The Confluence of Millenarianism and Sabbateanism in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands

The seventeenth century was a time of religious tension and a spike in apocalyptic rhetoric across not only the European continent, but also the Middle East and North Africa. Shabbatai Tzvi, a false Messiah based in the Ottoman Empire, promoted his own divine nature along with his subversive rewriting of Jewish law. Tzvi gained traction by capitalizing on the belief among persecuted Jewish communities worldwide that the Jews were soon to be redeemed; Protestants, facing their own predicted end-of-days in 1666, found commonalities in this theology. In a Netherlands newly free from Spain’s Catholic rule, Amsterdam boasted some of the most notorious followers of Shabbatai Tzvi. This paper aims to investigate how Sabbateanism affected the prosperity of the Sephardic community and its relations with their Ashkenazi and Dutch Protestant neighbors, using primary-source texts and scholarly analyses of the religious and interfaith dynamics of the time. The effects provide a possible look into how embracing the study of Sabbateanism might change the modern Jewish community. Part of the panel: Creating Space: Community in Unlikely Places Moderator: Professor Richard Beyler