Our holy universal Church condemns without exception such terrible heresies, but it is too great and powerful to trouble itself with such aberrations. The most important thing for the Church has always been the salvation of the souls of the faithful. This is why I inform Your Excellency of these suspicions with genuine aggravation. Can a man who has given himself through and through to heretical notions, and who strives to be of service to other heretics, be worthy of our trust? In our beloved Commonwealth, which survives in its greatness only thanks to our collective faith in the universal Catholic Church, there lurks yet the unrelenting danger of schism. The forces of dissenters are still encroaching from east and west, which is why we must all remain highly vigilant. I feel the necessity of this vigilance particularly acutely as a monk.
At the same time, I would pass over in silence certain matters that are of some significance to our joint inquiry. This Kossakowski-Moliwda is fluent in several languages, and his best languages are Turkish and ancient Hebrew, as well as Greek, Russian, and of course Latin and French. He has extensive knowledge of the Orient, is versed in multiple academic fields and also writes poetry. These talents have no doubt kept him afloat over the course of his turbulent life, and they might come in handy to us, if we could be certain of his dedication to the cause . . .
From Antoni Moliwda-Kossakowski to His Excellency Bishop ?ubieński
It makes me very happy indeed that I might at once present my report to Your Excellency, for it is my opinion that my observations may—even if only slightly—illuminate the highly complicated matter of the anti-Talmudists, completely inconceivable to us Christians, as we are unable to penetrate with clear understanding the dark, tangled secrets of the Jewish faith, nor can we penetrate in full the murky Jewish soul. Your Excellency sent me to follow the matter of Jacob Leybowicz Frank and his disciples at close range, but since this famous Jacob Frank is not in our country, and since, as a Turkish citizen, he remains under the protection of the Turks and is no doubt in his home in Giurgiu, I went to Satanów, where a Jewish trial against the anti-Talmudists took place, which I was able to spend a day observing.
It is a nice little town, fairly clean and bright, located on a tall embankment, with an enormous synagogue that towers over the town. Around it is the Jewish district, in total some several dozen houses that reach all the way up to the market square, where the Jewish merchants have taken charge of all the town’s trade. There the Talmudist Jews in their synagogue of such extravagant dimensions held their trial against the heretics. There were many interested persons in the audience, not only Israelites but also curious Christians, and I even saw a few of the local nobles, who, however, grew bored by the Jewish language, which is incomprehensible to them, and quickly departed.
It is with sadness that I must assert and reveal to Your Excellency that what I glimpsed there did not even remotely resemble a trial and was instead an attack of rabid rabbis upon frightened and perfectly innocent small-time merchants, who, terrified, said whatever came into their minds, and in this way condemned not only themselves but also their brothers and sisters. The vitriol that accompanied the charges was so great that I feared for the lives of the defendants, who had to bring in people from the manor of the lord of that region, strong Cossack farmhands, to keep the frenzied crowd from descending into terrible mob rule. For they were suspected of practices of adultery according to which wives would leave their husbands and be subsequently recognized as whores. Much of their property was taken from them, and they were released with only what they could carry in their hands. There is no mercy for them when their own people attack them, and our system cannot defend them against that. There has already been a first victim, one Libera of Brze?any, tortured to death for wanting to speak on behalf of Jacob Frank. The news that these Frankists are under the protection of the king himself has evidently not reached as far as here.
I understand Your Excellency’s agitation at the excommunico known in Hebrew as “herem,” and I share that agitation. Lest one doubt the mysterious workings of that curse and its diabolical powers, I had visible evidence of how it plays out here on earth—it places certain people outside the law, thereby putting their lives, their possessions, and their bodily integrity at risk.
In Poland, on the lands inhabited by our Christian population, the little bits of truth that reach us are gleaned by the sweat of the brow. But we also have here living with us millions belonging to the oldest people among all civilizations, that is, the Jewish people, who from the depths of their synagogues have never in so many centuries ceased to raise to heaven that plaintive cry, resembling nothing else in this world. It is a cry of abandonment, of being forsaken by God. If there is something that might bring heavenly truth down to earth, is it not those cries, in which these people concentrate and express their entire lives?
It is a paradox that the care these people need now cannot come from their co-religionists, but only from us, their younger brothers in faith. Many of them have begun to approach us with the same kind of trust with which little children approached Jesus Christ, Our Lord.
That is why I am asking you, Your Excellency, to consider another ecclesiastical audience with these same people, and a simultaneous summons to a disputation with their accusers, the Satanów rabbi, the Lwów rabbi, the Brody and ?uck rabbis, as well as all the others who made such serious accusations against them and in consequence of the results cast a curse upon them. We are not afraid of Jewish curses, just as we are not afraid of any other Jewish superstitions, but we do wish to stand in defense of the persecuted and provide them the right to speak for themselves.
Moliwda ends this letter with a great, elegant flourish and sprinkles it with sand. When it has dried, he starts to write another, in Turkish, in tiny script. He begins: “My Jacob.”
Knives and forks
Hana, Jacob’s young wife, loves order in her luggage, knowing where everything is packed—her scarves, her shoes, her oils, the ointments for her pimples. In her even, somewhat hulking hand, she loves to make lists of the things she has packed, and then she feels like she reigns over the world, like she’s its queen. Nothing worse than disorder and chaos. Hana waits until the ink on her list dries, strokes the end of the feather with the tip of her finger—her fingers are slender, shapely, with nice nails, although Hana can’t keep herself from biting them from time to time.