in and out several times that morning, and had kissed the mezuzah each time. But I didn’t think it mattered if I knocked on the open door.
“Are you like the tsadek who was so pious that he never noticed that his wife was missing a thumb? Unaware of the mystical meaning of your gesture?”
“Yes, that must be it,” I said.
“Ah, you admit your ignorance. That is a good start. Teach your tongue to say ‘I do not know’ instead of inventing some falsehood.”
I said, “Brukhes, folio four A. I’m glad to meet another Talmud scholar, but right now I need to talk to the rabbi.”
“Brukhes? Oh, you mean Brokhes. It’s hard to understand you with that poylish accent. Your lack of intellectual conviction tells me that you need to study the wisdom of the Khokhmas Hanister with us.”
He meant the Kabbalah. I needed to start forging some alliances against the forces gathering around us, so I chose my words carefully.
“You’re right about that, my friend. I don’t always get the answers I want from the Talmud, and it’s also true that I mustn’t miss out on this rare opportunity to study the hidden wisdom with the great Maharal. But right now I’ve got to talk to the rabbi about a completely different situation.”
“Something more important than the healing of God’s creation through mystical communion with His endless spirit?”
“This is more in the realm of the practical Kabbalah.”
“All the more reason why you should never act without thinking.”
“Right. Sometimes I act without thinking. That’s why I need to talk to the rabbi.”
I was about to push open the door to the rabbi’s study when I remembered how different these city folk are from the shtetl Jews. In Slonim, the tiny cottages huddled together under the big, empty sky in a valiant effort to keep their dreadful loneliness at bay. In Prague, five families might share a two-room apartment, but each family’s property lines were rigidly delineated. If that’s what it took for the highest concentration of Jews in the European Diaspora to live together without trampling on each other, so be it. Space had a different meaning here.
So I knocked.
“Who is it?” a voice said, stiffly.
“Benyamin Ben-Akiva.”
“Who?” Still no softening of tone.
“I’m the assistant shammes at the Klaus Shul.”
“What do you want?”
I pressed down on the curved iron handle and opened the door.
Three men sat around the rabbi’s table, scrutinizing the same passage in a set of Hebrew books bound in plain brown leather. I recognized Isaac Ha-Kohen, the rabbi’s son-in-law, but I didn’t know the other two, a roly-poly man who was clearly another rabbi, and a young student who appeared to be about thirteen. Two more chairs sat empty.
“Where’s Rabbi Loew?”
“Close the door,” said Isaac Ha-Kohen.
“Yes, the women are dusting and it’s quite a mess,” said Yankev ben Khayim, slipping past me to take his place at the table.
I stepped inside the study room and closed the door.
Two rooms away, Hanneh the cook demanded water from the well. Girlish footsteps clattered down the back hall to the courtyard.
Isaac Ha-Kohen reached for a cup of water and struck it sharply with his fingernail to frighten away the invisible spirits gathered on the rim so he wouldn’t swallow them as he took a drink, God forbid. I waited for him to take a sip and wipe his mouth with a fine white napkin before I spoke again.
“Pardon me, O esteemed Rabbi Ha-Kohen. Can you please tell me where I can find our teacher Rabbi Loew?”
“The High Rabbi cannot be interrupted,” said Isaac Ha-Kohen.
Two non-answers in a row. I took one more stab at being polite.
“How soon can I speak with him?”
“Rabbi Loew does not give audience during the morning study session.”
“Maybe we’d better let him decide that.”
Isaac Ha-Kohen looked up from his book as if I had burst into the study room with a team of filthy and incontinent mules. He looked me over, weighed my worth and value in an instant, and went back to the text before his eyes.
I stepped closer and peered at the pages the young teen was studying. It was the Gvuroys Hashem, The Powers of the Holy Name, Rabbi Loew’s commentary on the Haggadah, published anonymously in Poland to avoid reprisals from the old-shul rabbis for his biting attacks on their rank and privileges. The copies were already battered and frayed, as if they had been smuggled into the country in a barrel of chestnuts.
I skimmed over the discussion of Shmoys, Names, the Book of