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Joseph Hanauer, Part One: Into the Very Pit of Hell

Written by Douglas W. Jones

Fifteenth of Iyyar, 5391 (May 17, 1631)

The congregation for the Saturday evening service at the close of the Sabbath filled the small synagogue in Hammelburg. Several out-of-town visitors brought the number well above the minimum of ten men required for the service. It was not a congregation that placed great value on formality or decorum. Each man prayed at his own pace through many of the prayers, and at times, there were quiet conversations while slower members of the congregation caught up with the rest.

After the braided candle had been extinguished and the last words of the hymn to Elijah the Prophet had faded, the congregation began to drift apart. Several small groups remained in the schul talking quietly as others left.

"Reb Yakov," a large man said. "I enjoyed your comments on the Torah portion this afternoon. You say you're from Hanau? What brings you to Hammelburg?"

"Who are you again?" the rabbi asked, looking up.

"Yitzach ben Zvi, from Kissingen," the man said. His accent held almost no hint of Judische Deutsch in it, less even than in the speech of the Jews of Hammelburg. If they had not been speaking in a synagogue, the rabbi and his companions would have taken him for a Christian.

"We're on our way to Poland," the rabbi said.

"Poland? It's a long way to Poland, and with the war, is this a safe route?"

"Is anything safe for a Jew in this world? The route up the Fränkische Saale valley is direct enough. Moische Frankfurter here has traveled this way to the Leipzig fair twice. He knows the road and he has his father's notes from many more trips. So far, they've proven to be pretty good."

"But the war?"

"Now that King Gustav has left Poland, the war in that land is over, so Polish life is getting better. It doesn't take much to make it better than life in this war-torn land. For the moment, the war is all in the north, and without wishing ill on those living there, we hope it stays that way. Tilly and Pappenheim are tied up at Magdeburg, and that should keep King Gustav busy and out of the way. After we cross the Thüringer Wald, we'll stay well south of the armies."

The conversation continued until only the out-of-town guests remained. Yossie listened quietly; Yakov handled the questions. He and his two companions had faced similar questions a week previously, in the Jewish quarter of Aschaffenburg. That had been their first Sabbath away from home.

After a short while, the two women in the group rejoined their companions. They had spent the Sabbath day visiting with the Jewish women of the town. The synagogue served many purposes. It was a house of prayer and a school for the Jewish children of Hammelburg and it housed the community ovens. The bath house was attached and when there were out-of-town Jewish visitors it served as a makeshift inn.

"It must take a fair amount of silver to travel all the way to Poland," Yitzach said.

"That's why we're traveling with an experienced merchant," the rabbi said. "Reb Moische, why don't you explain how we can afford this trip."

"If we wanted to travel quickly, like a court Jew," Moische said, "we'd hire a coach and trade horses at every town. Where the roads are good, we could make a hundred miles in a day covering the entire distance at a trot. At that speed, we could go to Poland and back in a few weeks.

"If we had expensive trade goods, silk, spices, fine pottery from Delft, we'd hire teamsters from Frammersbach to drive our freight wagons, and we might make thirty miles a day. Before this twice cursed war began, my father could afford that."

Yitzach chuckled. "Is it news that the war has ruined trade?"

"No," Moische answered, "but there are still goods that you can buy low here and sell high there. It does slow the trip to a crawl, stopping at every village to buy and sell, but if you have a horse and a cart and you know the market, well, Yossie, you can make a profit. What have you bought and sold?"

Yossie wondered why Yitzach was so curious about their business. "Not much, but I didn't start with much either."

The merchant grinned. "Didn't start with much. Just books. Now what have you got?"

Yossie had enjoyed the way Moische had parried Yitzach's questions, giving almost no information in his answers. Now, he was puzzled to find that he was being asked to say more. After a Sabbath day spent in study together, they were not total strangers, so he only hesitated briefly before answering. "Well, when we left Hanau, Rav Yankel and I had a chest of copies of the Hanau Prayerbook, unbound, and a few boxes of other books, mostly Jewish but some Christian."

Yitzach ben Zvi looked startled. "So many books? What did you do, rob a Yeshivah or a print shop?"

Yossie chuckled. "We didn't rob it. Rav Yankel and I used to work at Hans Jacob Hene's printing press in Hanau. Master Hene died last year, may his memory be a blessing, and the new owner, well, he doesn't deal in Jewish books the way Master Hene did, so there was little reason for either the books or us to stay."

"So you are paying for a trip with books?"

"We sell and trade. There are forges and glassworks in the Spessart, and there is a paper mill in Lohr. We found a good market for scrap iron and rags. Now that we're in the Fränkische Saale Valley, we're trading empty wine bottles for full whenever we can. Friday, I sold some prayer books, bentschers, and a Chumash here."

"You'd better be careful which Christian books you show people in this valley," Yitzach said. "This is a Catholic valley now. If you have books of the lives of the saints, you'll do well, but if you have Lutheran or Calvinist books, be careful with them."

As the conversation wound down, the Sabbath lamp that had burned since Friday evening was extinguished. Aside from small splashes of moonlight shining through the small eastern windows, the only light came from the eternal flame over the ark holding the Torah scrolls. It was not long before the only sound in the building was the sound of gentle snores.

Sunday morning, there was work to be done. Buying and selling within the Jewish community was safe, but it was not a day to travel. Christians didn't like to be reminded that there were Jews living among them on their holy day, so the gates to the Jewish quarter remained closed.

While the merchants traded what they could, Rabbi Yakov ben Pinchas and Yosef ben Shlomo of Hanau worked as teachers in the Hammelburg schul. It was familiar work for the old Rabbi. He'd taught at the cheder in Hanau for many years, working only part time as a typesetter and proofreader at Hans Jacob Hene's print shop. He'd also worked part time as a scribe, writing the occasional marriage contract or divorce papers, or even repairing a Torah scroll when needed.

For Yosef ben Shlomo, the day's work as a school teacher was a new experience. Yossie had been a full-time print-shop worker since his parents died. Not an apprentice, though. Jews could not take apprenticeships in any of the guild trades.

Monday, after morning prayers, Yitzach ben Zvi set off with the group of travelers toward Kissingen. To Yossie, the small horse Yitzach was riding seemed large. Certainly, it was bigger and healthier than the old horse pulling the cart he and his sister shared with the old rabbi.

