Satan in Goray

behind one another's backs, the following being adversaries: Nechele and the rabbi's wife; Nechele and her sister-in-law; the two brothers; the orphans and their grandmother. Of Nechele it was said that she had bewitched her husband, causing him to remain in love with her and follow her false ways. Ozer's wife swore that Nechele went out to gather herbs every Sabbath eve. Someone also once met her going in to see the witch, Kunnigunde, who lived beyond the town, near the gentile cemetery.
    In the past, Rabbi Benish had tried to bring peace to his household. The rabbi feared the sin of controversy, knowing that every visitation inflicted on a house sprang from this transgression. But now the old rabbi no longer had the strength to make peace. His years were numbered and there was much to put in order. He had several works to complete. Moreover, the bitter persecutions of the years 1648 and 1649 had re-awakened in him the old paradoxes regarding faith, predestination and freedom of will, and the suffering of the virtuous. Rabbi Benish sat alone, locked in, and no longer visited his wife Friday nights in her bedroom. On the rare occasions when a member of his family came into his room to begin tattling and informing, Rabbi Benish would rise to his full height; his beard leaping like a living thing, one hand beating on the oaken table, the other pointing to the door.
    "Get--out!" he would shout. "I've heard enough. Pests!"

    3

    Extraordinary Rumors

    For a number of years now, extraordinary rumors had swept through Poland.
    During the time Rabbi Benish still dwelt in Lublin he had heard amazing things. All men were discussing the Jerusalemite rabbinical emissary, Baruch Gad, who, in journeying through a desert, had blundered across the other side of the river Sambation; he had brought back with him a parchment letter from the Ten Lost Tribes, supposedly written by the Jewish king, Achitov, the son of Azariah. According to this letter, the end of days was near. Copies of the writ were in the hands of a few Land of Israel Jews who journeyed from country to country collecting money.
    The greatest cabalists in Poland and other lands uncovered numerous allusions in the Zohar and in antique cabalistic volumes proving that the days of the Exile were numbered. Chmelnicki's massacres were the birth-pangs of the Messiah. According to a secret formula, these pangs were destined to begin in the year 1648 and extend till the end of the present year, when the full and perfect redemption would come.
    All these things were quietly talked about, the news passing from ear to ear, so as not to cause a stir among women and uneducated men, whose understanding was limited. Nevertheless, the common people, too, had their own way of predicting the help that would surely come to the Jews.
    In almost every town one person ran about testifying that the Jews would all soon be redeemed. Some declared that they could hear the great ram's horn being blown, signifying the end of days; others aroused the people to return to God, reckoning up their own as well as the sins of others; still others danced in the street for joy, and beat drums.
    Ordinary women dreamed remarkable dreams. Dead kin told them all about the wonders that would soon occur. Sleeping and waking, people saw, riding an ass, that pauper who was to be the Messiah; they heard Elijah the Prophet call: "Redemption cometh to the world!" A great cloud lowered, and all the Jews with their wives and children sat on it to fly to Jerusalem. Before them flew their prayer houses and study houses. A servant girl from Bechev related how, dozing, she had seen a fiery building as high as heaven, and bright as the sun. Around it, Jews in silken garments, wearing the fur caps of the devout, kneeled and sang the Sabbath psalms of praise. Her master, a learned man, immediately understood that the girl had been considered worthy to glimpse the heavenly Temple, with the Levites in attendance; he had made the rounds of the communities with her, that she might describe her vision. Gentile soothsayers divulged that more than once they had observed, in the eastern sky, a tiny star at war with all the others, gradually assimilating them and waxing larger until it became the size of the moon. This was taken as a sign that the smallest and most humble of nations would overcome the peoples of the earth and rule them. Priests, also, testified that they had seen the battle of Armageddon waged in Heaven, with Israel