When Jacob enters the room, Nahman silently hands him the letter, his face serious and impenetrable. Jacob is unable to read it, so he gives it to Hayah, but even she strains over the swirls, so the letter goes from hand to hand until it makes its way right back to Nahman. As he reads it, a broad smile, sly and insolent, appears on his face. He says that Primate Łubieński has granted their requests. The disputation will take place in the summer, with the baptism to follow.
This news has been so eagerly anticipated, so desired for such a long time, and yet at the same time, it simply heralds what’s inevitable. A silence follows Nahman’s announcement.
It isn’t easy to take the first step. They have been taught so determinedly how to behave that the instructions have been permanently etched into their brains. Yet now they must erase all that, wipe the Mosaic Tablets of their false commandments that keep them imprisoned like animals in cages. Thou shalt not do this, thou shalt not do that—none of it’s allowed. The boundaries of the unsaved world are built out of prohibitions.
“What you have to do is leave yourself behind, set yourself down somewhere else,” Nahman explains to Wajgełe later. “The situation is similar to when you have to slit a painful abscess and squeeze all the pus out of it. The worst part is making the decision and the first movement; then, once it’s under way, everything becomes quite natural. It’s an act of faith, jumping headfirst into the water without any regard for what’s at the bottom. When you come back to the surface, you are new. Or it’s like a person who has gone to distant countries and returned, and suddenly he sees that everything that used to seem natural and obvious to him is in fact merely local and bizarre. And what seemed foreign and bizarre he now understands, so that it feels like it belongs to him.”
Nahman knows what Wajgełe cares about most. Everyone asks about the same thing, everyone wants to know about intercourse, as if that were the only thing that mattered; they don’t ask about virtue, about the struggles of conscience connected with higher matters—everyone only ever asks about intercourse. That disappoints Nahman a great deal—people are not so different from animals. When you talk to them about copulation, about all those things that go on from the waist down, they turn bright red.
“Is there something wrong with a person joining with another person? Is not copulation good? You just have to give yourself over to it without thinking, and eventually pleasure will come of it, and this pleasure is a blessing of the act. Yet even without pleasure it is good, maybe even better, for then you are aware of crossing the Dniester and entering into a free country—just imagine, if you so desire.”
“But I don’t want to,” says Wajgełe.
Nahman sighs: the women always have a bigger problem with it. The women seem to cling more to the old laws; they are, after all, more frivolous and shyer by nature. Jacob has said that it is the same as with slaves—for women are to a considerable extent slaves of this world, knowing nothing of their freedom, having not been taught how to be free.
People who have already been initiated, the elders, treat it like people used to treat the mikvah. The body itself and the heart strive toward it, and when it comes time to extinguish the candles, it is like a holiday—a holy marker. For joining together is good—there’s nothing wrong in someone copulating with someone else. Between people whose bodies have overflowed into each other a new bond arises, a special connection, subtle and indefinable, as there are no words that can fully convey the nature of such a relationship. And it can happen that afterward people become close to one another, like brother and sister, and cling together, while others—this can also happen—feel some embarrassment toward one another and take some time to grow accustomed to each other. There are even those who cannot look into each other’s eyes, and then no one knows how things will work out between them.
People tend to have a greater or lesser inclination toward one another—something attracts them a little or a lot. These things are very complicated, which is why women are so sensitive to them. Better than men, they are able to figure out why . . . Why, for example, has Wittel always refused Nahman, and why has Nahman always been attracted to Hayah Shorr? And why has such a deep friendship arisen between young Yachne of Busk and Isaac Shorr, even though they both already have spouses?
What was until this time banned is now not only permitted, but actually required.
Everyone knows that Jacob takes upon himself those weightiest of Strange Deeds, and also that in doing so, he attains a special power. Whoever helps him in this is also anointed.
The greatest power, however, belongs not to corporeal action, but rather to action that unites with words, as the world was created out of words, and its foundations are the word. Thus the greatest Strange Deed, the Exceptional Act—is pronouncing out loud the Name of God, Shem haMephorash.
Jacob will do it soon in the presence of those closest to him, the two circles of chosen men and women.
Lately they have been eating bread that is not kosher, as well as pork. One of the women went into convulsions, but not from the meat—the meat is innocent—just from not being able to bear committing such an act. “This is not an ordinary act. It is a special thing. Ma’ase Zar, a Strange Deed,” says Jacob. He pronounces these words as though chewing something over, as though chewing over pork gristle.
“What is the meaning of Strange Deeds?” asks someone who clearly hasn’t been paying attention.
So Jacob explains it again, starting from scratch. “We are to trample all the laws because they are no longer in effect, and until they are trampled, the new ones cannot appear in their place. Because those old laws were from that other time, for an unsaved world.”
Then he takes the hands of those standing next to him, and soon a circle forms. Now they will sing, as always.
