The story of Jacob ben Judah Leib, aka Jacob Frank (1726-1791), a false messiah who emerged from the ashes of failed messianic expectations following the traumatic legacy of Shabbatai Tzvi, is one of the great tragedies of Jewish history.
Advertisement
Born in Korolivka, in Podolia (now Ukraine), Frank was raised in a region still steeped in kabbalistic ferment, particularly Sabbateanism, which had gone underground following Shabbatai Tzvi’s conversion to Islam in 1666. Although there appears to be no support for Frank’s claim that his father served for a time as a rabbi, his father was a scrupulously observant Jew but, at the same time, it is very likely that he already had certain connections with the Sabbatian sect that had taken root in many communities in Podolia, Bukovina, and Walachia. Frank lived for several years in Bucharest and, although he attended cheder, he gained no knowledge of Talmud, and in later years actually bragged about his ignorance and was proud to present himself as a prostak (“simple man”).
As such, Frank’s parents were likely crypto-Sabbatians and young Jacob grew up among merchants and mystics. As a traveling merchant in the Ottoman Empire, he was first exposed to Muslim Sabbatian sects, whose antinomian reinterpretations of Judaism resonated with him and, by the early 1750s, he began to organize his own circle in Poland-Lithuania, especially among former Sabbatians disillusioned by rabbinic orthodoxy.
“Frankism” was a mystical, messianic movement built on radical antinomianism: the belief that salvation required not only the abandonment of Jewish law, but also the purposeful transgression of its prohibitions. Drawing from the Lurianic kabbalistic concept of the need to descend into the kelipot (shells, or husks) to liberate divine sparks, Frank taught that one must pass through the depths of evil and impurity to redeem the divine sparks trapped within him and that the ultimate redemption therefore lay through a “descent into impurity.” One of his most subversive doctrines was “purification through sin” – the idea that true spiritual redemption comes not through Torah obedience but, rather, by transgressing its laws through “sacred” rituals. His teachings were so deeply antithetical to rabbinic Judaism that many leading rabbanim considered him to be a more dangerous heretic than even Shabbatai Tzvi.
Explicitly repudiating the Talmud, claiming that it had been superseded by a new, hidden revelation, Frank taught that there had been three historical revelations: first, the Old Testament; second, the New Testament; and finally, the third and final revelation, which he and his daughter, Eva, would soon inaugurate. Proclaiming himself the reincarnation of both Shabbatai Tzvi and King David, he declared that all three monotheistic religions were now obsolete, proposing instead a new, trinitarian cult in which he himself – and later, Eva, as discussed below – was divine. He attracted tens of thousands of followers throughout Eastern Europe and, over the next several decades, some 26,000 Frankists were baptized in Poland.
Frank’s leading opponent was arguably Rav Yaakov Emden (1697-1776), also known by the acronym Ya’avetz, who was a towering rabbinic scholar, halachist, and polemicist in 18th-century Germany and one of the most forceful and intellectually formidable rabbinic opponents of Sabbatianism and its successors. He had already waged an intense campaign against Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, whom he suspected of crypto-Sabbatian leanings, and when Frank and his movement erupted, he was swift and uncompromising in his denunciation. In his Sefer Shimush, one of R. Emden’s great polemical treatises, he refers to Frank and his followers with deep alarm and theological disgust, characterizing Frank not merely as a heretic, but also as a new manifestation of the dangerous messianic delusion that had plagued the Jewish people since the Sabbatian debacle.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
In Sefer Shimush – the name is a acronym of its three principal parts: Shot la-sus, Meteg la-hamor, Ve-Shevet le-gev kesilim (“A whip for a horse, a bridle for a donkey, and a rod for the back of dullards; see Proverbs 26:3) – R. Emden uses pointed biblical allusions and invective to expose Frank’s perversions of Jewish law and doctrine, portraying him as a false messiah, a blasphemer, and a corrupter of Israel’s faith. He dedicated the book as “a special weapon for every Jew to use in order to know what to answer to the Sabbatian groups and to fight Frankism,” at one point declaring “This impure one, named Frank, arose in the latter days to revive the rotten corpse of Sabbatianism, with a mixture of new and renewed heresies… and all his devotees have turned their hearts toward idolatry.”
