“Are we already in the worst possible place? Is this Busk?” Jacob asked me, and burst out laughing as we came up to Busk.
In Busk, we received Jacob in the home of my brother, Hayim ben Levi, as my wife did not wish to host him. Because she was heavily pregnant, I acquiesced. She, like many women, was disinclined to the new teachings. My one son who had survived his infancy was named Aronek, and Jacob took a particular liking to him. He would hold him on his lap, which gladdened me to my very soul, and he would often say that the little boy would grow into a great sage whom no one would be able to defeat with words. This gave me pleasure, though I knew that Jacob was familiar with my situation, aware that none of my other children had ever survived a year. Little Aronek became very flushed that evening, and Leah scolded me for taking a weak child outside and carrying him about in the cold.
She went with me once to Hayim’s, but that was enough for her. She asked if it was true what they said about us.
“What is it they say?” I asked her.
“You promised to bring us a truly learned rabbi, but because of him”—and she nodded toward the window—“God has punished us. He has us bear children who die.”
“Why because of him?” I asked.
“Because you’ve been going with him for several years now. Wherever he is, there you are.”
What could I say? She may have been right. On the other hand, maybe God was taking away my children so as to bring me closer to Jacob.
Every evening came together in a similar way: First, a communal dinner—kasha, cheeses, baked meat, bread, olive oil, potatoes. Everyone sat down together at those long tables—women, children, and young people, those who contributed something to the meal as well as those who had nothing to contribute, who were provided for and did not go away hungry. Then Jacob told his tales of the Turkish countries, often humorous and entertaining, so that the majority of the women, enchanted by his beautiful speech and humor, let go of their negative opinions of him, while the children agreed he was the best storyteller they had ever heard. Then there was a communal prayer that he had taught us, and after the women had cleaned off the table and put the children to sleep, we who were ready to participate in the nocturnal studies remained.
He always began with the burden of silence. He would raise his index finger and move it, pointing upward, back and forth in front of his face, and our eyes would all follow that finger, behind which his face would melt and vanish. Then he would begin with the words “Shloisho seforim niftuchem,” which meant “The three books are opening.” At this a thrilling quiet fell, and you could almost hear the rustle of the pages of the holy books. Then Jacob would break that silence and remind us: “Whatever you hear here must fall into you as it would into a grave. And going forward, this will be our religion: silence.”
He said:
“If a person wanted to claim a fortress, he would never be able to get there by just talking about it—for words are fleeting. He’d have to go in with an army. That’s what we have to do: walk, not talk. Did our grandfathers not have enough discussion, did they not strain their eyes over the Scriptures? What good did any of it do them? What purpose did it serve? It’s better to see than to speak. We have no use for know-it-alls here.”
It always seemed to me that whenever he mentioned know-it-alls, he would look directly at me. For it was I who was striving to preserve his every word, though he had forbidden me from writing down those words. And so I would write them in secret. I feared that all of them, now so intent upon him, would forget every single thing the very second they went out the door. I did not understand the prohibition. When the next morning I sat down as though to do our accounts, to write letters, or determine schedules, underneath what I was doing I had placed another sheet of paper, and there I wrote, like I was translating for myself, the words spoken by Jacob:
“You have to go over to Catholicism,” he told the simple people. “Make peace with Esau. You have to go into the darkness, that’s as clear as day! For salvation awaits us only in darkness. Only in the worst place can the Messianic mission begin. The whole world is the enemy of the true God, don’t you know that?
“This is the burden of silence. Masa duma. Words are such a weighty burden that it is as though they carried half the world inside themselves. You must listen to me and follow me. You must cast aside your language, and with each nation speak its proper tongue.”
It is virtuous not to allow anything ugly to leave one’s lips. It is virtuous to keep quiet, to keep everything one sees and hears inside. To be constant. Just as the First, Sabbatai, invited guests to his wedding and stood the Torah under the huppah as his bride, so, too, have we now replaced the Torah with a woman. Since then she has come naked every evening, with no concealment, here among us. Women are the greatest mystery, and here, in the lower world, they are the Holy Torah’s counterpart. We will join with her, gently at first, with just our lips, with a movement of the mouth that pronounces the word that is read and in so doing re-creates the world from nothing every day. For I acknowledge—I, Nahman Samuel ben Levi of Busk—that there is a Trinity with one God, and that the Fourth Person is the Holy Mother.
Of secret acts in Lanckoroń and an unfavorable eye
Nahman won’t describe it—yes, words do add weight. When he does sit down to write, Nahman divides things into what can be written and what cannot. He must be careful to remember this. Especially since Jacob always says: No traces, keep everything a perfect secret, no one can find out who we are and what we do. Even though he actually makes quite the ruckus, with his strange gestures and the odd things that come out of his mouth. He speaks so enigmatically that it’s hard to figure out what he means. That’s why people stay together for a long time after he leaves, trying to interpret for themselves and one another the words of this Frank, this foreigner. What did he say? In some sense, each can only understand it all as best he can, in his own way.
When they reach Lanckoroń, on January 26, guided by Leybko Abramowicz and his brother Moshek, both on horseback, they head straight for Leybko’s home. It’s already very dark.
The village lies on a steep slope that goes down to a river. The road, rocky and uncomfortable, leads up. The night is thick and cold; light gets bogged down in it a short way from its source. It smells of smoke from damp wood, and the outlines of houses loom in the near-blackness; here and there, a dingy yellow glow makes its way out of a little window.