Francism and appeal

The publishing house “Gesharim / Bridges of Culture” published a book by an employee of the Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Humanities of the Jewish University in Jerusalem Pavel Macheko “ A diverse tribal. Yaakov Frank and the Frankist movement in 1755-1816 ”(M. The monograph is based on many years of work in the archives of Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel, Germany, the USA and the Vatican. We publish an introduction to the book, which gives an idea of ​​a significant context of the consideration of the Frankist movement.

Baptism has always been one of the most traumatic events in the history of Jewish communities of the Middle Ages and the early New Age. Jews treated baptism as “betrayal of communal values, abandoning Jewish destiny, humility of the illusory verdict of history” [1] . Those who left Judaism of their own free will be perceived as the most terrible traitors and traitors, while violent appeals to Christianity were considered the worst form of persecution of the people of Israel by non -Jews. According to the generally accepted ideal, it is better to choose a martyrdom than to recognize the power of the Church over yourself [2] . Anyone who adopted Christianity was mourned as the deceased. In the public consciousness, it was not even assumed that a Jew can accept Christianity without any threat or a hidden motive. The Christians themselves officially extolled the apostates and expressed the hope that the “blind synagogue” recognized the “obvious” truths of Christianity in the future, but privately expressed doubts about the sincerity of the converts, and even in the very possibility that Jews could actually accept Christ.

In the Commonwealth, the largest Catholic country in Europe, which at the same time became the house for the largest Jewish community, baptism was a rarity [3] . Neither the local church nor the state conducted systematic missionary campaigns among the Jewish population. The violent baptisms of individuals were prohibited by law, their number was insignificant. Mass transitions to another faith, known in Western Europe, also did not occur-with one single significant exception. In the late summer and early autumn of 1759, a noticeable group of Jews (according to most evidence, several thousand) under the leadership of Yaakov Frank, in Lviv, to Catholicism. This appeal was unique not only in scale. It was - or it seemed - perfect of his own free will: no matter what behind the decision of the frank and his followers to approach the baptismal font, they were not put before the choice between baptism and expulsion or brutal death, like their brothers in German lands or in Portugal. However, the reaction of most Jewish contemporaries was even more strange. In contrast to ordinary grief, anger or despair, many Jews perceived the baptism of Frank and his group as a miracle sent by God, as a great victory of Judaism. Entire communities celebrated this event.

Among the early Jewish assessments of the baptism of 1759, only one did not correspond to the general triumphal mood and expressed radically other feelings. About Israel Baal Shem Tovy, or Beshte (1698–1760), the founder of Hasidism - the most significant spiritual direction in Judaism of that time, says that he mourned about mass religious in Lviv or even died of the pain that it caused him [4] . According to the history recorded in the hagiographic collection of Shivha ѓa-Basht ("praise of Beers") , Baal Shem Tov laid the blame for this for the Jewish authorities; He was “very angry on the rabbis and said that this happened because of them, because of the lies that they themselves invented” [5] . The leader of the Hasidov considered Frank and his group part of the mystical body of the people of Israel and represented their baptism as an amputation of part of the Body of Shkhina , the Divine presence on Earth: “I heard from the Rabbi of our community that those who were baptized [in Lviv] said:“ While the part is connected to the body, there is still some hope of its healing, but when it is cut off, the correction is no longer possible. Each person in Israel is a part of Shkhina '” [6] .

Baal Shem Tov died in 1760, a year after baptism in Lviv. One and a half centuries later, in Berlin, Shmuel Josef Agnon, an beginning author who later became the most famous writer of Israel and the Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote a short essay about Franca. He compared different Jewish assessments of the apostasy of 1759 and completed his essay by thinking about the words of Besht. He wrote:

We are all just dust under the feet of this holy man, but we dare to hold a different opinion. Frank and his gang were not part of the body of Israel; Rather, they were [pathological] growth. Honor and praise to our doctors who removed him on time until he was rooted in the body! ... Undoubtedly, Frank and his group were descendants of an alien crowd [7] , who fled to Israel during the outcome of Egypt and followed him further. In the desert, in the land of Israel and after, in exile, this set defiled the purity of Israel and desecrated its holiness. May we be free from them forever! [8]

