The Books of Jacob

A piece of paper dissolves in Yente’s esophagus. Elisha Shorr tries to resuscitate her, but she feels herself leaving her body. Yente has an out-of-body experience, seeing “everything from above” (894).

In October 1752, near Rohatyn, Father Benedykt Chmielowski waits for a carriage. He studies a sign recently commissioned for his presbytery and blames the Jewish craftsmen for mistakenly painting one letter backwards. A young man named Roshko collects Chmielowski in a carriage, and they take a familiar journey to Rohatyn but become lost in the thick fog. They follow “the faint murmur of water” (890) from the Linden River and arrive in the bustling market town.

Chmielowski walks between “stands made out of every imaginable material” (887) and into the poorest parts of the town. He thinks about the “ambitious” (885) book that he has been writing about religion, and then enters a Jewish-owned general store. The store has been recommended by Father Pikulski as a place where Chmielowski might be able to acquire a heretical book. Anxiously making his request through an interpreter named Hrycko, Chmielowski is led into the rear of the shop to meet with “the venerable Elisha Shorr” (882). Explaining that a Catholic priest and author such as himself requires privacy and secrecy, Chmielowski says that he wishes to access the Rabbi’s library and offers one of his most valuable