“I told you he was a golem, but no, you wouldn’t listen,” the old man said.
“You said he walked like a golem.”
“How could he walk like a golem unless he was one?”
“All right, all right…You broke him, so now fix him.”
“My grandfather, his light shines from Paradise, told me that when MoHaRaL—Moreynu Ha-Rav Löw—his memory for a blessing, made the golem in Prague, three hundred? four hundred years ago? he wrote on his forehead the Holy Name.”
Smiling reminiscently, the old woman continued, “And the golem cut the rabbi’s wood and brought his water and guarded the ghetto.”
“And one time only he disobeyed the Rabbi Löw, and Rabbi Löw erased the Shem Ha-Mephorash from the golem’s forehead and the golem fell down like a dead one. And they put him up in the attic of the shule and he’s still there today if the Communisten haven’t sent him to Moscow….This is not just a story,” he said.
“Avadda not!” said the old woman.
“I myself have seen both the shule and the rabbi’s grave,” her husband said, conclusively.
“But I think this must be a different kind golem, Gumbeiner. See, on his forehead: nothing written.”
“What’s the matter, there’s a law I can’t write something there? Where is that lump clay Bud brought us from his class?”
The old man washed his hands, adjusted his little black skullcap, and slowly and carefully wrote four Hebrew letters on the gray forehead.
“Ezra the Scribe himself couldn’t do better,” the old woman said, admiringly. “Nothing happens,” she observed, looking at the lifeless figure sprawled in the chair.
“Well, after all, am I Rabbi Löw?” her husband asked, deprecatingly. “No,” he answered. He leaned over and examined the exposed mechanism. “This spring goes here… this wire comes with this one…” The figure moved. “But this one goes where? And this one?”
“Let be,” said his wife. The figure sat up slowly and rolled its eyes loosely.
“Listen, Reb Golem,” the old man said, wagging his finger. “Pay attention to what I say—you understand?”
“Understand…..”
“If you want to stay here, you got to do like Mr. Gumbeiner says.”
“Do-like-Mr.-Gumbeiner-says….”
“That’s the way I like to hear a golem talk. Malka, give here the mirror from the pocketbook. Look, you see your face? You see on the forehead, what’s written? If you don’t do like Mr. Gumbeiner says, he’ll wipe out what’s written and you’ll be no more alive.”
“No-more-alive…..”
“That’s right. Now, listen. Under the porch you’ll find a lawnmower. Take it. And cut the lawn. Then come back. Go.”
“Go….” The figure shambled down the stairs. Presently the sound of the lawnmower whirred through the quiet air in the street just like the street where Jackie Cooper shed huge tears on Wallace Beery’s shirt and Chester Conklin rolled his eyes at Marie Dressler.
“So what will you write to Tillie?” Old Mr. Gumbeiner asked.
“What should I write?” Old Mrs. Gumbeiner shrugged. “I’ll write that the weather is lovely out here and that we are both, Blessed be the Name, in good health.”
The old man nodded his head slowly, and they sat together on the front porch in the warm afternoon sun.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Unto the Fourth Generation
The mystique of the assimilated Jew: He’s polished, urbane, suburban, modern, middle-class, mildly—if at all—religious, well-educated, politically liberal, socially insecure, and a second-generation American. He identifies with, and embodies, American culture. He’s Mr. New Yorker, the man on the way up, the cultural catchall. But his roots are carefully hidden, his links to the old world and his rich heritage seemingly severed. He must still come to terms with himself, his modern lifestyle, and his ancestral culture.
So here is a parable for that mythical assimilated Jew, an answer to the question: assimilation or continuation? Isaac Asimov, one of science fiction’s foremost yarnspinners, blends folk spirit with city sophistication to create a dream-distant New York where shadows of the past leave their imprints on Madison Avenue shop windows and old men can come back for one last look at the young.
AT TEN OF NOON, Sam Marten hitched his way out of the taxicab, trying as usual to open the door with one hand, hold his briefcase in another and reach for his wallet with a third. Having only two hands, he found it a difficult job and, again as usual, he thudded his knee against the cab-door and found himself still groping uselessly for his wallet when his feet touched pavement.
The traffic of Madison Avenue inched past. A red truck slowed its crawl reluctantly, then moved on with a rasp as the light changed. White script on its side informed an unresponsive world that its ownership was that of F. Lewkowitz and Sons, Wholesale Clothiers.
Levkovich, thought Marten with brief inconsequence, and finally fished out his wallet. He cast an eye on the meter as he clamped his briefcase under his arm. Dollar sixty-five, make that twenty cents more as a tip, two singles gone would leave him only one for emergencies, better break a fiver.
“Okay,” he said, “take out one-eighty-five, bud.”
“Thanks,” said the cabbie with mechanical insincerity and made the change.
Marten crammed three singles into his wallet, put it away, lifted his briefcase and breasted the human currents on the sidewalk to reach the glass doors of the building.
Levkovich? he thought sharply, and stopped. A passerby glanced off his elbow.
“Sorry,” muttered Marten, and made for the door again.
Levkovich? That wasn’t what the sign on the truck had said. The name had read Lewkowitz, Loo-koh-itz. Why did he think Levkovich? Even with his college German in the near past changing the w’s to v’s, where did he get the “-ich” from?
Levkovich? He shrugged the whole matter away roughly. Give it a chance and it would haunt him like a Hit Parade tinkle.
Concentrate on business. He was here for a luncheon appointment with this man, Naylor. He was here to turn a contract into an account and begin, at twenty-three, the smooth business rise which, as he planned it, would marry him to Elizabeth in two years and make him a paterfamilias in the suburbs in ten.
He entered the lobby with grim firmness and headed for the banks of elevators, his eye catching at the white-lettered directory as he passed.
It was a silly habit of his to want to catch suite numbers as he passed, without slowing, or (heaven forbid) coming to a full halt. With no break in his progress, he told himself, he could maintain the impression of belonging, of knowing his way around, and that was important to a man whose job involved dealing with other human beings.
Kulin-etts was what he wanted, and the word amused him. A firm specializing in the production of minor kitchen gadgets, striving manfully for a name that was significant, feminine, and coy, all at once—
His eyes snagged at the M’s and moved upward as he walked. Mandel, Lusk, Lippert Publishing Company (two full floors), Lafkowitz, Kulin-etts. There it was—1024. Tenth floor. O.K.
And then, after all, he came to a dead halt, turned in reluctant fascination, returned to the directory, and stared at it as though he were an out-of-towner.