Dönmeh

Uncommon card · No. 131140

The Dönmeh (Hebrew: דוֹנְמֶה, romanized: Dōnme, Ottoman Turkish: دونمه, Turkish: Dönme) are a group of Sabbatean crypto-Jews in the Ottoman Empire who embraced Islam, but retained their Jewish faith and Kabbalistic beliefs in secret. The Sabbatean movement was centered mainly in Thessalonika. It originated during and soon after the era of Shabbetai Tzevi, a 17th-century Romaniote Jewish rabbi and Kabbalist who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah and eventually feigned conversion to Islam under threat of capital punishment from the Ottoman sultan Mehmed IV in 1666. After Zevi's conversion to Islam, a number of Sabbatean Jews purportedly converted to Islam while remaining secretly faithful to Judaism after their leader, and became known as the "Dönmeh". In the 20th century, the Dönmeh were strongly involved in the Kemalist movement, the creation of the Turkish nation-state and the political system of the Turkish Republic. Many Dönmeh or other Jewish individuals, such as Hasan Tahsin, Haim Nahum...

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