Nahman and Nussen find themselves in Salonika on the fourth day of the month of Tishrei in 5515, or September 20, 1754, and immediately, though it is already dark and they are ready to drop from exhaustion, they go in search of Jacob. It is a hot night, and the city’s walls are warm, the air cooling lazily, in light bursts of breeze from somewhere in the mountains; the wind brings in the scent of live plants, wood, leaves. Everything is bone-dry in the city. It smells of oranges, the kind already swollen with juice, the sweetest and best to eat, that in the blink of an eye become overripe and fetid.
Nahman sees him first, in front of the beth midrash, where the Salonika Jews’ disputes always take place. They are already dispersing—it is late—but Jacob still stands there, discussing something heatedly, surrounded by men. Nahman glimpses the Greek-attired young Hershel. He goes up closer, and although he can’t hear what they’re talking about, he begins to shiver. Hard to explain on a night as hot as this. He writes:
Only then did I understand how much I had missed him; only now did all the hurry of our journey fall away, all that frenzy that hadn’t left me for one moment over the past several months.
“What is that man saying?” I asked the man standing next to me.
“He is saying that Sabbatai was not really the Messiah, that his nature was not divine, but rather that he was an ordinary prophet who came to announce his successor.”
“He’s right,” said another man standing near me. “If his nature had been straight from God, he would have changed the world visibly. But as it is, what’s changed?”
I didn’t venture into these considerations with them.
I saw him among the others. He had gotten very thin. He had deteriorated. His beard had grown. But something new had also appeared in him—a new fervor, a self-assuredness. Who had led him to this, who had helped him get like this while I was gone?
As I looked thus at his movements, as I listened to what he said, I slowly realized that it was good that he was able to give relief to others with what he said. It also seemed to me that in his heart there was a kind of wholeness that already knew what direction to go in and what to do. And looking at him sometimes sufficed; it was the same thing that attracted other people to him.
There is nothing that brings greater relief than the certainty that there is someone who really knows. For we ordinary people never have such certainty.
Many times, when I was in Podolia with my family, I had thought about him. I missed him, especially before I fell asleep, when my thoughts wandered freely, and there was no way to control them anymore. It was sad, because next to me lay my wife, to whom I was unable to dedicate much attention. Our children were born frail and quickly died, and I didn’t even think about that then, but it seemed to me that Jacob’s face was becoming my face, and I was falling asleep beneath his countenance instead of under my own. And now I was beholding that face once more in life; and now it was before my very eyes.
And so in the evening, when we sat down at last all together, Jacob, Reb Mordke, Isohar, Nussen, young Hershel, and I, I felt happy, and since there was no lack of wine, I got drunk, but it was as if I were a child—I felt defenseless, altogether open, ready for whatever fate would bring, and certain that whatever happened, I would be with Jacob.
Of how Jacob faces off with the Antichrist
In Salonika there lives the successor and son of the Second, Baruchiah. This man is known as Konio.
He has many followers here, and many treat him as the holy man in whom dwells the soul of Baruchiah. It takes them a long time to get to him. His blessing, and an initiation by him into the teachings of his father, would confirm Jacob’s exceptional status. Nahman takes letters from Isohar and Reb Mordke to the tall house without windows, in the middle of the city, which looks like a white tower. Apparently the inside of the compound has a lovely garden with a fountain and peacocks, but the outside looks more like a fortress. The white walls are smooth, as though made of sleek granite. In addition, the house is watched by guards who once tore Nahman’s clothing when he was too insistent in his demands for an audience.
Jacob, upset by that injustice—Nahman’s caftan was brand-new, he had just bought it at the market for a large sum—tells them to leave him at that inaccessible tower while they hide in a grove nearby. Then he leans up against the wall and begins to sing as loudly as he can, nearly bellowing like an ass, in the old Sephardic tongue. When he finishes his song, he moves to another side of the house and starts it again from the beginning.
“Mahshava se in fue esta . . . ,” he bellows, off-key, and he grimaces and contorts his body into strange poses. Of course this draws attention; people can barely restrain their laughter at the sight of him; there is a crowd and then an uproar.
So a little window opens, high up, and Konio himself sticks his head out; he shouts down something in Ladino, and Jacob answers, and for a minute they converse. Nahman glances inquiringly at Isohar, who knows this ancient language of the Jews of Spain.
“He’s asking for an audience,” Isohar explains.
The window slams shut.
Jacob sings under the tower until evening, until he goes completely hoarse.
There is nothing for it. Konio is unavailable, and uninterested in interlopers come from Poland. Even if Wise Jacob is among them, singing under his window. For that’s what he is called now: Wise Jacob.
But Salonika is filled at this time with every sort of mage and miracleworker, and there is some self-proclaimed Messiah or dark sorcerer offering instruction on every street corner. People are talking a lot about one particular Jew who considers himself the Antichrist Messiah, and they say that whoever exchanges so much as a single word with him will instantly be dragged over to his side.
Jacob wants to test him, wants to face off with someone like that; he talks of this intention for several days, until a whole group has gathered around him—small-time merchants, students, itinerant peddlers, cobblers who have closed their stalls—if only to see something out of the ordinary. They tramp through town and find this man with his retinue in a garden courtyard where he is delivering his teaching. He is a big man, with the build of a peasant and dark skin—another Sephardic Jew—bareheaded and with his hair curled into long matted cords. He’s wearing a white robe; against his dark skin, this robe seems to be gleaming. Jacob sits before him with that little smile of his that he gets whenever he starts plotting something, and he asks the man brashly who he thinks he is. The man, although accustomed to greater reverence, answers calmly: he is the Messiah.
“Give some sign of that,” Jacob says to him, looking around at the people who will be their witnesses.
The man stands and starts to walk away, but Jacob doesn’t give up. He follows him and repeats:
“Give some sign of that. Move that piece of the fountain by the wall. As the Messiah, you ought to be able to do that.”
“Get out of here,” says the man. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
Jacob will not let it rest. The man turns away and starts to whisper curses. Then Jacob grabs him by the locks, provoking the man’s companions to come to his defense. They push Jacob, and he falls into the dust.