Rahel and the Golem of Prague Read online

indeed facing a humble Jew. Thaddeus also insisted that both Christians and Jews be invited to hear the proceedings. Rabbi Loew responded immediately, saying that the Jews would welcome such a public airing and he already had in mind the appropriate rabbi and synagogue.

  Thaddeus did not yet tell the gentle and innocent Thomas of his plan to have him seduce Rahel away from the Jewish community. Instead he made sure that seats for his best students were reserved, and that those seats faced the women’s side of the shul, hoping that Thomas would glimpse Rahel through the lattice separating the women from the men. Thaddeus also offered to provide refreshments afterwards so that Christians and Jews would mingle socially.

  During the disputation Thaddeus was surprisingly courteous and asked Rahel’s father only questions that had already been well explicated by Rabbi Loew years before. Thaddeus did not bring up the subject of Jewish guilt, blood libel, or anything else controversial. He wanted the discussion to be as boring as possible, so that Thomas’s eye would wander.

  "Why do the Jews forbid holy images?" Thaddeus asked.

  "Our Lord transcends anything we can imagine," the rabbi said. "He cannot be captured or expressed in an image. Quite the contrary, any such depiction mistakenly suggests that He can be reduced to the physical realm."

  Thaddeus smiled and nodded, glancing toward Thomas who sat with his hands on his lap and his eyes forward, looking at the women's side of the shul. Unlike other men, however, the young man was not trying to catch a glimpse of Rahel. Thaddeus had not yet told the sheltered boy about the beautiful girl.

  "And yet you concede that man was made in God's image?" Thaddeus asked.

  "The Christians borrowed that concept from us Jews," the rabbi said.

  "Of course," Thaddeus said, again glancing toward Thomas. "Why would God create intelligent beings in his image if not for the purpose of expressing the beauty he bestowed upon them?"

  Thomas could not see the entire face of any woman through the wooden lattice. His eyes passed over Rahel as she turned to her mother, said something and laughed. He only glimpsed a wisp of her hair straying across her eye and the upturned corner of her mouth. Yet his heart quickened in a way it never had before.

  "The Lord has forbidden us from making images of Him," the rabbi said. "He is free to do as He pleases in regards to His Creation. We, however, are not free to create whatever we wish."

  Rahel rarely looked toward the men's section, and when she did, never allowed her gaze to rest on any man other than her father. It was as if she felt Thomas's eyes on her, though, and she looked at him and saw his face flush. She quickly looked away, angry with herself for allowing a man to catch her eye.

  Thaddeus watched the interchange between Rahel and Thomas. Pride swelled his heart and inflated his words:

  "You have mistaken my intent for carnality. I am talking about an expression of our human longing for Holy Beauty. What could capture our agonized yearning for the Divine more poignantly than the image of our Messiah dying for our sins upon the cross?"

  "He is your Messiah, not ours," the rabbi said. "Therefore we cannot accept his image as a reflection of our Lord."

  After the religious discussion, all the Jews hailed the humble rabbi for holding his own against the famously eloquent Thaddeus. People gathered for refreshments on the street in front of the shul. Rahel was behind one of the tables that served challah to the gathering. Thomas passed her, pretending to look at the table next to hers with apple slices dipped in honey. She purposely looked away from him, not only because she was well brought up to keep her gaze down in the presence of men, especially those young and single, but she also remembered Thomas's burning gaze in the shul.

  "What type of bread is that?" he asked, still assessing the apple slices.

  She handed him a piece of challah without speaking or looking at him.

  His hand trembled as he took it.

  Rabbi Loew, suspecting Thaddeus’s motives, had ordered Joseph the golem to become invisible and keep an eye out for any untoward activities among the Christians. The golem noticed Thomas’s interest in Rahel and whispered this fact to Rabbi Loew who communicated it to Rahel’s father. The rabbi immediately told his wife to send the girl home.

  Thomas was so smitten with Rahel, afterwards he could think of nothing else. He went to Thaddeus to confess that he could not study or eat. Thaddeus told Thomas that God worked in mysterious ways, and if he felt so strongly about the girl, it must be a sign from heaven. Thaddeus released Thomas from his vows and sent him forth to court the girl with the same vigor he had pursued the priesthood. He warned the boy, however, that he could not marry Rahel unless she converted to Christianity.

