The Books of Jacob Page 27

  In Skopje, I asked our prophet Nathan at his grave—I asked him quietly, not even moving my lips, but in my mind alone, as secretly as possible—whether we couldn’t meet Jacob as soon as possible; sometimes thoughts would come into my head that suggested that I lacked humility and a proper assessment of my own person, but I did begin to think that he was going mad without me, and that as soon as I found him, he would calm down and stop stubbornly imitating the First One (of blessed memory). That this hullabaloo on the road was a sign that he needed me.

  Nahman and Nussen find themselves in Salonika on the fourth day of the month of Tishrei in 5515, or September 20, 1754, and immediately, though it is already dark and they are ready to drop from exhaustion, they go in search of Jacob. It is a hot night, and the city’s walls are warm, the air cooling lazily, in light bursts of breeze from somewhere in the mountains; the wind brings in the scent of live plants, wood, leaves. Everything is bone-dry in the city. It smells of oranges, the kind already swollen with juice, the sweetest and best to eat, that in the blink of an eye become overripe and fetid.

  Nahman sees him first, in front of the beth midrash, where the Salonika Jews’ disputes always take place. They are already dispersing—it is late—but Jacob still stands there, discussing something heatedly, surrounded by men. Nahman glimpses the Greek-attired young Hershel. He goes up closer, and although he can’t hear what they’re talking about, he begins to shiver. Hard to explain on a night as hot as this. He writes:

  Only then did I understand how much I had missed him; only now did all the hurry of our journey fall away, all that frenzy that hadn’t left me for one moment over the past several months.

  “What is that man saying?” I asked the man standing next to me.

  “He is saying that Sabbatai was not really the Messiah, that his nature was not divine, but rather that he was an ordinary prophet who came to announce his successor.”

  “He’s right,” said another man standing near me. “If his nature had been straight from God, he would have changed the world visibly. But as it is, what’s changed?”

  I didn’t venture into these considerations with them.

  I saw him among the others. He had gotten very thin. He had deteriorated. His beard had grown. But something new had also appeared in him—a new fervor, a self-assuredness. Who had led him to this, who had helped him get like this while I was gone?

  As I looked thus at his movements, as I listened to what he said, I slowly realized that it was good that he was able to give relief to others with what he said. It also seemed to me that in his heart there was a kind of wholeness that already knew what direction to go in and what to do. And looking at him sometimes sufficed; it was the same thing that attracted other people to him.

  There is nothing that brings greater relief than the certainty that there is someone who really knows. For we ordinary people never have such certainty.

  Many times, when I was in Podolia with my family, I had thought about him. I missed him, especially before I fell asleep, when my thoughts wandered freely, and there was no way to control them anymore. It was sad, because next to me lay my wife, to whom I was unable to dedicate much attention. Our children were born frail and quickly died, and I didn’t even think about that then, but it seemed to me that Jacob’s face was becoming my face, and I was falling asleep beneath his countenance instead of under my own. And now I was beholding that face once more in life; and now it was before my very eyes.

  And so in the evening, when we sat down at last all together, Jacob, Reb Mordke, Isohar, Nussen, young Hershel, and I, I felt happy, and since there was no lack of wine, I got drunk, but it was as if I were a child—I felt defenseless, altogether open, ready for whatever fate would bring, and certain that whatever happened, I would be with Jacob.

  Of how Jacob faces off with the Antichrist

  In Salonika there lives the successor and son of the Second, Baruchiah. This man is known as Konio.

  He has many followers here, and many treat him as the holy man in whom dwells the soul of Baruchiah. It takes them a long time to get to him. His blessing, and an initiation by him into the teachings of his father, would confirm Jacob’s exceptional status. Nahman takes letters from Isohar and Reb Mordke to the tall house without windows, in the middle of the city, which looks like a white tower. Apparently the inside of the compound has a lovely garden with a fountain and peacocks, but the outside looks more like a fortress. The white walls are smooth, as though made of sleek granite. In addition, the house is watched by guards who once tore Nahman’s clothing when he was too insistent in his demands for an audience.

