Sam Aronow, you might be interested to hear that my school (Mount Scopus Memorial College, the largest Jewish School in the country of Australia) uses your last video when teaching about Spinoza in their 'Religion and Society' class. ... By my recommendation haha. Anything to give your incredible channel the respect and love it deserves.
I'm a Sephardic jew from Istanbul I've had never heard of Zvi or Dönmehs. It was a big revelation to me. Also kudos to that emperors for dealing with the Zvi in an extremely effective way.
Are you living in a bubble? Really never heard of prominent Sabetaist like Şemsi Efendi, Ahmet Emin Yalman, Abdi Ipekçi, Ismail Cem, Cemil Ipekçi, Dinç Bilgin, the Sertels? Or Yakubi, Kapancı and Karakaş communities? Ilgaz Zorlu and his famous book "Yes, I Am From Thessaloniki?"
@@anthonyn.7379 yep some of them still live in İstanbul but they do not hold a majority in teşvikiye, they are very seperated from each other because they are a small group now
Likewise !!! Raised Roman Catholic, & studied Canadian aboriginal life; I find it fascinating how others interpret life. Never learnd this in Sunday school!!
This was certainly one of the most fascinating episodes. The story of Shabtai Zvi gets crazier the more I learn about it. To be perfectly honest I kinda hoped we will hear more on this channel about the Jewish life in Poland-Lithuania before everything went downhill in 1648, for example about the forms of Jewish self-government: the kahals and the Council of Four Lands (and the separate Council of Lithuania since 1623), but maybe there will be an opportunity to mention this institutions latter, before or as they will be dissolved? Or maybe a mention of the Karaim (Karaites) community. BTW did you count the Karaites among the Jewish population of the Commonwealth? I was really surprised by that part about inbreeding (and the soundtrack was a very funny touch). Describing the Cossacks, specifically the Zaporozhian ones, as "Russian-speaking" at 4:27 might be very problematic to some, I think that Ruthenian or East Slavic would be safer terms (Ukrainian might be a bit anachronistic). Interestingly, I remember reading in Timothy Snyder's _The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999_ that during the Pereyaslav Council of 1654 Khmelnytsky's Cossacks and the representatives of the Russian Tsar discovered they need translators, despite both calling their language "Ruski/Rusky", because the forms that became modern Ukrainian and Russian were already becoming significantly different. I assume that the ending was a foreshadowing of Hasidism, but was the foreboding "for the most part" at 27:22 a foreshadowing of Frankism?
@@ChillDudelD Yeah, I've heard that Ukrainian shares more vocabulary with Polish than Russian, which is weird because Ukrainian and Russian are classified as East Slavic, while Polish is West Slavic. Maybe that's partially because the modern standard Ukrainian is based on the western dialects, which have the most similarities to Polish? Plus, language is more than just the vocabulary.
I taught English in Istanbul, Turkey for 5 years and my favorite area to visit was called Karakoy (lots of hiking/outdoor stores close together among interesting bookstores and pastry shops.) I always assumed the areas' name meant Black/Dark Village since Kara means Black or Dark, and Koy means village in Turkish. But I was later told my some people that Kara came from the name Karaite, and that Karakoy was once a commercial and residential enclave of Karaite Jews up until the late 19th century.
In the 1980s, a member of my synagogue in New York City confided to a few of us that her family were Jewish Shabbateans, who had ritual family orgies among other Shabbatean reversals of normative Judaism.
Greetings from Izmir! I grew up near the synagogue he declared himself Messiah (Havra st). How ironic that nowadays that area is a fish market! Perhaps, it is the Universe's way of honoring is obsession with Pisces and fish 😃
I read about Sabbataism some years ago in a Paul Johnson's book but this video made me remember the essential parts plus learning some new things. Well done!
The adoption of the printing press by Jews at the time helped their ideas be spared much more easily. Consequently it also made watching your videos even more enjoyable and rewarding because of how everything seems to be so much more connected. Story lines are crossed with each other and affect one another in a way I have never seen. Really enjoyed the last few videos, your work is excellent!
Well, hold on to your hat, because the next video will be the finale of this run of episodes, and *everything* is going to converge on its two central figures.
Do you plan on covering Jacob Frank on this channel? He lived about a century after Zvi and claimed to be his reincarnation. He was also acquainted with Mayer Amschel, patriarch of the Rothschilds.
I didn't even know about this fellow (nor about your channel till today) , but your vid made it so rewarding to watch. This is one of the best history channels I've seen in the platform, the amount of detail and depth in the videos I've seen is astonishing, unlike anything I've seen about the time period. Keep it going man, this is too good.
Another wonderful vid, Sam! BTW, Izmir, Turkey is present day Smyrna. My Sefardi ancestors arrived there from Spain following The Expulsion of 1492. I'm assuming they'd have heard of Zvi LOL!
I have been surprised, in my conversations while researching for this video, to find that he is not very well-remembered today. I can't decide whether this is primarily due to the desire to forget him or the ever-frustrating Tanakh-Palmach history curriculum.
I am from Turkey and I often go to İzmir (Smyerna), I would say that the story of Sabatay Sevi is well known among the people here. The curriculum even touches upon him shortly.
This is absolutely my favourite channel with fewer than 10k subscribers. These topics are extremely interesting and your ways of explaining them are amazing. Hope you get 100k more!
You left out the scandalous reasons why he became infamous: lifting of the moral code and institutionizing redemption through sin and its accompanying ritualized practices.
