I had been interested in antinomian Judaïsm for years. Unfortunatly I lost most of my computer data on the subject. I made a research to find some of the most interesting informations that I had found on the web. The following are among the most easy to find.
While studying this subject I realised that there was not many datas, researches, documents on Jacob Franck and I have felt that it was unfair.
It seems that I have not been the only one surprised to find so few crucial academic studys on the subject of Frankism. Indeed as you will see with the second link, the Italian Research has started a program on the issue.
But let us start with the overt "conspiracy" of the character named by Gershom Scholem,' the bad prophet':
_http://www.donmeh-west.com/frankintro.shtml
Extract: by...
Ben Zion Wacholder, Ph.D
Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati
Sheldon H. Blank, Editor
Matitiahu Tsevat, Associate Editor
Offprint from Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. LIII 1982
©1983, by the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion
[Reprinted with Kind Permission of the Author]
« Frank writes in an obscure manner, avoiding direct speech, conveying his message through the use of biblical and Zoharic citations. The style of gluing together a variety of biblical and Zoharic lines frustrates the reader.
Nevertheless, the general message comes through and may be summarized as follows:
Frank predicts the impending slaughter of the Jews in all the major and minor nations of Europe as part of the apocalypse.
The salvation of the Jews rests upon their accepting the faith of Edom, i.e., Rome.
Jacob Frank is the reincarnation of Jacob the patriarch.
Jacob Frank will lead Israel's redemption by conquering the world, including the Catholic Church. »
_http://www.ricercaitaliana.it/prin/dettaglio_prin_en-2005107225.htm
Extract:
"Frankism and revolutionary utopias in central Europe in the period between the emancipation and the assimilation of the Jews
Frankism has for centuries been pigeonholed as superstition, corruption or charlatanism. Even if twentieth-century historians avoid describing the Frankists as "savage barbarians" as did the scholar Eleasar Flekes in the early 1800s, this diffidence has prevented a clearer understanding of the phenomenon from asocial, cultural and political standpoint. It is to the work of Scholem—The Major Traditions of Hebrew Mysticism, The Kabbalah and its Symbolism, From Frankism to Jacobinism—that we owe the attempt to redefine the meaning and significance of the movement, both inside and outside the Jewish tradition. Scholem's work has put new life into research on Frankism. However, since confessional approaches continue to prevail, the re-evaluation of the movement has still to be carried out, and its impact on political thought has still to be fully appreciated. Harris Lenowitz's recent study —The Charlatan at the Gottes Haus in Offenbach, 2001—for all its rigour, does not spare the movement destructive criticism from an eminently religious point of view.
Nevertheless, some sound critical observations have been made. Scholem mentions the political consequences of Frankism, its links with the Enlightenment and Jacobinism. Arthur Mandel, in his study The Militant Messiah or The Flight from the Ghetto (1979, Italian trans. 1984), dwells on its links with the Polish revolution and Zionism. Jacob Katz has examined its connections with freemasonry, opening an interesting line of enquiry, which, however, he fails to develop systematically. Klaus Davidowicz, author of a book on Jacob Frank published in 1989, has recently drawn attention (in Zwischen Aufklaerung und Mystik, 2001) to a key figure in the connection between Frankism, the Enlightenment and freemasonry, as well as in the internationalisation of some political aspects of the "teaching" of Frank—namely Joseph Hirschfeld.
_http://www.ajlmagazine.com/content/032007/heretic.html
« And throughout, Frank maintained with his followers a secret, heretical religion of transgression, antinomianism, and inversion. It really was the stuff of folk legends: a sinister leader, secret sexual orgies, and a rejection of every standard of decency. Frank parodied the Zohar, the Talmud, the Torah; he boasted about his sexual prowess and told dirty jokes.
Oh, and that Jewish-Masonic conspiracy that anti-Semites often talk about? Not entirely fiction — one follower of Frank, Moses Dobruska, was in fact a prominent Jacobin and powerful Freemason who went under the name of Junius Frey. He ran arms during the French Revolution, and may have spied for Austria. He was later executed by guillotine.
Amazingly, some of Frank’s followers went on to become leaders of the Prague Enlightenment, prominent attorneys in Poland, and shape-shifters of every kind. Adam Mickiewicz, considered Poland’s greatest poet, used Frankist themes in his work. Even Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis had a portrait of Frank’s daughter Eva on his desk in the Supreme Court — an heirloom he received from his Dembitz relatives, whose ancestors were followers of Frank.
