In 1666, the mystic Shabbetai Zevi of Izmir (Smyrna) convinced most of the Jewish world that he was the righteous Messiah come to redeem his people Israel. Much of the Christian world, particularly Protestants in Western Europe, were equally fascinated by the tidings from the East (though they might have cast Shabetai Zevi in the role of Antichrist). All this came to a dramatic end with the Messiah’s forced conversion to Islam by the Sultan in Edirne (Adrianople). Was this truly the end? Does a Messiah ever truly end?
Reuven Alpert has doggedly tracked the remnants of Shabbetai Zevi’s followers in Greece and Turkey. A highlight of his journey is a visit to the home of this controversial personality in Izmir. Caught in the Crack is a search for the Messiah in time and space. Beyond that, Caught in the Crack has some disturbing things to say concerning Messiahs—Bar Kochba, Shabbetai Zevi, Jacob Frank—and the entire phenomenon of Messianism.
Reuven Alpert describes himself as a “spiritual anthropologist.” He has devoted several years to exploring exotic Jewish communities around the globe. He studied Talmudic law and Jewish philosophy in yeshivot and universities in the United States and Israel. His travelogs have appeared in Lifestyles magazine and elsewhere. Most recently, Mr. Alpert authored God’s Middlemen: A Habad Retrospective (White Cloud Press, 1998).
“On our globe, perhaps no rift is so profound as that separating Jew and Muslim. This is the story of a sect of some 25.000 souls who for over three hundred years have lived a double identity of Jewish Muslims. It is also the story of intense longing for the Messiah, of the apocalypse, of deep disappointment, and of faith beyond faith.”

Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook served as the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Erets Israel from 1921 until his death in 1935. Born in Grieva, Latvia in 1865, he studied in the famed Volozhin Yeshivah, dubbed “the mother of yeshivot.” Beside the intellectual tradition of Volozhin, reaching back to the Vilna Gaon, Rav Kook was exposed in early childhood through his mother’s family to the mystical legacy of Habad Hasidism.