Antelman to eliminate the opiate vol1

mysticism should have been regarded as demonic
possession. And it is indicative of one of the enormous
tensions that run through the history of Judaism that this most
destructive of all visions should have been formulated in its
most unrestrained form by one who rebelled against the
Jewish law and broke away from Judaism."
Jacob Frank preached his "Religious Myth of Nihilism" in
more than two thousand dogmatic sayings. One of the Frankist
cult's publications that has come into our possession is a book
entitled Book of the Words of the Lord, which Scholem
characterizes as "a mixture of primitive savagery and
putrescent morals." 78 The Frankists had a way of turning
around old homilies and sayings that were common among the
people, twisting them in their nihilistic "Torah of Atzilut." For
example, religious Jews at the beginning of the morning
service start their prayers with a series of thirteen benedictions
in which one thanks God for providing the necessities of life,
for clothing the unclothed, etc. Among these benedictions is
one that praises God for freeing those in captivity. The Hebrew
for this is matir asurim. In the Frankist cult the benediction was
pronounced, praising God as matir isurim, which means
permitting the prohibited. Similarly, they twisted around other
sayings. They would say, "the subversion of the Torah can
become its true fulfillment," and "great is a sin committed for its
own sake." 80
The Talmud states that the Messiah will come only in an
age that is completely guilty or completely innocent (Sanhedrin
98a). From this epigram the Frankists would state, "Since we
cannot all be saints, let us all be sinners." 81 Scholem goes on
to say that the blasphemous benediction "who permits the for-
bidden,"
"came to be considered by these radicals as the true ex-
pression of their feeling... To the anarchic religious feeling of
these new Jews, all the three great institutional religions have
no longer an absolute value." 82
87