by Pete Hamill
“But what about Frankie McCarthy?” Michael said. “He did it.”
“If the police don’t get him,” she said, “God will.”
She poured two cups of tea.
“Open that window, Michael, will you?” she said. “I can’t stand the smell of a cigar.”
11
They called their meetings classes, and at the next few classes, Michael pressed Rabbi Hirsch to tell him about the mysterious man whose statue stood so dramatically in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague. The sixteenth-century rabbi called Judah Loew. The man who knew the secrets of the Kabbalah and gazed from the shadows like a wizard. Rabbi Hirsch put him off. He acted as if there were more important matters to discuss: the rules of baseball or the words for work or the names of former presidents. What was a base on balls and what did they mean by “blue collar” and how did you pronounce Coolidge? He made Michael feel that the story of Rabbi Loew would require more energy than Rabbi Hirsch could summon. Or that the story needed a certain kind of weather, or music, or mood.
And then one rainy afternoon, Rabbi Hirsch made some tea and, using some of the leather-bound books as references, began to tell the story. Michael soon felt as if he were in some drafty stone building in Ireland or Prague, with the rain pounding on the roof, and a fire in what the storybooks always called the hearth. The words flowed. Michael was swept away.
He was in Prague again, this time in the fearsome years of the sixteenth century, when Jews were in peril throughout Europe. Rabbi Loew was presiding over the Old-New Synagogue in the Jewish ghetto, then called the Fifth Quarter. Rabbi Loew was lean, serious, careful, kind to his wife and daughter, generous to the poor, living in a modest house with a small walled garden. Next door was the synagogue, where Rabbi Loew spent most of his time; if he wasn’t in the house of God he was in his study, surrounded by books. Everybody knew that Rabbi Loew had no interest in the riches of the world; if he needed some new volume to add to his knowledge, he would give up eating for a week to pay for it. And he was so respected in Prague that he was not restricted to the streets of the ghetto.
He was most respected, perhaps even feared, by Emperor Rudolf himself. Michael saw Rudolf in Hradany Castle, tall and wild-eyed like the actor John Carradine, moving among his strange collections of art, animals, and rare objects. Look: in the private zoo, a two-headed alligator, snakes with legs, a cow with tits on its back. And look: two nails from Noah’s Ark! And dirt from a place called Hebron where God made Adam in His own image! And the horn of a unicorn!
And there was Emperor Rudolf, his face covered with a white mask from Japan, clopping over cobblestones in a stagecoach through the foggy midnight streets of Prague. Going to see Rabbi Loew. To enter the book-lined study, where the rabbi closed the drapes and lit candles, and listened to the Emperor’s tales of woe: treacherous alchemists, spies sent by the greedy English, fighting on the borders with the Turks. The Emperor himself, listening to advice, nodding, embracing the wise rabbi, hurrying back to the fog-shrouded Castle.
But it wasn’t just Rabbi Loew’s wisdom that drew the Emperor to him. The rabbi possessed something else that the Emperor could not buy, could not collect, something that he wanted and feared.
Magic.
The magic of the Kabbalah.
Michael saw Rabbi Loew in his big green chair in the study, a fire burning low in the hearth, a sheet of paper on a book in his lap, a hand to his temple, his eyes closed, and knew that he was communicating with rabbis all over Europe. His hand held a feathery pen and began to move, and words appeared on the paper in a language nobody knew. The words told of planned campaigns against Jews, the kidnapping of Jewish women, of forced conversions and burnings at the stake. Rabbi Loew’s advice was sent out to Russia and Italy and Belgium, without a word being spoken, without Rabbi Loew even once opening his eyes. Magic.
And as if he were at a movie, Michael saw him displaying his other powers. There was, for example, the first time that the Emperor came to the rabbi’s house. A jealous associate of the rabbi, short, fat, greedy, sweating heavily on a winter day, forged an elaborate letter to the Emperor, inviting him to a formal banquet at the rabbi’s house. The clear intention was to embarrass Rabbi Loew, whose cramped and book-strewn quarters were fine for his family but obviously could not accommodate a formal dinner for a goddamned emperor. The Emperor sent word that he accepted. And Rabbi Loew understood that it could be very bad for the Jews if he canceled the invitation. So he turned to the Kabbalah.
