And everyone laughs.
Not everyone is on board with the rule that they must give up their belongings. Yeruhim and Hayim from Warsaw keep saying that it can’t last, that people are greedy by nature and will just want more and more and try to turn a profit off the things that they receive. But others, like Nahman and Moshe, say they’ve seen this kind of community work before, and they stick up for Jacob. Nahman in particular is a big supporter of the idea. He can often be found holding forth on the subject in the households of the village:
“This was exactly how it used to be in the world before there were laws. Everything was held in common, everything belonged to everyone, and everyone had enough, and the commandments ‘Thou shalt not steal’ and ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ didn’t exist because if anybody had said them, nobody else would have understood. ‘What is stealing?’ they would have asked. ‘What is adultery?’ We should live in the same way, because the old law no longer applies to us. There have been three: Sabbatai, Baruchiah, and now Jacob. He is the greatest of them, and he is our salvation. We must rejoice that our time is the time of salvation, that the old orders no longer apply.”
During Hanukkah, Jacob distributes pieces of Sabbatai Tzvi’s shirt as relics. This is a great event for the entire community. It is the shirt that the First One threw to Halabi’s son; Shorr recently purchased both its sleeves from Halabi’s son’s granddaughter—he paid a pretty price for them, too. Now bits of the material—each of them smaller than a fingernail—make their way into amulets, little cherrywood boxes, pockets, and leather pouches worn around the neck. The rest of the shirt is placed in the box at Osman’s. It will be given to those who have yet to arrive.
Of the working of Jacob’s touch
Moshe from Podhajce, who knows everything, sits in the warmest spot, among the women weaving. Clouds of fragrant smoke rise toward the wooden ceiling.
“You all know,” he says, “the prayer that talks about Eloha encountering the demon of illness, who used to set up shop in people’s extremities and so make them sick. But Eloha says to the demon, ‘Just as you can’t drink down the whole sea, so you will not do any further harm to mankind.’ Just like that. And Jacob, our Lord, is like Eloha: he, too, can converse with the demon of illnesses. And all he has to do is give him a dirty look, and off the demon goes.”
This makes sense to them. For there is an endless procession of people standing at the door to Jacob’s shed, and if Wittel permits them inside, into the presence of the Lord, Jacob will lay his hands on the heads of the suffering, moving his thumb back and forth over their foreheads. Sometimes he blows in their faces. It almost always helps. They say that he has hot hands that can melt away all maladies, any variety of pain.
Jacob’s fame quickly spreads through the vicinity, and even local peasants end up coming to Ivanie (to “call on the ne’er-do-wells,” as they put it). They’re suspicious of these oddballs who are neither Jews nor Gypsies. But Jacob rests his hands on their heads, too. In exchange they leave eggs, chickens, apples, grain. Hava tucks everything away in her chamber and distributes it evenly later on. Every child receives an egg for Shabbat. Hava says “for Shabbat,” although Jacob has told them not to keep the Shabbat. All the same, unable to get used to this new edict, they still mark the passage of time from Shabbat to Shabbat.
In February something strange occurs, a real miracle, but of this Moshe knows next to nothing. Jacob has forbidden talk of it. Hayim, on the other hand, witnessed it. A Podolian girl grew very ill—she was dying by the time she was brought in. Her father let out a terrible howl, tearing out his beard in despair: she’d always been his most beloved child. They sent for Jacob. When he arrived, he shouted at them to be quiet. Then he holed up with the girl for a while. When he left, she was cured. He ordered her to be dressed in white.
“What did you do to her?” asked Shlomo, Wittel’s husband.
“I had my dealings with her, and she got better,” said Jacob. And he refused to say any more on the matter.
Shlomo, a polite and serious man, did not at first understand what he had just been told. He couldn’t quite recover from it after. That evening Jacob smiled at him as though perceiving Shlomo’s torment, and he reached out and tugged him gently by the nape of the neck, like a girl might do to a boy. He blew into his eyes and told him not to tell anyone. Then he went off and paid him no more mind.
But Shlomo did tell his wife, swearing her to secrecy. And somehow—no one knew how—within a few days all of Ivanie had heard the secret. Words are like lizards, able to elude all containment.
Of the women’s talk while plucking chickens
First, that the face of the biblical Jacob served as the model when God was creating the angels’ human faces.
Second, that the moon has Jacob’s face.
Third, that you can engage another man to give you children if you can’t get pregnant by your husband.
They recall the story of Issachar, son of Jacob and Leah: Leah engaged Jacob to sleep with her and then bore him a son. She compensated Jacob with a mandrake found by Reuben in the desert, much desired by the infertile Rachel. (Then Rachel ate that mandrake and bore Jacob his son Joseph.) All this is in the Scriptures.
Fourth, that you can get pregnant by Jacob without him even brushing up against your pinkie finger.
Fifth, that when God created the angels, right away they opened up their mouths and praised Him. And, too, when God created Adam, the angels piped right up: “Is this the man we are to worship?” “No,” replied God. “This is a thief. He will steal fruit from my tree.” So when Noah was born, the angels asked excitedly, “Is this the man we are to praise to high heaven?” And God replied in consternation, “No, this is just an ordinary drunk.” When Abraham was born, they asked again, but God, who had grown dejected, replied, “No, this one was not born circumcised and will only later convert to my faith.” When Isaac was born, the angels asked, still hopeful, “Is it this one?” “No,” replied God, terribly displeased. “This one loves his elder son, who hates me.” But when Jacob was born, they asked their question once more, and this time, the response was, “Yes, this is he.”
Several of the men working on the shed stop doing what they’re doing so they can stand in the doorway and eavesdrop on the women. Soon their heads are white with feathers: someone must have snatched up one of the baskets with a little too much zeal.
Of which of the women will be chosen
“Go to him,” Wittel’s husband says to her. “He took a liking to you. You will be blessed.”
But she resists.
“How could I sleep with him, when I’m your wife? It’s a sin.”