(1933)

PART ONE


1 The Year 1648 in Goray

2 Rabbi Benish and His Household

3 Extraordinary Rumors

4 The Old Goray and the New

5 The Woman and the Rabbinical Emissary

6 Reb Mordecai Joseph

7 Reb Eleazar Babad and His Daughter, Rechelle

8 Rechele in Lublin

9 Reb Itche Mates, the Packman

10 Reb Itche Mates Sends a Proposal of Marriage to Rechele

11 A Letter from Lublin

12 Rabbi Benish Prepares for War with the Sabbatai Zevi Sect

13 "The Others" Arrive

14 The Rabbi Forsakes His Congregation


PART TWO


1 The Wedding

2 The Seven Days of Benediction

3 Reb Gedaliya

4 The Rejoicing in Goray

5 Rechele Prophesies

6 A Wedding on a Dung-Hill

7 The Hour of Union

8 Golden Jackets and Marzipan Candy

9 The Evil One Triumphs

10 The Faithful and Their Opponents

11 The Sacred and the Profane

12 Rechele Is Impregnated by Satan

13 The Dybbuk of Goray

14 The Death of Rechele





　　　　　　　　　　　　PART ONE


1



The Year 1648 in Goray



In the year 1648, the wicked Ukrainian hetman, Bogdan Chmelnicki, and
his followers besieged the city of Zamosc but could not take it, because it
was strongly fortified; the rebelling haidamak peasants moved on to spread
havoc in Tomaszów, Bilgoraj, Krasnik, Turbin, Frampol--and in Goray, too,
the town that lay in the midst of the hills at the end of the world. They
slaughtered on every hand, flayed men alive, murdered small children,
violated women and afterward ripped open their bellies and sewed cats
inside. Many fled to Lublin, many underwent baptism or were sold into
slavery. Goray, which once had been known for its scholars and men of
accomplishment, was completely deserted. The market place, to which
peasants from everywhere came for the fair, was overgrown with weeds, the
prayer house and the study house were filled with dung left by the horses
that the soldiers had stabled there. Most of the houses had been leveled by
fire. For weeks after the razing of Goray, corpses lay neglected in every
street, with no one to bury them. Savage dogs tugged at dismembered
limbs, and vultures and crows fed on human flesh. The handful who
survived left the town and wandered away. It seemed as though Goray had
been erased forever.

Only years later did its destitute citizens begin to return, a handful
from each large family. Meanwhile, those who had been young men when
Goray was devastated had turned gray, those who had been a power in the
community were now clad in sackcloth and brought only beggars' bags with
them. Some had left the path of righteousness, others had fallen into
melancholy. But it is the way of the world that in time everything reverts to
what it has been. Shops which had long stood closed behind rusted shutters
opened one by one; bones were borne away to the untended cemetery,
where they were all buried in one common grave; the flaps of booths were
timidly lowered; apprentices mended the damaged roofs, repaired the
chimneys, and painted over blood-and-marrow-splattered walls. With long
poles, boys fished for human bones in dried-up streams. Gradually, the
runners began to move again from village to village, buying corn, wheat,
greens, and flax. The peasants in the surrounding villages had been too
terrified even to set foot in Goray for fear of the demons whose dominion
it was. Now they rode into town again to buy salt and candles, material for
women's smocks and blouses, cotton kaftans and clay pots, and all kinds of
necklaces and ornaments. Goray had always been isolated from the world.
Hills and dense woods extended for miles about the town. Winters, the
paths were the lurking-place of bears, wolves, and boars. Since the great
slaughter the number of wild beasts had multiplied.

Last of its citizens to return to Goray were the old rabbi, the
renowned Rabbi Benish Ashkenazi, and Reb Eleazar Babad, formerly the
richest man in the community and its leader. Rabbi Benish brought more
than half of his family with him. He moved immediately into his old house,
near the prayer house, began to supervise the observance of the laws of
ritual diet, saw to it that the women went to the ritual bathhouse at the
proper time, and that young men studied the Torah. The rabbi had left two
daughters and five grandchildren behind in the cemetery at Lublin. He had
lived in exile all these years, but misfortune had not changed his ways. He
rose early, studied the Talmud and its commentaries by the light of a waxen
candle, immersed himself in cold water, and recited prayers in the syna-
gogue at sunrise. Rabbi Benish was in his sixties, but his skin was still
smooth, he had lost none of his white hair, and his teeth had not fallen out.
When he crossed the threshold of the prayer house for the first time after
many years--tall, big-boned, with a full, round, curly beard, his satin coat
reaching to the ground, the sable hat pulled down over his neck--all those
sitting there rose and pronounced the blessing in thanks to Him who revives
the dead. For there had been reports that Rabbi Benish had perished in
Lublin during the massacres on the eve of the Festival of Tabernacles in the
year 1655. The fringes of the vest that Rabbi Benish wore between his shirt
and coat tumbled around his ankles. He wore short white trousers, white
stockings, and half-shoes. Rabbi Benish grasped between his index finger
and thumb the thick eyebrow that hung over his right eye, lifted it the better
to see, cast a glance at the darkened, peeling walls of the prayer house and
its empty book chests, and loudly declared: "Enough!... It is the will of our
blessed God that we begin anew."

Rabbi Benish Ashkenazi had inherited his office in Goray from genera-
tions of rabbis. He was an author of commentaries and responsa, a
member of the court of the Council of the Four Lands, and was reckoned
among the most brilliant men of the day. In former times many deserted
wives had made the long trip to out-of-the-way Goray to receive permission
from Rabbi Benish to remarry--for with all his learning and brilliance,
Rabbi Benish was one of those who construed the Law liberally. Often
emissaries had come to Goray from famous communities in an attempt to
persuade him to accept coveted rabbinical posts--but all went away
disappointed. Rabbi Benish wished to end his days in the place where he
had inherited his office. And now he was home again. Miraculously, there
had been little damage to his house. The two oaken book chests, once more
filled with folios and manuscripts, stood where they had previously, along
with the old-fashioned chairs covered in yellow satin, and the copper
candelabra hanging down from the ceiling. Sacred volumes and writings
were piled an ell deep in the attic. It was even rumored that somewhere in
the house a clay man was hidden, a Golem that had once helped the Jews of
that town in a time of persecution.

Reb Eleazar Babad returned to Goray with only one daughter. The older
daughter, the married one, had first been raped by the Cossacks and
then impaled on a spear. His wife had died in an epidemic; Reb Eleazar's
only son had disappeared, and no one knew what had happened to him.
Since the first floor of his house had been wrecked, he moved into an attic
room. In the old days Reb Eleazar had been famous for his wealth. He had
dressed in silk even on weekdays. It had been the custom for a bride to be
led to his house, where the wedding band would play in his honor. In the
prayer house the cantor would wait for Reb Eleazar before reciting the
Eighteen Benedictions, and on the Sabbath his household and the holiday
guests dined at a table set with silver. Many a time the lord of Goray drove
up to Reb Eleazar's in his carriage to pawn his lady's jewelry for gold
ducats.

But Reb Eleazar was now unrecognizable. The long, narrow body had
bent like a candle, the wedge-shaped beard had turned ash-gray, the
emaciated face was brick-red. Reb Eleazar's eyes, set close to his bony,
peeling nose, now protruded, and seemed always to be looking for
something on the ground. He wandered about wearing an old sheepskin hat
and nondescript housecoat; a rope girdled his waist, his feet were wrapped
in rags, like those of beggars. He never came to the prayer house to pray;
he did his own housework, sweeping up, preparing food for himself and his
daughter, and even going to the market to fetch a copper's worth of food
from the women who sat near their carts. Whenever he was asked how he
was getting along and how he had fared during the time he had been away,
Reb Eleazar would shiver as though at some dreadful thought, would shrink
into himself, look past his questioner's shoulder, and reply, "Why talk
about it? What's the use?"

Some said he was doing penance for his sins. Teme Rachel, the pious
woman, added that once late at night she had passed his window and
had observed him pacing back and forth and speaking aloud in a sad voice.
Others whispered that he was out of his mind, that he did not take his
clothes off when he went to sleep, and that he placed a long knife under
his pillow nights, like a woman in labor, to keep away the devil.

His daughter, Rechele, who was seventeen years old, had a lame left
foot and seldom showed herself outside, preferring to remain hidden in her
room. She was tall, with a greenish complexion, but handsome, with long
black hair that hung down to her waist. In the early days after Reb Eleazar's
arrival people had tried to arrange a match for her, because it was a pity for
so old a girl to sit at home without a man. But Reb Eleazar did not answer
the matchmakers, never said either yes or no, and they soon grew tired of
useless talk. Besides, Rechele's behavior was strange from the beginning.
When it thundered she would scream and hide under the bed. To the young
wives and girls who came to call on her she said nothing, driving them
away with her indifference. From early morning till night she sat alone,
knitting stockings or merely reading in the Hebrew volumes she had
brought from abroad. Sometimes she would stand at the window braiding
her hair. Her large, dark eyes gazed beyond the rooftops--wide-open,
brilliant, as though seeing things concealed from others. Though Rechele
had a deformity, she aroused sinful thoughts in men. Women shook their
heads when they spoke of her, whispering: "The poor lonely orphan... so
feeble a child. And such a melancholy thing."



2



Rabbi Benish and His Household



In Lublin Rabbi Benish had been constantly busy. The events of 1648 and
1649 had left thousands of women neither married nor widowed, since it
was uncertain whether their husbands were alive. Often the rabbinical
court had to veer from the strict letter of the law and release a woman
from the marriage bond. In the anterooms of the community house where Rabbi
Benish sat in judgment with other great rabbis, there was always a crowd
of weeping women. Some of these unfortunates wandered from town to town,
searching the registers of the holy burial societies for the names of their
lost husbands. Others, forced to release their brothers-in-law from the
obligation of marrying them, complained bitterly of the fee demanded for
such consent. Often, one of these women would remarry, only to have her
first husband return; he would have escaped from Tartar slavery or been
ransomed by the Jewish community of Stamboul. Around the building
where the Council of the Four Lands met, marriage brokers bustled,
matching prospective couples and extracting advances on their fees;
beggars tugged at the jackets of passers-by; persons who were half- or
completely mad laughed, cried, sang; children who had lost father and
mother wandered about the courtyard, abandoned and mangy, insolently
begging. Daily, emissaries arrived, each from a different Jewish community,
recounting the suffering that had come on the heels of Chmelnicki and the
Swedish soldiers. More than once Rabbi Benish begged God to transport
him from this world, as he no longer had the strength to hear these
sorrowful stories.

But here in Goray all was calm. There were no judicial disputes, few
queries concerning the holy law. True, the town offered him only a scant
living, but for that very reason the rabbi had enough time for himself.
His room was separated from the rest of the house by a large corridor,
and silence reigned throughout. A solitary fly buzzed, beating against
the windowpane; a mouse scratched along the floor; the cricket behind the
stove would chirp monotonously for a few minutes, then listen to its
echo for a long while before beginning anew, as though mourning an unfor-
gettable sorrow. The ceiling was blackened by smoke; the walls were
mildewed, and the stain of a white-and-green mold would appear nightly,
rising, it seemed, from another world. On the table lay unlined sheets of
paper and goose-feather quills. Rabbi Benish sat there for hours at a time,
deep in thought, his high forehead wrinkled, and every now and then he
would cast an expectant glance at the yellowed window curtains. Although
more than half the town had returned by now and found shelter, the sound
of talk and of children at play was rarely heard outside. It seemed as
though the few Jews who had come back to Goray were all indoors, their
ears alerted for news of the enemy's vengeful return.

Rabbi Benish knew his people. Although constantly preoccupied with
profound meditation, he kept everyone in mind, even calling women
by name. When Rabbi Benish arrived in Goray it was summertime, a busy
season. The townspeople were hauling timber from the forest; saws
screeched and hammers banged, and children ran about. Young girls came
out of the woods carrying full pails of blueberries and wild strawberries,
heavy bundles of branches, baskets of mushrooms. The lord of Goray allow-
ed the townspeople to fish in his pond, and every family dried fruit to
preserve it for the rest of the year. At dusk, when Rabbi Benish walked to
the prayer house, the air smelled of fresh milk and of chimney smoke, and
everything seemed to be as it had been before. At such moments, he would
raise his eyes to Heaven and thank God for having saved a remnant of his
flock, for not having allowed it to be completely destroyed, as they had
been in other communities.

But now, after the Feast of Tabernacles had passed, as the cold
season began, the havoc in Goray became more apparent. Most of the
empty windows were boarded up or stuffed with rags. There were no warm
clothes for the children to wear, so they sat at home and did not attend
school. The rain left pools of water to mirror the houses with their patched
walls and roofs. The harvest was meager, and the little wheat that was
reaped could not be milled, for the miller was one of those who had
perished. The mill locks had been broken, the earthen dam trampled. For a
bit of bread the folk of Goray had to crush the kernels by hand in oaken
bowls and bake the heavy dough over an open flame Many families never
had a taste of even this poor bread.

To make matters worse, Rabbi Benish's household was engaged in an in-
terminable family quarrel that had been smoldering for years, since
before 1648.

The rabbi's eldest son, Ozer, was a worthless man, a bad scholar and
an idler. Almost fifty years old, he still sat at his father's board with his
wife and children. Ozer was tall, stooped, rapid in his movements, and quick
tempered. His rumpled velvet hat was always askew, his shirt open, his vest
unbuttoned and stained. He had a nose that curved like a beak, two large
bird eyes, and a straw-colored, unkempt beard. Before 1648 Ozer used to sit
in the tavern for days on end, playing chess or gambling with dice, enjoying
all kinds of gossip and malicious talk. He never thought of his wife and
children, had no serious ambition, and always held a piece of chalk between
his fingers with which he perpetually marked calculations on every closet
and table that he passed. He was the same scatterbrain now as before 1648.
The rabbi disliked Ozer, and seldom spoke a word to him. Ozer sat in the
kitchen with the women, warmed himself at the stove and peered into the
pots, until his mother, the rabbi's wife, would drive him away with a broom,
crying, "Aren't you ashamed, a man your age! Why, it's a public scandal!"

Levi, the rabbi's youngest, was in his thirties, and quite different
from his brother. He was short, black as a gypsy, immaculate, a haughty
man with a dignified bearing. His roundish beard was fine-combed, his
earlocks genteel and curled. Levi brought fine garments back with him from
Lublin, and strolled around shabby Goray in a flowered silk dressing gown
with satin trim, slippers with pompons, and a sparkling new velvet hat on
his head. His gait was measured, he mingled little with the other members
of the household, and rarely entered his father's room. His mother sent
delicacies to him in his alcove, stuffing and pampering him until she
aroused the envy of Ozer and his children. Moreover, Levi's wife Nechele
had been the only daughter of a rich merchant. Her father had been
murdered in Narol during the massacre in that town; Nechele had been
reared in the home of wealthy relatives in Lublin. She behaved as she had in
the past, lying abed till late in the afternoon waiting for her mother-in-law
to send the maid to her with a jug of milk. Nechele even reckoned her
barrenness a virtue. Weekdays she wore silk headkerchiefs and gold
earrings. Her lean fingers were cluttered with rings. Thin, flat-chested, with
an aristocratic figure, unhealthily red cheeks, and eyes weak from crying,
Nechele never ceased complaining of how she had fallen into a vulgar
house; her thin lips mumbled constantly, and her nose crinkled as though
she suffered from the nasty Goray smells. She decorated lavishly the room
given to her and her husband. The walls were hung with various canvasses:
representations of The Sacrifice of Isaac, Moses Holding the Tables of the
Law, The High Priest Aaron in Breast-Plate and Vest. The bed was strewn
with small pillows. A thick embroidered curtain hung over the windows,
keeping the conjugal chamber in semidarkness. Nechele, lady-like in an
embroidered blouse, a feather duster in hand, sought out dust and cobwebs,
and addressed her husband with melancholy sighs that kept alive the fire of
discontent.

Ozer's wife and children, on the other hand, dressed in crude clothing,
lived in crowded quarters, and ate in the large kitchen with the servant
girl. In addition to them, Rabbi Benish's household included several
orphans left behind by his daughters who had died in Lublin during the
cholera, and one daughter who had been divorced. All these individuals
conducted a silent campaign against Levi and his wife, transferring their
resentment to the rabbi's wife, who they considered had succumbed to Levi.
The various parties also were at one another's throats, and told stories
behind one another's backs, the following being adversaries: Nechele and
the rabbi's wife; Nechele and her sister-in-law; the two brothers; the
orphans and their grandmother. Of Nechele it was said that she had
bewitched her husband, causing him to remain in love with her and follow
her false ways. Ozer's wife swore that Nechele went out to gather herbs
every Sabbath eve. Someone also once met her going in to see the witch,
Kunnigunde, who lived beyond the town, near the gentile cemetery.
In the past, Rabbi Benish had tried to bring peace to his household.
The rabbi feared the sin of controversy, knowing that every visitation
inflicted on a house sprang from this transgression. But now the old rabbi
no longer had the strength to make peace. His years were numbered and
there was much to put in order. He had several works to complete.
Moreover, the bitter persecutions of the years 1648 and 1649 had re-
awakened in him the old paradoxes regarding faith, predestination and
freedom of will, and the suffering of the virtuous. Rabbi Benish sat alone,
locked in, and no longer visited his wife Friday nights in her bedroom. On
the rare occasions when a member of his family came into his room to
begin tattling and informing, Rabbi Benish would rise to his full height; his
beard leaping like a living thing, one hand beating on the oaken table, the
other pointing to the door.

"Get--out!" he would shout. "I've heard enough. Pests!"



3


Extraordinary Rumors



For a number of years now, extraordinary rumors had swept through
Poland.

During the time Rabbi Benish still dwelt in Lublin he had heard
amazing things. All men were discussing the Jerusalemite rabbinical
emissary, Baruch Gad, who, in journeying through a desert, had blundered
across the other side of the river Sambation; he had brought back with him a
parchment letter from the Ten Lost Tribes, supposedly written by the Jewish
king, Achitov, the son of Azariah. According to this letter, the end of days
was near. Copies of the writ were in the hands of a few Land of Israel Jews
who journeyed from country to country collecting money.

The greatest cabalists in Poland and other lands uncovered numerous
allusions in the Zohar and in antique cabalistic volumes proving that the
days of the Exile were numbered. Chmelnicki's massacres were the birth-
pangs of the Messiah. According to a secret formula, these pangs were
destined to begin in the year 1648 and extend till the end of the present
year, when the full and perfect redemption would come.

All these things were quietly talked about, the news passing
from ear to ear, so as not to cause a stir among women and uneducated men,
whose understanding was limited. Nevertheless, the common people, too,
had their own way of predicting the help that would surely come to the
Jews.

In almost every town one person ran about testifying that the Jews
would all soon be redeemed. Some declared that they could hear the
great ram's horn being blown, signifying the end of days; others aroused
the people to return to God, reckoning up their own as well as the sins
of others; still others danced in the street for joy, and beat drums.
Ordinary women dreamed remarkable dreams. Dead kin told them
all about the wonders that would soon occur. Sleeping and waking, people
saw, riding an ass, that pauper who was to be the Messiah; they heard Elijah
the Prophet call: "Redemption cometh to the world!" A great cloud lowered,
and all the Jews with their wives and children sat on it to fly to Jerusalem.
Before them flew their prayer houses and study houses. A servant girl from
Bechev related how, dozing, she had seen a fiery building as high as
heaven, and bright as the sun. Around it, Jews in silken garments, wearing
the fur caps of the devout, kneeled and sang the Sabbath psalms of praise.
Her master, a learned man, immediately understood that the girl had been
considered worthy to glimpse the heavenly Temple, with the Levites in
attendance; he had made the rounds of the communities with her, that she
might describe her vision. Gentile soothsayers divulged that more than once
they had observed, in the eastern sky, a tiny star at war with all the others,
gradually assimilating them and waxing larger until it became the size of
the moon. This was taken as a sign that the smallest and most humble of
nations would overcome the peoples of the earth and rule them. Priests,
also, testified that they had seen the battle of Armageddon waged in
Heaven, with Israel victorious.

Incomprehensible things occurred everywhere. Vagabonds who wandered
from town to town and from land to land told of a hail of flintstones
that had fallen in Bohemia. During a rainstorm in Turkey a gigantic
snake had slithered from the sky, overwhelmed a number of cities, and
killed many Jew- haters. In Shebreshin a water carrier had heard a hea-
venly voice, and in Pulav a fish had cried, "Hear, 0 Israel!" while being
scaled in honor of the Sabbath eve dinner. Some had heard a voice from
MountHoreb crying, "Return, 0 my wayward children!" A sinful leech, to
whom this heavenly voice came three times running, deserted his wife and
children, girded sackcloth on his loins, and went into exile. He lay down on
the threshold of the study house in every town he came to, and all who
entered or left had to step on him and spit in his face, while he, sobbingly,
confessed all his misdeeds. A great deal of emphasis was placed on the fact
that in these dreadful times, when Jews were being tormented and driven
out of town after town, the number of converts from Christianity increased
in every land. Very often, converts had themselves circumcized secretly and
took on the yoke of the holy teachings, despite the harsh punishment this
brought. These were all distinct omens that an end was coming to the long,
dark night of servitude, and that the time of liberation was drawing near.

But people most often spoke of one great and holy man, Sabbatai Zevi,
who was said to be the one for whom Israel had been waiting these
seventeen hundred years and who would be revealed in a short time. Some
insisted that he was Messiah, the son of Joseph, who, as the holy volumes
indicated, was to be killed as the precursor of the true Messiah; others
argued that Messiah, the son of Joseph, had already come in the person of
one Reb Abraham Zalman, who had perished in Tishevitz, martyred for the
sanctification of God's name, and that Sabbatai Zevi would be the true
Messiah, the son of David. Various rumors concerning him were passed
around. Some said that he dwelt in a palace in Jerusalem, others that he
hid with his disciples in a deep cave; some knew as a fact that he rode
daily on a silk-saddled horse with fifty runners before him--others, that
he fasted from Sabbath to Sabbath and wracked his body with the most
severe torments. Every emissary brought another story. A Frank who had
wandered to Lublin swore that Sabbatai Zevi was as tall as a cedar, wore
gold, silver, and precious stones, and that it was impossible to look at his
face because of its brilliance. A Talmud scholar from some distant place
revealed that Sabbatai Zevi was involved in a controversy with the rabbis,
and that they had laid a ban on him, for blasphemy. People also had much to
say about Sarah, the girl from Poland, who having fled the Cossacks had
prophesied that she was destined to be the Messiah's wife--and had married
Sabbatai Zevi. While some declared she was modest and God-fearing,
others whispered that she had been a whore.

Rabbi Benish knew of these rumors and tales, but he heeded the
verse in Amos: "Therefore the prudent doth keep silence in such a time"--
and he kept silent. As long as Rabbi Benish dwelt in Lublin he pretended to
hear nothing. For many years he had known that Polish Jewry was taking
the wrong path. They delved too deeply into things that were meant to be
hidden, they drank too little from the clear waters of the holy teachings.
The study of the Bible and Hebrew was looked down upon. The early
commentators were rarely read. Young men, confused by the twists and
turns of pilpul, sought to resolve a hundred dilemmas with one answer; they
scorned true learning, as child's play. Boys not yet twenty, still young in
understanding, were already poring over mystical works, like the Treasury
of Life, and Raziel the Angel, and the Zohar, and the interpretations of the
mysteries of the Divine Chariot in the Book of Ezekiel. Men deserted their
families and wandered through the world, purifying their souls by exile;
boys of thirteen immersed themselves in cold baths. There were too many
ascetics among Polish Jewry, too many recluses, amulet writers, and
wonder workers. Himself a student of philosophy, well versed in The Guide
for the Perplexed, and the Cuzari, and the Duties of the Heart, and
Principia, Rabbi Benish deplored the cabalistic works of Rabbi Isaac Luria;
in his opinion they were contradictory and lewd. Before 1648, when at
home in Goray, Rabbi Benish had kept his eyes open and had seen to it that
this plague (as he sometimes called it in his thoughts) did not spread.
Secretly he had taken the cabalistic volumes with their wooden covers from
the study house and had hidden them in his own home. He recited the
lessons for the older boys himself, to be sure that they understood the
meaning clearly; and he did not allow them to indulge in pilpul. Rabbi
Benish ordered them to read the biblical Prophets and Writings until they
had memorized them, and he taught the boys Hebrew grammar, although in
Poland this was considered almost apostasy. If a younger rabbi had dared
this, he would have been driven from the town. But Rabbi Benish Ashke-
nazi was respected. The substantial citizens--men of means who liked
common sense and moderation in all things--stood by Rabbi Benish in
his battle against the zealots. The young man who secluded himself to
become immersed in the study of the mysteries would be flogged, or for-
bidden to appear in the prayer house, until he stood before the congre-
gation in his stockinged feet and promised no longer to isolate himself
from the community. Occasionally, adepts in the cabala, men who could
extract wine from walls, heal the sick, and even revive the dead, would
appear in Goray. But Rabbi Benish did not permit them to stay long.
Those who refused to leave of their own accord would be forced to leave.
There would be a certain amount of grumbling, Rabbi Benish's foes
claiming that he disbelieved in the cabala.

Once unknown persons posted a paper slandering Rabbi Benish. But the
rabbi remained steadfast in his ways, maintaining, "So long as I live,
there will be no idolatry in Goray!"

To Rabbi Benish the misfortunes of the years 1648 and 1649 were a
punishment visited on Polish Jews because they had been unfaithful to the
Law; he was certain that, once the persecutions were over, they would
return to the ways of their fathers. But now that their afflictions were past
and his expectations were not fulfilled, the rabbi shrank into himself and
said nothing. For he perceived that divine providence willed otherwise; as
he did not know what Heaven wished, he humbly acquiesced. Each day brought
its news, never anticipated, never the same, often contradicting that
of the day before. More and more, Jews divided into sects. Even the great
rabbis could not agree. Nor was this age of sickness and catastrophe the
time to harangue the people.

And Rabbi Benish returned from Lublin, to the town that lay in the midst
of the hills, half in ruins and cut off from the world. There the old
man immured himself as within an ark, to endure the bad years in solitude.
Only on rare occasions did Rabbi Benish cross the threshold of his house.
He would glance about him, and inquire of a passing porter or school boy:
"How will it end?"

"What does God want?"



4


The Old Goray and the New



October 1666. The rain had been coming down in torrents for a week, and
every night that week the wind had blown as fiercely as though seven
witches had hanged themselves. The downpour had flooded cellars, washed
plaster off walls, put out fires in ovens. In the woods many trees were
uprooted. The swift stream that ran near Goray had been blocked in its
course and had overflowed the low places. The windmill sails had been torn
from their chains, hence meal was dear. The few who were well off in
Goray and who had laid in stocks of food during the summer months remain-
ed secluded at home, fearful of worshiping in congregation, lest they
see the misery of the poor and hear their complaints. They dozed under
goosefeather comforters, relished hot grits, smoked tobacco, dreamed of the
fairs of old, and the mad, spendthrift gentry. For fear of thieves, they lit
no lamps at night and would, at the slightest provocation, have buried their
property and goods in the earth and made off. On the stoves of the poor, the
pots stood empty and cold. The roads were dangerous, and no wagons dared
venture into town. On rare occasions, a peasant carrying a small bag on his
back would swim into view. He would sink above his knees in the mud, and
plod from shop to shop, deliberating over where to sell his handful of rye.
Women in mannish boots, their heads covered with torn shawls, would
crawl forth to meet him like worms emerging from their holes. Tugging at
his arms they would bargain for hours, until their toothless mouths became
blue with cold.

"A black year on you, dear sir," they would cajole, mockingly, half
in Yiddish, half in Ukrainian. "Pharaoh's plagues fall on your head!"

Goray was unquiet. A runner who had left for a distant village a day
after the Feast of Tabernacles had not returned, and it was said that for his
thirty- odd groschen the peasants had murdered him. Only by a miracle had
a youth who traveled from farm to farm buying up produce escaped
disaster. Spending the night in the silo of a peasant he had been wakened by
the sound of his host murderously sharpening a hatchet. The feeble wasted
away, and one by one they died. Each death brought Grunam the Beadle
running through town in the early morning. Hurriedly, he would rap twice
on each shutter with his wooden mallet, as a sign that the water was to be
poured out of the house's water-run to thwart evil spirits (that no evil spirits
might be mirrored there) and the household was to prepare for a funeral.

Rabbi Benish labored to be with the poor in their hour of need. He
issued a decree that the wealthy must share a tithe of their bread and grits,
yellow peas and beans, linseed oil, and cords of wood. Tuesdays, two
public-spirited citizens made the rounds of the town with a bag for the tithe;
but the high cost of things had made people mean, and they hid their food.
There should have been no lack of meat, since calves were cheap. But the
old slaughterer had been killed, and no new one had settled in Goray.
Anyone who wanted to slaughter a beast had to drive it to a slaughterhouse
miles away.

The old Jewish town of Goray was unrecognizable. Once upon a time ev-
erything had proceeded in an orderly fashion. Masters had labored along-
side their apprentices, and merchants had traded; fathers-in- law had
provided board and lodging, and sons-in-law had studied the holy teach--
ings; boys had gone off to school, and school mistresses had visited
the girls at home. Reb Eleazar Babad and the seven town elders had kept a
sharp watch on all town affairs. Those who sinned were brought to court;
those who did not obey the court's ruling were flogged, or pilloried in the
prayer-house anteroom. On Thursdays and Fridays the needy went from
house to house carrying beggars' bags, collecting food for the Sabbath; on
the Sabbath itself the good women of the town collected white bread and
meat, fish and fruit for the needy. If a poor man had a daughter over fif-
teen years old who was still unwed, the community contrived to arrange a
trousseau, and give her in marriage to an orphan youth or an elderly
widower. The money that the groom received at the wedding sufficed to
support them for months. After that, the man worked at something or other,
or went about the countryside with a writ from the community certifying
that he was a pauper. Of course, all sorts of misfortunes occurred. At times
man and wife fell to quarreling, and they would have to journey to Yanov
for a divorce--for the Goray stream had two names, and no one knew which
was the proper one to use in locating Goray in the bill of divorcement
according to the strict letter of the law. ("The town of Goray, on the banks
of the River thus-and-thus.") Sometimes a man would go off, leaving his
wife behind him, or be drowned somewhere in some body of endless waters
whence his corpse might never be recovered. In such a case the widow
could not marry again. Every year before Passover there would be a great
furor in Goray over the paschal wheat, which the community would give as
a concession to some man of influence--who would eventually always be
accused of mixing the meal with chaff before selling it. As a rule, he would
be roundly cursed and would not live out the year. Nevertheless, the next
year another man was always found to profit from the Passover wheat.
Every year on the day of the Rejoicing of the Law, there would be a fight in
the tailors' prayer house concerning who was to have the honor of being the
first to carry the Torah scroll around the lectern. Afterward the burial
society would get drunk at the feast and break dishes. Several times a year
there would be an epidemic, and Mendel the Gravedigger would end up
with a few extra guilders. But such, after all, is the way of the world. The
Jews of Goray dwelled in peace with the village Christians; in the town
itself there lived only a few gentiles: a Sabbath gentile, to do the necessary
work forbidden Jews on the Sabbath, a bath attendant, and a few others who
lived in side streets, their houses surrounded by high picket fences so as not
to flaunt their presence.