Honestly, Zvi's story had a surprisingly happy ending for me. Mental illness and geopolitical prominence are a combination that almost always spell disaster for everyone involved, especially in the medieval/early modern period. Being imprisoned instead of executed by Pasa, being allowed to live relatively comfortable exile in future-Montenegro, and died naturally instead of by sword. For a mentally unwell man whose proclamation as messiah was causing riots and religious separatism across the continent during a time as charged with religious violence as the era of the Thirty Years War, that's about as storybook an ending as there is. I'm glad his days ended in peace.
Which is technically allowed in judaism Jacob had 2 wives king David had many wives and kind Solomon had 700 wives the only reason polygamy is not allowed in judaism is because monogamy is a tradition accepted by the vast majority of the Jewish community (except some yemenite communities)
@@almogz9486The fact that biblical figures such as Jacob, David, Salomon and many more practiced polygamy doesn’t mean that the Most High commanded it or was pleased with such practices…
@@Hmm-xy9qs how come god never said anything about that in the bible when Nathan the prophet condemns David for taking bat sheba the reason he gives in his analogy is that of a rich man with lots of sheep taking a sheep from a poor man. The problem in the story isn't that the rich man has tons of sheep but that despite the fact that he does he took the only sheep of a poor man. God specifically condemns David for taking another wife by condemns him not for the action itself but the details of it. If the act of taking another wife in on of itself was wrong the prophet could have just said that instead
19:20 "Gaza would be the fifth holy city of Judaism -- no thank you!" It's hard to believe Gaza was once hospitable for Jews, even Ashkenazy Jews like Natan's family. That certainly died with the Hatuels.
Gaza used to be a big Jewish city ,actually it was the only city in israel during the Muslim occupation period that didnt needed donations from the diaspora .that died when napoleon invaded,many years before Tali Hatuele and her daughters RIP
Gaza wasn't hospitable to jews between 1967 and 2005 they were just illegallyè settling it while setting up a military occupation to make sure none of the gazans do anything about it, uncomparable situation to Gaza in ottoman empire with its jews and muslims
With ashkanazi DNA I am of the understanding that a large amount, not a majority but still a lot, is European due to intermarriage. When did this intermarriage occur? because I can't imagine it being very popular with modern day orthodox Judaism.
@@SamAronow as far as I've been able to find the European DNA is mostly matrilineal, so presumably from Jewish men marrying roman women in late antiquity
Hey Sam! Just wanted to say thank you for all these wonderful videos! I descended from Russian and Ashkenazi Jews who came to America before WWI, and though we disconnected from the religion by the 1950s, rediscovering things I always thought was just strange family traditions are actually Jewish traditions or cultural behaviors, foods, etc has been so enlightening over the years. Your videos have been a wonderful dive into Jewish history I haven't been able to get access to yet, so again, thank you!!
Name "Dönme" means convert, which derives from the verb "dön-", meaning "to turn back", in an insulting way (like betrayal). Although Zvi and his followers converted to Islam, they were never welcomed by Turks. Even today, conspiracy theorists in Turkey depict them as people who are conspiring against the country lol. Although these theories aren't really taken seriously, they tell a lot about the impacts of these events on society. Also, a fun fact: Turkish government records the religious beliefs of citizens (originally to identify the Greek and Armenian minorities, since they have some minority rights given by Treaty of Lausanne). And only one person demanded that religion on his ID card changed to Judaism from Islam, saying that he's a dönme. Therefore, the official population of dönme minority in Turkey is 1.
I was today years old when I learned about Romaniote Jews. Really, we contain multitudes! Also, Shabai Zvi's story is a wild ride. The axe episode should be borrowed in some fiction or other!
Do you have a source for the population figures at 2:13? Growing from 350 to 50K in just 150 years would mean an annual growth rate of ~3.4%, which is astoundingly high for medieval times. By comparison, the growth rate in places like India and China when they were having their population booms in parts of the 20th century was perhaps 2.3-2.5% at the absolute highest. The only thing that comes close is the 13 American colonies (1625-1775)-where there was lots of land to expand into, generally much cleaner living conditions than in medieval Europe, and a small but steady inflow of immigrants-where the growth rate perhaps reached a hair more than 3%.
Yes, this was a mistake based on my misinterpretation of geneticist lingo. 350 was the _effective_ population, a non-literal term, whereas the actual founding population was closer to 3,000.
When talking about Russian Orthodox counterbalancing “Catholic” Poles, it’s best to say “Roman Catholic” because the Russian Orthodox Church is also catholic-it’s just not Roman Catholic.
There are actually even more catholic churches than the big two; it's just that most of them are so small they don't matter. This is, of course, the profoundest irony since the entire point of using "catholic" as an adjective is to say it's the umbrella for everything.
@@Duiker36 admittedly, I still have to refer to my Christian denominational chart to keep them all straight. Most churches which call themselves “catholic” probably believe they ARE Catholic-at least the only legitimate one, the others being under the umbrella in a state of graceful ignorance, I guess.
@@kenankara7122 Come, now! It can’t really be hairsplitting when there are many other kinds of Catholic too. Okay, maybe a tiny bit- but not much. Coulda said more. Just sayin’, z’all.
There of course remains a big split about the concept of a messiah within Orthodox Judaism. We all believe he will come as per Maimonides, but is he a mystic figure a la Shabtei Tzvi? Or a political figure? You could argue that Bibi had a better claim on the title than the Lubavitcher Rebbe, but even people who call him King Bibi aren’t saying that while thousands of Hasidim still think a man dead twenty years is messiah.