So, yes, it really is true that there were (and perhaps are) secret Jewish conspiracies and mystical orgies. »
_http://www.jewishwhistleblower.blogspot.com/2005/05/sabbateans-doenmeh-and-frankists.html
the extract is made from the Finkelstein's text on Rothenberg's poetical work:
« Then again, it could be that all Jews are mad, however they may resemble "other men {who} are not jews/not mad." The predisposition of Jews to various forms of mental illness was an accepted fact in the milieu about which Rothenberg writes, in both the popular mind and that of the scientific establishment. Just as the Jew's body was seen as particularly susceptible to various diseases and deformations, so too, as Sander Gilman notes, "Jewish mental illness was the result of the sexual practices of the Jew, such as inbreeding, which created the predisposition for disease, and the pressures of modern life in the city, which were the direct cause" (Freud 93). Gilman's exhaustive analysis of beliefs regarding Jewish mental illness not only reveals the links between sexuality and modern urban life but focuses specifically on "the world of the train." As Gilman explains, this world "was one of the public spaces, defined by class and economic power, in which the Jew could purchase status. It was part of the image of the world of `modern life' that helped deform the psyche of the Jew. A ticket assured one of traveling among one's economic equals-but not as racial `equals.' The association of trains and the trauma of confronting one's Jewish identity is a powerful topos at the turn of the century" (Freud 125).
Thus in Rothenberg's poem, the Jewish constellation of sex, madness, locomotives, and poetry is hardly accidental. The "mad" Jew on the train speaks boldly to the lady and the other passengers of "jewish alphabets," "jewish locomotives." »
I strongly advise you to check the picture of jacob Franck on his death bed on the wiki page. It underlines the wealth of the character and his power.
Wikipedia
Jacob Frank (יעקב פרנק Ya'akov Frank, Jakob Frank; 1726 - 1791) was an 18th century Jewish religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi and also of King David. Frank and his followers were excommunicated due to his extremely unconventional doctrines that included acceptance of the New Testament, Enlightenment and some controversial concepts such as purification through transgression.
Frank arguably created a new religion, now referred to as Frankism, which combined some aspects of Christianity and Judaism.
The development of Frankism was one of the consequences of the messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi, the religious mysticism that resulted as a reaction to nascent Hassidism and the socioeconomic upheavals among the Jews of Poland and western Ukraine.
The heyday of Frank's messianic movement occurred during a period of the loss of relative social and economic stability in the late 1770s resulting from the Koliyivshchyna rebellion, an uprising of Ukrainian peasantry that resulted in many Polish and Jewish casualties.
Messianism at the end of the seventeenth century assumed mystical coloring, possibly under the influence of the Rosicrucian movement in Germany, which dressed its doctrine of improvement of the World in mystical garb. In Polish-owned Ukraine, particularly in Podolia and Galicia, there were numerous secret societies of Sabbateans (after Sabbatai Zevi) formed.
In expectation of the great Messianic revolution, the members of these societies abandoned many Jewish principles of faith and discarded Jewish religious laws and custom. The mystical cult of the Sabbateans is believed to have included both asceticism and sensuality: some did penance for their sins, subjected themselves to self-inflicted pain, and "mourned for Zion"; others disregarded the strict rules of modesty required by Judaism, and at times were accused of being licentious. The Polish rabbis attempted to ban the "Sabbatean heresy" at the assembly at Lemberg in 1722, but could not fully succeed, as it was widely popular among the nascent Jewish middle class.
[edit]Early life
Jacob Frank is believed to have been born as Jacob ben Leiba (or Leibowits) in Koroliwka, Podolia (Ukraine) about 1726. His father was a Sabbatean, and moved to Chernivtsi, in the Austro-Hungarian region of Bukovina in 1730, where the Sabbatean influence at the time was strong. While still a schoolboy Frank began to reject the Talmud, and afterward often referred to himself as "a plain" or "untutored man."
As a traveling merchant in textile and precious stones he often visited Ottoman territories, where he earned the nickname "Frank," a name generally given in the East to Europeans, and lived in the centers of contemporary Sabbateanism: Salonica and Smyrna.
In the early 1750s, Frank became intimate with the leaders of the Sabbateans. Two followers of Osman Baba were witnesses at his wedding in 1752. In 1755 he reappeared in Podolia, gathered a group of local adherents, and began to preach the "revelations" which were communicated to him by the Tzeviists in Salonica. One of these gatherings in Landskron ended in a scandal, and the rabbis' attention was drawn to the new teachings. Frank was forced to leave Podolia, while his followers were hounded and denounced to the local authorities by the rabbis (1756). At the rabbinical court held in the village of Satanov the Sabbateans were accused of having broken fundamental Jewish laws of morality, modesty, and more importantly of acceptance of sanctity of the Christian Bible.
The anti-Talmudists
As a result of these disclosures the congress of rabbis in Brody proclaimed a universal Cherem (excommunication) against all "impenitent heretics", and made it obligatory upon every pious Jew to seek them out and expose them. The Sabbateans informed Dembowsky, the Catholic Bishop of Kamenetz-Podolsk, that they rejected the Talmud and recognized only the sacred book of Kabbalah, the Zohar, which did not contradict the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. They stated that they regarded the Messiah-Deliverer as one of the embodiments of the three divinities.
