Nathan of Gaza
prophet
Nathan Benjamin ben Elisha Hayyim haLevi Ashkenazi (Hebrew: נתן בנימין בן אלישע חיים הלוי אשכנזי, romanized: Nāṯān Bīnyāmīn bēn ʾĔlîšāʿ Ḥayyīm hā-Levī ʾAškənazī), more famously known as Nathan of Gaza (Hebrew: נתן העזתי, romanized: Nāṯān hā-ʿAzzāṯī; 1643–1680), or Ghazzati, was a theologian and author born in Jerusalem. After his marriage in 1663 he moved to Gaza, where he became famous as a prophet for the Jewish messiah claimant Sabbatai Zevi.
Biography
Nathan of Gaza was born in Jerusalem around 1643–1644; he died on Friday, January 11, 1680, in Sofia. He grew up in Jerusalem.
His father, Elisha Hayyim ben Jacob, was a distinguished rabbinic intellectual who served as an envoy of Jerusalem, collecting donations for impoverished Jews. During his travels, he would distribute kabbalistic works he obtained in Jerusalem. Upon settling in Ottoman Syria, Elisha Hayyim ben Jacob took on the surname "Ashkenazi" as a means of differentiating his family and himself from the largely Sephardic Jews of the Empire. He died in Alawid Morocco in 1673.
Before his father's death, Nathan of Gaza began studying Talmud and Kabbalah under Jacob Hagiz. The relationship between these two would continue for many years.
“Nathan of Gaza” enters the record as prophet. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nathan, Gaza and prophet can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q609696. VIAF identifies the subject as 2363327. The Library of Congress control number is nr96001278. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1643, 1680, 1663 and 1644.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nathan of Gaza” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.