This is the first book of its kind written from within the tradition.
Publishing on October 6, 2026, Uluc Ozuyener’s Born in Secrecy—Maaminim: The Practical Kabbalah of Shabbatai Sevi (Paperback original, ISBN 978-1966608516, 350 pages, $35.00) tells a remarkable story never-before heard firsthand. This the first book of its kind written from within the tradition.
Shabbatai Sevi (1626–76) was a 17th-century Ottoman Jewish rabbi and kabbalist who claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, inciting a massive, worldwide messianic movement. Forced to convert to Islam in 1666 to avoid execution by Sultan Mehmed IV, his public actions then caused widespread disillusionment. Yet he maintained a clandestine following. Ozuyener tells the fascinating story of belief, culture, ritual, and the descendants—called Maaminim—who continued to carry the spark of faith in the enigmatic Sevi behind closed doors, through gestures and coded language.
Ozuyener’s book is both a personal journey and scholarly exploration—to reveal how a faith could survive, and even flourish, through exile, contradiction, and concealment. It weaves together theological analysis, archival research, Ladino hymns, Zoharic commentary, and personal testimony. Ozuyener engages with the belief that exile and descent are not signs of failure, but sacred processes through which hidden light can be revealed.
Uluc Ozuyener founded the Society for Sabbatean Studies, the first international organization dedicated to preserving and illuminating the heritage of the Maaminim. He is a descendant of the Sabbatean Kapancı sect, born in Turkey, now living in the U.S. Professionally, Ozuyener leads global IT teams, but behind his technical career has been a devotion to this subject. His public contributions include interviews and articles in Åžalom, the leading Jewish newspaper in Turkey, and a widely viewed YouTube conversation with journalist RuÅŸen Çakır on Medyascope (you can turn
“A mosaic created by a single contemporary Sabbatean intellectual, during a lifelong search for the meaning of the unique and beautiful heritage he was born into.” —Eliezer Papo, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; President, Israeli National Authority for Ladino Culture
“Offers a rare and intimate window into the world of the crypto-Sabbateans: inevitably idiosyncratic, yet deeply representative of the lived religious imagination of generations who held fast to a paradoxical faith in silence. It is at once personal testimony and collective memory—three and a half centuries of Ladino hymns, ancestral whispers, and inherited gestures, refracted through a mind fully conversant with modern Sabbatean scholarship and unafraid of its tensions. It is unlike any other book I know.” —J.H. Chajes, Wolfson Professor of Jewish Thought, University of Haifa
“Weaves rigorous historical methods with the subtle inheritance of a living tradition. It offers not merely an intellectual analysis but a study shaped by an inner familiarity with its sources, resulting in a work both authoritative and quietly poetic. It stands among the most significant contributions to the field in recent years.” —Kursad Demirci, Professor of History of Religions, Marmara University
For author interviews, media review copies: Sandra Capellaro,
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Q&A with Author Uluc Ozuyener
What do Shabbatai Sevi’s followers believe and practice today?
The Sabbatean tradition today is not monolithic. Among the KarakaÅŸ, there remains a religiously practicing community that maintains shared ritual life. Among the Kapancı, to which I belong, the tradition is carried more privately—most descendants no longer practice, and those who still believe rarely show it to anyone. Some continue old customs in private—rituals encoded in gesture, food, and timing—while others fold the teachings inwardly into modern life, into art, and into the way we interpret the happenings around us, where even ordinary moments carry a mystical aroma.
About how many Sabbateans live in the United States?
There is no registry and no census—concealment was the tradition’s mode of survival, so any figure is necessarily an estimate. Worldwide, I believe roughly 100,000 people carry Sabbatean roots, with the largest community in Turkey, followed by the U.S., Germany, France, the UK, and Italy. The majority are unaware of their lineage or no longer practice, and among those who do, many will never reveal themselves to outsiders. In the U.S., a few descendants have returned to Judaism—some even becoming Orthodox—yet Shabbatai Sevi still holds a sacred place in their hearts.
What did they believe after Sevi’s conversion to Islam?
Yes, Sevi outwardly converted to Islam in 1666 under threat of death—that part is not in question. What is contested is what the conversion meant. For most of the Jewish world, it was a devastating betrayal and proof that he had been a “false messiah” all along. But for the Maaminim, it was understood through the mystical logic of yeridah le-tzorekh aliyah—descent for the sake of ascent: just as the Shekhinah descends into exile alongside her people, so too did the Messiah enter another world in order to gather what could only be reached from within it. His conversion was not abandonment but concealment. My own ancestor was Sevi’s right-hand man—he stood at his side throughout, faced the same choice, and followed him into hiddenness. Had he turned away, I would not exist to answer this question.
Why did they believe he was the Messiah?
The question itself contains a common misunderstanding. Sabbateanism did not begin as a sect—at its peak in 1665–66, before the forced conversion, almost the entire Jewish world believed Sevi was the Messiah. To be a Jew in those years was, in a real sense, to be a Sabbatean. The Jewish world embraced him almost in its entirety—merchants and farmers, doctors and craftsmen, ordinary worshippers and the rabbinical establishment alike—and those who dismiss Sevi today trace their lineage directly back to the very people who once proclaimed him the redeemer. He emerged into a generation worn thin by exile, persecution, and the recent trauma of the Khmelnytsky massacres, in which tens of thousands of Jews were killed—a wound that left communities desperate for redemption. His followers witnessed what they understood as miraculous signs, heard proclamations of his kingship read aloud in synagogues, and found in the Kabbalist Nathan of Gaza a theologian who gave the movement its architecture. The Maaminim, then, are not those who came to believe in Sevi—they are those who never stopped.
Why is your book subtitled “Practical Kabbalah,” which usually implies miracles in the physical world?
For the Maaminim, “practical” does not mean the performance of miracles or the manipulation of the physical world. It means embodied—a Kabbalah lived in the body, the home, the exile, in what can be said only through gesture and never fully spoken. It is the discipline of quieting the ego so that what surrounds us can be seen as it truly is, and recognizing that the sacred is already encoded in ordinary things, waiting to be read. That is the Practical Kabbalah of Shabbatai Sevi: not a Kabbalah that bends nature, but one that learns to perceive what is already there.
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