The Burden of Silence

Cengiz Sisman, Oxford University Press, 2017

The Burden of Silence is the first comprehensive study on Sabbateanism, an early modern Ottoman-Jewish messianic movement, tracing it from its beginnings during the seventeenth century p to the present day. Initiated by the Jewish rabbi Sabbatai Sevi, the movement combined Jewish, Islamic, and Christian religious and social elements and became a transnational phenomenon, spreading throughout Afro-Eurasia. When Ottoman authorities forced Sevi to convert to Islam in 1666, his followers formed messianic crypto-Judeo-Islamic sects, Dönmes.

The crypto-Jewish Dönmes were able to survive, despite persecution from ottoman authorities, by internalizing the Kabbalistic principle of a “burden of silence.” Believers kept their secret on pain of spiritual and material punishment, and in this
way were able to sustain their overtly Muslim and covertly Jewish identities.