  Jacob, upset by that injustice—Nahman’s caftan was brand-new, he had just bought it at the market for a large sum—tells them to leave him at that inaccessible tower while they hide in a grove nearby. Then he leans up against the wall and begins to sing as loudly as he can, nearly bellowing like an ass, in the old Sephardic tongue. When he finishes his song, he moves to another side of the house and starts it again from the beginning.

  “Mahshava se in fue esta . . . ,” he bellows, off-key, and he grimaces and contorts his body into strange poses. Of course this draws attention; people can barely restrain their laughter at the sight of him; there is a crowd and then an uproar.

  So a little window opens, high up, and Konio himself sticks his head out; he shouts down something in Ladino, and Jacob answers, and for a minute they converse. Nahman glances inquiringly at Isohar, who knows this ancient language of the Jews of Spain.

  “He’s asking for an audience,” Isohar explains.

  The window slams shut.

  Jacob sings under the tower until evening, until he goes completely hoarse.

  There is nothing for it. Konio is unavailable, and uninterested in interlopers come from Poland. Even if Wise Jacob is among them, singing under his window. For that’s what he is called now: Wise Jacob.

  But Salonika is filled at this time with every sort of mage and miracleworker, and there is some self-proclaimed Messiah or dark sorcerer offering instruction on every street corner. People are talking a lot about one particular Jew who considers himself the Antichrist Messiah, and they say that whoever exchanges so much as a single word with him will instantly be dragged over to his side.

  Jacob wants to test him, wants to face off with someone like that; he talks of this intention for several days, until a whole group has gathered around him—small-time merchants, students, itinerant peddlers, cobblers who have closed their stalls—if only to see something out of the ordinary. They tramp through town and find this man with his retinue in a garden courtyard where he is delivering his teaching. He is a big man, with the build of a peasant and dark skin—another Sephardic Jew—bareheaded and with his hair curled into long matted cords. He’s wearing a white robe; against his dark skin, this robe seems to be gleaming. Jacob sits before him with that little smile of his that he gets whenever he starts plotting something, and he asks the man brashly who he thinks he is. The man, although accustomed to greater reverence, answers calmly: he is the Messiah.

  “Give some sign of that,” Jacob says to him, looking around at the people who will be their witnesses.

  The man stands and starts to walk away, but Jacob doesn’t give up. He follows him and repeats:

  “Give some sign of that. Move that piece of the fountain by the wall. As the Messiah, you ought to be able to do that.”

  “Get out of here,” says the man. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  Jacob will not let it rest. The man turns away and starts to whisper curses. Then Jacob grabs him by the locks, provoking the man’s companions to come to his defense. They push Jacob, and he falls into the dust.

  In the evening, he tells everyone who wasn’t with him during the day that just as the biblical Jacob wrestled with the angel, so, too, has he now wrestled with the Antichrist.

  Nahman, who had so missed Jacob after not seeing him for a while, now accompanies him everywhere he can, which means he neglects
both business and study. All matters connected with earning money lie fallow. The goods brought from Poland still have not been sold. Some of Jacob’s adventures really embarrass Nahman, some he genuinely can’t accept. Jacob wanders the city, looking for any opportunity to fight. He finds himself, for example, some learned Jew, asks him some intelligent question, and so arranges things that the other man, feeling obligated to respond, finds himself drawn into Jacob’s disquisitions, and before he knows it, both of them are sitting in a shop drinking Turkish coffee, and Jacob is offering a pipe, and the man dares not refuse, but it’s the Shabbat, after all! And then when it comes time to pay up, the religious Jew obviously doesn’t have any money on him—it being the Shabbat—so Jacob pulls the turban off the poor man’s head and puts it down as a guarantee, which means that the man, made a laughingstock, must now go home with a bare head. He gets up to so many things like this that people start to fear him. Even his own.

