I worry that simply summarizing someone’s Views cannot convey a full Sense of their Spirit—the linguistic Habits of the Author get lost, his Style, too, and Humor and Anecdotes cannot simply be summarized. Such Compilations are therefore mere Approximations, and if someone else then summarizes the Summaries, only the very Dregs will be left, out of which all of the Information has been squeezed. I know not whether what remains is like the Pulp of those Fruits in the Wine, from which all that is essential has already been extracted, or whether, a contrario, it would be the opposite, Aqua vitae, when something that is more diluted, weaker, is distilled into Spirits—is fortified.
What I wanted was to achieve this type of Distillation. In order that the Reader might not have to trouble himself with all these Books that I have here on my Shelves—and there are a hundred and twenty of them—nor with the ones from which I read and made extensive Notes on visits to Houses and Convents and Estates.
Do not think, dear Friend, that I value my own Efforts over Your Poems and Romances. Yours are written to amuse, and mine are in the Service of Study.
My great Dream is someday to set out on a distant Peregrination, but I am not thinking of Rome or other exotic Locales, but rather of Warsaw. There I would strike out straightaway for one particular Location: the Daniłowicz Palace, where the Załuski brothers—Your venerable Publishers—have amassed a Library of thousands of Volumes and made it available to anyone who wishes and is able to read . . .
Please give Firlejka’s Ear a little Pet from me. I am so very pleased that You named her that. Her Mother has had another Litter. I have not the heart to drown them, so I hand them out around the neighboring Cottages, and coming as they do from a Priest, even the Peasants are happy to accept them . . .
What Pinkas records, and what goes unrecorded
It would be wrong to think that only bishops have spies; the letters have also been piling up on Rabbi Rapaport’s table in Lwów. Pinkas is his most distinguished secretary, his external memory, his archive, his address book. Always half a step behind the rabbi, small but standing very straight, a bit like a rodent, he takes every letter in his long, slender fingers, delicately turns it over in his hands, paying attention to every detail, splotch, stain, and then carefully he opens it—if there is a seal, then he tries to break it in such a way as to crumble it as little as possible, so that the seal preserves the mark of its sender. Then he carries the letters to the rabbi and waits for him to tell him what to do with them—set them aside for later, copy, or answer straightaway. In the latter case, Pinkas sits down to write.
But since he lost his daughter, it is hard for him to focus on the letters. Rabbi Rapaport, understanding this (or maybe fearing that in his state of internal commotion he might make some error—that he isn’t fit to serve as secretary anymore) now has him merely read or at most bring him the letters. For the writing, he has employed someone else, easing Pinkas’s workload. This is unpleasant for Pinkas, but he tries to stifle his somewhat wounded pride. Yes, he must admit, he has met with misfortune.
He remains nonetheless avidly interested in what is happening in connection with the cursed followers of this Frank, those vile creatures who do not hesitate to defile their nests. That is Rabbi Rapaport’s expression. Rapaport has been reminding everyone what must be done under such circumstances:
“The tradition of our fathers has been to say nothing on matters connected with Sabbatai Tzvi—nothing good, and nothing bad; to neither censure nor condone. And were someone to insist on asking questions, were someone to be curious about the way things were, then he must be threatened with herem.”
But things cannot be ignored into infinity. That is how they wound up in the shop of one Naftuła in Lanckoroń—he, Rapaport, and some other rabbis, forming a rabbinical court. They deliberate, having interrogated their prisoners not long ago. They had to protect them from the angry mob gathered outside the shop, grabbing at them in a frenzy, shouting, “Trinity! Trinity!”
“It’s like this,” says Rapaport. “As Jews, we are sitting in the same boat, and we’re sailing over a stormy sea, and all around us there are sea monsters—every day, at every hour, some great danger lies in wait for us. And any day, and at any hour, the massive storm that will drown us out of existence could arise.”