Before the Christian holidays, when large numbers of gentiles passed
through Goray on the way to a shrine, young boys were everywhere indus-
triously selling the pilgrims barrelsful of sweetened water. The Goray
fairs were famous throughout the countryside. Peasants from all the nearby
villages would come riding for the fair. Horses neighed, cows mooed, goats
bleated. Horse traders--powerful Jews dressed in heavy jackets and
sheepskin hats summer and winter--leaped to grab kicking stallions. They
shouted as coarsely as any of the peasants. Bloody-handed butchers, with
sharp knives thrust in their belts, would drag by the horn bound oxen who
were no longer fit for the plow. In those days the grain merchants' bins were
always full, and fat, white-bellied mice dined there; country whiskey at the
taverns was mixed with whole buckets of water. All during the fair the
children of Ham rejoiced in their own way. They danced with their women,
pounding the floor with their feet, whistling and singing coarse songs. The
women screamed and shook their hips, the men fought, swinging mighty
fists. And what merchandise did Jews not sell! They sold women's flower
patterned shawls and headkerchiefs; egg rolls and long, twisted white
breads; children's shoes and wading-boots; spices and nuts; iron yokes and
nails; gilded bridal gifts and ready-made dresses; noisemakers for night
watchmen, and Christmas Eve masks. True, often enough Rabbi Benish had
inderdicted Jews' dealing in Christian images. Nevertheless, secretly sales
continued of missals with gilded covers and pages, wax candles and even
holy pictures of saints with halos round their heads. In some out-of-the
way corner of the fair stood the few Goray gentiles, selling beet-brown
salamis and white hog fat. Once a fastidious young man passed by them and
conspicuously held his nose, as though something smelled; afterward, he
remarked peevishly, "The goy certainly eats well... you can smell it for a
mile!"

In the evening the sober peasants would ride off. Drunks would be
thrown out of the taverns into the mud, and their angry women would pull
them home by the ears. The dark circle of the fair-grounds would be
covered with dung, and from it would rise the rustic smell of manure. In
Jewish homes oil lamps, candles, and pieces of kindling would be lit.
Women wearing enormous deep-pocketed aprons would spit on their palms
to ward off the evil eye, and feverishly count the copper money they
transferred to pots; in houses where there was no counting of money, it was
deemed that the blessing of good fortune would be more apt to enter. Goray
Jews had great needs. They needed board and lodging for sons-in-law and
gifts for bridegrooms; satin dresses and velvet coats for brides and fur hats
and silk coats for the men. For the holidays they needed: citrus fruit for the
Feast of Tabernacles, the white unleavened bread for Passover, and olive oil
for the Feast of Lights. Jews needed money to lend to wicked lords and to
silence possible slanderers. More than once it was necessary to send an
intercessor to Lublin. And then there were community needs: The town of
Goray maintained a rabbi and his assistant, beadles and school teachers, one
ritual slaughterer and ten charity scholars, as well as attendants for the
bathhouse, one for the men and one for the women, besides the poor and the
sick in the infirmary. And how many times did not Goray, this town at the
end of the world, have to send money to other communities that had been
despoiled or burned down!


In those days Rabbi Benish reigned in Goray like a king. The people
went to the rabbi's assistant with their simple questions, and to Rabbi
Benish only when they were difficult, or involved suits of law. Rabbi
Benish would roll up the sleeves of his coat, and rule according to the strict
letter of the law, reckoning with no one. More than one Sabbath eve
Grunam the Beadle had to go rapping from shutter to shutter with the news
that the bathhouse was unclean, and the men were to stay away from the
women who had been there that day. Often Rabbi Benish discovered too
late that he had ruled an animal kosher when it was not. Half of the
housewives of the town then had to smash their earthen vessels, scald the
iron ones, and pour the soup and meat into the swill heap. Living was easy,
and Jewishness in high repute those days.

But now Goray had fallen upon evil days. Its best citizens had been
slaughtered. Most of the men who remained were young. Though the land
was quiet, the fear of new visitations never left the Jews. Worst of all,
at this time when unity was most necessary, every man went his own way, no
longer willing to share the common responsibility. Time and again Rabbi
Benish called a town meeting, only to have the townspeople doze off, or
yawn at the walls. They would agree to everything, but carry out nothing. It
was almost impossible to find anyone he could speak to. Rabbi Benish
thought of his sons, but he had never detested them so much as he did now.
Ozer, that scatterbrain, sat for days on end in the kitchen, disheveled and
covered with feathers, playing Goats and Wolves with his own children, and
quarreling with his mother because she would not cook the dishes he liked.
Levi and his wife, like two great spiders spinning an evil web, sat apart
from the rest in a pique in their darkened room, where the curtains were
always drawn and the door always closed.



5



The Woman and the Rabbinical Emissary



The rumor that the days of the Messiah were drawing near gradually
aroused even Goray, that town in the midst of the hills at the end of
the world.

A highly respectable woman, who for many years now had been journey-
ing in search of her husband (collecting alms at the same time), related
that in all the provinces of Poland people were saying that the Exile
had come to an end. Trees had begun to put forth enormous fruit in the holy
land, and in the salt waters of the Dead Sea golden fish had suddenly
appeared. The woman went from house to house. Her face was wrinkled
like a cabbage head, but her black eyes were young and gleaming. The satin
bands that hung down from her high bonnet rustled, the long earrings in her
lobes swayed, and her lips--thin and keen--uttered assurances of salvation
and consolation. Everywhere the woman tasted preserves which diligent
housewives had put up in the summertime; blew her crooked, rabbinical
nose; and with the silken tucks of her sleeve wiped the tears that slid
brightly down her withered cheeks to shine among all the ornaments on the
voluminous satin coat. The woman smelled of honey cake and holiday, of
remote Jewish cities and good tidings. Chatting about the Land of Israel as
though she had just returned from there, she told how the holy soil, which
had been shrunken like a deer skin, now expanded day by day. The mosques
were sinking into the earth, and the Turks were running away or being
converted while there was still time, for later, after the Messiah came, no
converts would be accepted. Even in Poland the nobles were showing favor
to the Jews and showering them with gifts, having already heard that the
children of Israel were soon to be exalted above all peoples. Crowds of
women followed her about, tirelessly asking question after question--and
she replied in phrases from the holy tongue, like a man. Wealthy folk
presented her with gold pieces, which she painstakingly and piously bound
into a kerchief, as though she were collecting donations for strangers.

When Rabbi Benish heard about the woman he sent for her to
present herself, but it was too late, for she was already in her sleigh,
prepared to ride off. The people of Goray had wrapped blankets around her
and covered her with straw; • they gave her jugs of cherry juice and Sabbath
cookies. Her ram's-horn nose was red with the cold and the fear of God, and
she replied to the beadle: "Tell the rabbi that, God-willing, we shall yet
meet in the Land of Israel... at the gates of the Holy Temple."

A traveling man who used to visit Goray yearly even before 1648
passed along the news that in Volhynia Jews were dancing for joy in the
streets. They had stopped buying houses and sewing heavy overcoats, since
it would be warm in the Land of Israel. In-laws-to-be were postponing
weddings, so as to be able to raise the bridal canopy in Jerusalem. In Narol
the young men had begun to study the Jerusalem Talmud, in preference to
the Babylonian, and a rich man in Masel-Bozhitz had divided his
possessions among the poor.

An ascetic who ate no meat, drank no wine, slept on a hard bench,
and journeyed over the world on foot, related that a prophet named Reb
Nehemiah ha-Cohen had arisen in Poland Minor. He wore a haircloak over
his bare skin, and, prophesying, would fall face down to the earth, emitting
cries that were more than human. Reb Nehemiah foretold that the Jews
were soon to foregather from all the corners of the earth, and the dead
would rise from their graves. The greatest rabbis and men of genius
believed in this prophet and gave him tokens of their esteem.

But he who raised the tumult in Goray to its highest pitch was a
certain rabbinical legate, a Jew from Yemen.

It was midwinter, early one January evening. All day a wind had
been blowing, driving hills of snow and piling them up in front of the
houses--blue, glassy, filling the air with dust, as in a field. Crows waddled
about on their short feet, picked at a frozen cat, cawed with their crooked
beaks, and flew low in the air to exercise their wings. Few windowpanes
remained whole in their frames, and on these grew complicated frost
patterns of trees that seemed to have been turned upside down by the storm,
their stocks broken. The roofs hung low, stooping to the earth, and a column
of milk-white smoke spiraled from every chimney, as though boring into the
sky. God's stars trembled brighter and larger than usual, sparkling green and
blue in the atmosphere. Circled by three pearl halos that reflected all the
colors of the rainbow, a yellow moon, like an eye, looked down at the Jews
hurrying to their afternoon prayers. Suddenly the sharp clanging of a bell
was heard in the market place, and a sleigh drove up. A man with a snow
covered beard and long earlocks got out. He was wearing a red turban and a
fur coat turned inside out. Darting fiery glances everywhere with his black
eyes, he asked: "Where is the study house?"

The newcomer appeared in the holy place between the afternoon and
evening prayers. His arrival created a sensation. He stopped at the
threshold, where he pulled off his felt shoes and stood in stockinged feet.
Afterward, he removed his outer garment, revealing a long smock black
striped like a prayer shawl, and girdled about with an embroidered sash.
Washing his hands and feet for a long time at the copper water tap, the
newcomer recited a benediction in a language that sounded like Aramaic.
Then, ascending the dais with measured step, he turned his face to the
eastern wall, and cried out in a trembling voice: "Judeans, I come to bring
you good tidings! From Jerusalem our holy city!"

The newcomer's arrival immediately became known in town, and a throng
came running to the study house. Womenfolk mingled with menfolk, young
men and girls stood up together on reading stands and tables. Everyone
gaped and listened. The stranger spoke in a broken voice, one that seem-
ed to be full of tears: "Judeans," he said, "I come from our holy land. I
am a pure-blooded Sephardi. I have been sent by my brothers into the Exile,
to tell you that the Great Fish that lurks in the river Nile has succumbed at
the hands of Sabbatai Zevi, our Messiah and holy king.... His kingship will
soon be revealed, and he will take the sultan's crown from off his head....
The Jews from the other side of the river Sambation are ready and waiting
for the battle of Armageddon.... The lion that dwelleth on high will descend
from Heaven, in his mouth a seven-headed scorpion.... With fire issuing
from his nostrils, he will carry the Messiah into Jerusalem. Gather your
strength, O Judean, and make yourselves ready!... Happy is the man who
shall live to see this!"

The study house became so quiet that a solitary fly could be heard
buzzing, beating its wings against the window. Women wrung their hands,
and from their grimaces it was difficult to tell whether they were laughing
or weeping. There was a sea of startled faces. The crowd stirred, as when
the ram's horn is blown on Rosh Hashana. The legate looked about him.

"Wonders and miracles are performed in Jerusalem.... In Miron a fiery
column has been seen stretching from earth to heaven.... The full name
of God and of Sabbatai Zevi were scratched on it in black.... The women
who divine by consulting drops of oil have seen the crown of King David
on Sabbatai Zevi's head.... Many disbelievers deny this and refuse to turn
back at the very threshold of Gehenna.... Woe unto them! They will sink
and be lost in the nethermost circle of Sheol!"

"Jews! Save your-selves! Jew-ws!" someone suddenly shouted, as
though he were choking.

The crowd shuddered. It was lame Mordecai Joseph, a cabalist, with
a thick, fiery beard and bushy eyebrows, a faster, a weeper, an angry man.
As he prayed he would beat his head against the wall; on the Days of Awe
he would fall to the ground at the Prayer of Petition, like the men of old,
and groan out loud. He delivered funeral orations and on the eve of Yom
Kippur flogged men in the prayer-house anteroom. When he fell into a
fierce mood he would slap not only the young but the old as well; therefore
none dared cross him. Mordecai Joseph was broad-framed, ungainly, with
unkempt red earlocks and green eyes. And now, breathing hard, the cripple
began to clamber up a table. Those close by lifted him so that he could
stand. Reb Mordecai Joseph banged the table with his crutch. His stained
coat came unbuttoned, his unkempt locks flew about wildly, and he began
in his passion to stutter and gasp.

"Jews, why are you silent? Redemption hath come to the world!...
Salvation hath come to the world!"

He beat his forehead with his left hand and all at once began to
dance. His oaken crutch drummed, his large foot dangled, and, gasping, he
cried one and the same phrase over and over again, a phrase which no one
was able to make out.

The legate turned and fixed his bright eyes on Mordecai Joseph. The
tails of Mordecai Joseph's coat swung through the air, his vest billowed
about him; he pushed the crumpled skullcap back on his head, stretched out
both arms, the fingers curling. Women screamed; from every side hands
reached for him. Suddenly Reb Mordecai fell his full length to the ground.
The whole study house swayed with the crowd and the sweating walls.
Someone shouted, "Help! He has fainted!



6



Reb Mordecai Joseph



It was Rabbi Benish's practice to say his afternoon and evening prayers by
himself in his study. When the news reached his ears he hurried to the
prayer house. But it was already empty. Everyone had hurried home after
the legate's sermon to discuss the news in the midst of the family. A few
people accompanied the legate to the inn; others went to the house of Reb
Mordecai Joseph. They had to rub Mordecai Joseph with snow for a long
time, to prick him with needles and pinch him hard before he was himself
again. On his broken bench bed he lay, dressed in all his garments; leaning
back on both elbows, he related that in his trance Sabbatai Zevi had come to
him and cried: "Mordecai Joseph, the son of Chanina the Priest, be not of
humble heart! Thou shalt yet offer up the priestly sacrifices!" Men and
women jostled one another in the narrow, unfloored room; there was no
candle, and Mordecai Joseph's wife heaped several dry twigs on the tripod
and lit them. The flame crackled and hissed, red shadows danced on the
irregular whitewashed walls, and the rafters loomed low. In a corner, on a
pile of rags, sat Mordecai Joseph's only daughter, a monstrosity with a
water-swollen head and calf's eyes. Mordecai Joseph's wet beard shone in
the reflection of the glowing coals like molten gold, and his green eyeballs
burned like a wolf's as he divulged the mysteries he had seen in his trance.
His cadence was that of a dying man speaking his last words to those
nearest him.


"A great light shall descend on the world! Thousands and thousands
times greater than the sun! It shall blind the eyes of the wicked and
the scoffers! Only the chosen shall escape!"

That night Rabbi Benish could not sleep.

The shutters were barred, and thick candles burned in the two bent
brass candlesticks. The old man paced back and forth with heavy tread,
stopping from time to time to cock his ears, as though listening for a
scratching in the walls. The wind tore at the roof, and sighed. Branches
crackled with the frost, the long-drawn-out howls of dogs filled the air.
There was silence and then the howling began again. Rabbi Benish took
book after book out of the chest, studied their titles and leafed through the
pages searching for omens of the coming of the Messiah. His high forehead
wrinkled, for the passages were contradictory. From time to time Rabbi
Benish would sit down at the table and press a key to his forehead so as not
to doze off; nevertheless, he would soon be snoring heavily. Then he would
lift his head up with a start, a crooked mark between his eyes. He paced
back and forth, running into objects in dark corners, and his magnified
shadow crept along the rafters, slid along the walls, and quivered as though
engaged in a ghostly wrangle. Although the oven was glowing, a cold
breeze stirred in the room. In the early morning, when Grunam the Beadle
came to put more wood in the oven, Rabbi Benish looked at him as though
he were a stranger.

"Go, bring the legate to me!" he commanded.

The legate was still sleeping in the inn, and Grunam had to waken
him. It was early, and stars were still sparkling in the sky. Handfuls of dry
saltlike snow fell across their faces. Rabbi Benish put on his outercoat and
stepped over the threshold of the house to welcome the legate; putting up
his beaver collar and crossing his arms, he thrust his hands up his sleeves. It
was bitter cold and Rabbi Benish kept turning around, stamping his feet to
keep warm. Somewhere from behind the snow hills, as huge as sand dunes,
a man rose into view, wind-blown, dipped out of sight, and then emerged
again, like a swimmer. Rabbi Benish glanced at the early morning sky.
Fixing his gaze inwardly, he cried, "Master of the Universe, help us!"

No one ever learned what Rabbi Benish said that morning, nor what
the legate replied. But one thing soon became common knowledge: the
legate rode away with no farewells from Goray, in the same sleigh in which
he had arrived. It was late afternoon when the news spread that the legate
had disappeared. It was Grunam the Beadle who imparted the information,
with a stealthy smile in his left eye. Reb Mordecai Joseph blanched. He
gathered immediately who was responsible for the legate's departure, and
his nostrils dilated with anger.

"Benish is to blame!" he screamed, and lifted his crutch threateningly.
"Benish has driven him off!"

For many years Reb Mordecai Joseph had been the rabbi's enemy.
He hated him for his learning, envied him his fame, and never missed an
opportunity to speak evil of him. At the yearly Passover wrangle he would
incite the people to break Rabbi Benish's windowpanes, crying that the
rabbi had only his own reputation in mind and gave no thought to the town.
The thing that chiefly vexed Reb Mordecai Joseph was that Rabbi Benish
forbade the study of the cabala; in defiance Reb Mordecai Joseph called the
rabbi by his first name. And now Reb Mordecai Joseph hammered on his
lectern, inciting controversy. "Benish is a heretic!" he shouted. "A
transgressor against the Lord of Israel!"

An old householder who was one of the rabbi's disciples ran over to
Mordecai Joseph and struck him twice. The blood streamed from Mordecai
Joseph's nose. Several young people jumped up and grabbed their belts. The
cantor pounded on the stand, and commanded them not to interrupt the
prayers, but he was ignored. Men wearing the large black phylacteries on
their heads, and with the broad phylactery thongs wound around their arms,
milled about, pushing one another. A tall, black-complexioned man, whose
head almost reached the ceiling, began to waver like a tree in the wind, and
cried: "Sacrilege! Blood in the study house! Woe!"

"Benish is a heretic!" roared Mordecai Joseph. Holding on to his
crutch he bent over and hopped forward with insane speed.

"May he be torn from the earth... root and all!"

Drops of blood shimmered on his fire-red beard; his low forehead,
parchment-yellow, was furrowed. Reb Senderel of Zhilkov, an ancient foe
of the rabbi, suddenly screamed: "Rabbi Benish cannot oppose the world!
He has always been a man of little faith!"

"Apostate!" someone shouted, it was hard to tell whether referring to
the rabbi or his opponents.

"Disrupter!"

"Sinner that leadeth the multitude to sin!"

"The world's aflame!" Mordecai Joseph kept pounding with his fists.
"Benish, the dog, denies the Messiah!"

"Sabbatai Zevi is a false Messiah!" a high, boyish voice cried out.

Everyone looked around. It was Chanina, the charity scholar, a young
divorced man and a stranger, who sat in Goray studying and lived off
the community. He was one of Rabbi Benish's brilliant students--tall,
overgrown, nearsighted, with a long, pale face and a chin sprouting with
yellow hair. His coat was always unfastened, his vest open, showing a thin,
hairy chest. Now he stood there, bent over his study stand, his near-blind
eyes blinking, waiting with a silly smile for someone to come and argue
with him, so that he could show how learned he was. Mordecai Joseph, who
bore Chanina a grudge on account of the many folios of the Talmud he
knew by heart and because he was always mixing in where he had no right,
suddenly sprang at Chanina with that agility the lame display when they
flare up and forget their defect.

"You, too!" he screamed. "Take him, men!"

Several young men ran over to Chanina, grabbed hold of his shirt and
began to drag him off. Chanina opened his mouth, shouted, tried to tear
himself loose from their grip, twisted his long neck back and forth, and
flailed about him with his arms, like a drowning man. His coat was torn, his
skull cap fell off. Two long, tousled earlocks dangled from his shaven scalp.
He tried to defend himself, but the charity students were quick to hold his
head, punching him with their weak hands as they helped carry him, as
though they were kneading dough. Mordecai Joseph himself proudly helped
carry Chanina by the legs, spitting into his face and pinching him viciously.
Soon Chanina was lying on the table. They lifted his coat tail. Mordecai
Joseph was the first to do the honors.

"Let this be in place of me!" he cried, in the words of the Yom Kippur
scapegoat ritual. He rolled up his sleeves, and gave Chanina so hard a
blow that the unlucky youth burst all at once into tears, like a school boy,
and whimpered.

"Let this be instead of me!" Mordecai Joseph exclaimed with a sigh
and again struck Chanina.

"Let this fowl go to his death!" someone cried responsively, and a
hail of blows fell on the idle scholar. Chanina gave a hoarse cry and began
to gasp.

When they took him from the table, his face was blue and his mouth
clenched. A boy immediately fetched a vessel of water and poured it over
Chanina, drenching him from head to foot. The young man jerked
spasmodically and remained full length on the ground. There was a terrified
silence in the study house. The one woman who happened to be in the
women's gallery pulled at the grate and sobbed. Mordecai Joseph limped
back, beating the floor with his crutch, and his face behind the thicket of his
beard was chalk-white.

"Thus rotteth the name of the wicked!" he said. "Now he shall know
that there is a God who rules the world!"



7



Reb Eleazar Babad and His Daughter, Rechelle



Reb Eleazar Babad and His Daughter, Rechele Reb Eleazar Babad was
seldom at home. It was his practice to move about from village to village.
He would put on his heavy coat, stuff straw in his shoes, and, with a sack in
one hand, a stick in the other, take to the paths and byways. Like a beggar
he would drive off the hounds with his stick and sleep nights in the haylofts
of peasant barns. Some said that Reb Eleazar went to collect old debts due
him from before 1648; others were certain that he wandered this way as a
penance for the sins that were wearying his spirit. Rechele, his only
daughter, remained at home all alone. For days on end she sat on a foot
bench facing the hearth, reading the volumes she had brought from distant
cities, and it was rumored that she was versed in the holy tongue. Some
even went so far as to declare that she had learned Latin from a physician in
Lublin. Goray housewives had sought to be friendly with Rechele and had
paid her courtesy visits, but her response had not been the usual "God bid
ye welcome." She had not urged them to be seated but had hid something
from them in the bosom of her dress. Young matrons in silk bonnets,
usually with aprons bulging over their pregnant bellies, came to amuse
Rechele, to play at bones with her, and to chat about prospective matches,
as young women will. Some of them brought their jewels along in caskets
in order to preen themselves; others had balls of wool and knitting needles,
to show how capable they were. But Rechele sat at the hearth, never rising
to greet them, not even wiping the benches dry for them to sit upon. She
confused their names, acted so haughtily that the women began to laugh and
mock her. Before leaving, the last of the visitors called to Rechele from the
other side of the door: "Don't be so high and mighty, Rechele! Your father
isn't rich any longer; you're a pauper now!"

Rechele (God save us!) was sickly, and much had to be forgiven her.
The woman who went from house to house Thursdays to knead the troughs
of dough for the Sabbath reported that Rechele ate less than a fly; she had
her period every three months. She slept late in the morning and barricaded
her door at night with wooden crossbars. A neighbor that lived behind Reb
Eleazar's brick house in a dwelling that had half settled in the earth
whispered that Rechele never went into the yard to relieve herself....

Rechele had been born in Goray in 1648, a few weeks before the
massacre. When the haidamaks had besieged Zamosc, her mother had fled
with the infant in her arms, and, after many trials, had arrived in Lublin.
The little one had been five at her mother's death, and Reb Eleazar had been
in Vlodave with the rest of the household at the time. Rechele alone had
remained in Lublin at the home of an uncle, Reb Zeydel Ber, who was a
ritual slaughterer. He was a tall man with thick eyebrows above red eyes,
and a black beard that reached to his waist, a taciturn widower who kept to
himself. In the booth in the courtyard where he did his slaughtering there
was always a wooden bucket full of blood, and feathers flew about
constantly. Here day was as dark as night when a small oil lamp burned.
Butcher boys in red-spattered jackets, with knives thrust in their belts,
moved about, shouting coarsely. Slaughtered chickens threw themselves to
the blood-soaked earth, furiously flapping their pent wings, as though
trying to fly off. Calves, whose legs were bound with straw, laid their heads
on one another's necks and pounded the earth with their split hooves, until
finally their eyes glazed. Once Rechele saw two blood-smeared butcher
boys skin a goat and let it lie there with eyeballs protrudeing in amazement
and white teeth projecting in a kind of death-smile.

Rechele was terrified of Reb Zeydel Ber. He had never remarried, and
had no children. The house was kept by his mother-in-law, a woman nearly
ninety, deaf, with a waxen, shriveled face, full of moles and clumps of
yellowish hair. The ancient stone house where they lived had thick walls
and small high windows near the vaulted ceiling. It stood somewhere on the
edge of town, near the graveyard. The doorway was low and dark as a cave,
and faced a dead-end street. The court was rolling and hillocky, full of
pits, and all manner of rags, feather dusters, and rotted sacks were scat-
tered about. Reb Zeydel occupied two rooms, with an entrance off a narrow
vestibule. He slept in one of the rooms, which had a wide canopy bed hung
with faded red satin draperies, a prayer stand, and a book chest. When
Uncle was not busy in his slaughter but he would sit in his bedroom on a
shoemaker's round stool and sharpen the greenish blades of his knives on a
large, smooth stone. He would test the edges with the nail of his right index
finger--allowed to grow long for just that purpose--and listen with his
long, hairy ear for sound of a defect in the blade. At other times he would
mumble over a holy volume, or prop his forehead on a fist and doze off.

The anteroom held the household necessaries: a water tun and a large
vessel for washing pots and dishes, two benches--one for dairy food,
the other for meat--and a broom leaning on a swill heap. The old woman
cooked in a deep sooty oven, constantly occupied with long paddles, and
eternally muttering. Whenever Rechele wanted to go outside to play,
Granny would grab the child with her bony hands, pull her hair, and hiss
at her.

"Sit down, you monster!" she would cry, and pinch Rechele black and
blue. "Throw fits and jump as high as a house! May the fit carry you
off!"

Rechele was a stubborn and contrary child; she would not let Granny
delouse her, and the old woman had to beat her with a block of wood.
In the trough that held the wash water there was always a switch soak-
ing with which the old woman would flog the girl for her wantonness.
Every Friday afternoon the old woman would force Rechele to put her head
into the trough, now filled with hot water, and Rechele would scream
until she was hoarse. To persuade Rechele to remain at home and not go
wandering off, the old woman took to terrifying the child.

She persuaded Rechele that there were graves in the yard where ghosts
flew about ceaselessly, seeking bodies to enter. She put a great apron
on Rechele as a charm, so that no unholy spirit might possess her, and
hung a linen sack with a wolf's tooth in it around her neck. Whenever
Granny went away she latched the door from the outside with a wooden peg.
Little light entered through the small, dust-covered window near the rafters,
and an oil-dipped wick burned constantly in a clay shard. Mice were forever
scratching in the narrow, crowded bedroom, and there were other small
sounds as though a hand groped its way through the darkness. There was an
opening high above the anteroom hearth. Whenever it smoked a chimney
sweep would be summoned, who would scramble up and shout down at the
old woman as he worked. His eyes all white as though the eyeballs were
turned up, he would grimace blackly, like a devil. Granny would stand
below him and shake her small fist.

"Higher!" she would screech. "Higher! Higher!"

Rechele would hide under the bed when the chimney sweep came, bury-
ing herself under a pile of clothing. She feared the broom he pulled out
of an iron bucket, was terrified of the heavy smoke-covered ropes he
uncoiled, would pale when she heard the stranger stumble over the oven.
Often there would be two chimney sweeps: the taller had a bristling
mustache, like an insect's. One of the sweeps would crawl out on the roof
and the other would thrust his head into the hearth opening and cry up to his
partner in a muffled voice as though from a cavern. After they had left, the
black prints of their bare feet remained on the floor. The slaughterer would
come into the room, a knife in a corner of his mouth. His blood- stiff coat
covered with feathers would creak as he bent to go through the low door.
He would grumble: "How much did you give the dogs?"

"A half penny and a handful of chaff," the old woman would respond,
thrusting out her chin. There was not a tooth in her shrunken
mouth.

It was terrifying at night when Rechele had to lie down in the bench
bed to sleep with the old woman. Uncle snored loudly in the bedroom,
wheezing as though he choked and groaning in his sleep, and the old
woman dallied over her prayers, as she turned restlessly from side to
side. She smelled of burned feathers and mice. Sometimes she would lift
the child's shift and run her dead hands over the girl's hot body, cackl-
ing with impure delight: "Fire! Fire! The girl's burning up!"

As they lay under the feather bed, in the pitch dark, the old woman
would tell Rechele stories of wild beasts and goblins; of robbers that lived
in caves with witches; of man-eaters that roasted children on spits; and of a
wild one-eyed monster that stalked about with a fir tree in its hand looking
for a lost princess. Sometimes from her sleep Granny would cry out wildly
and incoherently. The roots of Rechele's hair would tingle with terror, and,
her whole body a-quiver, she would wake up the old woman with the cry:
"Granny? What are you saying? Granny?

"Granny, I'm afraid!



8



Rechele in Lublin



When Rechele was twelve years old the old woman died. For three days she
lay on a bench bed in the anteroom, gasping her last. Her small head was
bound with a red kerchief, her wrinkled face was stiff as a corpse, her chin
pointed up, and her open eyes, with the eyeballs turned back, appeared
entirely white. That happened during the Ten Days of Penitence between
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. From the slaughter but in the yard the
cackling of roosters could be heard, mingled with the shouting of
housewives and servant maids. Rarely did anyone glance in at the dying
woman, for everyone was busy. Reb Zeydel Ber, her son-in-law, all smeared
with blood, would dash into the anteroom from time to time, beard flying,
red eyelids gleaming under bushy eye-brows. Drawing a goosefeather from
his breast, he would hold it near the dying woman's nostrils to see whether
she was still breathing, examine her expertly, and sigh: "Ah, well, it's a
story without an end!"