The bishop took the "Anti-Talmudists," or "Zoharists," under his protection and in 1757 arranged a religious disputation between them and the rabbis. The Anti-Talmudists presented their theses, to which the rabbis gave a very lukewarm and unwilling reply lest they offend the Church dignitaries who were present. The bishop decided that the Talmudists had been vanquished, and ordered them to pay a fine to their opponents and to burn all copies of the Talmud in the bishopric of Podolia.
After the death of the bishop, the Sabbateans were subjected to severe persecution by the rabbis, although they succeeded in obtaining an edict from Augustus III of Poland guaranteeing them safety.
Declaration of being a successor to Sabbatai Zevi
At this critical moment Jacob Frank came to Iwania, proclaimed himself as a direct successor to Sabbatai Zevi and Osman Baba, and assured his adherents that he had received revelations from Heaven. These revelations called for the conversion of Frank and his followers to the Christian religion, which was to be a visible transition stage to the future "Messianic religion." In 1759 negotiations looking toward the conversion of the Frankists to Roman Catholicism were being actively carried on with the higher representatives of the Polish Church; at the same time the Frankists tried to secure another discussion with the rabbis. The Polish primate Lubenski and the papal nuncio Nicholas Serra were suspicious of the aspirations of the Frankists, but at the insistence of the administrator of the bishopric of Lemberg, the canon Mikulski, the discussion was arranged. It was held in Lemberg, and was presided over by Mikulski. Protestant missionaries also tried to detour the Frankists to Protestantism, and a handful did in fact join the Moravian church.
[edit]Baptism of the Frankists
At the discussion in 1759, the rabbis energetically repulsed their opponents. After the discussion the Frankists were requested to demonstrate in practice their adherence to Christianity; Jacob Frank, who had then arrived in Lemberg, encouraged his followers to take the decisive step. The baptism of the Frankists was celebrated with great solemnity in the churches of Lwów, with members of the Polish szlachta (nobility) acting as god-parents. The neophytes adopted the names of their godfathers and godmothers, and ultimately joined their ranks. Frank himself was baptized in Lwów (September 17, 1759) and again in Warsaw the next day, with Augustus III as his godfather. Frank's baptismal name was "Joseph" (Józef). In the course of one year more than 500 individuals were converted to Christianity at Lwów, and nearly a thousand in the following year. By 1790 26,000 Frankists were recorded baptised in Poland [1].
However, the Frankists continued to be viewed with suspicion, due to their unusual doctrine. Frank was arrested in Warsaw on February 6, 1760 and delivered to the Church's tribunal on the charge of heresy. The Church tribunal convicted Frank as a teacher of heresy, and imprisoned him in the monastery of Częstochowa.
Prison and later days
Jacob Frank on his death bed in 1791.
Frank's imprisonment lasted thirteen years, yet it only increased his influence with the sect by surrounding him with the aura of martyrdom. Many Frankists established themselves near Częstochowa, and kept up constant communication with their "holy master". Frank inspired his followers through mystical speeches and epistles, in which he stated that salvation could be gained only through the "religion of Edom," or dat ("law"), a mixture of Christian and Sabbateanism. After the first partition of Poland, Frank was released by the Russian general Bibikov, who had occupied Częstochowa, in August 1772. Frank lived in the Moravian town of Brno until 1786, surrounded by a retinue of adherents and pilgrims who came from Poland. His daughter Eve began to play an important role in the organization of the sect at this time. Frank kept a force of 600 armed men at his "court" in Brünn. Future czar Paul I of Russia visited him.
Accompanied by his daughter, Frank repeatedly traveled to Vienna, and succeeded in gaining the favor of the court. Maria Theresa regarded him as a disseminator of Christianity among the Jews, and it is even said that Joseph II was favorably inclined to the young Eve Frank. Ultimately Frank was deemed unmanageable and he was obliged to leave Austria. He moved with his daughter and his retinue to Offenbach, in Germany, where he assumed the title of "Baron of Offenbach," and lived as a wealthy nobleman, receiving financial support from his Polish and Moravian followers, who made frequent pilgrimages to Offenbach. On the death of Frank in 1791, Eve became the "holy mistress" and leader of the sect. Her fortunes dwindled in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, and she died in Offenbach in 1816.
Some Frankists were active during the French Revolution, such as Frank's nephew Moses Dobruška. Many of the Frankists saw Napoleon Bonaparte as a potential Messiah. The Frankists scattered in Poland and Bohemia eventually intermarried into the gentry and middle class, and a number of important cultural figures in Poland are descended from from former Frankists, including Frederic Chopin, Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Slowacki.
