The Ashkenazi Revolution

321Seleucid EmpireThe Seleucid Empire was createdout of the eastern conquests of the former Macedonian Empire of Alexander theGreat, son of King Phillip of Macedon. The Macedonian kingdom was centred inthe Near East and regions of the Asian part of the earlier Achaemenid PersianEmpire. At the height of its power, it included central Anatolia,the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, today's Turkmenistan, Pamir and partsof Pakistan.SepharadThe Sephardic nation as a whole.SephardicSephardi is a general termdescribing a specific kind of Jewish people. There are two types ofmeanings, either in a narrow or broad sense: In a narrowsense, Jews descended from the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula before theirexpulsion in the late 15th century; in a broad sense, and particularly forreligious purposes, Jews who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or otherwisedefine themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and traditions whichoriginated in the Iberian Peninsula, whether or not they have any historical orethnographic connection to the Iberian Peninsula. In this broader sense, theterm Sephardim includes most Mizrahi Jews, and in Israel sometimes meansany Jew who is not Ashkenazi. The term essentially means "Spanish". Itcomes from Sepharad , a Biblical location. This location is disputed, but"Sepharad" was identified by later Jews as the Iberian Peninsula, and stillmeans "Spain" in modern Hebrew.Sephardo-MizrahiJews of either Iberian, orMideastern origin. The latter were heavily influenced by Iberian Jewry, sothe author saw fit to lump them together with this term.Shabbetian Movement/ Sabbatai Zevi (August 1, 1626 – c. September 17,1676 in Dulcigno, Montenegro) was a Sephardic Rabbi and kabbalist who claimedto be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. He was the founder of theJewish Sabbatean movement. At the age of forty, he was forced by theOttoman Sultan Mehmed IV to convert to Islam. Some of his followers alsoconverted to Islam, about 300 families who were known as the Dönmeh (akaDönme) (converts).