"revealed" himself as the one promised to redeem Israel from all his
troubles. Love of God began to be tinged with fear of the devil, and
incantations to take the place of religious belief. The _Zohar_ and
works full of superstition, such as the _Kab ha-Yashar_, _Midrash
Talpiyot_, and _Nishmat Hayyim_, the first studied by men, the others by
both sexes, but mostly by women, prepared their minds for all sorts of
mongrel beliefs. "In no land," says Tobias Cohn, "is the practice of
summoning up devils and spirits by means of the Cabbalistic abracadabra
so prevalent, and the belief in dreams and visions so strong, as in
Poland."[8] All this, though it strengthened religious fervor in some,
undermined it in others. Sects came into being, struggled, and, having
brought added misery upon their followers, disappeared. Jewish criminals
escaped justice by invoking the power of the Catholic priesthood and
promising to become converted to Christianity.[9] And now and then even
Talmudists left the fold, as, for instance, Carl Anton, the Courland
pupil of Eybeschütz, who became professor of Hebrew at Hamsted, and
wrote numerous works on Judaism. Others hoped to win the favor of the
Gentiles by preaching a mixture of Judaism and Catholicism. In many
places, especially in the Ukraine, the seat of learning that had
suffered most from the ravages of the Cossacks, the state of morals sank
very low, owing to the teaching of Jacob Querido, the self-proclaimed
son of the pseudo-Messiah Shabbataï Zebi, "that the sinfulness of the
world can be overcome only by a super-abundance of sin." This paved the
way for the last of the long list of Messiahs, Jacob (Yankev Leibovich)
Frank of Podolia. His experiences, adventures, and hairbreadth escapes,
his entire career, beginning with his return from his travels in Turkey,
through his conversion to Catholicism (1759), to the day of his death as
"Baron von Offenbach," would furnish material for a stirring drama. As
if to counteract this demoralizing tendency, a new sect, known as
Hasidim, originating in Lithuania and headed by Judah Hasid of Dubno and