Shabatai was born in 9 av. This 9av was a saturday thus he had this name. The gematry of the name Shabatai Tzvi is the same as Elshaday as a result Shabatai and Natan concluded that Shabatai is God, he is the Messiah. Natan of Gaza and Shabatai made an huge usage of Kaballah. Probably this is the reason why Kaballah has become so restrict
21:50 Both newspapers refer to Shabtai Zvi as "the King of the Jews". Did Shabtai Zvi claim that "political" title, or is that just the Christian observers describing his messianic claim? (Or his actual claim getting lost in transmission?)
One correction on cossacks: Khmelnytskyy didn't represent the Zaporozhians. Contrary -- his new state, the Hetmanate, was hostile towards Zaporozhian Sich, even tho several years before Zaporozhians helped him in his war. Thus, there were two independent cossack states, which later had a wild history together and politics between and around them.
I didn't know some Benveniste families changed there name to Epstien and Horwitz I thought only some of the Ha-Levi family Spain did. I have both names in my genealogy.
"All of us [Humans] are somewhere between 10th and 12th cousins"-Yaniv Erlich I don't think the Ashkenazi Jewish intermarrying is something to worry about, though people wring hands about it. Finns and Black Americans also share this. And the science for, as an example, Jewish irritable bowel syndrome is very small. By the way, i don't know if you've mentioned it before, but are you an Ashkenazi Jew yourself?
I'm not saying it. Decades' worth of genetic studies, historical demographic surveys, and well-documented health problems specific to this community (and not shared with their neighbors in Eastern Europe) say it. It's called the Founder Effect, and to an extent it can be found across the entire Jewish population, but especially Ashkenazim and *especially especially* Hasidim, but we're not there yet.
@@SamAronow I'm not saying the evidence isn't behind it, I just wasn't sure I heard you right because that is an incredible rate of population growth. Very interesting, looking forward to next week's video.
I also thought that the inbreeding took place in the Rhineland in the few Jewish families that first moved there, and not yet again in the late middle ages
This implies a growth rate of around 2%, not terribly unreasonable (Israel's current population growth rate is around the same). Exponential growth is strong.
Right, it's a normal growth rate for the industrial age, which makes sense when you realize that Jews were virtually the entire middle class (i.e. people whose wealth wasn't restricted by social status or landedness) and thus kinda had "industrialized" before everyone else- plus a much lower infant and child mortality rate. The Rhineland population was about as genetically diverse as any other Jewish diaspora population at the time and were basically an offshoot of Italki Jews, and there was a lot of crossover with other edot throughout the Middle Ages. It's only when you get the severe bottleneck of the Plague Massacres that something on this scale could happen.
You'd probably have to be an American Jew to understand. It is a popular trope in US politics today to claim that the Zionist movement was established by American evangelicals in the early 19th century, as they coincidentally came to hold beliefs similar to the Fifth Monarchists. Because the Evangelical right in the US is much larger than the American Jewish community *now,* and has come to dominate the narrative regarding our alliance (or did, many are quite angry at us for "betraying" Bibi), it has become convenient for certain US critics of Israel to blame _them_ for Israel's creation in a laughably failed attempt to convince American Jews, who are overwhelmingly left-leaning _and_ also overwhelmingly pro-Israel, that they are "the real victims of Zionism."
@@SamAronow The current embracing of the Evangelicals is quite alarming as they are not our friends. They only support the state of Israel and the return of all our people to Israel only for our annihilation in fulfillment of their End of Days second coming scheme.
@@SamAronow that's what i thought the context was. even before you said that when you talked about the Fifth Monarchists I thought to myself that they're similar to American Evangelicals today. the parallels are incredible.
I'm binging this series and I must say that I have found it to be impressively informative. It's been quite an eye-opener to someone who's connection to Judaism has been largely a vague familial experience (My paternal grandmother was the last practicing Jew in the family until she married my grandfather some 60 years ago). Thank you for your work. "You must struggle to truly remember this past in all its nuance, error, and humanity. You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history." ~Ta-Nahesi Coates, Between the World and Me
Sam Aronow, I hope you will see this comment. There is a book called Evet Ben Selanikliyim written by Ilgaz Zorlu. It is about followers of Shabtai Zvi in Turkey. Ilgaz Zorlu is also his follower afaik. The book also includes essays written by other Turkish authors, journalists etc. I don't know if it translated into English though. You can find the Turkish version online as a pdf ebook form and perhaps use google translate. However, google translate is not so accurate when it comes to translating Turkish into English. So in case you need a more precise translation of certain parts, feel free to reach me. I will gladly translate them to you as best as I can in my free time. Hope you will see my message. Cheers!
@@LüzumluTarih Konuyla alakasiz olacak ama aklima RUclips'da su baslikli video geldi "Maxwell's Passover Seder with Turkish Brigade Officers in Korea".
Why does the Sabattean Frenzy sound like some midwestern Judgement Day frenzy? Anticipation for the Rapture, selling one's possessions before Doomsday (most likely to the ministers who suggest this course of action), etc.
I wanna say it's your best video yet, but i like Agrippa and the Rambam so much that their videos are first for me, anyway, the video was really good and the most interesting video for me personally in the late period (except the Rambam video cause Rambam) I wanted to ask, our last 2 videos were kinda longer then the rest of the series, is it just for those 2, or it's gonna be like the episode of John Hyrcanus and that will be the new normal? same thing about the time between episodes, is it gonna be 3 weeks now or it just was a one time thing? last thing: Is the shadowed character Israel Ba'al Shem tov, cause if yes oh boy, Hasidism evreybody!
My schedule is to release a video twice a month, which is not necessarily the same as every two weeks. And these two videos were simply as long as they needed to be.
Apparently Sephardim have IBS too. And it is a nerve disorder, so it doesn't really matter what you eat. I grew up eating basically nothing but spicy food. Lactose intolerance, however; that's just a "vast majority of non-Europeans" thing.