Moses Dobruška
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Moses Dobruška (1753–1794) was a nephew of Jacob Frank, the founder of the Frankist sect who claimed to be the Jewish messiah. Dobruška was an alchemist, freemason, writer, and poet. In 1773 he converted from Judaism to the Catholic faith and took the name of Franz Thomas Schönfeld. In 1778 he was elevated to nobility in Vienna, becoming Franz Thomas Edler von Schönfeld. Together with Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld, who did not convert, he became one of the main conspirators of the “Knights of St. John the Evangelists for Asia in Europe,” a secret society of freemasons, which was much talked about in Germany and Austria between 1783 and 1790, not least because it was the first German-speaking fraternal order to accept Jews. In 1792, in the wake of the French Revolution, he traveled via Strasbourg to Paris and became a Jacobin, changing his name, once again, to Junius Frey. He was arrested for treason and espionage and executed by guillotine in 1794.
The following article is in French, my native language, so I did a translation of one of the most important sentences. I don't consider it a good translation but at least it will give the meaning so that the non-french speaking reader can grasp the importance of the issue.
_http://ciepfc.rhapsodyk.net/article.php3?id_article=194
« C'est Scholem lui-même qui, dès son installation en Palestine, avait opéré un rapprochement entre le sionisme et le sabbataïsme, dans lesquels il voyait les deux moments politiques de l'histoire du peuple juif à l'époque moderne. Le caractère « historique » de la rédemption dans le judaïsme (par opposition à l'idée chrétienne d'un salut dans l'autre monde), associé à l'espérance d'une fin des persécutions endurées dans l'exil et l'esclavage d'Israël, engendre une idéologie révolutionnaire que Scholem appelle « utopique » et « apocalyptique ».
Résultat d'une « attente messianique intense » [4], cette idéologie se représente l'âge messianique comme le moment d'un « affrontement final d'Israël et des Nations », une conflagration dotée d'une signification cosmique dont les cataclysmes forment la condition de la renaissance nationale. A cette représentation (qui se retrouvera dans le marxisme) du rôle de la violence dans l'histoire, identifié aux souffrances d'un enfantement, une tradition particulière issue de la Kabbale ajoute une dimension spécifiquement antinomique : l'ère messianique n'est pas seulement celle de la réunion au sein de la divinité des parties du monde « brisé » depuis la création, c'est aussi, en vue de « hâter la fin », celui d'une inversion de la loi ou de sa réalisation à travers sa transgression (« c'est en violant la Torah qu'on l'accomplit »), forme spécifique de « l'activisme [prenant] l'utopie comme levier en vue de l'instauration du royaume messianique » - si indécise d'ailleurs que demeure la figure du messie lui-même. [5]...Le cœur de cette analyse est donc une réflexion psycho-politique sur la façon dont l'antisémitisme en est venu à constituer, non seulement (comme Herzl n'avait de cesse de le répéter) l'allié objectif du sionisme, anéantissant les illusions d'assimilation et persuadant les Juifs que la persécution est pour eux le seul destin en dehors de « leur » Etat, mais le schème projectif d'une conception mélancolique de soi, dans laquelle le groupe se voit (et redoute en même temps de se voir) comme victime absolue, objet de la haine meurtrière d'un Autre à la fois omniprésent et radicalement méchant. Cette conception de l'identité collective évite toute remise en question de sa propre politique et permet par avance de verser la critique au compte de l'hostilité. Elle n'est évidemment pas la seule possible bien que, dans des circonstances déterminées qui «libèrent » l'élément antinomique de l'inconscient lui-même, elle soit peut-être irrésistible. »
The « historical » aspect of redemption in judaïsm (in opposition with the Christian idea of salvation in the otherworld)coupled with the hope for the end of the exilic persecutions and the slavery of Israël, has braught a revolutionnary ideology, named by Scholem « utopic » and « apocalyptic » which is the result of an « intense messianic awaiting ». This ideology consider the messianic ages as the moment of a "Final confontation of Israel with the nations", an explosion which is doted of a cosmic dimension which is specificaly antinomic:the massianic era is not only the reuniting in the divinity of the "broken" parts of the world since creation, it is also the inversion o the law or it's realisation thru transgression ("it is in the violation of the Torah tht it is accomplished")...The heart of this analysis is thus a psycho-politic reflexion on the way antsemitism has became not only (like Hertz has never ceased to say) as the ally of Sionism, destroying assimilations illusions, persuading jews that persecution is there only destiny outside "their" state, but the projective scheme of a melancolic perception of themself, in which the group sees itself (and fears to been seen like) as the absolute victim of an 'other', omnipresent and wicked....
_http://www.cairn.info/revue-raisons-politiques-2002-3-page-181.htm
« Je désirais pénétrer dans l’univers de la kabbale à cause de ma foi dans le sionisme comme réalité vivante, comme restauration d’un peuple qui avait profondément dégénéré » (FU, p. 34-36) »I had the desire to get in the Kabbala because of my faith in Zionism as a living reality, like the restauration of a people which had deeply degenerated »
Scholem
I will end noticing that I have never heard of an antinomian Islam. There are many heterodox groups, mostly rooted in shia Islam, but no antinomian theology. That makes a big difference.
