

By 

Murali Balaji

(RNS) — In recent years, India has seen growing tensions — and sometimes violence — between Hindus and the country’s large Muslim minority, often stoked by some of the country’s numerous political parties and extremist groups from both religions. The fraught relations between the two groups trace back centuries, from the persecution of Hindus and Sikhs by some Muslim rulers, to tensions perpetuated by the British in colonial India and the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.

But in the past, devotion united Indians of both faiths, as the story of a late-19th century and early 20th century Indian religious leader and his followers reminds us. 

Shirdi Sai Baba’s real name, birthdate and origins are unknown, but according to his Hindu and Muslim followers, he was born in the 1830s and followed an ascetic lifestyle from an early age, living under a neem tree and spending long hours in meditation. He wore Islamic garb but offered prayers at both the local mosque and temple.

Shirdi Sai Baba’s influence was monumental in shaping Indian spirituality. Sufi mystics praised how his idea of seeing divinity in all beings corresponded with their core philosophy and that of Advaita Hinduism, which preaches non-dualism between living beings and the Divine. Sai Baba influenced a Zoroastrian mystic, Meher Baba, who credited him with articulating a philosophy of looking inward for realization.

---

RELATED: How a small town in Wisconsin became home to four Dharmic houses of worship

---

Sai Baba was a proponent of “bhakti,” a feeling of intimate personal connection, and urged his followers to surrender themselves to the divine without getting caught up in the orthodoxy of rituals.

He encouraged both his Hindu and Muslim followers to read their respective holy texts to become the best versions of themselves. He rejected material offerings and spent his life in contemplation, eschewing orthodoxy. His life was chronicled by his followers in a book called “Shri Sai Satcharitra,” which was an important text to members of my family, a number of whom were devotees of Shirdi Sai Baba.

Shirdi Sai Baba in an undated image. Photo courtesy Wikimedia/Creative Commons

Shirdi Sai Baba preached the oneness of both Hindu and Muslim teachings by highlighting how both taught their followers to find the true realized versions of themselves. After his death in 1918, a Hindu temple in Shirdi was built that welcomed both Hindu and Muslim (and Zoroastrian) devotees.

Years later, a Hindu religious leader named Satya Sai Baba claimed to be an incarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba and preached the idea of “loving all and serving all,” a philosophy that drew hundreds of thousands of non-Indian followers from around the world. In fact, Satya Sai Baba became far more remembered in the West, particularly after influencing Americans such as Isaac Tigrett, the co-founder of Hard Rock Cafe, and the musician Alice Coltrane.

While Satya Sai Baba became an international celebrity, Shirdi Sai Baba was known more to locals and members of the Indian diaspora who were familiar with his life and teachings. For years, including in the decades after partition, Hindus and Muslims worshipped at the temple in Shirdi, and at least to a limited degree, Hindus and Muslims outside of India would attend ceremonies honoring his life or visit temples created in his honor.

Shirdi Sai Baba’s teachings brought together Hindus and Muslims of different castes as well. During times when lower-caste Hindus and lower-caste Muslims were frequently marginalized by upper-caste Hindus and upper-caste Muslims (known as Ashrafs), Shirdi Sai Baba rejected caste as anything grounded in religion.

---

RELATED: How John and Alice Coltrane’s music inspired a vision for American Hinduism

---

In recent years, however, the co-worshipping has diminished. Today, the vast majority of Shirdi Sai Baba devotees are Hindus, a product of a number of factors, including increased hostilities between followers of both faiths, calls by Indian Muslims to reject any reverence to any religious figures or deities except Allah, and a generational shift in how both Hindus and Muslims now practice their religions.

Still, Shirdi Sai Baba left an indelible mark on both the syncretic nature of Indian spirituality and communal harmony. His life and words could prove to be an inspiration to those seeking to rebuild the bridges between followers of both faiths.

(Murali Balaji is a journalist and a lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include “Digital Hinduism” and “The Professor and the Pupil,” a political biography of W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

HERESIOLOGY

Once upon a time, eager acolytes thought their false Messiah could make their country great again — sound familiar?

