Free Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer

long happy years and in peace, amen.
    "I have heard the tidings and pangs and throes assailed me as a woman in labor, and I cried with a loud and bitter cry. For a wicked people have arisen, sons of Belial that did say: let us break the bands asunder and the yoke of the holy teachings and of God (blessed be he 1).' And they did trust in the staff of the bruised reed, that sinful man who leads others to sin, like unto Jeroboam the son of N ebath--Sab-batai Zevi is his name, may he be erased from the book of life. Certainly his repute must have reached your ears, for it is many years now since first the cry went forth to all the borders of Judah--that the time of the Messiah was on hand, and that new prophets had arisen, visionaries and stargazers, who were pro-claiming: 'In the year 5,426 from the Creation of the World [1665] our redeemer cometh. He shall pass over the river Sambation to the other side. There he shall take for wife the thirteen-year-old daughter of our master Moses. Afterward he shall come back to us riding on a lion, to wage great wars with the peoples of the earth, and to raise up the fallen tabernacle of King David.' I alone, the little one among the thousands of Judah, must confess that I have never inclined an ear or given any credence to this alien talk, which has no sanction in the words of our wise men, of blessed memory, and flows from allusions in the Zohar and other cabalistic volumes, about which I would rather be silent. I shall keep a curb on my mouth, that I may not be burned by their speech, for their bite is as the bite of the fox and their sting is as the sting of the scorpion, and the like. These tidings have brought great confusion to the tents of Israel in Poland, for the wounds we got at the hands of the murderer Chmelnicki (may his name perish!) and from the other cruel men like him, are still festering, and the remnant of Israel is greatly impoverished, and our pride is fallen to the earth--the like has never been seen or heard since the day that Israel was driven from its land. In every town where these tidings came there sprang up empty and lightheaded men that, without considering, accepted the chaff together with the wheat, and let themselves fall into the net which the wicked man had spread at their feet. Likewise a great number of men of wisdom and understanding were captured in that net, or else feared to open their mouths, and cried Amen, despite themselves. Your Honor knows well that a long time must pass before any news can reach our ears from those lands that are under the sceptre of the Turk, and that for the most part there is no substance in such news, wherein truth 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,