The Golems of Prague - 1939

The Jews of 16th century Prague prayed to the Lord for protection, but not all had the strength of faith to accept His will and design. One learned rabbi, the Maharal, took matters into his own hands, using clay to shape a new future for his flock.He brought the humanoid golem to life with knowledge gleaned from The Book of Creation, or spiritual powers from knowledge of the Kabbalah, or with a Truename of The Lord. With his golem, he protected the Jews of the city from pogroms, and he employed it as a servant in his household. After a time the Golem had served its purpose, become a nuisance, or gone wild, and was placed to rest in the attic of the Altneushul. Ready to be awakened at a time of great need.

Chapter 1

March 14, 1939
Altneushul, Prague, Czechoslovakia

“Ki orlotam hai’yu...” I paused and lifted my eyes from the Passover haftara bible section to stare over my shoulder at Father, and changed the end, “...ve’achlu otam ba derech.”

Good, my papa was frowning. Not any frown; the worst type, where his cheeks twisted into that sharp nose, flaring the nostrils. Finally, some emotion. He hadn’t bothered to cry last week at Mom’s memorial service, but now I had upset him.

“Instead of saying Jews performed circumcisions while traveling through the desert you just said, ‘the Jews ate their foreskins’. Can you imagine the embarrassment... my son, the son of the rabbi of the Altneushul, saying our ancestors left Egypt at the Lord’s direction and resorted to eating orlotam?” Father’s voice snapped like a whip at foreskin, and dropped at the Lord. He tweaked his thick ginger beard to toss a few hairs over his shoulder, leaving another small patch; at this rate his face would be bald by the Bar Mitzvah.

I lowered my gaze to the scuffed hardwood floor. Had I gone too far? I clenched my fists and pushed them against the grainy wooden podium.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” Father’s words reverberated through the high arched ceilings and narrow glass panes of the main prayer hall.

I tugged the middle button of my black jacket. “Maybe the lack of an audience I care about is making me careless...”

His brown eyes hardened. So gentle while addressing members of the community, but now as harsh and unwelcoming as the Sinai desert. “Careless? At least eight generations we’ve led this shul, as long as any can remember, perhaps since the Maharal. We are fortunate to—”

“—Fortune? What fortune? We’re as fortunate as the Golem is real. Mom’s dead!” I smashed my toes into the pulpit and laid my arms across it.

My father paled, scratched his palm, and lifted his hands as if that would calm me.

“And every day is worse and worse. I’m all alone since you kicked out Devorah four years ago.” My voice broke, and I stared up at the electric lights. What a cursed place; even sunlight barely entered.

He snarled and turned his back. “Don’t say that name. I have no daughter.” Father pulled at his handmade Borsellino hat, twisting the brim out.

“Then I have no Bar Mitzvah!” I shouted, accidentally biting my tongue so hard I tasted blood. I stomped from the platform, across the aisle, and out to Pařížská Street.

The wind pushed me forward as I cut between members of the synagogue coming for late afternoon mincha prayers. My breath came fast and shallow, and tears rained down my cheeks. The shocked stares of the Rothshteins, Borovetzes, and Katzes drilled into my back. I locked eyes on the trees lining the sidewalk to avoid looking them in the face. They were going to spend all Sabbath gossiping about me. Why couldn’t there be more strangers instead of people who remembered your first steps or the time you broke an arm jumping off the tall tree on the boardwalk?

I stomped along the rows of crowded four-story buildings from the Jewish quarter’s old structures of stone, built like fortresses with tiny yet merrily lit barred openings bursting with family life. After a couple minutes they shifted to modern, freshly painted structures with larger windows nearer the town center where a more mixed population lived.

Almost at the Old Town Square entrance. “Never leave the Jewish quarter by yourself,” I said to myself, imitating Father. My breath was frosting, and I shivered. Stupid to forget my jacket.

Workmen rushed around, putting up wooden huts painted in the colors of spring to hug the medieval churches. Beyond those old structures stood the fancy 15th-century astronomical clock I’d been obsessed with as a kid, with its three circles filled with symbols and Roman numerals in golden lettering shining in the fading sunlight. I’d always felt guilty admiring it, with the various saints and death shown in statues unlike Jewish monuments and synagogues which glorified Him through His words rather than specific people. But a pretty thing is a pretty thing, even if it is of a strange religion.

Children ran in the square like little demons playing hide and seek. Feet stomped fresh yellow daffodils that ringed the statue of a victorious Jan Hus towering over his defeated Catholic foes. Why couldn’t there be a statue glorifying Jewish heroes here instead of a Protestant one? Even if his message of overcoming oppression and achieving religious freedom was so like my people’s history.

Booths for market day filled the town square. Glassware in shades of red and blue sparkled at the first booth, and from the second, flowery scents came from the lit candles. The third stall held a table bursting with figurines, some of observant Jewish men like matryushka dolls or leprachauns. I grimaced. Our culture wasn’t a joke.

