Introduction
In this article I want to show fascinating parallelism between the twelfth-century story of David Alro’i; the
seventeenth-century episode of Shabbatai Tzvi; and a modern event from a completely
different culture and context. By comparing these three stories, we might come
to a better understanding of modern messianism which is popular within the
Jewish world today. And, surprisingly, it may have a stronger component
relating to basic sociology and psychology than to spirituality.