Jacob plays with the children. They make silly faces, and the children love it. After the communal meals, the afternoons are dedicated to the children; the youngest are accompanied by their mothers, and they—only barely out of childhood themselves—like playing, too. They squeal and compete over who can make the scariest face. It is hard to make little children’s faces disgusting, but Jacob’s face can truly transform. Shrieks resound when he is playing monsters and demons, when he acts like the limping bałakaben do. When the children have calmed down, he has them sit down around him, and he tells them complicated fairy tales, about princesses on glass mountains, simpletons, and princes. There are adventures at sea and evil wizards who turn people into animals. The ending he often puts off until the next day, leaving the whole of Ivanie’s younger population distracted, living for what the morrow will bring. Will the hero be able to free himself from the donkey’s body to which he was condemned by a jealous woman?
When it warms up, in April, the fun moves out into the field. Jacob once told Nahman that when he was little and living in Czernowitz, some crazy person came around, and all the children ran after him and imitated him, all his gestures, his scary faces, his rage, and repeated his words. When the crazy man disappeared, when he went to another town, the children still aped him, and even expanded their repertoire of mad gestures, perfecting the madness of that madman. It was like an epidemic, for in the end, all the children in Czernowitz started behaving that way, Jewish, Polish, German, Ruthenian, until frightened parents took the rods down from their walls, and it was only through the use of these rods that they were able to dispel that madness from their children’s minds. But they were wrong to do so, because it had been fun.
Now Jacob makes faces, and the children follow. His tall figure can be seen leading the way, moving strangely, and then the children do as he does. Their legs shoot out, and every few steps they jump, waving their arms. The chain they make winds around the ponds, where in the wake of winter the water has cleared up and now trembles anxiously, reflecting the sky. Some of the grown-ups join in. Moshe from Podhajce, the old widower, has gained in vigor since being matched with Małka of Lanckoroń, barely fifteen, and he and his wife-to-be join Jacob�
�s retinue. That encourages others, for Moshe is a wise man, one who knows what he’s doing, and he’s not afraid of a little ridiculousness. In fact, isn’t ridiculousness what we want, isn’t ridiculousness on our side? thinks Nahman, also breaking into a dance. He hops on both legs, bounces like a ball, and he wants to bring in Wajgełe, so petite, so delicate, but she turns away, furious, still too childish to play like a child. Wittel, on the other hand, doesn’t need to be convinced, she holds on tightly to Nahman’s hand, and her abundant breasts jump in preposterous fashion. Other women follow Wittel, abandoning the hanging laundry, interrupting the feeding of their infants, the milking of the cows, the beating of the bedding. Seeing this, their husbands stop chopping wood and leave the axes on the blocks. Briefly spared is the life of the rooster from which today’s broth is supposed to be prepared. Yeruhim climbs down from the ladder, where he was patching up the thatched roof, and now he takes a laughing Hayah by the hand. Jacob leads the mad retinue between houses, over the toppled fence, through the barn that lies open at both ends, then along the embankment between the ponds. Whoever sees them either stands in pure astonishment or immediately unites with them, until they return to where they started, warmed up, with flushed cheeks, weakened from laughing and hollering. Suddenly there are a lot of them, many more than there were in the beginning. It’s almost everyone, in fact. If some stranger found himself at that moment in Ivanie, he might take them for a village of idiots.
In the evening, the elders gather in the largest chamber. They stand in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, men and women alternating. First they sing, then they recite the prayer, moving back and forth and supporting each other with their shoulders. Then, until late at night, Jacob teaches, meaning, as he says, he tells tales. Nahman tries to remember them exactly, and when he returns to his room, he writes them down, despite the prohibition. This takes him a lot of time, which is why he is always so exhausted.
A tale of two tablets
This is a story that everyone in Ivanie knows by heart.
By the time the Jews left Egypt, the world was ready for salvation and everything was waiting, prepared—both down below and on high. It was unprecedented—the wind died down completely, the leaves did not move on the trees, the clouds in the sky drifted so slowly that only the most patient were able to discern their movement. It was the same with the water—it became thick as cream, while the earth went the other way, became flimsy and unreliable, so that it often happened that people fell into it up to their ankles. No bird chirped, no bee flew, there were no waves in the sea, people did not speak—it was so quiet you could hear the heartbeat of the smallest animal.
Everything stopped in anticipation of the new Law, and all eyes were turned to Moses, who was climbing Mount Zion to receive it directly from God’s hands. And so it was that God Himself engraved the Law on two stone tablets in such a way that it would be discernible to the human eye and comprehensible to the human mind. This was the Torah of Atzilut.
During Moses’s absence, his people gave in to temptation and indulged in sin. Then Moses, coming down from on high and seeing what was going on, thought: I left them for such a short time, and yet they were unable to persist in virtuousness. Thus they are unworthy of the beneficent and noble law God appointed them. In his great despair Moses shattered the tablets on the ground so that they broke into a thousand pieces and turned to dust. Then a terrible wind rose up and threw Moses against the rock and set the clouds and the water in motion and made the earth solid again. Moses understood that his people were not mature enough for the law of liberty intended for the saved world. All day and all night he sat resting against the rock and looking down at the fires burning in the camp of his people, and he heard their voices, their music, and the cries of their children. Then Samael came to him in the guise of an angel and dictated to him the commandments that from then on would keep God’s people enslaved.
