The Fifth Servant by Kenneth Wishnia Read Free Book Online Page A

blue kerchief, standing just outside the doorway.
                “Just let us do our jobs, ma’am.”
                The sheriff spoke to the whole room, but he was looking at me. “Now here’s how it’s going to be. Either the accused, Jacob Federn, tells us who his accomplices were, or you personally deliver them to us, shammes.”
                “The imperial law code forbids the application of collective guilt—”
                “You better shut up before I take you in as well, Jew. You know very well how to force the murderers to come forward.”
                I opened my mouth to protest, and found that a feather had planted itself in my beard.
                Zizka delivered his ultimatum. “You’ve got three days. And if we don’t get the truth out of this fellow, we’ll hold the whole community responsible. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when Monday morning comes around and you’re empty-handed.”
                A few of the bystanders snickered.
                “We’re going to seal up Jew Town , effective immediately. If anyone tries to escape, it’ll be taken as proof of guilt, and we’ll burn the whole damn ghetto down to the ground.”

    CHAPTER 6
                EVERY NOW AND THEN the Christians go a little crazy.
                Did any of them stop to think about who might profit from this crime? Or consider the possibility that someone might have wanted to stir up hatred and mayhem for unknown reasons? No, all they can see is bloodthirsty Jews everywhere they look. They see what isn’t there and don’t see what is there. And they think that what ever they can’t explain must be inherently evil. This is only partly true.
                The rabbi in Slonim says that we spend every hour of the day surrounded by evil spirits who press in on us from all sides like an invisible army, and that the only reason we don’t go crazy is because most of the time we simply don’t realize that they’re there.
                But there are other unseen forces that hover around the edges of our experience. The Slonimer Rebbe will also tell you of the tsadek nister , the hidden wise man who labors among us, perhaps as a humble shoemaker, whose inner wisdom and strength remain invisible to the outside world. The Jews say that at any given time, there are thirty-six such men in the world, who are known as lamed-vovniks , and that for their sake alone, God keeps the universe in one piece. Their true value is so carefully hidden that even they may not realize who they are.
                For this reason, the great ReMo , Rabbi Moyshe Isserles of Kraków, always encouraged us to read the khokhmes khitsoyniyes , the “external wisdoms,” because he believed that all forms of wisdom were ultimately derived from the Torah. So we read Pomponazzi, who was excommunicated for claiming there is no way to prove that the soul is immortal, and Kopernikus, who dislodged mankind from his privileged location at the center of the universe, and Friar Bruno, who was excommunicated three times (which I believe is a record of some kind) because he didn’t believe in the power of miracles, prayer, or divine intervention in our daily lives. And what did it get us? Did the Christians really care if we read their heretics?
                No, but the other rabbis did. They tried to silence Rabbi Isserles and shut his yeshiva down, denouncing us as fraydenkers . Freethinkers. The label stuck.
                Then Rabbi Isserles, may his memory be a blessing, passed on too soon, and I woke up to find out that the Freethinkers weren’t welcome at the other yeshivas.
                So I had to prove myself all over again by toiling among the bookshelves, and never venturing beyond the Jewish Quarter, past the Corpus Christi Church , or across the Vistula to the main market