The Heresy of Jacob Frank from Jewish Messianism to esoteric myth /
The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth is the first monograph on the religious philosophy of Jacob Frank (1726-1791), who, in the wake of the false messiah Sabbetai Zevi, led the largest mass apostasy in Jewish history. Based on close readings of Frank's late teachin...
| Main Author: | Michaelson, Jay, |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | Oxford Scholarship Online. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
2022.
|
| Physical Description: |
271 pages: illustrations(black and white). |
| Series: |
Oxford Academic.
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth is the first monograph on the religious philosophy of Jacob Frank (1726-1791), who, in the wake of the false messiah Sabbetai Zevi, led the largest mass apostasy in Jewish history. Based on close readings of Frank's late teachings, recorded in 1784 and 1790, The Heresy of Jacob Frank presents Frank as an original and prescient figure at the crossroads of tradition and modernity, reason and magic. Frank's worldview combines an antinomian, skeptical rejection of religious law with a supernatural, Western Esotericist myth of immortal beings, magic, and worldly power. Frank's goal was alchemical in nature, culminating in physical transformation, power, and immortality, and his messiah was a syncretic female figure known as the Maiden, whose characteristics draw on Kabbalah, magic, and the veneration of the Black Virgin of Czes̜tochowa, where Frank was imprisoned for twelve years. Sexual ritual, apparently tightly limited and controlled by the sect, was not a libertine bacchanal but a transgressive enactment of the messianic reality, a corporealization of what would later become known as spirituality. While Frank was undoubtedly a manipulative, even abusive leader whose sect mostly disappeared from history, his ideology anticipated themes that would become predominant in the Haskalah, early Hasidism, and even contemporary "New Age" Judaism. And his unbelievable, winding journey from Sabbatean heretic to eighteenth-century charlatan- alchemist-spy is perhaps even more remarkable than the radical theology he preached. |
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| Item Description: |
Includes Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: Introduction: The Boundary Crosser - 1. "I tell you everything and tell you nothing": Charlatan, Fool, Deviant, Heretic-Who Was Jacob Frank? - 2. "I do not look to heaven but at what God does here on Earth": Frankist Antinomianism as Materialist Skepticism - 3. "Everything that is of the spirit has to be turned into flesh": Magic, Myth, and the Material Imaginaire - 4. "To make a man in wholeness, stable and possessing eternal life": The Occult Quest for Immortality - 5. "With this deed we go to the naked thing": Sexual Antinomianism as Mystical Messianism - 6. "We don't need the books of Kabbalah": Rejecting Kabbalah and Sabbateanism - 7. "The gods of the freemasons will have to do what those two have done": Frankism as Western Esotericism - 8. "All religions change and go beyond the borders laid down by their ancestors": Foreshadowing Secularism and Spirituality - Acknowledgments - Appendix: Review of Scholarship and Textual Notes - Bibliography - Index. The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth is the first monograph on the religious philosophy of Jacob Frank (1726-1791), who, in the wake of the false messiah Sabbetai Zevi, led the largest mass apostasy in Jewish history. Based on close readings of Frank's late teachings, recorded in 1784 and 1790, The Heresy of Jacob Frank presents Frank as an original and prescient figure at the crossroads of tradition and modernity, reason and magic. Frank's worldview combines an antinomian, skeptical rejection of religious law with a supernatural, Western Esotericist myth of immortal beings, magic, and worldly power. Frank's goal was alchemical in nature, culminating in physical transformation, power, and immortality, and his messiah was a syncretic female figure known as the Maiden, whose characteristics draw on Kabbalah, magic, and the veneration of the Black Virgin of Czes̜tochowa, where Frank was imprisoned for twelve years. Sexual ritual, apparently tightly limited and controlled by the sect, was not a libertine bacchanal but a transgressive enactment of the messianic reality, a corporealization of what would later become known as spirituality. While Frank was undoubtedly a manipulative, even abusive leader whose sect mostly disappeared from history, his ideology anticipated themes that would become predominant in the Haskalah, early Hasidism, and even contemporary "New Age" Judaism. And his unbelievable, winding journey from Sabbatean heretic to eighteenth-century charlatan- alchemist-spy is perhaps even more remarkable than the radical theology he preached. |
| Physical Description: |
271 pages: illustrations(black and white). |
| ISBN: |
9780197530665 |