The Collected Stories

fingers. Knees shaking, he was forced to support himself on a stand.
    “Why did you do this thing?” he asked feebly.
    “I don’t know, Rabbi … Something came over me!” cried Shloimele, and his puny figure seemed to shrink. “I committed a grave error … A grave error!”
    “An error?” Reb Ozer demanded and raised one eye. It seemed as if the single eye held a laughter not of this world.
    “Yes, an error!” Shloimele said, forlorn, bewildered.
    “
Oy vey
—Jews, a fire rages, a fire from Gehenna!” a man with a pitch-black beard and long, disheveled sidelocks cried suddenly. “Our children are dying because of them! Innocent infants who knew nothing of sin!”
    With the mention of children, a lament arose from the women’s synagogue. It was the mothers remembering their babies who had perished. Since Kreshev was a small town the news spread quickly and a terrible excitement followed. Women mingled with the men, phylacteries fell to the ground, prayer shawls were torn loose. When the crowd quieted, Shloimele started his confession again. He told how he had joined the ranks of the cult of Sabbatai Zevi while still a boy, how he had studied with his fellow disciples, how he had been taught that an excess of degradation meant greater sanctity and that the more heinous the wickedness the closer the day of redemption.
    “Men, I am a traitor to Israel!” he wailed. “A heretic from sheer perversity and a whoremonger! I secretly desecrated the Sabbath, ate dairy with meat, neglected my prayers, profaned my prayer books and indulged in every possible iniquity … I forced my own wife into adultery! I fooled her into thinking that that bum, Mendel the coachman, was in truth Adonijah the son of Hagith and that she was Abeishag the Shunammite and that they could obtain salvation only through union! I even convinced her that, by sinning, she’d commit a good deed! I have trespassed, been faithless, spoken basely, wrought unrighteousness, been presumptuous and counseled evil.”
    He screamed in a shrill voice and, each time, beat his bosom. “Spit upon me, Jews. Flail me! Tear me to bits! Judge me!” he cried. “Let me pay for my sins with death.”
    “Jews, I am not the rabbi of Kreshev but of Sodom!” shouted Reb Ozer, “Sodom and Gomorrah!”
    “
Oy
—Satan dances in Kreshev!” wailed the black Jew and clapped his head in both hands. “Satan the Destroyer!”
    The man was right. All that day and through the following night I ruled over Kreshev. No one prayed or studied that day, no ram’s horn was blown. The frogs in the marshes croaked: “Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!” Crows heralded evil tidings. The community goat went berserk and attacked a woman returning from the ritual bath. In every chimney a demon hovered. From every woman a hobgoblin spoke. Lise was still in bed when the mob overran her house. After shattering the windows with rocks, they stormed her bedroom. When Lise saw the crowds she grew white as the sheet beneath her. She asked to be allowed to dress but they tore the bedding and shredded the silk nightgown from her body, and in such disarray, barefoot and in tatters, her head uncovered, she was dragged off to the house of the rabbi. The young man, Mendel, had just arrived from a village where he had spent several days. Before he even knew what was happening, he was set upon by the butcher boys, tied with ropes, beaten severely and spirited away to the community jail in the anteroom of the synagogue. Since Shloimele had confessed voluntarily, he got away with several facial blows, but of his own free will he stretched out on the threshold of the study house and told everyone who entered or left to spit and walk over him, which is the first penance for the sin of adultery.
    XI
The Punishment

    Late into the night Reb Ozer sat in the chamber of justice with the ritual slaughterer, the trustee, the seven town elders and other esteemed citizens, listening to the sinners’ stories. Although the shutters were closed and the door locked, a curious crowd gathered and the beadle had to keep going out to drive them away. It would take too long to tell all about the shame and depravities detailed by Shloimele and Lise. I’ll repeat only a few particulars. Although everyone had supposed Lise would weep and protest her innocence, or simply fall into a faint, she maintained her composure. She answered with clarity every question that the rabbi asked her. When she admitted fornicating with