Authors: Kenneth Wishnia
Just then a man stepped away from the shadows behind a row of long winter cloaks hanging on their pegs. I recognized him as one of the young mystics in Rabbi Loew’s inner circle. His name was Yankev ben Khayim, and he wore the plain black robes of a student.
“Aha, you enter without knocking,” he said. “That shows you are more interested in the World-to-Come than in this world.”
I had gone in and out several times that morning, and had kissed the mezuzah each time. But I didn’t think it mattered if I knocked on the open door.
“Are you like the
tsadek
who was so pious that he never noticed that his wife was missing a thumb? Unaware of the mystical meaning of your gesture?”
“Yes, that must be it,” I said.
“Ah, you admit your ignorance. That is a good start. Teach your tongue to say ‘I do not know’ instead of inventing some falsehood.”
I said, “Brukhes, folio four A. I’m glad to meet another Talmud scholar, but right now I need to talk to the rabbi.”
“
Brukhes
? Oh, you mean
Brokhes
. It’s hard to understand you with that
poylish
accent. Your lack of intellectual conviction tells me that you need to study the wisdom of the
Khokhmas Hanister
with us.”
He meant the Kabbalah. I needed to start forging some alliances against the forces gathering around us, so I chose my words carefully.
“You’re right about that, my friend. I don’t always get the answers I want from the Talmud, and it’s also true that I mustn’t miss out on this rare opportunity to study the hidden wisdom with the great Maharal. But right now I’ve got to talk to the rabbi about a completely different situation.”
“Something more important than the healing of God’s creation through mystical communion with His endless spirit?”
“This is more in the realm of the
practical
Kabbalah.”
“All the more reason why you should never act without thinking.”
“Right. Sometimes I act without thinking. That’s why I need to talk to the rabbi.”
I was about to push open the door to the rabbi’s study when I remembered how different these city folk are from the
shtetl
Jews. In Slonim, the tiny cottages huddled together under the big, empty sky in a valiant effort to keep their dreadful loneliness at bay. In
Prague
, five families might share a two-room apartment, but each family’s property lines were rigidly delineated. If that’s what it took for the highest concentration of Jews in the European Diaspora to live together without trampling on each other, so be it. Space had a different meaning here.
So I knocked.
“Who is it?” a voice said, stiffly.
“Benyamin Ben-Akiva.”
“Who?” Still no softening of tone.
“I’m the assistant shammes at the Klaus Shul.”
“What do you want?”
I pressed down on the curved iron handle and opened the door.
Three men sat around the rabbi’s table, scrutinizing the same passage in a set of Hebrew books bound in plain brown leather. I recognized Isaac Ha-Kohen, the rabbi’s son-in-law, but I didn’t know the other two, a roly-poly man who was clearly another rabbi, and a young student who appeared to be about thirteen. Two more chairs sat empty.
“Where’s Rabbi Loew?”
“Close the door,” said Isaac Ha-Kohen.
“Yes, the women are dusting and it’s quite a mess,” said Yankev ben Khayim, slipping past me to take his place at the table.
I stepped inside the study room and closed the door.
Two rooms away, Hanneh the cook demanded water from the well. Girlish footsteps clattered down the back hall to the courtyard.
Isaac Ha-Kohen reached for a cup of water and struck it sharply with his fingernail to frighten away the invisible spirits gathered on the rim so he wouldn’t swallow them as he took a drink, God forbid. I waited for him to take a sip and wipe his mouth with a fine white napkin before I spoke again.
“Pardon me, O esteemed Rabbi Ha-Kohen. Can you please tell me where I can find our teacher Rabbi Loew?”
“The High Rabbi cannot be interrupted,” said Isaac Ha-Kohen.
Two non-answers in a row. I took one more stab at being polite.
“How soon can I speak with him?”
“Rabbi Loew does not give audience during the morning study session.”
“Maybe we’d better let him decide that.”
Isaac Ha-Kohen looked up from his book as if I had burst into the study room with a team of filthy and incontinent mules. He looked me over, weighed my worth and value in an instant, and went back to the text before his eyes.
I stepped closer and peered at the pages the young teen was studying. It was the
Gvuroys Hashem
, The Powers of the Holy Name, Rabbi Loew’s commentary on the Haggadah, published anonymously in
Poland
to avoid reprisals from the old-shul rabbis for his biting attacks on their rank and privileges. The copies were already battered and frayed, as if they had been smuggled into the country in a barrel of chestnuts.
I skimmed over the discussion of
Shmoys
, Names, the Book of Moses that the Christians call Exodus, until my eyes fell on the rabbi’s analysis of two key Biblical phrases. According to the Maharal, the first phrase, “they
worked
Israel with rigorous labor,” refers only to physical enslavement, but the second, “they
embittered
their lives,” suggests a different level of meaning entirely—that slavery ate at their souls, until the Israelites ended up internalizing their con dition and believing that they
deserved
to be slaves, a much more insidious form of servility that was passed from one generation to the next like a bad case of smallpox.