He raises his voice here, a thing he almost never does:
“But sitting in the boat with us are also miscreants, Jews from the selfsame stock. Yet it is only at first glance that they seem to be our brothers, for in reality, they are rogues, the devil’s seed that has gotten into our midst. They are worse than the Pharaoh, than Goliath, the Philistines, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Titus . . . For lo! they are worse than the serpent in Eden, since they curse the God of Israel, and that not even the serpent dared to do.”
All the eldest, most respected rabbis from around these parts are seated at the table. With their beards, in the weak light of the oil lamps, they resemble one another, and together they lower their eyes in despair. Pinkas and another secretary at a side table have been charged with taking minutes. Pinkas stops writing to watch the rabbi of Czortków, who has arrived late, drip damp snow from his coat onto the waxed wooden floor, creating small puddles that reflect the lamplight.
Rabbi Rapaport raises his voice again, and the shadow of his finger pokes at the low ceiling:
“But they don’t take into consideration the common good of the Jews, and they go on drilling a hole in our boat, not even realizing that we will all drown!”
Not all of them agree, however, that Gershon of Lanckoroń did the right thing by reporting on those disgusting rites in one of the houses of that town.
“Although the shiniest thing is what attracts attention in this matter, that thing is not at all the most important or the most dangerous,” Rapaport continues. He signals to Pinkas that what comes next is not to be recorded. “The real danger is elsewhere and has mostly gone unnoticed, because it has been overshadowed by the breasts of Hayah, Shorr’s daughter. Everyone has been focusing on female nudity and wallowing in that sensational little tidbit, but in the meantime, the important thing, the most important thing is what Melech Naftuła, who was there, saw with his own eyes and testified officially to having seen: the cross!”
A silence ensues, in which only the wheezy exhalation of Moshko of Satanów can be heard.
“And with that cross they tried working all sorts of different miracles, burning candles on it and brandishing it over their heads. That cross is the nail in our coffin!” The rabbi has raised his voice again. “Isn’t that right?” he asks Naftuła, who seems frightened by the thing he has revealed to them.
Naftuła nods.
“What will the goyim think now?” Moshko from Satanów asks. “To them we’re all the same. A Jew is a Jew, and it’s going to look to them like all Jews are like those. That all Jews treat the cross in such a sacrilegious way. That they abuse it so. We know what will happen, it’s happened before—before we can explain ourselves, they will have ushered us into the torture chamber.”
“Perhaps the matter should have been kept within the fold?” asks the dripping rabbi. “It could have been talked over quietly and handled prudently then.”
But there is no more “fold.” It is impossible to resolve anything with them, because they, too, insist with all their might. And they have the protection of such powerful persons as Bishop Dembowski (at the mention of this name there is an uneasy shuffling) as well as Bishop Sołtyk (at this the majority of the rabbis stare down at the dark floor, and one of them sighs plaintively).
“So maybe it would in fact be better,” wise Rapaport goes on, “if we washed our hands of this filth altogether, let the royal courts roll around in the mud with them—from now on, we will maintain that we have nothing to do with those renegades. For are they even still Jews?” he asks dramatically.
There is a moment of tense silence.
“They are no longer Jews, since they are adherents of Sabbatai, may his name be erased for all
eternity,” he concludes, and it sounds like a curse.
Yes, after those words, Pinkas feels relieved. He’s let out all the rotten air and is now taking in a big fresh breath. The discussion lasts until midnight. Pinkas, taking the minutes, listens closely to all the things that come between the phrases worth his writing down.
The herem is issued the next day. Now Pinkas has his hands full. The letter about the herem has to be copied out many times and sent as quickly as possible to all the kahalim. In the evening, he delivers it to the little Jewish printshop near the market square in Lwów. Late at night he returns home, where his young wife greets him with reproaches, being irritable as usual on account of the twins, who, she says, are sucking the life out of her.
