On the third day, after we had already discussed the whole situation, the machinations of Krysa and the silence of the Shorrs, and once we had read him the letters from our fellow true believers, Jacob said that, as the Turks had welcomed our people, offering real aid and not just empty talk, and there being no alternative, we would be obliged to stick with them. We needed to apply for Turkish protection.
“Be smart. We have been talking about this for many years, and yet when it comes to actually doing something about it, you all balk,” he said. Then he lowered his voice so that we had to lean in to hear him: “It’ll be like getting into cold water: your whole body balks, but then you get used to it, and what seemed to you terribly foreign starts to seem nice and familiar.” He told us about a mufti he knew, with whom he did business, who owed much of his wealth to making deals with the Sublime Porte.
Although there was still a great deal of snow, the four of us took sleighs, Hana and little Avacha, as well as Hershel, who was in their service, and farmhands for the sleighs, and, packing gifts, wine, and exquisite Polish vodka, we went to Ruse where the mufti, Jacob’s close acquaintance, lived. When we got there, Jacob went out for a word with the agha, who seemed almost like a brother to him, and talked with him a bit, while we, polite guests, relished the sweets that were offered us. They came back happy. And the next day, all of us who were there, along with more of our true-believer brothers and sisters from Ruse, where there were indeed a great number of us, turned up at noon in the mosque. There we all converted to the Islamic religion, putting green turbans on our heads. It all took just a moment; the only thing we had to do was say “Allahu Akbar,” and Jacob gave us all new Turkish names: Kara, Osman, Mehmed, and Hasan, and his wife and child would be Fatima and Aisha, like the wives of the prophet. Thanks to this, the faithful reached the number of thirteen, which was necessary if we wanted to found our own camp, as Baruchiah had done.
Suddenly we were safe again. For the second time, Jacob became our hakham, and our Lord. We recognized him as our Lord in everything with complete trust and would have been delighted if he’d said he wanted us all to go to Poland.
As we were returning home from the mosque on our sleighs, we were all in a good mood, and as though it were a kulig, we sang our songs at such a volume that our throats got sore. Then I felt better, and the logic of my thoughts returned. We are progressing toward God through three religions: Jewish, Ishmaelite, and Edomite. So it was written. And long ago I translated into Turkish from Hebrew my favorite prayer, and when I said it in the evening, everyone liked it and even wrote it down for themselves to remember in this new language. This is the prayer:
Underneath my gray robe I have nothing but my soul, Which is there for a moment but will more than console.
It will bounce off every shore, putting up a white sail, Nothing can stop it—squalls of the heart are too frail.
And so it will go, drifting in and out of your ports, Send your watchmen—nothing will put my soul out of sorts.
Build new walls—my soul will go right through them, When intentions are good, it will rightly construe them.
And amidst your borders it will fast get its bearings, Counter your words with wiser ones at any hearings.
Pedigree and permanence do not interest my soul, Nor courtliness, breeding, or the exercise of control.
If you try to calculate its vastness in a poem, It will break free, unable to sit and stay at home.
No one knows if it’s lovely or how lofty it is, Its bright, expeditious flights rule out analysis.
Help me, O merciful God and everlasting Lord, Express that free spirit with my mortal tongue, in words.
Open my calamitous mouth, make my tongue be bright, And I will state once and for all: you are good and right.
I was happy. Spring arrived one day not long after that, or one afternoon, really, the sun gathering its strength and beginning to burn our backs. We had already managed to sell all our goods, so we took a break in our bookkeeping. The next morning, singing birds awoke me, and right after that, though I know not how, everything turned green, little blades of grass growing between the stones in the courtyard, and the tamarisk burst into bloom. The horses stood motionless in patches of sun, warming their hides, half closing their eyes.
My window overlooked the vineyard, and that year I witnessed the whole process of life returning after the winter, from beginning to end, from buds to mature grapes. By August it was already time to pluck them, so heavy and full of juice were they. It occurred to me that God was giving me an example: an idea can arrive seemingly out of nowhere. It has its own schedule, advances at its own pace. Nothing can be rushed or bypassed. I crushed the grapes in my fingers and thought how much God had done in this time, letting the vineyards ripen, growing the vegetables in the ground and the fruits on the trees.
Anyone who might think we were listlessly sitting around would be mistaken. By day, we wrote out letters and sent them all over the world to our brothers—this one to Germany, this one to Moravia, this to Salonika, another to Smyrna. Jacob, meanwhile, remaining in intimate relations with the local authorities, met with the Turks often, and I accompanied him. Among the Turks there were also the Bektashi, who considered Jacob one of their own, and sometimes he would go to them, although he didn’t want us to accompany him there.
As we had not given up our business while staying with Jacob, several times that summer we set out from Giurgiu to Ruse, on the other shore, and from there we would take our products farther, to Vidin and Nikopol, where Jacob’s father-in-law, Tovah, still lived.
