manacles from his belt.
“You’ve got no evidence against me,” Horshky protested, stepping backward as the very walls seemed to shake from the pounding.
The squire advanced until Horshky was practically scrunched into the corner. Then a window smashed and Horshky threw his arms up to protect himself from the flying fragments and stumbled against the door of a cabinet. The door creaked open and a motley collection of shoes spilled out onto the floor.
His hatred had grown so palpable I could almost feel it walking among us, the floor bending under its weight.
“There’s your nameless evil,” I said.
As Horshky was led away in irons, Rabbi Loew said that God is present whenever true justice is rendered.
But sometimes I wonder.
R abbi Moyshe Ben Nakhman says that without the Torah, man would hardly be distinguished from a brute beast. And there were plenty of men without the Torah around these parts.
“The world of men is governed by evildoers,” said Rabbi Loew, looking up at the starry sky as if searching the heavenly spheres for answers. “When I was young, God granted me the strength of a lion to fight for the cause of justice. But in the end, I have failed to make much of a difference. Perhaps one person in a thousand will hear my words and follow the path of righteousness.”
Rabbi Loew was given to such pessimistic comments, so I just said, “It’s time to go, Rabbi. Let’s get out of this town.”
“Not before we say the mayrev prayer.”
Kassy the Bohemian stood by in silence as we chanted the verses, from Blessed art thou, Lord our God, Who causes day to pass and brings night to the counting of the Omer.
When we were done, we invited her to come to Poznan with us.
“There’s plenty of work for a wise woman there,” I promised. And she agreed to leave her native land behind and wander the world with us. So we set out on the dark road toward the distant dawn.
The mystics say that the Messiah will not arrive until the Age of the Four Kingdoms comes to an end, and that the first three kingdoms of Babylonia, Greece, and Rome have already been buried by the sands of time. No one knows the true identity of the Fourth Kingdom, but Rabbi Loew believes that we are currently living under the Fourth Kingdom, meaning the whole era of Christian rule over the lands of the West. And if that’s the case, we may have a heck of a long wait.
Fortunately, there is a Midrash which says, “One empire comes and another passes away, but Israel abides forever.”
Lord Strekov offered to pay us for our troubles and grant us safe harbor for the night under his roof, but we asked him to pay us nothing and grant us safe passage out of town. His Lordship agreed, with somewhat mixed feelings.
I thought of his role in creating the monster that had terrorized this remote village, and I prayed that we would not see his kind again any time soon.
W hen the Angel of Death darkens your doorway with his icy shadow, you must take great care to cover all the mirrors with heavy cloth or turn them to the wall, or else the dead man’s spirit might mistake one of the mirrors for a window and end up lost in an endless hall of mirrors and wander it forever, trapped in a left-handed world of everlasting confusion where it will be easy prey for the spiteful demons of Gehenem. Or so I am told.
And because the malekhamoves marks off a man’s last moments on earth by letting a drop of bitter gall fall from the point of his sword into the dying man’s mouth, you must also make sure to empty out all the pitchers and basins with any water left in them, because a wayward drop of the deadly gall might have fallen into the water.
And that’s the origin of the expression, “To kick the bucket.”
So it was a very serious matter indeed when a careless housemaid tossed a washbasin full of dirty water out a second-floor window and nearly soaked us with God knows what foul and offensive liquid.
Kassy jumped back, raising the hem of her
“You’ve got no evidence against me,” Horshky protested, stepping backward as the very walls seemed to shake from the pounding.
The squire advanced until Horshky was practically scrunched into the corner. Then a window smashed and Horshky threw his arms up to protect himself from the flying fragments and stumbled against the door of a cabinet. The door creaked open and a motley collection of shoes spilled out onto the floor.
His hatred had grown so palpable I could almost feel it walking among us, the floor bending under its weight.
“There’s your nameless evil,” I said.
As Horshky was led away in irons, Rabbi Loew said that God is present whenever true justice is rendered.
But sometimes I wonder.
R abbi Moyshe Ben Nakhman says that without the Torah, man would hardly be distinguished from a brute beast. And there were plenty of men without the Torah around these parts.
“The world of men is governed by evildoers,” said Rabbi Loew, looking up at the starry sky as if searching the heavenly spheres for answers. “When I was young, God granted me the strength of a lion to fight for the cause of justice. But in the end, I have failed to make much of a difference. Perhaps one person in a thousand will hear my words and follow the path of righteousness.”
Rabbi Loew was given to such pessimistic comments, so I just said, “It’s time to go, Rabbi. Let’s get out of this town.”
“Not before we say the mayrev prayer.”
Kassy the Bohemian stood by in silence as we chanted the verses, from Blessed art thou, Lord our God, Who causes day to pass and brings night to the counting of the Omer.
When we were done, we invited her to come to Poznan with us.
“There’s plenty of work for a wise woman there,” I promised. And she agreed to leave her native land behind and wander the world with us. So we set out on the dark road toward the distant dawn.
The mystics say that the Messiah will not arrive until the Age of the Four Kingdoms comes to an end, and that the first three kingdoms of Babylonia, Greece, and Rome have already been buried by the sands of time. No one knows the true identity of the Fourth Kingdom, but Rabbi Loew believes that we are currently living under the Fourth Kingdom, meaning the whole era of Christian rule over the lands of the West. And if that’s the case, we may have a heck of a long wait.
Fortunately, there is a Midrash which says, “One empire comes and another passes away, but Israel abides forever.”
Lord Strekov offered to pay us for our troubles and grant us safe harbor for the night under his roof, but we asked him to pay us nothing and grant us safe passage out of town. His Lordship agreed, with somewhat mixed feelings.
I thought of his role in creating the monster that had terrorized this remote village, and I prayed that we would not see his kind again any time soon.
W hen the Angel of Death darkens your doorway with his icy shadow, you must take great care to cover all the mirrors with heavy cloth or turn them to the wall, or else the dead man’s spirit might mistake one of the mirrors for a window and end up lost in an endless hall of mirrors and wander it forever, trapped in a left-handed world of everlasting confusion where it will be easy prey for the spiteful demons of Gehenem. Or so I am told.
And because the malekhamoves marks off a man’s last moments on earth by letting a drop of bitter gall fall from the point of his sword into the dying man’s mouth, you must also make sure to empty out all the pitchers and basins with any water left in them, because a wayward drop of the deadly gall might have fallen into the water.
And that’s the origin of the expression, “To kick the bucket.”
So it was a very serious matter indeed when a careless housemaid tossed a washbasin full of dirty water out a second-floor window and nearly soaked us with God knows what foul and offensive liquid.
Kassy jumped back, raising the hem of her
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