On the strange but insistent parallels between Sabbatai Sevi of Smyrna and Donald Trump of Queens



Donald Trump and Sabbatai Sevi — separated by centuries; joined by some common themes. Photo by Getty Images/Wikimedia Commons


By Robert Zaretsky

August 8, 2023

The Sabbatian movement, one of the most convulsive episodes in Jewish history, was launched 375 years ago. It is named after Sabbatai Sevi, a young native of Smyrna (present-day Izmir), who in 1648 announced that he was the Messiah. Sabbateanism, the movement hatched by this epiphany, ranks among the more striking examples of millenarianism, a worldview that anticipates the world’s end — tomorrow, if not today — when the forces of good and evil will meet in an apocalyptic clash, leading to a world of perfect peace and prosperity.

Sabbatai Sevi certainly had an eager audience for his claim. In some ways, 1648 was the best of times for European Jewry. The Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War, created an independent Netherlands, which proceeded to become a haven of tolerance for Jews across the continent. In other ways, though, 1648 was the worst of times for European Jewry. Under the leadership of Bogdan Chmelnicki, the Cossacks, launching their war against their Polish rulers, torched and terrorized Jewish villages across the region. And it was also the strangest of times, thanks to this self-proclaimed Messiah from Smyrna whose credibility was strengthened by a Kabbalistic prediction that a Messiah would appear that very year.

Even stranger, perhaps, is that while Sabbatai Sevi died in 1676, as a convert to Islam, the apocalyptic worldview he represented remains with us to this very day. Nearly half a millennium after Sevi’s life and death, we are again living through a millenarian movement, one as apocalyptic as that of the Sabbatian movement.

A new Messiah

This, at least, is what a reader might take away from two of European Jewry’s most imaginative minds, Gershom Scholem and Isaac Bashevis Singer. It seems the two men never met, but both spent their lives exploring the world of Jewish mysticism. (When asked what made him Jewish, Allen Ginsberg cited his love of the “bohemian mysticism of Scholem and Singer.”) Singer and Scholem were both especially taken, observed the Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse, “to the frenzy of the Sabbatian movement.” Such frenzy, both men also grasped, was not limited to a single place, time and people. Instead, it was a potential that resided in all of us, capable of erupting given the right conditions.

This awareness infuses Scholem’s magisterial work Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676, first published in Hebrew in 1957 and translated into English in 1973. (Re-issued as a Princeton Classic in 2016, it runs exactly 1000 pages, preceded by a critical and lucid introduction by Yaacob Dweck.) Though the title suggests a biography, the book is not really about Sabbatai Sevi, whom Scholem summarily diagnoses (and dismisses) as manic-depressive.

Gershom Scholem is the author of ‘Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah.’ Photo by Wikimedia Commons

With a doctorate in history from the University of Munich, Scholem was the wrong sort of doctor to make such a diagnosis. Moreover, it was a diagnosis based on centuries-old contemporary accounts of Sevi.

Nevertheless, Scholem was the right sort of doctor to offer a historical account that portrays Sevi as almost accidental to the history of Sabbateanism. What was essential, Scholem argues, was the role played by Nathan of Gaza. In 1665, this young and gifted Kabbalist, who had shortly before prophesized the arrival of the Messiah, met Sevi during the latter’s ramblings across the Middle East. According to a key account, Nathan “fell to the ground before Sevi,” convinced that the man who had been mostly shunned or ignored by Jewish communities until then was indeed the Messiah.

The rest is the stuff of history, partly because Nathan shaped that history. He was at once, in Scholem’s words, “the John the Baptist and the Paul of the new Messiah.” Or, as we might now say, Nathan was the crisis manager for a Messiah who, when the sultan gave him the choice between death or conversion, plumped for the latter. Expecting redemption at any moment, the thousands of Jews who had flocked to Sevi were dumbfounded. Had they been sold a bill of soteriological goods?