R. Emden accused Frank of seeking not just to mislead Jews, but also to create a counter-religion, one that masquerades as Jewish mysticism but is wholly rooted in apostasy, and he characterized Frank’s baptism, along with that of his followers, not as a mere tactic but as demonic evidence of complete theological betrayal. While other rabbanim were initially unsure how to respond to the Frankist phenomenon, Emden called for his total communal excommunication.
One of the most notable features of Sefer Shimush is the set of six woodcuts at the end of the book, likely the earliest caricatures in Jewish literature. The most renowned woodcut is the final one, the “Three-Headed Serpent” that depicts a “tricephalos” – a monstrous, three‑headed serpent with grotesque, shifting features – symbolizing the religious shapeshifting of the Frankists and the religious amalgamation and deception of their movement, accompanied by a Hebrew caption affirming the midrashic idea that “falsehood has no legs to stand on.”
Another leading and vociferous Frank opponent was Rav Ezekiel Landau of Prague (1713-1793), also known as the Noda B’Yehuda. As chief rabbi of Prague and one of the most respected halachic authorities in Europe, he played a significant leadership role in rallying traditional Jewry against Frank and his followers. He authored several communal bans and formal proclamations condemning the Frankists, and he joined a broad coalition of rabbis from Poland and Moravia who declared that Frank and his followers were apostates, heretics, and enemies of Judaism.
Although R. Landau did not write a full book solely on Frankism, his responsa, particularly in his Noda B’Yehuda (Mahadura Kama, Yoreh De’ah §161), contains references that demonstrate his concern for the preservation of Jewish orthodoxy in the face of messianic deception. In his writings and rulings, he warned about the dangers of mystical extremism and he encouraged the broader community to remain faithful to normative halacha and to reject speculative messianism and false prophecy. Not merely reacting to Frankism as a local or fringe movement but, rather, seeing it as a continuation of the Sabbatian threat that had undermined Jewish theology for nearly a century, he also strongly rebuked rabbis or communities who wavered in their condemnation of Frankists, arguing that ambiguity in the face of heresy was tantamount to complicity.
The Va‘ad Arba Aratzot (the “Council of the Four Lands,” Greater Poland, Little Poland, Volhynia, and Galicia), the supreme autonomous Jewish governing body in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from the mid-16th century until its dissolution in 1764, excommunicated Frank. At its height, the Council served as a kind of national Jewish parliament, making decisions on taxation, religious and communal life, education, representation to the crown, and responses to heresy or crisis. It convened periodically – often during major fairs such as the one in Lublin – and, with its authority to order excommunications, its policies and edicts, which were often coordinated with rabbinic bodies and leading sages, carried great weight. The Council responded to Frankism with urgency and severity including, after consultation with Rav Emden and Rav Landau, issuing a formal condemnation and excommunication of Frank (1756).
However, Frank proved adept at manipulating non-Jewish authorities. Rather than retreat, he leveraged Christian hostility toward Jewish authority in general and the Talmud in particular and approached the Catholic Church, portraying himself as a reformer persecuted by rigid rabbis and bringing false blood libel accusations of ritual murder against the Jews. This successful maneuver enabled them to find refuge with the ecclesiastical authorities, who saw in them potential candidates for mass conversion from Judaism to Christianity.
In response to the Frankists’ appeal to the Church and their allegations against the Jewish community, the Council sent emissaries to the Polish royal court and local authorities to defend the Jewish community and to expose Frank’s movement as fraudulent, hoping to protect the Jews from state-sponsored persecution triggered by Frankist agitation. The Council instructed local communities to monitor suspected Frankists, report on gatherings or subversive activity, and refuse to bury known heretics in Jewish cemeteries, which created a network of communal vigilance to isolate Frankist cells and to protect the integrity of Jewish life.