Beside them stood statues I liked more, including the Golem of Prague, shaped from clay with gaping holes for eyes and mouth. But the depictions of the Golem always looked so silly to me. Why didn’t the rabbi try to make it look more human?

I always imagined the Golem as a tall bulky man with gems for eyes and a voice like clay being squished. A chubby man with glasses and a tweed jacket examined a statue in his hands while speaking to the saleswoman. He had the look of an academic. I could fall asleep just looking at him.

Families and groups cut from booth to stand, buying eggs painted in all the colors of the rainbow. A treif smell, a whole pig roasting on a spit, with a small crowd gathered around. It must be the start of the Easter market.

I thought I recognized my sister Devorah’s long ginger hair in the shoppers moving away from me, but she disappeared. Lord, I miss her freckled smiles and bear hugs.

The sizzle of fried dough, a sugary sweet citrus scent reminded me of Mother. To my right, a busy cart sold vdolky. A father bought one for his young daughter. She carried it herself in her tiny hands, taking small bites of the hot round pastry, smearing the whipped cream and jam across her face. I moved closer and ran a fingertip along the grains of the wooden cart near the window to watch the dough being dropped in the fryer, coated, and handed to customers. What a delicious smell. But could I eat something made by a goy? Maybe it had pig fat in it. Imagine. The son of the great rabbi eating unkosher vdolky.

A beautiful voice came from a girl about my age, with warm blue eyes and long blond hair. She stood by her smiling parents. Everywhere I looked happy families passed. It wasn’t fair, everyone else had moms. I missed being hugged.

The little girl ordered and handed over a few coins. As the muscular vendor handed her the pastry it dropped. He swore, lifted the sweet treat, moved to throw the pastry in the bin on the counter, and then noticed me.
The seller snickered. “Why throw this away when a rat is hungry?” He spoke in German rather than Czech, hefted the vdolky, and threw it, smacking me in the face and smearing my cheeks red and white.

I froze and blinked. A Nazi flag hung proudly at the back of the cart. Here. Two minutes from the heart of the Jewish quarter. The salesman swung to the girl and handed her a fresh pastry. She took it and left. Would no one say anything? Down the street, I locked eyes with Mr. Svoboda, the wrinkled farmer who brought my family turnips and onions. He frowned, looked around as if hoping someone else would protest. When none did, he shrugged and pretended not to see me.

A few older people in line melted away with quiet mutterings about Nazis. Even the lady at the stand selling Golem statues said nothing. I guess she didn’t care about anything except making money even if it was thanks to a legend of my people.

I clenched my teeth and turned back to confront the vendor, opening my mouth to swear at him. A drop of jelly dribbled onto my tongue. Treif. Nausea. I spun and ran behind the Jan Hus memorial. And hurled. People whispered about me, and tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. I cleaned my face with a sleeve, stared at the ground, and stumbled down Kaprova Street.

The salesman must be laughing at me.

I wiped sweat from my forehead. The road led away from the square into the Jewish quarter.

A cool drop of water hit my head, and another, becoming a drizzle. I passed Aharon’s smokehouse, Shmuel the tailor, and Gideon’s pharmacy, dodging between young couples with babies and groups of children running free in the spring weather. Where could I go? My only other family, Eliyahu, who I called Uncle despite a more distant connection through Father, lived near Karlova university.

Chapter 2: Eliyahu

Light came from Eliyahu’s window. Good, still awake. I always loved to come to his ground-level apartment, and to let him yammer on about fables, birds, dead rabbis, and old-man complaints.

I crossed to the heavy wooden door and banged the knocker twice for the Holy Tablets, then once for Hashem according to family tradition. A chair shifted inside, followed by a groan, and the door swung open, revealing Uncle Eliyahu. As always, he wore his red bathrobe as if the raiments of a king, with his knitted maroon yarmulka as the crown.

Deep wrinkle lines ringed across Eliyahu’s reddish liver-spotted skin, bringing focus to his sunken turquoise eyes. The old man loved to brag that Maimonides’ teachings kept him healthy, so healthy even though Father remembered our relative as ancient decades ago. There was a weightiness about him; when Uncle spoke, people hung on his every word.

Eliyahu scanned my face. “Chanukah already?” I couldn’t find my smile. He rubbed my shoulder with a knobby hand, wiped my cheek with a handkerchief, and pulled me into the little apartment, through the hall lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves crammed with sacred texts bound in blue, black, and red to the study where I flopped onto the worn green sofa.

Eliyahu left the room to make tea, and my eyes wandered, from the beautiful gold Star of David above the window, with the broken bottom tip, to the set of faded paintings of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal. The first showed him forming the Golem from the clay of the Vltava River as farmers with pitchforks and torches approached. In the second, the creature stomped along a street, those same farmers fleeing. In the final picture, Rabbi Loew laid the Golem to rest in the attic of the Altneushul.

I loved these pictures and the story. The one odd thing was that instead of the text אמת, which means truth, another name for God, written on the Golem’s forehead, there was some strange script I didn’t recognize. If I had a golem, no one would be mean to me. And I could punish them, especially the Nazi vendor, and Mr. Svoboda.

Bangs and rattles came from the kitchen. On the coffee table lay a newspaper: Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg resigns with pleas not to resist Nazi advance into country. My lips automatically mumbled the prayer of protection. I shifted my eyes down the page to avoid thinking about trouble before looking back at the newspaper. Zizkov district stink due to overflowing sewers. Highly flammable says Fire Marshall. Thank the Lord that stench didn’t reach here.

Footsteps declared Eliyahu’s return with his special silver tea set. He set it on the coffee table with the brown, white, and gold sugar cubes and tongs. The old man sat across from me in his leather armchair and poured the hot drink carefully into the cups with his right hand. “Special tea for a special ziskayt,” Uncle grinned.

I put in a sugar cube for Hashem, one for Devorah, one for Eliyahu, and one for... I dropped that one back and mixed, watching the green leaves swell in the water and flowers swirl around the sugar cubes until the tea’s bright green color mellowed with the sugar.

Eliyahu shook his head, “This tea came all the way from the Holy Land.” I fidgeted until Eliyah winked. “Always meshugge with the sugar.” Eliyahu lifted his cup, inhaled deeply, took a small sip, and grinned.

I raised the cup more hesitantly; I never knew what waited in these cups. Sweet, with a bitter molasses aftertaste. Then a bright note reminiscent of black licorice cut through, and something lemony. The hot liquid puckered my lips into a smile with the tanginess, making my tongue buzz. “What is this?”

“Anise and lemongrass. A dear old friend brought it to me years ago from the hills of Jerusalem. Perfect for a special occasion.”

“Huh?” Being the victim of a hate attack and a big fight with my father didn’t seem like a time to celebrate.

Eliyahu drummed his fingers on the teacup, and set it on the tray. “I’ve been waiting for your Bar Mitzvah for a very long time. I don’t know if I’ll be around for the next generation.” He chuckled, which led to a wheezing cough.

I twitched. He’d never die. Uncle Eliyahu was as timeless as a rock. “I’m sure you’ll be right there celebrating with my grandchildren. Anyway, I’m not doing it ‘cause Father yelled at me!”

Eliyahu scrunched his eyes for a moment, and scanned my face. His expression softened. “I don’t think your problem is the Bar Mitzvah.” He turned his head and stared out the window. “Your father was just as stubborn at your age. You have to remember that he’s lonely. You’re all he has left.”

I shoved my hands under my thighs and let out a breath. “He has a daughter, too!”

Eliyahu looked back at me and raised his hand in appeasement. “I know. Dear Devorah, as prickly and stubborn as her namesake. But what would happen to your fater if they knew he still spoke to her after going with a goy? Would people come to his services? How long to lose his job, and then the roof over your heads?”

My face dropped. The old man sighed and took a sip of tea. I raised my head, “Maybe I should go home.”

Eliyahu twirled his bushy white beard, smiled, and rose to pat my shoulder. “Sleep here tonight; it’s dangerous after dark with the vilde chayas in the streets. I’ll let your fater know.”

I lay on the couch, shoes hanging on the armrest. Eliyahu never complained. Soon a blanket covered me, and I felt a kiss on my forehead. I drifted to sleep with the patter of rain.

Chapter 3

I woke in the morning to loud, insistent knocking. Eliyahu groaned from bed, bah. I staggered to my feet and opened the door. Shai Weiss towered above me. Uncle’s long-term caretaker. I was hit by his scent, like a combination of a barbershop and a tailor, and as I’d learned: breathe through my mouth until I get used to it.

He grinned, which smoothed the wrinkles cutting across his round face. I’d always felt odd around him. A stranger, especially one so tall and strong, caring for an old man for money. Shai dressed better than us, focusing too much on what people see. A carefully gelled beard, trimmed and filed nails, and shining shoes. Anyone who saw him on the street would think he was a perfect example of a Jew. But in my opinion, Judaism is about concentrating on the Lord and the mitzvahs and not on impressing others.

But Eliyahu liked him, greeting him with a big smile. And they studied together every afternoon with a small group of older eccentrics. The group didn’t focus on foundational religious texts like the Torah or Talmud as most Jews studied, but stranger and rarer ones like the Golem’s Book of Creation, or the tales of King Solomon and the binding of the demon Ashmadai.

It was fun reading about monsters, demons, and magic. More fun than reading about the various laws of kosher butchering, or what constitutes work on the Sabbath. ‘Golem Mania’ Father called it disapprovingly, saying those silly tales ‘seduced bright minds into a life of spiritual mediocrity instead of honing them with the wisdom of rabbis like Maimonedes and Akiva’.

We walked to shul together, each holding one of Eliyahu’s arms to keep him steady in the roaring wind. So cold.

A crowd of women stood outside the synagogue, wringing hands and shivering while Father and five other men scrubbed at hate symbols with sponges dipped in soapy water. I grabbed a rag and joined him. A small swastika resisted my efforts. I pictured the vendor and Mr. Svoboda drawing these, and wished that cleaning them could erase the hate.