  It would be difficult for Nahman to bear the humiliation of anyone in this way, even if it were his greatest enemy. Jacob, meanwhile, is extremely pleased with himself.

  “Whoever fears, respects. That’s just the way it is.”

  Soon everyone in Salonika recognizes Jacob, and Reb Mordke and Isohar decide they should release him from the obligations of trade. And that they, too, ought to dedicate themselves exclusively to study.

  “Take care of whatever you have to, but don’t try and make any new contacts,” says Reb Mordke to a shocked Nahman.

  “What do you mean?” asks Nahman. “How will we live? How will we eat?”

  “Alms,” answers Reb Mordke matter-of-factly.

  “But work has never been an impediment to studying before,” says Nahman.

  “Now it is.”

  The appearance of ruah haKodesh, when the spirit descends into man

  In the month of Kislev of the year 5515 (or November 1754), Jacob announces by way of Nahman and Nahman’s writings that he is opening his own beth midrash, his own school, and immediately many students enroll. Especially since—an absolutely extraordinary thing—the first student is Rabbi Mordechai, Reb Mordke. Making a ceremonious entrance, his dignified figure attracts much attention; people trust and admire him a great deal. Since he in turn trusts this Jacob, then Jacob must be someone truly special. Several days later, Jacob brings Nahman and Nussen into his school. Nahman is embarrassed by his new Greek clothing, which he’s bought to replace what was destroyed, using the money from the sale of the wax imported from Podolia.

  Some days later, they receive the news that, in Nikopol, Hana, Jacob’s wife, has given birth to a daughter, and that, according to a decision she and Jacob made long ago, this daughter has been named Eva, nicknamed Avacha. They had a portent of this—Nussen’s she-donkey gave birth to twins: gray herself, one of her babies was a female, completely white, while the other was a male, dark, an unusual coffee color. Jacob is delighted, and for several days he acts more serious and tells everyone that a daughter was born to him on the same day he himself gave birth to a school.

  Then something strange happens, something that was long awaited, or at least it has been known that it had to happen, that it was inevitable. It is hard to describe, even though it’s one event, in which everything happens in a certain order, even though for every movement, for every image, there exists a corresponding word, but maybe it will be best if told by a witness, especially since he is writing everything down anyway.

  Shortly after that, Nussen tore me from my slumber, saying that something strange was going on with Jacob. Nussen tended to sit up and read into the night, and everyone always went to sleep before him. Nussen woke up several of the others who were then with us in the midrash, and they, sleepy and scared, went down into Jacob’s room, where several lamps were burning and where Rabbi Mordechai had already gone. Jacob was standing in the middle of the room amidst overturned furniture, half naked, his breeches barely remaining on his skinny hips, his skin gleaming with sweat, and his face pale, his eyes strange somehow, unseeing, trembling all over, as though seized by fever. This went on for some time, with us standing before him, watching him and waiting to see what would happen; no one had the boldness to lay so much as a finger upon him. Mordechai undertook to say a prayer in a mournful, overwhelmed voice, so that I was shaken, too, and the others also were worried by the sight of what was happening right here before us. For we understood that the Spirit had descended amongst us. The curtains between this and that world had been rent, time had lost its purity, the spirit was forcing its way into us like a battering ram. The small stuffy room became thick with the smell of our sweat and there was also the smell of something like raw meat, like blood. I became nauseated, and then I felt all the hairs on my body rear up; I saw, too, that Jacob’s manhood was bulging against the material of his breeches, until at last, he moaned and fell onto his knees with his head down. A moment later he spoke softly, hoarsely, words not everybody understood: “Mostro Signor abascharo,” which Reb Mordke repeated in our language: “Our Lord descends.”