Of the Seder HaHerem, or the order of the curse
The curse boils down to a few words pronounced in a certain order and at a certain time, all to the sound of the shofar. This occurs in a synagogue in Lwów, by the light of black wax candles, by an open holy ark. Readings from the Torah include Leviticus 26:14–46 as well as Deuteronomy 28:15–68, and then the candles are extinguished, and everything gets frightening, just as divine light has ceased to shine onto the cursed ones from this point forward. The voice of one of the three judges conducting the ceremony carries across the whole of the synagogue, disperses over the great crowd of the faithful:
“We hereby proclaim to all who are gathered here that we have long since been informed of the hideous views and acts of Yankiele Leybowicz of Korolówka, and we have made repeated attempts to bring him back from the path of evil. Being unable, however, to reach his hardened heart, and receiving every day some new bit of information on his heresies and activities, having witnesses to hand, the rabbinical council has determined that Yankiele Leybowicz of Korolówka must be cursed and cast out of Israel.”
Pinkas, who stands in the very center of those gathered and can almost feel the warmth of the bodies of the other men, shuffles uneasily. Why are they calling the cursed man Yankiele Leybowicz instead of Jacob Frank, negating, in a way, everything that has happened lately? Suddenly Pinkas has the worrying suspicion that in cursing Yankiele Leybowicz, they are leaving Jacob Frank unscathed. Doesn’t the curse go after the name, like a trained hunting dog told to fetch? What if the curse, addressed wrongly, doesn’t make it to the right man? Perhaps a person could, by changing his name, his residence, country, and language, escape the herem, that weightiest of condemnations? Whom are they cursing? The wayward troublemaker? Or the kid who seduced and pulled off petty schemes?
Pinkas knows that according to the Scriptures a person upon whom herem has been placed should die.
He sticks out his shoulders and pushes his way to the front, whispering all around: “Jacob Frank, not Yankiele Leybowicz.” Or the one and the other. At last, those standing nearest understand what Pinkas means. There is a slight commotion, and in the end the rabbi goes on with the herem, his voice growing more plaintive and more terrible, until the men who are listening hunch over, and the women in the women’s courtyard cry in alarm in the face of this horrifying mechanism called forth as though from the darkest cellar, a kind of soulless giant made of clay that now will be in force forever, impossible to revoke.
“We curse and condemn and cast off Yankiele Leybowicz, also known as Jacob Frank, with the same words with which Joshua cursed Jericho, with which Elisha cursed his children, as well as with the words of all the curses written in the Book of Second Law,” says the rabbi.
A murmur rises up all around, and it’s not clear if it is of regret or if it is of pleasure, but it is as though it has come not from people’s lips, but rather from within their robes, from the bottoms of their pockets, from their wide sleeves, from the cracks in the floor.
“Let him be cursed by day and cursed by night. Cursed when he goes to bed and when he gets up, when he enters his home and when he leaves it. May you never forgive him, Lord, and may you never recognize him! May your anger burn from here on out against this man, may you weigh him down with all your curses, and may his name be erased from the Book of Life. We warn all never to exchange a word with him, in conversation or in writing, never to grant him any favors, never to be under one roof with him, not to be within four cubits of him, and not to read any document dictated by him or written in his hand.”
The words die down, transforming into something almost solid, a creature made of air, an indefinable and enduring being. The synagogue is closed, and they all head home in silence. Meanwhile, far away, in another place, Jacob sits surrounded by his people; he is a little tipsy, and he doesn’t notice a thing; nothing around him has changed, nothing has happened, except, perhaps, an abrupt swoon of the candlelight.
Of Yente, who is always present and sees all
Yente, always present, sees the curse like something blurred, like those strange monsters that float before our eyes, twisted scraps, tiny, translucent organisms. And the curse will now hold on to Jacob as the white clings to the yolk.
But in fact, there is nothing about this that is concerning or even surprising. Look—there are many such curses all around, lesser, weaker, perhaps, more insignificant. Many are hounded by these, as they orbit the human heart like slimy moons—all those to whom someone has ever said, “I hope you croak,” when their cart went off the road into the cabbage fields, its wheels crushing fully grown heads, and the girls cursed by their own fathers because they went into the bushes with a farmhand, and the man in the beautifully embroidered żupan cursed by his own serf over yet another day of serfdom, and then that same serf, who’s been cursed by his wife when he allowed their money to be stolen or drank it away at the tavern. To him, too, the words “May you keel over and die” have been said.
