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Frankism
A mystical and Messianic religious movement,
heretical with respect to Judaism, which remained under the
influence of
Sabbatianism. The movement's leader was Jacob Frank (Jacob
Leibowicz),
and its basic beliefs were laid out in the "Manifest",
published in Lwow
before the Kamieniec dispute (1757), in both Polish and
Hebrew. Frank's
teachings, in the form of parables and aphorisms, were
written down in
Polish by his followers and published in Brno and Offenbach
am Main.
(Rozmaite adnotacje, przypadki, czynnosci i anegdoty panskie
(Polish,
Various Annotations, Cases, Activities and Stories of the
Lord,
published 1996; and Ksiega slow panskich (Polish, Book of
the Words of
the Lord), published 1997).
The Frankists rejected Mosaic Law and the authority of
the Talmud,
emphasizing instead the cabbalistic tome Zohar and later
interpretations, particularly Sabbathaistic ones. The
adopted the
teachings about the sephiroth (sephiroth), personifying them
in the Holy
Trinity: the Good God, the equivalent of the cabbalistic En
Sof
[Hebrew, "Unfinished"]; the Big Brother or Ezav, the
equivalent of the
sefira Tiferet [Hebrew, "Beauty"]; and the Maiden, the
equivalent of
Shechina [Hebrew, "Presence" (divine)]. They believed that
the fruit Eve
pulled from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in
Paradise
brought death and misfortune to humans. The fruit trapped
the Maiden in
religious dogmas and institutions, however, hiding her under
a false
appearance ("portrait"). Frank believed that he was the
Messiah, the
third after Shabbetai Tzevi and Baruchya Ruso, and
identified himself
with Jesus-Paraclete, the final Savior. Like other
Sabbathaists, he
justified his own apostasy by "descending to the bottom of
the abyss"
(which means voluntarily subjecting oneself to disdain and
condemnation)
in order to free Shechina.
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He did not see Catholicism as the essence of
evil, however, as Shabbetai Tzevi regarded Islam: he saw it
as the last
veil separating us from God. He believed baptism was
necessary for
attaining eternal life, and thus required it of all his
followers, not
only selected ones. During his imprisonment in the
Czestochowa fortress,
he regarded the painting of the Madonna of Czestochowa as
being that
"portrait" in which Shechina was trapped. He also abandoned
his divine
pretensions in the belief that his predecessors, Shabbetai
Tzevi and
Baruchya Ruso, were just like Abraham and Izthak, who were
preparing his
true mission. Frank's task was to liberate Shechina from the
Czestochowa painting of the Virgin Mary and serving Her as a
"vessel",
before she joins the Big Brother, thus launching the
messianic epoch.
His later activities indicated that he believed this process
had not yet
come to an end.
Frank did not, however, link messianic aspirations with
the idea of
returning to Palestine. He emphasized that "Jerusalem and
the Temple
will never be rebuilt", and that Poland was to become the
promised
messianic kingdom ("Poland is the ground where we will
build").
(A.C./CM)
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