Like a false messiah, Jakob Frank wanted to destroy Poland
By Zenon Chocimski
25/01/15 Anno Domini
Translated from Polish
In my youth, my birthright was so alive that when one young man wanted to climb a tree, I placed it standing for him and climbed up. And when I was going among the virgins, I had to tie them, otherwise it would pierce my dresses. Also in the coldest water it has always happened.
(Jacob Frank, Book of the Words of the Lord, fragment 579)
In Ivan, the Lord said: when the dogs bark among themselves, although whoever comes among them and beats them with a stick, they ignore it and continue to bite. Such must be the extraordinary shedding of blood in the world, and during the same confusion we will only take back our loss, for which we are now chasing.
Similarly, when the water is cloudy, then we can catch good fish, so when the world is flooded with blood, then we will be able to catch the thing that is due to us.
(Jacob Frank, Book of the Words of the Lord, fragment 56)
In Ivan, women saw three births in me and they did not understand what good thing I put them on, and so far I cannot discover it. If I found it out to you, your souls would not stay in your body.
(Jakub Frank, Book of the Lord's Stów, fragment 116)
If we traveled around Warsaw like this, all gold and silver would fall, and all of Warsaw would collect it. You would shout with a loud voice: Long live the king! and all the lords and men would shout, Behold our king! They would throw their king into the Vistula. We, on the other hand, would sit in the royal chair.
(Jacob Frank, Book of the Words of the Lord, fragment 1118)
If I were given all the countries, filled with precious stones, I would not leave Poland, because this is God's succession and the succession of our fathers.
(Jakub Frank, Book of the Words of the Lord, fragment 904)
Counter-Muslims
The most famous of the false Jewish messiahs was undoubtedly the Sabbatai Tzvi, who was supported by most of the world's Jewry in the 17th century. Sabbatai's mission was a failure, and he himself was forced to convert to Islam. However, this was not a problem for the most die-hard Sabbathists. First, the Kabbalah, which was the basis of Sabbataism, taught that the messiah must pick up the sparks of divine light scattered in the darkness of creation, so the Sabbathai conversion was necessary to collect these sparks from the Islamic world. Secondly, the idea of two messiahs was vivid in the Jewish tradition: the first - the suffering and defeated Messiah, the son of Joseph, and the second - the triumphant Messiah, the son of David, laying enemies at his feet.
The latter concept made it only a matter of time before a new messiah would proclaim himself the successor and continuator of the Sabbatai Tzvi.
Such a man turned out to be Jakub Frank (1720-1791), who was most active in Podolia. The handover by Poland of the Podolia Province of Turkey for 27 years in 1672 meant that the Jewish communities in these lands were under a strong spiritual influence of the Sabbateans, whose main center was Thessaloniki. It was in this city that Frank initially tried to declare himself a messiah, but did not get the approval of the most influential Sabbathists. Forced to leave Thessaloniki, with a group of his followers, he returned to Poland, where in 1754 he appeared as the new messiah - the second incarnation of the Sabbatai Tzvi.
Frank, who postulated the total rejection of the Talmud in favor of the Zohar, very quickly gained crowds of believers not only in the Commonwealth, but also in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany. He also managed to gather around him famous rabbis devoted to Kabbalah. They included, among others rabbi Nadworny - Jehuda Leb Krysa, rabbi Buska - Nachman Ben-Samuel Lewi or rabbi Rohatyn - Eliza Szor. This upset other rabbis, concerned about the triumph of a suspected esotericism, the fall of the authority of the Talmud, and the break with the halakhic tradition. As the Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz writes, “Terror seized the pious. The rabbis and superiors immediately took the usual measures against the rapists: curses and persecution. A manhunt was organized on hidden heretics. "
One of the greatest Jewish minds of the era, Jakub Emden of Portugal, who was consulted by Talmudists from Poland, strongly advised persecuting the Frankists and arguing that the Zohar was a forgery. However, this did not take away the growing influence from the supporters of Jakub Frank.
The dispute over the "government of souls", which flared up between the Frankists and the Talmudists, caused both parties to apply for arbitration to the church authorities, thus suspending their own religious autonomy. The public dispute between rabbis and Frankists took place on June 20, 1757, before the consistory court in Kamieniec It was based on the main dogmas of faith presented by Frank. The court found that the Frankist teaching rooted in the Zohar was closer to Christian revelation than the Talmud, which was ordered to be publicly burned as "full of lies and blasphemy". As Graetz put it, "the stake for the Talmud was set on fire by the Kabbalah."
