Jacob Frank was born about 1726 in a town of Podolia. His father Judah Leib belonged to the lower Jewish clergy, among whom all kinds of perverted mystical notions were particularly in vogue. Judah Leib fell under suspicion as an adherent of Sabbatianism, and was expelled from the community, which he had served as rabbi or preacher. He settled in Wallachia, where little Jacob grew up in an atmosphere filled with mystic and Messianic fancies and marked by superstition and moral laxity. From his early youth he showed repugnance to study, and remained, as he later called himself, an ignoramus. While living with his parents in Wallachia, he first served as clerk in a shop, and afterwards became a traveling salesman, peddling jewelry and notions through the towns and villages. Occasionally young Jacob traveled with his goods to adjoining Turkey, where he lived for some time in Saloniki and Smyrna, the centers of the Sabbatian sect. Here, it seems, Jacob received his nickname Frank, or Frenk, a designation applied in the East to all Europeans. Between 1752 and 1755 he lived alternately in Smyrna and Saloniki, and came in contact with the Sabbatians, participating in their symbolic, semi-Mohammedan cult. It was then and there that Jacob Frank was struck by the idea of returning to Poland and playing the rôle of prophet and leader among the local secret Sabbatians, who were oppressed and disorganized. It was selfish ambition and the spirit of adventure rather than mystical enthusiasm that pushed him in that direction. In 1755 Frank made his appearance in Podolia and, joining hands with the leaders of the local "Shebsen," began to initiate them into the doctrines he had imported from Turkey. The sectarians arranged secret meetings, at which the religious mysteries centering around the Sabbatian "Trinity" (God, the Messiah, and a female hypostasis of God, the _Shekhinah_) were enunciated. Frank was evidently regarded as the second person of the Trinity and as a reincarnation of Sabbatai Zevi, being designated as S. S., _i. e._ Santo Senior,[192] "the Holy Lord." One of these assemblies ended in a scandal, and turned the attention of the rabbis to this new agitation.