However, the Frankists’ next sordid tact was to petition Bishop Dembowski for a public disputation between themselves and the rabbis, and on Aug. 2, 1756, they presented nine principles of their faith for debate, which were carefully formulated to mislead the Church about who they really were and what they really believed. The rabbis were able to avoid accepting the invitation to the disputation for nearly a year but, after great pressure from the bishop, the disputation finally took place at Kamieniec from June 20 to 28, 1757. On Oct. 17, 1757, Bishop Dembowski issued his decision in favor of the Frankists, imposing several penalties upon the rabbis, chief of which was a condemnation of the Talmud as worthless and corrupt and an order that it be burned in the city square. Moreover, all Jewish homes were to be searched for copies of the Talmud and, according to some reliable contemporary accounts, many cartloads of editions of the Talmud were in fact burned in Kamieniec, Lvov, Brody, Zolkiew, among other places. This “burning of the Torah” had a devastating effect on the Jewish community and the rabbanim declared a fast in memory of the event.
In 1759, with the help of Polish clergy, Frank orchestrated a mass conversion of over 500 followers in Lwów, and he himself was baptized with noble godparents under the name Jakub Józef Frank. Nevertheless, he never fully adhered to Catholic orthodoxy; his teachings remained deeply Gnostic and dualistic, and he viewed himself as a divine figure – a “lord of the world” who stood outside any religious law and who heralded a new age of salvation. Even when the Church convicted him of heresy and imprisoned him for twelve years in a monastery (1760 – 1773), he continued to communicate with followers, spreading his teachings through cryptic letters and emissaries, and his incarceration only served to heighten interest in his message and teachings.
Portrait of Eva Frank
During his incarceration, his daughter, Eva (born Rachel), became the de facto head of the sect. Upon his release, he relocated with her to Brno and then Offenbach in the German states, where he established a pseudo-royal court and declared the coming of a new spiritual era.
Though Frank has been the subject of extensive study – by, among others, Gershom Scholem, Pawel Maciejko, and Ada Rapoport-Alber – Eva’s life remains largely veiled in mystery due in large part to the secrecy of the Frankist court, the destruction or suppression of records, and the doctrinal fluidity of the movement. Born around 1754, likely in Brno or possibly in one of the Frankist settlements in Galicia, she grew up at the center of the Frankist cult steeped in the mythos surrounding her father and, from childhood, she was taught to regard herself as a figure of divine destiny and she became venerated by her father’s followers.
Eva’s mother, Hannah Falcon, the daughter of a respected Ashkenazi merchant in Nikopol (Bulgaria), was Jacob Frank’s mate (there is no record of a wedding or marriage). Although Hannah came to be highly revered within the Frankist court, Jacob bolstered Eva’s exclusive standing in the movement by circulating the story that he was only her guardian and that she was actually an illegitimate child of the Russian Empress Catharina and was therefore a princess in the House of Romanov. As early as 1760, during Frank’s imprisonment, he began to style Eva as Ha-Adonah HaKedosha (“the Holy Mistress”) and as a divine incarnation, modeled on the Shechina (the “female” aspect of G-d in Kabbalistic cosmology), and she was frequently referenced under this title in internal letters, hymns, and Frankist liturgy.
Upon her father’s death in 1791 – which Frank’s followers understood to be only a “temporary disappearance” – Eva assumed leadership of the movement, thereby becoming the only woman in Jewish history to be regarded by a significant sectarian group as a female messiah and incarnation of divine presence. Documents from the Polish state archives, particularly those housed in Kraków and Lwów, show that followers in places like Warsaw, Prague, and Odessa sent money and devotionals to Eva’s court, addressing her with reverential titles generally reserved for divine figures.
Frank declared Eva to be the incarnation of the Virgin Mary, a shocking gesture that sought to synthesize Christian imagery with Sabbatian and Lurianic concepts, and she was sometimes also referred to as the “Lady” or the “Virgin.” In a letter preserved in the Polish archives, a Frankist devotee wrote that “We gaze upon her and know the face of redemption.” Eva was not merely symbolic; she conducted rituals, led ceremonies, and inspired poetry, hymns, and even painted icons. Under her leadership, the Frankist court at Offenbach became even more baroque and mystical, as she received delegations, corresponded with nobles, and attempted to attract broader Catholic interest. Some Frankists even believed that their “Virgin” would give birth to a messianic son who would complete the redemption.