  And so Jacob knelt in that unnatural position, shrunken, sweat beaded on his back and shoulders, his wet hair matted to his face. His body quaked, stopped, quaked again, and again, as though gusts of cold air were shooting through it. Then, after a long while, he collapsed insensate onto the floor.

  Such is the ruah haKodesh, when the spirit descends into man. It resembles illness, sticky and incurable, like a sudden weakening. A beholder of it might well feel disappointed. What the majority assume will be a solemn, noble moment turns out to be more like a flogging, or a birth.

  When Jacob knelt, shrunken as though in a painful spasm, Nahman saw above him a luminescence and pointed it out to someone—clearer air, as though heated to glowing by cold light, an irregular halo. Only then, at the sight of that light, did the rest of them drop to their knees, and over them, slowly, as though they were submerged in water, circled something that resembled gleaming iron filings.

  News of all of this quickly made its way around the city, and people began to camp outside the home where Jacob lived. He also began to have visions.

  Nahman scrupulously recorded them all:

  Led from room to room, he floated through the air, on either side of him a beautiful maiden. In the rooms he saw many women and men, and in some of the rooms he noticed religious study groups, and from above he heard what they were saying and understood everything perfectly from the very first word. There were so many of these rooms, and in the last one he glimpsed the First, Sabbatai (of blessed memory)—he was dressed in Frankish clothing, like our own, and around him were gathered many students. The First said to Jacob: “So you are the Wise Jacob? I have heard that you are powerful and brave of heart. That makes me happy, because I have made it all the way here and have no strength to go farther. Many have taken on this weight before, but they have collapsed beneath it. Are you not afraid?”

  And the First showed Jacob the abyss that looks like a black sea. On the other, distant shore, a mountain rose. Then Jacob cried: “Let it happen! I am going!”

  The news of this vision travels around Salonika, passing from ear to ear, often with some new detail. It spreads around the city like news of arriving ships carrying extraordinary wares. Even more people come to listen to Jacob out of curiosity, his school is bursting at the seams. People clear the way for him with reverence and respect. Some, bolder, extend their hand to touch his robes. They have already begun to call him hakham, or wise man, though this makes him angry, and he tells everyone he is a simpleton. Even the older ones, who knew the old Kabbalah well, now recognize his greatness. They crouch in the shade and discuss him, and these sages discern the secret signs told by the ancient prophets.

  Jacob also dreams of divine palaces. He has been where the First is. He has seen that same door. He has gone after him. He has walked the same path.

  They begin every day by listening to Jacob’s dreams. They wait for him to wake up, are there at his first movement. He is not to rise
or touch anything, instead he must speak right away, straight out of sleep, as though bringing news from those worlds, greater, more distant, closer to the light.

  Students of Baruchiah’s son Konio—the one who wouldn’t receive them—come, too, and they also listen to Jacob, which pleases Reb Mordke most of all. Most of them, however, listen to Jacob with some suspicion, coming in with their opinions formed. They treat him as the competition, like someone who brazenly set up a salvation stall right next to theirs, that is just like theirs but with better prices. They ask, loudly and theatrically: Who is this stray?

  But the ones who most adhere to Jacob are the Jews from Poland, those who do business in Salonika or who got stuck here and can’t go back to their families, having squandered all their money. They are easy enough to recognize. Nahman, for instance, can immediately sniff them out in a crowd, even if they are wearing Greek or Turkish clothing and striding quickly down the cramped little streets. He sees himself in them—they make the same gestures, have the same bearing and the same slightly uncertain, slightly impudent step. The poorer ones tend to wear nondescript, dully colored clothing, and even if one of them has gotten himself a scarf or a better coat, Rohatyn still leers out from under it, or Dawidów, or Czernowitz. Even when, to protect against the sun, he wraps his head in a turban, Podhajce and Buczacz still jut out from under his pant legs, Lwów from his pockets, and his slippers, seemingly Greek, still clap as though stepping straight out of Busk.