Expressing the reaction of Beshta to the baptism of Frank, Agnon referred to the symbolism of the concept of a “mixed crowd”, or “diverse set”, Erev Rav . She appears already in the Bible, in the story of the outcome (Exodus/Samot 12: 37–38): “And the sons of Israel from Raamses to Sokhof went to six hundred thousand foot men, except for children; And many diverse people [ Erev Rav ] came out with them, and small and cattle, a herd is very large. ” According to the Jewish tradition, the expression of Erev is a group of strangers who joined the Israelis who came out of Egypt behind Moses. Some Midrases saw in this group the “pious among the Egyptians who celebrated Passah along with Israel” [9] Prototype of future heroes [10] . But most of the rabbinistic exegetes saw in a diverse set the source of damage, sin and discord: accustomed to idolatry, this diverse crowds overwhelmed Israel to make a golden body [11] and anger of God, demanding the abolition of an incest prohibition [12] . Therefore, the image of Erev Rav was supposed to cause a picture of unwanted strangers located in the very center of the Holy Community. People from a diverse set were not the true “children of Abraham” [13] , but an Egyptian crowd, who mixed with the Israelis, polluted their purity, bowing them to sin and knocking them down from the true path in the desert. It was because of them that the generation of the outcome lost the right road in the desert and Moses did not enter the land of Israel.

In the Middle Ages, the symbolism of this ancient midrash was developed in Kabbalah, especially in the Book of ZoAr (“Shine”). Zoarar understands Erev Rav in a universal sense, outside his specific historical place in a biblical story: a diverse crowd now acts not only in the generation of the outcome, but also during all periods of the history of mankind. Erev Rav turns out to be the impurity of the snake that entered Eve [14] ; These are the descendants of Cain [15] ; Nefilim , the “sons of God” who produced offspring with human daughters (Genesis 6: 2–4) [16] ; Those demons that survived the flood [17] . A diverse set was the offspring of Samael and Lilith [18] . It contributed to the construction of the Babylonian tower [19] and led to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple [20] . It practiced incest, idolatry and witchcraft [21] . This was the reason for the imprisonment of the divine presence in the demonic kingdom of the “shell” ( clipot ), as well as the scattering of Israel among the peoples of the world [22] .

In ZoAra, the activity of a diverse set is in no way limited to the past. Erev Rav is the eternal power of destruction, the purpose of which is to lead the world to the state of the biblical "visaless and empty" eternal chaos ( Tuu V-VOU ) [23] . It should be noted that this power was inside the Jewish people. Since the different -tribal set mixed with the Israeli in the desert, their descendants became indistinguishable from the rest of the Jews and appeared in every generation: in accordance with the mythology of Methempsychosis, the ZoAr -eare saw in the current Jewish sinners of those Jews whose "roots of the soul" came from Erev Rav.

The topos of a diverse set has become a symbol of the main inner enemy, different from the external haters of Israel among non -Jews. As Yitzhak Bar showed, already in the interpretation of Zoara this motive was used as a means of powerful social criticism, directed against the Jewish establishment of the time that oppressed scientists and exploited the poor. Rabbins and Parnas (secular leaders), who “taught the Torah not for the sake of herself,” “built the synagogues not for the glory of God, but to make a name,” became the “unhealthy pastors of Israel” and were not “true children of Israel”, but descendants of the Egyptian signs who joined Moses in the desert [24] . The leadership of the communities, influential, rich and materialistly thinking, was contrasted with the searches for the holiness of the ascetics, devoid of wealth and high social status, glorifying poverty in the name of God. In the eyes of the Kabbalists only the latter were the true community of Israel [25] .

The Jews who were baptized in Lviv in 1759 were Sabbatians - followers of the religious movement that arose thanks to the Messianic claims of the Jew from the Ottoman Empire of Shabtai Zvi (1626–1676). Shabtai first expressed his claims to messianism in 1648, but the group that developed around it began to grow rapidly only in 1665, when the young Kabbalist Nathan from Gaza (1643–1680) in an ecstatic vision “knew” the truth of the statements of Shabtai [26] . Soon after the announcement of Shabtai, the Messiah Nathan - who immediately became “at the same time as the John the Baptist and Paul of the New Messiah” [27] - compiled a comment on the ancient apocalyptic text, which he allegedly found in the bookstore of one old synagogue. In order to protect the nascent messianic movement from criticism from the rabbis, he used the symbolism of a diverse set: contemporaries of the Messiah “will rise against it with reproaches and blasphemy - they are a“ diverse -tribal ”, sons of Lilith, 'Live Basiling Essential' [Lev. 3: 4], the leaders and rabbis of the generation ” [28] .

