Jacob Frank: Encyclopedia II - Jacob Frank - Early life of Frank

Jacob Frank - Early life of Frank

From among these secret circles of the Shabbethaians came the founder of the Frankist sect, Jacob Frank, born in Korolowka (Podolia) about 1726 as Jacob Leibowitz. His father was expelled from the community for belonging to the secret society of Tzeviists (Shebs), and moved to Czernowitz, Bucovina in 1730, where the influence of the Turkish Shabbetaians was strongly felt. While still a boy at school Frank displayed an aversion to Jewish learning founded on the Talmud, and afterward often styled himself "a plain man" or "an untutored man."

In the capacity of a traveling merchant of clothes and precious stones he often entered Turkey; there he was named "Frank," a name generally given in the East to a European; and there he lived in the centers of contemporary Shabbethaianism; Salonica and Smyrna.

In the beginning of the fifth decade of the eighteenth century he became intimate with the leaders of the sect and adopted its semi-Islamic cult. Two Shabbethaians, followers of Osman Baba were witnesses to his wedding in 1752. In 1755 he appeared in Podolia, and, gathering about him a group of local sectarians, began to preach to them the revelations which were communicated to him by the successors of the false messiah in Salonica. In their secret gatherings was performed, under the leadership of Frank, much that was directly opposed to the religious-ethical conceptions of the orthodox Jews. One of these gatherings in Landskron ending in a scandal, the attention of the rabbis was drawn to the new propaganda. As a foreigner, Frank was obliged to leave Podolia, while his followers were given over to the rabbis and the local authorities (1756). At the rabbinical court held in the village of Satanov many of the sectarians confessed to having broken the fundamental laws of morality; and women confessed to having violated their marriage vows, and told of the sexual looseness which reigned in the sect under the guise of mystical symbolism.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early life of Frank", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki