“The world is sealed with the emblem of the cross,” says Jacob.
First, he puts it to his head and is silent for a long time, and then he moves through the common room, in this direction and that, the women behind him, while the men line up, each holding on to the shoulders of the one before him and walking after Jacob and the women, singing. Then Jacob, as though suddenly remembering, holding the cross by its ribbon, throws it in every direction in turn, so that they must jump out of its way, but they catch it instinctively, for it is not known whether this cross is foe or friend, so when they catch it and hold it for a moment, and then give it back to Jacob, it seems like some kind of game. In the end, Rabbi Moshe, who is just behind Jacob, clusters them all together and asks them all to hold on to each other, leaning on each other, and then Jacob starts to repeat in a resounding voice: “Forsa damus para verti, seihut grandi asser verti.” They all repeat it after him, even those who consider these words a spell that will protect them from evil. And so they dance, clinging on to one another, faster and faster, until the draft extinguishes almost all the lamps. Only one remains, placed very high, and its light illuminates just the tops of their heads, so that it looks as though they’re dancing in some sort of dim abyss.
20.
What Yente sees from the vault of Lwów cathedral on July 17, 1759
The ticket doesn’t cost much, a mere six groszy, so there is nothing to keep the rabble from entering the Lwów cathedral in droves. Enormous as it is, it cannot hold every interested party. All those still camping out in the Halickie Przedmieście want desperately to get in, especially the crowds of Sabbatians and poor Jewry, but also the local tradesmen, women vendors, children. Of course, many of them don’t have even that many groszy, and if by some miracle they got that many, they would probably choose to spend it on bread.
Order around the cathedral is kept by guards from the Lwów garrison. Thanks to the prudence of the priest who administers the tickets, there are seats to spare. Now merchants from Lwów are going in, while others who came from out of town just for the occasion are already inside: there is the Rohatyn starosta, Łabęcki, and his wife, Pelagia; near them sits the vicar forane Benedykt Chmielowski, and farther on, the Kamieniec castellan Kossakowski, with his wife, Katarzyna, along with other powerful people from the vicinity.
There are also many Jews—not something you see every day in a Catholic church—and youth of every background, who came out of pure youthful curiosity.
In the very front, in the first rows, sit theologians from various religious orders, as well as priests and church dignitaries. Behind them, the regular clergy. Next come the Contra-Talmudists, standing in a semicircle a little to the right, next to a double row of benches. They’re a small group of around ten, the rest having lacked carts to make the journey from Ivanie, as they explain. Yehuda Krysa and Solomon Shorr stand at the very front. Krysa’s clever face, sliced in half by his scar, is eye-catching. Shlomo, tall, slender, in a rich overcoat, inspires respect. Opposite them are the Talmudists, all of whom look like the same person: bearded, dressed in bulky black robes, and—as Asher notices, standing near the entrance—a generation older. The Talmudists have already designated three people to participate directly in the disputation: Nutka, the rabbi of Bohorodczany, Lwów’s Rabbi Rapaport, and David, the rabbi of Stanisławów. Asher stands on his tiptoes and looks for Jacob Frank—he would like to see him at least—but he can’t find anyone who looks like he could possibly be him.
In the middle, on the platform, is the Lwów administrator, Father Mikulski, nervous and sweaty, in wonderful shades of purple, as well as the king’s dignitaries, among them Ordinate Zamoyski and Margraves Wielopolski, Lanckoroński, and Ostroróg, all in elegant flowing kontusze tied with Turkish belts, the slits in their sleeves revealing equally colorful silk żupans.
Yente looks down on them from the top of the vault. She sees a sea of heads, big and small, in hats, caps, and turbans, and they remind her of a bumper crop of mushrooms—all sorts of honey fungus growing in clusters, each one similar to the next, chanterelles with fantastical headdress and the little stems of lone Boletus, embedded powerfully in the ground. Then, in a flash, her gaze travels to the nailed-up, half-naked Christ on the cross, and Yente gazes through the eyes of that wooden face.