Hey sam mentioned riots in morocco and bohemia being put down by the army. But i cant find any reference to that. Does anyone have any further information?
It was mentioned in my main source, Gershom Scholem's book, which is linked in the description. Unfortunately for most of my viewers, there's a lot in the book that relies on primary sources that have never been translated into English- a very common occurrence when covering this period.
This doesn't actually have anything to do with the video, but I just noticed how you pronounce certain words with long "ah" sounds when they would typically be pronounced with a short "a" in either a general American or New York accent, like "after" and "class". Is your original accent American?
This is like a mix of my native accent, but it is the way I've basically always spoken as an adult. They are both American accents. I'll have to explain this at some point, won't I?
@@SamAronow Perhaps so! I was just curious because you sound very American overall - sometimes more General American, sometimes more New York - but that one little feature stands out to me as unique. I once asked someone with a mostly English sounding accent about a few hints of Irish in some of their words, only to find out they were originally Dutch, so I didn't want to assume it was a regionalism - accents are an interesting thing!
I find it very interesting that he was possibly bi polar, because Kanye West decided to come to a strange epiphany in 2022, and has been a modern day pop culture ye....maybe he's channeling him? J/k. I have no idea, I just picked up learning about random religions as a hobby. I apologize if I have offended anyone.
@3:24 Does this not account for the Jewish populations in southern America and Caribbean islands? I know these weren't countries but I recall reading there being a population of around 200,000 or so around this time period.
No, because those people were no longer Jewish. There are also doubts about those numbers, since people of Jewish descent in Spain and Portugal were normally banned from settling the New World.
We're talking first cousins at the very closest here. From there, once the starting population gets so low, distant relatives stop being genetically distant. Something I didn't mention is that DNA testing companies often give Ashkenazi Jews false positives for close relatives who turn out to be like 5th or 6th cousins, and that's because of the Founder Effect.
@@SamAronow Oh, ok. Thanks for the timely response. I asked mainly because I looked it up and found out how hilariously specific the Torah was about how incest is bad, even among relatives by marriage.
"And yes i'm including the Torah scroll" almost made me fell
Sam Aronow, you might be interested to hear that my school (Mount Scopus Memorial College, the largest Jewish School in the country of Australia) uses your last video when teaching about Spinoza in their 'Religion and Society' class.
... By my recommendation haha. Anything to give your incredible channel the respect and love it deserves.
That southern banjo bit broke me 😂
Had me dying loool
I'm a Sephardic jew from Istanbul I've had never heard of Zvi or Dönmehs. It was a big revelation to me. Also kudos to that emperors for dealing with the Zvi in an extremely effective way.
Create as much negative energy forcing the Messiah to return
Sexual orgies, incestous etc
Sebatahi zvi
Are you living in a bubble? Really never heard of prominent Sabetaist like Şemsi Efendi, Ahmet Emin Yalman, Abdi Ipekçi, Ismail Cem, Cemil Ipekçi, Dinç Bilgin, the Sertels? Or Yakubi, Kapancı and Karakaş communities? Ilgaz Zorlu and his famous book "Yes, I Am From Thessaloniki?"
I heard some still live in the Teşvikiye neighborhood in Istanbul
@@anthonyn.7379 yep some of them still live in İstanbul but they do not hold a majority in teşvikiye, they are very seperated from each other because they are a small group now
Attatürk may have been Dönmeh as well!
despite not being a jew, and knowing little of jewish history, this has been incredibly interesting to listen to
Same here
Likewise !!! Raised Roman Catholic, & studied Canadian aboriginal life; I find it fascinating how others interpret life. Never learnd this in Sunday school!!
Same
Sam please you almost killed me playing the banjo behind that segment on the population rebound 💀💀💀
Well lads, don't come onto that Torah scroll... She's spoken for 😂
This was certainly one of the most fascinating episodes. The story of Shabtai Zvi gets crazier the more I learn about it. To be perfectly honest I kinda hoped we will hear more on this channel about the Jewish life in Poland-Lithuania before everything went downhill in 1648, for example about the forms of Jewish self-government: the kahals and the Council of Four Lands (and the separate Council of Lithuania since 1623), but maybe there will be an opportunity to mention this institutions latter, before or as they will be dissolved? Or maybe a mention of the Karaim (Karaites) community. BTW did you count the Karaites among the Jewish population of the Commonwealth?
I was really surprised by that part about inbreeding (and the soundtrack was a very funny touch).
Describing the Cossacks, specifically the Zaporozhian ones, as "Russian-speaking" at 4:27 might be very problematic to some, I think that Ruthenian or East Slavic would be safer terms (Ukrainian might be a bit anachronistic). Interestingly, I remember reading in Timothy Snyder's _The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999_ that during the Pereyaslav Council of 1654 Khmelnytsky's Cossacks and the representatives of the Russian Tsar discovered they need translators, despite both calling their language "Ruski/Rusky", because the forms that became modern Ukrainian and Russian were already becoming significantly different.
I assume that the ending was a foreshadowing of Hasidism, but was the foreboding "for the most part" at 27:22 a foreshadowing of Frankism?
Patience.
Excellent historical perspective and observation of the foreshadowing tendency of historical layers.
Ukrainian is a bit closer to Polish, by sharing around 70% root words with it, than Russian, which shares only around 60% root words with Ukrainian.
@@ChillDudelD Yeah, I've heard that Ukrainian shares more vocabulary with Polish than Russian, which is weird because Ukrainian and Russian are classified as East Slavic, while Polish is West Slavic. Maybe that's partially because the modern standard Ukrainian is based on the western dialects, which have the most similarities to Polish? Plus, language is more than just the vocabulary.
