Introduction

Abstract The introduction to The Heresy of Jacob Frank introduces the religious philosophy of Jacob Frank (1726–1791), a once-notorious messianic heretic who led the largest mass apostasy in Jewish history. While scholars have often dismissed Frank’s teachings as purely opportunistic, manipulative, or even sinister, in fact Frank was an original and prescient figure at the crossroads of tradition and modernity, reason and magic. He rejected religion on quasi-humanistic, rationalistic grounds, but in its place wove a bizarre myth of magical beings and the pursuit of immortality. The introduction next summarizes the eight chapters of the book. Chapter 1 is devoted to Frank’s actual life, and to the quite different character of “Jacob Frank” described in Frank’s teachings. Chapter 2 discusses Frankist antinomianism, that is, his principled rejection of religious law, and chapter 3 presents Frank’s materialist worldview and worldly conception of redemption. Chapter 4 discusses his occult quest for immortality, and chapter 5 discusses the role that sexual liberation and transgression played (and were rumored to play) in the Frankist sect, including veneration of the female messiah and the liberation of sensuality. The final three chapters situate Frank in the contexts of Jewish mysticism and messianism (chapter 6), Western Esotericism (chapter 7), and later movements of Jewish rationalism and spirituality which he anticipated (chapter 8). While Frank was undoubtedly a manipulative leader whose sect mostly disappeared from history, his ideology anticipated transformations in religion that would become predominant in the 20th and 21st centuries.