An Interesting Tidbit of Local History from Rabbi Izaak M.

Around 1700, a man named Savi Sabethau “appeared among the Jews in Thessaloniki as Messiah, and the Jews believed in him. But when the authorities [that would have been the Turks] imprisoned him, he was afraid and, together with his whole family, he denied Judaism. There are still descendants of his in Thessaloniki today.” (p.100)

(There’s nobody in our phone book with exactly this surname, but of course telephone books are outdated in this era of the cell phone. And obviously not all a person’s descendants share his last name.)