Sefer luhot edut (Tablets of Testimony)

Introduction

For it is not against me that these men have sinned, for what am I and what is my life? My days have passed like a transient shadow, and fly away as does a dream—like a dream upon awakening. I am despised, a man of sorrows and acquainted with illness, with men hiding their faces from me, stricken and smitten by God.¹ The Almighty has caused bewilderment to be my lot, on account of my iniquity, and old age has sprung upon me in an untimely manner. My strength has departed and the cord of yearning has snapped, and my desire for ostensible glory has vanished, and that for a surfeit of honor, advised by crooked counsel. Who is it that they have pursued, and against whom have they plotted stratagems that they cannot bring to fruition, to shoot in the dark those of upright heart? Do not my years fly by faster than a weaver’s shuttle, and come to an end with no hope? For the destiny of man is but the worm—I despise it, for I shall not live forever. Let me be, for my days are but vanity, and, that being the case, what further evils can they give to me and what can they add to me if they desecrate my crown and bring my glory down to the ground, to the dust, where it will dwell forever?

[ . . . ] They have become attached to the habit of slandering fellow Jews to the government, and they have accorded advantage to wagging tongues—the more slander a person relates and the more he creates an abhorrent odor, the more praiseworthy he is! And they have approached the gentile authorities and have desecrated the holy name—Israel. Let Zion weep bitterly—ye mountains of majestic peaks—let neither dew nor rain fall upon you, nor may you enjoy fields of bounty, for it is there that the shields of the mighty ones were rejected, anointed with poison! The sound of the cry and the tears of those who are oppressed, who have no one to comfort them, may readily be heard. In order that later generations may be aware of the things that have befallen us, and what the present generation had seen concerning this and what actually took place, from the mouths of the sages of the generation, the perfect ones—may saviors ascend Mount Zion, namely the gates which are distinguished in mastery of halakhah, to judge and to deliver those forsaken and ostracized such as ourselves—I said: “Let me approach the task concisely, providing mere chapter headings, and without leaving any space between the folds, and clarifying the manner in which they transgressed the covenant of the Torah and the laws.”

[ . . . ] It is now five years since I left the Holy Community of Metz for the Holy Communities of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek here, for the sake of Torah and divine testimony. I was at ease, but the Almighty broke me in pieces; for these five years during which there has been no silence—and silence, which is appropriate for the wise, is all the more so for the foolish! I perceived a powerful conspiracy against me, involving both stronger and feebler opponents. I dwelt with those who inhabit the tents of Kedar and the tents of Cushan in the wilderness of falsehood, and several individuals, both from here and from there—Metz—dealt craftily with me; they hatched a conspiracy, saying: “Let us dig a pit for him with traps to ensnare the wise with guile.” They found a pretext, in that I am in the habit of writing out amulets for the afflicted ones among my friends who tremble in terror on account of evil spirits and within whom erring spirits, or things of a comparable nature, reside, in accordance with the tradition received by me. I stitched together an amulet that would work for them. They were able to identify them as emanating from my hand, writing, as I did, in an incomplete manner, albeit with craftsmanship in the square Hebrew script—that employed for writing Torah scrolls, phylacteries, and mezuzot. They opened up the amulets and discovered within them unknown words and divine names—albeit they are not well acquainted with them or with their names. They arrived, and thought to say: “Here is an opportunity for us to make allegations against him.” Accordingly they interpreted the amulets as one interprets dreams; that is to say, with many vain words—like getting an elephant to go through the eye of a needle—and they smoothed their tongues by drawing distinctions and separations of words, with deliberate confusion of expressions, with a simple alef-bet and an alef-bet based upon the Atbash system;² they held me to be an abomination; they had no delight in me; they profaned my name, and they made the letters alef, yod, kaf respectively read bet, kaf, resh, and alef, lamed read bet, mem, by recourse to a secret code in which substituted letters [i.e., those next in the Hebrew alphabet] are employed; and they took the words contained in the amulets and, by means of their magic spells, ordered that a rod of strength be turned into a serpent—one letter was to be read as part of a simple alef-bet while another was to be read as forming part of the alef-bet of the Atbash system, or as one of the remaining alef-bet systems mentioned above—and, on occasion, the entire word was to be read as part of the simple alef-bet, or alternatively, as part of the alef-bet of the Atbash system, in accordance with the way in which the word in question could be compatible with their views and the evil intent that they had devised. And sometimes they omitted letters, and on occasion, added extra ones, but their omissions were the very opposite of being effected out of love for me—it was only in order to bring their design to fruition. They subtracted from the text, they added and arbitrarily expounded the meaning of the amulets to their own advantage, without following any systematic order and mode of writing—on one occasion they would expound the first letter and on another, the second, and on yet a third occasion, the final letter of a word and sometimes the entire word on the basis of the simple alef-bet system. There was no logical basis to their “teaching,” and their case against me was very weak. They took no care over all that they said, but rather employed for their purposes anything that was agreeable to their designs. They chose work of deceit, and the lot they had picked came up in their left hand—for Azazel! And they removed words from their aura of sanctity, and Shabetai Tsevi—may his name and his memory be blotted out—passed in front of them and the divine names contained within the amulets would be exchanged—they would depart from their sacred position within the text. They would treat phrases intended as requests to the Almighty as nothing other than supplications taken from Jews who were a band of traitors, the oppressive fruit of the uncircumcised, Shabetai Tsevi—may his name and his memory be blotted out—and they converted that which was pure into that which was impure. [ . . . ]

Below Is Reproduced a Copy of the Record Book of the Ḥevrah Kadisha [Burial Society]

At the mandate of the distinguished heads, the trustees of the Holy Burial Society—may they enjoy long life—this document is tendered by way of proof of the fact that we have seen the original record book and what has been inscribed in it by the trustees in their actual handwriting: all those who have gone to the world-to-come—on what day, and in which month and in which year this occurred. May the Almighty, in His mercy, heal the breaches of His people Israel! We have seen that it has been recorded in authentic handwriting, that from Tammuz 5509 to the end of Elul 5510—for our many sins—sixteen deaths occurred among women in childbirth, and from Tishri 5511, the time when the Holy Master, the Illustrious One, our Teacher, Rabbi Jonathan—may the All-Merciful preserve and redeem him—Head of the ecclesiastical court and spiritual leader of the Holy Communities of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek, arrived here, until Tishri 5512 only three women died in childbirth.³ May the Almighty say to the Angel of Death: “Stay your hand!” And by way of formal confirmation of the above, we have duly set our seals this New Moon of Tammuz 5515—the insignificant Meir Gerlitz Hofen, sexton of the Holy Burial Society—long may it live:

The insignificant Joseph, son of Rabbi Ber Ḥazan, sexton of the Holy Burial Society—may his Rock and Redeemer preserve them.