To survive a leader’s act of apostasy, whether political or theological, a movement needs both a base filled with fanatical devotion and a front office led by a skilled spinmeister. More than up to the task, Nathan sought to reassure Sevi’s followers that the Kabbalist texts made clear the “necessity” of this apostasy. In short, Nathan warned them not to believe not just the Messiah’s many enemies, but what witnesses saw with their own eyes. For the faithful who hold fast to their leader, “they will taste celestial delights.” That they never did hardly dampened the enthusiasm of Sevi’s base; if anything, the fact that Sevi seemed to be a loser made his followers’ conviction that he was a winner all the stronger.

More than two decades before Scholem published his book, Singer had already anticipated his findings. In 1933, he published Satan in Goray in a Warsaw literary journal while still living in his native Poland. It is, Wisse believes, Singer’s best novel. Published the same year Hitler came to power in Germany and Stalin launched the famine in Ukraine, the novel is certainly Singer’s most prescient work.


It is also much shorter than Scholem’s. In barely 200 pages, Singer unfolds the story of Goray, a Jewish village ravaged by the Cossacks under Chmelnicki. “They slaughtered one very hand, flayed men alive, murdered small children, violated women and afterward ripped open their bellies and sewed cats inside.” When those who fled eventually returned, they buried the bones of those who had remained, but they could not bury the memory of what had happened.

In Satan in Goray, Isaac Bashevis Singer, pictured here in 1968 outside the Forward Building, depicted a land gripped by Messianic fervor.

 Photo by Getty Images

The massacres, the narrator drily notes, “were the birth-pangs of the Messiah.” The survivors of Goray are left wide open to a second invasion, one advertised in the Messianic message carried by the followers of Sevi. Blazing like a deadly pathogen through a vulnerable population, tales of miraculous events, each portending Messianic redemption, crackled through the shtetls and ghettos across the continent. These mysterious occurrences all led back to Sabbatai Sevi, a maker of miracles who, as one visitor to Goray affirms, “was as tall as a cedar” and whose face was too brilliant to behold.

The tidal wave of Messianic fervor washing over Goray, a devastated place desperate for hope, sweeps away those who, like Rabbi Benish, refuse to surrender their reason. What follows, depicted by Singer in crisp, nearly clinical language, is petrifying. Certain that redemption was around the corner, the villagers indulge in every imaginable excess, turning Goray into a place where any and all kinds of behavior, whether in the bedroom or the synagogue, was not just permitted, but expected.

Once news of Sevi’s apostasy reaches Goray, the depths of human behavior are fully plumbed. As factions arise between those who know Sevi is pulling the wool over the sultan’s eyes and those who know Sevi has pulled the wool over their own eyes, Goray slips into civil war. Moreover, there are differences even within the first camp, with one group concluding that if they are to be redeemed, they must first test the outermost limits of evil. They outdid one another in ways to desecrate the Sabbath, from practicing serial acts of adultery to the practice of adulterating kosher meat.
What Singer and Scholem understood about us

For both Singer and Scholem, Jewish mysticism is clearly so much more than a bohemian tendency. It was too enticing to take wonders in the writings of Isaac Luria, the founder of modern Kabbalah, and transform them into a howl against the way things had been for an entire people since time immemorial. Hence the promise of Lurianic mysticism, for it contains the promise of making the world whole again. But it also contains the potential of unmaking the world entirely. While Scholem warned against making any comparisons between events in the 17th and 20th centuries, he nevertheless did so toward the end of his life.

In an interview in 1980 with the historian David Biale, Scholem declared that the very same apocalyptic fervor that defined the Sabbatian movement also fired the Messianism of the Jewish settler movement.

As for Singer, historical events come and go, but human nature stays the same. In her introduction to Satan in Goray, Wisse quotes Singer’s recollection about arguments he had with his brother Israel over the idea of human progress. Always the optimist, Israel believed that “little by little, humankind would learn from its mistakes. My brother needed this faith in moral progress, although the facts refuted him left and right.”

His task, he then believed, was to “mercilessly destroy his humanistic illusions.” It was only years later, Singer concludes, that he came to regret his destruction of Israel’s beliefs, if only because he had nothing with which to replace them.