Michael could see him in the study, consulting the magic alphabets, his face deep in concentration, murmuring words in a private language. And then on the evening of the so-called banquet, as Emperor Rudolf prepared to leave his castle in disguise, so that nobody in Prague would know where he was going, Rabbi Loew stepped outside and scanned the skies. There, visible only to him, a great flock of angels appeared, carrying an entire marble palace, lifted from a distant kingdom.
Angels. Hovering in the air. Wings beating. Muscles like cords and cables.
The angels set the palace upon an empty lot in the Jewish Quarter, and suddenly it could be seen by all.
Michael wandered through the banquet room of this palace, a vast space illuminated by ten thousand candles, and gazed at Rudolf’s intense face as he whispered with Rabbi Loew. Servants glided past Michael, carrying great platters of stuffed birds and thick steaks and soups in silver bowls, the air filled with the aroma of the feast. Michael listened to musicians play sad and melancholy music. He watched as jugglers and acrobats made the Emperor laugh. He saw the greedy assistant slink away into the night, surely never to return. The banquet was an astonishing success, and the Emperor returned to Hradany Castle in the early hours of the morning full of amazement and respect.
“Before the Emperor reaches his own castle,” Rabbi Hirsch said, “the angels, they carry the palace back to its original spot. Later, Rabbi Loew tells the Emperor about the angels and the tricky assistant that caused the problem and the Emperor says, ‘Rabbi, next time I come to your real house.’ And that’s what he did. But ever after, nobody can ever question this miracle. If they do, they are calling the Emperor a fool.”
Then, for the first time, the great villain named Brother Thaddeus appeared in the story. A big hulking man with no hair on his head and no beard and no eyebrows. As bald as Dr. Sivana in Captain Marvel or Lex Luthor in Superman. He was the greatest enemy of Rabbi Loew and the king of the Jewhaters. A lot of times, he told lies to stir up his followers. He was at his worst around Passover, spreading rumors that Jews killed Christian babies and mixed their blood with the unleavened bread called matzoh. Why? To start riots called pogroms, inciting mobs to kill or drive out the Jews, and take over their homes and shops. Rabbi Loew had to use all of his powers to foil him.
Michael was suddenly huddled in a doorway, as a mob marched on the Jewish Quarter, hurling stones at old men and young ladies, smashing windows, waving sharpened poles called pikes. Up the street, Brother Thaddeus smiled from a balcony. Then—Shazam!—the stones were changed in mid-flight into roses. Big, fat, white roses! Their petals dropping away like snowflakes! Brother Thaddeus frowned. His jaw dropped. He barked orders. The crazy people in the mob threw more rocks and stones, but they kept turning into roses, piling around Michael in the street as high as his waist. A group of young Jews appeared to face the mob. They bowed to the crazy people and thanked them for the flowers, while Rabbi Loew watched from the shadows of his study. Rabbi Loew did not smile.
Then, the scene shifted, and a second mob assembled in a square in the shadow of a cathedral, loading baskets with stones, sharpening knives, while Brother Thaddeus called on God to bless them. But the sky grew abruptly dark, lightning scribbled a warning, clouds burst across the city, and for more than an hour, dogs rained from the heavens. Thousands of them, landing softly on all four paws, barking and howling, their fangs bared. Brother Thaddeus rushed to the cathedral. His followers shivered in fear and cringed in fright, dropped their stones and
knives, and ran home. Michael was certain some gallant ancestor of Sticky had been there in the rain and the howling.
Rabbi Hirsch explained that through the magic of Kabbalah, Rabbi Loew could speak to all dogs and many birds, and they often came to him with warnings of the evil plots of Brother Thaddeus. That is how he learned of the planned revolution against Emperor Rudolf. Brother Thaddeus was telling his followers that the Emperor had gone mad and must be overthrown. They were storing arms, preparing for the day.
