Satan in Goray - Isaac Bashevis Singer [25]
and falsehood are mingled. Nevertheless, daily new tidings do arrive, filthy and terrifying, which cause our hearts to melt like wax and our knees to grow weak. For witnesses do testify that Sabbatai Zevi doth pronounce the holy name of God, sounding every letter in it, and that he doth make use of the impure names to do his magic and to alter the course of nature, that men may believe in him and his teachings. It is also said that he styles himself in his letters as 'I, your God, Sabbatai Zevi.' Woe to the ears that have heard these things, and woe to the eyes that have seen them! For this is blasphemy and taunting of the Lord, of which it has been said: `The fires of Gehenna shall be quenched, but their fire shall not be quenched, and they will be an abhorring unto all flesh.' I, the least of men, have sought to search into the roots of the thing--but who can gird his loins against a people that consumes alive all who dare cast the slightest doubt on their depraved belief--this multitude that would not sift pearls from sand? Who knows, perhaps Sabbatai Zevi intends to become the idol of an idolatry, like Mahomet and all the others who have forged the word of God and contaminated the world? If we, the wise men of Poland, the shepherds of our generation, had ourselves but known what he has done and his doings, we might have been able to go forth to meet him, armed with the shafts of the Torah, and we might have waged war upon him, the war of God, until he were utterly destroyed. But, to our sorrow, we know not the man and cannot, until we do, confront him with proof positive; we must in the meantime wait to see what the day will reveal. And though many and great men do err about him, I swear by the living God that Sabbatai Zevi is not our Messiah, for whom our eyes have yearned these nigh two thousand years. For falsehood and deceit drip from his lips. An inciter and a seducer is he, one that hath said: 'I shall devour Jacob and lay waste his habitation,' and of certain he shall meet his downfall. For who then has ever risen against the Eternal One of Israel and prospered? Bitter will be his end, and all the execrations of God in the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus and the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, and all' the curses which Joshua visited on Jericho will certainly fall on his head, Amen, so be His will. "Nor would I have written all these things, for the time is not yet ripe and we must in the meantime lean upon forgers of letters and spinners of moonbeams (as mentioned above). But by chance the news reached me that there has come to your holy com-munity a man, one Itche Mates by name (as his name is, so is he--Folly his name is, and folly is with him). And this forger and seducer doth give himself out to be a great man, as is the way of all who practice to deceive. He hath made a pit and digged it for young and old, to take them captive through his hypocritical piety and alien ways, the like of which no eye hath ever seen before. From what he says, one is to believe that he fasts from Sabbath to Sabbath, immerses himself many times in the ritual bath (with a rat in his hand!), mortifies his body with all manner of mortifications--all this he says and does to lead proper people into error and to seduce them from the path of righteousness, and to cast them into the lowest pit of heresy. Of such men King Solomon, the wisest of all men, hath justly said: 'None that go unto her return, neither do they attain unto the paths of life.' For this man works not through the power of God, but rather through that of the Evil One. He doth work magic. He doth consult with ghosts and his staff declareth unto him, and he hath made a covenant with demons. This has been revealed by the great ones, the kings of the world--and who, say, are the true kings of the world? They are our masters, the rabbis. Every place where the sole of his foot treads, he gives out cures and amulets to heal the sick and drive out evil spirits, like those masters who were able to venture into the vineyards of cabala and emerge unharmed. But those who