Despite Scholem’s warning, it is hard to ignore the many parallels we can draw between now and then. Just as Scholem, perhaps mistakenly, puts Sevi on the couch (and then in a straitjacket), we have done, perhaps no less mistakenly, with Donald Trump. While his followers vaunt him as the Messiah who will fix our country, too many specialists and non-specialists have put him on the couch (and then, it is hoped, in a prison cell).

Or, again, just as Nathan of Gaza devoted his life to putting Sevi’s outrageous acts and words into the proper Kabbalist context, Tucker of Fox, along with others, has devoted a career to putting Trump’s vile remarks in their proper context. Or, finally, just as Sevi’s apostasy reinforced the attachment of his followers — only a seeming paradox, since the psychic cost of admitting the truth was too great — so too with the support of Trump’s base, which deepens with each new indictment.

But these parallels either go only so far or not nearly far enough. They miss what both Scholem and Singer understood about us. As the narrator of Singer’s story concludes, “Goray, that small town at the edge of the world, was altered. No one recognized it any longer.” Perhaps we can say the same of our world today. But the funny thing is that, for those who try to keep their eyes open, they will always recognize the world for what it always, and unchangingly, was.

A professor at the University of Houston, Robert Zaretsky is also a culture columnist at the Forward. He is now writing a book on Stendhal and the art of living

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/08/heresiology-jewish-false-messiah-who.html

HERESIOLOGY

The Jewish false messiah who died a Muslim: The Shabbtai Zvi enigma

He began as an eccentric with unusual customs, sparked a revolution and drew masses of believers in the Jewish world; Even after his conversion to Islam and the subsiding euphoria around him, the Sabbatean movement influenced Hasidism, and some argue, Zionism as well

Shmuel Munitz|14:51

He only lived for 50 years, but in that tumultuous time, he became the greatest false messiah the Jewish world has known. Shabbtai Zvi, who caused euphoria throughout the Diaspora, has fascinated generations of scholars.

Shabbtai Zvi was born in 1626 in Izmir in the Ottoman Empire. The date we have for his birth is the 9th of Av, which fits nicely with the belief that the Messiah will be born on the day Jews remember the destruction of the two temples.

 
Shabbtai Zvi
(Illustration: from the book of Thomas Conan, Amsterdam, 1669)

As a young man, he studied Kabbalah, which greatly influenced the Sabbatean movement. Renowned scholar, Gershom Scholem, claims there is evidence to suggest that he suffered from bipolar disorder. His moments of transcendence and enlightenment followed by great sadness are well documented. At a certain point, Zvi declared himself to be the Messiah. He would publicly cry out God’s full four-lettered name, despite clear Halachic prohibition on doing so. At first, he wasn’t taken seriously.

He was forced to divorce his first two wives as he wouldn’t sleep with them and refused to touch them. His strange behavior, coupled with activities in contravention of Halacha and his messianic claims, led to his expulsion from Izmir. He found his way to Salonica where he “married” a Sefer Torah in a festive celebration including a chuppa. Yes, he really did. He was eventually thrown out of Salonica too.

In 1658, he arrived in Kushta (Istanbul), where he continued with his rather unusual customs including celebrating the three Pilgrimage Festivals of Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot in the same week. These practices, compounded by his announcement of the cancellation of mitzvot, led to the community of Kushta expelling him too. With his tail between his legs, he returned to Izmir and made it to Eretz Israel in 1662 by way of Rhodes and Cairo.

He married a woman named Sarah, a prostitute from Livorno, whom he arranged to have brought to Eretz Israel. In 1665, searching for a cure for his troubled soul, he traveled to Gaza to meet scholar and mystic, Nathan of Gaza. Instead of curing him, Nathan of Gaza convinced Shabbtai that he was indeed the Messiah. Every messiah needs one esteemed individual to believe in him.

Nathan, who claimed to have had a vision of Shabbtai as the Messiah before their meeting, took on the role of prophet regarding the Messianic issue: He sent letters declaring the good news all over the Jewish world. Masses, including prominent rabbis, were very excited about the news. Some communities even introduced a prayer for the wellbeing of Shabbtai Zvi, “Messiah of Israel”, referring to him as AMIRAH, a Hebrew acronym for the phrase "Our Lord and King, his Majesty be exalted" (Adoneinu Malkeinu Yarum Hodo). As the Sabbatean movement initially led to mass return to mitzvot, the opposition of rabbinical institutions was minimal. Until it inflated and got out of control.