I got to know this road along the Danube well—a road along the shore which, though mostly going low, sometimes climbs up high on the escarpment. One can always see from it the massive power of the flowing water, its true potential. When in the spring the Danube overflows its banks widely, as it did that year, one might take it for the sea, so much water is there across the whole of the lowlands. Some riverside settlements face flooding nearly every spring. To protect themselves from deluge, people plant trees of a certain kind along the shore, trees with powerful roots to absorb the water. The villages here appear miserable, their homes made out of clay, with nets hung up to dry alongside. Their inhabitants are small and swarthy, and the women will gladly read one’s palms. Farther from the water, among the vineyards, the more prosperous build their houses of stone, and their cozy courtyards are covered with a thick awning of vines that shields them from the heat. It is in these courtyards that family life occurs from spring on, it is here guests are received, here that people work, chat, and drink wine come evening. At sunset, by the river, you often hear a distant song carrying across the water—whence it comes is never clear, nor is it easy to identify what language it is sung in.
Around Lom, the banks climb particularly high, and from there it seems like you can see half the world or more. We always stopped there for supplies. I remember the warmth of the sun’s rays on my skin, and I can smell the heated vegetation, a mixture of herbs and the silt in the river. We would buy stores of goat’s cheese, as well as pots of zacusca, a well-seasoned paste of eggplants and red peppers roasted over the fire. Now I think that never in my life have I eaten anything as good. The inn was more than just an ordinary rest stop for the horses, the food better than the typical local cuisine. Everything interwove and locked together in that seemingly ordinary moment, and the boundaries of ordinary things dissolved, so that I stopped eating and simply stared, mouth open, into that silvery space, until Jacob or Yeruhim must have bashed me in the back to bring me down to earth again.
Looking at the Danube soothed me. I saw the wind moving the ships’ rigging, rocking the boats moored to the shore. I saw that our lives were stretched out between two great rivers, the Dniester and the Danube, which, like two players, set us on the board of Hayah’s strange game.
My soul is inseparable from Jacob’s. I cannot otherwise explain my attachment. Obviously at some time in the past we were one creature. Reb Mordke must
have been there as well, and Isohar, of whose passing we were saddened to learn.
One spring day of Pesach we conducted the old ritual that marked the beginning of the new road. Jacob took a small barrel and attached to it nine candles, while he had a tenth, and he lit that one and those nine, and then he put them out. He did this three times. Then he sat down next to his wife, and then the four of us went up to him individually and joined with him our souls and bodies, recognizing him as our Lord. And then we did it again, but all together. Many of our people were waiting behind the door, wanting to join. It was the ritual Kav haMalkhut, also known as the Royal Cord.
In the meantime, our brothers fleeing Poland were coming into Giurgiu en masse, trekking either to Salonika, to our Dönmeh brothers, lost and determined never to go back to Podolia again, or here, to Wallachia. Jacob’s house was open to them, even to those who, not knowing who he was, talked about a certain Jacob Frank, apparently still marauding through Poland and crushing the Talmudists. This brought Jacob great joy, and he spent a long time asking them all sorts of questions and dragging the matter out before he finally revealed to them that he was this very man. It just meant that his fame was growing, and that more and more people were hearing of him. Yet Jacob did not seem happy, and Hana and all of us had to bear the brunt of his bad moods, when he would curse and summon Israel Osman and have him go off somewhere with some urgent message, or else go and arrange something or other with the agha.
The newcomers, hospitably received by Hana, told of how along the Prut, on the Turkish side, a whole army of true believers waited to return to their country. They stood out in the cold, hungry and destitute, watching the Polish shore from afar.
In May, a long and much-anticipated letter arrived from Moliwda, in which he informed us of his great strivings as well as those of Mrs. Kossakowska, and various nobles and bishops, with the king himself, and then we, too, started to think about returning to Poland. Jacob said nothing, but I saw him stealthily reaching for a book in Polish in the evenings. I guessed that he was studying the language in secret, and I learned that I was right when he asked me one day, as though in passing:
“How can it be that they say one knife, but two knives? It should be knifes.”
I was unable to explain this to him.
We soon received a letter of safe conduct from the king through the same channel. This was written in a very
elevated style, and I had to put all of my energy into translating it adroitly. I read it so many times that I learned it by heart, and even in the night, waking from a dream, I could have recited any part of it at will:
Our councils have enjoined us, on behalf of the Contra-Talmudists, to take the same under our royal protection by means of this iron letter, also known as a letter of safe conduct, to defend against the pertinacious tentatives of whosoever it may be, including, but not limited to, the scurrilous Talmudists alluded to in the aforementioned correspondence, not only in the Podolian Voivodship, but also in every place in the Kingdom and Grand Duchy, where the Contra-Talmudists must be free to stay and litigate their uncompleted trial, that its outcome should apply to every court, including the highest of the Commonwealth, both religious and secular, which shall support absolutely all those who have sustained injury—that they might exercise the privileges, rights, liberties, and freedoms provided the Jews by royal writ, safely, freely, and in peace.
