Father Chmielowski visits Rabbi Elisha Shorr to borrow a Jewish book, encountering the hidden world of Jewish learning in Rohatyn.

Yente swallows Elisha Shorr's magical charm at the wedding and sinks into an endless coma-like sleep.

Nahman begins secretly recording Jacob's teachings in writing during their travels together in the Ottoman Empire.

Jacob marries Hana after Nahman and Mordechai arrange the match with her father Tovah in Smyrna.

Jacob is smuggled back into Poland past plague quarantine and begins preaching his combined faith of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Gershon Nahmanowicz witnesses Jacob's heretical ceremony at the Shorr home and summons armed authorities, leading to Jacob's arrest.

The rabbinical council formally excommunicates Jacob and declares him cast out of the Jewish community.

Nahman, Shlomo Shorr, and Jacob meet with Bishop Dembowski, bribing him with gems to support their conversion to Christianity.

Bishop Dembowski suffers a stroke and dies at a celebratory dinner before he can formalize his arrangement with Jacob.

Jacob and his followers are baptized as Christians in a mass public ceremony.

Jacob is arrested and imprisoned in a monastery for heresy after church authorities expose his conversion as insincere.

Russian troops besiege the monastery and General Bibikov grants Jacob official permission to leave Poland.

Jacob and Eva are invited to the imperial court, but the emperor refuses to grant Jacob land or formal patronage.

Jacob dies heavily in debt in Offenbach, leaving Eva to manage the community's collapsing finances and unpaid staff.

Yente watches from her cave as Jacob's skull becomes a museum artifact repurposed to justify antisemitic theories.

The story begins in the Jewish and Christian communities of eighteenth-century Poland, where a charismatic young man named Jacob begins gathering followers who believe he is the Messiah. After traveling through the Ottoman Empire and smuggling himself back into Poland, Jacob attempts to win the protection of the Catholic Church by offering a mass conversion of his Jewish followers. The church initially exploits this offer but quickly turns on Jacob, imprisoning him for heresy in a monastery where he spends thirteen years. After Russian troops free him, Jacob moves to the imperial court in hopes of winning the emperor's formal support, but this too ends in failure. He dies deeply in debt in Offenbach, and his legacy dwindles until even his skull becomes a forgotten artifact.

Jacob Frank's rise, persecution, and death as a failed Messiah.

Bishop Soltyk accumulates crippling gambling debts and sells his decorative bishop's cross to Jewish moneylenders to cover them.

Soltyk leads a violent pogrom against Jewish people in Zytomierz and brags about it in a letter to church authorities.

Katarzyna Kossakowska falls ill during her journey and is treated by the Jewish doctor Asher Rubin in Rohatyn.

Father Chmielowski and Elzbieta Druzbacka begin a long written correspondence about writing, language, and their personal lives.

Nahman visits Elisha Shorr to speak glowingly about Jacob, and Shorr encourages Nahman to bring Jacob to Rohatyn.

Moliwda meets Jacob in Craiova for the first time and is immediately captivated by Jacob's charisma and gift for storytelling.

Jacob's returning followers establish the communal village of Ivanie, organizing shared labor and property under Jacob's teachings.

The first disputation under Bishop Dembowski results in Talmud books being ordered burned and violent attacks on the Jewish community.

A plague ravages the newly baptized Contra-Talmudists in Lwow, and Asher Rubin attempts to contain the epidemic.

Katarzyna Kossakowska arranges for Hana to be reunited with Jacob at the monastery, where Hana soon becomes pregnant.

Hana dies near the monastery during the long Russian siege and is buried in a cave.

Eva becomes pregnant by Emperor Joseph II and Jacob sends medicine from Offenbach to secretly terminate the pregnancy.

Empress Maria Theresa dies and Jacob's lingering hope for sustained imperial backing permanently disappears.

Jacob discovers that Thomas has unilaterally declared himself his spiritual successor, beats him, and orders him imprisoned.

Nahman dies a year after Jacob, his painstakingly composed accounts of Jacob's life eventually scattered and lost to history.

While Jacob dominates the novel's center, the world surrounding him is equally rich with events that shape the story's outcome. Bishop Soltyk's gambling debts make him a tool easily manipulated by those who need church approval, and his violent pogrom in Zytomierz illustrates the brutal backdrop against which Jacob's followers seek protection. Secondary characters such as Father Chmielowski, Asher Rubin, Moliwda, and Katarzyna Kossakowska each navigate their own arcs while orbiting Jacob's gravitational pull. The communal village of Ivanie, the plague that follows the mass baptism, and the slow dissolution of Jacob's court in Offenbach all reveal the human cost of following a self-declared Messiah. These events fill in the texture of the novel's world and show how Jacob's ambitions ripple outward to touch everyone around him.

The world surrounding Jacob — politics, persecution, and the lives he shaped.

Elisha Shorr discovers Yente has swallowed his magic charm and tells Hayah in a panic, realizing the old woman will not die.

Asher Rubin dismisses Yente's condition as a coma, and her grandson Israel places her body on a cart and takes her home.

During a terrifying sea crossing, Jacob goads a frightened Nahman into swearing before God that he will never leave Jacob's side.

Jacob has a prophetic dream that he must travel to Poland, and the group departs from Smyrna.

Jacob and a group of thirteen followers formally convert to Islam in Giurgiu to secure legal protection from the Ottoman Empire.

Moliwda negotiates safe conduct back to Poland for Jacob's followers by paying enough to redeem Bishop Soltyk's pawned bishop's insignia.

Jacob's followers hold a tense vote and agree to accept baptism into Christianity, despite fierce objections from Krysa.

The Contra-Talmudists falsely testify about Jewish blood libel practices at the second disputation, betraying their former community.

Jacob is interrogated by church authorities about his beliefs, and Moliwda is forced under threat to write a betrayal of Jacob in writing.

Nahman convinces himself that Jacob's monastery imprisonment is a necessary fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy he recorded.

Hayah prophesies that the King of Poland will die and that Jacob will be freed by his own enemies before escaping south to a castle.

Before his delegation departs for Russia, Jacob orders Nahman and the others to sleep with Hana in order to bind them to him as brothers.

Thomas proposes producing fake miraculous medicines through alchemy and selling them to help cover Jacob's mounting debts.

Jacob's finances in Offenbach collapse completely and he is forced to sell his lavish possessions and dismiss most of his household staff.

Gitla dies on the same day as Jacob, her modest life alongside Asher Rubin offering a quiet rebuke to Jacob's grandiose failure.

Beneath the headline events of Jacob's life lies a series of smaller but decisive turning points that quietly determine the story's outcome. From the discovery that Yente cannot die to the terrifying sea crossing where Nahman swears eternal loyalty, these moments reveal the emotional and spiritual machinery driving each character. Jacob's conversions to Islam and then Christianity are calculated gambles, and the blood libel testimony at the disputation shows the moral cost his followers willingly pay for safety. Betrayals, prophecies, and acts of desperation accumulate until Jacob's finances and authority crumble in Offenbach. The pool closes with Gitla's quiet death on the same day as Jacob, a final revelation that a modest, honest life outlasted the spectacle of a failed Messiah.