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Abstract
This paper utilises the concept of the charlatan in order to analyse the fortunes of two Jewish ‘false messiahs’, Wolf Eibeschütz and Jacob Frank. As the Encycopédie put it, charlatanry is ‘the vice of him who strives to recommend himself, or things belonging to him, as being endowed with imaginary qualities’. While charlatans obviously existed in every age and ‘every class had its charlatans,’ in some periods charlatanry was particularly prominent and widespread. Thus, charlatanry was especially likely to appear in the periods of social, cultural, and scientific change, in which empirical research out ran theory, and the rapid development of technology eluded the abilities of its conceptualisation, let alone the possibilities of explaining it to the general public. In other words, charlatanry was likely to hold sway whenever the ‘fringe of the inexplicable’ became especially large, and the gap between those in the know and the rest of the population particularly wide. The mid-eighteenth century was the golden age of European charlatanry. Members of the pan-European guild of the itinerant charlatans drifted from court to court, rotated from salon to salon, exchanging experiences, swapping mistresses, and underwriting each other's false bills of exchange. The most important representatives of this type were contemporaries and often knew each other. The last part of the paper discusses contacts between Jacob Frank and Giacomo Casanova.
Notes
1. This paper is based on a chapter of my book, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement 1755–1816, University of Pennsylvania Press (forthcoming).
2. CitationEmden, Sefer Hitabkut, 40r-v, see also 48v.
3. Ex. 13: 21–22, 14: 24. Tanakh: a New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia, 1988).
4. Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer 31 (Lemberg, 1864). In most other midrashim the vision of Abraham is that of the pillar of a cloud see Bereshit Rabbah 55:1; Midrash Tanhuma Noah 11 (Soncino edition).
5. Zohar II. 7b. Sefer ha-Zohar (Żołkiew, 1756).
6. CitationScholem, Sabbatai Sevi: the Mystical messiah 1626–1676, 206–7.
7. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: the Mystical messiah 1626–1676, 207.
8. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: the Mystical messiah 1626–1676, 927.
9. CitationScholem, “Redemption through Sin,” 109.
10. CitationDe Francesco, The Power of the Charlatan, 7, 13.
11. Gvul Benyamin was the title of Wolf's lost book on Kabbalah see CitationLiebes, Hibbur, 80.
12. Emden, Sefer hitabkut, 19v.
13. CitationEmden, Megilat sefer, 201.
14. Emden, Sefer hitabkut, 51r.
15. Emden, Sefer hitabkut, 51r.
16. Emden, Megilat sefer, 204.
17. This work was frequently cited by Emden (see for instance Sefer hitabkut, 26r-v, 27v, 33v) but long regarded as inauthentic. However, Yehudah Liebes identified Wolf's treatise as a part of another manuscript (Jerusalem, JNUL, Ms Heb. 8° 3100) and published it together with an extensive commentary in his Hibbur, 77–102.
18. CitationKwasnik-Rabinowicz, “Wolf Eibenschitz,” 268; CitationKlemperer, Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz, 134. Ezekiel Landau was one of the Jewish leaders who urged Eibeschütz to send Wolf away.
19. Emden, Sefer hitabkut, 21v, 30v-31r; see also Rabinowicz, “Wolf Eibenshitz,” 268–9.
20. Kwasnik-Rabinowicz, “Wolf Eibenschitz,” 274–5; Klemperer, Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz, 144.
21. CitationCarmilly-Weinberger, “Wolf Jonas Eibeschütz,” 23.
22. Klemperer, Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz, 144. Bernard Brilling has identified this patron as Count Joseph von Bolza see his “Eibenschütziana,” [part 3], 261–79.
23. CitationBeer, “Toledot bne Yehonatan,” 77.
24. Beer, “Toledot bne Yehonatan,” 80.
25. Beer, “Toledot bne Yehonatan,” 79.
26. Emden, Sefer hitabkut, 22v.
27. CitationKraushar, Frank i frankiści polscy, I, 258–69; CitationMieses, Polacy – chrześcijanie, 34.
28. Kraushar Frank i frankiści polscy, I: 210–11; Mieses, Polacy – chrześcijanie, 36.
29. CitationKonarski, Volumina Legum, 39–40. See also a letter of a convert demanding that his noble status be reinstated: Warsaw, National Library, Ms 3215, 127v-128v, reproduced in CitationGoldberg, Ha-Mumarim be-Mamlekhet Polin-Lita, 82–9.
30. Konarski, Volumina Legum, 185. A certificate issued by Stanislaus Augustus in Goldberg, Ha-Mumarim, 90–4. As Mieses (Polacy – chrześcijanie, 40) has noted, some contemporary observers attributed this to the attempts of Stanislaus Augustus to build a party of ‘new nobility.’