In his subsequent writings, Nathan developed the doctrine of salvation, which can be achieved only by the Messian faith (and not observing the commandments), and expanded the understanding of the concept of Erev Rav , arguing that the souls of all Jews fully observing the law that reject the messenism of Shabtai come from a diverse tribe [29] . As Gershom Sholem notes, linking the symbolism of a diverse set with eschatology and messianic secrets, Nathan combined two different motives that exist separately in ZoAra. Just as in the ZoAra Lakmusova Paper, showing where someone's root of the soul is located, “observing the Torah for itself” was, for the Sabbatians, this criterion was the belief in the Shabtai Zvi Messiah: the sectarians “more and more felt like true Israel, which is produced by a“ diverse-tribal set ” [30] .

The idea of ​​the fundamental difference between the followers of the Messiah and the rabbis-skeptics was developed in more detail in the comments on the midnight service [31] , written by the student of Nathan, Rabbi Israel Khazan from the castoria. Khazan claimed that the real Messiah will not be recognized as Jewish leaders, whom he considered the descendants of a diverse set, but as a simplest [32] . The denial of the Messianism of Shabtai Zvi and the inability to see hints of him in the Jewish canon pointed out the blindness of the soul, which was explained by a kind of metaphysical blindness associated with the roots of the soul of the unbeliever. According to the Sabbatians, the “imaginary rabbis” [33] could no longer claim power over Jews or declare themselves as authoritative interpreters of Jewish tradition. Their scholarship was false, their secular position was based on the use of power, their ostentatious holiness cost nothing and was devoid of inner meaning.

As soon as Nathan from Gaza and Israel Khazan compiled their polemic work against the rabbis, the enemies of the new Messiah decided to try to defeat the Sabbatians with their own weapons. Rabbi Yaakov Sports, the famous opponent of early Sabbatianism, knew about Nathan's statements [34] . Enraged by the absurd allegations that the very cream of the rabbinsky elite consist of descendants of a diverse set, Sports announced that not the head of the generation, but the Sabbatians themselves were the souls that descended from Erev Rav . Soon, the terms “diverse tribal” and “true Israel” firmly entered the polemic vocabulary of the Sabbatians and their opponents. This was especially evident in the texts of the XVIII century. and documents directly related to Frank. In one of the first reports on baptism in Lviv, Berkental from Berkental reports that “they call us [Antisabbatians] Erev Rav, and they call their clique Mahana [company, brotherhood]” [35] . The main contender of the leadership over the Central and Eastern European Sabbatians Wolf Eibashchz also defined the conflict between sectarians and rabbinat as the struggle between BBU MEMANUT (“sons of faith”) and the sons of Erev Rav [36] . On the other side of the barricades, Rabbi Yaakov Emden, the most zealous anti -Sabbatian of that period, interpreted the baptism of Frank as the final gap between Erev Rav and the chosen people, claiming that the purified Israel could now calmly eat from the tree of life and achieve salvation [37] . Shortly after the baptism of the Francists, Emden composed an ode to God, glorifying “the separation between the unclean and pure ... between us and a diverse tribe - those who are trying to bring the world into an antediluvian state” [38] .

However, this question was not simply terminological, and the case was not limited to mutual watering with mud. The dichotomy between true Israel and a diverse set formed the basis of a theological confrontation that broke Judaism of the XVIII century. About a century after the appearance of Shabtai Zvi, the main debate concerning Sabbatianism (and, more widely, Jewish heterodoxy), not around the messianism and, moreover, not around the Messian claims of Shabtai himself. The subject of disputes was the establishment of the boundaries of religion and the question of belonging to the Jewish people [39] . Each side considered only its own version of Judaism legitimate and claimed that it was the only true Israel. Both parties called each other “descendants of a diverse set”, implying that opponents are not Jews at all. Thus, the concept of a diverse set helped to establish the boundaries of Judaism and the Jewish people, without any connection with the traditional ѓalachic criteria of the one who is a Jew: within its framework certain groups could seem to “outwardly” as Jews, while remaining strangers in the depths of their souls. Conducting the demarcation line between those souls that descended from the “children of Abraham”, and those who came from Erev Rav, the discussion about Sabbatianism should have established the difference between “real” Jews and pseudo -eevids, “true” Judaism and false faith. Frankism-the movement that has developed around Yaakov Frank in the 1750s-became the last and in many ways the most dramatic stage in this dispute.

