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Tel Aviv Review Photo: Yahav Gamliel/FLASH90 David N Myers and Benjamin Ravid, professors of Jewish history at UCLA and Brandeis University, respectively, discuss the life and work of Simon Rawidowicz, a seminal, albeit somewhat forgotten, 20th-century Jewish intellectual, upon the publication of an edited volume of his selected writings.
“History is written by the winners.” Whether or not Napoleon Bonaparte first uttered this, the sentiment behind it applies to the arch-heretic Jacob Frank, who died while Napoleon was still an obscure lieutenant colonel in Corsica. Frank was one of the most enigmatic and bizarre figures in modern Jewish history — a combination of charlatan, opportunist and Jewish religious critic. He grew up as part of the growing Sabbatean movement in Poland, and after numerous incarnations he began his own heretical movement, converting to Christianity with many of his disciples in 1759.