"Tell me," Yitzach said. "How is it that you can buy and sell so freely? I'm a Schutzjude. I know the laws that limit what we can do."

"Reb Moische, that's your business," Yossie said.

The young merchant, Moische ben Avram, gave a bow from beside the horse he was leading. "At your service. I might ask how you make a living. You face the same trade restrictions as we do."

"I'm a broker, cattle, feed, wine, you name it, I connect sellers with buyers. That's basically all a protected Jew is allowed to do aside from making loans."

"So do you ever take someone's cattle, for example, and give them silver now, before you go to look for a buyer?"

"Sure. Of course, what I do is loan them the value of the cattle, and then the buyer pays back the loan, plus a bit of interest, plus a commission."

Rabbi Yakov coughed. "But of course, you never take more than one sixth of the value."

"What?" Yossie asked. He had been admiring the way Moische had turned Yitzach's question away from their business.

"One sixth. It follows from Parshas Behar. Come Yossie, we just read it two days ago on Shabbos. What the Christians call Leviticus chapter twenty-one, but I forget the verse number. It says 'And if you sell anything to your fellow or buy anything from your fellow's hand, you shall not wrong one another.'"

"I know the text, but where does it say one sixth?"

"That is the oral tradition, the Talmud."

"But it says your fellow's hand, doesn't that mean only other Jews, not the goyim?"

"Except that the goyim around here worship our God, so they aren't idolaters. They bind themselves by the laws against theft and dishonesty, so we must treat them as our fellows in business."

"A good lesson, Rabbi," Yitzach said. "Was it Rabbi Chananya who said that where words of Torah are exchanged, the divine presence is there? But for the sake of argument, since I only act as a broker, not buying or selling, it doesn't strictly apply, does it?"

"Your status as a broker is just a legal fiction to satisfy the Christian authorities," the Rabbi said. "Of course, to support that fiction, you have to give your buyer an exact accounting, so he knows exactly what fee he is paying. A successful Shutzjude must always charge prices that are even more fair and more honest than any Christian merchant or they will cancel your protection and send you packing."

"That puts it well," Yitzach said. "Now, though, I think I'll send myself packing. My horse and I would both rather move a bit faster than you're walking. But, why not spend the night at my place? It's just outside Kissingen. When you reach the village of Aura on the north bank of the Saale, turn north up the hill to the next crossroads, then east across the upland toward Kissingen. My house will be one of the first you come to. It is on the hill looking down on Kissingen, easy to find. But if you get lost, just ask for me by my goyische name, Isaac Kissinger."

The Fränkische Saale valley led them along a winding path to the northeast through a land of chalky hills and vineyards. When the two loaded carts turned aside at the next cluster of farmhouses in the hope of selling something, Yitzach's horse quickly passed out of sight around the next bend.

The travelers slowed in every village they passed to see if they could find someone who wanted empty wine bottles or some of the ironwork Moische Frankfurter had picked up at a forge in the Spessart. They had pruning hook blades, sickle blades, hoe blades and shovel blades for sale. Whenever they had earned a surplus of silver, Moische disappeared into one of the wine cellars along the way to see if he could buy bottles of wine.

Moische did not need to emphasize that it was dangerous to have too much silver. They had already been robbed once on the trip. It was a small loss because the thieves only took silver, not the books, rags or scrap iron that represented the bulk of their wealth at that time. Wine was a more dangerous cargo than rags or scrap, but a thief who could easily take all of their silver would only be able to carry a few bottles of wine.

As required by law, they were all clearly identified as Jews. The three men in the group wore Jew badges, yellow circles, on their outer cloaks. The two women wore veils that were marked with the two blue stripes reserved for the Jews over their hair combs.

For Yossie and his sister, approaching each cluster of houses was an uncomfortable experience, even after two weeks of travel. They had always lived in the large Jewish communities of Frankfurt am Main and Hanau, while the others had much more experience in the larger world. Yossie's experience with non-Jews was limited to those who routinely dealt with Jews. Here in the Fränkische Saale valley, Jews were rare. Sometimes when they approached a village, children announced their arrival as if they were devils. Some of the men would cross themselves defensively after completing a trade.

Seventeenth of Iyyar, 5391 (May 19, 1631)

Monday afternoon, with the sun low behind them, the travelers turned east toward Kissingen, although the old road sign spelled it Kissick. The valley of the Fränkische Saale was spread out below them to the right, turning north ahead of them and winding lazily away to the southwest behind them. There were vineyards on both sides of the road, but higher up the hills were woodlands. A haze of smoke rose from the valley ahead of them, marking the location of the Kissingen salt works.

"These vines aren't well kept," Moische Frankfurter said, walking beside Yossie. "And did you notice the empty houses in village we just passed?"

"The war, I suppose," Yossie said, as he led the horse pulling the rear cart.

"There hasn't been war in this valley for a decade," the young merchant said. "I suppose, though, that the taxes to pay for the war would be almost as hard on many farmers. Some of them seem to have more wine than they can sell."

"So the Christians are leaving the land, too?"

"More likely, when the families can't afford the taxes, their sons leave to take jobs as mercenaries."

"Can you two men talk about something less grim?" asked Basya, Yossie's sister. "How about a song?" she added, reaching into the back of the cart in front of her and pulling out her copy of the Shmuelbuch and starting to lead them in song.

"Rav Joseph said that if men sing and women respond, the law is broken," Yakov grumbled, quoting from the Talmud under his breath as he walked beside Yossie. "But if women sing and men respond, it is as if fire is sweeping a field of flax."

For the last mile into Kissingen, Basya led the travelers in verses from the epic ballad of Samuel the prophet, King Saul and King David. The subject was biblical and the dialect was Jewish, but the ballad form was as German as the countryside around them. Everyone in the group knew the melody. Only the old rabbi did not join in. Yossie kept his silence through a few verses, not wanting to offend his teacher, but when Yakov made no further comment about the evils of allowing women and men to sing together, Yossie finally joined in the song.

The house of Isaac Kissinger was easy to find. It was one of a small cluster of farmhouses on the hillside above Kissingen. All of the buildings were old, made of ancient plastered stonework below with timber, wattle and daub above.

