Jacob Frank

Abstract

Ya‘akov (Jakub) ben Yehudah Leib Frank (b. 1726–d. 1791) was the founder of Frankism, a Jewish religious movement that spread in East-Central Europe in the second half of the 18th century. Ya‘akov ben Leyb, later known as Frank or Frenk, was born in Podolia, the east-southernmost Palatinate of the Polish-Lihuanian Commonwealth in a family of known Sabbatians. When he was only a few months old, his family left Poland and moved to the Ottoman Empire. In Salonika, he established contacts with the most radical branch of the Dönmeh, founded by Berukhiah Russo (d. 1720), who was considered by his followers to be the next manifestation of the soul of Shabetai Tsevi. In 1755, Frank returned to Poland where he presented himself as an emissary of the Dönmeh and a famous kabbalist. He managed to unify splintered Sabbatian groups and attracted many followers throughout Podolia. Arrested by the rabbinic authorities, Frank and his followers demanded permission to hold a public disputation against the rabbis. Two disputations were held, the first one in Kamieniec Podolski in 1757 and the other one in Lviv in 1759. It the wake of the second disputation Frank and several thousands of his followers converted to Roman Catholicism. Shortly after the conversion, Frank was arrested again, this time by the Christians. He spent thirteen years in the prison-monastery in Częstowchowa. Therein, he developed a set of highly original theological doctrines focusing on the concept of the female messiah. Freed in 1772 by the Russians, he settled in Brno in Moravia. Frank died in 1791 in Offenbach am Main. The movement founded by him continued, in various forms, at least till the mid-19th century.