The Books of Jacob

by Olga Tokarczuk

Quoting is like grafting a Tree; citing, indicating a grafted Quote’s Source, like sowing Seeds.

“What will the goyim think now?” Moshko from Satanów asks. “To them we’re all the same. A Jew is a Jew, and it’s going to look to them like all Jews are like those. That all Jews treat the cross in such a sacrilegious way. That they abuse it so. We know what will happen, it’s happened before—before we can explain ourselves, they will have ushered us into the torture chamber.”

Doesn’t the curse go after the name, like a trained hunting dog told to fetch? What if the curse, addressed wrongly, doesn’t make it to the right man? Perhaps a person could, by changing his name, his residence, country, and language, escape the herem, that weightiest of condemnations?

The words die down, transforming into something almost solid, a creature made of air, an indefinable and enduring being.

that in fact the world is made of words that, once uttered, lay claim to every order, so that all things seem to occur at their behest. All things belong to them. Every curse, even the slightest, has an effect. Every single word that’s said.

Nahman’s eyes fill with tears, and his feelings are shared by the others. A miracle is a miracle, regardless of the creed.

now wield this powerful man at court, the Polish king’s most important adviser. Who would have thought that kissing a naked woman in some village in the middle of nowhere would ever attain such proportions?

their suspicious religion. Why suspicious? Because it’s too close. Their books are the same, Moses, Abraham, Isaac on the stone under his father’s knife, Noah and his ark—all of it’s the same, and yet, with them it appears in some strange new context.

With us, everything is somehow lighter, as though more conventional, sketched in an elegant hand, thinks the bishop—delicate, meaningful. Their faith is dark and concrete, almost uncomfortably literal.

What are these other people like when they take off their robes? the bishop wonders.

It is said in the Zohar that all females on earth dwell within the mystery of the Shekhinah.

When their bodies were smooth, elastic and clean, unstained, and their minds were full of good faith, not yet broken by anything?

while his eyes wander along the string of letters from right to left, but then he recollects that here you have to go in reverse, from left to right, and his eyes struggle to perform this circus trick.

In Turkey and Wallachia women know their place, and religious scholars keep their distance from them, for women’s inherent connection with the lowest world of matter introduces chaos into the world of the spirit.

Custom dictates they have sexual intercourse without any unnecessary caresses and without words.

whether Jacob’s wife also converted to Islam and whether women have it better there than here. Did his decision to convert really protect him? Did he think he was out of reach of the Polish authorities? And did he know that for Jews—and for her, too—such a conversion would be extremely difficult?

He has learned that he cannot expect sympathy from others. He must specify exactly what he wants—ask, demand, negotiate. If it weren’t for that scar on his face, it would be him in Jacob’s place right now, this he knows for sure.

Those who pray believe the world can no longer be saved, that they must simply prepare for the end, which is imminent. The Last Judgment is like childbirth: once it’s under way, it can’t be called off or put on hold.

Instead, it occurs almost unnoticeably, without extravagance. In a sense it happens behind our backs and in our absence. We have been judged in that strange year of 1757, in absentia and—this is certain—without any possibility of appeal. Our human ignorance is no excuse.

Sometimes it amuses him that he can foresee a certain thing, and then he looks into the sky; there seems to be more of it on these lowlands, and it works like a mirror lens, gathering up image after image into itself, reflecting the earth as a fresco, where everything happens simultaneously and the tracks of future events can be followed. Any person who knows how to look can simply raise his eyes to the sky. There he will see all.

Books burn throughout Lwów, where every square of any significance has its own book burning, whether Talmudic or not. These fires are still smoldering the next day, and then in the evening they blaze back up again with the addition of new books. Now, all printed matter seems sinister, and even Lwów’s Christians begin to hide their books and barricade their printing presses, just in case.

The sight of the burning books, their pages fluttering in the flames, draws people in, arrays them in a circle, like a magician at a fair who has ordered chickens to do as he says. People gaze into the flames and find they like this theater of destruction, and a free-floating anger mounts within them, although they don’t know whom to turn it on—but their outrage more or less automatically makes them hostile to the owners of these ruined books.