"Welcome to Kissingen, almost," Yitzach said, greeting them from the door. "Jews aren't allowed in town after dark, so we must live outside the walls, closer to the farmers we serve. Let me help with the horses; they'll be comfortable in the field out back. We'll eat after we settle the horses. I warned my wife you were coming, so there's plenty to eat. We'll be done in time for afternoon prayers."

Yitzach's wife Chava was not as round as her husband, but she looked comfortable. He also had a daughter, Gitele, who was close to Yossie's age and who seemed to be alternately fascinated and shy in his presence.

Over the meal, as was the custom, zmiros took priority over conversation. Songs based on the Psalms or other biblical verses met the need for words of Torah at the table without sounding academic. Some of the tunes were very simple and repetitive, easy for the smallest child to join in, while others were complete psalms, sung like ballads. When everyone was done eating, Yitzach took out his bentscher and led them in the chanting the long grace after meals.

As the sun approached the horizon, the men gathered for the afternoon prayer service, abbreviated because there were only four of them, not the ten required for the full service. They finished just before the sun touched the western horizon. As soon as the sun was down, while the light was still good enough to read, they started again with the evening service.

"Praised be to the Lord, God of the universe, who has commanded us to count the days of the Omer," Yitzach said, "on this, the thirty-third day of the Omer."

"Amen," the other three replied, ending the service. There had been thirty-three days since the start of Passover, and until the festival of Shauvos, every day was to be counted.

"So," Yitzach said. "Time for a haircut, but we'll do that tomorrow. Chava, Gitele, we need to talk. Come, everyone, back to the table."

"I have a proposition for you," Yitzach said, as they sat down at the table by the light of one candle. "My son doesn't want to take up the life of a Shutzjude. He's a scholar at the Yeshiva of Heidingsfeld. I've married off one daughter and I think it's time for me to find someone to carry this house into the next generation. I'd like to find a husband for Gitele, and that won't be in Kissingen. Your trip to Poland has me thinking that perhaps we should join you.

"So, here is my proposition. Stay through the week, and then we'll come with you. That will give me time to transfer my protected status and will give us time to pack up what we can take with us. Waiting a bit will be worth your time because Wednesday is market day. That will give you a chance to lighten your load by getting rid of all those empty bottles before we leave the best of the Franconian vineyards."

There were several replies. "Father!" Gitele said. "Can we afford a week's delay?" Yankel asked. "Is it safe?" Gitele added. "How long have you been planning this?" Moische asked.

"There are too many Jews around Kissingen," Yitzach said. "We've known that for a while. If some of us don't leave soon, the Christians will force us out. Last winter Chava and I decided we should go, so this spring we've been watching for a group to join. Poland, Hungary, Turkey, they all look better than German lands."

"Too many Jews?" Yankel asked. "Do you have a minyan?"

"No, Rav Yakov," Yitzach said, pausing to count under his breath. "There are eight over age thirteen. When I was a child, there was a minyan, but that was before the war."

"There are three of us," Yankel said. "So together, we have one extra. So long as we are here, we have enough for a Torah service."

"It's a long walk. My brother lives down by the river."

"Tell them I have a sefir Torah in my luggage," the old rabbi said. "We can do the full service Thursday and perhaps on Shabbos if the walk is not too far."

"I can't promise they'd come on Thursday," Yitzach said. "There is work to be done. If you stay through Saturday, though, they will come."

"I don't want them to come on Shabbos if they have to walk over two thousand cubits."

"The walk is longer," Yitzach said, "but we know our eruv laws. When one of us wants to visit the other on Shabbos, we arrange to eat a Shabbos meal at my cousin's place, halfway between."

"So Reb Yitz," Moische asked, once it was clear that the Rabbi was satisfied that no laws would be broken by the proposal to gather a minyan for Shabbos. "How many other groups of travelers have you spoken to?"

"There was a group of Jews out of Wertheim two weeks ago. They were traveling fast and didn't want more people. Last week another group came through. Like you, they were from Frankfurt and trying to peddle their way east. I would have been tempted to go with them if they had seemed competent. I've heard rumors of other groups but not everyone who travels up this valley stops in Kissingen to talk with me."

"Thank you for the compliment," Moische said, with a laugh.

"Don't thank me too soon," Yitzach said. "First, my wife and daughter need to be convinced that you are competent enough for us. And I suspect that we need to convince you that we are competent enough for you."

For the next hour, the travelers repeated many of the answers they had given two nights before in Hammelburg. This time, though, there were fewer evasive answers.

"My wife and I left Frankfurt Monday a week after Passover ended," Moische explained. "I'd hoped to leave the week before, the first Monday right after Passover, but that didn't work out. Instead, we left on the eighteenth day of the Omer. That seemed good enough, and eighteen is a lucky number."

"It took a day to pack up Reb Yankel, Yossie and Basya in Hanau, and then we spent the Sabbath of Parshos Emor with the Jews of Aschaffenburg. Last Monday, we set off into the Spessart. In a week, we made it to Hammelburg, buying and selling as we went.

Yitzach interrupted. "You know, Reb Moische, yesterday I asked how you could manage, buying and selling across the countryside, and we got off into matters of commercial law and legal fictions and Talmud. You never answered my question."

Moische Frankfurter answered, "A merchant can't afford to disclose the secrets of his trade."

Yossie chuckled. "He never lets us suggest a price, ever. Before we buy or sell, he always looks in his book and then tells us what offer to make, and he tells us what the final price should be. Sometimes, he's wrong, but mostly, his advice is good."

"When I'm wrong," Moische said, "It's because of the war. I've been this way twice before, to the Hannover fair and back, by way of Meiningen and Erfurt. My father did it many times. The first rule for any merchant is to constantly watch the prices of everything."

"I know that well enough," Yitzach said. "But I only need to know the prices of goods in and around Kissingen. You need to know the prices everywhere."

"We only know the prices where my father or I have been before. Of course, you have to correct for the season." He paused. "So, Reb Yitzach, if you come with us, what will you bring as trade goods?"

The answer to that question emerged after morning prayers and breakfast Tuesday, while Moische's wife and Chava set to work cutting the men's hair. Between Passover and Shavuos, the thirty-third day of the Omer was the only day on which it was auspicious to have a haircut, so all of the men took their turn.

