Of why Salonika does not care for Jacob
Then the situation changes. One day, when Jacob is teaching, some bruisers armed with sticks come into the classroom. They go after those standing nearest the door. They strike blindly. Nussen gets hit, he’s bleeding, his nose is broken. On the floor, streaks of blood, and shouts—a clamor that can be heard from everywhere. The students flee outside, and soon they are afraid to return—for this all happens again the next day. Everyone knows it’s followers of Konio, Baruchiah’s son, who are trying to chase off Jacob, insisting that only they can offer instruction in Salonika. Some of them have familiar faces, the faces of friends—they are, after all, also true believers, but now those old friendships don’t count. There isn’t room in Salonika for two contenders for Messiah. Nussen places guards outside the midrash, to stand there all day and all night. Even so, someone sets fire to it twice. Several times Jacob is attacked on the street, but he is strong, able to defend himself. Nussen, as he is doing the shopping, nearly loses his only eye in an attack. And—this is the strangest one—the Salonika Jewesses have conspired against Jacob; angry women, young and old, attack him as he is going to the baths and throw stones at him. After that, he limps for several days, but he is ashamed to admit it was women who did it.
From one day to the next, the local merchants stop doing business with them as well. Now, when Jacob’s men enter their stalls, they treat them like strangers, turning away and vanishing among their wares. This makes their situation very uncomfortable very quickly. In order to sell or to buy anything, they have to go to the bazaars on the city’s outskirts, where no one knows them. Konio’s followers have declared war on Jacob and his entourage. They conspire against him with the Greeks, meaning the Christian merchants, and they, too, turn away at the sight of them. Nussen’s guards at the beth midrash are no help when Konio’s people post theirs as well, who beat up anyone who attempts to enter Wise Jacob’s school. The money runs out very quickly, and unfortunately, the school has to be closed.
In addition, an unexpectedly severe winter set in—
Nahman writes later. They do not have money for even the worst fuel. They sit shut inside their rented home, fearing for their lives. Jacob coughs.
I have often thought about how success and good fortune can suddenly transform into misery and humiliation.
There wasn’t any money, which is why I will remember that Salonika winter as being ravenous and thin. In order to fill our stomachs, we would often go begging for alms, as many of the learned have done here before. I always tried to ask people calmly and politely for spare change, but Jacob would use very different methods. Once, just before Passover, we stopped by to see a certain Jew who kept funds for the poor. I spoke to him first, for in such situations it worked to our advantage that I spoke well and could make the types of arguments that would make a good impression, as a learned man, and trustworthy. So I said that we were from a cursed land, where Jews have suffered the greatest misfortunes as a result of terrible persecutions and where the direst poverty prevails, where the climate is hostile, though for all this the people there are honest and wholly dedicated to the faith . . . And so I spoke, trying to awaken pity in him, but he didn’t even look at me.
“We’ve got enough domestic alms-collectors here, we can’t be maintaining foreign ones on top of this.”
So I replied:
“In our country, even a foreigner can find support.”
This treasurer gave me a spiteful smile and looked me in the eye for the first time:
“So what did you come wandering in here for, leaving behind that magnificent country, since things were going so well for you there?”
I was about to come back with a clever retort when Jacob, who until that moment had been standing calmly behind me, shoved me aside and shrieked at him:
“How dare you ask why we left our country, you little scumbag?!”
The other man took a step backward, frightened by Jacob’s tone, but he didn’t answer, and in any case he would have been unable to, for Jacob was already leaning in to him and shouting:
“Why did Jacob the Patriarch leave his country and go to Egypt? Isn’t that where Passover comes from? If he had stayed in his country, you would have no holiday now, you scoundrel, and we would have no need for holiday meals!”
The man was so frightened he instantly gave us a few levs and, apologizing profusely, showed us to the door.
