By converting to Christianity, Jacob’s followers hope that they will be allowed to settle in Poland. When they return to Poland, they petition Bishop Dembowski for help.

They search for somewhere they can practice their religion in peace. Jacob and his new retinue of followers travel across borders in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire. As Jacob begins to present himself as a Messiah, Nahman dedicates himself to recording Jacob’s life even though Jacob tells him not to do so. Their initial meetings take place against the backdrop of many periodic outbursts of intense violence against Jewish people. He meets Jacob through Elisha Shorr and brings Jacob to Rohatyn. He writes about how he met Jacob in the context of a history of Messianic Jewish preachers such as Sabbatai Tzvi. Meanwhile, Bishop Soltyk builds up secret gambling debts.Ī young Jewish man named Nahman wants to be the author of a book about Jacob. From her out-of-body perspective, Yente views the events of the novel and beyond. Her family does not know what to do with her, so they place her body in a cave. She sinks into a deep coma-like sleep and has an out-of-body experience.

Yente eats the paper on which the charm is written. Elisha makes a mystical charm to delay her death long enough so as not to ruin the celebrations. Asher believes that she may die close to the date of the wedding. An elderly woman named Yente is brought to the wedding but falls sick. During his frequent visits to the Shorr house, he notices that they are preparing for a wedding. He considers himself separate from the other Jewish people in the town. Chmielowski and Druzbacka begin a decades-long correspondence in which they discuss the nuances of writing and language, as well as their personal lives.Īsher Rubin is a Jewish doctor who studied in Italy and now lives in Rohatyn. Later, Chmielowski meets Elzbieta Druzbacka, who is traveling with a noblewoman named Katarzyna Kossakowska. In the Polish town of Rohatyn in 1752, a Christian priest and author named Father Chmielowski visits a Rabbi named Elisha Shorr to borrow a book to aid his composition of an encyclopedia named New Athens. This decision is intended to echo the pagination and reading styles of texts written in Hebrew.Ĭontent Warning: The source material occasionally deals with issues such as sexual violence, violence, and religious persecution. This guide also follows the author’s stylistic choice of numbering the pages in reverse, beginning on page 892 and ending on page 27. This guide uses the print version of the 2021 Fitzcarraldo edition, translated by Jennifer Croft.

The book of jacob olga