Nathan of Gaza
(Illustration: from the book of Thomas Conan, Amsterdam, 1669)

“A broad variety of weird and wonderful explanations have been given to account for the movement’s enormous, rapid success,” says Dr. Avishai Bar-Asher, head of the Jewish Studies program at the Jewish Thought Department at the Hebrew University. “At its peak, Sabbatean Messianism was a mass movement. It was by no means marginal. It wasn’t a small defined group like the Messianic faction of Chabad for example - whose adherents believe that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is the Messiah. This was a movement that was almost everywhere.“

How many Jews followed him at the time? “A lot. Almost no Diaspora community was untouched by Sabbateanism. Multitudes followed him – in Turkey, Greece, Amsterdam, Poland, Hamburg, Morrocco, Italy and as far afield as Yemen. There were always people who opposed the movement. But the appeal was enormous. The movement spread quickly into diverse regions. At the movement’s peak, even initial opponents became adherents. People sold their property and started preparing for the journey to the Eretz Israel and for Redemption.“

Abrogation of prohibitions was a core revolutionary idea in the movement: Sabbateanism held that the historical role played by commandments that had accompanied the Jewish People had come to an end in the Messianic Age. Stretching Kabbalistic beliefs, Sabbateanism claimed that to repair the world, one must perform “transgressions for their own sake.” Sin for the sake of sin. Sabbatean theology, developed by Nathan of Gaza, stated that the sins were Shabbtai Zvi’s way of getting close to transgressors, to stop them and bring about correction.

“Shabbtai Zvi was first and foremost a Kabbalist. He operated within the Kabbalistic tradition. This was his theology and practice. He enhanced and improved it,“ explains Dr. Bar-Asher. “The divine and cosmic connection between male and female is well known in Kabbalah, as is the idea that any human sexual act affects the divine system.”

Even at the height of Sabbatean euphoria, there were pockets of resistance including Rabbi Jacob ben Aaron Sasportas from Hamburg. “Sasportas fought a long hard battle against Shabbtai Zvi, and kept a record of it for posterity," sats Dr. Bar-Asher. "It’s important to understand that even Sasportas would praise the positive aspects he identified in Sabbatean activity – like the mass movement of returning to religious practice. People became more religious and the synagogues filled up. This was regarded in a positive light, even by those opposing Shabbtai Zvi’s messianic claims.“


The Temple Mount
(Photo: AP)

Samuel Primo was Shabbtai Zvi’s personal scribe. Bar-Asher tells us that “Primo was the ‘Messiah’s scribe.' He wrote down what Shabbtai Zvi said and spread his message far and wide. He was among the people closest to Shabbtai Zvi – what we would call today a personal secretary and public relations officer. He remained loyal to Shabbtai Zvi even after the latter’s conversion to Islam and - despite claims that he completely left the movement - acted as an underground Sabbatean leader in Adrianople, Turkey for many years.“

His third wife, Sarah, was a prostitute – something Sabbateans never denied. This is reminiscent of the biblical story of Hosea who was commanded by God to marry a prostitute and have children with her. The idea is that the messiah, by his actions, will begin turning around the current order,” Bar-Asher explains. “Before the Messiah arrived, the world had operated under a certain order. Messianic Sabbateanism believed that the Messiah would change that order and all kinds of things that had been forbidden, would now be allowed,” he explains.

Bar-Asher advises caution regarding details surrounding Shabbtai Zvi’s wives and his refusal to sleep with his first two wives. Various groups, both supporters and opponents, had a plethora of vested interests in how they portrayed Zvi.

“Shabbtai Zvi’s sexual behavior was a critical link in stories told about him. We must remember that in addition to many followers during Shabbtai Zvi’s lifetime, there were all sorts of groups and individuals that continued Shabbtai Zvi long after his death. Some of these groups found it prudent to portray him in a certain way, while others chose to paint a more ascetic, conservative picture. Shabbtai Zvi’s biography is adorned with efforts to portray a perfect character, so it’s hard to tell where the writer’s imagination ends and historical reality begins. Opponents of Sabbateanism also clearly had a vested interest in portraying him in a certain manner.“

The spectacular downfall

In 1666, a man named Nehemiah HaCohen informed on Shabbtai Zvi to the Ottoman authorities who feared rebellion. Zvi was subsequently declared a traitor. He was imprisoned and the Sultan gave him two options: execution or conversion to Islam. He chose Islam and was granted the new name of Aziz Mehmed Effendi.

Most of Shabbtai Zvi’s followers were shocked and abandoned their beliefs following the conversion. A minority did follow him converting to Islam in his wake. Small groups within Jewish communities continued with their, now clandestine, Sabbatean beliefs.

“Nathan of Gaza – who originally opposed Shabbtai Zvi’s conversion to Islam – ultimately didn’t abandon him, going to great lengths to update his messianic view after Zvi’s conversion. Nathan, along with others held fast to Shabbtai Zvi and tried to come up with all sorts of hidden reasons for his conversion to Islam, viewing the conversion as part of his messianic process,” Bar-Asher tells us.

“After Shabbtai Zvi’s death in 1676, there was a need to update the messianic theology from a different angle. His remaining followers developed a variety of intriguing systems. Some believed he had just “vanished” and would return to reveal himself at some later date. Others believed that Shabbtai Zvi was only the first messiah, Mashiach ben Yosef, announcing the arrival Mashiach ben David - the final messiah who would bring about full redemption.

Bar-Asher adds that “From his third wife, Sarah, Shabbtai Zvi had a son, Ishmael Zvi. Some followers pinned their hopes on him. It’s unclear what became of him.”

Sabbateanism resonates for years after his death: In the 18th century, another false messiah, Yaakov Frank arose. The Frankist movement had many similarities with Sabbateanism: Believers abrogated religious laws as part of the cult surrounding their messiah, and a Sabbatean sect called the Dönme, descended from followers of Shabbtai Zvi who converted to Islam, exists in Turkey to this very day.

HERESIOLOGY

The Grandfather of Modern Neo-Nazism Is Fighting With Satanic Neo-Nazis Now


The ongoing flame war among some of the worst people alive has resulted in the inevitable—calls for murders.

By Mack Lamoureux

VICE
July 28, 2023

JAMES MASON LOOKS AT THE LATEST EDITION OF SIEGE IN ONE

 PHOTO VIA SCREENSHOT

In the latest edition of infighting occurring in the worst corners of the internet, influential neo-Nazi James Mason is going to war with a satanic sect of Nazis who published his book.

Mason, arguably the grandfather of the neo-Nazi accelerationist movement, is particularly at odds with a small satanic cell of the Order of Nine Angles. The Order of Nine Angles, or O9A is a decentralized neo-Nazi Satanic group connected to both acts of violence and horrific pedophilia. Despite how obtuse the O9A is, they have an outsized influence on the far-right.

The cell in particular is a splinter group from a splinter group of the infamous neo-Nazi terror organization Atomwaffen. According to propaganda photos published by this specific cell, they don’t seem to be much larger than three people.

Mason, 71, is best known for a collection of his writings in which he argues for militant action and that the collapse of Western civilization is necessary for the survival of the white race. Written in the 1980s, Mason’s work found a new life over the last decade, becoming massively influential in the far-right, particularly those in the militant accelerationist milieu—which believes they must hasten the fall of society so they can build a white ethnostate from the ashes—like Atomwaffen and The Base. Earlier this year, the small satanic neo-Nazi cell was able to pull together enough money to publish a new copy of Mason’s influential terrorist manifesto—which they called the “666 edition.”

The latest edition, which VICE News has reviewed, has an introduction section where the editor claims to have gotten to personally know Mason and actually helped publish the previous edition. It essentially states Mason has grown meeker than the ideas presented in his work and denounces him.