She sees men focused on maintaining their seriousness and calm, although it is obvious that they are not calm. Maybe that one who is sitting in the middle, the most colorful one—he is thinking about some woman who stayed behind, in bed, and more precisely, about her body, and more precisely about one particular place on her body, wet and fragrant. Nor are those to either side of him fully present in the cathedral. One is still with the bees in his hives, for the bees have left them to go swarm on a linden—will he ever be able to get them back? The other is going over his accounts, he keeps getting his numbers mixed up and having to start over. They are all wearing Sarmatian hats adorned with a big jewel and a peacock feather, and the colors of their costumes are cheerful as parrots’ plumage, which is no doubt why all three of them have wrinkled brows, frowning so as to counterbalance the licentious colors of their dress with the severity of their faces. These three are the most majestic-looking.
The debaters, on the left, are milk caps—that is, their caps resemble those mushrooms. From up here, the milk caps look like they would love to make a run for it. They are here under penalty of imprisonment or fine, yet this cause has been lost in advance, their arguments will not be understood or even heard out. Those on the right side, meanwhile, are the honey fungus, huddling together, their clothing brownish gray and worn, in constant undulation as one of their number and then another leaves their litter cluster and then squeezes back in with papers in his hand; flowing from them are obstinacy and anger, although they expect to triumph. Yente doesn’t like them, although she recognizes among them some of her relatives—but that doesn’t have much meaning now. For if Yente were to look at the matter of her relations from a certain angle, she would see that here and there, outside the cathedral and beyond, in the little enclaves that have popped up around the town, her relatives are everywhere.
After the opening formalities and the reading out of a long list of titles, Father Mikulski, who will be presiding over this disputation, begins to speak. He sounds rather nervous at first, but a quote from the Gospels anchors him in these rough waters of words, and with the Scriptures behind him, he begins to speak assuredly and without stammering, even with gusto. He presents the Contra-Talmudists as lost little lambs who, after a long time wandering, have at last found the shepherd who wishes to tend them.
Then Antoni Moliwda-Kossakowski, a nobleman, as the secretary introduces him, comes forward—he is the Contra-Talmudists’ spokesperson. A balding man with a somewhat protruding belly and watery eyes, he might not make—it is true—the best impression, but when he starts talking, he draws everyone’s attention, and it is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. He has a warm, booming, resonant voice, and he modulates it in such a lovely way that he touches people’s hearts. He speaks beautifully, though in quite a convoluted way, and yet with great conviction, and in any case, people heed a melody more than they do words. Right away he addresses all the Jews, calling upon them to convert. After each sentence he leaves a pause, that it might linger a little longer under the cathedral’s vault. And indeed, each sentence floats along through that vast space like poplar fluff.
“We stand here before you, not out of revenge or spite or to repay an eye with an eye, nor was it for such purposes that we pleaded with God, Creator of compassionate hearts, to summon you today. We stand here not in order to call down divine judgment, the judgment of the righteous and the just, but rather to soften your hard hearts and bring about some recognition of divine law . . .”
And so goes the whole speech—lofty and filled with pathos. The crowd is moved, Yente notes the repeated bringing of handkerchiefs to eyes, and she knows exactly what kind of emotions these are. For indeed, the Contra-Talmu
dists sitting by the wall look like miserable wretches in the presence of these rabbis who wear long furs and fur-lined caps even though it is summer. They look like children banished from their homes, lost lambs, foreign vagabonds, indigent and tired, who have come knocking at the door. They are supposed to be Jews, but to the Jews they’re not Jews, for they are persecuted by their own, cursed, belonging nowhere. And in their distress, their dark souls, like potato shoots growing in a cellar, instinctively seek out the light and lean toward it, poor things. How could they not be welcomed into the bosom of the Christian church—that capacious, comfortable, Catholic bosom?
They seem honest: Yeruhim of Jezierzany; Yehuda of Nadwórna, known as Krysa; Moshe Dawidowicz of Podhajce. All of them will speak. Then there is Hirsh of Lanckoroń, Elisha Shorr’s son-in-law, husband of Hayah, who is standing by the wall, and finally Elisha Shorr of Rohatyn himself, with his sons, amongst whom the most striking is Shlomo, with his curly mop of hair and his bright coat. Farther down are Lwów’s own Nussen Aronowicz, dressed in the Turkish fashion, and Shyle of Lanckoroń, who are acting as secretaries of sorts. Papers are piled up in front of them, there is an inkwell, and every type of writing instrument as well. At the very end of the row, at a little table set slightly apart, sit Nahman of Busk and Moliwda, the translators. Nahman is dressed like a Turk, modestly and in dark colors. A wiry man, he rubs his hands together nervously. Moliwda, meanwhile, sweats into his elegant dark clothing.
