BOOK REVIEW
SHABTAI ZVI
THE MAN WHO BELIEVED
HE WAS MESSIAH
By Shlomo Rosenberg
Published by Hamenorah Publishing House, Tel Aviv, Israel, 1965
Translation from Yiddish to English by Albert G. Golden, MD
AuthorHouse, Bloomington, Indiana, July 2007
Reviewed by
M. Saleem Seyal, MD, FACC, FACP
“Ani Ma’amin, I believe with a full heart in the coming of the Messiah, and even though he may tarry,
I will wait for him on any day that he may come.”
Moses Maimonides (12th Article of Faith)
W
hen you are close to approaching
your 90th birthday you don’t, in
general, embark on a translation
project from Yiddish to English that lasts two
years, with no help from the original publisher
(not in business any longer) or the author (deceased). However, that is exactly what a senior
member of the Greater Louisville Medical Society did quite successfully. Dr. Albert Goldin,
a semi-retired internist from Louisville, completed translation of
a historical novel about Shabtai Zvi, a controversial figure in the
annals of Jewish history. At the age of 40 in 1666 he proclaimed
that at long last, he was the long-expected redeemer and messiah.
He was able to convince a large segment of the Jewish diaspora
and developed a significant following. This Sabbatean Movement
reached its peak when he sailed from Izmir to Istanbul hoping to
take the crown from the Ottoman ruler, but he was promptly arrested, jailed and ended up becoming a Muslim (under duress) along
with a large number of his followers who accepted Islam. Despite
his conversion to Islam, many continued to believe that he was the
true messiah and remnants of these believers (ma’aminin) who are
called donmeh (Muslim descendents of Jews) still exist in present
day Istanbul in Turkey.
Dr. Albert Goldin was born in Lima, Ohio in 1922 in a Yiddish-speaking immigrant family from Belarus, Russia. After graduating from The Ohio State University, he completed an internal
medicine residency followed by a year of cardiovascular fellowship
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LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
at the University of Louisville. He went away to Japan and Korea
as part of his military service and on his return got married to
Anita, a Louisville native, made Louisville his home, and started
his private practice in internal medicine. He retired from full-time
practice many years ago but still sees patients once a week. He has
been quite active at the Jewish Community Center and has taught
spoken Yiddish for many years to interested citizens. His brother, a
radiologist in Bronx, New York, received a copy of the original book
in Yiddish from the author Shlomo Rosenberg, which he then gave
to his mother. Dr. Goldin received the book from his mother and
enjoyed reading the story of Shabtai Zvi, an enigmatic, fascinating
but ultimately a tragic and reviled figure in Jewish history. Dr. Goldin
decided to translate it verbatim without any editing.
The result is a book of intrigue in a rather original flowery language with interesting insight into the pervasive religious milieu
of messianic fervor, weaving cohesively Shabtai Zvi’s psychiatric
travails with episodes of “illuminations” punctuated by bouts of
depressive spells. He surrounded himself with many of his sycophants and propagandists who produced tracts, documents and
authentic looking “vintage” parchments proclaiming that Shabtai
Zvi was the real thing. He went along with the roller-coaster ride of
mystic messianism and convinced himself about the role that he’d
been grooming himself to play since adolescence in Izmir. In his
preface to the book, Dr. Goldin quotes Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer
(1700-1760) also called Baal Shem Tov / Master of the Good Name
(a Jewish mystical rabbi and founder of Hasidic Judaism) who wrote
these comments about Shabtai Zvi, “He had within him a Holy Spark