However, the victory in the public dispute did not change much in the position of the Frankists, who were still fiercely attacked within the Jewish community by the supporters of the rabbinical tradition. The Frankists therefore decided to deal with the Jewish Orthodox in a different way. In 1759, they publicly accused them of ritualistic murdering Christians: "Talmudists shed more innocent Christian blood than pagans." The main blame for this lies with the Talmud, which "teaches Christian blood to need." Besides, said these Frankist rabbis in gowns, which must have made a great impression on Christians, "Talmudist innkeepers drink the peasants, suck the blood of poor Christians and strip them down to their last shirts."
With these accusations they again appealed to the church hierarchy for another arbitration. The Archbishop of Lviv, Konstanty Łubieński, agreed to another dispute between rabbis and Frankists (held in June 1759 in Lviv) - on one condition: that the latter would be baptized earlier. So it happened. Thousands of Jews converted to Catholicism, including Jakub Frank himself, whose godfather was King Augustus III of Austria.
While the Church was able to tolerate a sect within Judaism, after Frank and his followers had converted to Catholicism, she could not afford a similar indulgence towards the sect within Christianity. That is why in 1760 the church court in Warsaw sentenced Frank to indefinite solitary confinement in the Jasna Góra monastery. He stayed there for 13 years, until he was released by the Russian army. Later he moved to Brno, Moravia, and then to Offenbach, Germany, where he died in 1790.
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Poland - the Promised Land
In his teachings, Frank specifies two goals of his messianic mission - the conquest of the world and the salvation of the world. Ultimate spiritual liberation is to be preceded by temporal liberation. The relationship between these processes, however, was opposite to that in the concepts of the previous pretenders to the role of the messiah. The latter maintained that earthly liberation would be the result of a spiritual transformation of the world. Frank believed that only the earthly messianic reign would create the conditions for the salvation of the world: "we will first repair the lower sphere, and then we can repair the upper sphere."
With wounds in his side, arms and legs. Seeing him, I jumped out of bed and fell on my knees in front of him, and he told me this: I sent Elijah for you twice, and you refused to listen to him. Well, now I have come to you myself. Do not be afraid. You will go to Poland. And I replied: how do I go to Poland, when I do not understand the language, I have a fortune in this country, I have a young wife who will not want to go with me? He replied: go on, then she will go, and although you will be persecuted in various ways, do not be afraid of anything, have confidence in me. When it becomes difficult for you, you will see Elijah in front of you. With these words the Lord Jesus disappeared. " Well, now I have come to you myself. Do not be afraid. You will go to Poland. And I replied: how do I go to Poland, when I do not understand the language, I have a fortune in this country, I have a young wife who will not want to go with me? He replied: go on, then she will go, and although you will be persecuted in various ways, do not be afraid of anything, have confidence in me. When it becomes difficult for you, you will see Elijah in front of you. With these words the Lord Jesus disappeared. " Well, now I have come to you myself. Do not be afraid. You will go to Poland. And I replied: how do I go to Poland, when I do not understand the language, I have a fortune in this country, I have a young wife who will not want to go with me? He replied: go on, then she will go, and although you will be persecuted in various ways, do not be afraid of anything, have confidence in me. When it becomes difficult for you, you will see Elijah in front of you. With these words the Lord Jesus disappeared. "
Frank firmly rejected the idea of the Chosen Nation's return to Palestine: "Jerusalem and Tempel will not be built any more." In his Book of the Lord's Words, he emphasized: "If I were given all the countries, filled with precious stones, I would not leave Poland, because this is God's succession and succession. our fathers ". Already in exile in Brno, he told his followers: "I also had to leave Warsaw to another gate, to another country, and I had to withdraw from God's succession. After all, they heard from me especially: We will go to Poland. There is a great thing to be trampled on in this country and I am trampling on so far. "
It seems that Frank linked his hopes for the construction of the Israeli state on the territory of the Republic of Poland with the size of the Jewish community and with Jewish self-governing institutions, which, compared to other European countries, were more developed here and enjoyed the greatest autonomy. He hoped that thanks to the support of the Catholic hierarchy, the state authority would give him sovereignty over the autonomous community of Polish Jews. When it failed, he demanded that the king set aside a small territory in the borderlands, near the border with Turkey, on which to build his state. He promised to bring Jews from all over Europe there and convert them to Christianity. When Borderland magnates protested against this proposal, Frank's offer became more modest - he only wanted four towns in Podolia. He didn't even get it.
