![]() ![]() “On our globe, perhaps no rift is so profound as that separating Jew and Muslim. Alpert authored God’s Middlemen: A Habad Retrospective (White Cloud Press, 1998). His travelogs have appeared in Lifestyles magazine and elsewhere. He studied Talmudic law and Jewish philosophy in yeshivot and universities in the United States and Israel. ![]() Reuven Alpert describes himself as a “spiritual anthropologist.” He has devoted several years to exploring exotic Jewish communities around the globe. Beyond that, Caught in the Crack has some disturbing things to say concerning Messiahs-Bar Kochba, Shabbetai Zevi, Jacob Frank-and the entire phenomenon of Messianism. Caught in the Crack is a search for the Messiah in time and space. A highlight of his journey is a visit to the home of this controversial personality in Izmir. Reuven Alpert has doggedly tracked the remnants of Shabbetai Zevi’s followers in Greece and Turkey. Was this truly the end? Does a Messiah ever truly end? All this came to a dramatic end with the Messiah’s forced conversion to Islam by the Sultan in Edirne (Adrianople). ![]() Much of the Christian world, particularly Protestants in Western Europe, were equally fascinated by the tidings from the East (though they might have cast Shabetai Zevi in the role of Antichrist). In 1666, the mystic Shabbetai Zevi of Izmir (Smyrna) convinced most of the Jewish world that he was the righteous Messiah come to redeem his people Israel. ![]()
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