Shabbetai Tzvi was the central figure of a messianic movement that swept the Jewish world in the mid-seventeenth century. Born in Izmir (Smyrna), as an adolescent Shabbetai Tzvi embarked on the study…
Day unto day bequeaths its fading sun,
and night after night laments for night.
Summer after summer is gathered in fall
and the world in its sorrow gives song.
Tomorrow we’ll die, the word in us…
I admit my guilt . . . in that I was told of a maiden who was [there] the daughter of Juan Estevan who had ascended to heaven and was approached there by an angel, and how she had told of the many…