News

Conspiracy Theorists (and Elon Musk) Falsely Accuse Student of Being ‘Fed’ Posing as Neo-Nazi

MACK LAMOUREUX

07.11.23

After becoming aware of the “666” publication, Mason made a video called “Satanic Expose,” where he accused the group of being a front for the FBI (an influential member of the O9A was previously proven to be a federal informant.) The main piece of evidence he presents for his claim is essentially that the 666 Edition was physically too well-made for a neo-Nazi publication.

“We here call it the 'federal edition' because of its high quality, hardback, coded stock, color throughout... most impressive! Not only that, I initially heard this was (a) $100 volume, and I can believe it, but I'm told now they're giving it away,” he says in the video. “Most odd, who has that kind of money? That's why we call it the federal edition. The feds do good work.”

In response to the video, the O9A adherents made a blog post where they called him “the high priest of deceleration James ‘don't do it’ Mason” and complained he was all talk, no terror crimes. This insult, while coming from a group that appears to be pretty small, got to Mason so much that he essentially suggested to his followers they may as well commit murder..

Earlier this week Mason released a video he and his team entitled “Accelerate!” where he addresses the satanic Nazis insults. In it, Mason takes umbrage with the small sect of satanic neo-Naizs and others who have been calling him soft. For over 12 minutes, Mason sits in front of his mantle and rants about these groups.

At one point Mason begins telling the story of his first arrest, which he says came in 1969 in Silver Spring, Maryland after he and his fellow Nazis were caught postering a Jewish store. He said that he got off lightly but times have changed and his followers that do similar actions will likely catch a hate crime charge.

“Today, I think most will know what would happen in a case such as this. A federal hate crime, your life turned upside down,” he says in the video. “Now, this sort of activity is exactly what these types who are calling me a decelerationist are advocating. ‘No,' they say 'no need to go out and kill anyone, just play these stupid and silly games.' I say that if you choose death or prison, then you might as well go all the way with it.”

Josh Fisher-Birch, an analyst with the Counter Extremism Project, told VICE News that this goes along with Mason’s past statements where he accuses those arguing for low level crime of being “feds” repeatedly and “winks at his audience by saying that if one is going to commit an illegal act and risk prison or death, it should ‘count’ and be done in secret.”

 

News

Two of the Worst Far-Right Groups Are Now Fighting Each Other

MACK LAMOUREUX

06.30.23

“It suggests that Mason does not want to be seen as someone who would never advocate violence in any circumstance,” said Fisher-Birch. “It gives Mason an out to avoid responsibility and tries to confer all agency on the hypothetical perpetrator. Mason is, of course, speaking to an audience where certain members do certainly believe in the use of violence.”

For some reason, cuckoo clocks go off at random intervals and interrupt him throughout, making the video of a septuagenarian neo-Nazi ideologue encouraging his followers to kill feel even more bizarre than it already is.

The Empire Never Ended, a podcast that chronicles the ins and outs of the extreme right, recently did an episode on the satanic cell where they tracked its growth. The cell in particular splintered off from the National Socialist Order, a group which itself was formed when Atomwaffen disbanded. They splintered off essentially over adherence to the O9A.

“In the fall of last year, when a beef with James Mason ballooned into yet another realization that National Socialist Order was still full of Nazi Satanists, a big chunk of them, including at least one founding member according to Mason, went off to make the (neo-Nazi cell) and ‘build a community of true evil’ and all that nonsense,” said Fritz McAlinden, one of the show's hosts.

McAlinden added he “can't think of a dumber and more edge-lordy group.” In regards to the statements Mason made, McAlinden said, the elder neo-Nazi is singing “the same old song.”

“He's very weaselly about this,” he said. “This is the classic thing where they all want to be the most evil but none of them want to get in trouble.”

Neo-Nazis and other members of far-right groups tearing themselves apart are nothing new. If you track the movement over decades you’ll see countless examples of bigots going after bigots. Just recently the neo-Nazi Active Clubs had a nationwide online tizzy with the Proud Boys, a far-right street fighting group because a few members were pushed around in Oregon.

