I worry that simply summarizing someone’s Views cannot convey a full Sense of their Spirit—the linguistic Habits of the Author get lost, his Style, too, and Humor and Anecdotes cannot simply be summarized. Such Compilations are therefore mere Approximations, and if someone else then summarizes the Summaries, only the very Dregs will be left, out of which all of the Information has been squeezed. I know not whether what remains is like the Pulp of those Fruits in the Wine, from which all that is essential has already been extracted, or whether, a contrario, it would be the opposite, Aqua vitae, when something that is more diluted, weaker, is distilled into Spirits—is fortified.
What I wanted was to achieve this type of Distillation. In order that the Reader might not have to trouble himself with all these Books that I have here on my Shelves—and there are a hundred and twenty of them—nor with the ones from which I read and made extensive Notes on visits to Houses and Convents and Estates.
Do not think, dear Friend, that I value my own Efforts over Your Poems and Romances. Yours are written to amuse, and mine are in the Service of Study.
My great Dream is someday to set out on a distant Peregrination, but I am not thinking of Rome or other exotic Locales, but rather of Warsaw. There I would strike out straightaway for one particular Location: the Dani?owicz Palace, where the Za?uski brothers—Your venerable Publishers—have amassed a Library of thousands of Volumes and made it available to anyone who wishes and is able to read . . .
Please give Firlejka’s Ear a little Pet from me. I am so very pleased that You named her that. Her Mother has had another Litter. I have not the heart to drown them, so I hand them out around the neighboring Cottages, and coming as they do from a Priest, even the Peasants are happy to accept them . . .
What Pinkas records, and what goes unrecorded
It would be wrong to think that only bishops have spies; the letters have also been piling up on Rabbi Rapaport’s table in Lwów. Pinkas is his most distinguished secretary, his external memory, his archive, his address book. Always half a step behind the rabbi, small but standing very straight, a bit like a rodent, he takes every letter in his long, slender fingers, delicately turns it over in his hands, paying attention to every detail, splotch, stain, and then carefully he opens it—if there is a seal, then he tries to break it in such a way as to crumble it as little as possible, so that the seal preserves the mark of its sender. Then he carries the letters to the rabbi and waits for him to tell him what to do with them—set them aside for later, copy, or answer straightaway. In the latter case, Pinkas sits down to write.
But since he lost his daughter, it is hard for him to focus on the letters. Rabbi Rapaport, understanding this (or maybe fearing that in his state of internal commotion he might make some error—that he isn’t fit to serve as secretary anymore) now has him merely read or at most bring him the letters. For the writing, he has employed someone else, easing Pinkas’s workload. This is unpleasant for Pinkas, but he tries to stifle his somewhat wounded pride. Yes, he must admit, he has met with misfortune.
He remains nonetheless avidly interested in what is happening in connection with the cursed followers of this Frank, those vile creatures who do not hesitate to defile their nests. That is Rabbi Rapaport’s expression. Rapaport has been reminding everyone what must be done under such circumstances:
“The tradition of our fathers has been to say nothing on matters connected with Sabbatai Tzvi—nothing good, and nothing bad; to neither censure nor condone. And were someone to insist on asking questions, were someone to be curious about the way things were, then he must be threatened with herem.”
But things cannot be ignored into infinity. That is how they wound up in the shop of one Naftu?a in Lanckoroń—he, Rapaport, and some other rabbis, forming a rabbinical court. They deliberate, having interrogated their prisoners not long ago. They had to protect them from the angry mob gathered outside the shop, grabbing at them in a frenzy, shouting, “Trinity! Trinity!”
“It’s like this,” says Rapaport. “As Jews, we are sitting in the same boat, and we’re sailing over a stormy sea, and all around us there are sea monsters—every day, at every hour, some great danger lies in wait for us. And any day, and at any hour, the massive storm that will drown us out of existence could arise.”
He raises his voice here, a thing he almost never does:
“But sitting in the boat with us are also miscreants, Jews from the selfsame stock. Yet it is only at first glance that they seem to be our brothers, for in reality, they are rogues, the devil’s seed that has gotten into our midst. They are worse than the Pharaoh, than Goliath, the Philistines, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Titus . . . For lo! they are worse than the serpent in Eden, since they curse the God of Israel, and that not even the serpent dared to do.”
All the eldest, most respected rabbis from around these parts are seated at the table. With their beards, in the weak light of the oil lamps, they resemble one another, and together they lower their eyes in despair. Pinkas and another secretary at a side table have been charged with taking minutes. Pinkas stops writing to watch the rabbi of Czortków, who has arrived late, drip damp snow from his coat onto the waxed wooden floor, creating small puddles that reflect the lamplight.
Rabbi Rapaport raises his voice again, and the shadow of his finger pokes at the low ceiling:
“But they don’t take into consideration the common good of the Jews, and they go on drilling a hole in our boat, not even realizing that we will all drown!”
Not all of them agree, however, that Gershon of Lanckoroń did the right thing by reporting on those disgusting rites in one of the houses of that town.
“Although the shiniest thing is what attracts attention in this matter, that thing is not at all the most important or the most dangerous,” Rapaport continues. He signals to Pinkas that what comes next is not to be recorded. “The real danger is elsewhere and has mostly gone unnoticed, because it has been overshadowed by the breasts of Hayah, Shorr’s daughter. Everyone has been focusing on female nudity and wallowing in that sensational little tidbit, but in the meantime, the important thing, the most important thing is what Melech Naftu?a, who was there, saw with his own eyes and testified officially to having seen: the cross!”
A silence ensues, in which only the wheezy exhalation of Moshko of Satanów can be heard.
“And with that cross they tried working all sorts of different miracles, burning candles on it and brandishing it over their heads. That cross is the nail in our coffin!” The rabbi has raised his voice again. “Isn’t that right?” he asks Naftu?a, who seems frightened by the thing he has revealed to them.