ONL: Third Vision of Levi Charlap - Beginning

 1648

Begins with 22 year old Shabbetai Zevi delivering a speech in his town of Smyrna (Izmir, Turkey) that anticipates the Ba'al Shem Tov. He declares that when Moshiach comes, heaven will be a wedding that never ends as Hashem marries the Jewish people.  He leads a group of Smyrna Jews in song. Maybe 'Od Neshama' or 'Lavala Blanca Nina.' Meanwhile passes around a special mystical pipe (obviously opium). Everyone begins to dance and sing. 

There is a discussion among two friends of his rich, blind father, Mordechai Zevi, about Zevi's prophets from the war between Turks and the Venitian state, and about whether his son Shabbetai is a holy man or a madman, and the coming of the year 1666 when the Messiah is supposed to finally come. They discuss his recent divorce from his wife, the most beautiful Jewess in Smyrna, whom he drove crazy with his obsessive cleanliness and refusal to sleep with her. One of them takes that as a sign of his moral purity and 'cleanness', the other takes it as a sign that he's 'what the Ashkenazim call 'meshuggeh.' One says 'he may yet be the Messiah.' The other says 'he'll certainly convince himself he is.'

The first friend goes to a shul where people are discussing the holy work of Shabbetai Zevi, and the friend suggests that their Shabbetai may be the Messiah. He wins over many of them, perhaps still high on opium, who then sing their way to Shabbetai's house. At first, Shabbetai is aghast, and angrily silences them from such blasphemies. But they manage to convince him by some convoluted Talmudical argument which spurs in him an horrific vision of the Chmielnicki massacres, of which they are given conformation the next day. This convinces him and his followers that he is in fact Moshiach. 

1661: Cairo

Shabbetai and his followers, having been exiled for nearly twenty years and subsequently exiled from Salonica (Thessaloniki, Greece). Having remarried, he sends his new wife out to the market, then whips himself to flaying until his body is completely bloody and scarred, and cries out in moaning. His neighbor barges in, a local Coptic Abouna (priest), who claims he had to interfere because he has never heard him whip himself and cry aloud so much. Shabbetai tells the Abouna to hold him in the manner of a pieta. He confesses has secretly lost his faith and thought of following embracing Christianity, he does not know why he whipped himself so hard except that he wanted to punish himself out of guilt and also wanted to experience what Jesus might have experienced on the cross. But the Abouna, being a true priest, tells him not to convert because so many followers are dependent on him, spiritually and financially, and might kill themselves out of grief for their loss of their leader, leaving their children orphans, or perhaps they'd kill their children. The Abouna tells him once again teaches him about the trials of Jesus before he became the Messiah. The Abouna meant that Jesus's lesson is there for all of mankind to benefit, but Shabbetai interprets the Abouna's lessons it as meaning his tribulations on the way to becoming Messiah. As Shabbetai sings another of his songs, the Abouna wipes, washes, and cleans the bloody floor for him.