“Keep your distance from the Trinity,” he warned.
This image got etched into my memory: three grown men, bearded, enveloped in the quivering light of an oil lamp, whole evenings spent talking aimlessly of the Messiah. Every letter that arrived from brothers in Altona or Salonika or Moravia or Lwów or Kraków or Stamboul or Sofia was cause for another sleepless night, and in Smyrna at that time our thinking gradually got more harmonious. Isohar seemed the most restrained, while Tovah could be sarcastic, and I must confess that I avoided his furious gaze.
Yes, we know that since he, Sabbatai Tzvi, had come, the world had had a different, deadened countenance, and though it appeared the same, it was in fact a completely different world from the one before. The old rules no longer applied; the commandments we had once followed to the letter, trusting as children, had lost their logic. The Torah seems the same, and nothing in it has literally changed, no one has transformed the letters, but it can no longer be read in the old way. In those old words, a completely new meaning appears, and we see and understand it.
Whoever in this redeemed world keeps to the old Torah simply honors the dead world and the dead law. This man is the sinner.
The Messiah will complete his painful journey, destroying empty worlds from within, reducing dead laws to rubble. We must thus annihilate the old order, so that the new one may prevail.
Do not the teachings and the Scriptures show us clearly that this was precisely why Israel was scattered over the face of the earth, so that every spark of holiness could be collected, even at the farthest reaches of the world, and from its deepest depths? Has not Nathan of Gaza also taught us that at times those sparks have lodged deeply and shamefully inside matter, like jewels that have become lodged in shit? At the most difficult moments of tikkun there was no one able to extract them again, except for that one person—it was for him alone to enter into sin and evil in order to retrieve the sparks of holiness inside. This is why Sabbatai Tzvi had to accept Islam, had to betray on behalf of all of us, so that we would not have to do the same. Many are unable to understand this. But we know from Isaiah—the Messiah must be rejected by his own as well as by outsiders. So goes the prophecy.
By now Tovah was preparing to leave. He had bought silk brought here by ship from China, and Chinese porcelain, carefully packed in paper and sawdust. He had bought Indian oils. He went to the bazaar himself to get presents for his wife and his beloved daughter, Hana, about whom I heard for the first time then, without yet knowing how things would turn out later. He perused embroidered slippers and scarves shot through with gold thread. Reb Mordke and I went to him as he was resting, having sent his aides to the customs offices for firmans, since in a few days they were to set off again for home. Thus everyone who had family in the north was now writing letters and packing up small parcels so that they might accompany Tovah’s caravan over the Danube—to Nikopol and Giurgiu, and from there onward to Poland.
We sat beside him, and Mordechai brought out a bottle of the finest wine. As a man unaccustomed to drinking, Tovah was affected quickly. After two glasses, his face softened into an expression of childlike surprise, his eyebrows rising, his forehead wrinkling, and I became aware that now I was seeing the true face of this wise man, that Tovah had always been on guard until now. Reb Mordke started to poke fun at him: “How can you not drink, when you own your own vineyard?” But the purpose of our visit was something else entirely. I felt just as I had when, in the past, we had made matches for young people. Now, the youth to be matched was Jacob. We pointed out that he was often in the society of the Salonika Jews, who were supporters of Konio, the son of Baruchiah, which Tovah liked very much, as he, too, had allied with them. But both Reb Mordke and myself kept on obstinately returning to something else, and our obstinacy—the obstinacy of “those two from Poland,” as Tovah called us—was like a spiral that at first seemed to be abating, but that soon returned to the same place as before, except in slightly different form. The place to which every conversation returned, after the furthest-reaching digressions and the widest-ranging associations, was Jacob. What did we want? We wanted to marry Jacob to Tovah’s daughter, and in that way, to make Jacob a respectable man. An unwed Jew is no one, and he will be taken seriously by no one. And what else? What idea came into our heads as if by miracle? It was a bold thought, maybe dangerous, but I suddenly saw it in its totality, and it struck me as absolutely perfect. As if I had understood at last what all of this had been for—my travels with Reb Mordke, all of our studying. And maybe it was the wine that relaxed my mind, for suddenly everything became so clear to me. Then Reb Mordke said on my behalf:
“We will arrange his marriage with your daughter, and he will go to Poland as a messenger.”
That was what we wanted. And surprisingly, Tovah did not say even one word against it, for he had heard, of course, of Jacob, as everyone had.
So we sent for Jacob, and he came after a while, and with him came a whole pack of boys his age, and some Turks. They remained on the other side of the square, while Jacob stood respectfully before us. I remember that I got goose bumps at the sight of him, I felt my body tremble, and I experienced a love greater than I had ever felt for anyone before. Jacob’s eyes were shining with excitement, and he struggled to repress that ironic smile of his.
“If you, Mordechai, you, Tovah, and you, Nahman, are the sages of our age,” he said with exaggerated deference, “then surely you will be able to transform ordinary metal into gold. That way I will know for certain that you are messengers from on high.”
I didn’t know if he was just playing around or being serious.
“Sit,” Reb Mordke snapped. “That kind of miracle only the Messiah himself can work. You know that. We’ve talked about it before.”
“And where is he, this Messiah?”
“What, you don’t know?” Reb Mordke glared at him. “You’re always hanging around with his followers.”
“The Messiah is in Salonika,” said Tovah calmly. The wine seemed to stretch out his words. “After Sabbatai Tzvi’s death, the Holy Spirit passed from him into Baruchiah (of blessed memory).” For a moment he was silent, and then he added, as if hoping to provoke a certain reaction: “And now they say the spirit has found itself a home in Baruchiah’s son, Konio. They say it’s him—that he is the Messiah.”