In order that no one would know the true Law of Freedom, Samael carefully gathered the little pieces of the shattered Torah of Atzilut and scattered them around the world among many different religions. When the Messiah comes, he will have to pass over into Samael’s kingdom to collect the tablets’ shards and present the new Law in its final revelation.
“What was this lost Law all about?” asks Wajgełe, when she and Nahman climb into bed.
“Who could possibly know, since it has been dispersed?” he answers warily. “It was good. It respected people.”
But Wajgełe is stubborn.
“Was it the opposite of what we have now? The opposite of ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ would be ‘Thou shalt commit it.’ And the opposite of ‘Thou shalt not kill’ would be: ‘Kill.’”
“It’s not that simple.”
“You always tell me that—‘It’s not that simple, it’s not that simple . . . ,’” she mocks him. She pulls a pair of woolen stockings up over her skinny legs.
“People want easy explanations, and so we must simplify everything for their sake, and since it cannot be written down, it all becomes rather stupid . . . This or that, black, white—it’s like digging with a hoe. Simple is dangerous.”
“But I want to understand it, and I can’t.”
“Wajgełe, my time will come, and your time will come. That is grace. Sabbatai, the old Mosaic law, the one given by Samael, is no longer in effect. That also explains the conversion of our Lord, Sabbatai, to Islam. He saw that Israel, in obeying the Mosaic law, was no longer in the service of the God of the Truth. That is why our Lord gave up the Torah in favor of the Din Islam . . .”
“How can you believe in all of this, Nahman? What do you need it for? The truth is simple. Isn’t it?” Wajgełe says sleepily.
“. . . and why we are crossing over to Edom. We are destined by God to perform such acts.”
Wajgełe doesn’t answer.
“Wajgełe?”
In the silence, he hears the girl’s even breathing.
Nahman carefully climbs out of bed so as not to wake her and lights a tiny clay lamp. He places a board between it and the window so that it can’t be seen from outside. He will write. He throws a blanket over his shoulders, and he begins:
Scraps, or: Eight months in the Lord’s community of Ivanie
There exists in Ein Sof, that is, in the Infinite itself, in the divine source, absolute good, which is the origin and source of all perfection and all good in the world. It is perfection, and perfection requires no alterations, it is dignified and immovable, there can be no movement in it. But for us, who look upon it from the underside of creation, from afar, this motionlessness seems dead, and therefore bad, yet perfection excludes movement, creation, change, and therefore the very possibility of our freedom. That is why it is said that in the depths of absolute good, the root of all evil is concealed, and that root is the negation of every miracle, every movement, and all that is possible and all that might still happen.
For us, then, for people, good is something other than what it is for God. For us, good is the tension between God’s perfection and his withdrawal in order that the world might arise. For us, good is the absence of God from where he could instead be.
Nahman rubs his chilled fingers. He can’t stop, the sentences attack his brain one after the next:
When the vessels broke, and the world came about, it immediately began to climb up to where it fell from, gathering itself from bottom to top, from least to most perfect. The world ascends higher and higher and works to perfect itself, obtaining new goods and adding them to the previous ones, organizing the sparks released from the shells of matter into brilliance and strength. This is tikkun, a process of repairing in which mankind can assist. The process of ascent must transcend the law that is already in place and create a new law, in order to then transcend it again. In this world of dead husks, nothing has been given once and for all. Whosoever does not move up stands still, that is, falls downward.
This last sentence soothes him. He stretches and looks at Wajgełe, sleeping ne
xt to him. Suddenly he feels overcome by tenderness.
When we crossed the Dniester, singing, boldly and openly this time, for we had in hand the royal letter that made of us free men in this country, I thought that everything was working out as if in a stone pattern in which each stone is a different color: when scattered, no connection or interdependence can be discerned among them, but when they are reassembled according to the proper order, they reveal a very striking and obvious picture.
Ivanie had to be given to us, that we might create here a great family that would continue for many years, so that even if we were to be scattered again, if we all had to disperse into the world, these ties, these Ivanie ties, would remain. For here, in Ivanie, we are free.
If we were also to be given our own land, as Jacob says, leased to us for our whole lives and for our children’s whole lives, so that we could govern ourselves according to our laws, getting in no one else’s way, we would not even fear death. When a person has a piece of land, he becomes immortal.
There was once a sage in Wilno named Heshel Tzorev, and he taught how according to gematria there exists a numerological identicality between the words Polin, or Poland, and the name in the Bible of Esau’s grandson, Tsefo. Esau’s guardian angel—and that of his family—is Samael, and he is also the guardian of Poland. Poland should rightly be called the Kingdom of Edom. The name Tsefo has the same Hebrew letters as tzafon—north—and they have the same value as Polin-Lita, or Poland-Lithuania. And as is known, Jeremiah 1:14 says that when salvation comes, it will start in the country in the north, meaning Poland and Lithuania.
Edom is Esau’s country, but here, now, in the darkness of the world, Edom means Poland. Going over to Edom means coming into Poland. That is clear. Here we take on Edom’s religion. So Elisha Shorr said back in Smyrna, and so I said. Now everything is coming true, but it could not have been so but for Jacob.
The Books of Jacob Page 53