One of the most interesting among these groups are the Bektashis. It happens that Shabbataï Zévi ended his life uneder the protection of that tiny Sufi heterodox community.
While studying this subject I realised that there was not many datas, researches, documents on Jacob Franck and I have felt that it was unfair.
It seems that I have not been the only one surprised to find so few crucial academic studys on the subject of Frankism. Indeed as you will see with the second link, the Italian Research has started a program on the issue.
But let us start with the overt "conspiracy" of the character named by Gershom Scholem,' the bad prophet':
_http://www.donmeh-west.com/frankintro.shtml
Extract: by...
Ben Zion Wacholder, Ph.D
Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati
Sheldon H. Blank, Editor
Matitiahu Tsevat, Associate Editor
Offprint from Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. LIII 1982
©1983, by the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion
[Reprinted with Kind Permission of the Author]
« Frank writes in an obscure manner, avoiding direct speech, conveying his message through the use of biblical and Zoharic citations. The style of gluing together a variety of biblical and Zoharic lines frustrates the reader.
Nevertheless, the general message comes through and may be summarized as follows:
Frank predicts the impending slaughter of the Jews in all the major and minor nations of Europe as part of the apocalypse.
The salvation of the Jews rests upon their accepting the faith of Edom, i.e., Rome.
Jacob Frank is the reincarnation of Jacob the patriarch.
Jacob Frank will lead Israel's redemption by conquering the world, including the Catholic Church. »
_http://www.ricercaitaliana.it/prin/dettaglio_prin_en-2005107225.htm
Extract:
"Frankism and revolutionary utopias in central Europe in the period between the emancipation and the assimilation of the Jews
Frankism has for centuries been pigeonholed as superstition, corruption or charlatanism. Even if twentieth-century historians avoid describing the Frankists as "savage barbarians" as did the scholar Eleasar Flekes in the early 1800s, this diffidence has prevented a clearer understanding of the phenomenon from asocial, cultural and political standpoint. It is to the work of Scholem—The Major Traditions of Hebrew Mysticism, The Kabbalah and its Symbolism, From Frankism to Jacobinism—that we owe the attempt to redefine the meaning and significance of the movement, both inside and outside the Jewish tradition. Scholem's work has put new life into research on Frankism. However, since confessional approaches continue to prevail, the re-evaluation of the movement has still to be carried out, and its impact on political thought has still to be fully appreciated. Harris Lenowitz's recent study —The Charlatan at the Gottes Haus in Offenbach, 2001—for all its rigour, does not spare the movement destructive criticism from an eminently religious point of view.
Nevertheless, some sound critical observations have been made. Scholem mentions the political consequences of Frankism, its links with the Enlightenment and Jacobinism. Arthur Mandel, in his study The Militant Messiah or The Flight from the Ghetto (1979, Italian trans. 1984), dwells on its links with the Polish revolution and Zionism. Jacob Katz has examined its connections with freemasonry, opening an interesting line of enquiry, which, however, he fails to develop systematically. Klaus Davidowicz, author of a book on Jacob Frank published in 1989, has recently drawn attention (in Zwischen Aufklaerung und Mystik, 2001) to a key figure in the connection between Frankism, the Enlightenment and freemasonry, as well as in the internationalisation of some political aspects of the "teaching" of Frank—namely Joseph Hirschfeld.
_http://www.ajlmagazine.com/content/032007/heretic.html
« And throughout, Frank maintained with his followers a secret, heretical religion of transgression, antinomianism, and inversion. It really was the stuff of folk legends: a sinister leader, secret sexual orgies, and a rejection of every standard of decency. Frank parodied the Zohar, the Talmud, the Torah; he boasted about his sexual prowess and told dirty jokes.
Oh, and that Jewish-Masonic conspiracy that anti-Semites often talk about? Not entirely fiction — one follower of Frank, Moses Dobruska, was in fact a prominent Jacobin and powerful Freemason who went under the name of Junius Frey. He ran arms during the French Revolution, and may have spied for Austria. He was later executed by guillotine.
Amazingly, some of Frank’s followers went on to become leaders of the Prague Enlightenment, prominent attorneys in Poland, and shape-shifters of every kind. Adam Mickiewicz, considered Poland’s greatest poet, used Frankist themes in his work. Even Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis had a portrait of Frank’s daughter Eva on his desk in the Supreme Court — an heirloom he received from his Dembitz relatives, whose ancestors were followers of Frank.
