The Dme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780804768672)

This book tells the story of the Dme, the descendents of Jews who resided in the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam along with their messiah, Rabbi Shabbatai Tzevi, in the seventeenth century. For two centuries following their conversion, the Dme were accepted as Muslims, and by the end of the nineteenth century rose to the top of Salonikan society. The Dme helped transform Salonika into a cosmopolitan city, promoting the newest innovation in trade and finance, urban reform, and modern education. They eventually became the driving force behind the 1908 revolution that led to the overthrow of the Ottoman sultan and the establishment of a secular republic. To their proponents, the Dme are enlightened secularists and Turkish nationalists who fought against the dark forces of superstition and religious obscurantism. To their opponents, they were simply crypto-Jews engaged in a plot to dissolve the Islamic empire. Both points of view assume the Dme were anti-religious, whether couched as critique or praise. But it is time that we take these religious people seriously on their own terms. In the Ottoman Empire, the Dme promoted morality, ethics, spirituality, and a syncretistic religion that reflected their origins at the intersection of Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufism. This is the first book to tell their story, from their origins to their near total dissolution as they became secular Turks in the mid-twentieth century.

Author: Marc David Baer
ISBN-10: 0804768676
ISBN-13: 9780804768672
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/16/2009
Pages: 358
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.20w x 1.00d
Award: National Jewish Book Award - Finalist

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 01/08/2010 pg. 17