When a young woman would come to his chambers for a blessing, my brother, Reb Breslov, was able to take one look at her and recognize at once if she was potential material for one of the eighteen boils destined to be attached to him for tikkun purposes. If she was married and arrived with a husband, he would inquire when she had last immersed herself in the ritual bath. Depending on the answer and other mystical factors known only to him, he would command the couple to abstain from intimate relations for a specified period of time based on his calculations, after which they would receive a visitation in the form of a child. He would then request that the husband leave the room and wait outside while he sanctified the wife. He would ask the woman to sit on his lap in his wheelchair, drawing the prayer shawl he always wore up over his head and down over hers, thereby creating a sacred space of seclusion as after the breaking of the glass at a wedding. Within this talit tent he would insert his hands under her clothing to check every part of her body for as long as necessary to certify if she was one of the eighteen buboes chosen to be attached to him, soothing her the entire time during this procedure with such words as, Take comfort, daughter, you have entered the world of nobility. If she passed this test, he would request that she take off her clothing and stand before him naked as he licked her entire body with his tongue; it was important for the sake of salvation not to miss a spot. If he found her worthy, he would then order her to undress him as well and help him from his chair so that he could lie down beside her on the daybed in his chamber, the two of them naked.

Nor was it necessary for the woman to be newly married; she could also be even younger, a virgin. For the purpose of carrying out his work of purification and deliverance and of averting another holocaust, as he informed the candidates, the essential point was that there always be eighteen females attached to him, married or virgins, since as might be expected, some fell away for one reason or another over the course of time, like scabs, there was always natural attrition, and replacements might be required. It was with one of these younger unmarried girls that he was lying one afternoon, when he turned and saw the face of a disciple pressed against the half-open window. As if no one had told him he was naked, with the innocence of Adam before the fall in the Garden of Eden, he slithered off the daybed and crawled on his belly to the window to confront the disciple perched on a ladder. “You have merited to see your master in the midst of performing the act of tikkun,” he said. He reached his powerful arm up from the floor and slammed the window shut, sending the ladder reeling backward as the disciple hung on to the ledge like a spider.