So, yes, it really is true that there were (and perhaps are) secret Jewish conspiracies and mystical orgies. »
_http://www.jewishwhistleblower.blogspot.com/2005/05/sabbateans-doenmeh-and-frankists.html
the extract is made from the Finkelstein's text on Rothenberg's poetical work:
« Then again, it could be that all Jews are mad, however they may resemble "other men {who} are not jews/not mad." The predisposition of Jews to various forms of mental illness was an accepted fact in the milieu about which Rothenberg writes, in both the popular mind and that of the scientific establishment. Just as the Jew's body was seen as particularly susceptible to various diseases and deformations, so too, as Sander Gilman notes, "Jewish mental illness was the result of the sexual practices of the Jew, such as inbreeding, which created the predisposition for disease, and the pressures of modern life in the city, which were the direct cause" (Freud 93). Gilman's exhaustive analysis of beliefs regarding Jewish mental illness not only reveals the links between sexuality and modern urban life but focuses specifically on "the world of the train." As Gilman explains, this world "was one of the public spaces, defined by class and economic power, in which the Jew could purchase status. It was part of the image of the world of `modern life' that helped deform the psyche of the Jew. A ticket assured one of traveling among one's economic equals-but not as racial `equals.' The association of trains and the trauma of confronting one's Jewish identity is a powerful topos at the turn of the century" (Freud 125).
Thus in Rothenberg's poem, the Jewish constellation of sex, madness, locomotives, and poetry is hardly accidental. The "mad" Jew on the train speaks boldly to the lady and the other passengers of "jewish alphabets," "jewish locomotives." »
I strongly advise you to check the picture of jacob Franck on his death bed on the wiki page. It underlines the wealth of the character and his power.
Wikipedia
Jacob Frank (יעקב פרנק Ya'akov Frank, Jakob Frank; 1726 - 1791) was an 18th century Jewish religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi and also of King David. Frank and his followers were excommunicated due to his extremely unconventional doctrines that included acceptance of the New Testament, Enlightenment and some controversial concepts such as purification through transgression.
Frank arguably created a new religion, now referred to as Frankism, which combined some aspects of Christianity and Judaism.
The development of Frankism was one of the consequences of the messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi, the religious mysticism that resulted as a reaction to nascent Hassidism and the socioeconomic upheavals among the Jews of Poland and western Ukraine.
The heyday of Frank's messianic movement occurred during a period of the loss of relative social and economic stability in the late 1770s resulting from the Koliyivshchyna rebellion, an uprising of Ukrainian peasantry that resulted in many Polish and Jewish casualties.
Messianism at the end of the seventeenth century assumed mystical coloring, possibly under the influence of the Rosicrucian movement in Germany, which dressed its doctrine of improvement of the World in mystical garb. In Polish-owned Ukraine, particularly in Podolia and Galicia, there were numerous secret societies of Sabbateans (after Sabbatai Zevi) formed.
In expectation of the great Messianic revolution, the members of these societies abandoned many Jewish principles of faith and discarded Jewish religious laws and custom. The mystical cult of the Sabbateans is believed to have included both asceticism and sensuality: some did penance for their sins, subjected themselves to self-inflicted pain, and "mourned for Zion"; others disregarded the strict rules of modesty required by Judaism, and at times were accused of being licentious. The Polish rabbis attempted to ban the "Sabbatean heresy" at the assembly at Lemberg in 1722, but could not fully succeed, as it was widely popular among the nascent Jewish middle class.
[edit]Early life
Jacob Frank is believed to have been born as Jacob ben Leiba (or Leibowits) in Koroliwka, Podolia (Ukraine) about 1726. His father was a Sabbatean, and moved to Chernivtsi, in the Austro-Hungarian region of Bukovina in 1730, where the Sabbatean influence at the time was strong. While still a schoolboy Frank began to reject the Talmud, and afterward often referred to himself as "a plain" or "untutored man."
As a traveling merchant in textile and precious stones he often visited Ottoman territories, where he earned the nickname "Frank," a name generally given in the East to Europeans, and lived in the centers of contemporary Sabbateanism: Salonica and Smyrna.
In the early 1750s, Frank became intimate with the leaders of the Sabbateans. Two followers of Osman Baba were witnesses at his wedding in 1752. In 1755 he reappeared in Podolia, gathered a group of local adherents, and began to preach the "revelations" which were communicated to him by the Tzeviists in Salonica. One of these gatherings in Landskron ended in a scandal, and the rabbis' attention was drawn to the new teachings. Frank was forced to leave Podolia, while his followers were hounded and denounced to the local authorities by the rabbis (1756). At the rabbinical court held in the village of Satanov the Sabbateans were accused of having broken fundamental Jewish laws of morality, modesty, and more importantly of acceptance of sanctity of the Christian Bible.
The anti-Talmudists
As a result of these disclosures the congress of rabbis in Brody proclaimed a universal Cherem (excommunication) against all "impenitent heretics", and made it obligatory upon every pious Jew to seek them out and expose them. The Sabbateans informed Dembowsky, the Catholic Bishop of Kamenetz-Podolsk, that they rejected the Talmud and recognized only the sacred book of Kabbalah, the Zohar, which did not contradict the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. They stated that they regarded the Messiah-Deliverer as one of the embodiments of the three divinities.