"So," Yitzach said, while his wife worked around his head with comb and shears. "What I propose to do is slaughter a cow and make sausage. I'll sell the meat I can't preserve and buy trade goods with the profit. There aren't more than a handful of Jews east of here. The Protestants did a good job of driving us out of Saxony back before my lifetime, so you'll want kosher meat that will keep. My sausage should keep all summer if it stays dry and out of the sun. I'll need help, though, because we'll have to keep the fire smoking, and we'll need to shave an awful lot of beef very thin.

"You're a shochet?" Moische asked.

"The best in Kissingen, if you discount my brother's son Ari. He's the one I want to take over this place. I also have a cousin who is competent. We take turns buying cattle at the Neustadt market. Most of the meat we sell to Hammelburg."

"Where did you study?" Yankel asked.

"Heidingsfeld, where my son is now. When my father died, I left the yeshivah and came home to take over his business."

The cow was slaughtered that morning, and everyone was put to work, under the able direction of Yitzach and his wife. The larger butchering job, of course, was left to the shochet himself, but then the meat had to be salted and rinsed to get the blood out, and every bit of meat had to be stripped from the carcass excepting the hindquarters. That part would go, at a discount, to the Christian butchers in town because kosher preparation of the loins would have been too much work.

By evening, the big chimney in Yitzach's kitchen was festooned with thinly sliced beef hung from freshly cut willow twigs. Larger cuts of meat hung awaiting sale or additional work the next day. They'd stripped the derma from the intestines for use as sausage casing, and the smell of grilling liver filled the house.

Yossie was the strongest of the travelers, with years of experience doing hard physical labor at the printing press. Because of his strength, he spent a good part of the day chopping firewood from Yitzach's woodpile for the kitchen fire. The wood had to burn to charcoal on one side of the kitchen hearth, then the hot coals were swept over to the other side to provide dry heat under the meat. When the wood supply was adequate and the fire burning properly, he was put to work at the cutting block, shaving thin curls of beef. For a break in that job, he was sent to the salt works for a sack of salt. By nightfall, Yossie's arms ached as much as they had ever ached after a long press run.

Wednesday morning, Yossie was spared from more physical labor. The evening before, Moische and Yitzach had asked him to come with them into town to help in the marketplace. The three of them woke up before sunrise, said their morning prayers quickly and ate a cold crust for breakfast before setting out.

Market day in Kissingen was busy. At the town gates, farm carts vied in friendly competition with merchants. The Jews knew their place and held back, waiting their turn. Once the crowd around the gates had thinned, they paid their Jew tax to the guard at the gates, as required by law, and then entered the town. In Kissingen, Jews were permitted to buy and sell in the marketplace, but the protocol at the town gates guaranteed that they would always get the least desirable spaces.

Once the three of them had staked out their spot, Isaac took his cart to the Christian butchers so he could sell the non-kosher cuts of meat while Yossie and Moische arranged what they had to sell. They had straw-packed baskets of the flat bottles used for Franconian wines, window-glass, ironwork, books and paper.

"Today," Moische said, "make all sales in silver. Here's the price list, what you should open the haggling with, what they should offer, and where you should go for the final price. I want to spy out the market to see if I am right on the prices, so for now, you run things."

Yossie felt a bit abandoned. Then he straightened his shoulders. He'd been the buyer at other markets, after all. Not just for himself, either. He'd done it for Master Hene's print shop and he knew how things worked. Buying and selling door-to-door the last two weeks helped, but he'd never been in charge of a market stall before. It certainly didn't help that he was a complete stranger in Kissingen.

His first few sales were small; bottles by the twos and threes, a shovel blade, a pruning hook, and two sheets of paper. Then, to Yossie's surprise, a man came to buy four full baskets of bottles.

"So, Jew, where are they from?" the man asked, pulling one of the flat green bottles from its straw packing and looking at it with care.

"Paul Fleckenstein's glassworks in Heigenbrucken, on the Lohrbach," Yossie answered. He remembered being fascinated as he watched the glassblower manipulating the red hot glass. That such green glass could be made by melting the red Spessart sandstone was almost magical.

Only after inspecting several more bottles with equal care did the man begin to dicker seriously. The man knew what he was doing, but with Moische's price recommendations in mind, Yossie was prepared.

Moische came back shortly after that to amend the price list. "You need to read the sales," Moische said, after Yossie described what he'd sold. "If you're buying wine from the vineyard next door, or if you make it for your own use, you reuse bottles. Break a barrel of wine into bottles, drink them up, and then refill the bottles when you break open the next barrel. If you sell just one or two bottles, you're probably just replacing broken glass.

"But think. If you're selling wine for shipment to far away places, you buy enough empty bottles to hold a whole barrel of wine and the empties never come back. Your last sale means that someone in town is still shipping wine to someplace far away. The local wine is good enough to grace a noble's table, which is why we are buying as much as we can with our profits."

"You've been tasting Christian wine?" Yossie asked, mildly taken aback.

"Of course. How else would I know its value in trade?" Moische said. "We're forbidden to drink the wine of idolaters, but I don't drink, just taste. It is very good wine, but then, Reb Yitzach's wine is no worse, and he has promised to bring a bit of that along with us."

Soon after Moische left for another round of spying on the marketplace, Yossie found himself facing a Catholic priest. Christian clergymen had always made him uncomfortable.

"My son," the priest said, with an alarming smile that might have been intended to be friendly. "I hear you have books for sale."

"A few, Father," Yossie said, in his best German. He knew that for a Jew to show insufficient respect could lead to trouble. He was more alarmed to be addressed as "my son" than to be addressed merely as "Jew."

Yossie went around the back of the cart to show the books. Moische had shifted their goods around carefully so that the Jewish and Protestant books were all on the cart they had left behind at Yitzach's house.

"Have you read this?" the priest asked, holding up a book.

Yossie leaned over to look. It was a volume of St. Thomas Aquinas. "My Latin is poor, Father, but I like what I know of the Saint's logic."

"If your Latin were better," the priest said, "you would find that the logic of Aquinas is compelling. The only way to salvation is through our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ."

Yossie groaned inwardly, fearing that the conversation was becoming a trap. "I have no desire to engage in a religious disputation, Father. All I want to do is find a good home for these fine books."