Those who were only recently considered wretched, sinful, and accursed have now become legislators and enforcers.

instead proceed directly to the place you know books are usually kept, often in a glass case, and you pull them out one by one and then eviscerate them, holding them by their covers like chickens before they are boiled.

Some woman, often the oldest one in the house, throws herself in front of the books in desperation as though defending a weird, disabled grandchild who has been reduced to these paper dimensions,

In Lwów a madding crowd burns the whole of a Jewish library collected in a house of prayer. The windows are shattered, the pews wrecked.

All that matters is that a book be filled with those bizarre letters, inherently hostile since illegible.

People stand at the entrances of homes and demand that books be handed over, like hostages. If a homeowner is deemed to be hiding something, they strike. Blood is shed, hands and arms are broken, teeth are bashed out of mouths.

How is it possible, how could God be putting us through such a horrendously painful trial—how can it not be a Cossack, not some wild Tatar lying in wait for our lives, but our own, our neighbors, a person with whose father or grandfather we used to play as children?

When a people turns against itself, it means the sin of Israel is great, and God is very angry.

“Well, yes, everyone believes that: In the beginning was the Word. We believe that, too. So where’s the heresy?” “Yes, Your Ladyship, but we leave it at that sentence, whereas they apply it to even the smallest thing.”

“Words with the same numerical values are tied to one another by some deep meaning, even if on the surface it seems there is no connection between them. You can count with words, perform arithmetic with them, and all kinds of interesting things can happen.”

“According to the Kabbalah, when a man has carnal relations with a woman, their alphabets meet, and it is these alphabets, in intermingling, that occasion the conception of a child.”

It teaches a way of worshipping God that is pure heresy. It allegedly also teaches how to predict the future and promotes the performance of magic. Kabbalah definitely comes not from God, but from Satan.”

one of the girls who is always orbiting the garrison, whores of every stripe and nation, so that the soldiers may pick their type and color.

He feels on him the indifferent gaze of countless eyes peering from the void, as if millions of people were awaiting him there.

Of the life of dead Yente in the winter of 1757, also known as the year the Talmud was burned, followed by the books of those who burned the Talmud

it does create a certain chain of events in which we must trust because we have nothing else.

you can see all those bridges, hinges, gears, and bolts, and all the minor instruments that link distinct, singular, and unique events. It is these that form the underpinnings of the world, these that transport this or that word over into events in the vicinity,

these that bring into contact time after time the same objects or the same people, these that launch the phantom trains of thought between things that are naturally strangers.

When you try to follow any human figure, she or he changes, so that it would be hard to be certain, even for a moment, that it is still the same person.

Only Yente is unchanging, only Yente can repeat and can keep going back to the same place.

The excrement of the horse standing in front of Israel’s home steams in the frost, ruining the clean white sheet of snow, a sad proof of the weakness of all of creation; it rapidly transforms into a frozen lump of matter.

“I feel like I’m in prison . . . My whole life is a prison,” Sobla sobs, taking a lot of air into her lungs, but she is unable to say anything more.

Even the most bizarre, most frightening thing can start to seem natural, familiar, when it becomes a part of the plan.

Israel discovers that the death of Jesus, the Christian Messiah, was also a part of God’s plan. Jesus had to be crucified, for otherwise the action of salvation could not have gotten under way.

People have begun to fear public miracles; better if they take place concealed somewhere.

Sometimes Pesel, when it was still warm, would bring her sewing to her grandmother’s, as she calls Yente, and work near her. She would tell her all kinds of stories, confide her plans. That she would like, for example, to live in a big city and be a great lady. Have her own carriage and dresses embellished with lace, and a small silk bag where she would keep a perfumed handkerchief, because she doesn’t really know what else a person would keep in such a little bag.

It looks like a war between the elements: the earth defending itself against water with fire, but the element of water is more powerful; wherever the waves strike, they extinguish all life, destroying and erasing everything.

this Armageddon, what is happening is not happening on a human scale.