The Books of Jacob

Jacob is the central figure in The Books of Jacob and, despite the book’s length, he remains an inscrutable figure. Unlike the depictions of many of the other characters, the narrative never pauses to view events from his perspective. He has no first-person interjections, nor does the third-person narrator ever portray events directly from Jacob’s perspective. The result of this is that, even though he is the most prominent character in the story, Jacob’s true motivations and beliefs remain deliberately obscured.

The crux of this obfuscation is the question of whether or not Jacob truly believes himself to be the Messiah. Throughout the novel, his sincerity is questioned by other characters. Moliwda and other powerful Christians dismiss his Messianic claims as a scheme or a fraud perpetrated on the Jewish people. Traditional Jews insist that he is a heretic—sincere in his beliefs, but still incorrect. Jacob‘s followers agree that he is sincere, but they claim that this sincerity is because Jacob is truly the Messiah. Jacob never answers this question. In a material sense, he benefits financially from his claims. He makes a huge sum of money and lives like an aristocrat thanks to the generous donations from his followers, who believe that their money will allow Jacob to lead them to salvation in a way that never materializes. Whenever he arrives in a new place, his first instinct is to establish his patronage network and ensure that the money continues to flow. Jacob and his family become incredibly wealthy and deliver very little in terms of salvation, suggesting that Jacob is aware of the fraudulent nature of his scheme. Throughout this time, however, Jacob never publicly or privately disabuses anyone of the notion that he is the Messiah. If he is committing a fraud, then he needs people to believe that he is sincere.

Jacob may actually believe himself to be the Messiah. There are parts in the novel where his conviction seems unshakeable, and his charisma is undeniable. He spends 13 years locked inside a monastery prison and, throughout this time, he refuses to abandon his belief that he is the Messiah. Over the course of his life, his story rarely changes. If he is acting a part, then he never allows his audience to see anything other than the character he has created. The credibility of his claims often relies on the perspective from which his behavior is observed. When described in Nahman‘s reverential tones, everything Jacob does is pious, devoted, and with the best of intentions at heart. When Jacob is described by Christian or Jewish sources, his heretical ways are more pronounced. The ceremonies and rituals which Jacob invents seem designed to satiate his lust and desires. He abandons traditional ideas of sex, but in such a way that allows him to have sex with any young woman he desires. Nahman portrays this licentious behavior as a Messianic form of iconoclasm whereas the authorities condemn Jacob as a heretical liar.

The contrast may provide the best insight into Jacob: His true character is a mirror, reflecting back whoever looks at him and revealing whatever it is they wish to see. When the devout Nahman looks at Jacob, he sees a devout man. When the habitual liar Moliwda looks at Jacob, he sees another liar. When the scheming church authorities look at Jacob, they see a man perpetuating a scheme. The obfuscation of Jacob in a narrative sense extends this idea. The audience can see in Jacob exactly what they want to see, with enough evidence from enough sources to justify any perspective.

Moliwda has a complicated relationship with the truth. In this respect, he is very similar to Jacob. While Jacob keeps his true motivations hidden, Moliwda cloaks his own truth in an overwhelming number of lies. He tells so many stories—which he swears to be true—that people end up charmed by his obvious tendency to lie.

Similarly, Moliwda functions as an inverse of Jacob due to their vastly different backgrounds. Moliwda comes from an aristocratic Christian family, but he rejected his formal education and ran away from home, preferring to live like an adventurer and lose himself in the various stories that he loves to tell. Jacob is from a far more impoverished Jewish family; he lacks the social status and the opportunities that Moliwda rejected at will. While both men are from very different backgrounds, they form an immediate understanding because they recognize in each other the complicated relationship with the truth. They empathize with one another, even if demographically they could not be more different.

Moliwda can be understood through his tendency to exaggerate his stories. The tall tales that he tells are charming and entertaining; this is his way of penetrating high society and securing meetings with important people. He teaches himself many languages, but the most important language he learns is exaggeration. He knows how and when to over-emphasize certain aspects of his story so as to appeal to certain audiences. This is what fascinates Moliwda about Jacob. In Jacob, Moliwda recognizes a similar tendency. When Jacob is preaching or delivering sermons, he stretches the fundamental religious truths to suit his audience. Moliwda admits that he always suspected that Jacob was a conman. He never believed that Jacob was the Messiah, but he helped the Contra-Talmudists as much as he possibly could. His motivation is something akin to professional respect. He is fascinated by Jacob because he sees too much of himself in Jacob. For Moliwda, the relationship with Jacob is far from religious in terms of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Instead, Moliwda has an almost devotional relationship with fiction and stories: In this respect, Jacob is a kind of secular Messiah, a man who can bring about salvation through the telling of a story.

However, Moliwda’s professional respect for Jacob can only go so far. When his life is threatened and he is forced to confess about Jacob’s transgressions, Moliwda begins to doubt himself. He is no longer certain that Jacob is as self-aware as he perceived him to be. Moliwda loses faith in Jacob and stops working for the Contra-Talmudists because he is afraid that Jacob has come to believe his own lies. Moliwda relies on self-awareness to guide him through the rocky waters of his own fiction. In Jacob, he begins to see a man who has become drunk on his own storytelling. If Moliwda is drawn to Jacob because he respects Jacob’s skills as a liar or an exaggerator, he abandons Jacob because he fears that Jacob has lost the ability to differentiate between his stories and reality.