Satan in Goray

with whores and thou hast fornicated: And thinkest thou now to deny the sight of thine own eyes lest that thy wickedness become known to men and that thou mightest further beguile them with thy cunning and with thy insolence: And it came to pass that when Reb Gedaliya heard these words the strength ebbed from his body: But anon he revived and cried, She is mad completely: But the people would hear him no longer and they would not believe him: And there was a pious man, one Reb Mordecai Joseph (may his remembrance be a blessing to us all) who formerly had descended to the nethermost Sheol and afterward had done penance and had saved his soul: And he was zealous for the zeal of God and he lifted up his stick and he smote Gedaliya: And he cried, Thou wretched man now shalt thou blind the eyes of this people no longer: For thou art a seducer and a magician and thou art the cause that the plague has been poured out on us all and that we must drink the cup of persecution to the dregs: Then the mighty Gedaliya would have killed him but the people took his part and defended him: AND NOW did the dybbuk scream ever more loudly and he confessed his sins with a fearful lamentation and groaning: And the woman lifted a heavy stone and smote her breast: And the marvel was that her limbs were not broken nor her frame shattered for so heavy was the stone that three strong men could not move it from its place: But in her hands it was as a feather: And she smote her body with the stone from the top of her head to the tips of her toes time and again without interruption: And that pious man Reb Mordecai Joseph (his remembrance be a blessing unto us) girded his loins and asked, Why dost thou scream and bring her so much woe:

    AND THE DYBBUK replied in a loud and piercing voice: How then shall I not cry and how then shall I not wail: Seeing that when. I walked among the living I polluted my soul and transgressed every transgression cited in the Torah: I hail from Lublin and there I was one of those frivolous youths that swill beer in the taverns and frolic in the whore houses: And I rebelled at every command of God and incurred His wrath: On the holy Sabbath day I did work and I did eat of the pig and of the other forbidden foods: And on Yom Kippur I made a feast for spite and drank wine and gave myself to unbridled desire and I also lay with beasts, animals and fowls: Woe is me for I said in my heart, There is neither Justice nor Judge, and I denied that the Torah is from Heaven and I despised all wise scholars and I brazenly swore at them and I set dogs on them as is the practice of pranksters: When lo suddenly I suffered a stroke and this is a sickness that no one ever rises from: And I saw clearly that my end was come: But (such is the way of the wicked) I grew not submissive and I remained haughty at the very gate of Gehenna and before my death my comrades came to me and they asked me Abraham (such was my name) dost thou repent: And I answered them in my pride, Now even now I do not believe that there is a Creator in the world and before I expired I blasphemed and thus my soul left me denying Him:

    AND IT CAME TO PASS that I had but died and had not yet been lifted up and laid in the earth that three evil spirits seized me: And they tormented me cruelly and they trampled on me with their feet and they sorely afflicted me: And then I saw that indeed there is a punishment only it was already too late: And all the time I lay covered they perpetrated on me all manner of suffering that cannot be recounted: And I called on my kin that they might discover me some relief but they could not hear my voice for I was already not of this world: And tens of thousands and millions of milliards of imps followed my funeral: And they were all my children that I had created through continual defilement and fornication: And they called me Father and my shame was boundless: AND WHEN they had laid me in the grave and piled the last shovelful of earth upon me there came to me the Angel Dumah: And he rapped on my grave with his fiery rod and the grave split open at once: And he called Mah Shemecha (What is thy name) and I could not remember the verse for I had not prayed: And the angel cried Thou foul seed Thou sinner against the Lord of Israel Tarry not here and abandon this grave and fly away to the hollow of the sling: For thy place is not in the graveyard where so many righteous and proper men rest in peace: And I tried to implore him but he tore the