Perhaps it was all for the best, since our deprivation that winter ultimately focused us and sharpened our senses. There was no force capable of extinguishing Jacob’s flame. He—as was shown in a variety of situations—was able to shine like a precious stone even in the worst of conditions. Even in rags, as we begged for alms, there was a kind of majesty that emanated from him, and everyone who met with him knew that he was encountering an extraordinary being. And was afraid. It’s strange, but in that poverty, instead of perishing, we began to understand. It was as if we had only disguised ourselves in that cold, that pain, and that destitution. Jacob in particular—freezing and tattered, he inspired even greater compassion, but also greater respect than any self-satisfied, wealthy hakham.
And then another miracle occurred: Jacob’s fame so increased across Salonika that in the end, Konio’s true believers showed up, for now they wished to buy him off. They offered him a considerable sum of money to either join with them or leave the city.
“Now you come?!” he cried bitterly. “Now you can kiss my ass! You’re too late.”
In the end, hostility toward him became so severe that Jacob stopped sleeping at home. He had a Greek gentleman sleep in his bed, a man hoping to get into the stone trade with us. Jacob went to sleep in the kitchen, or so he told us all. I knew very well that he went to see a widow who often provided him with financial support as well as with the comforts of her body. One night, someone broke into the house and stabbed the Greek under his blanket. The murderer vanished like a shadow.
This event alarmed Jacob to such an extent that for some time he left Salonika for Larissa, while we pretended he’d remained. On the very first night of his return, they prepared an ambush for him.
From then on, Jacob spent every night in some new place, and we began to fear for our lives and for our health, so—there was no alternative—we determined to leave Salonika to the mercy of its evil and go back to Smyrna. The worst thing was that it was our own people who so desired Jacob’s demise. Now even he had nothing good to say about them. He spoke of them with contempt, calling them effeminate and saying that of everything Baruchiah had taught them, all that had stayed with them was a fondness for sodomy.
Scraps: Of the curse of Salonika and Jacob’s molting
As soon as we had made the decision to flee Salonika and started to ready ourselves for the road, Jacob fell ill. One day his body became covered in abscesses, and his skin came off in bloody sheets as he howled in pain. What sort of illness comes on so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and takes on such symptoms as these? The first thing that came to everyone’s mind was that this must be a curse. Jacob believed it, too. Those Koniosos must have hired some sort of sorcerer, although among their own they had several who might well have the skill to cast such a curse upon their rival.
At first, Reb Mordke applied the bandages himself, swathing Jacob in amulets he had prepared, mumbling spells, while he filled the pipe with dark resin for the patient, since smoking it alleviated his pain. But helpless in the face of his beloved Jacob’s continued suffering, he called up a certain woman, old and trembling, reputed to be the finest healer. They said she was a witch, and extremely famous, one of those Thessalonians who have lived just outside the city for centuries and know how to disappear. She coated his wounds in a foul-smelling liquid that stung and burned, and Jacob’s howling could be heard all over town. As he moaned in pain, she chanted some kind of spells over him, in a language no one could recognize, so bizarre it was. She patted him on the buttocks like she might a child, and when it was over, she wo
uldn’t accept any payment, saying it hadn’t been an illness at all, that Jacob had merely been molting. Like a snake.
We looked at one another in disbelief, and Reb Mordke burst into tears like a little boy.
“Molting like a snake!” Overcome, he raised his hands to heaven and cried, “Our Lord, to the ends of the earth—thank you!” And then he pulled on everyone’s sleeves and repeated, thrilled, “The serpent is the savior, nahash. Is this not evidence of Jacob’s messianic mission?” His dark, teary eyes shone, reflecting the little flames of the lamps. I soaked the bandages in a warm herbal decoction, as the old woman had instructed, in order to be able to lay them upon the crusted-over wounds. It wasn’t that the wounds themselves were terrible, though the pain they caused was real and acute—but it was mainly the fact that they were there. Who did this? Who cast this curse? I thought at first with anger and bitterness. But now I knew that no one would be able to do anything bad to
Jacob. When the spirit enters a human being, everything must change in his body, start up afresh. A man leaves his old skin aside and covers himself in a new one. Yes, this is what we talked about through the night before we left.
