Israel thinks about this all afternoon. Since the long-awaited, muchanticipated messianic times have dawned, Jacob is right: the laws of this world—the laws of the Torah—cannot be in effect anymore. Now everything is the other way around. But this idea fills Israel with fear. He sits on a bench and watches with his mouth open as the world is utterly transformed. His head is spinning. In the yard, Jacob promises there will be more of them, these “Strange Deeds,” and that they must be performed concertedly, with zeal. Breaking the old laws is necessary, is the only thing that will hasten the arrival of salvation. In the evening, Israel asks for some of that gentile bread, and he chews it slowly, laboriously, thoroughly.
Meanwhile, Sobla is an exceptionally practical person and not at all interested in such things. Were it not for her sound reasoning, they would have starved to death a long time ago, given that Israel’s only pursuits are things like tikkun, Devekut, salvation, and the like. Besides, he has an ailment in his lungs that means he can’t even chop wood properly. So Sobla gets the water heated so she can cook some chickens, oversees the preparation of a thick broth. She goes about her business. She’s helped by Pesel, who is eight and resolute—the two of them are peas in a pod. Sobla is breastfeeding yet another child—Freyna. Freyna is voracious, which is why Sobla is so thin. The rest of the children run around the house.
Sobla would be quite curious to see the wife of this off-putting cousin she has to host in her home—they say she’s given him a daughter. Is she ever going to come to Poland to join her husband? What’s she like? And what sort of family is it that they have out there in Nikopol? Is it true that Jacob is rich there, and that he has his own vineyard? And if so, what could he be after here?
On the first day, there isn’t time for anything, since people are always clustering around him, touching him, tugging at his sleeves. Jacob gives a lengthy talk to those assembled, full of parables. He proclaims a new religion, one accessible exclusively through Esau, meaning Christianity, just as Sabbatai crossed over to Ishmael, meaning the Turkish faith. The progress of salvation depends upon extracting from those religions the seeds of revelation and sowing them in one great divine revelation, the Torah of Atzilut: Torah of the World of Emanations. In this religion of the end of days, all three religions will be braided into one. On hearing this, some people spit into the snow and leave.
Then there is a feast, which leaves Jacob so tired or drunk that he goes to bed immediately—not alone, of course, for in Sabbatian homes a particular type of hospitality is practiced. To keep Jacob warm, Moshe from Podhajce sends his youngest daughter for the night.
Right after breakfast, Jacob asks to be taken up to the hill where the caves are. There his companions are to wait for him, while he vanishes into the forest. More shuffling of feet in snow. A substantial little crowd gathers, including village goyim, too, asking what is going on. They’ll later tell the curious authorities: “A learned Jew came from Turkey, Your Honor. Big, with a Turkish hat on and pockmarks all over his face.” More villagers join them, waiting for him to come back from the forest, sensing something significant is happening, certain Jacob is conversing with underground spirits. By the time he does return, it’s starting to get dark, and with the dusk falls snow. The whole company heads back to the village, cheerful though cold, happy they will find vodka and warm broth on their return. In the morning they’ll head out again, this time going farther, to Jezierzany, for Hanukkah.
The spies know exactly what happens next: This prophet, Jacob, spends two weeks with Simha ben Hayim and starts to see a light over the heads of certain of the faithful. It is a halo, greenish, or maybe cerulean. Simha and his brother have this light over their heads, and it means they have been chosen. Everyone would like to have a halo, some people can even feel it, a slight tingling sensation along their scalps, warm, as though they were without kippot. Someone says that such a halo comes from an invisible little aperture in the head through which an internal light pours forth into the world. It’s that little hole that tingles. Everyone should get rid of whatever mats of hair they have there that might interfere with the light’s passage.
“Three things are too wondrous for me; the fourth I can’t understand.” —Book of Proverbs 30:18
When Jacob walks through villages or towns, the local traditional Jews run after him, shouting, “Trinity! Trinity!” as though it were a slur. Sometimes they pick up stones and throw them at his followers. Others, those under the sway of Sabbatai Tzvi, the forbidden prophet, look on in curiosity, and it is primarily from them that Jacob draws ever more followers.
People are poor here, and because they’re poor, they’ve grown suspicious. The poor can’t afford to place too much confidence in anyone. Before the fat man gets skinny, the skinny man will croak, as the saying goes around these parts. They want miracles, signs, shooting stars, water become blood. They don’t completely understand what Yankiele Leybowicz, called Jacob Frank, is saying. But because he’s tall, handsome, and dressed like a Turk, he seems exceptional, and he makes a big impression. In the evening, as they talk around the fire, Jacob complains to Nahman that he feels like a merchant with the most beautiful pearl for sale, and yet here they treat him like some rag-and-bone man and can’t appreciate the value of the pearl, taking it for a fake.
He tells people what Isohar has taught him, what Reb Mordke tells him to say in the evenings, and what he has learned from Nahman. Nahman is well-versed in every disputation, but lacks Jacob’s good looks and powers of persuasion. But when Jacob puts these ideas forward, he adds quite a bit of his own. He especially loves striking comparisons and never balks at profanity. He talks like a simple Jew, like the milkman from Czernowitz, like the harness-maker from Kamieniec, except that he throws in lots of Turkish words, blending them into his Yiddish phrases, the result something like challah with raisins.