IS THE HOUSE SHABBETAI TZVI LIVED IN, A LANDMARK? The Turkish government wants to tear down the house to make a park. Doenmeh, descendants of his followers want to preserve it--but can't come right out and say so.

Over the years, most of the doenmeh assimilated into Islam; many more were annihilated during the Holocaust, and still more have, in modern-day Turkey, come to see their background as a curious but largely irrelevant heritage. But even those who did assimilate usually maintained some knowledge of their ancestry, and doenmeh were among the founders of the secular Turkish republic. Today, many doenmeh are among Turkey’s elite, though it is taboo to speak their names; since doenmeh are regarded as traitors by both Muslims and Jews, it is scandalous to accuse a person of being one of them, even if his or her identity is an open, unspoken secret. (Recently deceased Turkish foreign minister Ismail Cem, for example, was outed by several Turkish newspapers, but he denied being a Sabbatean, and Iglaz Zorlu’s best-selling 1999 memoir, “Yes, I Am a Salonikan,” stirred controversy throughout the country.) But the secret is open, like the doenmeh cemeteries outside of Istanbul, with their distinctively unadorned gravestones, and the mosques where doenmeh are known to pray.

Barry Kapandji is one of the few doenmeh descendants willing to openly acknowledge his ancestry but even he wouldn’t use his real name (totally out of the question, he said). Kapandji, 33, was told by his father that he was a doenmeh when he was 9 years old. Since then, he has been fascinated by his heritage. Kapandji first contacted me a few months ago, when he learned that the house in Izmir (formerly Smyrna), in which Tzvi is believed to have lived, was slated for demolition by the municipality to make way for a park. No one would help him: the doenmeh he knew were afraid of going public, and the Jewish community wanted nothing to do with this sect of heretics.

So can the home of a false messiah--be a landmark?

Technorati Tag: Shabtai Zvi and Shabbetai Zvi and Doenmeh.