Department of Jewish Thought
Subject: The Hymns of the Sabbatean "Ma'aminim" in their Ottoman Context
Supervisor: Dr. Pawel Maciejko
Abstract: My work is dedicated to the research of the lives and texts of the Sabbatean "Ma'aminim", also known as " Dönme ", who converted to Islam in the footsteps of their messiah Sabbatai Sevi. The Ma'aminim lived in Ottoman Salonika, starting at the late 17th century, and until 1924, when they were forcibly repatriated in Istanbul.
My research deals with one of the few authentic inner sources that are available: a codex of approximately a thousand mystical, messianic, liturgical poems, dating to the 18th and 19th centuries, written in Ladino, Hebrew, Aramaic and Ottoman- Turkish. These poems appear in five manuscripts, four are located in Ben Zvi institute and the fifth at Harvard University library archives. To this day only a small part of the poems were examined and published. My research aims to progress current achievements by providing an encompassing and systematic analysis of the entire codex. I wish to discern the unique identity of the Ma'aminim community and their relationship to their surroundings by examining the poems in multiple aspects: Linguistic, formative, musical, ritualistic and philosophical. Through this work I wish to contribute to the understanding of the inner world of the Ma'aminim, as well as exploring their syncretic religion and the development of later Sabbateanism. Moreover, studying the poetry of the Ma'aminim can provide a case study for other syncretic phenomena and a model for exploring inter-cultural relations taking place between a majority and a minority in general, and in European and Ottoman cultures of the early modern era, in particular.
Presidential Stipend 2013/14