31. CitationKrauss, Joachim Edler von Popper, 37–46; CitationSchnee, Die Hoffiananz und der moderne Staat III, 311 claims that the first one was Israel Hönig ennobled in 1789.
32. Emden uses a slightly distorted German word Auerhuhn.
33. Lit. sar hofshi, an attempt to render the German Freiherr in Hebrew.
34. Emden, Sefer hitabkut, 22r-v.
35. CitationGuttmann, “Lazarus Bendavid,” 205.
36. Klemperer, Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz, 132.
37. Beer, “Toledot bne Yehonatan,” 79.
38. CitationBrilling, “Eibenschütziana,” [part 3], 261–79 (includes a reproduction of the diploma of ennoblement dated 17 July 1776).
39. The petition is reproduced in Brilling, “Eibenschütziana,” [part 3], 270.
40. A letter from Vienna to Count von Bolza dated 16 April 1777, in Brilling, “Eibenschütziana,” [part 3], 276.
41. See Schnee, Die Hoffiananz und der moderne Staat, II, 249.
42. Brilling, “Eibenschütziana,” [part 3], 278–9.
43. CitationDoktór, ed., Rozmaite adnotacje, czynności i anekdoty pańskie, no. 90; CitationTrautenberger, Chronik der Landeshauptstadt Brünn, IV, 117.
44. Doktór, Rozmaite adnotacje, no. 90.
45. Doktór, Rozmaite adnotacje, no. 90.
46. Kraushar, Frank i frankiści, II: 20.
47. Kraushar, Frank i frankiści, II: 272–3.
48. Letter of Revizki to the nuncio, see the Vatican, ASV, Segr. Stato, Polonia, 312, 47r; Letter of Revizki to Kaunitz dated 1 April 1776, reproduced in Kraushar, Frank i frankiści, II, 273.
49. In Offenbach Frank reportedly purchased the title of baron together with the castle.
50. Doktór, Rozmaite adnotacje, no. 97.
51. See Doktór, Rozmaite adnotacje, nos. 97, 100, 102.
52. Kraushar, Frank i frankiści, II, 36; CitationSchenck-Rinck, Die Polen, 5, 30.
53. Joseph II's putative affair with Eve is a commonplace in later literature, see for instance Kraushar, Frank i frankiści, II, 37; CitationSulima, Historya Franka i frankistów, 192–4, 197 and references therein.
54. Brno, MZA, B1 J47 box 730/32. See CitationMüller, ed. Urkundliche Beiträge zur Geschichte der mähr[ischen] Judenschaft im 17. Und 18. Jahrhundret, 148–9, 155; cf. CitationMcCagg, A History of Habsburg Jews, 34–5; CitationWolf, Judentaufen, 80. Wolf Hönig married Salomon and Schöndl's daughter Franziska; cf. CitationRuzička, “Die österreichischen Dichter jüdischer Abstammung Moses Dobruschka = Franz Thomas von Schönfeld und David Dobruschka = Emanuel von Schönfeld,” 288. In the 1790s–1800s the Hönig family became one of the most important Sabbatian families in Prague.
55. CitationJan Doktór reaches a similar conclusion in his Śladami mesjasza-apostaty, 140.
56. CitationStanisław Schnür-Pepłowski, ed., “Pamiętnik Thulliego,” 372. See also CitationAwedyk, Opisanie wszytskich dworniejszych okoliczności nawrócenia do wiary s. Contra-Talmudystów albo historia krótka ich poczętki i dalsze sposoby przystępowania do wiary s. wyrażajęca, 92–4.
57. See for instance Zbiór Słow Pańskich [hereafter: ZSP], Kraków, Biblioteca Jagiellońska, Ms. 6968/9, nos. 826, 829, 955, passim.
58. ZSP, 635.
59. The Polish text of ZSP customarily uses the word “narody,” peoples, as a designation for non-Jews. It is, of course, a calque from the word goyim.
60. ZSP, no. 434.
61. ZSP, nos. 531, 653
62. ZSP, no. 2202.
63. See below.
64. ZSP, no. 169.
65. ZSP. no. 194.
66. Esau = the Christians. The veil and bands are tallit and teffilin; Frank alludes to BT Avodah Zarah 3b: “that in the days of the Messiah … there will be self-made proselytes and will place phylacteries on their foreheads and on their arms, fringes in their garments.”
