The Mixed Multitude. Pawel Maciejko

      

      The Mixed Multitude

      JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS

      Published in association with

      the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

      of the University of Pennsylvania

      David B. Ruderman, Series Editor

      Advisory Board Richard I. Cohen Moshe Idel Alan Mintz Deborah Dash Moore Ada Rapoport-Albert Michael D. Swartz

      A complete list of books in the series

      is available from the publisher.

      The Mixed Multitude

      ____________________

      Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755 –1816

      PAWEŁ MACIEJKO

      UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

      PHILADELPHIA

      Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant

      from the Herbert D. Katz Publications Fund

      of the Center for Avanced Judaic Studies.

      Copyright © 2011 University of Pennsylvania Press

      All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for

      purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book

      may be reproduced in any form by any means without

      written permission from the publisher.

      Published by

      University of Pennsylvania Press

      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

      www.upenn.edu/pennpress

      Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

      2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Maciejko, Paweł, 1971–

      The mixed multitude : Jacob Frank and the Frankist movement, 1755– 1816 / Paweł Maciejko. — 1st ed.

      p. cm. — (Jewish culture and contexts)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-8122-4315-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

      1. Frank, Jacob, ca. 1726–1791. 2. Jewish Messianic movements—Europe, Eastern—History. 3. Judaism—Europe, Eastern—History—18th century. 4. Judaism—Europe, Eastern—History—19th century. I. Title. II. Series: Jewish culture and contexts.

      BM755.F68M33 2011

296.8’3—dc22

2010036520

       To my mother and thememory of my father

      And the People of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot, who were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, and very many cattle.

      —Exod. 12:37-38

      It is them [the mixed multitude] who cause the world to revert to the state of waste and void. The mystery of this matter is that because of them the Temple was destroyed, “and the earth was waste and void” [Gen. 1:2], for [the Temple] is the center and foundation of the world. Yet as soon as the light, which is the Holy One, blessed be He, comes, they will be wiped off the face of the earth and will perish.

      —Zohar 1:25b

      Contents

      ____________________

       Preface

       Introduction

       Chapter 1. In the Shadow of the Herem

       Chapter 2. The Peril of Heresy, the Birth of a New Faith

       Chapter 3. Where Does Frankism Fit In?

       Chapter 4. The Politics of the Blood Libel

       Chapter 5. How Rabbis and Priests Created the Frankist Movement

       Chapter 6. Ghosts of the Past, Heralds of the Future

       Chapter 7. The Fall of Edom

       Chapter 8. The Vagaries of the Charlatans

       Chapter 9. The Ever-Changing Masquerade

       List of Current and Historical Place Names

       List of Abbreviations

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgments

      Preface

      ____________________

      The linguistic and political complexity of the region where Frankism developed means that several variants of place and personal names exist. Where there is an accepted English spelling, I have used it (therefore Warsaw, Prague, Vienna). Otherwise, I have preferred the official forms as they were during the time that the events described in this book took place (thus the Lwów—not Lemberg, Lviv, or Lvov—disputation of 1759). For the names of people, I have employed either the existing English equivalents (thus Jacob Frank, not Ya’akov or Jakub Frank or Frenk) or the forms most frequently used in the documents discussed in the body of the present work (Elyakim ben Asher Zelig and not Jankiel Selek).

      An attempt has been made to achieve consistency in the transliteration of words written in scripts other than Latin. For Hebrew and Aramaic, I have employed the slightly modified system of Encyclopaedia Judaica. Tsadi is written ts; khaf is written kh; no distinction is made between he and het and between alef and ayin; dagesh hazak is represented by doubling the consonant; sheva nah—by e. In very few instances, in which eighteenth-century sources written in Latin characters contain transliterated Hebrew words or expressions, I have retained the original spelling reflecting either local (usually Ashkenazic) pronunciation of Hebrew or idiosyncrasies of the scribes. For Yiddish, the transliteration adopted follows the YIVO system; for Cyrillic, the British Standard scheme is followed.

      Quotations from the Hebrew Bible follow the Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia, 1988);