On My Mind: How Shabatai Tzvi's Message Reached Norway in 1666

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April 16, 1993 - In my articles I have from time to time written about the electrifying effect which the presumed Messianic appearance of Shabatai Tzvi had on European Jews everywhere. The year 1666 was a crucial year in that historic episode. It was then that his "revelation" took place as the Messiah. The effect was two-fold: On one hand, Jews in many countries far and wide liquidated their possessions and embarked on the voyage to Turkey to see their own eyes the Messiah about whom they had just heard. They also heard of his assistant, a man who was called Nathan the Prophet of Gaza. On the other hand, a vigorous campaign was launched by rabbis and community leaders who suspected that Shabatai Tzvi was a fraud. It was, of course, the latter group which was proven correct when Shabatai Tzvi, to everyone's consternation, submitted to the pressure of Sultan Mohammed IV, and "took on the turban," or, in other words, converted to Islam.

The Christian world, naturally unnerved by the appearance of a Jewish Messiah (since they had preached that a Messiah had already appeared sixteen hundred years earlier...), did everything it could to ridicule and mock the Jews who were still waiting for the coming of a Messiah. Many publications on this theme appeared in Christian lands. I illustrate this with booklet, printed in Germany, entitled "The Story of the Great Deceiver, or the False King of the Jews, Shabatai Tzvi of Smyrna."

I have now found rather unexpected and amazing evidence that the news of Shabatai Tzvi travelled even further and faster than usually assumed. I have come across an unusual letter, written in a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish, by a Jewish woman, Schoenchen Sossmann, in Copenhagen, to her husband Jacob Sossmann in Oslo, in 1666. The letter is now in the royal archives of the Norwegian Government. Her husband had run afoul of the law in Norway and was held by the police. His wife kept him informed of news and current events. At the end of the letter she wrote: "Now I wish to inform you of news about the melech hamoschiach (King Messiah) and about Nathan the Prophet from Gaza, who together with ten chachomim are arriving in Constantinople. There the geulah (redemption) will become mefursam (publicized)."

Being that the letter is written almost contemporarily with the event in far off Turkey, it is amazing how quickly the news reached the far north of Europe, where very few Jews lived at the time (no Jews were officially permitted entry into Norway for another two hundred years). We must be grateful to that lady who left for posterity such valuable testimony of the burning expectation of the Moshiach at that tragic time in Jewish history, after the Chmielnitzky pogroms in the Ukraine had just caused the loss of a substantial part of the Jewish people. Some have estimated that only one hundred thousand Jews survived those massacres. Therefore, the news of a Moschiach was the sorely needed event to inject the new hope and bitochen in the Jewish people's eternal survival and ultimate redemption.

Norway and the Jews

Since we have mentioned Norway in connection with this amazing letter, it is worthwhile reflecting on the fate of Jews in that far northern country.

Norway was for much of her history either a Danish or Swedish province or colony. In the seventeenth century Norway was part of Denmark. Later she became Swedish, in a union which lasted till 1905. That is why the Nobel Peace Prize is given out each year in Oslo, and not in Stockholm, as the rest of the Nobel Prizes are. Alfred Nobel knew Norway as a Swedish province and wanted her to share in the honors he sponsored.

The Church had a stronger hold on the Norwegian people than she had on the Danish people. As a consequence, hostility to Jews and Judaism lasted longer in Norway than in any other Scandinavian country, as in many other countries where the Church held sway. Christians were afraid that people would be attracted to Judaism, which was clearly recognized as the true religion of Biblical days.

The fear of mass conversions to Judaism prompted the clergy to insist on strict separation of Christians from Jews and Jewish practices. In Norway, as early as 1436, the arch-Bishop issued an edict in Latin in which it was forbidden to celebrate the "Sabbath in the Jewish manner..." After the Lutheran reformation, things became even tougher: An edict issued in 1569 declared it a capital crime, punishable by death, for any non-Lutheran to stay in Norway for more than three days.

Although in later centuries Jewish bankers and financiers made important contributions to the economy of Denmark, and therefore also of Norway, the land was closed to Jewish immigration until the middle of the nineteenth century. The Norwegian law of 1814 - at a time when Jews were already admitted into Denmark and Sweden for a long time - said: "Jews were excluded form entry into the country."

Things changed when a highly respected young poet and playwright, Henrik Wergeland, championed the entry of the Jews. Another Norwegian poet, Andreas Munch, likewise fought for the liberalization of the immigration law in favor of the Jews. In one of his poems he pleaded for freedom for the Jews, because, as he wrote: "He is your brother, and you are his." He severely criticized his countrymen in a poem with the following lines (my translation):

And you, my Norway, freedom's sons
You land of the future, so young, so beautiful
You are proud of being free and light
But you close your ports when
The Jews seek safe haven
You rebuff a people
Is that being freedom's spokesman?

Norwegian Jews in the Holocaust

The Norwegian Jewish community always remained small. Just before the Holocaust they numbered about 1100, with most of them living in the capital, Oslo, while some had a small congregation in the most northern location of any Jewish community in the world, in Trondjem, near the Polar Circle. The Oslo community had engaged a charismatic German rabbi, Julius Isak Samuel, whom I was privileged to know when he used to visit our home in Stockholm before the War. My late father and he were good friends, and therefore it was a deeply felt tragedy in our family when the news came that Rabbi Samuel and most of his congregants had been murdered by the Germans after they were deported in 1942. Of the 740 Jews deported only 24 survived...

On the other hand, the community of Trondjem, perhaps because its location was far removed from the German headquarters, managed to smuggle a few Jews over the border to Sweden. Records found after the War show that the Germans wrote furious letters to Berlin lamenting the fact that 400 Norwegian Jews had managed to escape Sweden, and tried to intimidate the Swedish Government to surrender them to the Germans. Sweden refused.

The rabbi of Trondjem, a very great talmid chacham and true giant among the Jewish leadership in our times, was Rabbi A.I. Jacobson. He was a very colorful person, born in Tiberias, who came to Norway before the war, and managed to flee to Sweden - where my late father helped engage him for the "Jeshurun Synagogue" which my father saved from destruction during the Kristallnacht and physically transported to Stockholm. There Rabbi Jacobson was a pillar of strength for the Danish and other Jews who, during and after the War, saved themselves by fleeing to Sweden. He lived to rededicate his Trondjem synagogue in 1947, and he was active in our family schule till he died in the 50's.

Quisling and His Terror Rule

The name "Quisling" has become synonymous with one who is a traitor to how own people. Vidkun Quisling was a small-time Norwegian "red neck" who caught the fancy of the Nazi barbarians in Berlin. They raised him to the top position, with full powers over every Norwegian's life and death. His pathological hatred for Jews resulted in one of the most complete eradications of a Jewish community anywhere during the Holocaust. After the War he tried to plead that he was a Norwegian patriot. He was executed as the most hated man in his own land. His name then became a synonym for "traitor," a latter-day version of Benedict Arnold in American history, only much more ferocious and lethal. His name comes to mind when, in our own ranks, Jews pose as friends of the PLO and other enemies of Israel....

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