Uncle Reb Zeydel Ber was as usual before the high holy day, when
he was slaughtering atonement roosters whilst the women burdened him
with their haste and idle talk. Moreover, young Rechele was burning the
meals she cooked for him, because she was tired. Apprehensively she kept
the wick burning all night and sat until dawn on the bench enveloped in a
shawl. The cricket behind the wall oven chirped even more demandingly
than ever. Time and again, from the alcove Uncle would cry out in his sleep,
as though he were conversing intermittently with some-one. Rechele was
well aware that the room was crowded with evil things. The brooms and
mops stirred; long shadows swept along the walls like apparitions from
another world. Now and again the old woman raised her upper lip in a
horrifying smile. She thrust out her waxen hand from under the feather bed,
clutched at the air, and then clenched her fingers as though she had caught
something. The old woman died in the early morning on the day before
Yom Kippur. At once diligent women from the burial society arrived,
wearing enormous aprons that encircled their bodies. They heated kettles of
water for the ritual of purification, and the room was filled with thick steam,
wet rags, and straw. One woman opened the chest and drew out a suit of full
under- hose that had been sewed in a shroud stitch and a mitre, which the
old woman had prepared in advance; another woman carried a black
stretcher into the room. Rechele was sent off to a distant relation of Reb
Zeydel Ber's. The funeral took place at once and Reb Zeydel Ber recited the
mourner's prayer. Just before sundown Uncle sent for Rechele to be brought
home. The wet floor had already been swept and spread with sand. Three
candles in memory of Granny's soul were burning in a sand-filled box.
Uncle stood in a white smock, wearing cloth shoes, his head covered by a
white mitre that was embroidered with golden fringe. His black beard was
combed and wet, his earlocks, as long as braids, were still dripping from the
bath. He resembled one of those holy and God-fearing Masters of whom
Rechele had read in her little books in Yiddish. He placed both hands on her
head and said in a sorrowful voice, "May the Lord make thee as Sarah,
Rebecca, Rachel, Leah.... Be Blessed and of pure spirit, 0 child, and tend to
the house... in God's Name!" Rechele opened her lips to answer, but Uncle
violently thrust the door open, and rushed out, almost extinguishing the
candles. Rechele remained standing in the middle of the room; she looked
about in amazement, as though in a strange place. A blood-red fragment of
the sky filled the small window near the rafters, and outside a great wailing
was heard. Lublin's narrow streets, lighted by the setting sun, were now full
of men wearing the white Yom Kippur robes; they looked like corpses in
shrouds. The women wore white dresses with trains, and silk scarves; they
were arrayed in pearls and heavy necklaces, pins and bracelets, brooches
and long earrings which quivered like jelly. Those women who had been
widowed or had lost children recently ran with outstretched arms, as though
insane, hoarsely repeating the same phrase over and over. Neighbors who
had been at each other's throats throughout the year embraced and clung
swaying to and fro, as though nothing could separate them.... Young
matrons walked proudly, holding in one hand the gold-trimmed prayer
books while the other caught up the trains of their gowns. Laughing and
crying they fell upon each other's necks. Four girls conveyed a paralyzed
dowager some hundred years old on a red-up-holstered chair. The old
woman's golden dress blazed in the sunset and her high bonnet set with
beads and precious stones glittered, its satin ribbons fluttering in the wind.
A blind old man, with a white windblown beard, stood leaning on his
crutches, his blue hands groping to bless all who passed by. The street
leading to the prayer house was filled with low tables on which stood alms
bowls. The crooked, the dumb, the lame sat on footstools and counted the
silver and copper coins with which the crowd redeemed their souls for the
holy day. Yerucham, the Lublin Penitent, stood as he did every year, at the
door of the prayer house barefoot, his clothes unfastened. Wringing his
hands, he wept for his sins.

"Jews, have mercy, Jew-ws!... Compassion.. Compassion!..."

But here, in this lonely street, inside the thick walls, Rechele heard
only an echo. She stood there, ears cocked and eyes wide. This was her first
time alone on Yom Kippur eve. In the past Granny had invited girls in to sit
with her, and they would pass the evening braiding each other's hair and
talking in hushed voices while huddled at the table. The night before Yom
Kippur is a frightening time. Often, on that night, lords would fall upon
Jewish homes and ravish the young, unprotected girls. Sometimes the
candles would droop, and the children alone in the house would have to run
outside to find a gentile to straighten them. Fires in which small children
perished were frequent. Everyone remembered the catastrophe in the great
synagogue when someone had called out that the city was on fire and in the
panic many men and women had been trampled on and crushed. Moreover,
it was common knowledge that on this, the holiest of nights, when the
awesome prayer of Kol Nidre was chanted, the air was full of those ghosts
that could find no resting place in the Hereafter. Rechele and her friends had
once seen with their own eyes such a ghost pass by the candle and disappear
in the hearth.... The candle flame smoked and sputtered for a long time
afterward.

Now Rechele was alone in the house on the night before Yom Kippur,
and only a few hours previously a corpse had been taken away. Rechele
wanted to go out into the street and call people to her, but she was
afraid to open the door in the dark passageway. She pursed her lips to
shout, but the cry would not leave her throat. Terrified, she threw herself
on the bench-bed, rolled up into a ball, shut her eyes, and covered herself
with the comforter. From somewhere a low mutter reached her ears. The
sound seemed to come from beneath the earth, and it appeared to Rechele
that it was the chanting of Kol Nidre. But then it dawned on her that it
was the dead who were chanting, and she knew that whosoever hears the Kol
Nidre of the dead would not live out the year.

She fell asleep and in her dreams Granny came to her--her clothes in
tatters, disheveled and haggard. The kerchief about her head was soaked
with blood. "Rechele! Rechele!" she screamed and rubbed the girl's face
with a straw whisk.

Rechele's whole body shuddered. She awoke, drenched with sweat. There
was a ringing in her ear, and she felt a sharp stab in her breast. She
tried to cry but could not. Gradually, the terror subsided. She heard
footsteps in the house, fragmentary phrases. The pots on the oven and on
the benches moved and were suspended in air. The candle box turned
around and did a jig. There was a scarlet glow on the walls. Everything
seethed, burst, crackled, as though the whole house were aflame.... Late
that night, when Uncle came home, he found Rechele lying with her knees
pulled to her chest, her eyes glazed and her teeth clenched. Reb Zeydel Ber
screamed and people came running. They forced open the girl's mouth and
poured sour wine down her throat. A woman skilled in such things
scratched Rechele's face with her nails and tore from her head patches of
hair. At length Rechele began to groan, but from that evening on she was
never the same.

In the beginning Rechele could not speak at all. Later she regained
her speech, but she suffered from all sorts of illnesses. Reb Zeydel Ber
wished to marry Rechele because she was beautiful and of good family, and
he looked after her as though she were his own daughter. He hired a servant
maid to care for her, and he had recourse to various cures and charms. A
woman was brought in to drive the evil spirit away by incantation; another
washed her body with urine; still another applied leeches. Rechele lay inert
on her bed. So that she might forget her pain, Reb Zeydel Ber brought her
books and even went so far as to instruct her in the Torah. Sometimes the
Polish physician who bled Rechele read with her from a Latin book.
Eventually Rechele improved and could once more stand, but her left leg
continued paralyzed, and she walked with a limp. Then Reb Zeydel Ber
died, and Rechele returned to her father, Reb Eleazar Babad, who in the
meantime had lost both wife and son.

Thenceforth Rechele was one apart. She was beset by mysterious ills.
Some said she suffered from the falling sickness, others that she was in
the power of demons. In Goray Reb Eleazar left her completely on her own,
rarely returning from his round of the villages to see her. When people
spoke to him about his poor orphan daughter, he would hang his head and
answer in confusion: "Well, let it be...! There is no wisdom nor
understanding nor counsel against the Lord!"



9



Reb Itche Mates, the Packman



A packman came to Goray with a full sack of holy scripts and fringed vests,
phylacteries and skull caps for pregnant women and oval bone amulets for
children, mezuzahs and prayer sashes. Packmen are notoriously short
tempered and suffer no one to touch their merchandise who is disinclined to
purchase. Gingerly, one at a time, the young men approached the packman,
stared curiously at the store of goods which he spread out on the table, ran
their fingers along the books, and turned the leaves with silent caution, so as
not to arouse his wrath. But apparently this was a courteous packman.
Putting his hands up his sleeves, he allowed the boys to riffle through the
books as much as they pleased. A packman comes from the great world,
and usually brings with him all sorts of news. People sidled over to him and
asked: "What do they call you, stranger?"

"Itche Mates."

"Well, Reb Itche Mates, what's happening in the world?"

"Praised be God."

"Is there talk of help for the Jews?"

"Certainly, everywhere, blessed be God."

"Perhaps you have letters with you and tracts, Reb Itche Mates?"

Reb Itche Mates said nothing, as though he hadn't heard, and they
understood at once that these were matters one did not discuss openly. So,
murmuring under their breath, they said, "Are you staying here awhile, Reb
Itche Mates?"

He was a short man, with a round, straw-colored beard, and appear-
ed to be about forty years old. His dilapidated hat, from which large
patches of fur were missing, was pulled down over his damp, rheumy eyes;
his thin nose was red with catarrh. He was wearing a long patched coat
which reached to the ground. A red kerchief was wound about his loins.
The young men rummaged through his books, ripping the uncut pages,
and doing all sorts of damage, but the pack-man made no objection.
Mischievous boys played with the embroidered fringed vests and tried on
the gilded skull caps. They even dug down deep in the packman's sack and
discovered a Book of Esther scroll cased in a wooden tube, a ram's horn,
and a small bag containing white, chalky soil from the Land of Israel. Very
few people bought; everyone handled the merchandise and seemed to be
conspiring to enrage the packman. But he stood woodenly in front of his
goods. When they recited the Holy, Holy, Holy, his straw mustaches
quivered almost imperceptibly. When asked anything's price he capped his
hand to his ear as though he were hard of hearing, thought for a long time,
avoiding his questioner's face.

"What does it matter?" he would finally say in a low hoarse voice.
"Give as much as you can." And he extended a tin coin box, as though he
wasn't really a packman but was collecting money for some holy purpose.
Levi, the rabbi's son, invited him for supper, for in his controversy
with his father Levi lent his silent support to the Sabbatai Zevi sect.
Gathered together were members of the inner circle; all the cabalists
apparently sensed that the packman had something of interest to tell. Reb
Mordecai Joseph, Rabbi Benish's foe, was amongst them. Nechele, Levi's
wife, closed the shutters and stuffed the keyhole so that Ozer's children
would not be able to carry on their customary spying. Everyone sat around
the table. Nechele offered them onion flatcakes, and set drinks on the table.
Reb Itche Mates took only a morsel of bread, which he swallowed whole,
but he bade those about him to feast their fill and drink hearty. Perceiving at
once that Reb Itche Mates was one of the chosen, they did as he bade. Their
foreheads became moist, and their eyes shone with the hope of great times
to come. Reb Itche Mates unbuttoned his jacket and drew from the inner
pocket a letter written on parchment in Aramaic, in a scribe's script, and
with crownlets on the letters like a Torah scroll. The letter was from
Abraham Havchini and Samuel Primo, who resided in the Land of Israel.
Hundreds of rabbis had put their signatures to this letter, most of them
Sephardim with exotic names reminiscent of the Talmudic masters. It
became so quiet that Ozer's boys, who were lurking outside the door, heard
not even a whisper. The wick in the shard crackled and sputtered, long
shadows trembled on the walls, shook back and forth, merged. The well-
born Nechele stood beside the oven where she burnt kindling. Her thin
cheeks were flaming hot; she glanced sidelong at the men, and absorbed
every word.

Reb Itche Mates sat hunched up, speaking almost in a whisper, divulg-
ing mysteries of mysteries: only a few holy sparks still burned among
the husks of being. The powers of darkness clung to these, knowing that
their existence depended on them. Sabbatai Zevi, God's ally, was battling
these powers; it was he who was conducting the sacred sparks back to
their primal source. The holy kingdom would be revealed when the last
spark was returned whence it had come. Then the ritual ceremonies would
no longer hold. Bodies would become pure spirit. From the World of
Emanations and from under the Throne of Glory new souls would descend.
There would be no more eating and drinking. Instead of being fruitful and
multiplying, beings would unite in combinations of holy letters. The
Talmud wouldn't be studied. Of the Bible only the secret essence would
remain. Each day would last a year, and the radiance of the holy spirit
would fill all space. Cherubim and Ophanim would chant the praise of the
Almighty and He Himself would instruct the righteous. Their delight would
be boundless.

Reb Itche Mates' speech abounded in homilies and parables from the
Torah and Midrash. He was familiar with the names of angels and seraphim,
and quoted at length passages from the Book of Transmigrations and
Raziel; all the mansions in heaven were known to him, every detail of the
supreme hierarchy. There could be no doubt that here was a most holy man,
truly one of the elect. The decision was that all should keep silent and that
Itche Mates should spend the night at the home of Reb Godel Chasid, who
sat opposite. In the morning they would see what was to be done. Reb
Godel Chasid took the packman by the hand and led him to his house. He
offered him his own bed, but Reb Itche Mates preferred to sleep on the
bench near the oven. Reb Godel Chasid gave his guest a sheepskin cover
and a pillow and retired to the alcove that served as his bedroom. But he
could not sleep. All night long there came from behind the stove a bee-like
drone. Reb Itche Mates was busy at Torah and, although there was no
window in the room, he was surrounded by light as though the moon shone
upon him. Before daybreak Reb Itche Mates rose, poured water on his
hands, and sought to steal away to the study house. But Reb Godel Chasid
had not undressed. He took Reb Itche Mates by the arm and whispered
confidentially, "I saw everything, Reb Itche Mates."

"Ah but what was there to see?" murmured Reb Itche Mates, bowing
his head. " 'Silence is seemly for the wise.' "

In the study house Reb Itche Mates spread out his wares and again
waited for buyers. After the morning prayers he set his sack in a corner and
went from house to house through Goray, examining the mezuzahs, as is the
way of packmen, who are generally scribes as well. Whenever he found an
error in a mezuzah, he corrected it on the spot with a goose quill, accepted a
penny from the householder, and left.

So it went until he came to Rechele's house. The mezuzah on
Rechele's doorpost was an old one, covered with a white mold. Reb Itche
Mates took a tong from his pocket, pulled out the nails that held the sign to
the lintel, unrolled the scroll, and went over to the window for light in
which to see whether any of the letters had blurred. It turned out that the
word God had been completely erased, and that the right crown was
missing from the letter "s" of the name Shaddai. His hands began to
tremble, and he said with sternness, "Who lives here?"

"My father lives here--Reb Eleazar Babad," replied Rechele.

"Reb Eleazar Babad," said Reb Itche Mates, and he rubbed his forehead
as though attempting to re-call something. "Isn't he the head of the
community?"

"No longer," Rechele said. "Now he's a rag picker." And she burst
into high-pitched laughter.

That a Jewish girl should laugh so unrestrainedly was something new to
Reb Itche Mates, and he glanced at her out of the corner of his wide
set eyes, browless and cool green, like those of a fish. Rechele's long braids
were undone, like a witch's, full of feathers and straw. One half of her face
was red, as though she had been lying on it, the other half was white. She
was barefoot, and wore a torn red dress, through which parts of her body
shone. In her left hand she held an earthen pot, in her right a straw whisk
with ashes in it. Through her disheveled hair a pair of frantic eyes smiled
madly at him. It occurred to Itche Mates that there was more here than met
the eye.

"Are you a married woman, or a maiden?"

"A maiden," answered Rechele brazenly. "Like Jeptha's daughter, a
sacrifice to God!"

The mezuzah fell out of Reb Itche Mates' hand. Never in his whole life,
not since he had first stood on his feet, had he heard such talk. His flesh
crawled as though he had been touched by icy fingers. He wanted to run
away from such sacrilege, but then it came to him that this would not be
right. So he sat down on a box and took out a ruler and a bottle of ink. He
sharpened his goose quill with a piece of glass, dipped it in the ink, and--
wiped it again on his skull cap.

"These are not proper things to say," he told Rechele after some
hesitation. "The Blessed Name does not require human sacrifices. A
Jewish girl should have a husband and heed the Law."

"Nobody wants me!" Rechele said, and limped so close to him that
the female smell of her body overcame him. "Unless Satan will have me!"
She burst into sharp laughter which ended in a gasp. Large gleaming
tears fell from her eyes. The pot slipped from her hands and broke into
shards. Reb Itche Mates sought to reply, but his tongue had become heavy
and dry. The cupboard, the walls, the floor swayed. He began to write, but
his hand shook and a drop of ink blotted the parchment. So Reb Itche Mates
lowered his head, wrinkled his forehead, and suddenly grasped the secret.
For a while, he studied his pale fingernails, and then he muttered to himself:
"This is from Heaven."



10



Reb Itche Mates Sends a Proposal of Marriage to Rechele



Then did Reb Itche Mates the cabalist send messengers to Rechele,
enjoining them to speak to her in these words: The bridegroom is a
widower, and a man of no importance. His entire fortune consists of
one cotton coat, for both Sabbath and weekday wear; one fringed vest
worn on his bare body; one pair of cloth trousers; and one prayer shawl,
together with two sets of phylacteries. But the Creator is compassionate
and He doth feed all His creatures, from the weasel beast to the eggs of
the louse. Forty days before Rechele was born it was decreed in Heaven
that this seed, the daughter of Reb Eleazar, was to belong to Itche
Mates. What more is there to say? Let Rechele agree and the betrothal
will take place immediately; God willing, the groom will give the bridal
presents in the Land of Israel.

The following went to see Rechele: Reb Mordecai Joseph the cabalist,
Levi the rabbi's son, and Nechele his wife. Reb Mordecai Joseph chara-
cteristically struck his crutch on the floor and admonished Rechele
that Reb Itche Mates was a holy man who fasted from Sabbath to Sabbath,
so it would be an honor to have him as her husband, and the town where he
settled would be protected from evil. Levi the rabbi's son bit his underlip
and fixed his glance on the girl's face. Dismissing the men, Nechele under
took to arrange matters as one who understood women. Nechele's shoulders
were covered with a Turkish shawl; she wore a silk kerchief on her head, as
though it were the Sabbath, and two large gold earrings dangled from her
ears. After the fashion of daughters of good family, her ears had been
pierced many times. Self-importantly she sat down on the bench used to
prepare meat dishes, rested her feet on a footstool, and motioned the girl to
a place opposite--the bench used for dairy dishes. Then she blew her nose
loudly, wiped her fingers on the voluminous train of her cloth dress, and
spoke as follows: "Don't put on airs, Rechele, for your father is a poor man,
and has left you in God's care. Besides, you are not well (God save us!).
People are already talking and you'll end up in disgrace. Now that you have
someone who wants you, let your head be covered and take him. And if it
turns out that he doesn't please you, there's always the bill of divorcement."

Then did Rechele, she who was reputed to be half-witted, cover her face
with her delicate hands, bend over and begin to cry softly, bewailing
her fortune--and she wept as one who has all her wits about her. Her long
hair nearly touching the floor, her girlish shoulders quivered. As Nechele
spoke the girl sobbed. Her breasts trembled, and she could not utter a word.
She was still whimpering when Nechele, who was used to both the screams
of women in birth and the shrill mourning of brides, rose and left. A thin
smile played about Nechele's lips when she later said to the menfolk: "Ah
well, she's not mad at all! Fetch Reb Eleazar home, and she will put on the
bonnet soon enough."

Reb Itche Mates' friends collected a few coins and sent a runner to
the villages, to locate Reb Eleazar and bring him back. The messenger had
been away several days, and there was still no word. People whispered
anxiously that both Reb Eleazar and the messenger had been killed in the
village of Kotzitza. There was a magician in that hamlet who, it was said,
shrank human heads. Meanwhile Reb Itche Mates waited in the dark room
in Reb Godel Chasid's home. All day long he sat swaying over the appendix
to the Zohar, and working out numerical combinations of the names of
Yaweh. At night, when everyone else was asleep, he stole out of Reb Godel
Chasid's house and went to the bathhouse, which was situated between the
infirmary and the old graveyard. Against the infirmary door rested the
purification board awaiting a new corpse. In the moonlight the half-sunken
tombstones looked like toadstools. Entering the bathhouse Reb Itche Mates
lighted a piece of kindling and held it up like a torch. The walls were black
with soot. Cats jumped from bench to bench, silently pursuing each other,
with fiery eyes. The scorched stones lay cold and scattered near the oven.
Reb Itche Mates took off his clothes. His body was covered with a heavy
growth of yellow hair. It was scarred by the thorns and thistles on which he
had mortified himself. Silently he went down to the pool by way of the
crooked stone steps, noiselessly slipped into the water, submerged himself
without a splash, and disappeared for a few minutes. Slowly and cautiously,
like some water creature, he lifted his drenched head. Two and seventy
times did he immerse himself, according to the numerical signification of
the letters Ayin and Beth. When he had done he clothed himself and went
off to recite the midnight prayers.

Reb Itche Mates moved restlessly in the room that Reb Godel Chasid
had set apart for him, until day-break. Rather than annoy the mistress
of the house, he did not light the wick in the oil lamp. Sprinkling
ashes on his head, he strode from wall to wall in the darkness, chanting
verses, lamenting the destruction of the Holy Temple, and begging the Holy
One, blessed be He, to take back the Divine Presence which he had driven
away into Exile with Israel. Between prayers he grew silent, as though
attentive to things taking place in other worlds, which his ears alone could
discern. Outside the wind blew, rattling shutters and bringing the rending
cry of an infant and the singsong lullaby of a mother. Reb Godel Chasid
started up from sleep, awoke his wife, and said, "Rechele is greatly
honored. Reb Itche Mates is a holy man. She must be righteous too."

They waited for more than eight days, and still there was no word
either of Reb Eleazar or the messenger. Every peasant who came to Goray
was interrogated: "Have you heard anything, Ivan, of Reb Eleazar, the
owner of the brick house? Or have you perhaps met Leib Banach, who used
to buy horses' tails?"

But the peasant would push his sheepskin cap back over his tousled hair,
rub his forehead, look far into the distance to jog his memory, blink,
and remonstrate: "I've seen nothing, heard nothing...."

And he would stride off in the deep mud.

Thus Goray acquired a new deserted wife and a new orphan. The crows
cawed the bad news from the rooftops; Reb Itche Mates was the only
one not to be informed of it, for certainly the news would have made him
unhappy. The wife of Leib Banach the Messenger sat for seven days of
mourning. Rechele cried her eyes out and the good women of the town
looked after her. They prepared delicacies for her in small pots, made over
old garments for her to wear, and came to console her and to talk away the
evil spirits. Chinkele the Pious spent the night with Rechele, that demons
might not attach themselves to her.

Rechele was sick. Of the delicacies that were brought her she tasted
almost nothing, and she missed her period. Hour after hour she moved
aimlessly about the house like one in a cage, and peered into every crack
and crevice. Sometimes, for no reason, tears began to drop from her eyes,
as from a tree after rain. At other moments she would suddenly fall to
laughing, so loud that the echo resounded through all the corridors and
alcoves of the ruined house. At night, before going to sleep, she draped
the window of her room with all kinds of old clothes, out of dread of
moonlight. But the bright night spied through the cracks, light stained the
faded walls, trembling in long pearl strands. Rechele crawled down from
bed in her night dress, listening to the scratching of the mice and the dry
crackle of the firewood behind the stove. Sometimes a crow outside her
window would awaken with a throaty cry. One day Rechele imagined that
the snowcovered chestnut tree across the way had begun to blossom.

For a few days Rechele had heard the sound of a man laughing and
braying in the middle of the night.

As often as Chinkele the Pious fell asleep, Rechele would wake her
with a tug at the shoulder.

"Chinkele, don't be angry," she would say guiltily. "Somehow, I can't
rest."

"Be patient--soon you'll be married to Reb Itche Mates, and nothing
bad will come near you," Chinkele would say. "He is a holy man sent by
Heaven to save you."

"Chinkele, darling, I'm so afraid of him!" remonstrated Rechele, and
her voice broke. "He has dead eyes!"

"You mad creature!" Chinkele cried, infuriated. "God send your
enemies such nightmares! Come, lie down near me, and I'll drive off the
evil spirit."

Rechele lay near Chinkele, who whispered an incantation. Then
Chinkele the Pious began to snore and whistle through her thin nose.
Suddenly the old clothes dropped from the window and the room became
bright as day. Now Rechele could distinguish everything: pots on the
hearth, cobwebs on the walls, and the lions on the eastern wall tapestry,
with their heads averted and tongues protruding. One of Chinkele's eyes
was half open and glazed, the other shut tight, shrunken as though the liquid
had run out of it. There were so many wrinkles in the corners of Chinkele's
eyes that she seemed to be laughing in her sleep. Raising herself, Rechele
rested her head on her knees, waiting for the cock's crow. Her arms and legs
ached, the brains in her skull crumbled like grains of sand, and thought
buzzed about in her head like flies. Lifting her gaze, she stared into the
dazzling snowy landscape and shuddering, as from many pinpricks,
murmured: "I've no strength left! Merciful God, take me!"



11



A Letter from Lublin



An emissary came from Lublin to Goray bearing a letter for Rabbi Benish
Ashkenazi. Written in the holy tongue, in small ornate characters, with the
sig-nature ending in a flourish, it read thus: "To the master of the holy
teachings, the righteous one, the foundation of the universe, like unto
Joachin and Boaz, he that is the pillar of our house, for whom the doors of
the fear of the Lord and wisdom are never shut, the pride of our generation
and its glory, the strong hammer whose learning smashes mountains and
grinds them fine, our rabbi and leader, the man of God--that is to say, to
Rabbi Benish Ashkenazi, may his light shine forever and forever, and may
he live many long happy years and in peace, amen.

"I have heard the tidings and pangs and throes assailed me as a
woman in labor, and I cried with a loud and bitter cry. For a wicked people
have arisen, sons of Belial that did say: let us break the bands asunder and
the yoke of the holy teachings and of God (blessed be he 1).' And they did
trust in the staff of the bruised reed, that sinful man who leads others to sin,
like unto Jeroboam the son of Nebath--Sabbatai Zevi is his name, may he
be erased from the book of life. Certainly his repute must have reached your
ears, for it is many years now since first the cry went forth to all the borders
of Judah--that the time of the Messiah was on hand, and that new prophets
had arisen, visionaries and stargazers, who were proclaiming: 'In the year
5,426 from the Creation of the World [1665] our redeemer cometh. He shall
pass over the river Sambation to the other side. There he shall take for wife
the thirteen-year-old daughter of our master Moses. Afterward he shall
come back to us riding on a lion, to wage great wars with the peoples of the
earth, and to raise up the fallen tabernacle of King David.' I alone, the little
one among the thousands of Judah, must confess that I have never inclined
an ear or given any credence to this alien talk, which has no sanction in the
words of our wise men, of blessed memory, and flows from allusions in the
Zohar and other cabalistic volumes, about which I would rather be silent. I
shall keep a curb on my mouth, that I may not be burned by their speech,
for their bite is as the bite of the fox and their sting is as the sting of the
scorpion, and the like. These tidings have brought great confusion to the
tents of Israel in Poland, for the wounds we got at the hands of the murderer
Chmelnicki (may his name perish!) and from the other cruel men like him,
are still festering, and the remnant of Israel is greatly impoverished, and our
pride is fallen to the earth--the like has never been seen or heard since the
day that Israel was driven from its land. In every town where these tidings
came there sprang up empty and lightheaded men that, without considering,
accepted the chaff together with the wheat, and let themselves fall into the
net which the wicked man had spread at their feet. Likewise a great number
of men of wisdom and understanding were captured in that net, or else
feared to open their mouths, and cried Amen, despite themselves. Your
Honor knows well that a long time must pass before any news can reach our
ears from those lands that are under the sceptre of the Turk, and that for the
most part there is no substance in such news, wherein truth and falsehood
are mingled. Nevertheless, daily new tidings do arrive, filthy and terrifying,
which cause our hearts to melt like wax and our knees to grow weak. For
witnesses do testify that Sabbatai Zevi doth pronounce the holy name of
God, sounding every letter in it, and that he doth make use of the impure
names to do his magic and to alter the course of nature, that men may
believe in him and his teachings. It is also said that he styles himself in his
letters as 'I, your God, Sabbatai Zevi.' Woe to the ears that have heard these
things, and woe to the eyes that have seen them! For this is blasphemy and
taunting of the Lord, of which it has been said: `The fires of Gehenna shall
be quenched, but their fire shall not be quenched, and they will be an
abhorring unto all flesh.' I, the least of men, have sought to search into the
roots of the thing--but who can gird his loins against a people that consumes
alive all who dare cast the slightest doubt on their depraved belief--this
multitude that would not sift pearls from sand? Who knows, perhaps
Sabbatai Zevi intends to become the idol of an idolatry, like Mahomet and
all the others who have forged the word of God and contaminated the
world? If we, the wise men of Poland, the shepherds of our generation, had
ourselves but known what he has done and his doings, we might have been
able to go forth to meet him, armed with the shafts of the Torah, and we
might have waged war upon him, the war of God, until he were utterly
destroyed. But, to our sorrow, we know not the man and cannot, until we
do, confront him with proof positive; we must in the meantime wait to see
what the day will reveal. And though many and great men do err about him,
I swear by the living God that Sabbatai Zevi is not our Messiah, for whom
our eyes have yearned these nigh two thousand years. For falsehood and
deceit drip from his lips. An inciter and a seducer is he, one that hath said: 'I
shall devour Jacob and lay waste his habitation,' and of certain he shall meet
his downfall. For who then has ever risen against the Eternal One of Israel
and prospered? Bitter will be his end, and all the execrations of God in the
twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus and the twenty-eighth chapter of
Deuteronomy, and all' the curses which Joshua visited on Jericho will
certainly fall on his head, Amen, so be His will.

"Nor would I have written all these things, for the time is not yet
ripe and we must in the meantime lean upon forgers of letters and spinners
of moonbeams (as mentioned above). But by chance the news reached me
that there has come to your holy community a man, one Itche Mates by
name (as his name is, so is he--Folly his name is, and folly is with him).
And this forger and seducer doth give himself out to be a great man, as is
the way of all who practice to deceive. He hath made a pit and digged it for
young and old, to take them captive through his hypocritical piety and alien
ways, the like of which no eye hath ever seen before. From what he says,
one is to believe that he fasts from Sabbath to Sabbath, immerses himself
many times in the ritual bath (with a rat in his hand!), mortifies his body
with all manner of mortifications--all this he says and does to lead proper
people into error and to seduce them from the path of righteousness, and to
cast them into the lowest pit of heresy. Of such men King Solomon, the
wisest of all men, hath justly said: 'None that go unto her return, neither do
they attain unto the paths of life.' For this man works not through the power
of God, but rather through that of the Evil One. He doth work magic. He
doth consult with ghosts and his staff declareth unto him, and he hath made
a covenant with demons. This has been revealed by the great ones, the kings
of the world--and who, say, are the true kings of the world? They are our
masters, the rabbis. Every place where the sole of his foot treads, he gives
out cures and amulets to heal the sick and drive out evil spirits, like those
masters who were able to venture into the vineyards of cabala and emerge
unharmed. But those who know cabala truly, those who understand its
allusions and mysteries, have searched his amulets closely and have found
that he makes use of the names of demons and demonesses, of hobgoblins
and brazen hounds (God help and shield us!). And not only have his
amulets been of no avail, they have instead brought innocent children, that
had not before tasted of sin, as well as pure-hearted men, to die from
extraordinary causes, after lingering illnesses. The hair of my flesh doth
stand up, for the devils take dominion over those who make use of them,
wreaking their vengeance on them both in this world and in the world-to
come. For they attach themselves to the soul and do it all manner of filth.
The rabbis, God-fearing and perfect souls, have often warned Itche Mates
to cease his practices--for one must warn the culprit before punishing him.
But he mocks in his heart the utterances of the righteous. He howls like a
hound with his mouth, and finds a hundred and fifty arguments with which
to declare the unclean clean; but in secret he clings to Satan and to Lilith,
and offers up sacrifices to them. To demons he doth sacrifice, not to the
living God. His pocket is full of forged letters from the greatest men of the
generation, and his lips drip with deceit. With a tongue of blandishment he
doth speak, and the poison is under his gums. To make matters worse, this
false prophet is forever sunk in melancholy, whose root is lust, as has been
clearly demonstrated by our sages. In every town he comes to he speaks
upon the heart of some woman to join him in the bond of matrimony, but
his purpose is to make her unclean and to give her a bad name. For after the
marriage his wives all move away from him, because of his ugly ways;
from too much magic working, he has himself been caught in the web, and
no longer has the strength to act the man's part; he shall lean upon his
house, but it shall not stand.... Nevertheless, he will not divorce them, and
lets them sit alone, grass widows, the tears on their cheeks, their bitter cries
splitting heaven, with no recourse. Woe to him, and woe to his soul, that
shall weep in secret: Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to
rouse up leviathan.

"And now I beg Your Honor, regard not the vessel but that which is
in it, and let this wicked man not strike root in your holy congregation,
whose name is as ointment poured forth, henna and spikenard. Incline not
your ear to his allusions and falsehoods. Tear him out by the roots. Beat
him, break his head, make him a disgrace and a mockery, and so shalt thou
put away the evil from thy midst, as was done with the help of God in other
holy congregations. For from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is
no soundness in him, but wounds and bruises and festering sores. Tear the
veil from his face, to sanctify the name of Him who is on high, and to give
the wicked the reward for his wickedness. Let the blood that he has shed
fall on his own head. Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from
under heaven. Drive him off in shame, as have done all the other great men
in their towns, and uncover his nakedness for all to see, that he may know
that there is a judge and justice in the world, and that Israel is no widower.
For the waters are come in even unto the soul, and there is no longer the
strength to suffer these hypocrites and prophesyers, who would tear down
the branch of Judah--that is, the disciples of the wise--and do away with
them utterly. This sheet is too short, and not all things can be said. Give
to the wise man and he will be yet wiser, understanding one thing from
another. And God shall stand at our side and cleanse the world from the
scum of the serpent and the poison of the basilisk. With this I put an end to
words and conclude with a broken and a contrite heart, and with faltering
knees.

"--From me, who am the smallest of men, the tail of the fox, the
threshold to be trodden by the wise. A worm am I, and no man, one to be
mocked and despised by all: Jacob, the son of the holy Rabbi Nachum
(blessed be the memory of the righteous!), once the head of the holy
community of Pintchev, and now resident in the holy community of Lublin
(God protect and shield it!)."



12



Rabbi Benish Prepares for War with the Sabbatai Zevi Sect



Rabbi Benish prepared for war with the Sabbatai Zevi sect. He sent
Grunam to search out the packman Itche Mates and learn his ways,
and on the fence of the prayer house he hung an injunction against
reading the tracts from abroad. Rabbi Benish called on all those
who had amulets to bring them in to be examined, for there were
widespread rumors that the names of impure demons and of Sabbatai
Zevi were written in many of them. On the Sabbath the rabbi preached
in the prayer house between the morning and the afternoon prayers
on the verse in the Song of Songs: "Awaken not, nor stir up love,
until it please"; he pointed out that it was a sin to try to hasten the
end of days. Rabbi Benish also told the congregation of the false Messiahs
who had risen in days gone by, and of the persecutions that Jews had
suffered because of them. To keep the young folk who were cabalists from
gathering at midnight as they usually had done, he ordered the study house
and the bathhouse closed late at night. Reb Itche Mates was no longer able
to immerse himself in the bathhouse before the midnight prayer watch, and
was forced to go to the pond beyond the town, taking along a hatchet to
chop a hole in the ice. Two young men walked ahead of him with wooden
lanterns to light the way, which was full of pits and holes. Reb Itche Mates
carried the Book of the Creation to drive off evil spirits. Silently, without a
sigh, he took off his clothes, and immersed himself in the water. So as not to
lose the small break in the ice, he held on to a rope. After immersion he did
not cover his frozen body immediately; instead, he rolled in the snow,
recounting his transgressions. He went so far as to beg forgiveness for the
pain he had given his mother when he lay in her womb.... Rabbi Benish
called him a "foolish zealot."

The old rabbi's melancholy mood would not leave him. Ever since
the Sabbatai Zevi sect had gained in strength in Goray, he had begun to
shout at the members of his household, and had become brusque with the
women who asked him ritual questions. He stopped greeting visitors with
"God bless your coming," and avoided prayers with the quorum. His body
stooped as under a heavy load, and he would nap during the day; this was
unusual for him. Waking his household in the middle of the night, he would
demand to have his bed fixed because his body ached and he was sleepless.
With nightfall he ordered the shutters barred. He wrote many letters that he
did not send, and they were scattered over the table and the floor. No matter
how often his dinner was brought to him from the kitchen, he would let it
grow cold, until finally it had to be carried off, still untouched. He no longer
reviewed the daily lesson with his students, and, as in times of famine or
epidemic, he ordered his bed removed from the bedroom. His face yellowed
and grew wrinkled, and old age overtook him all at once. Once he sat up all
night composing a will, which he burnt in the oven at dawn. _Another time,
calling in ten of his company, he made a declaration to the effect that he
remained true to his faith, and that any statement to the contrary that he
should make before his death should be regarded as lacking truth and
validity. He also wrote this declaration on parchment with his goose quill,
and ordered the witnesses to sign their names to it. For many days after
ward the town was full of whispering about this event, for people did not
understand the meaning of it. Finally, in the Book of the Ford of the Jabbok,
they found a passage explaining that Samael comes to every dying man
with a drawn sword in his hand, and incites him to deny God; hence, it is
best to void any such blasphemy in advance. From this they drew the
conclusion that Rabbi Benish was preparing for his end.

Meanwhile, amazing things were taking place in Goray.

It was reported that Mordecai Joseph, the cabalist, was kneading a
clay golem in the study house attic, that he might come to the help of
theJews at the birthpangs of the Messiah. Someone saw Mordecai Joseph and
a boy haul a sack of clay up the stairs. Of Reb Itche Mates it was said
that he experienced an ascent of the soul every night, and that Rabbi
Isaac Luria, the holy man, came and revealed the secrets of the cabala to
him. Since Reb Itche Mates' arrival in Goray, the Jews of that town had
set their hearts on returning to God. The men arose before daybreak to
recite psalms, the women fasted Mondays and Thursdays and sent pots of
food to the poorhouse. One married woman rapped on the prayer stand one
Sabbath and confessed that she had lain with her husband during the days
of her impurity. Young newlyweds did not visit their wives on the nights
they immersed themselves in the bathhouse. A few select persons gathered
every night at Reb Godel Chasid's house, and Reb Itche Mates bared the
mysteries of the Torah for them.

On the night of the seventeenth day of Tebet, Rechele was betrothed
to Reb Itche Mates; the betrothal feast took place in the upper floor of
Rechele's house. Benches and tables were set about the room, one section
for the men and another section for the women. At the last moment Rechele
changed her mind and fell to weeping that she did not want Itche Mates.
But she was mollified with sweet talk and gifts until finally she consented
again. Now she sat crowded in among the women, wearing a silk dress, a
kerchief on her forehead, and a strand of beads that belonged to Chinkele.
Her face was pale, and wry, her large brilliant eyes were full of tears. To
divert the bride and raise her spirits, the women enthusiastically praised her
beauty, stroked her hair, and quickened her with spoonfuls of moldy citrus
preserve. Reb Itche Mates, in a silk kaftan, sat surrounded by his followers
at the men's table. The oven was stoked, so that the walls sweated, and the
tall candles in the earthen candlesticks melted so fast that the wicks needed
frequent trimming. Reb Itche Mates was in high spirits, his face flushed,
eyes bright. Alluding often to the mystery of holy sexual union, he
expounded new cabalistic combinations and permutations of holy letters,
while doling out portions of brandy and spiced wine. So elated did he
become that he told the women to dance, to amuse the bride-to-be. At this
Chinkele the Pious stood up and ordered the table pushed aside. A
Bohemian, she followed that country's customs. The young women
mocked her and guffawed, but Chinkele did not seem to hear them.
Extending her thin arms in their wide, gathered sleeves, she put her small
head to one side, circled about and sang in Old Yiddish: Protect, Lord God,
this bride and groom; May we see the Messiah soon.

The Holy Presence, Lord God, wed As these two seek the marriage
bed.

Ecstatic, Chinkele the Pious wanted them to dance in a circle, but
the women were bashful and, crowding around the threshold, they pushed
one another forward. Chinkele tried to dance with the bride, but because of
Rechele's lameness had to desist. Then, wiping his wet forehead with his
sleeve, Itche Mates arose and approached Chinkele. He drew his
handkerchief from his breast pocket, held one corner of it, and said to
Chinkele, speaking out of the side of his mouth so as not to address her
directly: "Take a corner! It is pleasing to the blessed God for us to dance
before Him."

Reb Itche Mates pulled up the tails of his kaftan, exposing his white linen
trousers and the fringes of his vest, and, covering his eyes with his left
hand, he began to scrape his feet. Like a bride at the bridal dance, Chinkele
lifted the train of her ruffled satin wedding dress and hopped back and forth
in her pointed shoes. The sparkling beads on her bonnet jangled, her hollow
cheeks were flushed red, and shining tears dripped from her eyelids. At
first everyone looked on in amazement. Some even doubted whether this was
not sinful levity. But soon they were silenced, sensing that this dance was
not a simple one: great things were transpiring. So profound did the silence
become that candle flames could be heard sputtering. Men crowded close
together, staring with moist wide-open eyes. A tall, starved-looking young
cabalist, with a prominent Adam's apple, swayed violently as though in
prayer and, wringing his fingers until the knuckles cracked, he grimaced
and squinted. Reb Mordecai Joseph stood in a corner leaning on his crutch.
His tousled beard burned, his eyeballs flickered green, torrents of sweat
poured down his face, and his whole body jerked spasmodically. For hours
on end the two danced without wearying. Their souls seemed to be reaching
for the higher spheres. Rechele meanwhile leaned against the edge of a bed,
hands covering her face as though she were secretly crying. Suddenly,
dragging her lame leg, as though to step forward, she pulled herself up and
fell to laughing so violently and so loudly that everyone was startled.
Before anyone could reach her, she had fallen and she lay choking with
sobs. Her eyes glazed, her arms and legs contorted, foam ran from her
twisted mouth. She shuddered, twisted, and a vapor rose from her as from a
dying ember.

Reb Itche Mates noticed nothing: the kerchief still in his hand he
danced on, his feet stumbled over each other like a drunken man's. His face
glowed with mystic enthusiasm, his silk coat was wringing wet; beads of
sweat ran down his beard and glided over his open chest. His sash had
fallen off, one of his kaftan tails trailed on the drenched floor, his head was
turned up and tilted, as though he constantly stared at something beyond the
ceiling.

Unable to restrain himself any longer, Reb Mordecai Joseph
groaned, pounded the floor with his crutch, and suddenly began to hop
about, sobbing and yammering: "Dance, men! Let's not delay! The divine
company await us!"



13



"The Others" Arrive



It was after midnight. In the bright night that lay over Goray a wind blew,
a strong wind that swept away the dry snow and bore it off to pile up in
mounds. The frozen earth was bared; trees shook off their winter white;
branches broke; moss suddenly appeared on the housetops. In the very
middle of the winter the roofs faced the world, with all their rotten
shingles and patches. Crows awoke and cawed hoarsely, as at some
unexpected sorrow. Snowflakes whirled through the air like wild geese.
Between dark, plowed clouds, full of pits and holes, a faceless moon rushed
through the sky. One might have thought the town had been doomed to a
sudden alteration that had to be completed before the rising of the morning
star.

That night Rabbi Benish lay down to sleep later than usual on the
bench bed in his study. In his white trousers and prayer vest he lay, resting
on three feather-soft pillows, and covered with a comforter. Nevertheless,
he could not fall asleep. A whistling and a howling rose from the hearth,
and now and then in the stagnant air a sigh as of a soul in torment. The
rafter, piled high with ancient holy volumes no longer fit for use, shuddered,
and dull thuds were heard from above, as though someone were moving
heavy things about. Though the clay oven was stoked, and the windows
shut and sealed with braided straw, a cold gust blew through the air, chilling
Rabbi Benish's old limbs.

Rabbi Benish attempted to concentrate on Torah as he usually did
when sleep had deserted him. But tonight his thoughts ran too rapidly,
crowded close on one another, tangled. He pressed his eyelids down over
his eyes, but they opened again of their own accord. Half awake and half
asleep, his ears caught the sound of speech that seemed to be issuing from
many mouths. Several voices were debating stubbornly and hotly. It was the
same old everlasting wrangling about Sabbatai Zevi and the end of days that
had been running ceaselessly through his mind. Suddenly he started, so
violently that his bench bed moved with him. The voices ceased. In their
place there came a rapping at the rabbi's shutter. He shook himself awake,
sat up, and trembling with fear asked: "Who's there?"

"It is me, Rabbi. Forgive me."

"Who are you?"

"Grunam."

Rabbi Benish sensed bad news, and his skin prickled. After a brief
silence he replied, "Just a moment!"

The rabbi crawled out of bed, groped for his slippers in the dark, and
pulled his robe around him. Then he went to the door. In his confusion he
knocked his head so hard against the top of the door-post that a lump
immediately rose on his forehead. Blindly, his hand trembling, he lifted the
chain, drew the bolt, and turned the key twice in the keyhole. Grunam burst
into the room, bringing the cold with him, breathing as though someone had
been pursuing him.

"Rabbi," he gasped, "a thousand pardons! A whole crowd of men
and women have gathered together! At Reb Eleazar Babad's, on the upper
floor! Men dancing with women. Profanations!"

Rabbi Benish could not believe his ears. Had things gone this far in
Goray? Without delay and silently he began to dress. In the darkness he
found his trousers, put his fur coat over them, and even located his broad
sash. Several times chairs fell; Rabbi Benish stumbled against the table
edge and hurt himself. His legs were unusually torpid; a tremor crossed his
back, stabbing icily at his spine. For the first time in many years Rabbi
Benish fell into a fit of coughing. Old Grunam's eyes shone like those of a
cat.

"Rabbi, forgive me," he began again.

"Come," Rabbi Benish almost shouted. "Quick!"

Weak-kneed, Rabbi Benish pulled up his collar. He expected darkness
outside, but it was bright as twilight. An icy wind immediately gripped
him and took his breath away. Thin needles of snow or rain--it was
impossible to tell which--began to sting his face, which immediately
swelled. His forehead and eyelids stiffened and became bloated. Rabbi
Benish looked about him, as though unable to recognize the town, and
wanted to take Grunam's hand, so as not to slip and fall. But all at once a
great hoarse wind rushed upon him, thrusting him back several steps, and
began to drive him downhill from behind. His fur hat, torn from his head,
flew high in the air like a black bird, crookedly plunged to the earth, and
began to roll madly straight toward the well. Rabbi Benish seized hold of
his skull cap with both hands, and the ground wavered beneath him.

"Grunam!" Rabbi Benish shouted, in a stranger's voice.

Later, Rabbi Benish did not know himself how it had all happened.
Grunam began to run after the sable hat, racing down the steep incline;
then, as though attempting to cover the hat with his body, fell and rose to
fall again. He rolled down the hill and all at once disappeared entirely, as
though carried off. Casting a terrified glance over his shoulder, Rabbi
Benish realized that evil was abroad and tried to return to his house. But at
that moment his eyes were filled as with sand. The skull cap fell from his
head, the tails of his coat billowed, and began to drag him backward. His
head spun and he choked. Suddenly the storm seized him, bore him aloft for
a short distance, as on wings, and then cast him down with such violence
that in the turmoil he could hear his bones shatter. With the last vestige of
his consciousness he was still able to think: "The End."

The whole incident must have taken a few seconds. Grunam arrived
in haste with the fur hat, but he could no longer find the rabbi. He was
certain that the rabbi had turned back to the house and began to rap on the
shutters, calling, but there was no answer. Then, sensing evil, Grunam fell
to shouting at the top of his lungs: "Help, the rabbi! He-lp!"

The first to respond was the rabbi's wife; then his daughters-in-law
and grandchildren sprang from sleep. Running outdoors half naked, they
roused the town with their frightened cries. At first no one could understand
what had happened. Terror had deprived Grunam of speech; instead, he
gestured and blinked like a mute. Doors opened on every side. Many of the
townspeople feared that marauders had descended on the town, others
thought there was a fire. A full half hour passed before Rabbi Benish was
found half covered with snow near a chestnut tree some twenty paces from
his home. The rabbi's wife fainted when she saw what had happened, and
all the women began to lament at once. But Rabbi Benish was not dead.
Several men lifted the groaning rabbi and bore him into the study. His face
was blue and frozen, his right arm broken or dislocated. One eye was shut,
as though pasted together. A vapor rose from his snow-covered beard, and
his body shook feverishly. People asked him questions, shouting into his
ears, but he did not answer. With difficulty his garments were removed and
he was put to bed. The rabbi's lips grew white with the pain, and Ozer's wife
moistened them with vinegar. Someone else rubbed the rabbi's temples and
blew on his face, to revive him. To brighten the room, one of those who had
come running up lighted the braided candle re-served for the Sabbath night
ceremony; the candle flickered with a smoky fire.

What had happened soon became known to those at the betrothal feast.
Most of the assembled immediately ran off, the women stealing out
individually. The candles had already gone out. Only a few damp pine
branches low under the tripod spread a flickering glow. The floor was wet,
the benches and tables were pushed back and overturned, the ceiling
dripped and the smell of brandy and charred embers, as after a fire, hung in
the air. Rechele had still not come to, and lay on the bed, damp, her hair
wild and her teeth clenched. Chinkele the Pious kept trying to revive her,
unbuttoning Rechele's blouse, unclasping hooks, untying laces, pouring
juice on her lips and at the same time murmuring affectionately and
pleading with her. Reb Itche Mates, his face turned to the wall, stood in a
corner, muttering.... Reb Mordecai Joseph, who had drunk half a jug full of
aqua vitae, jogged Itche Mates' elbow, trying to get him to go home, and,
rasping, crowed with pleasure at his foe Benish's downfall.

"Come, Reb Itche Mates. The demons have him now--may his name
perish!"



14



The Rabbi Forsakes His Congregation



In the study, where Rabbi Benish's canopy bed had been placed, the oven
had been stoked so high that the plaster. was cracking and the heat
scorched. The outside door had been locked to keep out the cold, and
visitors who started coming early in the morning would pass through
several rooms before entering the one where Rabbi Benish lay. Its floor was
wet and muddy, and it reeked of sickness and medicines. The citizens of
Goray milled about the sickroom, careworn, chewing at their beards,
rubbing their foreheads, and loudly debating what was to be done. Women
with filthy kerchiefs on their heads huddled drearily together, whispering in
corners, blowing their noses in their aprons, and sighing aloud. The table
where the rabbi had studied the Torah for more than half a century had been
moved aside; the doors of the bookchest were wide open; the spindly legs
of the antique chairs cracked and split under the unaccustomed weight of
the visitors, and everything seemed suddenly to be amiss. The sick man lay
in his bed under two comforters, his velvet coat on his legs. Perspiration
beaded his high, bruised forehead, his eyes were closed, and his beard
tangled like flax. His whole appearance had changed.

The rabbi's house was greatly disordered. The rabbi's wife moved about
with her head bound and red eyes swollen with crying. Her shoulders
stooped even more than usual, her hairy chin kept shaking. She seemed to
be constantly muttering something, and in her confusion carried a pot with
her wherever she went. The rabbi's daughter--the widow--and his elder
daughter-in-law ran to the study house every few hours to supplicate God
anew and to light fresh candles. Together, they rushed up the steps leading
to the Torah Ark, opened the door to implore the pure Torah scrolls, and
cried so piteously that the young men in the study house wept to hear them.
Common folk recited psalms, women measured the graves with wicks from
which they later made candles to ward off death from the rabbi. Even the
rabbi's son Levi, who belonged to the Sabbatai Zevi sect, forgot the differ-
ences with his father and joined the other visitors in the sick room. Only
Ozer, the rabbi's eldest, was not there; he sat in the kitchen, after his
fashion, filching from the pots on the fire food which, in his panicky
haste, he swallowed unchewed. Every now and then Ozer would come rushing
into the sick room with a sooty face, jostle his way through the crowd,
to confusedly ask of all and none: "What's happening? No better?"

What cures were not attempted! They tried soaking the bad arm in hot
water, to soften it, but that only scorched it. They applied seething salt,
but that made it worse. The keeper of the poorhouse, an expert at nursing
the sick, insisted that the arm was only dislocated, and she tried to snap
it back into its socket, but Rabbi Benish fainted with the pain. His
grandchildren ran from house to house asking for advice, and returned with
numerous home remedies: Honey cakes to apply to the wound, dog fat to
smear on it, malodorous yellow-green salves, mustard plaster. Two
experienced women with headkerchiefs high on their foreheads, sleeves
rolled up, and great aprons on, stood beside the bed and poured boiling
water constantly from pots into basins, so that the sick room was dense with
steam; they filtered the water through sieves and lighted glowing coals, as
women do on the eve of Passover when cleansing the Passover dishes. The
room smelled of smoke, charred stones, and the ritual of the purification of
the dead. Whenever anyone asked the sick man how things were with him,
he would open a corner of his eye, look strangely at his questioner, and
instantly sink back into his slumber.

Two messengers had been sent at daybreak to a nearby village to fetch a
peasant who was reputedly expert at setting dislocated arms and legs.
The messengers were given money and a flask of aqua vitae, and told
to drag the peasant by the ears if necessary. They should have returned by
now, for the village was barely a mile away. But they were nowhere to be
seen. Boys ran outdoors to be on the lookout for the messengers and the
peasant. Each of them came back with another reply. Somewhere far away,
on a hill, a dot came into sight, but it was uncertain whether it could
be the messengers or a sleigh hauling wood. Since the disappearance of Reb
Eleazar and Leib Banach, everyone lived in terror. Already the messengers'
wives sat with flushed faces in the kitchen of the rabbi's wife, prepared
to scream and weep. Eating thickly buttered bread, they sighed like widows.
Though it was fiercely cold outdoors, knots of women stood about the
market place, hunched in shawls, huddling together and as anxious as
though waiting for a funeral. Their feet, thrust into men's great boots,
kept up a constant dance. Their faces, prematurely aged, were pale with the
frost and the new terror whose shadow was slowly deepening over the town.
They all repeated the same refrain: "It's because of 'the others,' the
demons."

"They're the ones to blame."

They gossiped that Nechele, his daughter-in-law, had bewitched Rabbi
Benish. One woman had with her own eyes seen Nechele in secret confabu-
lation with the old witch Kinnegunde. All the women knew for certain
that Nechele had a magical elf lock in the chest in her room, and in
order to bind her husband, Levi, she would have him drink the water in
which she washed her breasts. Glucke, the trustee, swore that, unable to
sleep all night, she had heard the noise of women chattering in the wind,
and had concluded that the spirits were gathering together. Later, at the
very moment when Rabbi Benish was injured, all the spirits had burst
into laughter, mocking and clapping their hands--for they had avenged
themselves on humans, had done them an injury.

At nightfall the peasant healer finally arrived. The messengers reported
that the peasant had refused to come under any circumstance and
that they had had to get him dead drunk and drag him all the way. He was a
tiny old man, wearing straw shoes and a sheep-skin coat with the wool side
out. His tremendous hat was pushed authoritatively back over his white
curls. His small eyes were red and always smiling. He was led into the room
where Rabbi Benish lay; the door was opened wide in his honor, as though
he were a great physician. The old man rubbed his hands joyfully together,
and began to hee-haw and skip about. His toothless mouth babbled
something foolish and sly.

"He wants another cupful," one of the messengers confided to the rabbi's
wife. They poured the peasant half a cup. He took a piece of dry cheese
out of his pocket, bit it, and tears of pleasure rolled down his cheeks.
Then he approached the sick bed to show what he could do. He looked at
Rabbi Benish as though the rabbi were only pretending to be ill. The
moment the peasant grasped his bad arm Rabbi Benish began screaming
and twisting in his bed as though to tear himself free. The peasant pull-
ed so violently they heard the bone crack. His drunken face turned blue
with the strain and with sudden wrath. Rabbi Benish gagged and fainted--
they were barely able to revive him. The peasant fell into a murderous
rage and grabbed a vessel and smashed it to the earth.

"Devils in human shape!" he screamed, and his fists shook. He
seemed to be about to throw himself at the sick man.

With difficulty they managed to get the peasant out of the sick room
and persuade him to return to his village. Afraid he might collapse in some
field and freeze to death, he was so drunk--and that the peasants might then
accuse the Jews of killing him, and descend upon the town, they found a
man who agreed to take him home.

Meanwhile, night fell, and, with it came a frost more bitter than any
the old folks could remember. Water froze in the well, and the pail cracked.
An ice hill formed up to the very rim of the well, and it was dangerous to go
near it, for one false step was enough to send one over the edge. Though the
ovens were heated in every house, small children in their cribs cried with
the cold. As always on a night like this, there were numerous accidents and
evil afflictions. Infants would suddenly begin to choke, lose their breath,
and turn blue. The brandy and pepper placed on their bellies made things
even worse. Girls put on men's jackets, bundled up in double layers of
shawls, and went seeking women who could avert the evil eye by incan-
tations. In many houses the stoves suddenly began to smoke so heavily
that, to avoid suffocation, people had to pour water over the fire. In one
house soot began to burn in the chimney, and a ladder had to be quickly
found for someone to crawl up the crooked, slippery roof and poke wet
sacks and rags down the chimney. Everybody began coughing. Elsewhere,
there were cases of frozen arms and legs.

In Rabbi Benish's room the company gradually thinned out, until ever-
yone had left; the room looked like an inn just emptied of guests. Ever
since the peasant had tried to push his arm back into its socket, the rabbi's
suffering had grown greater every minute. The flesh of his bad arm had
swollen, became puffed, and had a fat, ugly smoothness about it; it was
steaming with heat. Late at night Rabbi Benish grew delirious with pain. He
demanded that his wife pay him in full the one hundred and fifty gold
pieces that his father-in-law had pledged. Then suddenly he wanted to know
if his dead son-in-law had eaten the evening meal. This was taken as a bad
omen, and his family burst into tears. Rabbi Benish opened one eye, came
to himself momentarily, and said: "Take me away to Lublin. For God's sake!
I do not want to lie in the graveyard in Goray."

Early the next morning a sleigh with two horses stood before the
rabbi's house. Rabbi Benish was dressed and covered with several
comforters and whole bundles of straw. Grunam and the rabbi's wife
accompanied him. Even his foes gathered and followed the sleigh to the
bridge. Women cried and wrung their hands, as at a funeral. One woman
flung herself in front of the horses, hoarsely screaming: "Holy Rabbi, why
do you forsake us? Rabbi! Ho-ly Rabbi!"




　　　　　　　　　　　　PART TWO


1



The Wedding



The day of Reb Itche Mates' wedding. For three days, engaged in a constant
round of mortifications, he had not taken so much as a spoonful of warm
water into his mouth. Nights, without removing his clothes, he sat with his
feet in a bucket of cold water to keep him awake and mumbled perpetually.
For days on end he strayed somewhere in the hills, sinking to his knees in
the snow, as though he sought for someone in the white, luminous fields.
The cold baths had made his voice hoarse; his eyes were overcast and
extinguished like a blind man's. On his wedding day he lay on the bench
in his small room in Reb Godel Chasid's house, surrounded by the faithful,
who attended his every word. There was even one young cabalist who
wrote down whatever Reb Itche Mates said.--The women devoted
themselves to Rechele.

Ever since Itche Mates had, as a groom-to-be, been called to the pul-
pit to read out of the Torah scroll the Sabbath before the wedding, Rec-
ele had shown no further signs of rebellion. She listened submissively
to the older women's instructions. She was already versed in the laws
dealing with a wife's cleanliness and had read through all the women's
books concerning purity and modesty. On her pale cheeks two red spots had
settled and would not vanish. Chinkele the Pious daily for hours on end
instructed Rechele in morality, stroked her head, and kissed her with cold
lips, as though Rechele were her own daughter. The previous evening,
Rechele had been taken to the bathhouse for the first time. As they always
did at a virgin's first visit, the bandsmen followed her, playing a merry
dance tune. A number of women accompanied Rechele, forming a circle
around her that she might not be contaminated by encountering a dog or a
pig on the way. Vulgar street boys shouted lewd words and obscenities after
her. In the bathhouse Yite the Attendant took charge of Rechele, undressed
her, and felt her loins and breasts to determine whether she might be barren.
With great care, Yite cut the nails of Rechele's hands and feet, so that there
might be no barrier to the water at Rechele's immersion, combed her long
hair with a wooden comb, and scrutinized all the unseen places of Rechele's
body for an abscess or horny skin. Women with shaven heads or badly shorn
hair, veteran bathers, sauntered comfortably about, perfectly at home;
stark naked, with breasts hanging like lumps of dough, with mighty hips,
and loose bellies from continually carrying and giving birth. Waddling
about, they familiarly splashed their feet in the puddles of water on the
stone floor and diligently tended to the abashed Rechele: they gave her
advice on how to arouse her husband's desire and taught her what luck
charms to use to conceive male children. The very young women, with their
small sheep's heads, played in the bathhouse like silly children, touching
Rechele's unshorn hair in amazement, chasing one another about, and being
generally frivolous. In a corner of the bathhouse the healer tapped veins,
set leeches, and fastened sucking cups. The floor was as bloody as a slaughter
house. An elderly woman spoke grossly to Rechele and confided things to the
girl's ears that sent the blood rushing to her head, and she almost sank to
the earth with humiliation.

It was the day of the wedding. Rechele sat on a chair, her feet resting
on a footstool, and read a book. She was fasting that day, and in the af-
ernoon would recite the Yom Kippur confession, since all one's sins were
forgiven on one's wedding day, as they were on Yom Kippur. Her thin lips
were white; her eyes gazed into the distance. Her face was livid and drawn
as after a long illness. In the house two cooks busily baked white bread and
honey cake, cut out cookie dough, dipped feather brushes in oil and egg
yolks, poured honey, and crushed almonds in a pestle. Fish and meat had
been fetched from a neighboring town. The great pots steamed, and the
women kept removing the scum with wooden ladles and trying the broth, to
make sure it was tasty. They had baked a long white bread and braided its
two narrow tapering ends; holding this loaf they would dance to meet the
bride and groom after the ceremony; it was decorated with various good
luck tokens: ladders, birds, wheels. Seamstresses sat on the bed putting the
last touches to the white satin bridal dress and underclothes. The needles
flashed between their much-pricked fingers. Their glances were lowered to
their work but their genteel mouths smiled incessantly and grimaced at the
constant gossip of the eldest of them, a widow. Everywhere were long
sheets with red tooth-shaped fringes on the hems, embroidered pillow cases,
and lace-edged underclothes. The new linens crackled in the women's hands,
and dazzled the eyes, like the snow outside the window. The house smelled
of cinnamon, raisins, and preparation for the feast that ends a fast.

In the evening the girls began to congregate at Rechele's house. The
floor was sprinkled with yellow sand, and a few tallow candles were
burning. The healer and his son, strumming on their fiddles, were paid in
paper pennies for each number. Rechele sat in her bride's chair, wearing a
white satin dress and borrowed jewelry. Around her neck hung a thick gold
chain. From her pierced ear lobes dangled two long earrings, black with
age, their stones clouded. Two girls who were still almost children sat on
either side of Rechele. They were to be her bridesmaids, and it was their
duty to remain at her side and to protect her. Since no wedding jester could
be found in Goray, this role was taken by Doodie, a poor shoemaker blind
in one eye. Frightened and pale, he stood at the door, hoarsely and
mechanically reciting phrases in Yiddish, his manner so ambiguous it was
impossible to tell whether he wished to make people merry or sad. His good
eye remained fixed; the one with the tumor kept blinking rapidly. Doodie
imitated women crying; he covered his face with dirty hands and bleated
like a goat. The girls nudged one another and giggled. They performed first
the Mad Dance and then the Scissors. Dance and the Water Dance, lifting
their dresses as though to cross a puddle. Like strangers they averted their
eyes. It was some time before they agreed to accept the pieces of honey
cake which were their due; they tasted only a single berry of the jam set
before them. Because the fool did not jest, some of the girls upbraided him;
others flirted with the player, who wore an effeminate jacket and a plush hat
with earlaps, and who kept making vulgar comments under his breath. The
girls scolded him, surreptitiously shaking their fingers at him, convulsing
with laughter.

"The rascal!" they cried, falling into one another's arms.

Rechele covered her eyes with a handkerchief, remembering her father,
Reb El-zar Babad, who had been killed on the road and had not even been
buried in a Jewish grave. Remorse consumed her; she had been unable to
visit her mother's grave in Velodova and as was proper invite her to the
wedding. Suddenly the women crowded together. The menfolk approached,
accompanying the groom who came to cover the bride's head. They could
be heard already on the stairs, and the girls tried to lock the door
against them. But the door was forcibly pushed open and the men entered,
drunk and in high spirits. They soon filled the house. Elbowing the women
aside, so that Reb Itche Mates might not have to pass among them, his
companions made a path for him, crying haughtily, "Women, to one side!
Let us through! Girls--go home!"

As is the custom at weddings, when frivolity is tolerated, a few
young women screamed. Reb Itche Mates entered, in a borrowed fur coat
which dragged behind him on the floor and wearing a sable hat that fell
over his eyes. Before covering the bride's head he recited an interminable
prayer. Rechele cried out only once. When Itche Mates covered her head, a
rain of raisins and almonds fell on her, and all the women sobbed and blew
their noses. The fool stood on tiptoe at the door so as to be seen, despite
his smallness, and chanted in a melancholy way: "The haidamaks slaughtered
and martyred us. They murdered young children, they ravished women.

Chmelnicki slit open bellies, he sewed cats inside, (because of our
sins!).

This is why we wail so loudly and implore Revenge, 0 Lord, the
blood of thy slaughtered saints!"

A woman suddenly fainted, and they poured water over her. A boy
suffocating in the crowd screamed in fright. Someone stumbled over the
water tun. A vessel broke. And then the groom was escorted to the bridal
canopy, which stood between the prayer house and the old cemetery. Small
mounds filled the prayer house court, marking the graves of school children
who in 1648 had died martyrs' deaths at the hands of haidamaks and Tartars
rather than change their faith and be sold into slavery. The groom, in
memory of the day of death, put on a white robe like a shroud and a white
mitre. He had sprinkled with ashes the spot on his forehead where the
phylacteries usually rested. Hunched under the canopy Reb Itche Mates hid
his eyes with a kerchief. The four men who were holding the canopy poles
shuffled their feet to keep warm and blew on their hands. Mischievously an
urchin thrust his grandmother's knitting needle into the groom's buttocks.
The groom did not so much as move, and the boy's arms fell to his side. For
a long time all were still. Fragments of ancient monuments loomed above
the decrepit fence surrounding the cemetery; in serried ranks they rose
above one another. Then suddenly the red leaping flames of braided candles
approached, and all became merry. To the tune of a bridal canopy march
played by the healer and his son, the bride was led forth. Girls in white,
bearing wax candles, formed two rows through which Rechele passed.
Completely veiled, she limped more markedly than usual; the bridesmaids
almost had to drag her. Levi, Reb Benish's younger son, he that belonged to
the Sabbatai Zevi sect, was the master of the sacrament. Pale with the fear
of punishment that he, not Ozer, was filling his father's place, the narrow
glass in his hand trembled, and the wine spilled over his fingers, as he
chanted tearfully: "Blessed art thou, O Lord, who has sanctified us by thy
commandments... who has sanctioned unto us such as are wedded to us by
the rite of the canopy and the sanctification.... Blessed art thou, OO Lord,
creator of men."



2



The Seven Days of Benediction



It was now three nights since they had led the bride and groom to the
marriage bed, and Rechele was still a maiden. Early each morning, after
Reb Itche Mates had left for the study house, the two women who had given
the bride away came, along with a few other interested matrons, to discover
whether Rechele and her husband had as yet known each other. Ashamed,
Rechele hid under the bolster, but that did not bother them, for was she not
an orphan, with no mother to look after her? And so they uncovered her,
and examined her slip and bedclothes carefully, their faces reddening as
they piously went about their work. Each day they would ask the same
question: "Well, have you been together? Has he lain with you?"

The crows were already proclaiming the news from the rooftops to the
amusement of the frivolous in Goray. As for Reb Itche Mates, he began to
pray behind the oven in the study, hiding his face in his prayer shawl, so
that his devotions might not be disturbed by the grimaces of ruffians and
apprentices. The followers of Sabbatai Zevi saw that measures had to be
taken and Reb Godel Chasid brought Itche Mates home with him for the
express purpose of feeding him roasted garlic and saltless peas, food that
would make a man potent. Rechele also received instruction, Nechele
explaining to her the ways of arousing lust in a husband. And for seven
nights, as was the custom, bride and groom were led to the marriage
chamber and all waited expectantly for the consummation. During this
period, the time of the Seven Benedictions, all the members of the sect
gathered together at the evening meal. Rechele still wore her white bridal
canopy dress and jewelry, for she was still a bride. She sat shyly on her
chair while the shoemaker passed lewd remarks to rouse everyone's spirits.
Reb Itche Mates wore a coat of satin. His forehead was flushed, and he was
forever wiping the perspiration from his face with his pocket handkerchief.
He scarcely touched the dishes set before him, and what he did eat he
swallowed with revulsion. The food seemed to stick in his throat. When the
subject of marital relations came up he would shake his head, his dead eyes
blinking in terror.

"Yes... yes... of course," he would stammer.

In the afternoons young men were despatched to Reb Itche Mates, grooms
who were still boarding at their in-laws', to keep him occupied and pre-
vent him from being melancholy. They asked each other riddles, played
at Goats and Wolves, chess, and even dice. Some of them wrote in a fine,
curlicued script to exhibit their learning; others kneaded soft bread into
all kinds of birds and beasts. Those who could sing did so, and the bright
ones thought up new turns of pilpul. A few young men who were students of
world affairs conversed about the ancient wars of which they had read in
Josephus, as well as about the remarkable behavior of rich lords and knights
and of the Polish nobleman Wisniewcki, the friend of the Jews, who had
impaled the haidamaks on wooden poles. They enjoyed discussing the great
fairs in Lublin, where the rarest volumes and manuscripts, precious gold
and silver objects could be purchased, and where the wealthiest men from
Poland, Lithuania, Germany, and Bohemia sought husbands for their
daughters. One of the young men even brought his fiddle along with him
and played him Wallachian melodies. Amongst them Reb Itche Mates sat,
weary and alien, gazing obliquely over their heads. Occasionally he would
pull a hair from his beard, hold it close to his eye, stare at it long, and
finally place it carefully between the leaves of the Zohar. Soon his head
sank on his chest and he dozed off. His arms dangled limply and his nose
looked pale and lifeless. His visitors stood up and chuckled behind his back.
At night, when the important leaders of his sect came to escort Reb Itche
Mates to bed, they took him aside for a whispered conference,
remonstrating: "How can this be, Reb Itche Mates? To be fruitful and to
multiply is the principle of principles!"

The marriage bed was in a room in Reb Eleazar's half-ruined brick
house. Before removing his clothes Reb Itche Mates read the prayers of
Rabbi Judah the Devout for more than an hour. Next, beating his breast
with his thin fist, and weeping, he made his confession. Then he walked
innumerable times around a bench. Rechele lay in bed waiting for him,
prepared to greet him with sweet talk and love, as she had been tutored by
the women. Outside, dogs howled mournfully, grew silent, and then began
again, as though lamenting some great crime perpetrated on them. Rechele
became aware that the Angel of Death was outside. The wind tore at the
shutters, icily swept through the room, and the tallow candle flickered and
went out, leaving the room dark and smoky. Reb Itche Mates continued his
chant as he shuffled from corner to corner, as though in search of
something. It seemed to Rechele that there was someone besides Reb Itche
Mates in the room, some airy and terrifying presence. The roots of her hair
tingled with fear, and she drew the covers over her. At last, silently, Reb
Itche Mates lay down beside her. His body smelled of bathhouse water and
corpses. He warmed his frigid hands between her breasts, and his bristly
hair pricked her, yet his teeth continued to chatter and his body shook so
that the bed shook with it. Reb Itche Mates' knees were bony and sharp and
seemed to be hollow; his ribs protruded like barrel staves. All at once he
spoke, in a low hoarse voice full of childish mystery: "Do you see anything,
Rechele?"

"No! What do you see, Itche Mates?"


"Lilith!" Reb Itche Mates cried, and it seemed to Rechele that the
vision pleased him. "Look at her. Long hair like yours. Naked.
Concupiscent."

He rambled on in strange half-sentences, cryptic, incomprehensible,
as though in mockery. Suddenly he began to snore, with a long, shrill
whistle.

"Itche Mates!" Rechele called in a voice which though muffled had
a threat in it.

"Eh...?"

"Are you asleep?"

"Uh...."

"Why do you snore so loudly?" asked Rechele. Itche Mates listened,
yet the snores continued even though he was awake.

Rechele was terrified.

"Itche Mates!" she cried, turning from him. "I am sick. Stop
frightening me!"

He could not sleep all night. He left the bed and began washing his
hands and splashing water on the floor, while muttering prayers and
humming. Toward dawn he stationed himself at the window and peered
through the cracks in the shutters for sign of light. At the first hint of
blue, he put on his clothes and left the house. Only then did Rechele sleep.
Tormented by dreams, she saw her father lying in a field, empty-eyed and
circled by a flock of vultures. Uncle Reb Zeydel Ber came to Rechele also.
He was wearing a bloody shroud, and he waved a long butcher's knife in the
air, and shouted angrily: "Your days are numbered! Descend, Rechele,
descend into the dark grave!"

She rose in the morning altered, as though by a mysterious disease,
and it seemed to Rechele that the night had been longer than nights usually
were. She could on no account remember what she had dreamed and what
she had experienced. Her head was heavy; her hair hurt, as though it had
been pulled; there were blue circles under her eyes, and her body was black
and blue as though it had been pinched. Stiffly she walked to the oven and
rubbed the flints together until the wick at last caught fire. Then she put a
pot on the tripod, but so forgetful was she that the food burned. Reb Itche
Mates returned from the study house at noon, wearing a kerchief around his
loins and stooping as he carried a great prayer bag. Selecting some dry
bread from the kneading trough, he washed his hands and wiped them on the
tail of his kaftan. First he dipped the small piece of bread in salt, then
shook off some of the salt and dipped the bread again--thus three times.
Afterward he rubbed a clove of garlic into the crust. After the meal, he
leaned his forehead on the corner of the table, and dozed for a quarter hour.
Occasionally his shoulders would jerk. Suddenly he wrenched himself from
sleep. There was a red mark on his forehead, and his eyes stared confusedly.
Rechele spoke to him, but he seemed unaware of her presence, and did not
respond. Presently he stood up, kissed the doorpost sign three times, and
went off again--until evening....

When the seventh day of the Seven Days of the Marriage Feast was
passed, Rechele was still a virgin. Young women who spoke of it in the
shops pitied Rechele who, they said, had had "her head cut off with no
knife." Everyone believed that sorcery had prevented the bride and groom
from consummating their marriage. The fringes of Rechele's shawl were
searched for knots, and the folds of her dress for hidden evidence of
witchcraft. All the brooms were taken from her house and burned. The
bridal bedding was smoked out and amulets were hung in every corner, to
drive off evil spirits. Led separately to the bath, Red Itche Mates was
examined by the men for signs of maleness....

And the good-for-nothings who sat in the tavern making fun of law
and order had found a nickname for Reb Itche Mates. They called him
Gelding



3



Reb Gedaliya



Some time before the Feast of Purim there arrived in Goray an emissary
with amazing, if bewildering, news.

Sabbatai Zevi--he related--having already, with God's help, been re-
vealed as the Messiah, had departed for Stamboul to claim the crown of
the Sultan who ruled the Land of Israel. Not through the might of hosts had
Sabbatai Zevi conquered, but through the power of lords and prophets from
the other side of the River Samation who accompanied him riding on the
backs of elephants, leopards, and water oxen. Sabbatai Zevi himself (may
his name be praised!) rode before them on a wild lion, wearing garments
of purple and spun gold and numerous precious stones that shone in the
darkness. A sash of pearls girdled his loins. His right hand clasped a
scepter, and he was fragrant as the Garden of Eden. The sea parted before
him, as it had in days of old for our Master Moses (peace be with him!), and
he walked upon dry land in the midst of the waters, he and those that were
with him. A pillar of fire went before him to show the way, and angels flew
after him, singing hymns in his praise. At first the kings and princes of
the earth had dispatched hosts of giants with drawn swords against Sabbatai
Zevi, that they might take him prisoner. But a torrent of great stones
rained from heaven as had been promised for the day of Gog and Magog, and
all the giants perished. The world was astounded. The people of Judea were
now in high repute. Princes and kings came to honor them and prostrated
themselves before them. Earth and Heaven would rejoice on the day that
Sabbatai Zevi arrived in Stamboul. All the Jews would certainly celebrate
the Feast of Weeks in the Land of Israel. The Holy Temple would be
restored, the Tables of the Law returned to the Holy Ark, and a High Priest
would enter the Holy of Holies. Sabbatai Zevi, the redeemer, would reign
throughout the world....

The bearer of this news was no common person, no ordinary traveler,
but Reb Gedaliya, the ritual slaughterer from ZamosC, a man who was
held in high regard, an individual of standing; Reb Gedaliya was tall,
heavyset, with a great belly and creases in his neck. His coat was of beaver
and covered with silk, and the hat he wore was sable. His black, broad, fan
shaped beard hung down to his waist, his curly hair fell over his shoulders.
Reb Gedaliya's name was well known to the Sabbatai Zevi sect, for he was
renowned as a cabalist; it was because of his belief in Sabbatai Zevi that he
had been forced to leave his native town. Reb Gedaliya had come to Goray
to rally the believers--perhaps also to take over the office of slaughterer
which had been vacant in Goray since 1648. Beasts and fowls could be
purchased cheaply in the nearby villages, and all the people of Goray
longed for meat. Levi, who now occupied the rabbinic chair in his late
father's place, led Reb Gedaliya respectfully into the study house, seated
him at the eastern wall, and summoned his sect to a feast in honor of the
famous man. The tavern-keeper, who was one of the brotherhood, brought a
cask of sour wine that had lain in his cellar for more than fifty years, and
Nechele set out cookies, butternuts, and preserves. The guests sang hymns
of the new Messiah which he himself had heard in paradise. Reb Gedaliya
skillfully poured wine for himself into a tall silver beaker, thrust his huge
hairy hands into his embroidered sash, and enumerated the many joyful
happenings.

He related how on the great German Sea Jews and Christians alike had
seen a ship whose sails and ropes were of white silk. The sailors spoke
in the holy tongue, and on the ship's flag were inscribed the words: "The
Twelve Tribes of Israel." In Izmir, three days in succession, a voice from
Heaven had cried: "Touch not my messiah Sabbatai Zevi!" The Fast of the
Tenth of Tebet had been turned into a holiday, into a day of rejoicing.
Wherever the testament of the Messiah came, there men ate meat, drank
wine, and blew the ram's horn. In the great communities of Hamburg,
Amsterdam, and Prague, all the Jews--men and women alike--danced in the
streets, holding the Torah scrolls, adorned with crowns and precious stones.
Bandsmen played, beat on drums, rang bells, and carried a white canopy
before them. On the Sabbath the priests blessed the congregations, as in the
ancient days when the Holy Temple was still standing, and thrice daily the
cantor led the congregation in the psalm beginning, "O Lord, in Thy strength
the king rejoiceth." In every land new prophets were appearing. Ordinary
men--even girls and Christians--were throwing themselves to the earth and
crying aloud that Sabbatai Zevi, the anointed of the Lord (blessed be He!),
had come to redeem God's elect, the Children of Israel. Sinners who until
then had openly denied and angered God, had now become penitent, putting
on sackcloth and wandering from town to town in atonement and calling upon
the multitudes to confess their sins. Rich converts were discarding their
wealth and prostrating themselves at the feet of the rabbis, pleading to
be readmitted into the fold. Jerusalem was being rebuilt, and rose once
more in all her former splendor. In many towns death had become unknown.

Reb Gedaliya said many other things, and the more he said the more
flushed the faces of his listeners became, and the more crowded and festive
it grew in the house. Nechele and the other women who were serving the
guest of honor shed tears of joy and embraced one another. The men
listened intently so as not to miss a word. They stood shoulder to shoulder,
muttering to themselves and trembling at the thought of the great days that
were coming. Reb Godel Chasid sought to elbow his way through the
crowd so that he might look Reb Gedaliya in the face but was swept off his
feet. A boy fainted and had to be carried into the open air. The eyes of the
young men were alight with holy enthusiasm, their ear locks shook, and
beads of sweat ran down their foreheads. Although Levi had gone to great
lengths to see that there should be no commotion at the feast and that only
those who were members of the sect should be present, the people of Goray
had heard of the arrival of the newcomer. Boys and girls besieged the
windows of the study house, people trampled one another in their eagerness
to hear the stranger's message. Reb Gedaliya placed his arms on the
shoulders of two young men, climbed on the table, and turned toward the
door where the crowd had gathered. His robust figure and sympathetic
words won them over immediately.

"Don't push, brothers!" he cried, in a kind, fatherly voice. "I am
staying with you. If God wills it, we shall rejoice often."

Life seemed to have become more pleasant in Goray with Reb Gedaliya's
appearance. Despite the frost, the day was sun-filled. The snowy hills
around Goray reflected sunlight, blinding the eyes, and miraculously
blending earth with sky. The air smelled of Passover, of salvation, and of
consolation. Hearing that a slaughterer had arrived in town, the village
runners lost no time in setting out for the nearby villages to purchase
calves and fowl. Next morning the town resounded to the mooing of cows, the
cackling of geese, and the crowing of hens. Broths and roasts appeared once
more. Out of their old pantries the women drew moldy salting boards and
soaking vessels, skimming ladles and chop knives. Once more they gathered
about the cloven butcher blocks, which had been unused and abandoned for
many years; butchers stood amongst them splitting marrow bones with sharp
hatchets, and carving out the lungs, liver, and intestines. A bloody
hide already hung on a fence, to dry in the wind. Even the gentiles
were pleased, for now the fat backsides and tallow could be bought cheaply.
In the study house, where Reb Gedaliya came to pray the third day after his
arrival, it was discovered that he did not recite prayers but sang them. Three
gold crowns decorated his Turkish prayer shawl; his skull cap was silver
stitched like those worn on Yom Kippur. His snuff box was of bone, his
pipe had an amber head, and a silver pouch held his tobacco. He pinched all
the boys' cheeks lovingly and praised them to their fathers. For the scholars
he had learned explications; ordinary people were delighted with his
witticisms. After the prayers he sent out for a quart of whiskey and a honey
cake. He sliced the cake himself with his small knife, which had a mother
of-pearl handle, and dealt the slices out to each one according to his years
and situation, calling them all by name, and forgetting no one. Extending
his full, warm hand, he wished each "to meet soon, in Jerusalem, at the gate
of the Holy Temple."

Reb Gedaliya was a welcome newcomer to the citizens of Goray, and he re-
vived their declining spirits. His arrival was a sign that the town would
rise again. The Sabbatai Zevi sect led by Levi immediately forgot the
melancholy Itche Mates, and entrusted their leadership to Reb Gedaliya.
Nechele, the rabbi's wife, praised him in the women's section of the
prayer house, and bade the women send him Sabbath puddings. Even the old
conservative citizens of Goray, the opponents of Sabbatai Zevi, did not
openly step forth against Reb Gedaliya; because they too relished a
spoonful of broth and a bit of meat, they pretended neither to see nor hear.
Reb Mordecai Joseph rapped his crutch on the study house floor, flourished
his left fist, and shouted: "Reb Gedaliya is a holy man! A righteous man!
and the righteous endure forever!"



4



The Rejoicing in Goray



Reb Gedaliya performed wonders. In every house his wisdom and talents
were discussed. He had brought a kerchief with him on which the name of
Sabbatai Zevi was stitched. When it was placed on the bellies of women in
travail, their birth pangs ceased immediately. From the saintly Rabbi
Michael of Nemerov he had brought magic pearls and coins worn smooth
by many fingers. He knew how to make ointments for scaldhead and pills to
prevent excessive menstruation. Since coming to Goray, Reb Gedaliya had
saved many a soul. With his amulets he exorcised evil spirits from a house
where they had dwelt and multiplied for years; he also restored the power of
speech to a child who had been frightened by a black dog. Reb Gedaliya's
piety and learning were famous.

Levi was still young, unaccustomed to the yoke of a congregation,
and Reb Gedaliya became the true leader of Goray. He ruled on all the
difficult cases, and occupied himself with ministering to the spiritual needs
of the community. With Levi he visited the mill, to pronounce it fit to grind
the Passover wheat, examined specimens of the grain, and went from house
to house with a bag to collect for the poor. Never since Goray first became a
town had the rich given so much to the poor. Reb Gedaliya completely
overwhelmed the wealthy with his smooth tongue, and enchanted them with
his grand manner. Two weeks before the holiday the people of Goray began
to bake unleavened bread. Reb Gedaliya himself drew from the well the
first bucket of water that would be allowed to settle overnight; he taught the
kneaders how to knead properly, the water pourers how to pour, the hole
punchers how to punch holes. He even rolled up his coat sleeves, and,
covered with flour, stood at the table beside the women. He even shoved
the unleavened bread into the oven with the long wooden paddle. Not, like
Rabbi Benish, with wrath and harshness, did Reb Gedaliya oversee the
preparation of the matzoth, but with rejoicing and blandishments. With a
long pipe constantly between his fleshy lips he watched everything that
went on. The older women heaped blessings on him and said the Divine
Presence was upon him. The young women and girls blushed and became
more diligent. Smiling, Reb Gedaliya showed a mouth full of strong yellow
teeth, and cried: "Hurry, children! Next year we shall eat matzoth in the
Land of Israel! The angels will prepare it!"

On the Great Sabbath before Passover, after Levi's explication, Reb
Gedaliya preached a sermon that was full of admonitions and consolations.
He reminded the congregation that the days of exile were numbered, and
warned them that the last souls who were to be brought into the world
waited beneath the Throne of Glory. He scolded them that so many young
men and girls were still unmarried. Such neglect of the principle of
fruitfulness would delay their redemption. He demonstrated by means of
cabala that all the laws in the Torah and the Shulchan Aruch referred to
the commandment to be fruitful and multiply; and that, when the end of
days was come, not only would Rabbi Gershom's ban on polygamy become null
and void, but all the strict "Thou shalt nots," as well. Every pious woman
would then be as fair as Abigail, and there would be no monthly flow of
blood at all; for impure blood comes from the Evil One. Men would be
permitted to know strange women. Such encounters might even be
considered a religious duty; for each time a man and a woman unite they
form a mystical combination and promote a union between the Holy One,
blessed be He, and the Divine Presence. Reb Gedaliya explained all these
things in a pleasant way and with many parables; he recited from memory
whole sections from the Zohar and other works of cabala and adorned his
speech with mystical combinations and permutations. Several times he
raised his glance to the women's gallery, which was fuller than it had been
in former years. It was well known that the women looked on Reb Gedaliya
with sympathetic eyes.

A few days before Passover the village runners brought a great
abundance of beasts and fowls into Goray. These could be purchased for
very little, and Reb Gedaliya had requested that no expense be spared, for
the coming Passover would be the final one before the redemption. From
early morning until late at night he stood before a blood-filled pit and,
with his long butcher's knife, tirelessly cut into warm, distended necks,
slaughtering innumerable calves and sheep, hens, geese, and ducks. The
month of Nisan arrived, mild and sunny. From the hills around Goray the
last traces of snow disappeared. The long, deep gutters that extended
through the town to the river overflowed, flooding all inclines and even the
floors of houses. The puddles mirrored bits of sky; rippled by the slightest
breeze, they grew turbid, like deep waters. School boys ran barefoot. The
peasant women coming to Goray to sell eggs and horseradish, lifted their
dresses high, and splashed about with naked feet. Here and there the first
grasses sprouted. A tumultuous throng filled the courtyard where Reb
Gedaliya was slaughtering. Sooty housewives and daughters, with their
sleeves rolled up, were scrubbing tables and benches in honor of the
holiday, scouring them with ashes, scraping so fiercely with their knives
that the noise grated. Boiling water in a kettle, they cleansed the crockery
and cutlery. With bare, scorched fingers they carried glowing coals and
threw them into the hissing water. Reb Gedaliya was surrounded by a dense
crowd of women and girls. The feathers flew above his head, like snow, and
were borne off in clouds of steam. The women pushed and quarreled among
themselves. From every side hands were raised, clutching pent fowl. Wings
fluttered and beat, blood spurted, smearing faces and dresses. Bent over the
stump of an old tree, Reb Gedaliya accepted pennies with accustomed speed
and constantly joked, for he hated sadness, and his way of serving God was
through joy.

His Seder was held in the study house, where he was joined by the rest
of the Sabbatai Zevi sect. Seated at the head of the table, he wore a
white smock, a high mitre on his head; his beard and ear locks were combed
and moist from the bathhouse. The candle flames were reflected in the gold
stitched skull caps, in the satin seams of the sleeves, in the polished and
gilded wine glasses, and in the women's jewelry. The women sat with the
menfolk, as Reb Gedaliya had bidden. They mingled the unleavened bread
with the meats, the dumplings with the pancakes, and all ate and drank
together, like one family. Reb Gedaliya, who was a widower, having buried
his fourth wife, leaned back at his ease on his pillowed chair and bade all
the boys ask the Four Questions together; further, he permitted more than
the prescribed four goblets of wine to be drunk. Among those at the Seder
in the study house were Reb Itche Mates and his wife Rechele. Reb
Gedaliya seated Rechele at his right hand, and he told her of the Messiah's
wife, Sarah, who dazzled kings with her loveliness. He informed her in
confidence that Sarah had once been an inmate of a brothel in Rome.
He addressed Rechele courteously as though she were one of the sect.

"Rechele," he said, "the angels and seraphim are envious of your noble
spirit. The root of your name is Rachel, and Rachel's beauty is yours."

From that night on there was no end to the rejoicing in Goray.

Both the first and the second days of Passover each man who went to the
dais to recite his blessing of the Torah was required to add a special
blessing for Sabbatai Levi, and the cantor chanted: "May He who bringeth
aid to His kingdom, bless and guard, assist and exalt, glorify and raise on
high, our Master, the holy rabbi and saint in whom we are saved, Sabbatai
Levi, the Messiah of the God of Jacob."

Between the morning and afternoon prayers Reb Gedaliya in his sermon
commanded the people of Goray to clear the dogs, cats, and other unclean
beasts out of their homes. The afternoon following the feast there
was dancing in the courtyard of the prayer house, men and women circling
together. Schoolboys leaped like goats and sang: "The white doves preen--
The Messiah has been seen!" Powerful men carried the lame Reb Mordecai
Joseph on their shoulders; young men whirled this way and that and
engaged in all sorts of nonsense. Even gentiles came to watch the Jews
amuse themselves. During the intermediate days of the holiday, marriage
contracts were written and good-luck plates were broken in every house
where there was a girl over eight. Shortly after Passover new tales of
Sabbatai Zevi's prowess circulated in Goray.

It was said the Turks in Stamboul had attempted to rise against Sabbatai
Zevi, and he had taken refuge in a fortress set aside for him since the
Six Days of Creation, after killing every one of them. He had slaughter-
ed the Passover offering and roasted it in the fat, while Sarah, the
Messiah's wife, sat in the Sultan's chair, where she was served by caliphs
and pashas. Scholars and holy men had kissed her feet and heard the
mysteries of the Torah from her lips. Wearing the crown of King David,
Sabbatai Zevi had been surrounded by the Fathers, who had risen from their
sepulchers in the Cave of Machpaleh. Every day Sabbatai Zevi journeyed to
the seashore to receive the potentates who arrived in sailing vessels from
the other side of the River Samation, bringing with them talents of gold and
precious stones sent by the king of the Ten Tribes. Fifty knights rode before
the Messiah, singers attended him with songs of praise, glorifying the
Almighty. The earth was cleft by the sound of their voices....