Nussen and I were squatting down beneath the trees. We were waiting for a miracle. The sky in the east got pink, the birds began to sing, and then the call of the muezzin joined in with theirs. When the sun began to make its way out from under the horizon, the little homes with their flat roofs covered themselves in long, damp shadows and all the smells of the world awoke: orange flowers, smoke, ash, and yesterday’s rotting remains tossed out onto the streets. And incense, and donkey excrement. I felt unimaginable happiness overflowing in me—it was a miracle, and a sign that every day the world arises anew and gives us a new chance for tikkun. It gives itself over into our hands trustfully, like an enormous and uncertain animal, crippled and dependent on our will. And we must harness it to our work.
“Will we find Jacob’s shed skin on the floor?” Hershel asked in excitement, as I stood and in the light of the rising sun, to the accompaniment of the muezzin’s wailing, I danced.
That day, Jacob woke angry and suffering. He told us to pack our paltry goods, and since we had no money for a ship, we set out on donkeys along the shore to the east.
En route to Adrianople, we camped by the seaside. Jacob was hissing in pain, and the dressings I made for him didn’t help at all. Then a woman passing through on a donkey, no doubt also a witch, like all Thessalonian women, advised him to enter into the salty seawater and to stand there as long as he could take it. Jacob did as she said, but the water did not wish to take Jacob. He staggered in it, got knocked over, and the sea ejected him, weak, onto the shore. He tried to throw himself upon the waves, but it looked as if they were fleeing from him, and he was left in the wet sand. Then—I saw this myself and record it here as an eyewitness—Jacob raised his hands to the sky and gave a series of horrific shouts. He shouted so that all the nearby travelers paused, uneasy, and the fishermen, who were readying their nets, stopped mid-motion, and the women who were selling fish straight out of the basket, and even the sailors who were just coming into port looked up and over. Nussen and I couldn’t bear to hear it. It was as if they were skinning him alive. I covered my ears, and then a strange thing happened—suddenly the sea let him in, a wave came up, and Jacob plunged into it up to his neck, and in the end, for a moment, all of him disappeared under the water, his hands and feet flashing, and the water turned him over like a little scrap of wood. At last he emerged onto the shore and lay in the sand like a dead man. Nussen and I ran up to him and, getting our robes wet, dragged him farther onto the shore. To tell the truth—I thought that he had drowned.
But after this bath the skin fell off him in sheets all day, and underneath appeared new and healthy skin, pink like a child’s.
In two days Jacob was healthy and when we got to Smyrna he was young again, and so handsome and full of light, like himself again. And this was how he presented himself to his wife.
Nahman is very happy with what he’s written. He hesitates over whether or not to mention the adventures at sea that came next. He could describe it—the trip was certainly dramatic enough to be described. He dips his pen, then instantly flicks the drops of ink onto the sand. No, he won’t write about that. He won’t write that for a small sum a little trade ship agreed to carry them to Smyrna. The passage was cheap, but the conditions were very bad. They had barely settled in belowdecks, and the ship had sailed out to sea, when it turned out that its proprietor, a man who was neither a Greek nor an Italian, but some Christian, was not a merchant at all, but rather a pirate. When they demanded to be taken straight to Smyrna, this man abused them and threatened to have his thugs throw them all overboard.
Nahman remembers the date well—it was July 25, 1755, the day of the patron saint of this horrible man, a saint to whom he prayed incessantly, confessing all his crimes (which they had to hear, and which made the blood in their veins run cold). A terrible squall descended on the water. It was Nahman’s first time experiencing something so abominable, and he became convinced that he was going to die that day. Terrified, he tethered himself to the mast, in order that the frenzied waves not wash him away, and he lamented loudly. Then, in a panic, he clutched at Jacob’s coat, trying to hide under it. Jacob, who had no fear in him, tried at first to calm him, but when nothing helped, he began to ridicule poor Nahman, making fun of the whole situation. They held on to the flimsy masts, and when those broke under the beating of the waves, they grabbed hold of anything they could. The water was worse than a robber—it washed out all the loot from below the deck and also took one deckhand who was drunk and barely able to stay on his feet. The loss of this man to the depths caused Nahman to completely lose control of himself. He jabbered incoherent words of prayer, tears as salty as the seawater blinding his eyes.