"Where did you get them?" the priest asked.

"They are from the estate of Master Hans Hene of Hanau, may his memory be a blessing."

The priest looked startled. "The printer? I had not heard that he died! May his soul rest in peace. And you, a Jew, why do you bless his memory?"

"Should I curse a man simply because he was not of my religion?" Yossie asked. "I worked in Master Hene's print shop for many years."

In the end, the encounter with the priest turned out better than Yossie had feared. He even sold the volume of Aquinas and a supply of paper to the priest. Not long after that, he sold all that was left of the green-tinted window glass they'd purchased in the Spessart.

Moische, meanwhile, had been searching out what they should buy with their profits. It was no surprise to Yossie that this included more wine, but Moische also bought several empty barrels.

"Why these?" Yossie asked, grimacing after taking a sniff at one of the bung holes. The strong vinegar smell made it clear that that they were old wine barrels.

"Vinegar prevents vermin," Moische said. "These should sell well after we leave the vineyards."

Twenty-first of Iyyar, 5391 (May 23, 1631)

By the week's end, all of the travelers were sick of the sight and smell of beef in all of its forms. They had dealt with everything from raw beef, dried strips of beef, cooked beef, suet, and, most of all, sausage.

Friday afternoon, in addition to keeping a charcoal fire going under the hanging meat, they began to heat kettles of water to be added to the bath. As the Sabbath drew closer on Friday afternoon, each of them left work in turn to bathe and change into their best clothes. The meat was prepared to the point that what work remained could wait for Sunday. What the sausages needed most was to hang in the chimney over the banked fire for as long as possible.

Yossie had never encountered a private bath before. In Frankfurt and Hanau, and even in Hammelburg, the bathhouses had been communal affairs. The structure was not as old as the house, but it had obviously been there for generations. The masonry lining was sound but undecorated, and the room was plain. The bath met the letter of the law, being dug into the ground and open to the sky. As with every other bath he had used, the opening to the sky was a narrow chimney that ended just above the water in one corner. Anything more would have let in far too much cold air in the winter.

Yossie washed himself using a clean rag and a pot of warm water so as not to pollute the bath water with dirt when he finally immersed himself. The five pots of boiling water they had added to the bath had not warmed it enough that he wanted to spend much time there, but that was not the point. The point was to make a clear separation between the week past and the Sabbath to come, a spiritual cleansing.

Once he was dry and dressed, Yossie helped Yakov bring the case holding the old rabbi's Torah scroll in from their cart. The case was large and heavy enough that it took two men to carry it comfortably. It was not ornate, but nonetheless its solid construction signaled that it held something precious. The scroll inside was the most central symbol of Judaism, but it was also precious because of the labor it represented. The many sheets of parchment sewn into the scroll had all been specially prepared, as had the ink. Yakov himself had written every letter in the scroll, using exactly the letter forms required by tradition.

Yitzach led the evening service welcoming the Sabbath, as was his right as master of the house, but he also made a point of involving the others. Of the eleven men that made up their congregation, three were still young, one not much over thirteen, and Yossie enjoyed watching their response when they were asked to lead some of the simpler prayers.

After the evening kiddush over bread and wine had been said, their guests left for their Sabbath dinners. As promised, Yitzach's brother and his two nephews left with his cousin. As the men left, the women rejoined the group and Yankel asked a question that was also on Yossie's mind.

"Reb Yitzach, you did not begin your service with the Kaballos Shabbos psalms."

"No," Yitzach said, "and neither did my father, nor his father, nor his. Welcoming Shabbos with psalms is a beautiful innovation, but what's wrong with the order of the traditional service?"

"Saying the Kaballos Shabbos psalms helps to put you in the right frame of mind for the service," Yankel said. "It makes your prayers more effective."

Yitzach shook his head. "That would imply that our reward is not for carrying out the six hundred and thirteen commandments in the Torah. That our reward is not for prayer, repentance and doing justice, but for being in the right frame of mind. That sounds like something a Lutheran would say; that we are saved by our faith, not by what we do."

So began an argument that would relieve the boredom of many long hours in the days to come. On one side were the pietist innovations of the Kaballah, while on the other was the traditional Jewish emphasis on obeying the commandments.

To Yossie, who had grown up since the time that kabalist thought had swept through the urban centers of Jewish Europe, the debate was an eye opener. For him, the Kaballos Shabbos psalms and the hymn welcoming the Sabbath bride were simply the way the Sabbath evening service had always begun, not a statement of a new radical theology.

The next morning, Yitzach's brother and nephews arrived with a disturbing story that drove all thought of theological controversy aside.

"We were on our way home last night after dinner," his nephew Ari said, while they waited for the rest of their small congregation to arrive. "As we passed the crossroads tavern, a farmer came out and called out to us. He sounded like he'd had too much to drink. 'Hey Jews,' he said, 'have you heard the news from Magdeburg? The siege is over. They set fire to the town.' He said he'd heard the story from a post rider."

To the travelers this was an alarming rumor, although the fact that it had come from a drunkard added an element of doubt. They had been relying on the siege to keep the armies tied up in the north, out of their proposed path. It was the Sabbath, though, so until sunset, their first order of business was prayer and study. As soon as they had ten assembled, they began the Sabbath morning service.

Their makeshift synagogue centered on the table where they had eaten dinner the night before. Now, it was covered with a clean cloth to serve as the reading table. The case holding Yankel's Torah scroll was set on end on a sideboard against the eastern wall, marking the direction they were to face while praying.

For an hour, they read the Psalms, blessings and prayers of the morning service. They wore their fringed prayer shawls as hoods over their heads as they swayed with the rhythm of prayer. Yitzach's voice was very good. As he had the evening before, he made room in the service for the younger men to help lead parts of the service.

The Torah portion was Parshas Bechukosai, the end of the book of Leviticus. There had not been a full Sabbath service in Kissingen for many months, and the blessings and curses of chapter twenty-six had not been chanted in Kissingen for many years.

As Yossie listened to Yankel chant the ancient curses that were promised if Israel failed to obey the commandments, he wondered about Magdeburg. What must that town have done to bring on the horrors that were rumored to have come? He'd been very young when Wallenstein's army had come through the lower Main valley. The army had ensured the restoration of the Jewish community of Frankfurt, but they had created hardship for the entire region. His parents had died that winter, and his only memories from that time were of overwhelming loss and hunger.

