“We don’t need the books of Kabbalah”

Abstract To the extent he is known today, Jacob Frank is understood to be a false messiah preaching Kabbalah and Sabbateanism. Chapter 6 shows that, at least in the period of ZSP’s dictation, this is not the case. First, Frank does not declare himself the messiah, though he predicted imminent apocalypse. The Maiden is the messiah, not Frank, who seeks immortality and power. Second, Frank explicitly rejects Kabbalah and Sabbateanism, ridiculing them for their ineffectualness. Kabbalistic language or symbolism appears in fewer than fifty dicta out of over 2,500 in ZSP. And the view that Frankism is a continuation of Sabbateanism obscures more than it reveals. While Frankism begins from a Sabbatean framework, and returned to it after Frank’s death, it inverts the Sabbatean emphasis on faith and the unseen; for Frank, faith in the invisible is ridiculous, and the manifest is all he trusts.