I taught English in Istanbul, Turkey for 5 years and my favorite area to visit was called Karakoy (lots of hiking/outdoor stores close together among interesting bookstores and pastry shops.) I always assumed the areas' name meant Black/Dark Village since Kara means Black or Dark, and Koy means village in Turkish. But I was later told my some people that Kara came from the name Karaite, and that Karakoy was once a commercial and residential enclave of Karaite Jews up until the late 19th century.
In the 1980s, a member of my synagogue in New York City confided to a few of us that her family were Jewish Shabbateans, who had ritual family orgies among other Shabbatean reversals of normative Judaism.
Create as much negative energy forcing the Messiah to return
Sexual orgies, incestous etc
Sebatahi zvi
Greetings from Izmir! I grew up near the synagogue he declared himself Messiah (Havra st). How ironic that nowadays that area is a fish market! Perhaps, it is the Universe's way of honoring is obsession with Pisces and fish 😃
tHe UnIvErSe
I read about Sabbataism some years ago in a Paul Johnson's book but this video made me remember the essential parts plus learning some new things. Well done!
The adoption of the printing press by Jews at the time helped their ideas be spared much more easily. Consequently it also made watching your videos even more enjoyable and rewarding because of how everything seems to be so much more connected. Story lines are crossed with each other and affect one another in a way I have never seen. Really enjoyed the last few videos, your work is excellent!
Well, hold on to your hat, because the next video will be the finale of this run of episodes, and *everything* is going to converge on its two central figures.
Great topic, even better jokes
Do you plan on covering Jacob Frank on this channel? He lived about a century after Zvi and claimed to be his reincarnation. He was also acquainted with Mayer Amschel, patriarch of the Rothschilds.
I didn't even know about this fellow (nor about your channel till today) , but your vid made it so rewarding to watch. This is one of the best history channels I've seen in the platform, the amount of detail and depth in the videos I've seen is astonishing, unlike anything I've seen about the time period. Keep it going man, this is too good.
Another wonderful vid, Sam! BTW, Izmir, Turkey is present day Smyrna. My Sefardi ancestors arrived there from Spain following The Expulsion of 1492. I'm assuming they'd have heard of Zvi LOL!
I have been surprised, in my conversations while researching for this video, to find that he is not very well-remembered today. I can't decide whether this is primarily due to the desire to forget him or the ever-frustrating Tanakh-Palmach history curriculum.
@@SamAronow i read they destroyed bet din records that mentioned his name. it was a very deliberate effort to forget what happened.
@@SamAronow He is very well remembered by Turkish-Sephardic Jews but mostly kept secret from public due to security reasons which you can guess why.
Algazi?🤔
@@bosbanon3452 Yes?
I am from Turkey and I often go to İzmir (Smyerna), I would say that the story of Sabatay Sevi is well known among the people here. The curriculum even touches upon him shortly.
This is absolutely my favourite channel with fewer than 10k subscribers.
These topics are extremely interesting and your ways of explaining them are amazing. Hope you get 100k more!
You left out the scandalous reasons why he became infamous: lifting of the moral code and institutionizing redemption through sin and its accompanying ritualized practices.
How bizarre!?
Very sanitized…
Oh yes
Nega-Christ
Honestly, Zvi's story had a surprisingly happy ending for me. Mental illness and geopolitical prominence are a combination that almost always spell disaster for everyone involved, especially in the medieval/early modern period. Being imprisoned instead of executed by Pasa, being allowed to live relatively comfortable exile in future-Montenegro, and died naturally instead of by sword. For a mentally unwell man whose proclamation as messiah was causing riots and religious separatism across the continent during a time as charged with religious violence as the era of the Thirty Years War, that's about as storybook an ending as there is. I'm glad his days ended in peace.
"Gaza shall be the 5th holy city... No thank you :D" omfg, that got me (so did the "Yes, I'm including the Torah scroll")
If we are counting the Torah scroll, then he technically had multiple wives at the same time
Which is technically allowed in judaism Jacob had 2 wives king David had many wives and kind Solomon had 700 wives the only reason polygamy is not allowed in judaism is because monogamy is a tradition accepted by the vast majority of the Jewish community (except some yemenite communities)
@@almogz9486The fact that biblical figures such as Jacob, David, Salomon and many more practiced polygamy doesn’t mean that the Most High commanded it or was pleased with such practices…
@@Hmm-xy9qs how come god never said anything about that in the bible when Nathan the prophet condemns David for taking bat sheba the reason he gives in his analogy is that of a rich man with lots of sheep taking a sheep from a poor man. The problem in the story isn't that the rich man has tons of sheep but that despite the fact that he does he took the only sheep of a poor man. God specifically condemns David for taking another wife by condemns him not for the action itself but the details of it. If the act of taking another wife in on of itself was wrong the prophet could have just said that instead
19:20 "Gaza would be the fifth holy city of Judaism -- no thank you!"
It's hard to believe Gaza was once hospitable for Jews, even Ashkenazy Jews like Natan's family. That certainly died with the Hatuels.
Gaza used to be a big Jewish city ,actually it was the only city in israel during the Muslim occupation period that didnt needed donations from the diaspora .that died when napoleon invaded,many years before Tali Hatuele and her daughters RIP
Gaza wasn't hospitable to jews between 1967 and 2005 they were just illegallyè settling it while setting up a military occupation to make sure none of the gazans do anything about it, uncomparable situation to Gaza in ottoman empire with its jews and muslims
I've watched some other videos about shabtai Zvi but Aronow is by far the most detailed and complete.
If he'd been killed instead of imprisoned and converted, I feel like Sabbataism would be a major religion today.
Maybe it is. Look at the moral decadence.
With ashkanazi DNA I am of the understanding that a large amount, not a majority but still a lot, is European due to intermarriage. When did this intermarriage occur? because I can't imagine it being very popular with modern day orthodox Judaism.
It's about equal to the European quotient of Sephardic Jews, is mostly Italian, and dates back to around the 1st century. Can't imagine why...
@@SamAronow Love your stuff Sam so don't take my corrections as passive aggressiveness, but this is quite an outdated view.
@@SamAronow as far as I've been able to find the European DNA is mostly matrilineal, so presumably from Jewish men marrying roman women in late antiquity
@@SamAronow you can "thank" the roman legion for that
Hey Sam! Just wanted to say thank you for all these wonderful videos! I descended from Russian and Ashkenazi Jews who came to America before WWI, and though we disconnected from the religion by the 1950s, rediscovering things I always thought was just strange family traditions are actually Jewish traditions or cultural behaviors, foods, etc has been so enlightening over the years. Your videos have been a wonderful dive into Jewish history I haven't been able to get access to yet, so again, thank you!!
Name "Dönme" means convert, which derives from the verb "dön-", meaning "to turn back", in an insulting way (like betrayal). Although Zvi and his followers converted to Islam, they were never welcomed by Turks. Even today, conspiracy theorists in Turkey depict them as people who are conspiring against the country lol. Although these theories aren't really taken seriously, they tell a lot about the impacts of these events on society.
Also, a fun fact: Turkish government records the religious beliefs of citizens (originally to identify the Greek and Armenian minorities, since they have some minority rights given by Treaty of Lausanne). And only one person demanded that religion on his ID card changed to Judaism from Islam, saying that he's a dönme. Therefore, the official population of dönme minority in Turkey is 1.
That's one of the most weird interesting information I've ever heard of. 1 person it's hilarious.
I've read rumours that Ataturk was from such a family. They were part of some pretty crazy conspiracies.
I can't with the southern banjo lmao :'DD as soon as that started I knew where you were going next
9:02 its hillel the younger not the elder
also great video as always it literally gets better every time.
The Alabama banjo music that starts playing when discussing our polish ancestors was hilarious. We're all like, 30th cousins I guess.
That pause around 7:00 is woefully ironic and tragic given current events.
8:16 This came out of the left field... I don't think you ever mentioned the Romaniotes before, at least not by this name.
I explained them fairly thoroughly in "The Adventures of Benjamin of Tudela," but it was not a very popular video.
@@SamAronow Ooh, right... It's been a while since I watched that video, and it was so jam-packed it must have slipped my mind.
@@SamAronow you could mention it again in the next corrections video as a reminder
That "nice" in the subtitles after 1569 did not go unnoticed
6:57 - Yep, we're all thinking it.
"bruh"
I was today years old when I learned about Romaniote Jews. Really, we contain multitudes! Also, Shabai Zvi's story is a wild ride. The axe episode should be borrowed in some fiction or other!
ruclips.net/video/lpKi5tmZVRk/видео.html
"I'm going to depose the Ottoman Caliph. This is what I call a pro-gamer move"
Do you have a source for the population figures at 2:13? Growing from 350 to 50K in just 150 years would mean an annual growth rate of ~3.4%, which is astoundingly high for medieval times. By comparison, the growth rate in places like India and China when they were having their population booms in parts of the 20th century was perhaps 2.3-2.5% at the absolute highest. The only thing that comes close is the 13 American colonies (1625-1775)-where there was lots of land to expand into, generally much cleaner living conditions than in medieval Europe, and a small but steady inflow of immigrants-where the growth rate perhaps reached a hair more than 3%.
Yes, this was a mistake based on my misinterpretation of geneticist lingo. 350 was the _effective_ population, a non-literal term, whereas the actual founding population was closer to 3,000.
When talking about Russian Orthodox counterbalancing “Catholic” Poles, it’s best to say “Roman Catholic” because the Russian Orthodox Church is also catholic-it’s just not Roman Catholic.
There are actually even more catholic churches than the big two; it's just that most of them are so small they don't matter. This is, of course, the profoundest irony since the entire point of using "catholic" as an adjective is to say it's the umbrella for everything.
@@Duiker36 admittedly, I still have to refer to my Christian denominational chart to keep them all straight. Most churches which call themselves “catholic” probably believe they ARE Catholic-at least the only legitimate one, the others being under the umbrella in a state of graceful ignorance, I guess.
Oh, come on, don't split those hairs now.
@@kenankara7122 Come, now! It can’t really be hairsplitting when there are many other kinds of Catholic too. Okay, maybe a tiny bit- but not much. Coulda said more. Just sayin’, z’all.
Thanks for your work.
Am really starting to love this channel.
6:54 your reaction was absolutely hilarious
Plus ca change, plus le meme chose.
Dang it Zvi you were this close
do really want this guy as your king?
This is your best video yet! כל הכבוד!
There of course remains a big split about the concept of a messiah within Orthodox Judaism. We all believe he will come as per Maimonides, but is he a mystic figure a la Shabtei Tzvi? Or a political figure? You could argue that Bibi had a better claim on the title than the Lubavitcher Rebbe, but even people who call him King Bibi aren’t saying that while thousands of Hasidim still think a man dead twenty years is messiah.
Similarly, on Reddit I recall someone saying DBG fulfilled certain messianic conditions-perhaps even more than Bibi?
Confession: I misread "DBG" as "DBZ."