Those able to see the way Yente sees things would realize that in fact the world is made of words that, once uttered, lay claim to every order, so that all things seem to occur at their behest. All things belong to them.
Every curse, even the slightest, has an effect. Every single word that’s said.
When Jacob finds out about the herem a few days later, he is sitting with his back to the light, so no one sees the expression on his face. The candles cast a sharp light onto his rough, uneven cheek. Is he going to get sick again, like he did back in Salonika? He has Nahman summoned, and together they pray, standing up, until morning. They pray to protect themselves. The candles burn, and the room becomes stuffy and hot. Just before dawn, as their legs are getting almost too weak to hold them, Jacob carries out a secret ritual, and then Mordechai pronounces words just as powerful as the curse and points them in the direction of Lwów.
In Lwów, Bishop Dembowski wakes up one morning and feels as though his movements have grown slower, as though they now require of him a greater effort. He doesn’t know what this could mean. But when a possible explanation for this strange, unexpected indisposition comes to him, he begins to feel afraid.
Yente lies in the shed and neither dies nor awakens. Her grandson Israel, meanwhile, goes around the village telling of this marvel with a degree of terror and distress that only vodka is capable of assuaging. He presents himself as the good grandson who dedicates whole days to his grandmother and has no time left for work. Sometimes the contemplation of it brings him to tears, and sometimes to fury, and then he gets into fights. But in reality, the ones who take care of Old Yente are Pesel and Freyna, his daughters.
Pesel gets up at dawn and goes to the shed, which is after all an annex to their cottage, and there she checks that everything is still all right. It is always all right. Only once did she see a cat sitting on the old woman’s body, a strange cat. She chased it off, and now she always makes sure the door is very tightly closed. Sometimes Yente is covered in something like dew, drops of water on her skin and on her clothing, but it’s strange water that doesn’t evaporate, that can only be dispersed with a feather duster.
Then she gently wipes Yente’s face. Her hand always hesitates before touching the skin, which is cool, delicate and soft, but supp
le. Sometimes it seems to Pesel that it crackles slightly, or, perhaps more precisely, that it creaks, like a new leather shoe, like a harness bought at market. Once Pesel, intrigued, asked her mother, Sobla, to help her, and very carefully they lifted up the body to check if there were any bedsores. They pulled aside the dress, but there was nothing.
“Her blood no longer flows,” Pesel says to her mother, and it sends chills down both of their spines.
But she isn’t a dead body, either. When she is touched, the slow motion of her eyeballs under their lids quickens. There can be no doubt.
To satisfy her curiosity, Pesel tried one other thing, but this she did alone, without witnesses. She took a sharp little knife and nicked a bit of skin at Yente’s wrist. She was right: no blood emerged, but Yente’s eyelids quivered uneasily, and something like a long-held breath escaped her lips. Was that possible?
Pesel, carefully observing the life of this one laid to rest, if she could be described as such, does see certain changes occur, very subtle ones. She repeatedly tells her father that Yente is shrinking, for instance.
Meanwhile, outside, a tired crowd is waiting. Some of them have been walking the whole day to get here, while others have rented a room with someone in the village, having come from farther away.
The sun rises over the river and travels quickly up into the sky, casting long, wet shadows. Those waiting warm themselves in its sharp rays. Then Pesel lets them inside, where she allows them to remain for some time. At first, they stand shyly, not daring to go up to this thing that’s like a bier. She does not permit them to pray out loud—have they not troubles enough already? So they stand and pray in silence, conveying to Yente their pleas. She seems to fulfill those requests that have to do with fertility and infertility, as the case may be—the ones that have to do with women’s bodies. But men come, too; they say that Yente helps with hopeless causes, after a person has lost everything.
The Books of Jacob Page 34
