that the universe was an emanation of God, but evolved a form of Pantheism, declaring that the whole universe was God, that even evil exists in God since evil is not bad in itself but only in its relation to Man; sin therefore has no positive existence. As a result the followers of Besht, calling themselves the "New Saints," and at his death numbering no less than 40,000, threw aside not only the precepts of the Talmud, but all the restraints of morality and even decency.
Another Ba'al Shem of the same period was Heilprin, alias Joel Ben Uri of Satanov, who, like Israel of Podolia, professed to perform miracles by the use of the Divine Name and collected around him many pupils, who, on the death of their master, "formed a band of charlatans and shamelessly exploited the credulity of their contemporaries."
But the most important of these Cabalistic groups was that of the Frankists, who were sometimes known as the Zoharists or the Illuminated, from their adherence to the Zohar or book of Light, or in their birthplace Podolia as the Shabbethan Zebists, from their allegiance to the false Messiah of the preceding century--a heresy that had been "kept alive in secret circles which had something akin to a masonic organization." The founder of this sect was Jacob Frank, a brandy distiller profoundly versed in the doctrines of the Cabala, who in 1755 collected around him a large following in Podolia and lived in a style of oriental magnificence, maintained by vast wealth of which no