He betook himself to Jerusalem, perhaps under the delusion that in the Holy Land a miracle would take place to confirm his greatness. The community at Jerusalem was at that time in every way poor and wretched. Besides being ground down by the oppressions and extortions of Turkish officials, it suffered because the supplies from Europe were exhausted on account of the constant massacres of the Jews in Poland. The consequence was that the best men emigrated, leaving the government of the community to thorough-going Kabbalists, devoted adherents of Lurya and Vital, or to a licentious set, who followed the impulses of bare-faced selfishness. There were at that time very few men of repute and authority in Jerusalem. A Marrano physician named Jacob Zemach appears to have stood at their head. He had leapt, so to speak, in one bound from a Portuguese church into the nest of Kabbalists at Safet, and there, as later at Jerusalem, had become an unconscious tool for the mystifications practiced by Vital. Abraham Amigo, a Talmudist of the second or third rank, had similar aims. A man of some importance, to be sure, was Jacob Chages (1620-1674), who had migrated from Italy to Jerusalem, and who wrote Spanish well. Chages, however, had no official position, but lived the life of a recluse in an academy, which two brothers named Vega, of Leghorn, had founded for him. The thoughtless credulity of the people of Jerusalem of that time is instanced by the gross deception practiced upon them by Baruch Gad, one of their alms-collecting emissaries, which they, the learned and the unlearned, not only credited, but swore to as true. Baruch Gad had gone on a begging journey to Persia, where he pretended that he had experienced many adventures, and had been saved by a Jew of the tribe of Naphtali, who had given him a Kabbalistic letter from one of the "Sons of Moses" at the miraculous river Sabbation. It contained much about the riches, splendor, and daily miracles of the Sons of Moses, and said that they were momentarily awaiting the commencement of the Messianic epoch as a signal for coming forth. This story, certified by a circular, was brought by Baruch Gad to Jerusalem, where it found unquestioning credence. When the community of Jerusalem had fallen into great want in consequence of the Cossack massacre, ten so-called rabbis, Jacob Zemach at their head, sent to Reggio to their envoy Nathan Spira, of Jerusalem, a copy of this document from the Sons of Moses, which was kept in careful custody. It was to serve as a bait to draw more abundant alms.