Frankism

Frankism was a heretical Sabbatean Jewish religious movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, centered on the leadership of the Jewish Messiah claimant Jacob Frank, who lived from 1726 to 1791. Frank rejected religious norms and said that his followers were obligated to transgress as many moral boundaries as possible. At its height it claimed perhaps 50,000 followers, primarily Jews living in Poland, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe. Unlike traditional Judaism, which provides a set of detailed social, cultural, and religious norms and laws (halakha) that regulate many aspects of life of observant Jews, Frank claimed that "all laws and teachings will fall" and, following antinomianism, asserted that the most important obligation of every person was the transgression of every boundary. Frankism is associated with the Sabbateans of Turkey, a religious movement that identified the 17th-century Jewish rabbi Sabbatai Zevi as the Messiah. Like Frankism, the earlier forms of Sabbateanism believed that at least in some circumstances, antinomianism was the correct path. Zevi himself would perform actions that violated traditional Jewish taboos, such as eating foods that were forbidden by kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws, and celebrating prescribed fast days as feast days. Especially after Zevi's death, a number of branches of Sabbateanism evolved that disagreed among themselves over which aspects of traditional Judaism should be preserved and which should be discarded. In Frankism, orgies featured prominently in ritual. Several authorities on Sabbateanism, such as Heinrich Graetz and Aleksander Kraushar, were skeptical of the existence of a distinctive Frankist doctrine. According to Gershom Scholem, a 20th century authority on Sabbateanism and Kabbalah, Kraushar had described Frank's sayings as "grotesque, comical and incomprehensible." In his classic essay "Redemption Through Sin," Scholem argued a different position which placed Frankism as a later and more radical outgrowth of Sabbateanism.