Sunday was another day of hard work for everyone. Yitzach and his family were busy at work packing their own belongings for the trip. Moische and Yitzach had purchased quite a bit of wine with their earnings from the market, and all of the bottles needed to be very carefully packed into baskets with straw.

While the others packed, Yossie was put back to work maintaining the fires to smoke and dry their newly made sausages. When he found that they were low on firewood, he was surprised that Yitzach simply handed him a wood collecting basket and pointed him up the hill at the woodlands above.

"But Reb Yitzach," he asked, "is it safe working in public on the Christian Sabbath?" He had never before been outside of the walled Jewish quarter of a town on a Sunday.

"Close to home, yes," Yitzach answered. "My family has lived in this house since the Jews were expelled from Kissingen long before my time. Since I am a cottager here, so long as I pay my Shutzgeld, I have the right to gather wood up there. My neighbors all know you are with me, so go, before the fires burn too low. But do not cut wood, my rights extend only to dead wood that is on the ground or that you can break from trees with your hands."

So, on a beautiful May Sunday, Yossie found himself up in the hills to the northwest of Yitzach's house gathering firewood. The view to the east out over Kissingen was quite beautiful, and even the sound was beautiful. He could hear the faint sounds of Christian hymns from the nearest village church, and later, the sounds of church bells from the big church in Kissingen itself. It seemed impossible that the such a day could be contained in the same world that contained the horrors that were rumored to have occurred in Magdeburg.

Yossie walked the woods with his eyes on the ground and tree trunks for the wood that was needed. Only when he stopped to adjust the shoulder straps of the wood basket did he take the time to admire the view. There was no smoke from the salt works because it was Sunday so the view to the east was clearer than it had been all week. The crags of old fortifications on the hilltops east of Kissingen held his gaze. He guessed that some of those ruins dated back to before the first Crusade, back to the time when Jewish life in German lands had been as safe and peaceful as the scene before him.

It was perhaps the third time he stopped that he saw a very strange thing. The eastern sky filled with light, so bright that the whole world seemed dark in its aftermath. Fortunately the flash was too brief to injure his eyes, but it left an afterimage that Yossie could study. A half circle of purple showed against his eyelids every time he blinked during the next minute or so, as if he had stared for too long at sun as it rose over the eastern horizon. Whatever it was, it had been larger looking than the sun. Where the sun wasn't even the width of one finger at arm's length, the half circle Yossie saw after every blink was as wide as three fingers side by side.

By the time Yossie had carried his load of sticks down to the cluster of houses where Yitzach lived, what he had seen seemed unimportant. Once the afterimage had faded from his vision, the day went on as before, just as beautiful and with just as much work remaining to be done. The hills still rose above the valley of the Fränkische Saale, and the old ruins were unchanged.

Monday morning, Yitzach's nephew Ari arrived in time for morning prayers, along with his young wife Rivke. Yitzach's wagon and the two carts were already loaded, so all that remained to be done after breakfast was to give Ari the big iron key to the house and hitch up the horses.

"Before you go," Ari said, "you need to hear what I heard this morning. Rivke and I stopped by the town gate on our way over and asked if there was news. There is, and it might matter to you. Magdeburg has indeed fallen, that was not just drunken babble. Last Tuesday, General Tilly's troops set fire to the town."

"Blessed be the righteous judge," Yakov said.

"Amen," Yossie said, a bit surprised.

Ari continued. "With the town burning, the armies will have to move if they are to eat. Be careful what road you take, Uncle Yitz."

"We will," Yitzach said.

"Don't go to Meningen if there is even a rumor that the armies are turning south," Ari said. "Go via Prague instead of Leipzig."

As they set off on the road north along the Fränkische Saale, Yossie continued to mull over the news of the sack of Magdeburg.

"Rav Yakov," he asked, as he and the old rabbi walked alongside their horse, "Why did you say 'Blessed be the righteous judge' about Magdeburg?"

"Because, Yossie, that is what you should say when you hear that someone has died."

"But we don't know anyone who died."

"If they ended the siege by burning the town, tens, hundreds, perhaps thousands died," the old rabbi said, in a sad voice. "You know they are dead, burned to nothing but smoke, and every one of them a divine self portrait, made in His own image, whether they are Lutheran or Catholic or Jewish."

Yossie listened to the quiet clop of the old horse's hooves on the earth and grass of the roadway while he thought. There was little reason for a Jew to sympathize with Lutherans, particularly in Saxony. The Lutherans there had been particularly harsh ever since Luther had penned his diatribe against the Jews. All of that had been generations ago, but it was still fresh in the memory of the Jewish community. Even so, Yossie could not see the burning of Magdeburg as just retribution for the evil that Martin Luther had done.

The fact that the sack had occurred on the thirty-third day of the Omer only added to his confusion. By tradition, that day was a day of release from mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. What good purpose could be served by mass murder on that date? Yossie had listened to the chanting of the Book of Lamentations every summer on the ninth of the month of Av. With his childhood memories of the hardships of the war, he could easily connect the text of Lamentations to the experience of the doomed at Magdeburg.

Twenty-fifth of Iyyar, 5391 (May 27, 1631)

They heard more news of Magdeburg Tuesday morning as they got ready to leave Neustadt. Yitzach knew the innkeeper there, and he came out to say goodbye to them while they were hitching up the horses.

"Isaac," he said. "I will miss doing business with you."

"You will see plenty of my nephew Leow," Yitzach said, as he checked the attachment of the harnesses to the whiffletree of his wagon. "I put my house and business in his hands. He will come to the Neustadt cattle market as often as I did. Call him Ari and he will know that I trust you."

"Is Ari his secret Jew name?" the innkeeper asked.

"Not a secret," Yitzach said, with a chuckle. "But it means the same as Leow in the language of Israel. Come, we must be off."

"Before you go," the innkeeper said. "Did you hear about Magdeburg?"

"Terrible," Yitzach said. "Blessed be the righteous judge, but I cannot see any justice in the news I have heard."