Behind them the crowd swirls, perspiring, colorful—wives, sisters, mothers, and brothers, all squeezed in, all intimidated.
On the right, on the benches for the Talmudists, things are not quite so crowded. There are a dozen or so well-dressed, dignified older rabbis, almost indistinguishable from one another but for the length and extravagance of their beards. But Yente’s eye discerns Rabbi Rapaport of Lwów, Rabbi Mendl of Satanów, Rabbi Leyba of Międzybórz, and Rabbi Berk of Jazłowiec. Yos Krzemieniecki, the rabbi of Mohylew, sits at the edge of the bench and rocks back and forth with his eyes closed, absent in spirit.
They begin with a point-by-point reading of the manifesto they have had printed for this occasion. As the first point begins to be discussed, the rabble realizes at once that it will not be getting what it wanted. Some complex matters have been brought up, and it is hard to listen to the rabbis’ babbling, since they are talking through a translator, which takes a long while, especially since the translator is terrible. Only Rapaport dares speak in Polish, but the Yiddish lilt to his speech makes him sound silly, humorous, as if he were selling eggs at the market—it gives him no authority. The crowd starts to murmur and fidget, not only those standing toward the back of the cathedral, but also the nobles in the benches, who whisper amongst themselves or get up to wander absentmindedly beneath the vault, whence Yente watches them.
After a few hours, Father Mikulski decides to adjourn the hearing until the next day, when they will finish the discussion about whether the Messiah has already come, as the Christians believe, or if he is still to come, as the Jews would have it.
Of Asher’s familial bliss
By the time Asher goes home, it’s already getting dark.
“And? Was he there? Did he make an appearance?” Gitla asks him from the doorway, as if indifferent, as if asking about the chimney sweep who was supposed to come and clean the stove. Asher knows this person is still in some sense living in his home, although Gitla barely ever mentions him. And it is not just a matter of the child, Samuel, her son. Jacob Frank is like a small plant that vegetates in the kitchen, on the windowsill, and that Gitla is constantly watering. Asher considers that this is something people who have been abandoned do. Until eventually the plant withers and dies.
He peers into the room where, on the floor, on a worn carpet, little Samuel is playing. Gitla is pregnant, which is why she is so irritable. Gitla did not want the child, but she had found it difficult to ward off a second pregnancy. She has read somewhere that in France they make little sheepskin hoods for the male member, and then all of the semen is kept inside that hood, so it does not leave the woman with child. She would like to have such hoodlets herself, and to hand them out to all the women at the weekly market, that they might give them to their husbands and stop getting pregnant. Misery results from all this disorderly proliferation, multiplication, just like with worms on rotting meat, she says often, puttering around the house with her belly showing already, which is sad and funny at the same time. There are too many people, the cities are smelly and dirty, there’s too little clean water, she repeats. Her lovely face is distorted by a grimace of disgust. And these women, eternally swollen, eternally pregnant, lying in childbed or breastfeeding. There would not be all this misery amongst the Jews if Jewish women were not always getting pregnant. What do people want with so many children?
When she speaks, Gitla gesticulates, her thick black hair, cut to her shoulders, also moving in violent jerks. She walks around the house with her head bare. Asher looks lovingly at her. He thinks that if something were ever to happen to her or to Samuel, he would die.
“Is it really for this,” Gitla often repeats, “that a woman’s body gives away its finest substances—to create within it a future person who will only die anyway, so that all will turn out to have been for naught? How poorly thought-out it is. There cannot be a logic to it—not practical, nor any other kind.”
Since Asher Rubin loves Gitla, he listens to her attentively and tries to understand what she is saying. Slowly he begins to share her view. Each year he silently commemorates the blessed day she showed up at his house.