Late one night, while Michael watched, Rabbi Loew wrote a long, detailed letter to the Emperor, warning him of the great trouble that was brewing and asking him to protect the Jewish Quarter. He sealed the letter with wax and asked Michael to deliver it to the Castle. After all, Michael was a Shabbos goy. Nobody would stop him on the streets beyond the ghetto. The boy took the letter and slipped into the Prague night, through narrow alleys, where buildings leaned at strange angles and rats scurried in the dark. He hugged the shadowy walls of deserted squares, crossed the river into Mala Strana, and then began climbing climbing climbing to the walls of the Castle. When he came close, six guards appeared, their faces masked by iron visors, holding lances and giant axes. Growling and nasty, they yanked the letter from his hands and told him to go home. From the walls of the Castle he could see fires burning in the mountains. One guard laughed and said that these were happy fires. They are sending Jews to Hell, he said.
Michael reported this to Rabbi Loew, but a raven had already delivered the news. All over the kingdom, Jews found outside the ghetto were being killed. Next, the Jew-killers would breach the walls of the Jewish Quarter itself. We will wait three days, the rabbi told Michael, and then we will be forced to do something drastic.
Three days passed. More Jews were killed. There was no word from Rudolf. And then Rabbi Loew took his drastic action.
He decided to make the Golem.
“The what?” Michael asked, in the synagogue in Brooklyn.
“The Golem,” Rabbi Hirsch answered. “The word, it means in dictionary English, like a robot. But the English word, you know, is not really true. Not good enough. Not right. To Rabbi Loew, the Golem has another meaning.”
The story of the Golem had really started a year earlier, when Rabbi Loew made a night visit to Emperor Rudolf in the Castle. Among the Emperor’s collection of thousands of artifacts was a heavy silver spoon, almost eighteen inches long, with Hebrew letters engraved upon the handle. The Emperor asked Rabbi Loew for a translation. Rabbi Loew was astounded at what he saw, but gave Rudolf an incomplete version of the words. He didn’t lie. He just didn’t tell Rudolf all the words. For a good reason: he was afraid of what they said.
The object was laid aside, as the Emperor turned in excitement to show Rabbi Loew a monkey that could play the clavichord and then a portrait of the Virgin Mary that wept real tears. But when the evening was over, the Emperor presented the silver spoon to Rabbi Loew as a gift.
“He says, take it home, use it for soup,” Rabbi Hirsch said. “Rabbi Loew takes it home. He doesn’t make soup.”
All the way home through the foggy streets, Rabbi Loew’s heart thumped with excitement. He knew that he had been given the silver spoon that was mentioned in the Book of Creation. With this spoon, he could shape a man from mud. And by saying the correct words from the Kabbalah, he could bring the mud to life.
That is, through the wisdom of God, he could make the Golem.
The Golem, that huge creature whispered about in secret books and hinted at in the Book of Psalms.
The Golem, who could not be destroyed.
The Golem, who was obliged to do whatever the Jews asked him to do.
“It’s like Frankenstein,” Michael said in a hushed voice. “You know, the movie? Frankenstein, with Boris Karloff?”
“I have not seen this movie,” Rabbi Hirsch said.
Michael told him about the movie starring Boris Karloff as the monster who was created from the parts of dead bodies by Dr. Frankenstein. It played every year at the Venus.
“The Golem,” Rabbi Hirsch said, “was not a movie.”
He talked then about how Rabbi Loew fasted and prayed for three days, purifying his body and his soul. Then one moonless midnight, accompanied by two young and pure assistants, he slipped out of the ghetto through a secret passage. Michael saw him carrying the silver spoon. He noticed that under his coat, Rabbi Loew was dressed completely in white. The three men made their way to the banks of the Vltava. Sweating in silence, they began to shape the body of a man from the pure mud of the riverbank.
Then Michael saw Rabbi Loew take from his jacket a piece of parchment upon which he had written certain words in Hebrew. Letters only he understood. This was called a shem. It included the secret name of God. He inserted the shem in the Golem’s mouth and leaned close to his ear and whispered a secret prayer. With the tip of a pointed tool, he etched a word in the Golem’s brow, a word that Michael could not read. Then Rabbi Loew removed the shem and he and his assistants danced in a circle, moving one way and then another, chanting seven times the secret name of God. Michael could not understand the words.
But slowly, after the mud first turned very red, as if it were baking, and then cooled in a mysterious wind, the Golem rose from the riverbank.
Alive.