The bishop took the "Anti-Talmudists," or "Zoharists," under his protection and in 1757 arranged a religious disputation between them and the rabbis. The Anti-Talmudists presented their theses, to which the rabbis gave a very lukewarm and unwilling reply lest they offend the Church dignitaries who were present. The bishop decided that the Talmudists had been vanquished, and ordered them to pay a fine to their opponents and to burn all copies of the Talmud in the bishopric of Podolia.
After the death of the bishop, the Sabbateans were subjected to severe persecution by the rabbis, although they succeeded in obtaining an edict from Augustus III of Poland guaranteeing them safety.
Declaration of being a successor to Sabbatai Zevi
At this critical moment Jacob Frank came to Iwania, proclaimed himself as a direct successor to Sabbatai Zevi and Osman Baba, and assured his adherents that he had received revelations from Heaven. These revelations called for the conversion of Frank and his followers to the Christian religion, which was to be a visible transition stage to the future "Messianic religion." In 1759 negotiations looking toward the conversion of the Frankists to Roman Catholicism were being actively carried on with the higher representatives of the Polish Church; at the same time the Frankists tried to secure another discussion with the rabbis. The Polish primate Lubenski and the papal nuncio Nicholas Serra were suspicious of the aspirations of the Frankists, but at the insistence of the administrator of the bishopric of Lemberg, the canon Mikulski, the discussion was arranged. It was held in Lemberg, and was presided over by Mikulski. Protestant missionaries also tried to detour the Frankists to Protestantism, and a handful did in fact join the Moravian church.
[edit]Baptism of the Frankists
At the discussion in 1759, the rabbis energetically repulsed their opponents. After the discussion the Frankists were requested to demonstrate in practice their adherence to Christianity; Jacob Frank, who had then arrived in Lemberg, encouraged his followers to take the decisive step. The baptism of the Frankists was celebrated with great solemnity in the churches of Lwów, with members of the Polish szlachta (nobility) acting as god-parents. The neophytes adopted the names of their godfathers and godmothers, and ultimately joined their ranks. Frank himself was baptized in Lwów (September 17, 1759) and again in Warsaw the next day, with Augustus III as his godfather. Frank's baptismal name was "Joseph" (Józef). In the course of one year more than 500 individuals were converted to Christianity at Lwów, and nearly a thousand in the following year. By 1790 26,000 Frankists were recorded baptised in Poland [1].
However, the Frankists continued to be viewed with suspicion, due to their unusual doctrine. Frank was arrested in Warsaw on February 6, 1760 and delivered to the Church's tribunal on the charge of heresy. The Church tribunal convicted Frank as a teacher of heresy, and imprisoned him in the monastery of Częstochowa.
Prison and later days
Jacob Frank on his death bed in 1791.
Frank's imprisonment lasted thirteen years, yet it only increased his influence with the sect by surrounding him with the aura of martyrdom. Many Frankists established themselves near Częstochowa, and kept up constant communication with their "holy master". Frank inspired his followers through mystical speeches and epistles, in which he stated that salvation could be gained only through the "religion of Edom," or dat ("law"), a mixture of Christian and Sabbateanism. After the first partition of Poland, Frank was released by the Russian general Bibikov, who had occupied Częstochowa, in August 1772. Frank lived in the Moravian town of Brno until 1786, surrounded by a retinue of adherents and pilgrims who came from Poland. His daughter Eve began to play an important role in the organization of the sect at this time. Frank kept a force of 600 armed men at his "court" in Brünn. Future czar Paul I of Russia visited him.
Accompanied by his daughter, Frank repeatedly traveled to Vienna, and succeeded in gaining the favor of the court. Maria Theresa regarded him as a disseminator of Christianity among the Jews, and it is even said that Joseph II was favorably inclined to the young Eve Frank. Ultimately Frank was deemed unmanageable and he was obliged to leave Austria. He moved with his daughter and his retinue to Offenbach, in Germany, where he assumed the title of "Baron of Offenbach," and lived as a wealthy nobleman, receiving financial support from his Polish and Moravian followers, who made frequent pilgrimages to Offenbach. On the death of Frank in 1791, Eve became the "holy mistress" and leader of the sect. Her fortunes dwindled in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, and she died in Offenbach in 1816.
Some Frankists were active during the French Revolution, such as Frank's nephew Moses Dobruška. Many of the Frankists saw Napoleon Bonaparte as a potential Messiah. The Frankists scattered in Poland and Bohemia eventually intermarried into the gentry and middle class, and a number of important cultural figures in Poland are descended from from former Frankists, including Frederic Chopin, Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Slowacki.
Moses Dobruška
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Moses Dobruška (1753–1794) was a nephew of Jacob Frank, the founder of the Frankist sect who claimed to be the Jewish messiah. Dobruška was an alchemist, freemason, writer, and poet. In 1773 he converted from Judaism to the Catholic faith and took the name of Franz Thomas Schönfeld. In 1778 he was elevated to nobility in Vienna, becoming Franz Thomas Edler von Schönfeld. Together with Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld, who did not convert, he became one of the main conspirators of the “Knights of St. John the Evangelists for Asia in Europe,” a secret society of freemasons, which was much talked about in Germany and Austria between 1783 and 1790, not least because it was the first German-speaking fraternal order to accept Jews. In 1792, in the wake of the French Revolution, he traveled via Strasbourg to Paris and became a Jacobin, changing his name, once again, to Junius Frey. He was arrested for treason and espionage and executed by guillotine in 1794.
