4. First Visit to Altneushul
I had a fantasy that my first day in Prague would be K-esque. But as it turned out it was my second.
At 6:45, per Jiri Krupka-Weisz’s instructions, I walked up to the Altneushul. How out of place this nearly one-thousand-year-old structure with its peaked roof looked among the modern office buildings and fashionable shops on Parizska Street. The street was deserted. I was the only person in sight. I walked into the narrow lane where the Jewish Town Hall meets the entrance to the synagogue. I looked up to the top of the Jewish Town Hall, at the famous reverse-running clock with its polished brass Hebrew letters that serve as numbers. Then I noticed the policeman patrolling.
“What time do services begin?” I asked in English.
He stared at me with his simple, Schweik-like face.
I pointed to my watch. Well, actually, I didn’t have a watch. To the place where the watch would have been. And then I pointed to the door of the synagogue and mimed opening it.
The cop waved his hands, crisscrossing one over the other like an umpire signalling “safe.” But here it meant the opposite. No. Closed. Then he turned his fingers and fist as if to lock a door.
“Sinagoga geshpert,” he said in pidgin German.
“How is that possible?” I exploded. “The booklet said the shul is open every day. Offen, offen!” I said, miming an open door.
“Turistika,” he said, pointed to his watch and held out ten fingers.
I didn’t want to join a 10 a.m. tour with hundreds of people traipsing through the shul. I wanted to see the shul as a shul should be seen, when it breathes with worshippers — not when it holds its breath. Of course, I also wanted to meet my contact whose name I had forgotten.
I had risen at six, dead tired, ordered breakfast, and made sure to be here at least ten minutes early. And now the policeman tells me the Altneushul is closed.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a man in motion. He moved in what I call the shul walk, slightly bent forward, in a rush, using a stride that is reserved just for synagogue services. He wouldn’t walk that way to catch a train. He wouldn’t walk that way for exercise. He walked that way to shul because that’s the way he saw his father and grandfather walking to shul. And then under his arm I noticed the telltale tallis bag.
I thought I’d try the international language, Yiddish.
“Sholem aleichem. When does davenning begin?”
“Aleichem sholem. Soon. At seven.”
“The cop told me the shul is closed.”
The man made a disparaging motion with his hand. “What does he know? His job is to protect the shul. So he does it by keeping people he doesn’t know away, the idiot.” The man pulled a rather large, old-fashioned key from his pocket and unlocked the ancient door. He looked at his watch and didn’t relock the door.
I followed him down three stone steps. A thrill ran through me as I entered the fabled shul, where the Maharal, the creator of the golem, had prayed four hundred years ago. I wondered if the people here were similarly in awe of this holy space. Two men were already inside. One, to the right front, was putting on tefillin. The other, on the bimah, was shifting books. So few Jews for the morning service in the oldest synagogue in the world, one of Jewry’s treasured sites? But as my eyes grew accustomed to the chiaroscuro light, other figures appeared. Two men way in front near the Holy Ark. Three to the side of the door in pews perpendicular to the bimah. Three in the back. Exactly ten, a minyan. Wait, I was there too, which made it eleven.
Jiri had told me that his old family friend always prayed by the rear wall in the corner. I looked at the three men standing there and thought I knew which one it was. He stood there in the corner by himself, the tallest of the three. Since he didn’t move, I imagined for a moment he was a statue, something that George Segal might have made, akin to the outdoor statue of Schweik sitting at a café I would see later. But actually the man was just meditating before putting on tefillin. Unlike the others, who were chatting before the start of the service, he spoke to no one. He was about six-two or six-three, vigorous-looking, in his mid-fifties, with a big head and a round, reddish face.
I saw the man in profile. His right eye seemed lifeless. He looked a little slow, like a golem. But what wasn’t golemic in Prague? Even the uncooperative policeman looked like a golem. As the man took four steps forward to get a Siddur, I noticed his deliberate, awkward movements. His dull, expressionless eye and lumbering gait made him seem retarded. I immediately nicknamed him golem. The phlegmatic way he wound the tefillin straps around his arm and the largo recitation of blessings confirmed my judgment. Was this the man Jiri had sent me to? The man who supposedly would be so helpful to me? He, the key? Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Why did I stare at him so incessantly? Did I think this would help reveal his name to me?
His big face and slow movements somehow indicated strength. I imagined how powerful he must be, the golem. I fantasized that if the ceiling were to collapse, he would lift his powerful arms like the golem did in the silent film classic, The Golem, when the ceiling of the emperor’s palace began to crumble. The Rabbi of Prague, the Maharal, had warned the courtiers not to laugh when he magically showed them scenes from the Exodus from Egypt or there would be serious consequences. But laugh they did, and the vaulted stone ceiling began to descend and the golem stretched his hands up and the ceiling bent around his arms and you can see the striated lines in the stone straining, lines like wrinkles in an old woman’s face. And I imagined from my stone seat by the doorway, about twenty-five or thirty feet from the modern golem, that with his powerful arms he could enact the same feat.
Then I rose and walked toward him.
“Shalom,” I said. “I have regards for you from—”
He turned slightly.
Just then, without excusing himself, another man interrupted. He stood in front of the golem and began to speak. I was about to protest this rudeness, as I would usually do when peeved, but I restrained myself. I was a visitor. I had just arrived. I wouldn’t want to alienate anyone here.
Their lively conversation in Czech made me realize the man I had nicknamed Golem wasn’t dimwitted at all. Not with that crackling, assertive burst of Czech.
The other man went back to his seat.
I introduced myself. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes. Welcome to the Al-tnigh-shul.” He used the alternative pronunciation.
We shook hands. I was surprised by the gentleness of his handclasp, rather soft and meek.
Just like with Jiri, I couldn’t quite make out where his accent came from.
“I bring you regards from a family friend, Dr. Jiri Krupka-Weisz.”
Now I saw the golem full face. No wonder I thought his face was expressionless. His right eye was glass. His right cheek seemed stiffer than the left, as if the nerves had been damaged. But the left side was quite animated.
“I didn’t know dead men can send regards,” he said drily.
It was too late for foreboding. At once the pain of sadness swept over me. Oh, my God, I thought. So it is true. If a friend says it, it must be true.
Still, I said, “Who is dead?” One always hopes, even when there is little reason to hope. After all, I had heard the news in rather oblique fashion, from Patient Information and from the super in Jiri’s apartment.