The Fifth Servant (72 page)

           
Shabbes
—Sabbath Day; Saturday.

           
shakhres
—morning prayer services.

           
sh’khineh
—the emanation of God’s presence in the world, traditionally given a female shape or essence; similar in some ways to the Christian Holy Spirit.

           
Sh’ma
—prayer of faith in one God, consisting of passages from Deuteronomy and Numbers.

           
Shmoys
—
Names
, Hebrew name for the Book of Exodus.

           
shikseh
—a Christian woman.

           
shmaltz
—chicken fat.

           
shoykhet
—ritual (kosher) slaughterer.

           
shrayber
—writer; also used more derogatorily: scribbler.

           
shtetl
—small city or town.

           
shulklaper
—a person who goes around banging on doors and windows to announce that it’s time to go to the synagogue services.

           
Staré M
sto
—(Czech) Old Town.

           
tallis
—prayer shawl.

           
talmid
—student.

           
Talmud
—expansion and commentary on the Mishnah, written down in the fifth to sixth centuries C.E. The longer Babylonian Talmud is better known and generally considered to be more authoritative than the Jerusalem (Palestinian) Talmud.

           
tateleh
—father dear.

           
Tehillim
—
Praises
, Hebrew name for The Book of Psalms.

           
tfiles
—prayers.

           
toyu vo-boyhu
—lit. “without form and void,” the description of the earth in Genesis 1.2.; general chaos.

           
Torah
—lit. the five books of Moses (the first five books of the Bible); used figuratively to refer to all Jewish religious study.

           
treyf
—non-kosher.

           
tsadek
—Hebrew letter
for the sound “ts” also, a righteous or wise man (pl. tsadikim).

           
tsures
—trouble.

           
vey iz mir
—lit. “woe is me” often used with “Oy.”

           
vi a toytn bankes
—lit. “like cupping a dead man,” i.e., applying suction cups to a corpse to improve circulation, etc.; a worthless or pointless activity.

           
yeshiva
—school for advanced Jewish education.

           
Yidngas
—Jewish street; Jewish neighborhood in a small town.

           
Yidnshtot
—Jewish Town; Jewish neighborhood in a big city, specifically the name given to the Prague ghetto.

           
yikhes
—stature; respect due to someone because of their stature, usually as a scholar.

           
zogerke
—female speaker.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

           
I normally thank three people: my agent, my editor, and my wife for putting up with me.

           
But everything about this massive project has been at least five times harder than my previous work, and the acknowledgments are no exception. A
lot
of people helped bring this one to fruition. But the places of honor go to:

           
S.J. Rozan
and
Linda Landrigan

           
[Typesetter: please highlight these names with actual
working
neon tubes (if practical).]

           
These fabulous women gave their time and expertise, reading early drafts and giving me crucial advice and confidence, as well as helping me find the main character’s center. Their place in heaven is assured (with an unobstructed view, not too near the choir).

           
Special thanks are also due to Dr. Robert Goldenberg, Professor of History and Judaic Studies at SUNY Stony Brook, and to Dr. Robert Hoberman, Professor of Linguistics and Judaic and Middle Eastern Studies at SUNY Stony Brook, whose comments prevented me from making several errors. Of course, I also took fictional liberties with a few well-known historical details in order to fit them into the story: Rabbi Loew’s famous visit to Rudolf II’s castle reportedly took place in February, not March; the name Our Lady of Terezín is a deliberate anachronism (the actual place name dates from the eighteenth century), as is the figure of Langweil (the real Antonín Langweil lived from 1791–1837, and he spent
eight years
building his model of Prague); also, the “Slonimer Rebbe” referred to in this story is not
the
Slonimer Rebbe, who is a much later figure (Rabbi Zvi Yosef Resnick, 1841–1912).

           
Other outside readers include my father Arnold, who spotted a couple of errors that only a scientist would spot, and my brother Steve, for his perspective and for his sociopolitical contributions, without which this book would have been a lot harder to write. Thanks to Laura Leis and Emily Krump at Morrow Books for their bright-eyed assistance with the midwifery of this book. Thanks also to Barbara D’Amato for her early support of this project.