The following article is in French, my native language, so I did a translation of one of the most important sentences. I don't consider it a good translation but at least it will give the meaning so that the non-french speaking reader can grasp the importance of the issue.
_http://ciepfc.rhapsodyk.net/article.php3?id_article=194
« C'est Scholem lui-même qui, dès son installation en Palestine, avait opéré un rapprochement entre le sionisme et le sabbataïsme, dans lesquels il voyait les deux moments politiques de l'histoire du peuple juif à l'époque moderne. Le caractère « historique » de la rédemption dans le judaïsme (par opposition à l'idée chrétienne d'un salut dans l'autre monde), associé à l'espérance d'une fin des persécutions endurées dans l'exil et l'esclavage d'Israël, engendre une idéologie révolutionnaire que Scholem appelle « utopique » et « apocalyptique ».
Résultat d'une « attente messianique intense » [4], cette idéologie se représente l'âge messianique comme le moment d'un « affrontement final d'Israël et des Nations », une conflagration dotée d'une signification cosmique dont les cataclysmes forment la condition de la renaissance nationale. A cette représentation (qui se retrouvera dans le marxisme) du rôle de la violence dans l'histoire, identifié aux souffrances d'un enfantement, une tradition particulière issue de la Kabbale ajoute une dimension spécifiquement antinomique : l'ère messianique n'est pas seulement celle de la réunion au sein de la divinité des parties du monde « brisé » depuis la création, c'est aussi, en vue de « hâter la fin », celui d'une inversion de la loi ou de sa réalisation à travers sa transgression (« c'est en violant la Torah qu'on l'accomplit »), forme spécifique de « l'activisme [prenant] l'utopie comme levier en vue de l'instauration du royaume messianique » - si indécise d'ailleurs que demeure la figure du messie lui-même. [5]...Le cœur de cette analyse est donc une réflexion psycho-politique sur la façon dont l'antisémitisme en est venu à constituer, non seulement (comme Herzl n'avait de cesse de le répéter) l'allié objectif du sionisme, anéantissant les illusions d'assimilation et persuadant les Juifs que la persécution est pour eux le seul destin en dehors de « leur » Etat, mais le schème projectif d'une conception mélancolique de soi, dans laquelle le groupe se voit (et redoute en même temps de se voir) comme victime absolue, objet de la haine meurtrière d'un Autre à la fois omniprésent et radicalement méchant. Cette conception de l'identité collective évite toute remise en question de sa propre politique et permet par avance de verser la critique au compte de l'hostilité. Elle n'est évidemment pas la seule possible bien que, dans des circonstances déterminées qui «libèrent » l'élément antinomique de l'inconscient lui-même, elle soit peut-être irrésistible. »
The « historical » aspect of redemption in judaïsm (in opposition with the Christian idea of salvation in the otherworld)coupled with the hope for the end of the exilic persecutions and the slavery of Israël, has braught a revolutionnary ideology, named by Scholem « utopic » and « apocalyptic » which is the result of an « intense messianic awaiting ». This ideology consider the messianic ages as the moment of a "Final confontation of Israel with the nations", an explosion which is doted of a cosmic dimension which is specificaly antinomic:the massianic era is not only the reuniting in the divinity of the "broken" parts of the world since creation, it is also the inversion o the law or it's realisation thru transgression ("it is in the violation of the Torah tht it is accomplished")...The heart of this analysis is thus a psycho-politic reflexion on the way antsemitism has became not only (like Hertz has never ceased to say) as the ally of Sionism, destroying assimilations illusions, persuading jews that persecution is there only destiny outside "their" state, but the projective scheme of a melancolic perception of themself, in which the group sees itself (and fears to been seen like) as the absolute victim of an 'other', omnipresent and wicked....
_http://www.cairn.info/revue-raisons-politiques-2002-3-page-181.htm
« Je désirais pénétrer dans l’univers de la kabbale à cause de ma foi dans le sionisme comme réalité vivante, comme restauration d’un peuple qui avait profondément dégénéré » (FU, p. 34-36) »I had the desire to get in the Kabbala because of my faith in Zionism as a living reality, like the restauration of a people which had deeply degenerated »
Scholem
I will end noticing that I have never heard of an antinomian Islam. There are many heterodox groups, mostly rooted in shia Islam, but no antinomian theology. That makes a big difference.
One of the most interesting among these groups are the Bektashis. It happens that Shabbataï Zévi ended his life uneder the protection of that tiny Sufi heterodox community.
