“Ah,” said the small man. “This is your golem, at last.”
The Rabbi nodded. He had his usual gravitas, but he did not look at ease.
“Tell me how you work it, and why you have commanded it to come here.”
“Your Excellency, I did not command it,” said the Rabbi, “nor do I work it, in the sense that you mean. It works itself. It requires merely a few words from myself to set it to a task, and then it will pursue that task with a will of its own.”
“Set it a task,” said the emperor. “I want to see it work. Set it some task that is impossible for a human being.”
“Your excellency,” said the Rabbi, “it does not necessarily do things that are impossible, but it has the strength of ten men. So if you have some lifting or some tearing down, those would be an ideal way for me to show you the golem’s strength.”
“Very well,” said the Emperor, “have it move the gate for me. I have been planning to extend the yard here and have more protected space for men and horses. Tell your golem to take apart the stones of the gate and rebuild it on the other side of the guard building.”
I was taken aback by this, as I am sure you can imagine.
I knew I no longer had that strength, and I feared that, even though the Emperor meant us no harm, as soon as the less stable gentiles found out about my weakness they would come to the Jewish Town and they would set fire to our synagogues. They would bash the heads of Jewish babies against the stone steps. They would kill young women and men, and leave the old for the dogs.
The Rabbi immediately noticed my distress. He showed no alarm, but in a calm, even voice said, “My Emperor, the golem is an automaton and a creature of chaos. He has no thought or will of his own. I must tell him, very carefully, to do exactly what you want done and in the order you want it done. Otherwise, instead of accomplishing your task, he will simply create chaos.”
“Is that so?” said the Emperor. “I will keep that in mind in building my homunculus. For now, for the demonstration, just have him move the slabs of stone to the site of the new gate, over there.”
“Yosef, do this,” said the Rabbi to me quietly. I tried to speak to him with my eyes, but, as I have said, I do not have an expressive face. There was no way that I would have the strength to do that, and yet I could not disobey the Rabbi. My body moved and tried to act. Again the Rabbi noticed my struggle. There is nothing that escapes his benevolent attention.
“My Emperor,” said the Rabbi, “it was kind indeed of you to bring us here under your protection, but tomorrow our Sabbath begins. Please allow us to return home and prepare to honor that day, on which even the golem does not work. We now have our golem to protect us if necessary, and as soon as the Sabbath is over, the golem will move the stones. He can work all night. Later, when it is time to put them in position, the golem and I will return and he will do that under my instruction and the supervision of your architects.”
“Very well,” said the Emperor. “We here are very close to creating a homunculus, using alchemical means rather than your Kabbalah. Seeing your golem at work would be instructive: we must find a way to keep the chaos at bay.
“Come back after your Sabbath and my own, in three days. Then we will see what your golem can do.”
The Emperor offered his guards, but the Rabbi declined in a courteous fashion. I was to be his guard, and I think he would have said the same even had he known the full extent to which I was disabled. Our small party walked out of the Emperor’s workhouse, across the tiny townlet, and out the big gate that he wanted me to move. My height alone, I felt, was sufficient to discourage the sort of cowardly attackers who would lie in wait in the dead of night, and the Rabbi, I was sure, was doing this to make the point that he feared nothing, and that I was sufficiently strong to defend him and his family and, by extension, the entire Jewish community.
When we got back to his house, inside, in privacy by the fire and near my pallet, I demonstrated for the Rabbi that I could lift small objects, of the sort that the average human might lift, but I could not budge objects of the weight and heft that I had previously handled. The Rabbi was clearly puzzled, but he told me to rest, and the next day we would figure things out. By now it was the small hours of the morning, and we all went to bed, me on my pallet away from the fire, and the Rabbi and his wife in their comfortable room in which only they slept, their bed close to the warm wall of the chimney.
The next day there was much to do to prepare for the Sabbath, which started at sundown. Wood needed chopping, water need hauling, food for the Sabbath meals had to be prepared, as well as that day’s food. My labors were limited in preparation for the Sabbath, as my role was less one of serving household needs than it was of serving the community. The Rabbi had a few comforts, however, that he allowed me to provide: the water and wood for his bath and the occasional draft of water from a country well. I believe that his thinking was that, to some extent, the community’s well-being depended on his own well-being, and my serving him in those ways aided the entire community. The Rabbi was a reasonable man, and not an ascetic.
At any rate, only the Rabbi and perhaps his wife, from whom he had no secrets, were privy to the information that I was lacking my usual strength, and I was able to accomplish my tasks without drawing others’ attention.
Just before the beginning of the Sabbath, the Rabbi commanded me to open my mouth for the removal of the Shem, so that I might rest. It was then he found the coins that the ratcatcher’s daughter had given me. He nodded and said, very solemnly, “Yosef, I think I have discovered the source of the problem. You will need to resolve this, but like all of us, you shall rest on the Sabbath. ” He removed them, then removed the Shem, and I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, a brief return to the great silence of the earth.
On the first day of the week, I was awoken after sunset by the Rabbi putting the Shem into my mouth, just as it happened every week. He sat by me on my pallet. “Yosef,” he said, “I have given your situation much thought, and I believe I know what you should do.”
I had hoped he would figure it out, and I indicated my thanks to him.
“You should not be so quick to thank me,” he said. “There is little I can do for you. You must accomplish this yourself.”
I looked at him in doubt and worry, and he read, as so often he does, the voice of my stance.
“Yossele, you can do this. G-d does not require of us what we cannot do.”
That’s all well and good, I thought, but I am not human. G-d did not create me, the Rabbi created me. G-d’s own creations are more capable (meaning no offense to the Rabbi), so His expectations may be elevated well beyond my abilities.
The Rabbi ignored my reservations, although I know that he saw them.
“Listen to me,” he said. “You put this money in your mouth with the Holy Name. I do not know where you got the money, but now it seems to me that its appropriate use is charity.” The Rabbi sighed. “Do you understand? You must give this money to someone less fortunate than yourself.”
Well, of course I understood that. It’s the principle activity of the Rabbi’s life, as I have observed it, aside from his studying the Torah.
I nodded, and he told me to go and fulfill my obligation. “Do this before you come home,” he said.
I lumbered out of the family compound, but not with my usual calm confidence that I could accomplish my assignments. Where would I find these unfortunates, and how would I tell whether they were even less fortunate than myself?