The opponents of Sabbatai Zevi were silenced. Some of them now believed
in him; others out of fear of persecution said nothing. In the study
house the young men pored over the account of the building of the Holy
Temple, and those descended from priests studied the offerings and the
sprinkling of sacrificial blood on the altar. As soon as night fell, fiery
omens appeared in the sky. One night Rechele, looking into her broth, saw
seven maidens with golden crowns on their heads and heard the sweet strains
of an unearthly melody. Revealing her secret to no one, she immediately set
out to tell Reb Gedaliya.

Reb Gedaliya happened to be all alone in the house. A wax candle burned
in a silver candlestick; on the table stood an earthen jug of wine; on
a silver platter lay a roast hen. Before Rechele could speak, Reb Gedaliya
rose and ran to meet her with outstretched arms, crying: "Welcome, O
righteous woman, in God's name! Verily, I know all!" And he shut the door
behind her.



5



Rechele Prophesies



Midnight of the fourteenth day of the month of Sivan, in early June,
Rechele lying in her canopy bed after a penitential fast (Reb Itche Mates
had lodged in the study house overnight), heard a sound as of the wind
blowing and wings beating. A bright red glow surrounded her; flames
seemed to overwhelm the house, and a voice called: "Rechele, Rechele!"

"Speak, for thy servant hearkeneth," replied Rechele, who had studied
the Bible and remembered the tale of the young Samuel and Eli, the priest.
"Rechele, be strong and of good cheer! I am the Angel Sandalfon!" an
awesome voice said. "For lo, I shall put thy tears into a gourd and bear
them up on high to the Throne of Glory. Thy prayers and supplications have
penetrated the seven firmaments. Go, and proclaim in the ears of those that
tremble at the word of God that the perfect and full redemption will come at
the new year. And to Reb Gedaliya, that saintly man, thou shalt announce:
'All the worlds on high do tremble at the unions he doth form. The power
of his combinations reaches even to the heavenly mansions. From these
combinations seraphim and angels twist coronets for the Divine Presence.' "

All night the voice called to Rechele, without interruption, at times
in the holy tongue, at times in Yiddish. The air thickened with smoke and a
glowing, ghostly, purple light. Rechele felt the walls sundering, the ceiling
dissolving, and the whole house above the clouds. Swooning with fear, she
lay with inert limbs: her eyes glazed, her arms and legs distended and
wooden like those of a corpse. With the rising of the morning star, at
cockcrow, the voice subsided, but Rechele did not stir until sunrise. Only
then did she waken and rouse from her swoon. Her ears still rang with the
voice, her cheeks were damp with tears, and her body strange and cold, like
one returned from the edge of death. Yet she rose from her bed on faltering
legs, washed at the full tun, rinsing her breasts and thighs as though
performing a ritual.

Then, dressing in her Sabbath garments, she put on her jewelry, covered
her face with a veil, and set out for the prayer-house court. Those who
passed her were astonished to see her dressed so. Some thought her in the
power of an evil spirit. Others followed her to see what would happen, for
they surmised at once that this was no ordinary occasion. No sooner had
Rechele crossed the study house threshold than she fell face forward on the
earth. Though in the midst of prayer, the worshipers saw Rechele fall, and
the Eighteen Benedictions were interrupted. Reb Gedaliya, who was putting
away his phylacteries in their silver container, dropped them in
consternation. Some men approached the woman, intending to assist her, for
they thought this some human affliction. But suddenly a voice issued from
Rechele; it resounded from wall to wall: "O Jews! Happy are you, and
happy your souls! I have beheld a great light. At midnight the great and
awful Angel Sandalfon came to me. He announced wondrous things. At the
time of the new year good shall come to us, for the godfearing shall gather
in Jerusalem. Be strong and of good cheer, 0 Jews, and proclaim a fast. And
as for the saintly man, Reb Gedaliya, the Angel declared: 'The time has
come for him to be revealed. For he is a godly man, and worthy, like Elijah,
to behold the face of the Divine Presence.' "

Rechele spoke in fits and starts, as though in her sleep, but so
resonant was her voice that its echo could be heard throughout the town,
and the people of Goray came running. Shopkeepers deserted their shops,
artisans rushed in with sack aprons circling their loins, women left
sucklings in their cradles, and flew breathless into the study house. Young
men and girls leaped up on tables, hung onto bookshelves, climbed the very
walls to see what was happening. Pranksters climbed into the study house
through the window, and someone accidentally knocked against the copper
candelabrum, and there was a shouting and a furor, for it was in danger of
falling and causing disaster. Hearing the news, an old paralyzed woman
who sat at her spinning wheel pulled on her dress and ran to look at the
prophetess. But so great was the confusion that no one noticed this marvel.
Meanwhile, Rechele, with arms and legs extended, still lay there, baring
mysteries of mysteries, such as no son of man had ever heard--much less a
woman. Calling by name angels and seraphim, she told of the heavenly
mansions and the lords ruling in each of them; the cryptic passages in the
Book of Daniel so baffling to ordinary minds were explained by her--it was
clear to all that the spirit of prophecy had entered into Rechele. Several
individuals fainted. A shudder ran through the crowd, for no one in Goray
had ever witnessed anything like this, and it was interpreted as a sign that
God had taken compassion on his congregation and the end of days was
near.

Reb Gedaliya bent over Rechele, listening to the voice and trembling
with fear; his body had to be supported by two strong men, for his legs
had failed him, and he shook as with fever. Only when Rechele lay as
though dead, did Reb Gedaliya gesture for a prayer shawl to cover her
face. Then he bore her in his arms to the dais.

So tightly was the study hall packed, there was not even room for a
pin. However, the crowd made way for Rechele, as though she were the
sacred Torah. Some even touched her with their fingertips as she passed and
bore their fingers to their lips, as when a scroll is taken from the Ark.
Rechele's left shoe fell and Reb Godel lifted it like some holy vessel.
Reb Gedaliya placed Rechele on the dais table and commanded that candles
be lighted in the menorah. Then he approached the woman, kissed her
forehead, and said in a wavering voice, for his throat was full of tears:
"Rechele, my daughter, be of stout heart! Happy are we, for the Divine
Presence has returned to us, and happy art thou, for she has chosen thee!"

The study house was filled with the sounds of sobbing women and
whispering men. Anxiously all waited for the prophetess to begin again.
Rechele opened her eyes.

Her sick body shivered, as with cold, and her teeth chattered. She
seemed to struggle with a compulsion to speak, but her strength deserted
her again, and she uttered a shrill wail. Then, sighing, she grew still once
more, as though her soul had deserted her. Reb Gedaliya straightened up
and lifted his arms, signaling silence. His silk coat flew open, the crown of
his hat pointed skyward, and his whole figure was imbued with the awe of
Heaven. He resembled one of those great men of old, a leader of Israel.

"Jews!" he cried. "The blessed God has worked a great miracle for
us! The Angel Sandalfon has spoken to us this day through the lips of
Rechele! Prophecy has returned! Let us all recite the benediction of
thanks!"

"Blessed art thou, O Lord, our God, king of the universe, who hath
kept us alive, and sustained us, and brought us to this day!" every mouth
responded. The walls shook with the echo, and the very pillars of the dais
seemed to rock.

"Let us send forth emissaries! Let us spread the word to every
settlement!"

"I'll go!" shouted someone; it was lame Mordecai Joseph. "I'll run
and waken the whole world!"

"Go, Mordecai Joseph!" Reb Gedaliya cried, "and take with you
Itche Mates, the husband of the prophetess! Do not hesitate--spread the
news!"

"Where is Itche Mates?"

"Bring Itche Mates!" rasped Reb Mordecai Joseph, and he held his
head with his hands, as though he were going mad. He threw his crutch
from him.

All his life Reb Mordecai Joseph, the cabalist and student of mysteries,
had anticipated the day when his mission would be to go into the
world. He had always feared that his revelations and warnings would find
no listeners, for his name was unknown outside of Goray. But now Reb
Mordecai Joseph's voice could resound throughout all Poland, stirring up
every community. He already imagined himself in Lublin at the yearly fair,
standing before the assembly of the Council of the Four Lands, roaring with
his lion's voice at multitudes of important Jews--rabbis, righteous men,
learned men, rich men--pouring pitch and tar on those who doubted
Sabbatai Zevi, bidding that they be flogged and bound with heavy ropes.
Their tracts and epistles must be burned in a fire whose glow would reach
Heaven. In his enthusiasm Reb Mordecai Joseph began to preach standing
there in the study house at Goray.
"
I swear by the Messiah of the God of Jacob that Rechele is a true
prophetess! Woe to the doubters! Alas for their souls! A curse on them!
May they perish! Do you hear me, men? May they be torn out by the roots!
But O you true believers, rejoice in the Lord!"

Reb Mordecai Joseph suffered a coughing spasm and then suddenly
Reb Gedaliya lifted Rechele in his arms and walked in the direction of the
doorway to the anteroom. Song burst from every throat. Men and women
embraced, kissed, and, with arms about each other, danced out of the study
house. Hats and bonnets fell from their heads, but no one cared. The
gentiles who had crowded about the prayer house stepped back, terrified at
the sight; they kneeled and bowed, and God's name was sanctified abroad.
Young men took the Torah scrolls, and the curtain of the Ark was hung on
poles as a kind of canopy and borne aloft over the heads of Reb Gedaliya
and Rechele. Never since Goray first became a town had there been such
rejoicing. Even the ill and bedridden were taken from the poorhouse to
witness the holiday. A few apprentices in their zeal fetched the board of
purification and burned it in the midst of the market place, as a sign that
death from this day on should cease among Jews. And that very day, Reb
Mordecai Joseph and Reb Itche Mates, taking parchment letters written by
Reb Gedaliya and Levi and signed by many witnesses, hung beggars' bags
on their arms and went off to spread the news far and wide--that they might
gladden the hearts of those who believed in God and in Sabbatai Zevi, His
Messiah.



6



A Wedding on a Dung-Hill



Reb Mordecai Joseph and Reb Itche Mates departed, and their wanderings
took them to far places, bearing the good tidings. In Goray some believed
that they had already passed the Polish borders and were now somewhere in
Germany, or Bohemia. Others thought that the emissaries had embarked for
Stamboul to see the Messiah. Now the affairs of Goray town were managed
by Reb Gedaliya. His new rulings disagreed with the practices cited in the
Shulchan Aruch, but the few learned men who remained pretended neither
to see nor hear what was happening, for the common people believed in
Reb Gedaliya. As for Reb Gedaliya, he settled Rechele in his house, and he
lived with her under one roof although she was a matron. He had a room
painted white for her, and he hung the walls with guardian amulets, and
placed a Holy Ark and Torah there. Rechele was dressed in white satin; her
face was hidden by a veil. During the week she could be seen by no one
except Chinkele the Pious who served her. But on the Sabbath ten women
from the sect gathered in her room to make a prayer quorum, as though they
were men--for thus Reb Gedaliya had bidden. A woman cantor stood before
the lectern chanting the Sabbath prayers. Then the scroll was taken from the
Ark and Reb Gedaliya chanted the proper melody. Moreover, he permitted
seven women to be called up to the lectern to read for the Sabbath, and after
each reading he ordered a benediction of thanks to be offered in the name of
Sabbatai Zevi and Rechele the prophetess.

His was a great name in Goray and in all of the surrounding country-
side. Housewives gave him a tithe of their chickens, eggs, butter, and
honey. A special poll tax had been laid by him on the rich. From every
calf he slaughtered he put aside for himself not only the tripe and the milt,
as the custom is, but all of the under-parts as well--these he cleaned, though
it is not the practice to do so nowadays. He did not need these for himself,
no, not Reb Gedaliya--but for the poor and hungry. Sabbath afternoons he
held the midday feast in the study house, and every household sent him
pudding, seasoned according to his taste. Men and women sat at the table
on benches, or clustered about it, and Reb Gedaliya sang new Sabbath
hymns, served portions of calf's foot jelly himself, and gave each person a
cup of wine. The wine was red and smelled of ginger, onycha, and saffron.
Reb Gedaliya hinted that it tasted like the wine reserved for the righteous to
drink in the Garden of Eden.

Remarkable things were done by Reb Gedaliya, and his kindness was re-
nowned. He was extremely charitable and would rise from bed in the mid-
dle of night to tend to the sick. Though an important man, he would roll
up his sleeves when it was necessary, to massage men and women alike with
aqua vitae and turpentine. He jested with the ill, forcing them to laugh
and forget their pains. For children he imitated the mooing of cows and the
twittering of birds. Stammerers began to speak properly under his guidance.
The melancholy laughed heartily after he had spent some time with them.
Adept at sleight of hand and hocus-pocus, he could turn a kerchief into a
hare. His elbows bound with a sash, he would blow, freeing them once
more--and then produce the sash from beneath the shirt of the person who
had bound him! An expert at solving complex puzzles, he could write a row
of words that might be read from top to bottom as well as the usual Hebrew
right to left. He showed housewives who came to visit him how to put up
new kinds of preserves, taught girls how to work on canvas and embroider.
In the late afternoon he bathed in the river and instructed the young men
how to swim and tread water. Afterward they all said their afternoon
prayers at the riverbank, under the open sky. Once, when in good spirits, he
gathered a few lusty young fellows who were boarding at their in-laws and
went to the other side of the hill to scare the women bathing there. Chaos
ensued. The more agile women sprang screaming into the water. Those who
were large and slow-moving were so confused that they remained
transfixed. Uncovered before the eyes of the men, they were publicly
shamed. There was much jesting and frivolity that evening. Nevertheless,
this was not taken amiss in Reb Gedaliya, for he was already known for his
unconventional ways. Only a few hidden foes spoke out against him, with
no attempt to disguise their irritation.

They whispered unpleasant things about him. They said that since becom-
ing the slaughterer of Goray he had never once found any beast to be un-
clean and unfit to be eaten--this in order to win the favor of the butch-
ers. Whenever the question arose, he ruled the beast clean, and he had
abandoned all the laws of purity. He permitted the women to go to the
bathhouse and then to bed with their husbands soon after menstruation;
according to him, they did not have to keep the additional seven days of
abstinence. He explained to young matrons ways to enflame their husbands,
and whispered in their ears that, ever since Sabbatai Zevi had been revealed,
the commandment against adultery was void. It was rumored that young
men were exchanging wives, and everyone knew that Nechele, the wife of
Levi, received men in her house and sat up past midnight with them,
singing prurient songs. A servant girl who had been sent to look through the
keyhole was said to have seen Nechele unhooking her blouse and offering
the visitors her breasts to press and the nipples to be kissed. Of Levi it
was said that he had forced Glicke, his brother Ozer's daughter, to lie with
him, and that he had paid Ozer three Polish gold coins as requital money,
that the sin might not be discovered. The young men who studied together
in the study house were up to all kinds of evil. They would climb into the
women's gallery in the middle of the day, committing pederasty with one
another, and sodomy--with the goats. Evenings they went to the bathhouse
and, through a hole they had bored in the wall, watched the women
purifying themselves. Other young scholars even went off to observe the
women tending to their bodily needs....

There were few old householders in Goray, and no one heeded their grum-
bling. Reb Gedaliya bribed some with rich gifts. Others were warned that,
if they rebelled against his rule, he would place them under a ban, or
have them arrested and bound to the post in the study house anteroom. He
also presented himself before the lord of Goray; speaking a fluent Polish,
he gained the lord's promise to take him under his protection and punish
those who tried to overthrow him.

Goray, that small town at the edge of the world, was altered. No one
recognized it any longer.

Ever since the advent of Reb Gedaliya and since the miracle of the
prophetess, the town had prospered. From Yanov, Bilgoray, Krasnistav,
Turbin, Tishevitz, and other settlements, people came to visit the holy
pair. The water in which Rechele washed her body had restoring powers, Reb
Gedaliya proclaimed, and a barrel of it stood in the anteroom of his house.
The dispirited who wandered from place to place in search of a cure came
to Goray. They gathered before the porch of Reb Gedaliya's house: young
women whose hiccuping was like the barking of dogs; barren women who
yearned for a blessing that might unlock their wombs; monstrosities, with
reptile outlines on their bodies; paralytics and epileptics. Chinkele the
Pious stood at the door and let them in one by one. Many of the visitors
had to wait at the Goray inns for a long time before being admitted to Reb
Gedaliya's house, so they might receive from him amulets and pieces of
magical amber and salves to be smeared on the disturbed part of the body
and pills to be swallowed. He licked the faces of sickly children, massaged
arthritic women, and had them spend the night in his house. Daily the num-
ber who came to the miracle worker increased. They shopped in Goray, and
slept on the bare floor in the homes of the townsfolk, avidly listening to
the amazing tales concerning Rechele the prophetess. Everywhere, they sat
on benches in front of the houses. Their kerchiefs were pulled down over
their eyes; their hands clutched baskets of food; between their breasts
hung pouches containing the copper coins that were to buy them health. The
young were bashful, and would say nothing. But the older women knitted
stockings and recounted with relish their sicknesses and the cures they
had been given by various magicians and miracle workers. Those whose men-
strual flow had stopped prematurely were advised to eat the foreskin of
a circumcised infant. Those who wished to please their husbands were told
to have their men drink the water in which their breasts had been washed;
those with the falling sickness were told to cut the nails of their hands
and feet and have the nails kneaded into a lump of dough and thrown to a
dog. At times older women would tease the young barren ones, shocking them
with their lewd talk.

And then, finally, men also began to arrive in the town. There were
beggars and vagabonds; there were ascetics, and there were husbands trying
to get the signatures of a hundred rabbis for a writ of remarriage; a yeshiva
student was seeking a master to teach him cabala; a penitent was tormenting
himself by putting peas in his shoes. A convert from Amsterdam also came,
a man who had taken a vow of silence as well as a bandsman who walked
around blindfolded, so as not to perceive women, and a barefoot jester who
asked for alms and recited obscene rhymes. These lived by begging from
the pilgrims, slept in the poorhouse or, when that was full, in any corner
they could find. Evil often transpired secretly. Once two wandering beggars
who had come to Goray decided to marry, and married they were by some
mischief makers on a dung-hill.



7



The Hour of Union



This was a year of severe drought. The grass that was to be used as fodder
had been scorched, and the peasants sold their beasts at half-price. Wheat
grew sparsely in the fields, and the stalks were light and empty. Burning
winds threshed the yet unreaped grain, and ripped the green fruit from the
trees. Every day a host of peasants passed through Goray on their way to
chapels and shrines to pray for rain. They were so poor that the men wore
straw for clothing. Their cheeks were hollow, and their protruding, fright-
ened eyes stared from beneath their strands of flaxen hair like the eyes
of madmen. The women carried their babies on their backs, wrapped in
sheets, gypsy fashion. The feet of these wanderers were black from the dust
of the roads, their voices were hoarse from imploring their God, and it
seemed as if they had already died, and that this entourage was conducting
itself to the grave. The rumor in the villages was that, before going off
to join their Messiah, the Jews had prevailed upon the devil to kill all
Christians. Each day the water sprite carried off another Christian; the
water sprite was large as a cow, and swam backward in the river which he
patroled early each evening in search of victims; his custom was to sing and
do antics to attract the passers-by. Nor was this the only evil the devil
concocted. He had of late sent a black cloud of locusts swooping down
upon the fields; he had also summoned the field mice of the world and had
sent them scampering through the furrows of wheat and into the barns.
And one night a peasant saw a spirit dancing on stilts near the windmill. It
whirled and capered and whistled, its face bearded, its feet webbed like the
feet of a goose. Wild creatures circled it, foxes, and polecats, martens and
wolves. They beat their wings like birds, and flew away laughing. A young
woman who had gone to the well late one evening to fetch water, felt her
bucket touch some live thing, and heard a voice from the depth cry out:
"Sell me thy soul, handsome one. I shall give thee sweet almonds and a
string of beads. I shall set a crown on thy head, and thou shalt be my
princess."

The peasants in the villages did not speak their wrath. In silence
each day they sharpened their scythes, though there was no crop to har-
vest, in silence they filed the blades of their axes. It was thought by
some that they would rise in revolt, murdering the Jews as well as the
Polish gentry. Others predicted Cossack armies advancing from the Ukraine
and Wolhynia, as in Chmelnicki's days, to avenge the oppression of the
people. As if this were not enough, there was an increase in the number of
practitioners of the evil eye. Cattle stopped giving milk and women turned
yellow with jaundice. In the village of Kotzitza the householders buried a
witch alive. They nailed a horseshoe to her left foot to prevent her from
running from her grave, and they stuffed her mouth with poppy seed. In the
village of Maidan the peasants lured a witch into the woods, chained her to
a tree, and built a fire about her, after stripping her of her clothes. The
villagers watched the naked witch writhe and tear at her flesh in agony,
calling upon the name of Satan, until the flames consumed her. Then four
women hacked her body to pieces with sickles, and buried the corpse in a
field, with neither mound nor cross to show where she lay.

The most ancient in Goray could not remember such a time. It was diffi-
cult to get a loaf of bread, but meat was plentiful. Early each evening
the butcher boys drove whole herds of calves, and sheep, and goats to
the slaughterhouse. They brought cows whose udders had shrunken and had
ceased giving milk. These animals had thin flanks overgrown with thick
clumps of dung; their ribs stuck out like barrel staves; their bellies hung
loose like empty bags; their black, damp, hairy muzzles were drawn with
hunger and thirst; and the town resounded with their pitiful mooing. They
fell at the butcher's first push, and expired without a struggle. Reb Geda-
liya hurried about with his green slaughtering knife, expertly slashing at
the shaven necks, and recoiling from the spatter of blood. Butchers moved
about with hatchets chopping off the heads of the still breathing beasts,
dexterously stripping hides, tearing bodies open, and dragging out red
satin lungs, half-empty stomachs, and intestines. They inflated the lungs by
blowing through the windpipe, and slapped the distended or-gans and spat
into the flaps to see if there were any vents which would make the animal
unclean. Reb Gedaliya stood in the center of the slaughterhouse, his knife
clenched between his teeth, his earlocks and his long beard disheveled, his
black eyes, deep set in the hairy pouches of his cheeks, rolling as he urged
the butchers to finish the examination, remonstrating: "Hurry! It's clean!
It's clean!"

For Reb Gedaliya had to be very sparing of his time; the weight of
all Goray lay on his shoulders. The elders waited at the town meeting to
hear his views; the women required his advice on how to obtain dowries for
orphan girls; it was he whom the lord of Goray had licensed to levy and
collect taxes, in his wisdom; emissaries brought him letters from the
Sabbatai Zevi sect in Zamosc and Ludomir; rich men from other towns
pleaded for his salves and potions; persons possessed, brides under a spell,
children with blown-up bellies were brought to him. The table in Reb
Gedaliya's room was piled high with sheaves of parchment, goose-quill
pens, hailstones from Heaven, balls of devil-dung. There was always a pot
of leeches handy, and somewhere in the room Reb Gedaliya had a scroll
inscribed with the names of angels and demons. Secreted elsewhere was a
black- bordered mirror and a cross on a string of beads. Young men
frequently came to study the circulars of Nathan of Gaza and Abraham Ha
Yachini. Reb Gedaliya trained these young men in the magical science of
drawing wine from walls, and transporting themselves from place to place
according to a cabalistic formula....

Goray was elated. Every few days there was another wedding. Twelve-
year-old brides walked the streets with swollen bellies, for pious
women saw to it that their daughters and sons-in-law lay with each other
often. Moreover, Reb Gedaliya and Levi had released from marriage all
women who had been deserted--and they had lost no time finding new
husbands. Reb Gedaliya's calculations were that the ram's horn would
announce the coming of the Messiah in the middle of the month of Elul,
and three days before Rosh Hashana a cloud would descend and the pious
would climb aboard and be off to the Land of Israel. Daily, between the
afternoon and the evening prayers, Reb Gedaliya told the congregation of
the miracles that were about to take place. Every godfearing man would
have ten thousand heathen slaves to wash his feet and care for him. Duch-
esses and princesses would act as the nurses and governesses of Jewish
children, as had been foretold in the Book of Isaiah; thrice daily the
Jews would fly like eagles to the mount of the Lord and there bow and
prostrate themselves before the Holy Temple. The afflicted would be
healed, the ugly made beautiful. Everyone would eat from golden dishes
and drink only wine. The daughters of Israel would bathe in streams of
balsam, and the fragrance of their bodies would suffuse the world. The
sons of Israel would go girded in armor, swords on their thighs and equip-
ed with bows and arrows with which to harry the remnants of the foes of
Israel. Those of the nobility who had been kind to the children of Israel
would be spared, along with their wives and children; they would be the
servants of the upright.

As the month of Elul approached, the faith of the people of Goray
grew stronger. Shopkeepers no longer kept shop, artisans suspended their
labors. It seemed useless to complete anything. Now the people ate only
food that did not need preparation and was easy to obtain. Since they were
too slothful to gather firewood in the forest, they acquired the habit of
heating their ovens with the lumber they had available. By winter they
would be settled in Jerusalem. And so they tore down fences and outhouses
for kindling. Some even ripped the shingles from their roofs. Many refused
to undress when they retired at night. The awaited cloud might come when
they were asleep, and they did not wish to be forced to dress in a hurry. In
Reb Godel Chasid's house the books had been wrapped in a sheet, as after a
fire, and thrice daily their owner stepped outside to look toward the east for
some sign of the cloud. He would cover his eyes, as though to protect them
from too strong a light, and cry: "Father in Heaven, save us now. We have
not the strength to wait longer."

Late at night Reb Gedaliya would come to visit Rechele in her room.
She would be lying in her canopy bed, asleep. Since becoming a prophet-
ess, Rechele had almost ceased eating entirely; no longer did she attend
to her physical needs. Her body had become white and semitransparent,
like mother-of-pearl, and it seemed to her that she was exuding a leafy
fragrance. Each night angels visited her in her dreams, and Rabbi Sim-
eon ben Yohai and the prophet Elijah came, and angels and prophets
studied with her until daybreak. Often when she awoke in the morning she
would be able to recite entire sections from the Zohar and its Emendations
by heart. At times she spoke to Reb Gedaliya in Targum Aramaic. As she
read the pages turned of their own accord. Sometimes she would put out her
hand to take some object, and it would fly to her fingers, as though drawn
by magic. Her body shone in the darkness like a precious stone, and her
skin emitted sparks. She would lie in her canopy bed wearing a silk kerchief
on her head, which rested on three pillows, one of her eyes half open, her
nose white, her breathing so faint it could not be heard. Reb Gedaliya would
enter naked, a thick growth of hair covering his body like a fur coat,
wearing only a skull cap, and with a wax candle in his left hand. He would
lift the white silk gown that, covered Rechele's body, kiss her feet, and
waken her.

"Rechele, it is midnight. The heavens are parting. The Divine Parents
are coupling face to face. Rechele, be of good cheer. This is the
hour of union."



8



Golden Jackets and Marzipan Candy



The month of Elul. Each morning crowds of women descended to the ceme-
tery to bid the dead farewell; the dead would not reach the holy land as
soon as the living; when the Messiah came they would pass to the Land of
Israel by way of underground caverns. For days the women lay prostrate on
the graves, screaming and wailing, begging the forgiveness of the dead for
deserting them, explaining that the day of resurrection was near, calling
upon them to intercede for their living kin and neighbors in the Hereafter.
The wealthy cut wicks the length of the graves of their beloved, to make
candles for the study house. The poor could only weep, and the graves
were wet with their tears. Even the children were brought, and they played
among the tombstones. It seemed as if the living and the dead dwelt
together in the cemetery, and the gypsies who had pitched their tents close
by marveled at the sight. As for the gentiles, they were delighted, believing
that they would inherit all that the Jews abandoned. In the study house the
ram's horn was sounded, and Reb Godel Chasid trembled at each blast, for
each might be the one that announced the Messiah. Too anxious to remain
at home, he paced restlessly outside. For several days a cloud had hovered
in the sky to the east of Goray. Evenings, it elongated, taking on the shape
of an enormous fish; mornings it was aflame, a burning red, and afternoons
it seemed a ship with silver sails, drawing nearer and nearer. Reb Godel and
the other members of the sect were certain this was the pillar of cloud
mentioned in the holy scriptures; but they spoke of this only among
themselves in hushed tones, so that the people might not become excited.
The women shook their heads piously, unable to keep their eyes away from
that part of the sky; all seemed to feel that at such a moment silence was
best.

But the days came and went, and still there was no miracle. As the
High Holy Day grew nearer, Goray grew quieter and quieter. It was as
if the inhabitants of the town had deserted it one by one, or had
gone into hiding. The curtains of the houses were drawn; here and there
shutters were bolted. The shops were either closed or were tended by
children. The market was empty; the sand in the market place was hot as in
a desert, and nettles grew at the edge of the circle. The whole town seemed
to be holding its breath. When people met they discoursed in whispers, and
they avoided each other's eyes. In this hour of eclipse they seemed to be
dazzled.

Only three days remained before the eve of the High Holy Day, and accord-
ing to all calculations this was the day on which the great blast was to
be heard. But the sun set--and nothing had occurred. Nor had the people of
Goray prepared for the holy days. Children and adults went barefoot and in
tatters; there was no flour with which to bake the bread for the holy days;
there was no fish or honey. Reb Gedaliya was sought to explain the sig-
nificance of this, but it was discovered that he had gone to commune in
the hills. As for Rechele, she had been in a coma for several days, and
Chinkele would permit no one to see her. At the last moment runners had
been sent out to the surrounding villages to buy the most necessary articles.
But they had not as yet returned. The unpainted houses huddled together,
their roofs torn and their interiors visible: dusty attics full of cobwebs
and rubbish. That summer the people of Goray had destroyed their most
valuable possessions: they had ripped up floors and dismembered chests
and shelves. At Reb Godel Chasid's they had burned the wall beams in the
oven on Friday. All the holiday clothes were soiled and torn because the
women had worn them on weekdays.

Never before had there been such weeping as this year at the Peniten-
tial Prayers. No sooner had the Prayer of Sanctification begun than the
cantor fell to the ground, as though his legs had collapsed beneath him.
At the words, "Behold, I will turn the captivity of Jacob's tents," the
congregation burst into lamentation. One old man beat his head with his
fists, and cried: "Father in Heaven, you have tested us sufficiently!
Now display your might!"

Rosh Hashana eve was cool and damp. The sky, which all summer long
had been as blue as the curtain of the Torah Ark, and somewhat broader
and higher than usual, contracted. Now the town seemed enclosed in a
dark canvas tent. The hills, which had been green and evocative of the
holy land, disappeared, wiped off the face of the earth. The smoke,
reluctant to leave the chimneys, spread over the houses, as though
space had shrunken.

Not until sunset did the pious lose hope in the possibility of a miracle.
Miracles, they knew, always occur unexpectedly, when people are
looking the other way. Perhaps just an instant before sunset the cloud
would appear and carry them all off to the holy land. Some had even had a
presentiment that it would happen thus. Reb Godel Chasid was steadfast;
God, he argued, was testing the people of Goray to see whether they truly
believed in Him with their whole heart. He went so far in his obstinacy that
it angered him to see his household preparing food; he put out the fire in the
oven, so certain that the evening meal would be eaten in the Land of Israel.
Not until it grew dark and the stars could be seen peeping through the
clouds did it become clear to the people of Goray that the Exile was to
continue during the High Holy Days. The women sat with downcast eyes
and rigid bodies in the unlit houses. The unkempt men hastened to the
prayer house, unwashed and with straggly beards. Too ashamed to
commune with one another, they immediately began the long overdue
afternoon prayers.

Reb Gedaliya had returned from the hills a few hours before. He stood
at the lectern reading the evening prayers, singing in a loud tearful
voice and completely enveloped in his prayer shawl and white robe. His
every groan set the congregation shaking, like trees in a storm. The women
wailed as though they were mourning for the dead. After the prayers, the
worshipers left quickly, without wishing one another a happy new year.
There were no candles in town, and so the people of Goray sat in the
darkness that night, or burned kindling chips. At the holiday feast they had
nothing but meat and last year's kidney beans, though they were weary of
meat. Those who were fortunate enough to have a loaf of bread divided it
into slices which were sent their relatives to share. The children cried hard,
complaining that they had been fooled.... They wanted to go to Jerusalem....
They wanted to wear little golden jackets.... They wanted wings, so they
could fly through the air.... They wanted the marzipan candy and the gold
coins in the broth that they had been promised.... Their fathers looked
dejected and toyed with the food, eating merely to fulfill the religious duty,
in order not to appear to be fasting on Rosh Hashana. They sang the High
Holy Day hymns with hoarse, quavering voices and quickly went off to
sleep behind the oven, silent and irritable. Mothers quieted the sucklings by
nursing them, and sat up late next to the children's cribs and beds, sleepily
telling stories to keep the little ones from asking questions. Though it was a
High Holy Day, the silent feuds between mother-in-law and daughter-in
law, mother and daughter, brother and sister, persisted, as bitter as ever. The
people of Goray fell asleep in their clothes, their mouths open and their
hearts hollow, as in times of persecution when Jews are never sure that they
will live through the next day.

On both the first and the second day of Rosh Hashana Reb Gedaliya preach-
ed before the ram's horn was blown. His face was cinder-red, his eyes
flashed, and every word he spoke lightened the heart of the congregation.
He argued that this marred holiday was the last of the trials that God was
inflicting on his people. Reb Gedaliya compared the present time to the
hour before dawn, when the sky must become darkest so that the sun might
shine forth in all its splendor. He called on all in the congregation to be
steadfast in their faith, and not to despair on this eve of great days. He
swore a mighty oath that Sabbatai Zevi was the true Messiah of the God of
Jacob; he bade the Jews put away their sadness and gird themselves with
trust and joy; he said that the Four Matriarchs had visited Rechele at
night to solace her, and they had reported that Satan had leveled a bitter
accusation in Heaven against those who wavered in their faith; as a
consequence, the end of days had been postponed until such time as the
wrath of God should be placated. Before the congregation dispersed, Reb
Gedaliya blessed each worshiper with his hands. He lifted the children to
kiss them on the head, and called out as the congregation departed: "Go
home and rejoice. We shall all be in the Land of Israel soon, speedily and
in our time. Every man shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree."

For the ceremony of the Casting, everyone in town put on his or her
holiday rags and, walking in file, set forth in the direction of the river
outside the town. Rechele, who was not well, was borne on a gilded chair,
and accompanied by the most important people in town. She looked
(impossible comparison!) like one of those icons that the gentiles bear in
church processions during their festivals.... The young women stood on the
bridge and shook out their pockets and kerchiefs, alluding to the
transgressions that are cast into running waters. As was customary, the
younger people of Goray were jolly at the expense of the old women and
even the men. They jibed at Nechele, Levi's wife, whispering in one
another's ears that the river would overflow with her sins. Returning to
town, uncouth boys tried to stab the women's hips with pins and made lewd
remarks. Reb Godel Chasid shouted angrily, reprimanding them for being
sacrilegious; but Reb Gedaliya passed it off with a wave of his hand,
signifying that there was no harm in raising people's spirits.... Nevertheless,
at dusk the town grew so still one might have thought that everyone had
died. The air turned blue, like the pages of an old book, the houses were
drab, half in ruins, and it seemed like the year 1648. The pails of water that
the girls carried were reminiscent of ablution rites for the dead, and
everything smelled burned and acrid, as after a fire. Sleepily, the men
recited psalms in the study house, as though they were asking for com-
passion on some person who was mortally ill. The women gathered before
the doors of their homes. They spoke in hushed tones, looking around them
meanwhile, fearful of being overheard by strangers; they let the children
pull the last embellishments from their coats, just so that they--the mothers
--might have some peace. One woman casually remarked that people ought
to repair their houses and get this thing out of their heads; the Messiah was
not coming to Goray. But the other women scolded her. They threatened
her, warning her to be silent. She was reminded that she was no one, a
person of humble origin. The women shook their heads and spat; they blew
their noses piously and entreated the Almighty: "May it be thy will, 0
Father in Heaven, that this holy day be the last to be spoiled! May we soon
have true cause to rejoice--after such humiliation!"



9



The Evil One Triumphs



On the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles a deluge descended on Goray,
and the rain poured down incessantly for three days and three nights. The
river overflowed, smashing the locks of the water mill and crumbling the
dam. Those who dwelt in the lowlands had to be rescued. In many homes
women waded about, their dresses lifted, bailing out the water with pots and
buckets, only to find it pouring in once more. Icy winds tore the last
shingles from the roofs and knocked down fences. The windows were
covered with rags and felt was plugged in the cracks. Very little wood could
be obtained. The children began to cough, and developed red noses and
watery eyes. Their ears, which had been healed by the summer sun, began
to run anew; boils that had dried up swelled up again. Their stomachs ached
from eating too much meat, and there were many cases of vomiting and
diarrhea. Mothers ran to the study house to implore God's help, and lit
candles in every candle holder. Groups of school boys went to the study
house to recite psalms. Nevertheless, in house after house infants
succumbed, coughing, eventually to be seized with spasms and turn blue.
Joel the Sexton again made the rounds with his black basket. There were so
many children for him to bury that he had to wrap the infants in linen and
stuff them into the deep pockets of his overcoat. When the storm subsided,
flocks of crows appeared, flying low, crookedly, and croaking, as though
they hunted corpses. The swamp was oily yellow, and spirals of vapor rose
from it, as from a subterranean fire. It suggested Sodom and Gomorrah,
where the smoke rose as from a furnace....

The oldest people in Goray could not remember another Feast of Taber-
nacles like this, nor had they ever heard of anything like it from their
elders. On the morning of the third day of the holiday week it suddenly
grew dark as night, and everyone at once began to prepare for the worst,
for the world seemed to be about to come to an end. The day before Hoshana
Rabba there was a hailstorm. Pieces of ice fell, large as goose eggs, injur-
ing many beasts in the meadow, as well as shepherds. Afterward, it began to
thunder and lightning, though that was unusual for this time of year. A
blinding spiral of fire twisted into the study house, rolled across the tables,
like a ball, swirled into the open oven door, and went out the chimney with
so loud a crash that many people were deafened. From the study house the
lightning flew off to the church, causing considerable damage. On the night
of Hoshana Rabba a dreadful thing happened: A woman who had gone to
fetch water was thrown by demons into the well, where she was found dead
the next morning, head down and feet up. The evil spirits also molested the
old night watchman, tearing off half his beard.

During prayers in the study house on Shemini Atzeret a completely
unexpected fight broke out which was without precedent in Goray. Later, no
one could tell exactly how it started. Some people stated that one of Reb
Gedaliya's enemies had struck him in the face. Others insisted that "the
others" had had a hand in the affair, for a strange man was said to have
appeared among the congregation, only to slink out of sight later. Whatever
the cause, there were sudden shouts and cries of pain, as during a bandit
attack, and a wild bloody fight ensued. The Sabbatai Zevi sect hurled
themselves murderously at their opponents, whom they beat and trampled
underfoot, ruining their clothes and prayer shawls. Even the women, as
though devil-driven, attacked one another remorselessly, tearing bonnets,
ripping shawls and jackets, savagely digging their nails into flesh, and
filling the prayer house with their uproar. It took Reb Gedaliya and a few
other sensible persons a long time and a great deal of effort to separate and
calm the factions, for even the old people had become involved in the
battle. Reb Godel Chasid's entire body was one big bruise. In the turmoil,
even children and invalids were injured. And, as though this event were not
outrageous enough, the next morning, at the Feast of the Rejoicing of the
Torah, a band of idlers gathered together and to begin with took over the
tavern, like bandits, consuming a whole barrel of aqua vitae. Then they
went from house to house singing and snatching up geese, pots full of fat
and preserves, and anything drinkable that they found. Nor did they spare
Reb Gedaliya. They hastened to his house also, but he was too cunning for
them. He came out to meet them, and opening his closets and pantries bade
them take whatever their hearts desired, for it was proper to rejoice on such
a day. Thus he won favor in their eyes and they showed him respect, calling
him "Rabbi." Then they departed drunkenly to the back streets where the
common people lived and desecrated the holiday in other ways.

From that time on, not a day passed without incident or affliction. In
the middle of the night, at the end of the month of Cheshvan, the earth was
heard to rumble and the houses quaked. Everyone ran terrified into the
street, unclothed; although the noise stopped, they remained outdoors for
hours, afraid to return to their homes. Several developed colds from this
and inflammation of the lungs. A few days later a fault was discovered in
the prayer-house wall, extending from the roof to the foundation, and it
was rumored to be unsafe to worship there, since the walls might collapse;
this produced a new furor in the town.

On the fifteenth day of the month of Kislev, in the midst of the morn-
ing prayer, the door of the study house suddenly opened, revealing two
unexpected visitors: the emissaries, Reb Mordecai Joseph and Reb Itche
Mates. Their abject appearance caused universal distress. Reb Mordecai
Joseph's feet were bound with rags, his loins covered with a sack, and one
of his coat lapels was rent, as though he were in mourning. Reb Itche Mates
was barefoot, his body smeared from head to foot with dirt, and his face
pot black. The people of Goray were completely taken aback. They were too
shocked to open their mouths; they seemed to have lost the power of
speech. Finally, some of the worshipers greeted the newcomers; but Reb
Mordecai Joseph and Reb Itche Mates did not respond, remaining silent
until the whole congregation had gathered around them. Only then did Reb
Mordecai Joseph pound his crutch on the floor and beat his breast with his
left fist, screaming: "O Jews, rend your garments! Sprinkle ashes on your
heads! A great disaster hath overtaken us! A bitter calamity!"

He fell against the wall, gasping until the foam began to ooze out of his
mouth; everyone recoiled from him. Then Reb Mordecai Joseph rose to
his full height and began again: "He has become a Turk! An apostate! Woe
to us that have lived to see this thing! Alas for our souls!"

"Who do you mean, Reb Mordecai Joseph?" many voices implored
him, with an anxious presentiment.

"That foul liar!" Reb Mordecai screamed. "That seducer and inciter,
Sabbatai Zevi, and his whore Sarah! May they be blotted out! May they be
flung from the hollow of the sling! May every curse in the chapter of curses
fall on their heads and every plague that afflicted the land of Egypt plague
their bodies!"

Reb Itche Mates seated himself on the floor and hid his face. His
kaftan was full of holes and his swollen feet were covered with clay. Large
yellow tears dripped down his beard, and he swayed to and fro, as though
keening over a corpse. Reb Mordecai Joseph's eyes were inflamed, his thick
eyebrows prickly, his fiery beard bristled, and he resembled one of the
wrathful lions carved in the woodwork above the Holy Ark. He coughed
and spat at great length, beating the air with his hairy hands, and sobbing
spasmodically, as at a funeral oration.

"He has put on the fez, the mad dog! He worships idols! A great mul-
titude was converted with him! Woe to the unclean! Shame and disgrace
for us all!" All of the congregation bowed their shoulders, as under a heavy
burden. They looked exactly as they had that day in the year 1648 when
messengers brought them the evil news that Cossacks and Tartars encircled
Goray. A young man who fainted easily turned chalk-white, and his
neighbors had to hold him by the arms to keep him from slipping to the
ground. Even the children froze in their places. Powerless to move, they all
stood where they were on quaking feet and with open mouths. Then
suddenly the door was violently opened, and Reb Gedaliya rushed into the
study house. He had apparently heard all, for on the very threshold he cried
with wrathful mockery: "What is wrong with you, Reb Mordecai Joseph?
Why do you cry like a woman in labor?"

"Are you still alive!" and Reb Mordecai Joseph sprang to face him.

"Devil!"

"Bind him! He is mad!"

"O, thou that sinnest against the God of Israel! Thou adulterer!" Reb
Mordecai Joseph roared. "Sabbatai Pig kneels before idols--and this man
lies with a married woman!"

"Jews, he is blaspheming!" Reb Gedaliya leaped at Reb Mordecai Joseph
and there was the sound of a slap. "He is cursing the Messiah of the
Lord of Hosts!"

Reb Mordecai Joseph plunged forward, but he was seized and pulled
back. Blood began to flow from his hairy, red nose.

"Woe!" he wailed. "Adultery and bloodshed!"

"Jews, he's lying!" Reb Gedaliya turned to the congregation. "This
dog barks lies and deceit. Not Sabbatai Zevi, but Sabbatai Levi's shadow
was converted. There is an explicit passage in the Zohar! The Messiah has
ascended to Heaven! He will soon descend and redeem us. Here are letters
to prove it! From all the holy men!"

And he drew from his bosom a package of letters and circulars.

Reb Mordecai broke free from the hands of those who were
restraining him, threw his crutch into the air, and rushed at Reb Gedaliya
with arms outstretched like a beast of prey. But then he fell to earth and
lay there hugging the ground and weeping. "Jews, help! The Evil One triumphs!
Woe...!"



10



The Faithful and Their Opponents



Jews everywhere divided into two factions: that of Sabbatai Zevi,
and their opponents. Controversy flamed; at every fair the two sects
excommunicated each other with the threefold ritual of ram's horn blast,
purification board, and black candles. Rabbis were driven from their
communities in their stockinged feet, or made to ride in ox-drawn wagons;
men of dignity were flogged publicly and humiliated. Numerous legates
journeyed about, carrying letters, both authentic and spurious. Traveling
prophets and preachers delivered individual versions of the gospel. Zealots
on both sides were guilty of injustices. In Lublin there were fights in the
prayer houses, and Polish soldiers had to separate the participants. In
Ludomir the slaughterers thrashed a schoolteacher who forbade people to
eat on the Tenth of Tebet. In Hrubishev, only a few persons continued to
believe in Sabbatai Zevi, and they were avoided, like lepers, their doors
painted with pitch, to signify that none was to cross their thresholds.
Moreover, the towns-people banned the sale of food to the Faithful, until
they should return to the true faith. The few believers who did repent were
treated harshly--they were required to dress in tatters, to cover their heads
with ashes, and, lying on the floor of the prayer house anteroom, to pound
their breasts while loudly confessing their sins. Everyone who entered or
left the study house had to step over them. Some of the worshipers spat in
their faces as well.

Certain men of stature in Poland attempted to play the role of peace-
maker, but they too became entangled in controversy soon enough and
concluded by inciting it even further. The great among the Jews dreaded a
widespread desertion of the Jewish faith, as in the days of Anan and the
Karaites. It was reported that whole families were being baptized, in every
Jewish settlement. Some of the Faithful in such great communities as
Jerusalem, Altona, and Vilna committed suicide.

The Faithful themselves were divided into two groups. One group
asserted that the Messiah would not appear until the generation had
become completely virtuous. Those persons fasted in penitence, and
shunned intercourse with their wives. They mentioned the name of Sabbatai
Zevi no less than one hundred times each day, and incised the letters S
and Z on their mezuzot and windows, on the head-boards of their beds,
and even on their flesh. They were convinced that Sabbatai Zevi, though a
living man, had passed into the World of Emanation, and that the apostate
who resided in Stamboul and had taken an Ishmaelitish wife was the demon
Ashmodai The other group argued that before the Messiah could be re-
vealed he had to enter the Nether Sphere, in order to draw from it the
sparks of holiness; there was an explicit text to this effect in the ap-
pendix to the Zohar--to wit: Toy Milgav Ubish (outwardly evil, inwardly
virtuous). Furthermore, the prophet Isaiah had foretold this: "And he
shall be reckoned with the sinners." According to those who supported this
interpretation, the generation before redemption had to become completely
guilty; consequently, they went to great lengths to commit every possible
offense. They were secretly adulterous, ate the flesh of the pig and other
unclean foods, and performed those labors expressly forbidden on the
Sabbath as most to be avoided. In Szebreszin, one such believer shaved off
his beard and earlocks with a razor. In the middle of the night, another
broke into the prayer house of Krasnik and corrupted the Torah scrolls by
scratching out the name of God. Scribes laid filth in the phylactery boxes
that contained verses from the Bible. Other believers defiled the bath-
houses, so that the women could not clean themselves properly, and their
husbands had to lie with them in their unclean state. Still others threw
limbs of corpses into the homes of those of priestly descent, who, as a re-
sult, were contaminated. Others went from house to house stealthily putting
lard in the pots, thus polluting the food cooked in them. The slaughterer
of Kreshev, in order to render slaughtered beasts un-kosher, kept his knife
unmended; moreover, when he circumcized the new-born, he actually prevent-
ed circumcision by not removing the membrane of the corona. The night
these things were discovered, the townspeople vengefully surrounded
the slaughterer's house. But he slipped away, and his end was unknown.
Others of the Faithful spread dissension and calumny. They bore tales
to husbands about their wives, and to wives about their husbands; thus
frequently incurring violence.

They compelled the pious to desecrate the Sabbath by putting out fires
started on Friday night. Divorce often resulted from their rumors of
adultery concerning married women. They did not disdain emptying the
charity boxes and buying wine to sacrifice to their idols. Their impulse
toward corruption led them even to black magic and the conjuring up of the
dead.

Though remote from the world, impoverished and bare, Goray found that
the dispute did not cease with the conversion of Sabbatai 'Levi,
but rather increased daily.

Reb Mordecai Joseph, Reb Godel Chasid, and many others abandoned the
Faithful and did penance for having succumbed to the seduction of the
false redeemer. Reb Godel Chasid dressed in rags and had himself flog-
ged every afternoon, in order to be cleansed of his sin through suffering.
Fasting all day until nightfall, he then ate only a bit of bread and
garlic. Reb Mordecai Joseph went from house to house agitating against the
Faithful. Describing the desolation that followed them everywhere, he gave
a long account of their misdeeds, and warned the householders against
joining them. Rechele was the only one of the Faithful whom Reb Mordecai
Joseph would not vilify. Reb Itche Mates sat locked in an upper-floor room
of his father-in-law's house, inscribing his scrolls. He did not pray with
the prayer quorum and seldom came outside. No one knew how he subsisted,
for he would accept no gift; it was rumored that. doves he produced by
incantations from the Book of Creation were his food.

Reb Gedaliya and Levi were still leaders of the town. They excommun-
icated Reb Mordecai Joseph and his supporters, ordering everyone to
remain at a distance of four ells from them. Reb Gedaliya and Levi
removed many books from the study house and either burned or buried
them; all that remained were volumes of cabalistic mystery. Then
they stirred up hoodlums to ambush Reb Mordecai Joseph behind the
bathhouse when he came out to relieve himself. They fell upon him,
trampled him with their feet, rolled him in the dung, and beat him
mercilessly until they thought him dead. Not until many hours later did
the bathhouse attendant find Reb Mordecai Joseph, his clothing blood-
soaked, and both his eyes blackened. A few days later these very same men
compelled Reb Itche Mates to consent to divorce his wife Rechele--nor
did they mind that the river of Goray had two names, and that the tradition
was that no bill of divorcement could be written in the town. As for Reb
Gedaliya, he did not wait the legal ninety days; the very next morning he
stood with Rechele under the wedding canopy, thus openly demonstrating
his contempt for the Talmud.

From that time on, Goray indulged in every kind of license, becoming
more corrupt each day. Assured that every transgression was a rung in
the ladder of self-purification and spiritual elevation, the people of
Goray sank to the forty-nine Gates of Impurity. Only a few individuals
did not join in but stood apart watching Satan dance in the streets.

And the deeds of the Faithful were truly an abomination. It was
reported that the sect assembled at a secret meeting place every night;
extinguishing the candles, they would lie with each other's wives. Reb
Gedaliya was said to have secreted a whore sent him by the sect in Zamose
somewhere in his house without the knowledge of his wife, Rechele. A
copper cross hung on his breast, under the fringed vest, and an image lay in
his breast pocket. At night Lilith and her attendants Namah and Machlot
visited him, and they consorted together. Sabbath eve, dressing in scarlet
garments and a fez, like a Muslim, he accompanied his disciples to the
ruins of the old castle near Goray. There Samael presented himself to them,
and they all prostrated themselves together before a clay image. Then they
danced in a ring with torches in their hands. Rabbi Joseph de la Reina, the
traitor, descended from Mount Seir to join them in the shape of a black dog.
Afterward, as the legend went, they would enter the castle vaults and feast
on flesh from the living--rending live fowl with their hands, and devouring
the meat with the blood. When they had finished feasting, fathers would
know their daughters, brothers their sisters, sons their mothers. Nechele,
Levi's wife, strolled about unclothed, consorted with a coachman before
the eyes of all the company--and of her own husband too....

Goray became a den of robbers, an accursed town. The old residents
were afraid to leave their homes, for children, who were also numbered
among the Faithful, threw stones at the rival group. The children were
particularly spiteful. They placed nails on the prayer-house seats of the old
residents, causing them to tear their clothing; they cut the fringes of their
prayer shawls, and molested their goats. Some boys even poured a bucket of
slop down the chimney of a house and contaminated the vessels and food.
The Faithful went so far as to write the government, charging their
opponents with disloyalty, and they spilled oil on their goods; they even
avenged themselves on small children. A woman who was returning from
the bathhouse was ambushed in a back street by some hoodlums who
attempted to rape her. She screamed and they ran away.

God's name was everywhere desecrated. In the villages the peasants
already complained that the Jews had betrayed their faith and were
behaving exactly like gypsies and outlaws. The priests were inciting the
masses to a holy war. They foresaw all devout Christians gathering together,
sword and spear in hand, to exterminate the Jews, man, woman, and child,
so that not a trace should be left of the people of Israel (God save us!).



11



The Sacred and the Profane



Ever since Rechele had heard that Sabbatai Zevi had donned the fez, the
holy angels had ceased appearing before her. She lay in her canopy bed long
hours every night, reciting holy names and awaiting a vision. She invoked
cherubim and seraphim, meditated on Metatron, the Lord of the Face, and
petitioned him until her lips grew weary and her strength lapsed. But there
was no reply. Just recently Bathsheba and Abigail would visit her and they
would study the mysteries together. When she was half-asleep, Joseph the
Righteous would appear in all his beauty and grace and lead her through the
heavenly mansions. He showed her the Garden of Eden and the Gates of
Gehenna, the Treasures of Snow, and the Three Hundred and Ten Worlds to
be inherited by the pious. When she awoke her legs would ache from so
much climbing about in the celestial spheres. But now her thoughts were
barren. In her sorrow she could not touch the morsels of honey cake that
Chinkele set before her, or taste the sweet wine or other delicacies. She did
not wash her hands, or recite the blessing over food, or pray, though she
yearned for prayer. Her body, which had long ago lost its heat, would break
out intermittently in perspiration. The hair sprouting on her shaven head
pricked and hurt, her cheeks were hollow, her eyes dilated and her eyelids
puffed. For the last few days her palate had been constantly dry, her tongue
felt odd--it seemed entirely to fill her mouth; her teeth were set on edge as
though she had eaten something sour; her legs were stiff and cumbersome.
As though blown up with wind, her belly was distended.

At the beginning Reb Gedaliya tried to reason with Rechele and solace
her. He explained that she had fallen from a high rung only to climb
above it; he attempted to strengthen her with his words and to raise her
spirits. Borrowing a fiddle, he played a Sabbath night melody for her in the
middle of the week. He dispatched a messenger to buy her a necklace and
bracelet, and invited the young wives to enter her room without asking
permission and entertain her with merriment. He even sent Levi to Rechele
to clarify the new ways of serving God and explicate the verse: "And I shall
dwell with you in the midst of your uncleanliness." But Rechele greeted
Levi with unrecognizing eyes, and was inattentive. Her soul seemed to be
elsewhere.

Rechele experienced mysterious and terrifying things. Though her room
was heated twice a day, she suffered constantly from cold chills that
seemed to her to emanate within. Often her heart palpitated like a living
creature; something contracted, coiled, and twisted like an imbedded snake
in the recesses of her being. Her arms and legs were feeble, and loose in
their joints. Her head hung down weakly, and she could not raise it. With
nightfall she collapsed on her bed, where she remained in a trance for
several hours. Her skull seemed to be filled with sand, her mouth was
agape. She always woke at the same moment, in a panic, as though
deathbed watchers had brought her back to life with their screams. Her
throat was narrow and swollen, almost strangled; her congealed blood
slowly warmed and began to flow again through her veins. It would seem to
Rechele that her body had actually died and gradually was reviving.

But what had happened to Rechele the prophetess? Piety and the
grace of God had left her. She had lost all inclination to study the holy
books, and lacked interest in worldly affairs. She received visitors coldly,
and confused their names. She had ceased to bathe every morning and no
longer wore her finery. For a long time now someone inside her had been
thinking twistedly, someone had been asking questions, and replying--as
though a dialogue went on in her mind, complicated, tedious, with neither
start nor conclusion. For days and nights on end the argument exended.
Lofty words were spoken, the Torah was explained meticulously, as well as
secular works; the disputants were obdurate. Often Rechele tried to
comprehend the grounds of the dispute and later to recall them; but they
were elusive, like words in a dream. Sometimes it seemed to Rechele that
these things were only occurring within her; at other moments she saw
visions that appeared and disappeared in an instant, leaving her uncertain as
to what had actually happened. Once Rechele distinguished one of the
disputants crying: "God has died! The Husk shall reign for ever and ever!"

It was a tall man who said this, ash-gray, terrifying, cobwebby. Long
strands of hair hung from his head; an evil, mocking smile swept across his
pitted, discolored countenance. Soon after he had spoken, another voice
chanted the verse from the Passover Haggadah: "I am the Lord! I am He,
and no other!"

The sacred and the profane were engaged in a disputation. The sacred
had a face, but no body. The Face was flushed, as after the bath, had
a white beard and long, blown earlocks. A velvet skull cap sat on its high
forehead. The Face swayed in prayer; it spoke with zeal, like Rabbi Benish
in the old days, chanting the holy writ; it raised questions of Torah and
resolved them; it told pious tales to strengthen the faith and vanquish
disbelief. With sacred pride, the Face recited the blessing before meals, and
prayers that come at the beginning and the end of the Sabbath, as well as
whole sections from the liturgy and the Zohar. Sometimes shutting her eyes,
Rechele could see the Face surging up from the darkness. Tiny old-man's
wrinkles quivered in the corners of its eyes. Delicate blue veins shone in its
red cheeks, its eyes smiled with grandfatherly grace.

The Profane was situated in some distant place, in darkness, deep down,
like a cellar. Sometimes he spoke very low, voicelessly. Hidden and
veiled, he lay inside some web or cocoon. Often, he changed shape - at
times he looked human, at other times like a bat or a spider. At moments all
that Rechele could see was an open mouth, askew like a frog's. The Profane
was audacious, making lewd remarks. Then his voice boomed from the pit,
or the cave, where he lay concealed. Taunting and blaspheming, he bandied
about the names of holy men and angels. A stream of vulgarities escaped
his lips. He jested and mocked profusely, bringing Rechele to the verge of
laughter, though she knew that to be sinful.

Where did such shameful thoughts come from? The Profane called
the nether parts of men and women by their crudest names; he showed
Rechele vile sights, and discovered obscene meanings in Biblical verses.
Nor did he spare the patriarchs and King David, Bathsheba and Queen
Esther. He depicted the copulation of beasts and animals, an ox with a
woman, and a man with a sow. He told tales of women who lay at night
with monstrous men, and of girls who had assignations with goblins and
evil spirits. He recited magical incantations in Aramaic, and invoked
destroyer demons in Latin. Sometimes the Profane would begin to babble in
a strange tongue, cackling toothlessly and throatily, as though something
tickled him. At other times he poked fun at Rechele in rhyme: Rechele, now
I'll teach thee how..

Rechele was terrified of the Profane, for he grew stronger from day
to day, entangling her. Sometimes, when Rechele lay down and shut her
eyes, the Face of the sacred would begin to recede until, becoming as small
as a nut, it would disappear. One night Rechele found herself in a fenced-in
place, full of mounds, and thorns, and stones--like a cemetery. In the
dubious dusk, broken pots and rags lay about; there were puddles of water,
as though a corpse had been washed here. She stood before a hut with no
opening except for a round hole in the wall, whence steam issued. A dying
light seeped through the cracks of the hut, and some lunglike, red, and
swollen thing peered out. Afraid, Rechele wanted to run away, but her legs
were leaden and faltering. Desperately she tried to run, but in her
helplessness only became lost in some subterranean passage with bolted
shutters, blind walls, and crooked rafters. Rechele clambered up hill and
down, wormed through small openings; with feeble arms she climbed
wavering ladders and pulled herself up ropes. But she continued to sink, and
the lower she sank the darker it became, the more suffocating the air. A
bearded figure pursued her, hairy and naked, wet and stinking, with long
monkey hands and open maw. Catching her at last, he carried her as light as
a feather (for she had all at once become weightless) and flew with her over
dusk-filled streets and tall buildings, through a skyless space full of
mounds, and pits, and pollution. At their back ran hosts of airy things, half
devil and half-man, pointing at them, pursuing them. The Thing swept her
over steep rooftops, gutters, and chimneys, huge and mildewy; there was no
escape. It was stifling and the Thing pressed her to him, leaned against her.
The Thing was a male; he wanted to ravish her. He squeezed her breasts; he
tried to force her legs apart with his bony knees. He spoke to her rapidly,
hoarsely, breathing hard, imploring and demanding: "Rechele! Quick! Let
me! I want to defile you!"

"No, no!"

"Rechele, make a covenant with me!"

"No, no!"

"Rechele, you are already defiled!"