As Jan Doktór claims in his work on Jakub Frank, the false messiah planned to take power from Polish lords: "the messianic kingdom would then be all of Poland under the rule of Frank and his followers." of this text): "If you were all of you, I would be the king of Poland, and you would be twelve lords, on whose riches all kings would be astonished"; “When I go to Poland, then I will extend my hand over everything. Then I will say: I am Esau, older than you. "
Frank refers here to the old Kabbalistic concept that there is a conflict over spiritual heritage and God's true blessing between two forces, symbolized by the biblical figures of Jacob and Esau. According to the Zohar, the offspring of Jacob were the Israelites, and Esau were the Christians. In the Book of Genesis, Jacob disguises himself as Esau, puts on goatskins, and thus deceives his father Isaac, who, unaware of anything, gives his blessing to Jacob instead of Esau. The Frankists maintained that these events did not concern the distant past, but the future. This is how Frank himself explained his baptism: “After all, I told you that the messiah must enter Esau, almost enter him, as he stands: he went to Cheronne. He went out to go to Cheronne, but he didn't go. "
As Jan Doktor writes, "entering Esau", i.e. apostasy, does not mean a true entry into the reigning Christianity, because it would amount to recognizing the status quo (...) For Frank, it is only a tool for Esau's insidious disinheritance, "putting on goat skins" by which Jacob will receive a blessing or power. "This is what Frank said to his followers about Esau (i.e. the Christians): his place and he will stand in yours.
In the Book of the Lord's Words, Frank argued that what the biblical Jacob failed to do, he, "the true Jacob," would succeed: "Jacob did not circumnavigate and walk with wisdom, because he escaped from Laban, he did not take Esau's power away. and we will go wisely, because they will all gather to war, then a terrible power will come from God, that the whole world will shake, and kings, by the power of wisdom and sweet words, will fall into our hands and lay down their crowns. "
Trinity and cross
If these were indeed Frank's plans, how was it that an ecclesiastical court found his followers right, considering the teachings of the Kabbalists to be closer to Christianity than the Talmud? On August 2, 1756, the Frankists presented nine theses of their faith to the consistory in Kamieniec Podolski. Almost all of them could be successfully accepted by the Catholic Church. The thing is, however, that Frank substituted a completely different meaning for their content. It was similar with the seven theses presented by the Frankists two years later in the Lviv consistory. Take, for example, the fifth point: "The Holy Cross is the image of the Holy Trinity and the sign of the Messiah." How did the Frankists understand the Cross and the Trinity?
Well, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, is in the shape of a slightly tilted cross. The Torah, however, begins not with the first, but with the second letter of the alphabet, beth. So the aleph - or cross - signifies the precedence of Esau, which should be dethroned by beth, that is, the priority confirmed by the Scriptures. As Jacob Frank proclaimed in the Book of the Words of the Lord, "But aleph was given to Esau, just as the word had long wandered among the Orthodox believers, that the cross was stolen and was with Esau ... this aleph, and the bible begins with beth. Jacob was holding on to Esau's heel, that means he will answer in the end. "
The purpose of Frank's conversion to Christianity is therefore - as John the Doctor writes - "to take away from Esau" the stolen cross, that is, the symbol of reign, aleph, and to impose on him the subordination symbolized by the letter beth. In the light of the picture of the inverted world, it seemed obvious that Christians would take the place of the Jews and take from them with the letter beth the Mosaic Law, considered by Frank to be an extremely effective instrument of enslavement, while the Jews (of course those who followed Frank) would take over the riches and privileges. Polish gentlemen. "
Also, the Frankist concept of the Holy Trinity, adopted from the Sabbathists, differed from the Christian one. It consisted of the "three knots of faith": the Creator, the God of Israel and Shekhinah. According to Kabbalists, the unity of the Trinity was broken as a result of a cosmic catastrophe. It can only be restored by the Messiah who marries Shekhinah. Then the rift between God and His people will be eliminated. Sabbatai Tzvi believed that Shekhinah - the female element of God - resided in the Scriptures, therefore one of the most important moments of his mission was the mystical marriage with the Torah. The Frankists alternately used the terms Shekhinah and "Virgo" in their writings. When Frank was imprisoned at Jasna Góra, he declared: "The Virgin is in Częstochowa and she is hidden in the portrait." Thus, identifying Szechinc with the Jasna Góra image of the Mother of God, Frank was able to present even his forced confinement in a Pauline monastery as a logical condition for his own mission. "About Częstochowa, the Lord says: this place has been established from the beginning of the world, to take this stone from this well from there - taught Frank - I put you for brothers, so that you would be helpers, take this stone off (...) and thus you could come to life eternal. "
He referred to a fragment of the Talmud in which Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi asked the prophet Elijah when the Messiah would appear. In response, he hears that he can ask the Messiah himself, who "is at the gates of Rome. He is there among the righteous who suffer, he is among the beggars covered with wounds. I am the one who binds and dissolves, as you see with your own eyes. "Because you have known for a long time that Częstochowa is called the Roman Gate, and I stayed there in great darkness."
