“I do not look to heaven but at what God does here on Earth”

Abstract Chapter 2 discusses Jacob Frank’s antinomianism: his rejection of traditional religion and its norms. Frank’s critique is neither Kabbalistic/Sabbatean nor nihilistic in nature but based on skepticism, theodicy, humanism, materialism, and a surprising universalism. For Frank, religious restrictions are ineffectual and thwart human flourishing. Joy and life, for Frank, are signs of the Divine, while mourning and self-abnegation are from the “side of death.” Since only the material is real, Frank has contempt for the strictures of traditional religion, which accomplish nothing and divide people against one another. Frank’s God rewards the transgressor, epitomized by Abraham, who breaks human laws to obey God. As he says in §1089 of ZSP, “I do not look to heaven for aid to come from there. I only look at what God does here on earth, in this world.”