He threw her down, and entered her. She cried a bitter cry, but there
was no sound, and she started from sleep. With perfect clarity she saw that
the dark house was crowded with evil things, insane beings running hither
and thither, hopping as on hot coals, quivering and swaying, as though they
were all kneading a great trough of dough. A mocking exultation shone in
their faces. Rechele could not remember who she was, where she was, or
what had happened. Her head was weighted like stone, her skin covered
with a glutinous substance. At times Reb Gedaliya heard her gasping. With
a candle, he hurried to her bedside. He rubbed her temples with vinegar,
blew on her and fanned her, to drive away the intruder. Reb Gedaliya spat
three times, and searched every corner of the room for some sign of the
visitations. His large hands trembled; perspiration dripped from his body to
Rechele's featherbed, and he shouted as though she were hard of hearing:
"Wake up! Rechele! Don't be afraid! Thou hast seen a goodly vision! A
goodly vision hast thou seen! Goodly is the vision thou hast seen!"



12



Rechele Is Impregnated by Satan



There was famine in Goray. In the half-empty shops shopkeepers dozed
before cold stoves; for lack of tools artisans were idle; everything had
crumbled that summer. Hollow stalks had been reaped in the fields, and
there was no seed for sowing. Abandoning their families, peasants begged
throughout the countryside; their emaciated horses were driven from the
stalls to become prey to wolves. So devastating a famine had not been
known for many years. People were found frozen on the roads; the mills
stood motionless, for there was no grain to mill. The people of Goray were
debilitated. Heavy persons turned saffron-yellow, began to limp, and a
white film like perspiration covered their eyeballs. Slender persons
developed the shiny, puffed faces associated with toothache. Chatterboxes
became silent, pranksters ceased their jokes. Even the children forgot to be
mischievous, and anxiety stared from their eyes as from those of the old.
From early morning till late at night the men sat in the study house,
warming themselves before the broad clay oven. In the beginning they still
disputed. The Faithful said that Sabbatai Zevi reigned in Stamboul and that
he had sent messengers to the Ten Tribes urging them to join him and to
disregard what he had done, for his deeds had been decreed in Heaven. The
first fifty ships loaded with mighty warriors, chariots, and arms had al-
ready embarked, in preparation for battle. But the Opponents were certain
that Sabbatai Zevi, who had changed his name to Muhammed Bashi, had be-
come a caliph and a Jew-hater, and had been responsible for an expulsion
of pious Jews. Often the disputants came to blows, tore letters and
pamphlets to shreds, wielded belts and drew blood.

But now, as though nothing more could be said, there was silence.
Despair gripped the town. The old men publicly deloused themselves and
snored without restraint on the study house tables and benches. Boys played
at Goat and Wolf and never looked into books, since no one cared what they
did. There was no longer even sinning; the Evil Spirit himself seemed to
have dozed off; every man went his solitary way. The occasional itinerant
who found himself in Goray walked the streets disconsolately for a while,
and then, with empty bag and a curse on his lips, departed.

Alas for Goray--every visitation fell upon it! De-spite the winter, fires
were frequent. Houses seemed to catch fire by themselves, and burned
to the ground. Only pot shards and bare chimneys remained. More than
ever, this year, people slipped, breaking arms and legs. Because the barns
were empty, field mice entered the houses. Polecats strangled chickens, and
even bit children. Thieves broke into the homes of those who lived on the
environs of town; bears and boars lurked on the roads. The destroyer
demons had been reveling freely in the streets of Goray. Every night they
beat on the windowpanes of Reb Godel Chasid's house. When a candle was
lit, the shadow of a bony hand with five outspread fingers could be
distinguished on the wall opposite. Groaning, as of a woman in labor, issued
from the chimney of Levi's house. On Thursday imps overturned the dough
troughs, spilling the dough for the white Sabbath bread; they threw handfuls
of salt into the pots where dinner was being cooked, ripped the mezuzot
from door posts, and held weddings in desolate places. Imps would hang on
to the wheelspokes of a wagon, dragging the wagon back and blinding the
horse. Disguising themselves as he-goats, they danced to meet the women
returning from the bathhouse. Late one afternoon when Chinkele was on her
way to prayers in the women's section, she saw a black-skinned beast
crawling at her in the light of the rising moon. She tried to run, but the
monstrosity reared up on its hind legs, like a man, and pursued her until she
fell into a ditch. The next evening the same creature scared some children in
the street. One of the boys heard the beast shout something in a gentile
tongue. Everyone immediately understood that this was a werewolf. Some
whispered that it was the mad lord Zamoyski, for once the werewolf fired a
pistol and threw down some gold ducats. They ran off to tell Reb Gedaliya
and Rechele the Prophetess about this--but there, also, evil reigned.

Rechele had been impregnated by Satan. She confessed this herself
to her husband: Samael had come to her at night, and had violated her. A
destroyer demon grew in her womb. She bade Reb Gedaliya probe her
belly, and he discovered that, indeed, it was tight as a drum. Rechele also
told Reb Gedaliya that she no longer menstruated, and she showed him
where the demons had made seven braids in her hair. At first Reb Gedaliya
would not believe Rechele, and maintained that she imagined it all. At night
he would kindle many lights in her room, place amulets everywhere, and
recite various adjurations, for he wished to remain with Rechele. But the
moment he lay at her side all the candles were extinguished, and he
received a blow on the temples that flung him out of bed. Then he would
hear a voice cry: "Touch her not, for she has made a covenant with me!
Arise and go quickly!"

From then on Reb Gedaliya avoided all intercourse with Rechele
and left her alone. He even drove Chinkele away and took instead a mute
servant girl, to keep people from discovering this latest disgrace. Because
his beloved wife had been stolen from him, Reb Gedaliya began to drink
and slept all day on his bench bed. His friends fell away from him, and he
would certainly have been driven out of town if the butchers had not sided
with him. Meanwhile, horrifying things happened to Rechele.

Every night Satan visited Rechele to torment her. He was black and tall,
fiery-eyed and with a long tail; his body was cold, his lips scaly, and he
exhaled pitchfire. He ravished her so many times that she was powerless to
move. Then, rising, he tormented her in numerous ways. Pulling the hairs
singly from her head, he wound them about her throat; he pinched her in the
hips and bit her breasts with his jagged teeth. When she yawned he spat
down her throat; he poured water on her bedsheet and pretended she had
wet her bed. He made her show him her private parts and drink slop. He
seduced her into reciting the explicit name of God and blaspheming Him;
on Friday nights he forced her to desecrate the Sabbath by tearing paper and
touching the Sabbath candlesticks. Sometimes Satan told Rechele obscene
tales, and Reb Gedaliya on the other side of the wall would hear her loud,
mad laughter resounding at midnight. Once, Reb Gedaliya opened the door
of the Holy Ark to take out the Torah scroll, only to find the scroll mantle
slashed, and a piece of dung lying within....

Rechele suffered extraordinary tortures. At times the evil one blew
up one of her breasts. One foot swelled. Her neck became stiff. Rechele
extracted little stones, hairs, rags, and worms from wet, pussy abscesses
formed on the flesh of her thigh and under her arms. Though she had long
since stopped eating, Rechele vomited frequently, venting reptiles that
slithered out tail first. At times she barked like a dog, lowed like a cow,
neighed like a horse, or made sounds of the lion and the leopard. There
were days when she could not open her mouth; and there were others when
she was deaf. Occasionally, she would squint and become cross-eyed, and
her tongue would stammer incomprehensibly, as though she spoke in her
sleep. The pills she was given for her illness remained in her throat,
and she had to spit them out again.

Rechele's name had become a byword. Reb Gedaliya struggled vainly
to conceal what had happened, for the walls have ears. Her odd
behavior was remarked on everywhere. At night when the moon shone,
Rechele went into the snow, barefoot and in her nightgown. Sleepwalk-
ing, she visited the cemetery, where she crawled among the tombstones;
scratching in the dirt with her fingernails, she unburied dead infants,
and she climbed up on the apex of sepulchers. She had been observed sit-
ting at the rim of a well and crowing like a rooster. One woman swore she
had seen Rechele riding on a broom, with a dog rolling after her on a hoop.

The village runners encountered Rechele sitting on the banks of the
river rinsing clothing. The tale of what had happened to Rechele spread
to Yanov, Turbin, Zamosc, Krasnik, and even to Lublin, for her name was
famous in all these places as that of a prophetess. The peasants, also, knew
that Satan had entered into the body of a daughter of the Jews, and this
visitation was spoken of at fairs and in taverns. The shutters of Reb
Gedaliya's house were bolted day and night, and he did not show his face
outdoors until dusk fell. Then Reb Gedaliya would wrap himself in his great
coat and set out for the slaughterhouse, carrying a heavy stick and a lantern,
afraid of people and the mockery in their glances.



13



The Dybbuk of Goray



A marvelous tale treating of a woman that was possessed of a dybbuk (God
preserve us): Taken from the worthy book The Works of the Earth and
rendered into Yiddish to the end that women and girls and common folk
might perfectly comprehend the wonder of it all and that they might set
their hearts on returning to God's ways: And that they might be instructed
in how great is the punishment of the sinner who staineth his soul (God
save us): May the Almighty protect us from all evil and avert his wrath
from us and expel Satan and his like for ever and ever Amen:

AND IT CAME TO PASS in the town of Goray that lay among the hills near
the holy communities of Zamosc, Turbin, Krashnik et al. where formerly
dwelt the author of the work Holy Offering and where latterly Rabbi Ben-
ish Ashkenazy occupied the rabbinic chair (the remembrance of the right-
eous be a blessing to us all). It happened in that terrible year when
the pillars of the earth trembled with the deed of Sabbatai Zevi (may the
memory of him be blotted out): Who (for our sins are great) was himself
converted and did seduce many others from the paths of righteousness and
many pious amongst them and he lighted a fire in every corner of the Exile:
May God who is a jealous and an avenging God give him his due and repay
the wicked for his wickedness as he deserveth and may we all be deemed
worthy to witness a true and a full redemption speedily and in our days and
let us say Amen:

AND IN THE TOWN of Goray there dwelt a man renowned far and wide for
he was a Godfearing man and had a pleasing countenance and his deeds
were good and the name of this man was Gedaliya: And this man was vers-
ed in the uses of the cabala and in the mysteries: To wit he could draw
wine from a wall and was expert in the science of alchemy and every Sab-
bath eve he created a third-born calf like unto the tradition concerning
our holy Amoraim: This man also knew many nostrums for he was a sage
and he found favor in the eyes of all men with his understanding and
smooth tongue: But in fact he was a son of Belial and entirely wicked and
all that he did he did to provoke the blessed Creator: For in secret he
invoked the name of the profane and he conjured up Lilith Naamah Machlot
and all the other destroyer demons that they might do his will and that he
might do their will: And after this fashion he amassed treasures of gold,
silver, diamonds and precious stones: And he deceived the townspeople and
knew their wives and fathered bastards without number: And in his lust and
license he did shameful things such as are not proper to be written in a book
and a word to the wise should be sufficient: AND LO (for his sins that were
many) his own wife too (whom he had cunningly stolen from her husband a
most righteous man) fell prisoner in the net of the Outer Ones and a dybbuk
possessed her: And for that she had the name of a righteous woman and
Elijah revealed himself to her; no son of man could rightly believe the
tidings that came to his ears and all were curious to ascertain whether or no
there was truth in the report: And there was: For the young woman (Rechele
was her name) lay naked in her house and her shame was uncovered and all
the utensils were broken and the bed linen was torn and she cried a loud and
a bitter cry: And when all the elders of the town and its leaders gathered
together they could not recognize her: For her shape was completely
changed and her face was as chalk and her lips were twisted as with a
seizure (God save us) and the pupils of her eyes were turned back after an
unnatural fashion: And the voice that cried from her was not her voice: For
her voice was a woman's voice and the dybbuk cried with the voice of a
man with such weeping and wailing that terror seized all that were there and
their hearts dissolved with fear and their knees trembled: And for that she
lay with parted legs like a woman in labor on the stool the women desired
to put her legs together for it was a shame before the men and they also did
cover her: But at once her garments fell from her body for the evil spirit
cast them off: And the strength in her limbs was unnaturally great so that
even the men could not prevail and the thing was a marvel to all and a
mystery indeed:

AND IT CAME TO PASS that when Reb Gedaliya saw what had transpired
and what had occurred to him that he was greatly ashamed and shame did
cover his face: For he thought in his heart, What will people say: If the
spirit has taken possession of Reb Gedaliya's wife and he has discovered no
counsel to prevent it then surely he is no righteous man and all his amulets
are false and people would mock him and revenge themselves upon him:
And therefore in his cunning he said, You see now she is out of her mind
and all her words are the words of a madwoman: Then the dybbuk began to
scream: Alas and alack to thee thou wicked man Thou hast worked
unrighteousness and thou hast polluted thy soul with every unworthy thing
and thou hast lain with whores and thou hast fornicated: And thinkest thou
now to deny the sight of thine own eyes lest that thy wickedness become
known to men and that thou mightest further beguile them with thy cunning
and with thy insolence: And it came to pass that when Reb Gedaliya heard
these words the strength ebbed from his body: But anon he revived and
cried, She is mad completely: But the people would hear him no longer and
they would not believe him: And there was a pious man, one Reb Mordecai
Joseph (may his remembrance be a blessing to us all) who formerly had
descended to the nethermost Sheol and afterward had done penance and had
saved his soul: And he was zealous for the zeal of God and he lifted up his
stick and he smote Gedaliya: And he cried, Thou wretched man now shalt
thou blind the eyes of this people no longer: For thou art a seducer and a
magician and thou art the cause that the plague has been poured out on us
all and that we must drink the cup of persecution to the dregs: Then the
mighty Gedaliya would have killed him but the people took his part and
defended him: AND NOW did the dybbuk scream ever more loudly and he
confessed his sins with a fearful lamentation and groaning: And the woman
lifted a heavy stone and smote her breast: And the marvel was that her
limbs were not broken nor her frame shattered for so heavy was the stone
that three strong men could not move it from its place: But in her hands it
was as a feather: And she smote her body with the stone from the top of her
head to the tips of her toes time and again without interruption: And that
pious man Reb Mordecai Joseph (his remembrance be a blessing unto us)
girded his loins and asked, Why dost thou scream and bring her so much
woe:

AND THE DYBBUK replied in a loud and piercing voice: How then shall I
not cry and how then shall I not wail: Seeing that when. I walked among the
living I polluted my soul and transgressed every transgression cited in the
Torah: I hail from Lublin and there I was one of those frivolous youths that
swill beer in the taverns and frolic in the whore houses: And I rebelled at
every command of God and incurred His wrath: On the holy Sabbath day I
did work and I did eat of the pig and of the other forbidden foods: And on
Yom Kippur I made a feast for spite and drank wine and gave myself to
unbridled desire and I also lay with beasts, animals and fowls: Woe is me
for I said in my heart, There is neither Justice nor Judge, and I denied that
the Torah is from Heaven and I despised all wise scholars and I brazenly
swore at them and I set dogs on them as is the practice of pranksters: When
lo suddenly I suffered a stroke and this is a sickness that no one ever rises
from: And I saw clearly that my end was come: But (such is the way of the
wicked) I grew not submissive and I remained haughty at the very gate of
Gehenna and before my death my comrades came to me and they asked me
Abraham (such was my name) dost thou repent: And I answered them in
my pride, Now even now I do not believe that there is a Creator in the
world and before I expired I blasphemed and thus my soul left me denying
Him:

AND IT CAME TO PASS that I had but died and had not yet been lifted up
and laid in the earth that three evil spirits seized me: And they tormented
me cruelly and they trampled on me with their feet and they sorely afflicted
me: And then I saw that indeed there is a punishment only it was already
too late: And all the time I lay covered they perpetrated on me all manner of
suffering that cannot be recounted: And I called on my kin that they might
discover me some relief but they could not hear my voice for I was already
not of this world: And tens of thousands and millions of milliards of imps
followed my funeral: And they were all my children that I had created
through continual defilement and fornication: And they called me Father
and my shame was boundless: AND WHEN they had laid me in the grave
and piled the last shovelful of earth upon me there came to me the Angel
Dumah: And he rapped on my grave with his fiery rod and the grave split
open at once: And he called Mah Shemecha (What is thy name) and I could
not remember the verse for I had not prayed: And the angel cried Thou foul
seed Thou sinner against the Lord of Israel Tarry not here and abandon this
grave and fly away to the hollow of the sling: For thy place is not in the
graveyard where so many righteous and proper men rest in peace: And I
tried to implore him but he tore the shrouds from my body and he beat me
with his fiery rod and he drove me out: AND Lo without there lay in wait
for me vast armies of demons and destroyer spirits and messengers of
annihilation and they were all in readiness to fling themselves at me in their
wrath and to rend me to bits: And they came at me in anger and mockery
and they gave chase to me and they whistled and howled and pursued me
through the wilderness: I sought to flee them and to escape them but there
was no hiding place and they captured me and they cast me and tossed me
like a bird in the wind: One pulled me from the right hand and one from the
left and they would not let me be by day or by night and they delighted in
my terror: Oh were all the heavens parchment and all the seas ink would
they not yet suffice to inscribe one thousandth part of my ordeal: In my
anguish I passed into the leaf of a tree: But there too my sorrow was
immeasurable for when the leaf shook in the wind I shivered and twisted
exactly as though I were a living man: Yet so long as I dwelt in the leaf the
demons could do me no evil: But I was forced to leave it for a worm crept
into the leaf and it bit me: And the instant I left the leaf the black hosts
ringed me wildly about and they rolled me through every wilderness and
desert and wasteland full of serpents and scorpions and horned snakes: And
in my straits I entered into a frog: But there too things were bitter for me,
for a man cannot dwell in a frog that breeds in the swamp and in stinking
marshes: Also the frog suffered and sickened and her belly swelled: And
thus I passed from creature to creature: Moreover for many years I dwelt in
a millstone and when it turned it rubbed against my limbs and my pain
knew no bounds: AND REB MORDECAI JOSEPH asked the dybbuk How
didst thou enter into the woman and by what means didst thou gain the
ascendancy over her: And the dybbuk said Let it be known that Gedaliya is
a denier of the faith and an apostate out of spite and that he has defiled his
wife with many defilements and hence I was able to gain the ascendancy
over her: For one morning the woman desired to start a fire with two flint
stones and the sparks would not light the wick: And she cried out the name
of Satan: And the moment I heard this I entered into her body:

AND REB MORDECAI JOSEPH said to the spirit, Through what opening
didst thou force thy way into the woman, and the dybbuk spoke and said
Through that same place:

THEN REB MORDECAI JOSEPH rose and smote Gedaliya with violence:
Moreover the other men flung themselves at him and beat him and shed his
blood and tore his beard until he fell fainting to the ground: And Reb
Mordecai Joseph (may his remembrance be a blessing) flogged him forty
times forty until his blood flowed like water: And the people took him and
flung him into the jail that is in the prayer house anteroom. And they
chained him to the post and there he remained to await his judgment: For
the gentiles too were sentencing witches in their judgments and many of
them were burned at the stake: And they appointed a watchman to watch
him:



14



The Death of Rechele



AND IT CAME TO PASS after these things when the wicked Gedaliya had been
imprisoned that Reb Mordecai Joseph (may his remembrance be a blessing)
bade powerful men carry the young woman to the study house where the
evil spirit might be driven out of her: For the dybbuk did weary her
with all manner of torment and caused the name of God to be desecrated
(God preserve us) and there was great sympathy for the woman: And the
powerful men rose and took the woman in their arms and against her will
and bore her off to the court of the prayer house: All this time the
woman was still and silent as though her strength had deserted her and
she was like a little child: But when they came near to the door of the
prayer house anteroom then did the dybbuk begin to scream and wail,
Bring me not nearer to this place For I cannot endure the holy air,
and the sound of his outcry was heard far and wide: But the men did not
heed the dybbuk and they carried the woman into the study house by main
force though she wrestled with them: And she worked with a strength
exceeding the strength of a man for her power came from the evil spirit
(yid. sup.): AND IT CAME ABOUT that when the woman lay on the pulpit
the dybbuk burst into a weeping such that all who heard wept with him: For
not women alone but men as well were overcome with compassion: And the
dybbuk cried and said: Why have ye no pity on me and why do ye work all
this to vex me and to distress me: Seeing that ye know full well that every
thing that is holy causes me much suffering and may be compared to a
needle in the flesh of a living man: Now search ye out and discover What
injustice hath been done unto this woman through me: Who before I entered
into her was weak and sickly and she required broth for her nourishment
and she was compelled to lean on a stick for support: And now behold for
that I have entered into her she has grown powerful and is able to lift up
heavy burdens and go into the cold without warm garments and do all that
her heart desires: Therefore what is the matter that ye have all come
together to undo me and particularly since I am of the seed of Israel and
have great fear of the Outer Ones: Who some of them have the faces of
boars with eight heads and the poison under their snouts is all fire from the
valley of the shadow of death: And others of them butt with their horns
ram- like and they are called Hairy Goat Ones: And their fur is covered with
tar and the bristles thereof are of thorns to affright the sinful, and their
dwelling place is beyond the Hills of Darkness: Now I implore ye, Give me
leave to dwell in her body and I swear Not a hair of her head shall be
harmed and I shall guard her like the apple of my eye that no mishap may
trouble her: And when the allotted measure of my suffering shall be full and
I shall be given leave to endure my judgment in Gehenna for the space of
twelve months why then I shall forsake the woman with no further ado and
unloose her and leave her in peace:

AND THE SPIRIT spoke these words with cunning purpose to deceive the
people and to mock them: And there were indeed some simple folk who in
their innocence believed the words of the dybbuk to be true and they
wished him to be spared: But the pious Reb Mordecai Joseph (may his re-
membrance be a blessing) comprehended the demon's wiles (for he was a
great cabalist) and he cried, No, Depart thou from her and go forth to that
place where no man dwelleth and where no cattle of the field sets foot For
it is not seemly thou shouldst continue among the living: And when Reb
Mordecai Joseph had uttered these words he meditated on such holy names
and formed such unions and made such combinations and described such
circles and rings as are within the ken of those that are knowing in the
mysteries: THEN DID THE SPIRIT abandon gentle words and begin with
the harsh words and a fire seethed from his nostrils and he cried in a loud
voice that made the walls shake: WHO ART THOU and of what merit is the
house of thy forebears that thou thinkest to contend with me: Dost thou
believe that thou art a master of His name and wise in cabala: No, For thou
art a complete ignoramus and thy combinations can never be efficacious:
And the dybbuk spoke a saying in the vulgar tongue They shall avail as
cupping avails the dead: And he cursed Reb Mordecai Joseph (may his
remembrance be a blessing) and played tricks upon him such as were never
seen or heard since the world began, and the multitude laughed at the pious
Reb Mordecai Joseph: And there was a great desecration of God's name for
the dybbuk uttered obscenities and played the fool and there was hee-
hawing and guffawing: And first he reckoned up the secret sins of each one
and called them by name and winked with his eyes and asked Dost thou not
remember such and such a place, and there arose a hubbub: For he put the
wives of respectable men to shame and revealed that the rabbi's wife had
played the whore, and he published slander concerning many families and
all with contumely and effrontery: And (for that we have transgressed) no
one dared give the dybbuk the lie and he grew bolder and discovered things
that had lain hidden, giving clear signs of proof: He reminded one woman
that she had a mole under her breast: Another that she had a birth mark,
another a boil, another a scar, another lice, etc.: And he also repeated
things that are betwixt him and her, man and wife: And then he frolicked,
singing songs and all in rhyme so that all who heard were amazed, for it
is not the practice for women to produce such inventions: And he derided
the women and their habitudes: How they blessed the candles on Sabbaths
and holidays and how they tithed the white bread and burned it and how they
picked peas and their gesticulations in the bathhouse and in the prayer
house: And he worked this all with malice that the women might be ugly in
the eyes of their husbands: And he called the pious with bynames in the
German tongue to wit trop lekish parech esel shemosh pushkemeckler kaltoon
bock, et al. (pinhead loony scab ass slattern meddler stinkpot he-goat) and
in the Polish tongue and in Ivan's tongue as well: And he sang the bridal
canopy tunes with great skill item the Covering Tune for when the groom
covers the bride's hair, item the Canopy Dance Tune, item the Escort Tune
for when bride and groom are escorted to their chamber: And he mimicked
the sound of the fife and of the cymbal and of the bagpipe and Of the other
instruments and all with locked lips and the hearts of the congregation were
melted like wax at the sight of the woman's gesticulations and grimaces:
And there were present flippant, light-headed persons that had never
believed in transmogrification and now when they saw this with their own
eyes they fell on their faces and beat their breasts and tore their gar-
ments and there was a great tumult: THEN DID REB MORDECAI JOSEPH (may
his remembrance be a blessing) collect his strength and he bade a censer be
fetched and onycha and wax and incense and other spices and glowing
coals: And he bade black candles be lighted and they brought the board of
purification and he enveloped himself in a white robe and another ten men
put on prayer shawls and phylacteries and the chanter took a ram's horn in
his hand: And he opened the doors of the Holy Ark and he drew out thence
a Torah scroll and he cried: Be quick and fly Or I shall excommunicate thee
and drive thee off by force: And he laid all the spice on the censer and the
smoke of the incense arose for it is notorious that the smell of incense
undoes the Husk: And thus it came to pass:

FOR WHEN THE SPIRIT smelled the smoke of the holy incense he uttered
a great and bitter cry and he sprang as high as the rafters, and the woman
rolled on the floor and a foam dribbled from her mouth like an epileptic
(God preserve us): And for spite the spirit flung her bonnet to the earth
and uncovered her body, and she spread her legs to show her nakedness and
to bring men into thoughts of transgression: And she passed water and
befouled the holy place and her breasts became as hard as stones and her
belly bulged so that ten men could not depress it: Her left leg she twisted
around her neck and the right she stuck out stiff as a board and her tongue
lolled like a hanged man's (God preserve us): In this state she lay and her
cries went up to very Heaven and the earth was split by her cries: And she
vomited blood and filth and it dripped from her nostrils and from her
eyes and she broke wind: And many of the congregation turned sick with
revulsion: One time she laughed and one time she cried and she sobbed and
ground her teeth: And many righteous women did testify that a stink issued
from that same place for the spirit dwelt in there (vid. sup.): and she also
made such lewd gesticulations as cannot be put down in writing: And when
they placed a holy object near her, to wit a page from a discarded holy
volume, or the thread of a prayer shawl fringe, why she leaped up and flew
through the air: And all this to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning,
so that many of the congregation were struck with terror and their knees
knocked and they cried: Woe unto us, For the profane doth triumph over the
sacred (which God forbid);

THEN DID REB MORDECAI JOSEPH (may his remembrance be a blessing) cry
Blow the blast and he who held the ram's horn blew: And Reb Mordecai
Joseph cried I excommunicate thee: May every curse and every ban in
the Chapter of Curses fall on thy head if thou forsake not the body of
this woman immediately and out of hand: And the chanter chanted the
Chapter of Curses and sprinkled ashes on the woman's head: And there was
such a turbulence in the study house that the gentiles came running up too
and their priest with them and they bowed for they saw that this thing was
from on high and they prayed to their God: And some of them cried that the
woman be put to death for that she was a witch: And the congregation stood
so close in the prayer house that no more could enter and there was a great
press:

AND THE DYBBUK cried Make me free of the ban and I undertake to
leave in good faith for I can withstand the sacred no longer: And Reb
Mordecai Joseph (may his remembrance be a blessing) did as the dybbuk
had bidden promising to study the Mishna in his name and to recite the
Mourner's Prayer after his soul and he solaced the dybbuk and lifted the
ban: But at once the evil spirit denied himself and he cried: No, Here it is
better for me and I shall not depart: Then Reb Mordecai Joseph laid him
under a ban again and threatened the dybbuk and adjured him and this went
on hour after hour for the dybbuk did nought but lie and perjure himself
with his crooked tongue: And he boasted that the holy names held no terror
for him and he denied the blessed God: And when they asked him Why then
art thou punished he replied It is all chance and an event of nature: And thus
he continued in his rebelliousness: Oh if we were to undertake to tell but
one thousandth part of all that the fiend did and his ribaldry and his
lewdness this tongue would be too brief to recount it and this sheet to record
it: But the whole congregation saw with perfect clearness the wonders of
God and set their hearts on returning to their Father in Heaven: And the
name of the Almighty was consecrated that day:

AND IT CAME TO PASS toward evening that the spirit cried Look after
yourselves For I am about to forsake the body of this woman, seeing that
the blasts of the ram's horn and the adjurations have left me no place here:
And he began to weep with a man's tears and he said Pray that He show me
compassion for I am in dire straits: And dusk fell on the study house for it
was wintertime and the days were short: And the congregation all recited
the verse beginning And let there be contentment and various psalms and
other prayers to drive the spirit away: When suddenly the spirit cried: Move
off for I come: And there was such a press for very terror that many folk
were trampled: The next instant the congregation beheld a flash of fire from
that same place and it flew through the window burning a round hole in the
pane: And no man opened his mouth for all were struck dumb with shock:
BUT RECHELE LAY on the earth like dead for her strength had come from
the spirit (vid. sup.): And the women hastened and covered her and they
bore her to her house to revive her and to bring her back to life:
AND MANY NIGHTS thereafter the evil spirit visited her and rapped on
her window and spoke to her sweetly: And he said, But see As long as I
dwelt in thee thou were in good health: And now art thou sickly and poorly:
But let me return to thy body and remove the amulets from thy throat and I
shall do thy pleasure: And the spirit spoke in this manner smooth words and
pleasant but the woman would not heed him: And then he warned her that
she would be repayed for this and that he would have his revenge: And so it
came to pass (because of our transgressions that are great): For on the
morning of the third day when the women came to Rechele to tend her they
found her dead and her body was already cold: And they did what was
proper with her: And Reb Itche Mates her first husband mourned her and
recited the Mourner's Prayer over her grave: And in his love for her that
knew no bounds he took the thing to heart and he sickened: And before he
died he bade that he be buried near her: And thus that righteous man passed
away with a kiss: May his merit be our shield:

AND THE WICKED GEDALIYA persuaded the watch man and the latter
removed his chains and they fled together: And Gedaliya became an
apostate (God save us) and rose to high position among the idolators and a
troubler of Jews: And some folk say that Gedaliya was none other than
Samael himself and that all his deeds were nought but seduction: And the
moral of this tale is: LET NONE ATTEMPT TO FORCE THE LORD: TO
END OUR PAIN WITHIN THE WORLD: THE MESSIAH WILL COME
IN GODS OWN TIME: AND FREE MEN OF DESPAIR AND CRIME:
THEN DEATH WILL PUT AWAY HIS SWORD: AND SATAN DIE
ABJURED, ABHORRED: LILITH WILL VANISH WITH THE NIGHT:
THE EXILE END AND ALL BE LIGHT: AMEN SELAH: CONCLUDED
AND DONE

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