The innkeeper shook his head sadly. "Indeed. But had you heard that General Pappenheim has pulled his troops south, and that General Tilly's army is spreading south over Saxony to feed itself. Be careful which way you go on the way east!"

"And I hope the armies stay far from this valley," Yitzach said, in parting. "May he who blessed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob bless all those who care for the wayfarers of the world."

Despite the news, none of the travelers suggested turning back. They had little choice but to continue north out of Neustadt. It was possible that Yitzach might have been able to resume his old place in Kissingen, but the others had no home to return to. None of the Jewish communities they knew of to the south or west were prosperous enough to provide more than temporary refuge. Yossie knew that if he and his sister were to return to Hanau, they would be welcome only until they had spent the last of their silver. They were better off as homeless peddlers, but only so long as they could stay away from the war.

Two miles north out of Neustadt, there was a fork in the road. To the north was the road they had intended to follow, the road to Meiningen, Suhl, Erfurt, Weimar and Leipzig. This was the road Moische had been on before, but with the news from the north, it no longer seemed a prudent path.

"We should turn east here," Yitzach said, after the two carts had pulled up to his wagon at the fork.

"Reb Yitzach," Moische said. "I have never been that way."

"Which is safer?" Basya asked. "Would you rather follow a familiar road toward armies locked in battle or a new road that may miss them?"

"It is not entirely a new road," Yitzach said. "I was as far as Hildburghausen once. The road follows the Saale to Königshofen then goes overland. Hildburghausen is a town of tailors and there is one last Jew there."

"How far?" Yossie asked.

"A day's ride on a good horse," Yitzach answered. "At the rate we are going, stopping at every village to buy and sell, we will be there by the Sabbath."

Basya gave a nervous chuckle.

"What's the joke?" Moische asked.

"It will be Shabbos Parshas Bemidbar. The Torah portion begins 'In the wilderness,' and that is where we will be going once we leave the last Jewish house in the land."

Yitzach chuckled. "We aren't already in the wilderness? In any case, we won't have a minyan there unless there is a miracle. You'll have to wait a year to hear the start of the Book of Numbers chanted properly. Rav Yankel, what do you think?"

The old rabbi had listened without comment up to that point. Now he sighed. "God seems to have offered us little choice in this matter. Let us visit this town of tailors."

"Reb Yitzach," Moische asked, after they started on the road east. "What should we buy, what should we sell?"

For the next few miles, that topic consumed the men while they left the women to lead the horses. Yitzach explained that the lands they were passing into were croplands, but that after they reached Hildburghausen, the land would change. The Thüringerwald began there, a region like the Spessart where the economy was dominated by woodsmen, charcoal burners, miners and smiths.

"There is another thing," Yitzach said. "We will leave Catholic Franconia when the hills of the Thüringerwald come in view. You'll be able to sell those Protestant books of yours again."

With each little farm village they visited, Yossie noticed something else. Despite their Jew badges, despite the clear proclamation of status in the women's blue striped scarves and the rectangular combs that supported them, more and more of the people they met did not recognize them as Jews.

They were just strangers to many of the farmers, just refugees like so many others who the war had uprooted. Their Judische Deutsch accents no longer marked them as Jews, but only as being from far away.

Yossie found that there was an unexpected benefit of traveling with Yitzach and his family, the food. Moische's wife Frumah was not a very good cook, so Yossie's sister Basya had had done most of the cooking on the way to Kissingen. She was a competent camp cook, but she was not very creative. Yitzach's wife Chava had quickly taken charge as they traveled onward, and the result was rewarding.

That night, for example, as they camped in a fallow field with the permission of the local village, Chava made bread. She had mixed up a batch of dough in the morning, so that it was ready for baking by nightfall. Of course, they had no access to a kosher oven, but Chava twisted the dough around green willow twigs so they could toast individual servings of bread over their fire.

While the women bustled about their campsite making dinner, the men took care of the horses and then took out their prayer books for the afternoon and evening prayers. Without the minyan of ten men required for the full service, each prayed at his own pace. To keep the commandment to love the Lord with all their strength as well as with all their heart and all their spirit, they swayed to the rhythm of their words.

All of the men prayed aloud, mostly in an undertone, but whenever one paused in his prayer and heard the other say one of the prescribed blessings, he would respond with an amen. So it was that Yossie, who finished his prayers last, was answered with two loud amens as he counted the forty-first day of the Omer.

After dinner, they sat around the embers of their small fire and talked before going to sleep.

"I keep hoping for more news of Magdeburg," Moische said, "but in these little farming villages, it seems that we are telling people the news as often as we are hearing anything new."

"At least there is no news of troops coming our way," Basya said.

Yossie wasn't sure that the lack of news was reassuring. They were traveling on a minor road through villages that seemed out of touch with the larger world. It seemed quite possible that an army could travel faster than rumors of its presence through such a countryside.

"We should hear news tomorrow," Yitzach said. "Either in the town of Königshofen or at the crossroads village where we cross the high road from Meiningen to Bamberg."

"Reb Yitzach, what should we buy and sell tomorrow?" Moische asked. For the next few minutes, the two of them discussed business. They concluded that disposal of the last of their wrought iron from the Spessart should be a priority, before they got too close to the forges of the Thüringerwald. They had been buying scrap iron since they left Kissingen for the same reason.

"What about the paper we bought at Lohr?" Yossie asked. "And when do we start to sell the wine we bought?"

"I think there is a paper mill east of the Thüringerwald," Moische said, "So we should try to sell the rest of the paper on this side of the hills. The wine we hold until we are over the hills. It was the common wine of farmers' tables around Kissingen, here it is still common in inns and taverns. On the other side of the Thüringerwald, this wine will be reserved for the tables of the highborn."

"But Reb Moische, what if our worst fears come true?" Basya asked. "What if the armies do come south?"

"We can hope they come to go west into the lands we have left," Moische said. "Mainz, Frankfurt, Würzburg, those are tempting targets."

"Blessed be he who protects the innocent," Yitzach said. "Wherever the armies go, they strip the land. Perhaps, to be safe, we should buy food, grain and hard cheese. If the armies go elsewhere, we'll lose little. If they come close, we'll make a profit, and if they come too close, it may save our lives."

"That suggests that we should buy quickly, before everyone hears the news," Moische said. "And it suggests that we should stop telling what news we know. When they hear, people will start hoarding, just in case the armies come here."

