The Mixed Multitude. Pawel Maciejko
to use the word “orthodox” in discussions of phenomena preceding the advent of Orthodox Judaism in nineteenth-century Germany. However, it should be noted that the term “orthodoxy” was already used in the 1750s by the Lutheran scholar Friedrich David Megerlin specifically to describe Emden’s position in his controversy with Eibeschütz.92 Emden was orthodox in the sense that he saw his version of Judaism as the only natural and true point of reference for all other versions of Judaism, which he considered inherently inferior, heretical, and deviant. This, in turn, made sense only within the framework of an organized church: it is little surprise that Emden’s vision of Judaism so resembled that of the Church and that his rabbis were so like the priests.
Emden brought into play the half-forgotten anti-Sabbatian apologetics of Sasportas and neglected anti-Christian works such as Hoda’at ba’al din. He then turned both on their heads. He accepted Sasportas’s idea of Sabbatianism being a new religion but used it as an argument for establishing a common front with Christianity. He employed Hoda’at ba’al din’s notion that Jewish principles were expounded in the Gospels but argued that this only proved the legitimacy of the Church in Jewish eyes. Like Sasportas, Emden believed that Sabbatianism was not Judaism and argued that the Sabbatians were descendants of the erev rav: they were ostensibly Jewish but, in fact, did not belong to the people of Israel.93
After Sasportas in the mid-seventeenth century, no other opponent of Sabbatianism took up this line of argumentation; as Sid Leiman has noted, during the first stages of polemics against Eibeschütz in the early 1750s, Emden “was a loose cannon, if not worse.”94 Yet, thanks to the mediation of Abraham of Zamońć and others, Emden’s highly radical (and highly original) perspective on Sabbatianism was accepted by the Council of Four Lands in their dealings with case of the Frankists. At the end of 1756 Emden became what he had dreamed of becoming but had never managed to achieve in his campaign against Eibeschütz: the mind behind the anti-heretical policy of the most powerful body in world Jewry.
Chapter 3
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Where Does Frankism Fit In?
The Contra-Talmudists
Emden’s strategy of involving the Christians in the campaign against the Sabbatians was designed to appeal to the sentiments of the priests. The mid-eighteenth-century Polish Church, determined to wage an intense battle against the religious dissent among the country’s Christian population, could be expected to be sympathetic to an anti-heretical case. In approaching Bishop Dembowski, the rabbis counted on his concern for established religious authority. For the Sabbatians, a natural response to this strategy was to resort to the prevalent Christian stereotype of “rabbinism” as an empty shell of legalistic casuistry and present their version of Judaism as more spiritual and based on direct divine inspiration of a mystical type. The battle lines were thus drawn: in their contacts with the Catholic clergy, the Sabbatians would play on the Church’s view of Jewish religion as “letter” without “spirit,” “law” without “grace” (and would even use this latter notion), while the rabbis would appeal to the priests’ distrust of “enthusiasm” and of private revelations extra ecclesiam. Various understandings of the fundamental nature of what was gradually becoming a mass religious movement forming around Frank were formulated, put forward, and tested against one another during the ongoing debate. Podolian Sabbatians, the Jewish authorities, and the bishop and his aides all tried to fit the developing events into their respective visions of history, redemption, and society; what we know today as Frankism emerged as a product of the clash of ideas, contradictory strategies, interests, and commitments of these groups.
As discussed in Chapter 1, after the public violation of the Fast of Esther in Kopczyńce and the hearing in Dembowski’s court in late March 1756, Frank left the Commonwealth and headed home to Salonika (according to a Polish source, those arrested in Kopczyńce were set free on condition that they would disperse to their homes).1 He was not directly involved in the developments that took place in the Kamieniec diocese in 1756–57, and it is unclear what influence he did have on the course of events. Later Frankist sources imply that he did not authorize actions of the Sabbatian party in Kamieniec. He seems to have lost some authority: during Frank’s sojourn in Turkey, Yehudah Leyb Krysa assumed the leadership of the group in Podolia and was probably responsible for the strategy developed in the contacts with the bishop.2 However, the Jesuit Konstanty Awedyk claimed that Frank was constantly pulling strings behind the scenes and that upon leaving Poland, he told his followers to present themselves as adherents to two main tenets: a belief “in the Holy Trinity, that is, in One God in three persons” and the rejection of “the Talmud as full of errors and blasphemies.”3 While Awedyk’s description of Frank’s role is probably an ex post embellishment (his book was published in 1760, when Frank had firmly established his leadership over those Podolian Sabbatians, who were Christians by then), the description of the subject of debate is accurate.
On 2 August 1756, a manifesto was submitted to the Kamieniec consistory. Twenty-one named Sabbatians from Jezierzany, Kopczyńce, Nadworna, Busk, Zbrzezie, Rohatyn, Satanów, and Lanckoronie claimed to speak on behalf of Jews in other countries who held similar beliefs. They asserted that, upon lengthy consideration, they had concluded that the Talmud was blasphemous and contrary to reason and God’s commandments. The signatories complained to the authorities that because of their anti-talmudic position, they had been persecuted, excommunicated, expelled, and falsely accused by their enemies, the “teachers and advocates of the Talmud.” They demanded that the Talmud should be rejected and consigned to the flames and stated their intention to “declare to the entire world” the principles of their faith, which they proclaimed themselves to prove true in a public disputation. Their principles were:
1. We believe in everything that was taught and commanded by God in the Old Testament.
2. The Holy Scriptures cannot be comprehended by human reason without the assistance of Divine Grace.
3. The Talmud is full of scandalous blasphemies against God and should be rejected.
4. There is One God who created everything.
5. This God is in Three Persons, indivisible as to their nature.
6. God can take a human body upon Himself and be subject to all passions except for sin.
7. In accordance with the prophecies, the city of Jerusalem will not be rebuilt until the end of time.
8. The messiah promised in the Old Testament will not come again.
9. God Himself will remove the sin of the First Parents. This God is the true messiah, incarnate.4
The manifesto was presented in Latin and signed with the full Hebrew names of its proponents. The Latin translation from Hebrew was executed by one of the most interesting characters in the early phase of Frankism, the Polish nobleman Antoni Kossakowski, called Moliwda (1718–86).5 Antoni grew up in the house of Dominik Kossakowski, father of the future bishop of Livonia and a member of the Targowica Confederation, Józef Kossakowski. Having secretly married “a peasant, daughter of a local mill man,”6 he fled his family’s wrath to Russia, where he became an “elder” of the Greek Orthodox sect of Philipovtsy (a radical branch of the schismatic Old Believers). Later, he claimed that “under the name Moliwda, he ruled one of the Greek islands”7 and reportedly spent time in one of the monasteries on Mount Athos.8 Contemporaries marveled at his mastery of oriental languages including Turkish, Tatar, Hebrew, and Aramaic, as well as his “profound knowledge of the Scriptures and Holy Fathers.”9
The Philipovtsy had numerous contacts with the Jews; in Poland, their faith was considered so close to Judaism that some members of the Polish nobility wanted them to pay the Jewish poll tax.10 Moliwda met Frank somewhere in the Balkans and saw in him a chance for a return to Poland. His exact role in the formulation of the Frankist manifestos and points for the disputations is a matter of conjecture, but it is certain that he was one of the most important sources of information on the selected Christian concepts that helped construct the Frankist teachings.11
Awedyk