What Is the Meaning of Frankist Sexual Antinomianism?

• In Event: Sabbateanism, Anti-Sabbateanism, and Historiography

Abstract

Sexual antinomianism is the most notorious aspect of Frankism, in the eyes of both traditionalist critics and scholars. This sensationalistic and frequently moralistic assessment is of a piece with the general scholarly dismissal of the movement as well as with traditional heresiology, which often depicts heretics as sexually depraved.

In fact, ritualized or antinomian sexuality is referenced in just six episodes of the Various Notes and a handful of dicta in the Words of the Lord. Alhough this may be due to self-censorship, the textual evidence does not support the view that sexual ritual was central to Frankism. Frankist sexual praxis is highly regulated, ritualized, and limited in scope.

Yet sexuality and eros generally are central to Frankist thought, with at least five distinct meanings (Kabbalistic and Sabbatean concepts notably absent among them).

First, sexuality is a form of material ecstasy, the consummate heroic success (particularly in the tales) that is a form of this-worldly mystical experience. Second, Frank’s phallocentric sexuality is a queer remasculinization of the Jewish hero. In contrast to the homoerotic strand in mysticism addressed by Kripal, Wolfson and others, and to Talmudic and Zoharic literary homoeroticism, Frank’s macho positioning of Esau over Jacob, deeds (and violence) over words, and sexual prowess over restraint reflects his rejection of both traditional Judaism and “feminized” Sabbateanism.

Further, erotic mysticism is a redemptive performance with pneumatic/ecstatic effects upon practitioners. And (fourth) it is an enactment of the carnival grotesque, instantiating the transgression of norms. This deliberately vulgar undermining of order is not mere abandon but is rather an assertion of individual power, a la Audre Lorde, against patriarchal structures of restraint and subjugation.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the Frankist liberation of the ‘feminine,’ a theme at once feminist and misogynist. Like other 18th century figures, Frank identified the erotic with the feminine – but argued for the liberation of the both. Frank’s myth of the redemption of and copulation with the Maiden is a metonym for the liberation of sexuality and materiality generally. His materialist sexual ideology is a deliberate recorporealization of that which religion sublimates into mysticism.

author

• Jay Michaelson, Hebrew University of Jerusalem