The words struck a chord deep within me, as if Rabbi Loew had looked directly into my soul and plucked it like a string. Somehow I had always known the truth of this observation, because the lesson applied to me as well. I, too, had once believed in the inevitability of my place on the bottom rung of the social ladder in this world, but no one had ever explained it so succinctly. And it played a central role in the festival of Pesach—the idea that every Jew in every generation must regard himself as having
personally
made the exodus out of
Egypt
. The hardest part was shedding that inbred slave-like mentality.
Right. Then comes the “easy” part: wandering in the wilderness for forty years, looking for a place to call home.
In any case, a rabbi capable of such insight clearly deserved every bit of his storied reputation.
And I sure felt like a fool when it finally dawned on me why no one would tell me where the rabbi was. He was, you should pardon the expression, in the
beys ha-kises
. The house of thrones.
I wondered how long I’d have to wait for the great rabbi. The sages in the Talmud say, “Who prolongs his stay in a privy lengthens his days and years.” But Rabbi Loew wasn’t the staunchest Talmudist, and I wasn’t sure where the Kabbalists stood on the issue.
I asked the boy, “Can you tell me something? What exactly is a daler?”
“You mean a Reichsthaler? It’s a huge piece of silver. Worth a week’s pay to a skilled craftsman.”
“Or a month’s pay to a
shleper
like you,” said Isaac Ha-Kohen, without looking up.
The rabbi next to Ha-Kohen shook his head and
tsk-tsk
ed his neighbor’s unnecessary comment, and told us that the leading artists and scientists in
keyser
Rudolf’s court made as much as three thousand dalers a year. I looked into the other man’s face and held on it, until I remembered the face thinner, the beard shorter and darker.
“Rabbi Dovid Gans?”
“You know each other?” said Rabbi Ha-Kohen.
I said, “We studied under Rabbi Moyshe Isserles, may his name be a light unto nations.”
Rabbi Gans laid down his book and squinted at me. Then his eyes brightened. “My God, it
is
you. I see you’ve gone a little gray since your days with the
fraydenkers
.”
And you’ve put on about fifty pounds,
I thought. “What can I say? We were just kids back then.”
“Like our young prodigy, master Yontef Lipmann here.”
I looked at the thirteen-year-old boy.
“No, I was more like his age,” I said, indicating Yankev ben Khayim, who sat before an open book, absently stroking his wispy teenage beard.
“If you were a student of Isserles, you must have showed promise,” said Isaac Ha-Kohen. “How come I haven’t heard of you?”
“Because the angels who sing my praises do it beyond the range of normal hearing.”
Ha-Kohen sat frozen a moment, as the back door creaked open, and measured footsteps trod the length of the back corridor. Blue-veined fingers drew back the curtain and the great Rabbi Loew entered the room rattling a jar of almonds in his left hand. He was in his late seventies (some say his early eighties), with a full white beard. He wore two layers of heavy black robes under an academic gown with a black rabbit’s fur collar, and a soft octagonal hat with thick silver threads radiating from the center, dividing it into eight slices like a velvet pie. His shaky hands displayed all the frailties of age, but his eagle’s glare declared to all within range that his eyes were still sharp and his mind was still quick. All the Jews in the city knew of his commanding presence, his
yikhes
, his stature. Even his enemies respected his opinions, feared his tongue, and called him the
MaHaRal mi-Prag
, Our Teacher and Master Rabbi Loew of
Prague
. He was said to be descended from King David.
I spoke: “Most venerated High Rabbi Yehudah ben Betzalel—”
“Just call me ‘Rabbi,’” said the master.
“Yes, of course, Rabbi—”
“Where were you during the
Amidah,
Benyamin Ben-Akiva? Poor Avrom Khayim had to cover both services, running between the Klaus and the Old-New Shuls. He’s getting too old for that.”
I did my best to explain the situation without running out of breath.
Dishes clattered in the kitchen as the everyday plates were put away and the special kosher-for-Pesach set was brought out.
Rabbi Gans groaned
“Oy, gvalt!”
and covered his ears and rocked from side to side as if he were hearing of an earthquake, a flood, a punishing deluge of fire and hailstones.
Rabbi Isaac’s shoulders slumped forward as if a piece of the heavens had just landed on them.
Rabbi Loew grabbed a fistful of his robe and yanked at it until he split the seam and ripped out a good six inches.
Yankev ben Khayim clutched at his own robe and worked at it till he tore a piece loose.
Rabbi Loew lowered his head and said,
“Borukh dayan ha-emes.”
Blessed is the true Judge.
Yankev ben Khayim did the same, imitating his master in every detail like a true disciple.
Rabbi Loew said, “Listen to me, Rabbi Gans. I need you to gather sheets of parchment, take up your quill, and begin a chronicle of these events.”
“Why is that so important now, Rabbi?” asked young Lipmann.
Rabbi Loew said, “Who do you want to write this story—the Christians?”