It’s something that holds true no matter how bizarre or influential the groups become. They can be an influential neo-Nazi who has inspired murders, or a weird little racist occult group, but they can’t resist the siren song of a flame war.

SEE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for ORDER OF THE NINE ANGLES 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for SATANISM 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HERESIOLOGY 

HERESIOLOGY

‘Mad and offensive’ texts shed light on the role played by minstrels in medieval society

‘Manuscripts often preserve relics of high art. This is something else’ … the Heege Manuscript. Photograph: National Library of Scotland

The Heege Manuscript which ‘pokes fun at everyone, high and low’ is among the earliest evidence of the life and work of a real minstrel


Sarah Shaffi

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 31 May 2023 

From mocking kings and priests to encouraging audiences to get drunk, newly discovered texts at the National Library of Scotland have shed light on the role played by minstrels in medieval society.

Containing the earliest recorded use of the term “red herring” in English, the texts are part of a booklet known as the Heege Manuscript. Dr James Wade of the University of Cambridge, who discovered them, said echoes of minstrel humour can be found “in shows such as Mock the Week, situational comedies and slapstick”.

“The self-irony and making audiences the butt of the joke are still very characteristic of British standup comedy,” he added.

Throughout the middle ages, minstrels travelled between fairs, taverns and baronial halls to entertain people with songs and stories. Although fictional minstrels are common in medieval literature, references to real-life performers are rare, and the Heege Manuscript is among the first evidence of the life and work of a real minstrel.

Dr James Wade: ‘To get an insight into someone like that from this period is incredibly rare and exciting.’ Photograph: University of Cambridge

Wade, from Cambridge’s English faculty and Girton College, said that most “medieval poetry, song and storytelling has been lost”.

“Manuscripts often preserve relics of high art,” he continued. “This is something else. It’s mad and offensive, but just as valuable. Standup comedy has always involved taking risks and these texts are risky! They poke fun at everyone, high and low.”

The texts consist of a tail-rhyme burlesque romance entitled The Hunting of the Hare, a mock sermon in prose and an alliterative nonsense verse The Battle of Brackonwet. They were copied circa 1480 by Richard Heege, a household cleric and tutor to a Derbyshire family called the Sherbrookes, from a now lost memory-aid written by an unknown minstrel performing near the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border.

Wade believes the minstrel wrote part of his act down because its many nonsense sequences would have been extremely difficult to recall. “He didn’t give himself the kind of repetition or story trajectory which would have made things simpler to remember,” Wade said. “Here we have a self-made entertainer with very little education creating really original, ironic material. To get an insight into someone like that from this period is incredibly rare and exciting.”

The Hunting of the Hare is a poem about peasants, “full of jokes and absurd hijinks”. Wade said that one scene is reminiscent of Monty Python’s “Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog” sketch.

The sermon addresses the audience as “cursed creatures” and includes fragments from drinking songs. “This is a minstrel telling his audience, perhaps people of very different social standing, to get drunk and be merry with each other,” Wade said. The sermon also contains the first recorded use of the term “red herring”, when three kings eat so much that 24 oxen burst out of their bellies, sword fighting; the oxen chop each other up until they are reduced to three “red herrings”.

The Battle of Brackonwet features Robin Hood as well as jousting bears, battling bumblebees and partying pigs. The poem names several villages close to the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border and includes a “skilful demonstration of alliterative verse and a clever double entendre”.

Wade said: “We shouldn’t assume that popular entertainers weren’t capable of poetic achievement. This minstrel clearly was.”

Wade’s study is published on Wednesday in The Review of English Studies journal.

https://www.cambridge.org/9781009064347

Cambridge introduction mikhail bakhtin | Literary theory

Based on up-to-date sources and recent scholarly editions of Bakhtin's work; Sets Bahtkin's work in its historical context, helping readers better ...

https://monoskop.org/images/7/70/Bakhtin_Mikhail_Rabelais_and_His_World_1984.pdf

Rabelais and His World - Monoskop 

Bakhtin's ideas concerning folk culture, with carnival as its ... Long before he published his book on Rabelais, Bakhtin had ...

SEE 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HERESY