He is sitting on the sofa, Samuel playing around his legs, busy with two wheels connected by an axle that Asher made for him. On Gitla’s now ample belly lies a book—perhaps it is pressing too hard on her? Asher goes over, picks it up, and lays it down next to her, but Gitla instantly puts it back on her belly.
“I saw some people from Rohatyn I know,” says Asher.
“They must have aged,” answers Gitla, looking out the open window.
“They were all depressed. It will end badly. When are you going to start leaving the house again?”
“I don’t know,” says Gitla. “When I give birth.”
“This whole disputation is not for the people. They’re just trading supposed wisdoms. They read out whole pages from books, then translate them, and it takes a long time, and everybody gets bored. No one understands what’s going on.”
Gitla sets the book down on the sofa and straightens her back.
“I’d eat some nuts,” she says, and then, suddenly, she takes Asher’s face in both her hands and looks him in the eyes: “Asher . . . ,” she begins, and doesn’t finish.
The seventh point of the disputation
It is Monday, September 10, 1759, the Jewish year 5519, the 18th day of the month of Elul. People are slowly gathering, milling around in front of the cathedral—it’s going to be a hot one again. Peasants are selling small, sweet Hungarian plums and Wallachian nuts. You can also buy quartered watermelons laid out on big leaves.
The participants in the disputation come in through the side entrance and take their places, although today there are more of all of them, as even the Frankists have come in a sizable group, surrounding their beloved Frank, who has deigned to appear, like bees surrounding their queen. Rabbis from nearby kahalim have shown up, too, and distinguished Jewish scholars, and Rapaport himself, hunched over, as usual in a long coat that will be too hot. At the same time, the curious are let into the cathedral, those who purchased tickets, but soon there will not be enough space for them, either. Latecomers will have to stand in the vestibule, where they will hear little of what is going on inside.
At two o’clock, Father Mikulski calls them all to order and asks the Contra-Talmudists to furnish the evidence for their seventh thesis. He is nervous, and as he spreads out his papers in front of him, his hands can be seen to shake. Glancing at the written text, he begins his remarks; at first, they are clumsily delivere
d, as he stutters and repeats himself, but soon he finds his rhythm:
“The thirst for Christian blood amongst the Talmudist population, not only in the Kingdom of Poland but also in other countries, is a known fact, for there are many histories, in foreign nations as well as here in Poland and in Lithuania, of Talmudists mercilessly shedding innocent Christian blood and being sentenced to death for this godless act. Yet they have always stubbornly denied it, wanting to clear themselves before the world, alleging that they are the innocent ones, baselessly accused by Christians.”
His voice breaks, out of nervousness, and he has to have a sip of water, but then he goes on:
“We, however, taking as our witness an all-seeing God to come, who will judge the living and the dead—and not out of spite or in retaliation, but out of love for the holy faith—we let the whole world know of those Talmudists’ acts, and we will be adjudicating this matter today.”
A murmur passes through the cramped and undulating crowd. Now Krysa repeats the same thing in Hebrew, and this time, the small group of rabbis erupts. One of them—it looks like the rabbi of Satanów—gets up and starts to go over to the other side, but the others restrain and quiet him.
And now how it goes is Krysa speaks, and then Moliwda, in his role as interpreter, clarifying everything, though none of what they say is clear at all:
“A book of the Talmud, known as the Orah Hayyim Maginei Aretz, which means ‘Path of the Living, Defense of the Earth,’ the author of which is Rabbi David, says: ‘Mitsvah lehazer aharyain adom,’ which means: ‘Have (the rabbi) try to get red wine, a blood memento.’ The very same author then adds: ‘Od remez le-adom zekher le-dam she Hayah paroh shohet bnei Yisrael,’ in other words, ‘And I’m giving you a hint about the reason for the red blood memento, it’s because the Pharaoh slaughtered the children of the Israelites.’ And then this sentence follows: ‘Veha-Yehudim nimne’u mi-lakahat yain adom mipnei alilot shikriyym.’ Or: ‘And now the consumption of red wine has been forsaken, for there are false attacks.’”
The Books of Jacob Page 56
