Satan in Goray

indifference. From early morning till night she sat alone, knitting stockings or merely reading in the Hebrew volumes she had brought from abroad. Sometimes she would stand at the window braiding her hair. Her large, dark eyes gazed beyond the rooftops--wide-open, brilliant, as though seeing things concealed from others. Though Rechele had a deformity, she aroused sinful thoughts in men. Women shook their heads when they spoke of her, whispering: "The poor lonely orphan... so feeble a child. And such a melancholy thing."

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    In Lublin Rabbi Benish had been constantly busy. The events of 1648 and 1649 had left thousands of women neither married nor widowed, since it was uncertain whether their husbands were alive. Often the rabbinical court had to veer from the strict letter of the law and release a woman from the marriage bond. In the anterooms of the community house where Rabbi Benish sat in judgment with other great rabbis, there was always a crowd of weeping women. Some of these unfortunates wandered from town to town, searching the registers of the holy burial societies for the names of their lost husbands. Others, forced to release their brothers-in-law from the obligation of marrying them, complained bitterly of the fee demanded for such consent. Often, one of these women would remarry, only to have her first husband return; he would have escaped from Tartar slavery or been ransomed by the Jewish community of Stamboul. Around the building where the Council of the Four Lands met, marriage brokers bustled, matching prospective couples and extracting advances on their fees; beggars tugged at the jackets of passers-by; persons who were half- or completely mad laughed, cried, sang; children who had lost father and mother wandered about the courtyard, abandoned and mangy, insolently begging. Daily, emissaries arrived, each from a different Jewish community, recounting the suffering that had come on the heels of Chmelnicki and the Swedish soldiers. More than once Rabbi Benish begged God to transport him from this world, as he no longer had the strength to hear these sorrowful stories.
    But here in Goray all was calm. There were no judicial disputes, few queries concerning the holy law. True, the town offered him only a scant living, but for that very reason the rabbi had enough time for himself. His room was separated from the rest of the house by a large corridor, and silence reigned throughout. A solitary fly buzzed, beating against the windowpane; a mouse scratched along the floor; the cricket behind the stove would chirp monotonously for a few minutes, then listen to its echo for a long while before beginning anew, as though mourning an unforgettable sorrow. The ceiling was blackened by smoke; the walls were mildewed, and the stain of a white-and-green mold would appear nightly, rising, it seemed, from another world. On the table lay unlined sheets of paper and goose-feather quills. Rabbi Benish sat there for hours at a time, deep in thought, his high forehead wrinkled, and every now and then he would cast an expectant glance at the yellowed window curtains. Although more than half the town had returned by now and found shelter, the sound of talk and of children at play was rarely heard outside. It seemed as though the few Jews who had come back to Goray were all indoors, their ears alerted for news of the enemy's vengeful return.
    Rabbi Benish knew his people. Although constantly preoccupied with profound meditation, he kept everyone in mind, even calling women by name. When Rabbi Benish arrived in Goray it was summertime, a busy season. The townspeople were hauling timber from the forest; saws screeched and hammers banged, and children ran about. Young girls came out of the woods carrying full pails of blueberries and wild strawberries, heavy bundles of branches, baskets of mushrooms. The lord of Goray allowed the townspeople to fish in his pond, and every family dried fruit to preserve it for the rest of the year. At dusk, when Rabbi Benish walked to the prayer house, the air smelled of fresh milk and of chimney smoke, and everything seemed to be as it had been before. At such moments, he would raise his eyes to Heaven and thank God for having saved a remnant of his flock, for not having allowed it to be completely destroyed, as they had been in other communities.
    But now, after the Feast of Tabernacles had passed, as the cold season began, the havoc in Goray became more apparent. Most of the empty windows