Satan in Goray Read Online Free PDF Page B

mouth a seven-headed scorpion.... With fire issuing from his nostrils, he will carry the Messiah into Jerusalem. Gather your strength, O Judean, and make yourselves ready!... Happy is the man who shall live to see this!"
    The study house became so quiet that a solitary fly could be heard buzzing, beating its wings against the window. Women wrung their hands, and from their grimaces it was difficult to tell whether they were laughing or weeping. There was a sea of startled faces. The crowd stirred, as when the ram's horn is blown on Rosh Hashana. The legate looked about him.
    "Wonders and miracles are performed in Jerusalem.... In Miron a fiery column has been seen stretching from earth to heaven.... The full name of God and of Sabbatai Zevi were scratched on it in black.... The women who divine by consulting drops of oil have seen the crown of King David on Sabbatai Zevi's head.... Many disbelievers deny this and refuse to turn back at the very threshold of Gehenna.... Woe unto them! They will sink and be lost in the nethermost circle of Sheol!"
    "Jews! Save your-selves! Jew-ws!" someone suddenly shouted, as though he were choking.
    The crowd shuddered. It was lame Mordecai Joseph, a cabalist, with a thick, fiery beard and bushy eyebrows, a faster, a weeper, an angry man. As he prayed he would beat his head against the wall; on the Days of Awe he would fall to the ground at the Prayer of Petition, like the men of old, and groan out loud. He delivered funeral orations and on the eve of Yom Kippur flogged men in the prayer-house anteroom. When he fell into a fierce mood he would slap not only the young but the old as well; therefore none dared cross him. Mordecai Joseph was broad- framed, ungainly, with unkempt red earlocks and green eyes. And now, breathing hard, the cripple began to clamber up a table. Those close by lifted him so that he could stand. Reb Mordecai Joseph banged the table with his crutch. His stained coat came unbuttoned, his unkempt locks flew about wildly, and he began in his passion to stutter and gasp.
    "Jews, why are you silent? Redemption hath come to the world!... Salvation hath come to the world!"
    He beat his forehead with his left hand and all at once began to dance. His oaken crutch drummed, his large foot dangled, and, gasping, he cried one and the same phrase over and over again, a phrase which no one was able to make out.
    The legate turned and fixed his bright eyes on Mordecai Joseph. The tails of Mordecai Joseph's coat swung through the air, his vest billowed about him; he pushed the crumpled skullcap back on his head, stretched out both arms, the fingers curling. Women screamed; from every side hands reached for him. Suddenly Reb Mordecai fell his full length to the ground. The whole study house swayed with the crowd and the sweating walls. Someone shouted, "Help! He has fainted!"

    6

    Reb Mordecai Joseph

    It was Rabbi Benish's practice to say his afternoon and evening prayers by himself in his study. When the news reached his ears he hurried to the prayer house. But it was already empty. Everyone had hurried home after the legate's sermon to discuss the news in the midst of the family. A few people accompanied the legate to the inn; others went to the house of Reb Mordecai Joseph. They had to rub Mordecai Joseph with snow for a long time, to prick him with needles and pinch him hard before he was himself again. On his broken bench bed he lay, dressed in all his garments; leaning back on both elbows, he related that in his trance Sabbatai Zevi had come to him and cried: "Mordecai Joseph, the son of Chanina the Priest, be not of humble heart! Thou shalt yet offer up the priestly sacrifices!" Men and women jostled one another in the narrow, unfloored room; there was no candle, and Mordecai Joseph's wife heaped several dry twigs on the tripod and lit them. The flame crackled and hissed, red shadows danced on the irregular whitewashed walls, and the rafters loomed low. In a corner, on a pile of