67. A Paraphrase of Ze 9:10.
68. ZSP, no. 1282.
69. Emden, Sefer hitabkut, 20r, for another account of Wolf's alchemical pursuits see ibid., 45r.
70. Trautenberger, Chronik der Landeshauptstadt Brünn, IV, 147–48.
71. Schenck-Rinck, Die Polen, 12.
72. A letter to Christian G. Heyne dated 27 December 1791, in CitationForster, Sämmtliche Schriften, 169.
73. The aurum potabile, colloidal gold, also known as the Elixir of Life was supposed to cure all diseases. The term comes from Paracelsus and became a standard alchemical term.
74. Doktór, Rozmaite adnotacje, no 108.
75. Shed = demon (Hebr.).
76. KSP, 1790 quoted in Kraushar, Frank i frankiści, II, 362.
77. KSP, 254.
78. KSP, 1013.
79. A letter to Christian G. Heyne dated 14 October 1785, in Forster, Sämmtliche Schriften, 271.
80. CitationMoszyński, Réflections sur la science Hermétique, 955–64.
81. CitationCasanova, The History of My Life, X, 96–7.
82. CitationCooper-Oakely, The Comte de St. Germain, 36–8.
83. CitationPatai, The Jewish alchemists: a history and source book, 472.
84. Citation[Moszyński], Cagliostro démasqué à Varsovie.
85. CitationZweig, Casanova, 31–2.
86. A letter of Forster to Heyne as in note 107.
87. CitationBrinken, Józef Frank, 414.
88. CitationMauthner, Lebenserinnerungen, 295.
89. CitationPeter Beer, Geschichte, Lehren und Meinungen, II, 327.
90. A testimony from Berlinische Monatsschrift of 1787, quoted in De Francesco, The Power of Charlatans, 210.
91. CitationLenowitz, “The Charlatan at the Gottes Haus in Offenbach,” 192.
92. Casanova, The History of My Life, III, 3–19.
93. CitationCarlebach, “Attributions of Secrecy and Perceptions of Jewry,” 128–9.
94. CitationPomian, Collectionneurs, 2.
95. See for instance CitationGoethe, Italian Journey, 205.
96. CitationOron, Mi-Ba'al shem, 55.
97. Patai, The Jewish Alchemists, 465.
98. Cooper-Oakely, The Comte de St. Germain, 9.
99. CitationAnderson, The Legend of the Wandering Jew, 128–31 and references therein.
100. CitationWaliszewski, The Story of a Throne, 301–2; see Oron, Mi-Ba'al shem, 56.
101. CitationKosakowski, Katarzyna II carowa rosyjska. Oszukaniec. Komedia. Tłum. 7 marca 1786.
102. Zweig, Casanova, 37.
103. Casanova, History of My Life, VII, 267–78.
104. For a survey of Casanova's encounters with Jews see CitationLuccichenti, “Casanova e gli ebrei,” 23–33.
105. Casanova, History of My Life, I, 91.
106. Casanova, History of My Life, IX, 45–96.
107. Casanova, History of My Life, V, 118–9.
108. Casanova, History of My Life, VI, 9–11.
109. Casanova, History of My Life, III, 273.
110. Casanova, History of My Life, II, 195.
111. CitationCasanova, Briefwechsel, 331–2; the original was first published in CitationCasanova, Patrizi e avventurieri, 414–7.
112. Briefwechsel, 333–4; Patrizi e avventurieri, 416–17.
113. The procedure has been analysed in great detail by CitationBernhard Marr, “Casanova als Kabalist,” in Casanova, Briefwechsel, 389–96 and then by CitationFriedman, “Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt: the cryptologist,” 1–12. So far as I can tell it bears no resemblance to any Jewish kabbalistic numerological technique.
114. Friedman, “Giacomo Casanova de Seingalt: the cryptologist,” 332.
115. CitationHeymann, Die Chevalier von Geldern, 228. This information was later repeated, with typical inaccuracies, in CitationMandel, Militant Messiah, 108–10.
116. See Doktór, Rozmaite adnotacje, no. 100.
117. CitationPolišenský, Casanova a jeho svĕt, 97, 115; CitationPolišenský, “Casanova v Čechach,” 89–94. For a chronology of Casanova's travels in the later part of his career, see CitationLuccichenti, ed., Vita di Giacomo Casanova, 211–19.
118. The letter of introduction written by Lamberg is reproduced in CitationCasanova, Briefwechsel mit J. F. Opiz, 272–3.
119. CitationKroupa, Alchymie štěstí, 55.
120. For the roster of members of the “Zur aufgehenden Sonne im Orient” lodge see Kroupa, Alchymie štěstí, 209–10.
121. Prague 1786.
122. Leipzig 1788.
123. See Polišenský, Casanova a jeho svĕt, 123.