I think this is your best video so far.
Love all your videos, thanks for the really great content!
Shabatai was born in 9 av. This 9av was a saturday thus he had this name. The gematry of the name Shabatai Tzvi is the same as Elshaday as a result Shabatai and Natan concluded that Shabatai is God, he is the Messiah.
Natan of Gaza and Shabatai made an huge usage of Kaballah. Probably this is the reason why Kaballah has become so restrict
3:04 Joke's on the Nazis, this is what _real_ racial purity brings you.
2:49 Alabama and the Habsburg approve.
And Norfolk, and Tas too….
21:50 Both newspapers refer to Shabtai Zvi as "the King of the Jews". Did Shabtai Zvi claim that "political" title, or is that just the Christian observers describing his messianic claim? (Or his actual claim getting lost in transmission?)
They were historically synonymous.
One correction on cossacks:
Khmelnytskyy didn't represent the Zaporozhians. Contrary -- his new state, the Hetmanate, was hostile towards Zaporozhian Sich, even tho several years before Zaporozhians helped him in his war. Thus, there were two independent cossack states, which later had a wild history together and politics between and around them.
I love how buddy looks skeptical/disappointed for the whole video.
I didn't know some Benveniste families changed there name to Epstien and Horwitz I thought only some of the Ha-Levi family Spain did. I have both names in my genealogy.
Mate, I love your videos. Subscribed! Thank you so much.
0:07 Interesting pronunciation of "vast!" Great video!
Judaism has changed and evolved over time since the destruction of the second temple many came who claimed themselves to be the messiah anointed one.
Why is it the funniest thing at 6:49 when his face pops up and he just says nothing? 😂
4:27 - where did you get the "russian-speaking" claim? I do not know of that
"All of us [Humans] are somewhere between 10th and 12th cousins"-Yaniv Erlich
I don't think the Ashkenazi Jewish intermarrying is something to worry about, though people wring hands about it. Finns and Black Americans also share this. And the science for, as an example, Jewish irritable bowel syndrome is very small.
By the way, i don't know if you've mentioned it before, but are you an Ashkenazi Jew yourself?
By ancestry, mostly; by upbringing, hardly at all.
@@SamAronow You weren't raised Ashkenazi Jewish?
@@theklorg305Iranian road
To reiterate, are you saying Poland's Jewish population went from 350 to 185,000 in 300 years with very little immigration or conversion..?
I'm not saying it. Decades' worth of genetic studies, historical demographic surveys, and well-documented health problems specific to this community (and not shared with their neighbors in Eastern Europe) say it. It's called the Founder Effect, and to an extent it can be found across the entire Jewish population, but especially Ashkenazim and *especially especially* Hasidim, but we're not there yet.
@@SamAronow I'm not saying the evidence isn't behind it, I just wasn't sure I heard you right because that is an incredible rate of population growth. Very interesting, looking forward to next week's video.
I also thought that the inbreeding took place in the Rhineland in the few Jewish families that first moved there, and not yet again in the late middle ages
This implies a growth rate of around 2%, not terribly unreasonable (Israel's current population growth rate is around the same). Exponential growth is strong.
Right, it's a normal growth rate for the industrial age, which makes sense when you realize that Jews were virtually the entire middle class (i.e. people whose wealth wasn't restricted by social status or landedness) and thus kinda had "industrialized" before everyone else- plus a much lower infant and child mortality rate.
The Rhineland population was about as genetically diverse as any other Jewish diaspora population at the time and were basically an offshoot of Italki Jews, and there was a lot of crossover with other edot throughout the Middle Ages. It's only when you get the severe bottleneck of the Plague Massacres that something on this scale could happen.
22:23 I kinda missed what did you refrence
You'd probably have to be an American Jew to understand. It is a popular trope in US politics today to claim that the Zionist movement was established by American evangelicals in the early 19th century, as they coincidentally came to hold beliefs similar to the Fifth Monarchists.
Because the Evangelical right in the US is much larger than the American Jewish community *now,* and has come to dominate the narrative regarding our alliance (or did, many are quite angry at us for "betraying" Bibi), it has become convenient for certain US critics of Israel to blame _them_ for Israel's creation in a laughably failed attempt to convince American Jews, who are overwhelmingly left-leaning _and_ also overwhelmingly pro-Israel, that they are "the real victims of Zionism."
@@SamAronow The current embracing of the Evangelicals is quite alarming as they are not our friends. They only support the state of Israel and the return of all our people to Israel only for our annihilation in fulfillment of their End of Days second coming scheme.
@@SamAronow that's what i thought the context was. even before you said that when you talked about the Fifth Monarchists I thought to myself that they're similar to American Evangelicals today. the parallels are incredible.
In case anyone was wondering, the Fifth Monarchists suffered a fate poetically similar to Zvi and were prosecuted for treason.
Partly that, and partly they simply hate Muslims more than us.
I'm binging this series and I must say that I have found it to be impressively informative. It's been quite an eye-opener to someone who's connection to Judaism has been largely a vague familial experience (My paternal grandmother was the last practicing Jew in the family until she married my grandfather some 60 years ago).
Thank you for your work.
"You must struggle to truly remember this past in all its nuance, error, and humanity. You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history."
~Ta-Nahesi Coates, Between the World and Me
Sam Aronow, I hope you will see this comment. There is a book called Evet Ben Selanikliyim written by Ilgaz Zorlu. It is about followers of Shabtai Zvi in Turkey. Ilgaz Zorlu is also his follower afaik. The book also includes essays written by other Turkish authors, journalists etc. I don't know if it translated into English though. You can find the Turkish version online as a pdf ebook form and perhaps use google translate. However, google translate is not so accurate when it comes to translating Turkish into English. So in case you need a more precise translation of certain parts, feel free to reach me. I will gladly translate them to you as best as I can in my free time. Hope you will see my message. Cheers!
