Satan in Goray

shrouds from my body and he beat me with his fiery rod and he drove me out: AND Lo without there lay in wait for me vast armies of demons and destroyer spirits and messengers of annihilation and they were all in readiness to fling themselves at me in their wrath and to rend me to bits: And they came at me in anger and mockery and they gave chase to me and they whistled and howled and pursued me through the wilderness: I sought to flee them and to escape them but there was no hiding place and they captured me and they cast me and tossed me like a bird in the wind: One pulled me from the right hand and one from the left and they would not let me be by day or by night and they delighted in my terror: Oh were all the heavens parchment and all the seas ink would they not yet suffice to inscribe one thousandth part of my ordeal: In my anguish I passed into the leaf of a tree: But there too my sorrow was immeasurable for when the leaf shook in the wind I shivered and twisted exactly as though I were a living man: Yet so long as I dwelt in the leaf the demons could do me no evil: But I was forced to leave it for a worm crept into the leaf and it bit me: And the instant I left the leaf the black hosts ringed me wildly about and they rolled me through every wilderness and desert and wasteland full of serpents and scorpions and horned snakes: And in my straits I entered into a frog: But there too things were bitter for me, for a man cannot dwell in a frog that breeds in the swamp and in stinking marshes: Also the frog suffered and sickened and her belly swelled: And thus I passed from creature to creature: Moreover for many years I dwelt in a millstone and when it turned it rubbed against my limbs and my pain knew no bounds: AND REB MORDECAI JOSEPH asked the dybbuk How didst thou enter into the woman and by what means didst thou gain the ascendancy over her: And the dybbuk said Let it be known that Gedaliya is a denier of the faith and an apostate out of spite and that he has defiled his wife with many defilements and hence I was able to gain the ascendancy over her: For one morning the woman desired to start a fire with two flint stones and the sparks would not light the wick: And she cried out the name of Satan: And the moment I heard this I entered into her body:

    AND REB MORDECAI JOSEPH said to the spirit, Through what opening didst thou force thy way into the woman, and the dybbuk spoke and said Through that same place:

    THEN REB MORDECAI JOSEPH rose and smote Ge daliya with violence: Moreover the other men flung themselves at him and beat him and shed his blood and tore his beard until he fell fainting to the ground: And Reb Mordecai Joseph (may his remembrance be a blessing) flogged him forty times forty until his blood flowed like water: And the people took him and flung him into the jail that is in the prayer house anteroom. And they chained him to the post and there he remained to await his judgment: For the gentiles too were sentencing witches in their judgments and many of them were burned at the stake: And they appointed a watchman to watch him: 14 The Death of Rechele AND IT CAME TO PASS after these things when the wicked Gedaliya had been imprisoned that Reb Mordecai Joseph (may his remembrance be a blessing) bade powerful men carry the young woman to the study house where the evil spirit might be driven out of her: For the dybbuk did weary her with all manner of torment and caused the name of God to be desecrated (God preserve us) and there was great sympathy for the woman: And the powerful men rose and took the woman in their arms and against her will and bore her off to the court of the prayer house: All this time the woman was still and silent as though her strength had deserted her and she was like a little child: But when they came near to the door of the prayer house anteroom then did the dybbuk begin to scream and wail, Bring me not nearer to this place For I cannot endure the holy air, and the sound of his outcry was heard far and wide: But the men did not heed the dybbuk and they carried the woman into the study house by main force though she wrestled with them: And she worked with a strength exceeding the strength of a man for her power came from the evil spirit (yid. sup.): AND IT CAME ABOUT that when the woman lay on the pulpit the dybbuk burst into a weeping such that all who heard wept with him: For not women alone but men as well were overcome with compassion: And the dybbuk cried and said: Why