Jacob Frank - Early Life

Early Life

Jacob Frank is believed to have been born as Jacob ben Leiba (or Leibowits) in Korolivka, in Podolia of Eastern Poland (now in Ukraine), in about 1726. His father was a Sabbatean, and moved to Chernivtsi, in the Carpathian region of Bukovina in 1730, where the Sabbatean influence at the time was strong. While still a schoolboy Frank began to reject the Talmud, and afterward often referred to himself as "a plain" or "untutored man."

As a traveling merchant in textile and precious stones he often visited Ottoman territories, where he earned the nickname "Frank", a name generally given in the East to Europeans, and lived in the centers of contemporary Sabbateanism: Salonica and Smyrna.

In the early 1750s, Frank became intimate with the leaders of the Sabbateans. Two followers of Sabbatian leader Osman Baba (d. 1720) were witnesses at his wedding in 1752. In 1755 he reappeared in Podolia, gathered a group of local adherents, and began to preach the "revelations" which were communicated to him by the Dönmeh in Salonica. One of these gatherings in Landskron ended in a scandal, and the rabbis' attention was drawn to the new teachings. Frank was forced to leave Podolia, while his followers were hounded and denounced to the local authorities by the rabbis (1756). At the rabbinical court held in the village of Satanov the Sabbateans were accused of having broken fundamental Jewish laws of morality and modesty.