The Jewish response to Eva was perhaps even more horrified than to her father, as female leadership, especially in mystical or liturgical contexts, had no precedent in normative Judaism. Rabbinic texts referred to her as bat min niddah (“a daughter of impurity”) or a reincarnation of the biblical Lilith; rabbinic literature from the late 18th and early 19th centuries references her obliquely as a “sorceress,” a “priestess of sin,” or the “daughter of heresy;” and, even among Jews who had formerly dabbled in Sabbatianism, Eva’s role was considered blasphemous.
While Jacob Frank emphasized transgression and mystical dialectics between good and evil, Eva’s theological voice, while less documented, seems to have emphasized divine femininity, purity, and mystical royalty. The Frankist movement under Eva also began to emphasize courtly aesthetics and ritualized hierarchy over explicit antinomianism and, in this sense, it became more of a dynastic cult and less of a radical theological movement. However, some accounts suggest that sexual rituals continued under her rule, though details remain murky.
After her father’s death, Eva presided over the Offenbach court, financed primarily by dwindling funds and donations from loyal followers across Eastern Europe. However, the Napoleonic Wars devastated the region; her request for financial help to the faltering Frankist movement, which was supported by quotations from her father’s teachings and promises of approaching messianic redemption, proved unsuccessful; her efforts to find support from the Church similarly failed; her ability to maintain the Offenbach court diminished; and, by 1813, the Frankist movement was bankrupt. Exhibited here is one of the great rarities from the author’s collection, Eva’s October 20, 1792 “sugar and grain” correspondence to Frankfurt merchant Jean Hartman Lindheimer in which she manifests a humble, almost plaintive tone that contrasts sharply with her ostensible role as a “divine figure:”
Eva’s “sugar and grain” correspondence
I did not want to inconvenience you again but need obliges me, because I do not have enough sugar to share amongst the poor people, so I have waited a while with the exchange until I have asked you to be kind enough to send me a single centnar of sugar again. In case you have fine white sugar, I would prefer that. I hope you won’t refuse me. Also, if you have 5 centnars of rice, or 5 centnars of millet, or 10 centnars of barley [?], whichever of these three types you have, and could let me have one of them, it would make me enormously happy. The exchange will follow quickly as soon as I must reply through my servants. I will be very grateful to you for the news you will be able to bring me soon. I have the pleasure of thanking you…
Lindheimer (1753-1824), a prosperous merchant in the Saxenhausen section of Frankfurt, was a relative of Goethe, whose maternal grandmother was a Lindheimer. As our letter shows, her funds eventually ran out and she found herself deep in debt with local merchants – including Lindheimer – who ultimately was forced to take legal action against her.
Eva died in poverty in 1816, impoverished and largely forgotten. Her grave, which is shrouded in Frankist legend, has never been conclusively identified, with some sources suggesting that she was buried in a Christian cemetery, possibly under an alias, while others claim that her body was secretly interred by remaining disciples. After her death, many of her followers reentered Christian society and others assimilated entirely but, in any case, by the 1830s, Frankism had essentially ceased to exist as a living sect. Some scholars have identified Frankist lineage in some 19th-century Jewish apostates and assimilationists, and family legends and oral traditions persisted among some descendants, but these connections are cultural rather than doctrinal.
The story of Jacob and Eva Frank is one of the most provocative episodes in Jewish history. Frank’s radical theological inversion of Judaism shocked the rabbinate and scarred communal memory, but it was Eva’s rise – her gender, her role as mystical queen and messianic priestess – that to many marked the ultimate transgression. Though rejected, condemned, and ultimately erased from normative Jewish history, the Franks left a lasting, if subterranean, mark on Jewish mystical thought, gender discourse, and sectarian dynamics.
