“I’ll hire a teacher for you,” Elisha Shorr says, and stuffs his pipe for him. “Now listen. We certainly didn’t go all the way to Smyrna to collect you just to let you go now. All those people over there in Kamieniec are going out to fight in your stead for what we want to accomplish. You are leading them, even though you can’t go there yourself. But you cannot pull out now.”
Every evening Hayah kneels before her father and rubs his legs with a mixture of foul-smelling onion juice and something else that fills the house with the smell of herbs all night. But that’s not all: Hayah passes her child off to the women and shuts herself in with the men in her father’s room, and there they confer. Jacob is surprised by this at first. It isn’t a sight he’s used to. In Turkey and Wallachia women know their place, and religious scholars keep their distance from them, for women’s inherent connection with the lowest world of matter introduces chaos into the world of the spirit. But it doesn’t work that way among true believers. Since they are always on the road, they all would perish were it not for their women.
“Ah,” says Elisha, as if reading Jacob’s mind, “if she were a man, she would be my wisest son.”
That first night, according to the old custom, Hayah comes to Jacob’s bed. Her body is delicate, if a little bony, with its long thighs and rough mound. Custom dictates they have sexual intercourse without any unnecessary caresses and without words. But Jacob rubs her slightly convex belly for a long time, each time running his hand over her navel, which seems very warm to him. She takes his member boldly in her hand and gently, almost inattentively, strokes it. Hayah wants to know how the acceptance of the Turkish religion occurs, what they do instead of baptism, if you have to prepare for it somehow, how much it cost them, whether Jacob’s wife also converted to Islam and whether women have it better there than here. Did his decision to convert really protect him? Did he think he was out of reach of the Polish authorities? And did he know that for Jews—and for her, too—such a conversion would be extremely difficult? And that she believes him, that all the Shorrs would follow him if he would like to lead them. And also: Has he heard all the stories people are telling about him and that she herself has been spreading among the women? Finally Jacob, tired of responding, lies down on top of her and enters her with force, then quickly slides off her, spent.
In the morning, Jacob smiles at her as they are eating. He notices that Hayah is always squinting, which has brought about a web of little wrinkles around her eyes. Elisha is planning to send her to Lwów, to Asher, who has moved there, and who is the best at matching eyes with reading glasses.
Hayah dresses modestly—only once has Jacob seen her in formal attire, on the first day of his studies here, when lots of people from the neighboring areas came to the Rohatyn beth midrash. For that she wore a light blue shawl over her gray dress and put earrings in her ears. She is serious and imperturbable.
Then he sees an unexpected scene of tenderness: her father raises his hand to stroke her face, and Hayah, in a calm, slow movement, lays her head against his chest, in the undulations of his lush, gray beard. Not even really knowing why, Jacob looks away in shame.
Of Krysa and his plans for the future
Krysa, son of Nussen, has a scar on his face. One cheek is sliced from top to bottom by a straight line, which gives the impression of some sort of hidden symmetry, an impression so disturbing that anyone who sees him for the first time finds himself unable to take his eyes off him, until, seeking but not finding any order, he turns away in a disgust of which he may not even be entirely aware. Yet Krysa is the most intelligent person in Podolia, highly educated and prescient. At first glance you can’t see that. And that is good for him.
He has learned that he cannot expect sympathy from others. He must specify exactly what he wants—ask, demand, negotiate. If it weren’t for that scar on his face, it would be him in Jacob’s place right now, this he knows for sure.
Krysa feels they ought to be independent within Christianity. That is his position now, before the disputation, and that is what he’s aiming for as he carries on his misunderstanding-filled conversations with Bishop Dembowski behind his brothers’ backs. Because Krysa is convinced he knows better.
“We have to keep our distance from everyone, be right on the edge and do our own thing,” he says.
Not too Jewish, not too Christian, that would be the place for them, where they would be free from the control and greed of priests and rabbis alike. And furthermore: he believes that despite being persecuted by their own kind, by Jews, they nonetheless do not cease to be Jewish, even as they draw closer to Christians. They appeal, Krysa and the Jewish heretics, for support, protection, and care; they reach out with the gesture of a child, putting out an innocent hand to bring about an accord. The Christians accept them sympathetically.
Yet the most important thing for Krysa is not this, for as is written in Yevamot 63—and even though he is against the Talmud, he cannot keep from reading it—“Any man who does not have his own land is not a man.” And so to receive from the lords a piece of land, to settle down and cultivate the land in relative tranquility—that would be the best thing for everyone. The Jews would no longer persecute them, the true believers would work their land every day, could engage peasants to work it, too. They wouldn’t even have to be baptized. This vision unfurls over the table in the smoke-filled room, for as the wind blows it forces the air back down the chimney. Its howling echoes their discussion.
“Never under any lord,” someone interjects, and Krysa recognizes Leyb Hershkowicz of Satanów in the darkness.
“Mrs. Kossakowska would take us in on her properties . . . ,” Moshe from Podhajce starts.
Krysa lunges forward, his face contorted in anger.
“You want to tie the nooses around your own necks? The nobility will do with us whatever they please, and no laws can touch them. Two generations, and we’ll be just like those peasants.”
Some voice their agreement.
“With the bishop, too, we’ll be like peasants,” says Moshe.
Then Shorr’s eldest son, Shlomo, who has until now sat motionless, staring at the tips of his boots, says:
“The only option is to go to the king, to take none but royal land, that’s what Jacob says, and I agree with him. Under the king we’ll be safe.”
Krysa’s face contorts again. He says:
“You’re so stupid. A person extends a hand to folks like you, and you would yank them right down, wanting everything all at once. You have to bargain slowly.”
“And create more problems than you bargained for,” somebody snarls.
“You’ll see, all of you. The bishop and I have an understanding.”
16.
Of the year 1757 and of the establishment of certain age-old truths over the summer at the Kamieniec Podolski disputation