"A good idea, Reb Moische, but we can likely make the profit safe," Yitzach said. "There won't be many farms in the Thüringerwald, so if we find that the armies are going west, we can sell in the woods to miners and woodsmen. On the other hand, if we find that luck is against us, we should keep as much food as we can as we move east."

"Listening to you men makes me shiver," Basya said. "You make it sound like we are standing in front of a drunkard with a pistol, not knowing whether the ball will go to the left or right."

Yankel chuckled sadly. "Basya, that's exactly where we stand. Yitzach has just given us advice that is, I think, as precious as the advice Yosef gave to Pharaoh when he interpreted the dream of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of lean." The old Rabbi paused. "There is one thing, though. It would be wrong to let a man sell us his grain without letting him know the news. You must tell a man the value of his wares if he offers too low a price."

"Where does it say that in Torah?" Moische asked.

Yitzach answered, quoting Torah. "You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind."

Twenty-seventh of Iyyar, 5391 (May 29, 1631)

The travelers came in sight of Hildburghausen on Thursday afternoon as they descended into the valley of the Werra. The hills of the Thüringerwald rose to the northeast beyond the town, far higher than the rolling uplands they had crossed since leaving the valley of the Fränkische Saale.

Much of the land they had crossed had been croplands. At every stop, they had purchased whatever grain they could, until they had filled the small wine barrels Moische had bought. In a period of only two days, they had seen a noticeable rise in price as news of southward troop movements became more widely known.

"So Yossie," Yitzach asked, as the two walked beside the pair of horses pulling his wagon. "You and Rav Yankel used to work for the same printer, but there seems to be more than that between you."

Yossie nodded. "Reb Yitz, I was an orphan, and Rav Yankel was my teacher in the Hanau Cheder."

"What happened to your parents?" Yitzach asked. Moische fell back to join them, leaving his wife and daughter in charge of their cart.

"We were in Frankfurt when Fettmilch drove us out. You have to ask Reb Moische about that, I was too young to remember. After we were driven out, we came to Hanau, and then war came and there were hard times. I was five, young and strong enough to survive. My folks died that winter."

"Reb Moische?" Yitzach asked.

"I was seven when Fettmilch ruined Frankfurt. We fled just ahead of the mob into the cemetery. Everyone who didn't make it there was killed. I was old enough to know the story of the Book of Esther, so I knew that when Fettmilch called himself the new Haman, he would be hanged just like Haman was in the Bible. In that, my childish faith was eventually rewarded. We had almost nothing after that, but I remember the charity of complete strangers in the days that followed. Even Christians were ashamed of what Fettmilch had started."

"It seems that we Jews are doomed never to live in one place for very long," Yitzach said.

Nobody responded, so they walked in silence beside the horses for a while, until they were on the bridge across the Werra.

"Reb Yitz," Moische said, "I didn't come back to you to relive that awful day. What I wondered is, how do we find the one Jew who you say lives here? Do we just walk up to people and ask where is the Jew?"

"That would work," Yitzach said, "but he has a name, Gutkind, I think. Was it Samuel Gutkind?"

Hildburghausen had grown too big for its walls, so they were already in the town before they reached the city gate. The guard there sent them around the street that ringed the wall, and in short order, they found their destination.

Samuel Gutkind, as it turned out, was a half burgher, entitled to live within the city but outside the walls. He was not the only Jew. He had a son, and there was an elderly couple living with him as servants. The household reminded Yossie of some of the wealthier Jewish households of Hanau, but without the students and other boarders that filled those houses to the bursting point.

Over dinner, they learned that Samuel was emphatically Samuel or even Herr Gutkind, not Reb Schmuel. He made his living as banker to the merchants and petty nobility of the area. Technically, he was a Schutzjude, but he seemed to think of himself as a minor court Jew.

They spoke at length about the news from the North. They heard that General Pappenheim had moved to Halberstadt. It was a town none of the travelers had heard of, but Samuel said that he had heard that it was in the Harz mountains. The travelers were alarmed to hear that there had been news from as far south as Erfurt and even Rudolstadt of trouble. Erfurt had been on their intended agenda only a week ago.

"So tell me," Moische said, after they had exhausted the news from the north. "Have you heard any other strange tales recently?"

"Moses, there are always strange tales," Samuel said. "What leads you to ask?"

"Wednesday noon we stopped to do business in Königshofen and we heard quite a tale. The man who told it said that he heard it here in Hildburghausen. What he told us is that the pit of Hell has opened up beside some town to the east of here."

"Schwarzburg," Yossie added. "He said that the very pit of Hell opened there on Sunday." Yossie didn't mention the flash he had seen in the east that day, but he couldn't help but wonder.

"And what did you make of the story?" Samuel asked.

"We thought little of it until evening when we heard another tale in the small crossroads village of Trappstadt, or was it Drebstadt," Moische said, and then paused. "There, we met a merchant going south from Suhl. He said he'd heard the story from the east of Suhl. What he had heard was that on Sunday, the whole world to the east exploded with a flash and a roar like cannon fire. When the noise was finished, where there had once been mountains, there were valleys and where there had once been valleys, there were now mountains."

Moische paused. "After hearing two different tales, we wonder if perhaps something has happened in the Thüringerwald. You see why we ask?"

"I do, Moses Frankfurter, I do," Samuel said. "And I can add to the tale. When I first heard about the pit of Hell opening at Schwarzburg, I thought it was nonsense, of course. But you must know something. I have occasional dealings with the Count. I know some of his men from Schleusingen."

"And?" Moische asked.

"I was in town today. I ran into a man I know, a guard. He said that they had a message from Schwarzburg. An official message, mind you, not just some rumor from an ignorant shepherd."

"So?" Moische asked, after the silence had drawn out for too long. "What did it say?"

"How do I know? Am I privy to the Count's mail? No. But the story is that the pit has swallowed the whole road from Schwarzburg to Rudolstadt, and that it is many miles around. They say that the guards at Swarzburg have sent spies into the pit, and these spies say that they have seen things there that cannot be of this world."

"So is this pit really Hell?" Gitele asked.

Yakov sighed. "These spies are supposed to have gone into the pit and then returned ...