The which requests, rightly and fairly addressed to us, being granted, thus affirming that the ContraTalmudists, having renounced the Jewish Talmud—as it is filled with countless blasphemies, harmful to the general good of the True Believers of the Church and Fatherland, condemned to burn by the Highest Popes, and already burned in some kingdoms, including our own, by just decree of the Most Reverend, His Excellency, Bishop Mikołaj, in the midst of Our city, Kamieniec Podolski—and in this renouncement having come nearer to knowing God as He is in Three Persons, yet in Essence One, and professing and upholding the teachings of the Old Testament . . .
Thus taking the Contra-Talmudists under Our protection, in common and individually, this iron letter of Godspeed against the pertinacious tentatives of the aforementioned and all persons and in support of the alleviation of injury to those named in our writ, we have determined to grant, to extend, and to distribute . . .
Graced with and supported by this iron letter, the aforementioned Contra-Talmudists shall stay in the Kingdom and Grand Duchy without any impediments on the part of those whose oppression they have feared until now, trade according to their privileges in every place, throughout villages, towns, and urban spaces, go to market, as well as make all purchases decent and honorable, and shall hold their trial before the courts, both religious and secular, as well as royal, appearing now and also further bringing cases or responding to them later, not only legal transactions, but also others at their discretion, and they shall act according to the law, to justice, and to righteousness, and wives, children, and household servants, too, as effects, shall give reason for neither problems nor contests, graced with this, our royal protection, and let it be known that this, our grace, shall not be used for ill, but rather to the benefit of all of those who have endured oppression or whatsoever danger feared, this iron protective letter being submitted to common knowledge . . .
Augustus Rex
Warsaw, 11th June 1758,
the XXVth year of our reign . . .
As it is not often that the king stands on the side of the oppressed, our joy was sweeping, as was our excitement, and everyone began at once to pack, gather, organize, arrange. The little market squares where in the evenings endless debates would take place suddenly emptied, as all were occupied with the coming journey, and news was already reaching us that along the Dniester and the Prut thousands of our people now camped. We were returning to Poland.
Learning of the crowds camping along the Dniester, in Perebekowice, Jacob lavishly provisioned Israel Osman, who was living in Giurgiu and had long practiced the Muslim religion, and dispatched him to that poor multitude of Polish exiles who were sitting there in great sadness, not knowing what to do with themselves. Jacob was very worried about them, most especially since there were more mothers, children, and elderly people among them than men who had set out to make some profit from the situation. They were all living in haphazardly constructed mud huts.
The first to come was Nussen’s brother Krysa, known as Smetankes, who received special consideration from Jacob. Arriving from the camp along the Dniester, he made a memorable speech about the sufferings of our brothers and sisters who had been exiled from Poland. Jacob insisted that he and his companions make themselves at home, but as the house was too small, and they did not wish to return immediately, they wound up falling in with us in the vineyards for the duration of the heat. Next, two Kabbalists came to us: Moshe Dawidowicz from Podhajce with Yeruhim Lipmanowicz, which greatly pleased Jacob.
They began every statement with “We ma’aminim,” or “We the disciples,” as they say in Salonika when wishing to show that they worship Sabbatai. Every day at dawn they would check on the affairs of the world through divination. And Yeruhim would begin every sentence with: “It is time for this . . . It is time for that.” In the evenings, Moshe would see a light over Jacob’s head—it was slightly bluish, cold, as though frozen: a strange light. We all believed that Jacob needed to return to Poland and lead us. He had to return because our fellow believers, under the leadership of Krysa, who had remained with them, had grown impatient and were beginning to turn to the Sabbatians of Salonika for leadership instead. And apparently the Shorr brothers had already met with Wolf in Hungary, the son of the famous Eibeschütz, to see if he would take over the Polish leadership.
“If you don’t go, others will,” I repeated to Jacob daily, knowing him well. Whenever it was shown to him that he might be outdone, he would grow angry and gather his forces.
Moshe of Podhajce, when he talked, would lean forward and stretch out his neck, and his piercing, high-pitched v
oice would immediately attract everyone’s attention. When he told stories, he would become so engrossed in them that he would raise his fists over his head, shake his head, raise his eyes to the sky, and roar. He was quite the actor, and there was no one he could not do an impression of. Thus we asked him to do so often.
Sometimes he would imitate me, and I would laugh until I cried, seeing myself in his gestures: impulsive, impatient—he could even perform my stutter. And he alone, Moshe of Podhajce, was permitted to mock Jacob: he would stand up very straight, and his head would come forward a little, his eyes would become round, avian, penetrating, and he would blink very slowly, and anyone would swear his nose had grown. Then he would put his hands behind his back and walk, and just like Jacob, he would drag his legs slightly, sort of in a dignified way, sort of lazily. At first we would snicker, and then we would roar with laughter whenever Moshe did Jacob preaching to people.
The Books of Jacob Page 43
