I recalled how once I had wanted to be beside Jacob as Natan of Gaza was beside Sabbatai Tzvi, exalting him and showing Sabbatai himself that he was the Messiah, since Sabbatai did not know who he was. For when the spirit enters into a person, it happens as if by violence, as if the air were to penetrate the hardest stone. Neither the body nor the mind that the spirit has entered are fully aware of what has occurred. Thus there must be someone who pronounces it, who names it. And that is what I did with our holy Mordechai in Smyrna—we were witnesses to the descent of the spirit into Jacob; we put it into words.
Yet it seemed to me that since my arrival in Brünn an invisible wall had arisen between Jacob and myself, or a kind of curtain—as if someone had strung up the finest muslin sheets in that space.
The Lord’s words
“Three are hidden from me, and of the fourth the lot of you is ignorant.” What do those words of Jacob mean? They mean that there are three Gods who are very powerful, and they exercise an uncompromising rule over the world in its entirety. So said the Lord, and I wrote it down after him. One God gives life to everyone, and for this reason, He is good. Another God gives wealth—not to everyone, but only to those he wishes. The third God is Malakh haMayet—the Lord of Death. He is the strongest. And that fourth, the one of whom we are all ignorant—that is the Good God Himself. You cannot arrive at the Good God without having first passed through the other three.
All this, said Jacob, and we wrote it down, was unknown to Solomon, who tried to force his way up to the Highest One, but he could not reach him, and so he had to pass away from the world, without bringing it eternal life. Then a call reverberated through the heavens: “Who will go in search of eternal life?”
Jesus of Nazareth replied: “I’ll go.” But he, too, accomplished nothing, although he was very wise and learned, and though his power was great. Then he went to those three who rule the world, and by the power of the Good God, he began to heal, but those other three saw it and grew uneasy that he would take control over the world, for they knew from the prophecies that the Messiah would come and that death would be swallowed for ever and ever, amen. Thus Jesus of Nazareth came to the first of those three, and that one let him through to the second, and then that one let him through to the third. But the third, who was the Lord of Death, took him by the hand and asked: “Where are you going?” And Jesus said: “I am going to the fourth, who is the God of Gods.” At this the Lord of Death grew angry and said: “I am the Lord of the world. Stay here with me, you will be my right hand—you will be God’s Son.” And then Jesus understood that the power of the Good God was not with him, and that he was defenseless as a child. Then he said to the Lord of Death: “Let it be as you say.” But the Lord of Death responded: “My son, you must sacrifice your body and your blood for me.” “What do you mean?” Jesus replied to this. “How can I give you my body, when I have been told to bring eternal life into the world?” And that God, the Lord of Death, said to Jesus then: “It cannot be that death does not exist in the world.” And Jesus answered: “And yet I told my disciples that I would bring eternal life—” The Lord of Death interrupted him: “Tell your disciples that that eternal existence will not be in this world, but in the next, as it stands in the prayer: ‘And after death eternal life, amen.’” And this is why Jesus remained with the Lord of Death and brought a more powerful death into the world than even Moses. Jews die against their will, without desiring it, without knowing where they go after their deaths, while Christians die gleefully because they avow that each has their part in heaven with Jesus who sits to the right of the Father. And so Jesus went from this world. Many centuries on, once again the call resounded: “Who will go?”
In answer to this, Sabbatai Tzvi said, “I will go.” He went like a child, gaining nothing, accomplishing nothing.
That is why I was sent after him, Jacob says, and the silence among his listeners is that of the crypt, as if Jacob were telling them some kind of fairy tale, as if they were children. I was sent, he said, in order to introduce an eternal existence into the world. I have been given that power. But I am a great simpleton, and I cannot go alone. Jesus was a great scholar, and I am a simpleton. To those three you have to go quietly, down winding roads, and they can read our lips even when we do not say a word. There is no need to shout; it is possible to move along in silence, keeping quiet. I will not go forth, however, until the time has come for my words to be fulfilled.
Only some of them recognized in this tale our holy treatise, which only in this simplified and broken form could really reach people.
When he had finished, they begged him to say something else. So he started a new story.
It is like it was with a certain king who founded a great church. The foundations were laid by a certain foreman, an elbow deep and high as a man. And when he was supposed to keep on building, suddenly that foreman disappeared for thirteen years, and when he came back, he took to building the walls. The king asked him why he had gone off without a word and abandoned his work like that.
“My king,” answered the foreman, “this building is very big, and if I had tried to finish it at once, the foundations could not have borne the weight of the walls. That is why I went away intentionally, so that the foundation would be good and settled in. Now I can start putting up the edifice, and it will be eternal and will never fall down.”
Soon I had dozens of pages containing such stories; Yeruhim Dembowski had the same.
The bird that hops out of a snuffbox
Moshe, when he appears at court in Brünn, brings with him some craftsmen who speak in German with a strange accent.
First he shows Jacob and Eva the drawings.
He explains in great detail all the advantages of the invention, though Jacob appears not to understand how it works. Apparently the very same thing is at the imperial court, where Moshe has many friends and acquaintances. He is sometimes there himself, and he is hoping that soon he will also be able to take Jacob and his beautiful daughter. From now on, he wants to be called Thomas.
It is actually quite simple, and after just a few weeks it becomes clear how it works. It is a stone bowl placed in the highest room, beautifully polished; inside it there is a pipe that rises clear up through the roof, and, like a chimney, it extends outside. They had to pull off a few of the roof tiles and build wooden frames to support it, but it is all in operation now.
“Camera obscura,” says Moshe-Thomas with pride, like the master of ceremonies in a theater. The women applaud. With his hands on their flexible wrists Thomas makes circles in the air, the lace on his cuffs swishing around. His kind, smooth-shaven face, his wavy hair. His broad smile and slightly crooked teeth. Who could resist this young man who has a hundred ideas a second, and who works faster than anybody else? thinks Eva. They each go up to the bowl, and what do they see?