In Moliwda’s settlement, near Craiova in Wallachia, people believe that this year, 1757, is the year of the Last Judgment. The names of new angels are invoked daily so that they will appear as witnesses. It has not occurred to anyone that if they go on like this it may take many thousands of years—an eternity—since the number of angels is infinite. Those who pray believe the world can no longer be saved, that they must simply prepare for the end, which is imminent. The Last Judgment is like childbirth: once it’s under way, it can’t be called off or put on hold. But the brothers and sisters whom Moliwda has left behind for good also believe that this judgment isn’t as we might expect—it is not earthly, with angels’ trumpets, a great scale to weigh the deeds of men, and the archangel’s sword. Instead, it occurs almost unnoticeably, without extravagance. In a sense it happens behind our backs and in our absence. We have been judged in that strange year of 1757, in absentia and—this is certain—without any possibility of appeal. Our human ignorance is no excuse.
Evidently the world has become unbearable not only on the vast, open plains of Podolia, but here, too, in Wallachia, where it is warmer, where there is the possibility of vineyards. It needed some sort of ending, some resolution. Besides, war broke out last year. Yente, who sees everything, knows that this war will last for seven years and will tip the scales that measure human life. The shift is not yet noticeable, but the angels have begun their cleaning: they take the rug of the world in both hands and shake it out, letting the dust fly. Soon they’ll roll it up again.
The rabbis are losing the debate in Kamieniec, badly, and this is because no one wants to listen to their convoluted explanations when the accusations are so simple and precise. Reb Krysa of Nadwórna becomes a hero when he manages to make a laughingstock of the Talmud. He stands and lifts a finger in the air.
“Why does the ox have a tail?” he asks.
The room falls silent, intrigued by the posing of such a stupid question.
“What kind of holy book is it that puts such questions to its readers?” Krysa goes on with that finger, which slowly turns toward the rabbis. “The Talmud!” he exclaims after a moment.
The room bursts out laughing. The sound rises to the ceiling of the courtroom, a space unaccustomed to such merry outbursts.
“And what might the Talmudic answer be?” asks Krysa, whose scarred face has flushed. After a pause, he answers his own question triumphantly: “Because it has to chase away the flies!”
There is more laughter.
The rabbis’ demands—that the Contra-Talmudists be expelled from synagogue, that they be mandated some dress other than Jewish, and that they no longer be allowed to call themselves Jewish—also seem laughable now. The consistory court, with the gravity that is proper to it, dismisses their supplication, arguing that it simply is not competent to determine who can and who cannot call themselves Jewish.
When the matter of the Lanckoroń accusations is raised, the court avoids taking a stand. There was already an investigation, after all, and it discovered nothing sinful in singing and frolicking behind closed doors. Everyone has the right to pray as he wishes. And to dance with a woman, even if that woman bares her breasts. Besides, the investigation did not conclusively establish that there were any naked women there.
Then everyone’s attention turns to the matter of the trial against the Jewish forgers. One Leyb Gdalowicz and his journeyman Hashko Shlomowicz had been striking false coins. The journeyman is acquitted, but his boss is sentenced to be beheaded and quartered. The die that made the coins has already been ceremoniously burned and crumbled prior to the execution. In accordance with the sentence, the guilty man has his head cut off, and his body is quartered and nailed to the gallows. His head is nailed to a stake.
This trial did not help the rabbis. During the final days of the disputation, they had to keep a low profile, stealing along pressed against the walls of houses, so universally had public favor turned against them.
The consistory court, too, had turned to secondary matters, one of them appalling to the Kamieniec Christians. Henshiya of Lanckoroń, a Jew who did business with peasants, had responded to a charge of having dealings with the Shabbitarians by telling his accuser, one Bazyl Knesh, that he could take the cross and stick it up his nethers. For this blasphemy, Henshiya was sentenced to one hundred lashes, to be meted out in four different parts of the city, so that as many people as possible could view the punishment.
Gershon got the same punishment for having created such turmoil in Lanckoroń and starting all of this in the first place.
The consistory court and Bishop Dembowski also recommended that the holders of the properties where the Contra-Talmudists now found themselves extend their protection to the same.
This opinion was read out and instantly approved.
The court found the Contra-Talmudists innocent of all the calumnies against them and ordered the rabbis to pay 5,000 zlotys to cover the costs of the trial and to compensate those Contra-Talmudists who were beaten and robbed in skirmishes, and to be fined an additional 152 red zlotys for the repair of the church tower in Kamieniec. And the Talmud, that mendacious and pernicious book, was to be burned throughout Podolia.
After the sentencing a silence fell, as though the Church side were aghast at its own severity, but when a translator conveyed the words of the sentence to the rabbis, cries and laments rose from their bench. They were ordered to calm down, for now they inspired only embarrassment, not sympathy. They had only themselves to blame. They left the court in righteous silence, muttering under their breath.
Moliwda, elated to have returned to his country, also feels that everything has changed. Sometimes it amuses him that he can foresee a certain thing, and then he looks into the sky; there seems to be more of it on these lowlands, and it works like a mirror lens, gathering up image after image into itself, reflecting the earth as a fresco, where everything happens simultaneously and the tracks of future events can be followed. Any person who knows how to look can simply raise his eyes to the sky. There he will see all.
When Jacob and Nahman came to talk him into going back to Poland, he wasn’t even surprised. Out of politeness, he feigned hesitation. But the truth is, the sight of Jacob jumping off his horse with panache, in his typically Turkish way, awoke in Moliwda some sudden, boyish joy at the thought of the perilous new adventure to come.
Of burning books