“A glass tea I need,” the rabbi said, and Michael saw that his teeth were intact again. “Put the water, then tell me everything.”
The Golem went to the sink. Michael tried to run the tap, but the Golem gave him an offended look and assumed the task.
“Let him be,” the rabbi said. And ignoring the huge creature, he listened as Michael told him what the Golem had done. He nodded, he shook his head gravely, he chewed on a cuticle, he raised his black eyebrows in astonishment. He never once said “Good.” Then Michael was finished, the kettle whistled, and at last he smiled.
“So what is Jackie doing?” he said.
“He went two-for-four yesterday.”
“Home he has stolen again, like on June twenty-fourth?” the rabbi asked.
“Not yet. He will.”
“I hope we are at the game,” he said. His voice was weak and strained. “I hope he does it to the Philadelphias. That would be something. We’d be sitting in the catbird’s seat.”
He looked at the Golem’s broad back and then glanced at Leah’s photograph. For the first time, his eyes were troubled.
“Why now?” the rabbi said, more to himself than to Michael. “Why not then?”
Michael understood, remembering the cord on the ancient box. “Did you try then?”
“Yes.”
“In the attic of the Old-New Synagogue?”
“Yes.” His eyes glazed over. “I failed.”
The night was warm again, August again, sweaty and hot. The Golem poured water over tea leaves.
“Why I failed, I think now I know,” the rabbi said. “I was not pure enough.” He paused. “I did not believe enough. Maybe, God I did not love enough.”
His mouth started to form other words, but they would not come. The Golem handed him his glass of tea.
“A dank,” he said.
The Golem passed another glass to Michael, who accepted it and added his thanks. The boy looked at the rabbi, who smiled in a sweet, sad way. He stood up, refreshed by the tea.
“You are safe now, no? And your mother too. Di tsayt ken alts ihermakhn. Time, it changes everything.”
“Der beste royfeh,” Michael said. The best healer.
“And now we have to deal with… him.”
He looked at the Golem, who was squatting beside the sink and gazing at them.
“What do you mean?”
“Him we have to send back,” the rabbi said. “With men, he can’t live.”
Michael felt a stab of regret. To send him back was unfair; they hardly knew him. But the Golem understood; there was a fatalistic look in his eyes as he sat on the floor. He held up his huge hand and then pointed upstairs. Rabbi Hirsch nodded, Yes. Upstairs. The box was there, like a small coffin. The Golem waited until they finished their tea. Then he stood up, bowed under the low ceiling, and picked up the shofar. They climbed the stairs together. The rabbi, the boy, and the Golem. On Shabbos.
At the top step, the Golem smiled as Rabbi Hirsch pushed open the door to the sanctuary.
And halted in astonishment.
The sanctuary was again what it had been long ago. A thousand candles burned in holders along the walls and beside the Ark. The Torah was unrolled. The carved oaken pillars gleamed with fresh oil. The copper flutings on the bimah were burnished. The chandeliers were constellations of light. The stained-glass windows were healed and the dust was gone and the plaster whole. And the rows were filled with men holding prayer books, young and bearded and vital and proud, safe in America, their tall sons beside them, together on Shabbos. Among them, Michael saw Mister G, with a full head of hair, and three young boys, holding their prayer books. But there were so many others. There seemed to be thousands of them, millions, all the dead, all those who had vanished, Jews from Poland and Romania and Austria and Prague. The loft above them was full of women, and as Rabbi Hirsch walked out to face them, tentative and hopeful, hearing the old prayers in the old lost language, he gazed up through the dazzle of lights.
And then he saw her.
“Leah,” he whispered.
She was among the women, her face pale and beatific, and Rabbi Hirsch walked quickly, almost running, to the rear of the crowded sanctuary, his jaw loose, his eyes wide, and scrambled up the stairs, with Michael and the Golem behind him. In the loft, the women were jammed together like a wall, and then Leah Yaretzky shouldered her way through, her face dissolving in happiness. Rabbi Hirsch embraced her, holding her fiercely, almost desperately, whispering into her dark hair, and then they stepped out through the open door to the small roof, where the spires of Manhattan blazed magically in the distance.
Michael could not hear the words Rabbi Hirsch was saying to Leah. He could not hear because now the Golem raised the shofar to his lips and aimed it at the stars.
He blew a melancholy tune, full of love and sorrow and joy. The rabbi knew it by heart. The notes were addressed to the angels.
And then the rabbi bowed gracefully to Leah and took her hand.
Michael knew there would be time to send the Golem back to the place from which he had come, to stand above him and recite the letters and alphabets in reverse and invoke again the secret name of God. He knew there would be time to return him to dust. There would be time to fold his tasseled cloak and his button that was for someone named Jackie. There would be time to lay the silver spoon on top of this earthly mound and tie the cords around the shem and close the door and return the bimah to what it was. There would be time. There would be time.
For now, Michael stood quietly in the hot Brooklyn night while clouds tried to become angels and birds talked and stones became roses and white horses galloped over rooftops, and the rabbi, at last, danced with his wife.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is a work of fiction, a mixture of memory and invention. But the writing was immensely helped by the contributions of others.
Above all, I’d like to thank my friend Menachem Rosensaft for checking and correcting my idiosyncratic version of Yiddish and for advice about Orthodox traditions. Obviously, he is not responsible for any imperfections that might remain.
In addition, I’m indebted to Leo Rosten’s two American classics, The Joys of Yiddish and Hooray for Yiddish! They are a marvelous mixture of scholarship and humor and should be taught in our public schools. While writing this book, I also read, learned from, and drew upon Yiddish Proverbs, edited by Hanan J. Ayalti; Anglish/Yinglish: Yiddish in American Life and Literature, by Gene Bluestein; The Meaning of Yiddish, by Benjamin Harshaw; and Words Like Arrows: A Treasury of Yiddish Folk Sayings, compiled by Shirley Kumove. They have all contributed to the task of keeping alive this amazingly vital and supple language, and they fed the inspiration for this novel.
My readings in Jewish mysticism included Kabbalah for the Layman (volumes I, II, and III), by Rabbi Philip S. Berg; The Essential Kabbalah, by Daniel C. Matt; and From the World of the Cabbalah, by Ben Zion Bokser. I heard many tales of the Golem during a visit to Prague, but also read The Golem, by Chaim Bloch (translated from German by Harry Schneiderman); the detailed and scholarly Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid, by Moshe Idel; and various essays by Gershom Scholem. I urge these works upon interested readers, along with a marvelous book called Magic Prague, by Angelo Maria Ripellino, translated by David Newton Marinelli.