Frank, Jacob

(1726–91)

   Founder of Frankist sect. Frank was born in Korolowka, Podolia, the son of a respected Orthodox merchant. He himself became a merchant, trading from Bucharest in cloth, jewels and various other articles. Much of his time was spent in the company of followers of the pseudo- Messiah SHABBETAI ZEVI in Smyrna and Salonika. When he made his first public appearance in Podolia late in 1755, as the leader of a new movement, he posed as a Sephardi Jew, a Turkish subject, and for this reason was called a Frank, Yiddish for Sephardi. He adopted this as his surname. His movement spread rapidly, attracting many followers in Podolia. In a scandal in which some of them were arrested in 1756 it was alleged that the sect practised redemption through sin by means of sexual orgies. After Frank and his followers were excommunicated by the rabbis in that year, he appealed to the anti-Semitic bishop of Kamenetz-Podolski, seeking his protection on the grounds that his sect were ‘anti-tal-mudic’ Jews. In a public disputation between Jews and Frankists, ordered by the bishops and held in Lvov in 1757, Frank enumerated the principles of his sect, cunningly making it appear that references which were in fact to Shabbetai Zevi applied to Jesus. The upshot of this disputation, in which the Frankists were declared the victors, was the burning of the Talmud in Lvov. After a further disputation held in 1759 some of the Frankists were baptized.

   But Frank aroused the ire of the authorities when it was discovered that his followers still regarded him as the Messiah, and he was arrested. He was exiled in 1772. After living in Bruen in Moravia, in 1786 he settled in Offenbach. In both places his followers flocked to his court, pretending to follow Catholicism but keeping to the practices of the sect, many of which were of a deliberately exotic and ‘eastern’ nature.

   On Frank’s death he was succeeded by his daughter Eva, who was proclaimed the female principle of the faith. She acted like the royal princess her father claimed her to be, and died in 1816, leaving massive debts. The sect, members of whom tried to marry only among themselves, persisted for many years, but was eventually absorbed into Polish Jewish society. Groups such as the Frankists, whose beliefs were founded on a popular sort of mysticism, did much to engender rabbinical suspicion of the chassidic movement that was founded shortly after by ISRAEL BEN-ELIEZER BAAL SHEM TOV.