In the above-mentioned Kabbalistic concept of the Trinity, there is a clear distinction between the Creator and the God of Israel. As the Frankists claimed, “The world, the tewel, is not created by the Good God Himself. So Adam was not created from God, for if Adam and the world were created from the Living God, the world would exist forever and Adam would live forever. Just because they are not from the Good God, every man must die and the world does not persist. "According to their teachings, God as the first principle, En-Sof, Circus of all Circles, has no direct effect on the material world. characteristic of the various kinds of Gnostic movements that distinguished between the evil Demiurge and the good Savior, therefore recognized the contamination of all creation as a result of the imperfection of the act of creation itself.
So Frank proclaimed, “The first man Adam everywhere, wherever he trod, a city was built, but wherever I trample, everything will be destroyed. Because I only came so that everything would be spoiled. "
Religious prostitution
One of the signs of the coming of the messianic times was, according to the cabalists, the expiry of the law given to the ancestors in Sinai. Since the messiah is to bring the new covenant, the old one is no longer valid. Therefore, all the self-proclaimed messiahs ostentatiously violated the commandments of the Torah in order to legitimize their mission. They committed maasim zarim: pronouncing the unpronounceable name of Yahweh aloud, eating non-kosher meat, breaking sexual taboos.
The latter took on particular importance in the activities of Frank, who even claimed that he had five phalluses.
The sacred prostitution of the Frankists made Jewish historians consider them "a movement of a disgusting character" (Heinrich Graetz), "moral nihilists" (Gerszom Szolem).
Many testimonies, mainly Frankist ones, have survived, describing sexual practices with the participation of the master himself. To emphasize the mystical and not intimate nature of these activities, Frank often had intercourse with a woman of his choice in public ("in a little room in the middle of the day, in the presence of the all-conscious"). there were those "virgins" with whom sexual connections anticipated and accelerated the mystical connection with the only "Virgin", that is Shekhina. Frank also organized group mating sessions, where he selected pairs himself. As one of the Frankist sources says: Pawłowski and Matuszewski Nadwornieński had a connection with Henryka Wołowska. On the second night he ordered Henryk, Michał Wołoski, Dęboski and Jasser of Wittel have intercourse. 7 days Pawłowski, Matuszewski and Matuszewski Nadwornieński with Jakubowska. On the 8th day Matuszewski Nadwornieński was baptized and the Lord with our Eucharist kept him baptized. "Many sexual ceremonies preceded the baptism of Frankists (and both were a radical violation of the principles of rabbinic Judaism).
For example, in July 1759 in Lviv, on the eve of the beginning of a dispute with Talmudists and after the decision to be baptized, a mystical orgy took place, which began with the fact that Frank blessed his followers with a cross and the words: "give us the power to lead him and great happiness. Then, as one Frankist describes, "the Lord put a guard at the court of ours, so that no one would dare to look at the windows, and he himself, having entered with his brothers and sisters, undressed naked, so also her late and all gathered around us." He commanded, and taking the bench, he nailed a nail in the middle and put two lighted candles on it, and to this nail he hung his Cross, and then kneeling first, he took the cross himself, and bending down on all four sides, kissed it, the same goodness, and then all over the place. he ordered to be done,only then did the intercourse take place according to his appointment. "Fourteen pairs of his followers had intercourse then, and one of the women, not used to such views, had a fit of laughter that she could not calm down, so Frank had the candles put out and the orgy continued in the dark.
In the Old Testament, idolatry is repeatedly referred to as adultery, committed by the Bride, the Chosen People, with foreign gods. In the eyes of the Frankists, the combination of physical adultery with spiritual adultery (and the worship of the Cross as such) was to be a demonstrative sign of the Torah losing its validity, and at the same time the beginning of the messianic era.