Amused by Nahman’s state, Jacob had him make confession as well, and—worse still—had him make an assortment of promises to God. In his terror and his tears, he bound himself never again to touch wine or any spirits, or to smoke a pipe.
“I swear, I swear!” he shouted with his eyes closed, too terrified to think clearly, which brought Jacob great joy, so that in the midst of the storm he guffawed like a demon.
“And you’ll clean up after me when I shit!” Jacob shouted over the storm.
And Nahman answered:
“I swear, I swear.”
“And wipe my ass!” shouted Jacob.
“And wipe Jacob’s ass. I swear, I swear I’ll do it all!” answered Nahman, until the others, who were all listening, also started to collapse with laughter and mock the rabbi, and this ended up engaging them more than the storm, which passed like a bad dream.
Even now Nahman can’t shake his sense of shame and humiliation. He doesn’t speak a word to Jacob all the way to Smyrna, although Jacob often puts his arm around his shoulder and pats him on the back. It is hard to forgive someone for having fun at your misfortune. But—strangely—Nahman also finds an odd pleasure in it, a pale shadow of unspeakable delectation, a slight pain, when Jacob’s arm squeezes the nape of his neck.
Among all the oaths that Jacob laughingly forced Nahman to take, there was the promise he had made that he would never leave him.
Scraps: Of triangles and crosses
In Smyrna everything seemed familiar to us, as if we had been gone for just one week.
Jacob and Hana, and that tiny little girl who had recently been born to them, rented a small house on a side street. Hana, with the dowry given by her father, even arranged it so that it was pleasant to go there and sit for a bit, while she, in the Turkish fashion, would disappear with the child into the women’s part of the home, although I often felt from somewhere her gaze on my back.
Isohar, having heard about the entrance of the Holy Spirit into Jacob, had begun to behave completely differently from before. He began to seek out my company, as a direct witness of Jacob and as his voice. We would gather daily for long sittings,
and Isohar ever more fervently would urge on us the study of the teachings of the Trinity.
This forbidden idea we found so thrilling, so illicit, that we wondered whether it was so for every Jew, whether it had, as it did for us, the same force as those four Hebrew letters that create the name of God.
In the sand strewn over the table that served as our slate, Isohar drew triangles and marked their corners according to what was in the Zohar, and then according to the teachings of Sabbatai Tzvi, blessed be his name. Someone stopping by might have thought that we were children playing at drawing.
There is the God of truth in the spiritual world and the Shekhinah imprisoned in matter, and as if “underneath them,” in the lower corner of the triangle, there is God the Creator, the cause of Divine sparks. When the Messiah comes, he eliminates the First Reason, and then the triangle stands on its head, now the God of Truth is on top, and beneath him is the Shekhinah and the Shekhinah’s vessel, the Messiah.
Much of this I did not understand.
“Yes, yes, yes,” was all Isohar would say, time and again. He had aged a great deal of late, as though he were traveling faster than the rest of us, alone out in front. He would also show us two lines crossing each other, giving rise to the cross, the quadruplicity that is the world’s stamp. He drew two intersecting lines and skewed them slightly.
“What does this remind you of?” he asked.
And Jacob instantly glimpsed the mystery of the cross.
“That’s the alef. The cross is the alef.”
In secret, once I remained alone, I raised my hand to my forehead and touched my skin, saying, “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” for I was only beginning to grow accustomed to this thought.
One Smyrna night, stuffy from the fragrance of the orange blossoms, for it was already spring, Isohar revealed to us the following secret:
The Books of Jacob Page 28