Notes

[1] Carlebach E. Divined Souls. P. 12.

[2] For the development of the ideal of martyrdom, see: yuval I. Two Nations in Your Womb. P. 135–204.

[3] The latest data on the baptism of Jews in Poland, see: Fram E. Perception and Reception of Repostates in Medieval Ashkenaz and Premodern Poland; Kaźmierczyk A. Converted Jews in Kraków, 1650–1763.

[4] Libes . Ѓa-tint ѓa-Clali Shel r. Nakhman Mi-Breslav Vo-Yahaso Le-Shabtaut , in: Libes y . SOD ѓA-Emuna ѓa-Shabtaite. P. 238–261 (especially p. 251–252).

[5] Dov Baer Ben Samuel . In Praise of the Baal Shem TOV. P. 59.

[6] Ibid, p. 59.

[7] [That is, Erev Rav , "Dive -up set." - Ed .]

[8] Agnon Sh.J. Ein Wort über Jakob Frank. S. 56–57.

[9] Slave Shemot 18:10; See also: Mehilt de-r. Shimon b. Yohai, 12.

[10] [Proselites, ethnic non -Jews who have accepted Judaism. - Ed .]

[11] Slave Shemot, 42: 6.

[12] Bemidbar slave, 15:25; Midrash Tanhuma (Vilna, 1885), Behaaloteha, 35.

[13] Babylonian Talmud, Baitsa, 32b.

[14] Zoiar, 1: 28b.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Zoaar Hadash, 645, 31d.

[19] ZoAR, 1: 25A-25B.

[20] ZoAR, 1: 25B.

[21] ZoAr, 2: 191a and further.

[22] Tikuna Zoar, Tikun 19.

[23] Zoiar, 1: 25b.

[24] ZoAr 3: 153a-b.

[25] Ber and . Ѓa-river ѓa-ѓistori Shel Ryia Mehemn, p. 1–5, 18–19, 31–35; Baer I. A History of the Jews in Christian Spain. Vol. 1. P. 270–277.

[26] Scholem G. Sabbatai Sevi. P. 206–207.

[27] Ibid, p. 207.

[28] Sholem g . (Ed.) Behawed Mashia . S. 59–61; Scholem G. Sabbatai Sevi. P. 226.

[29] Scholem G. Sabbatai Sevi. P. 283; cf. Freiman a . Inyane Shabbatai Tsevi. S. 60.

[30] Ibid, S. 747.

[31] Sholem writes about this text as “Comments on the Psalter”. I accept the correction of the name proposed by David Galperin in a report at the conference of the Association of Jewish Research in Washington in December 2008

[32] Scholem G. Sabbatai Sevi. P. 867; Sholem​ Perush Mizmore Tehilim Me-Hugo Shel Shabtai Zvi Bo-Adrianopol , in: Sholem g . Mehkara Shabtaut. S. 122–123.

[33] According to the Sabbatian of Abraham Yakhini; See: Sholem g . Ѓa-nnua ѓa-Shabtat Bi-Polin, in: Mehkarim u-Mekorot le-topo ѓa-tnua ѓhabtata ve-gilgulea. S.79.

[34] For a more detailed presentation of the position of Sasports, see below, in chapter 2.

[35] Berkental from Belkhov . Sefer Divre Bina, Jerusalem, Jnul, MS. Heb 28 ° 7507, 222 (Below - bere from Bolekhov . Divra Bina).

[36] Либес Й . Хибур би-лешон ѓа-Зоѓар ле-рабби Йеѓонатан Айбешиц аль хавурато ве-аль сод ѓа-геула», в: Либес Й. Сод ѓа-эмуна ѓа-шабтаит. С. 77–102 (особенно с. 78, 82, 85, 94).

[37] См.: Эмден Я . Сефер шимуш, 83r (на основании Зоѓара 3:124b); cf. там же, 86r; он же . Сефер ѓитабкут, 29r; He. Эдут бе-Яаков, 37v ; He. Мегилат сефер , 184.

[38] Эмден Я . Сефер шимуш, 77v.

[39] Попытка определить роль саббатианства в установлении границ иудаизма предпринята Либесом в его кн. Шабтаут ве-гвулот ѓа-дат («Саббатианство и границы веры»).