Ketman
Samuel Primo, the personal secretary of Sabbatai Tzvi, stated that “by his conversion to Islam, Sabbatai has become credible as a messiah. What he did is the kabbalistic mystery which some scriptures had already foreshadowed. Just as the first savior, Moses, must have been in Pharaoh's court for a time, not as an Israelite but as an Egyptian, so the ultimate savior must live for a time in pagan disguise in a pagan court - sinfully on the outside but pure inside. "
One of the main theorists of Sabbataism, Abraham Cardoso, was of the opinion that "every Jew must become such a marranos before returning from exile." It was therefore the duty of the Sabbateans to officially adopt a foreign religion, but to practice their own secretly. They believed - as John the Doctor writes - " that as long as the world is ruled by powers contrary to salvation, true faith must be cultivated in secret so as not to succumb to the temptation of institutionalization, which would be tantamount to submission to the power of demonic forces. the better for faith. "
This idea of worshiping your Lord by serving someone else's God created a phenomenon called ketman, which Czesław Miłosz later described in the Captive Mind in a completely different context. He referred to Gobineau's observations: “Ketman fills those who practice it with pride. The believer thus achieves a state of permanent superiority over the one whom he has deceived, even if the latter was a minister or a mighty king; for the man who applies ketman to him, he is above all a poor blind man; he has only been deprived of access to the true road, and he does not suspect it; while you, ragged and starving, seemingly trembling at the feet of a cleverly mistaken power, eyes full of light; you walk in splendor before your enemies. You mock an unintelligent being; you disarm a dangerous beast. How many fun at the same time! "
How can this be achieved? Miłosz quotes Gobineau: “Not only do you have to renounce your views in public, but it is advisable to use all deceptions just to confuse the opponent. Any creeds that may please him will be pronounced, any rituals considered most absurd will be performed, his own books will be falsified, and any means of deception will be used. In this way great satisfaction and merit will be gained, that you have saved yourself and your own people, that you have not exposed your precious faith to hideous contact with infidels, and, finally, that by deceiving the latter and confirming him in his error, dishonor has come upon him and the spiritual misery he deserved. "
Followers of Sabbatai Tzvi argued that although he had officially embraced the Mohammedan faith, his conversion actually had a different, esoteric, sense - it was to pick up the sparks of divinity from the fallen pagan world. A hundred years later, the Frankists argued that this mission turned out to be halfway, because the other part of the pagan world, besides Muslims, is Christians - therefore it became necessary that Jacob Frank, as a new incarnation of Sabbatha Tzvi, be baptized and secretly complete the messianic work by collecting sparks lost among Christians. The Frankists managed to survive the death of the master. They continued their ceremonies in hiding. For example, testimonies of three believers have been preserved
Franka submitted to the rabbinate in Furth in 1800. They told about the orgies organized by Roch Frank, son of Jakub. In the same year, according to the prophecy of Eve Frank, daughter of the deceased messiah, there was to be a parousia, that is, the second birth of her father, Jacob. When this did not happen, some Frankists returned to Judaism, some remained Christian, but the most staunch ones continued to stick to the hetman, officially pretending to be Catholics and secretly practicing Maasim Zarim.
Both Catholic (priest Walerian Kalinka) and Jewish (Abraham Duker, Heinrich Graetz) historians cited many documents and testimonies that the Frankists, as an organized group, were still active in the second half of the 19th century. Gerszom Szolem wrote! even that the meetings of the Frankists with the Sabbatists took place in 1921. The Sabataist community in Thessaloniki survived in hiding for 250 years, practicing Islam on the outside, and Kabbalistic practices in hiding.
No wonder then that some Catholics were suspicious of Jewish converts, seeing them as potential Frankists. For example, until the Second Vatican Council, Catholics of Jewish descent were forbidden to join the Society of Jesus even in their fifth generation after baptism.
Interestingly, many of the leading representatives of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, were Frankists in their youth or came from Frankist families. According to Gerszom Sholem, the Frankists were the outpost of the violent secularization of Jewish life in the nineteenth century: "the nihilism of the Sabbatian and Frankist movements with its teaching that breaking the Torah is its fulfillment (...) paved the way for the 19th-century Haskalah and the reform movement, when his original religious impulse was exhausted. "Even the father of the Jewish Enlightenment, Moses Mendelssohn, a man who might seem extremely rational, argued - as Lessing wrote in 1767 -" that the dreams of a Polish Jew who had pretended to be a messiah a few years ago, are also legitimate. " This "legitimate" element.
Source: https://www.fronda.pl/a/jak-falszywy-mesjasz-jakub-frank-chcial-zniszczyc-polske,46705.html