The community of Amsterdam had been sufficiently warned of the machinations of the Sabbatians. The Jerusalem rabbi, Abraham Yizchaki, who had been appointed an emissary to collect alms, behaved like a papal legate, invested with supremacy over everything religious, and like a grand inquisitor commissioned to destroy the heresy which had been gaining ground. At Smyrna the heretical writings of the fanatic Abraham Michael Cardoso were in the hands of a few secret Sabbatians. At Yizchaki's suggestion these had to be given up by their owners under threat of excommunication and severe temporal punishment, and they were burned. The community of Smyrna thereby felt itself freed from a heavy burden, and was thankful to its liberator. Yizchaki had also come to Amsterdam, and had warned the rabbis and the communal council against Sabbatian emissaries, and drew attention to the hint of the Smyrna rabbinate, that a secret Sabbatian was on his way to print Cardoso's writings. In fact a Sabbatian emissary did come to Amsterdam for that purpose. Chayon at first conducted himself modestly, and affiliated with the Portuguese. He presented the council with a copy of his work on the Trinity printed at Berlin, in order to obtain leave to sell it. He appears to have passed himself off as an emissary from Palestine. Hereupon bickerings arose, which began with personal feeling and ended in wide-spread dissension.
The rabbi of the German community, Zevi Ashkenazi, called Chacham Zevi, was much excited at the news of Chayon's presence in Amsterdam. This man, whose father had belonged to the most zealous Sabbatians, while he himself and his son, Jacob Emden, were destined to fight against them with vehement zeal, was gifted with a clear head, and combined thoroughness with acuteness in the study of the Talmud. In his eighteenth year he had been consulted as an expert in the Talmud. Pampered, sought after, married while young to the daughter of a rich man at Buda and thereby rendered independent, he became proud, self-conscious, and vain of his knowledge of the Talmud. On account of his Talmudical learning he was invited to be chief rabbi of the German community at Amsterdam (1710); he preferred to be called Chacham. Here he looked down with great contempt upon his Portuguese colleagues, especially upon Solomon Ayllon, and would never regard him as his equal in rank. "Chacham Zevi wishes to rank higher even than the prophet Moses," was the judgment passed upon him by Ayllon.