@@LüzumluTarih Konuyla alakasiz olacak ama aklima RUclips'da su baslikli video geldi "Maxwell's Passover Seder with Turkish Brigade Officers in Korea".
6:55 Never heard that before..........
Why does the Sabattean Frenzy sound like some midwestern Judgement Day frenzy? Anticipation for the Rapture, selling one's possessions before Doomsday (most likely to the ministers who suggest this course of action), etc.
What are you referencing at 22:23 ? British Israelism?
What a great video!! And def laughed enough times 🤣🤣
2:50 all rise for the anthem of Alabama
Btw, who called Agrippa messiah?, i never saw it anywhere
Josephus, _Antiquities of the Jews._
@@SamAronow how i didn't thought about that?, well thank you!
I wanna say it's your best video yet, but i like Agrippa and the Rambam so much that their videos are first for me,
anyway, the video was really good and the most interesting video for me personally in the late period (except the Rambam video cause Rambam)
I wanted to ask, our last 2 videos were kinda longer then the rest of the series, is it just for those 2, or it's gonna be like the episode of John Hyrcanus and that will be the new normal?
same thing about the time between episodes, is it gonna be 3 weeks now or it just was a one time thing?
last thing: Is the shadowed character Israel Ba'al Shem tov, cause if yes oh boy, Hasidism evreybody!
My schedule is to release a video twice a month, which is not necessarily the same as every two weeks. And these two videos were simply as long as they needed to be.
@@SamAronow Oh ok then, good luck with the making of the next vidoes!
@@SamAronow i understand why you deleted that comment, sorry if it was too much
The banjo im dying here 😂
13:20 where you getting this from??
watching while eating spicy food knowing full well my ashki stomach can’t take it: I love this banjo background music!
Apparently Sephardim have IBS too. And it is a nerve disorder, so it doesn't really matter what you eat. I grew up eating basically nothing but spicy food.
Lactose intolerance, however; that's just a "vast majority of non-Europeans" thing.
Great video, though what’s with the guy in the green shirt
Sam uploaded a new video - like it and then watch it :)
Hey sam mentioned riots in morocco and bohemia being put down by the army. But i cant find any reference to that. Does anyone have any further information?
It was mentioned in my main source, Gershom Scholem's book, which is linked in the description. Unfortunately for most of my viewers, there's a lot in the book that relies on primary sources that have never been translated into English- a very common occurrence when covering this period.
This doesn't actually have anything to do with the video, but I just noticed how you pronounce certain words with long "ah" sounds when they would typically be pronounced with a short "a" in either a general American or New York accent, like "after" and "class". Is your original accent American?
This is like a mix of my native accent, but it is the way I've basically always spoken as an adult. They are both American accents. I'll have to explain this at some point, won't I?
@@SamAronow Perhaps so! I was just curious because you sound very American overall - sometimes more General American, sometimes more New York - but that one little feature stands out to me as unique. I once asked someone with a mostly English sounding accent about a few hints of Irish in some of their words, only to find out they were originally Dutch, so I didn't want to assume it was a regionalism - accents are an interesting thing!
“I couldn’t imagine what’s that like” in the new “we need to acknowledge that Persia exists”
Someone needs to make a movie about that dude
I find it very interesting that he was possibly bi polar, because Kanye West decided to come to a strange epiphany in 2022, and has been a modern day pop culture ye....maybe he's channeling him? J/k. I have no idea, I just picked up learning about random religions as a hobby. I apologize if I have offended anyone.
@3:24 Does this not account for the Jewish populations in southern America and Caribbean islands? I know these weren't countries but I recall reading there being a population of around 200,000 or so around this time period.
No, because those people were no longer Jewish. There are also doubts about those numbers, since people of Jewish descent in Spain and Portugal were normally banned from settling the New World.
I didn't know Bohdan Khmelnytsky had something to do with New Netherlands gobbling up New Sweden. Interesting
Virgin Sabbatean vs Chad Frankist
Normie
I myself am actually a sabbatian, pretty based to see a video like this lol
Jewish Poland was the OG Alabama
"This is gonna get a little uncomfortable." Oh? *ohhhhhh*
I'm just glad we didn't end up with a Hapsburg jaw kinda situation.
Have you watched אגדת חורבן? if so, what did you think of it?
The banjo music was a nice touch.🤣
Al Muqadimmah sent me.
2:44 Wait, but isn’t incest explicitly forbidden by the Torah? How could they manage so much inbreeding?
We're talking first cousins at the very closest here. From there, once the starting population gets so low, distant relatives stop being genetically distant. Something I didn't mention is that DNA testing companies often give Ashkenazi Jews false positives for close relatives who turn out to be like 5th or 6th cousins, and that's because of the Founder Effect.
@@SamAronow Oh, ok. Thanks for the timely response. I asked mainly because I looked it up and found out how hilariously specific the Torah was about how incest is bad, even among relatives by marriage.
3:16 oh Bloomberg
What’s the name of the music at end credits??
Interesting use of banjo music
6:57 became even more relevant after the video came out lolol
did he say rabbit instead of Rabbi multiple times in the video
Rabbinate. A judicial panel of rabbis for a city or country.
@@SamAronow oh thanks for clarifying
This episode has been wild, lol
I shouldn't be laughing, but what the actual heck is wrong with my man?
Did he ever divorce or get divorced with the Torah scroll