Tikkunei Zohar
Unknown creator
Tikkunei Zohar (Repairs of the Zohar)
[Salonika], ca. 1800–99
This Ladino manuscript in cursive Sephardic script is a rare example of the extant literary heritage of the Dönmeh community centered in the Greek city of Salonika (today’s Thessaloniki), dating back to approximately the late 18th-early 19th centuries. The term dönmeh (Turkish for “convert”) denotes the sect of the followers of Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676), a self-proclaimed Jewish messiah and kabbalist from Smyrna (present-day Izmir, Turkey). Sabbatai Zevi was imprisoned in Constantinople in 1666 as his growing popularity raised fears of potential unrest, and he opted to convert to Islam in order to avoid a death sentence. This led the approximately 200 Jewish families devoted to him to follow his example. They practiced Islam publicly, but continued to adhere to the Jewish rituals clandestinely, inside the inconspicuous prayer houses within their closed community. They conducted their religious services in Hebrew initially but later adopted Ladino as both their vernacular and liturgical language.
The manuscript represents translation into Ladino of the essential kabbalistic text Tikkunei ha-Zohar (Repairs of the Zohar). Originally written in Aramaic in 14th-century Spain, it comprises a collection of 70 kabbalistic commentaries on the first word of the Bible, “Bereshit” (meaning “beginning” in Hebrew). The kabbalistic texts were crucial for the Dönmeh community, which continued to believe in the mystical messianic mission of Sabbatai Zevi, until the eventual dissolution of the sect in the early 20th century and its assimilation into the broader Turkish society.
The Dönmeh origin of the manuscript is identified by handwriting, paper, and orthography. While the Hebrew words are written accurately, there are a few phonetic alterations, typical for late Dönmeh manuscripts. Despite being incomplete and lacking pages 1–16, it is still considered a unique document due to the scarcity of the corpus of manuscripts that survived from this community.
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