“The Golem, he’s almost seven feet tall, his skin is the color of the clay,” Rabbi Hirsch whispered. “He stands up naked on the riverbank and then one of the assistants gives to him a robe. They find out he can’t speak, the Golem, but his eyes, and what he does, tell them he understands everything.”
“Did he understand Yiddish?”
“Of course. And Hebrew. And German. And Czech, and maybe a little Greek too. He understands what he has to understand.”
Shazam!
“It’s like Captain Marvel,” Michael said.
“Who?”
Michael was embarrassed. “A story in the comics.” He leaned forward. “Tell me the rest.”
“The rest?”
“What did the Golem do?”
Rabbi Hirsch looked uneasy.
“What the Jews need him to do,” he said.
And then, leaning back in his chair, his eyes half-closing, Rabbi Hirsch transported Michael to Prague to witness the doings of the Golem. Michael could see the Golem lumbering through the dark nights to rescue a Jewish girl who was being baptized against her will. He could see the Golem summoning a million birds to darken the skies and shit on the heads of the legions of Brother Thaddeus. He could see the Golem in the shadowed doorway of Brother Thaddeus’s house, filling the locks with mortar, so that for three days and three nights Brother Thaddeus could not get out and his followers could not get in to plot against the Jews.
“Could he make himself invisible?” Michael asked, thinking of Claude Rains in The Invisible Man.
“Sure. If Rabbi Loew says is okay.”
But it was clear to Michael that the Golem sometimes acted without orders from Rabbi Loew. The creature knew he was a soldier in a war, and he had a few personal ideas about how to fight it. Once, the invisible Golem entered the house of Brother Thaddeus on an evening when Thaddeus was entertaining another big Jew-hater from Vienna. The Golem made Michael invisible too, and took the boy along as he moved through the huge kitchen. Michael saw him piss in the wine bottles and switch the serving trays. And then saw the great uproar when the gleaming silver dishes were uncovered on the dining table and Brother Thaddeus and his guests stared down at the roasted remains of rats.
“Great!” Michael shouted, laughing out loud.
“Yes, the Golem, he has a sense of humor,” the rabbi said, looking merry. The Golem had magical powers, he explained, but he was not a god; in some ways he was a large boy.
On another visit to Brother Thaddeus’s house, they saw the hairless monk showing some visiting aristocratic ladies his private art collection, which was housed in a vast gallery full of nooks and crannies. The monk was very rich now, because all of the peop
le who hated the Jews gave him money. Under his robe he wore polished leather boots, just like the Nazis, and they clacked as he walked down the halls. Then Brother Thaddeus turned into one corner, with the perfumed duchess and the silken princess and their ladies-in-waiting rustling beside him. All the time he was delivering a running commentary on the great works of art and his own great taste and how art would be better if only they could get rid of the Jews.
They paused in front of a work that even Brother Thaddeus had never seen before: two giant terra-cotta globes, protruding from a perfect rectangle in the wall. Brother Thaddeus began to expound on the glorious discoveries made in Italy of Etruscan culture, the delicate processes of glazing, firing, aging. The ladies leaned in closer, and then one of them reached forward to touch the terra-cotta globe.
It was soft!
“You see, she touches the Golem’s ass!” Rabbi Hirsch said. “Sticking through the hole he chopped in the wall! And then he gives them—how do you say it?”
He flipped through the dictionary, stopped.
“Effluvium! He puts in the air, effluvium!”
“A fart!”
“Yes! Yes! A great big fart! And the ladies fall over, like with poison gas, and Brother Thaddeus begins to sob and the Golem runned away, laughing and laughing!”
They laughed together at the image of the Golem’s triumph. And then slowly the rabbi’s face settled. His eyes grew grave.
“Brother Thaddeus, he never gived, gave up,” Rabbi Hirsch said. “But then, a terrible crime he planned. So terrible, this time he must be punished.”
In the week before Passover, a small Christian girl disappeared, and in a dream, Rabbi Loew saw that this was part of a wicked plot for which the Jews, of course, would be blamed. Echoing through the rabbi’s dream were two words: Fünfter Palast. Michael pictured him waking in his candlelit study from the dream, murmuring, “Fünfter Palast, Fünfter Palast…” Then he turned to Michael, played thoughtfully with his beard, furrowed his brow, and said that the words were the key to thwarting the evil intentions of Brother Thaddeus.