  From that day forward Thomas went to the rabbi’s house every day to call on Rahel, and each time he was turned away without being allowed to see her. Thomas came from a wealthy family and sent gifts of flowers, food and jewelry, all of which were duly returned to the boy’s parents with notes urging them to stop their son's foolhardy quest. But Thomas would not be deterred, not even by his mother and father. Fearing that Thomas might fail in his suit, Thaddeus urged the boy to sit on the street in front of the rabbi’s house and refuse to eat until Rahel agreed to at least speak to him.

  Rahel’s father thought that Thomas would eventually leave rather than die of hunger. But his wife believed the young man would allow himself to expire if Rahel did not speak to him. She told her husband that they should grant Thomas a half hour with Rahel, if he would give his word to leave her alone after that. The rabbi said that even if he agreed with his wife, there would be no one to chaperon Thomas and Rahel, even for a short half hour walk. It would be impious for either he or his wife to look upon their daughter talking with a young Christian man.

  After nearly a week of Thomas’s vigil, word got to Rabbi Loew that the boy would die of hunger on the streets of the ghetto, and surely that would become a scandal that could sour the recently improved relations between the Jewish and Christian communities. Rabbi Loew went to visit the home of Rahel’s father to convince him that it would be better to allow his daughter to talk to Thomas, rather than have the boy die on the street in front of the rabbi’s house. When Rahel’s father brought up the problem that any Jew would be compromised in the eyes of the Lord to spend time in the presence of an ardent Christian suitor for the hand of a Jewish girl, Rabbi Loew suggested Joseph the Mute as Rahel's chaperone.

  Rahel's father argued that it would be too risky to trust his precious Rahel with Joseph who had made costly mistakes in the past. He reminded Rabbi Loew of the time Joseph had been requested to bring buckets of water from the river to help his wife clean, and he had flooded the house because he was not commanded to stop.

  Rabbi Loew said it had been his mistake, not Joseph's. Having Joseph do secular, household tasks was an experiment gone awry. However, certainly watching over Rahel would be part of Joseph's intended duties. After all, protecting Jews from Christians was the task for which Rabbi Loew had created the “watcher.” Rahel's father was no match in a debate with the erudite Rabbi Loew and he finally relented.

  But when Rabbi Loew asked the golem to watch over Rahel and Thomas, it was the first time that Joseph had ever shaken his head and refused one of the rabbi’s requests. Rabbi Loew did not believe this possible from the golem, whom he had created to always do as commanded. The rabbi said more emphatically, “I am commanding you to protect the honor of a pious young Jewish girl from the unwanted advances of a Christian man.”

  With this command, the golem made strange gestures the rabbi had never seen before. Joseph fell to his knees and pounded his chest, slapped his face and put his hands over his eyes. The rabbi paced the floor, trying to understand what was bothering him. Rabbi Loew remembered how the golem used to attend services at Rahel’s father small synagogue but had stopped when Rahel became a woman. This was curious, since Rabbi Loew had heard from others that Joseph had seemed positively illuminated when he was in Rahel's presence. Then it struck the rabbi t
hat Joseph had never before seemed illuminated; he was not supposed to feel any emotion.

  When Rabbi Loew brought to life a lump of clay that became the golem, he gave it Nefesh—eyes to see, ears to hear and tongue to taste. And Ruach—the breath of life. But he purposely withheld Neshamah—the Light of God that infused mankind with human emotions. Before creating the golem, Rabbi Loew had long discussions with his pupil, Jacob ben Chayim Sasson who had participated in the secret Kabalistic ritual of bringing the golem to life. They had discussed at length how it would be possible to withhold the Light of God from a lump of clay that could only be animated by receiving that very Light of God.

  Rabbi Loew reminded Jacob that God's Light is carried by his Word, and it is only through His Divine Grace that the universe continues to exist. If God no longer spoke that Word, or even ceased to think the thought behind that Word, all would disappear in an instant. Rabbi Loew said that the Sabbath is the symbol of God’s Word infusing its radiance through the entire creation, animate and inanimate, pervading everything, including stone and clay. He speculated that if they created the golem on the Sabbath, their creation would no more retain God's Light than any other inanimate objects brought into existence through God's