           
Thanks to the members of the Faculty Association of Suffolk Community College/NYSUT-AFT Local 3038 and all my colleagues and superiors at SCCC for their support and for guiding me through the promotion and sabbatical application process, which was necessary for my sanity and went a long way toward making this book a reality, including Sarah Mackey Acunzo, Marie Hannah, Joseph Inners, Andrea Macari, Shaun McKay, Kevin Peterman, Rita Sakitt, Ellen Schuler Mauk, the infamous Prof. Dave Moriarty (“the Napoleon of crime"), Sandra Susman Palmer, Elaine Preston, Jane Shearer, Doreen Wald, and the staff in the Office of Instruction: Denise, Julie, Marie, and Marilyn. Thanks also to my student Tom Jordan, for letting me use one of his lines, Dana Loewy for the Prague connection, Daniel Vendrell for the Latin lesson, Konrad Bieber for the German books, and Patrick Kelso for providing the Jewish/Christian calendar for the year 5352/1592.

           
Other notables include Michael and Mary Mart of the Good Times Bookstore for all the books over the years, including the hard-to-find large format facsimile of the
Prague Haggadah
; James M. Gannon, Deputy Chief of Investigations, Cold Case Unit, Morris County, NJ, for his interrogation techniques; Nancy K. Yost for her display of selflessness in recommending my current agent; Donald Maass for giving me some free advice; Prof. Sara Lipton for getting me started in the right direction; John Westermann for his early comments; Angel B. Peña for his support; Mick and Keith for “Back-street Girl” Eddie Sullivan and Matthew Hochman at IMS for handling the Macintosh computer troubles; and my own personal “rabbi,” Dr. Carolyn Schwartz, for all her useful advice and counsel.

           
I would also like to thank the staff at the Museum of the City of Prague, who were so helpful with information about Langweil’s model (except for one guy, who was kind of a prick, but that’s how it is everywhere. Why should Prague be any different?); Aaron Kornblum of the Western Jewish History Center at the Judas L. Magnes Museum, for finding the information about Eva Kohen Bacharach; Zachary Baker of Stanford University; and Elise Fischer, Brad Sabin Hill, Yeshaya Metal, Vital Zajka, the late, great Dina Abramowicz, and the rest of the staff at the YIVO Institute in New York for providing access to rare books, articles, and documents.

           
Any novel with a plot and subject matter this ambitious requires a great deal of research. For general background, and to help re-create the spirit and consciousness of another age, I have fictionalized information—ideas, facts, and quotes—from scholarly, religious, and historical sources found mainly in the following works:

           
Israel Abrahams,
Jewish Life in the Middle Ages
; George Alter,
Two Renaissance Astronomers: David Gans, Joseph Delmedigo
; Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark,
Witchcraft and Magic in Europe
; Karen Armstrong,
A History of God
; The Artscroll Mesorah Series,
Kaddish
;
Pesach
;
Shabbos
;
Shema Yisrael
; The Artscroll Tanakh Series,
Job
;
Jonah
; Hanan J. Ayalti,
Yiddish Proverbs
.

           
Salo Wittmayer Baron,
A Social and Religious History of the Jews
; Judith R. Baskin,
Women of the Word
; Katerina Becková,
Langweiluv Model Prahy
(1826–1834); David Berger, “From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions: Some New Approaches to Medieval Antisemitism” Michael R. Best & Frank H. Brightman,
The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus
; Hayim Nahman Bialik & Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky (William G. Braude, trans.),
The Book of Legends: Sefer Ha-Aggadah
; Abraham P. Bloch,
Day by Day in Jewish History
; R. Ben Zion Bokser,
From the World of the Cabbalah: The Philosophy of Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague
; Heinrich Bornkamm,
Luther and the Old Testament
; Lewis Browne, ed.,
The Wisdom of Israel
.

           
Elisheva Carlebach, “Between History and Hope: Jewish Messianism in Ashkenaz and Sepharad,” “Jewish-Christian Tension in Seventeenth-Century Prague: The Death of Simon Abeles,” and “Discipline and Deviance: Life in the Pre-Modern Jewish Community” Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Prioress’ Tale” Robert Chazan,
In the Year 1096
; John Robert Christianson,
On Tycho’s Island
; Abraham Cohen,
Everyman’s Talmud
; Mark R. Cohen, ed. and trans.,
The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi
:
Leon Modena’s
Life of Judah; Bernard Dov Cooperman, ed.,
Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century
; Petr ornej and Ji
i Pokorný,
A Brief History of the Czech Lands to 2000
.