in Prague’s Jewish community, but he was a distinguished scholar and a known firebrand who was respected well beyond the borders of the empire. Reb Bernstein chose not to object.
“Very well,” said Rabbi Aaron. “The council will hear the case of Rabbi Judah Loew. Rabbi Loew?”
Rabbi Loew weighed his words carefully. “We are facing a grave and immediate threat to the whole community which must be given priority.”
Rabbi Loew now turned to me.
He was leaving it up to me to make the case?
I quickly explained, “The Christian authorities have arrested Jacob Federn and taken him to the city jail on a false bloodcrime charge.”
A great commotion rattled the benches and churned up the hall.
“And what action do you expect the court to take in this matter?” said Rabbi Aaron, shouting over the noise.
“The Jewish community needs to ask keyser Rudolf to transfer Reb Federn from the stock house to the royal prison, or else we’ll have to bail him out ourselves.”
“Look who’s talking like he’s part of the community,” said Reb Bernstein.
Rabbi Aaron said, “How much is that going to cost us?”
I had no idea. The monetary disputes in Slonim were pretty small by comparison.
Rabbi Loew came to my aid. “In capital cases of this kind, bail is usually set around ten thousand gulden.”
A collective gasp escaped from the spectators’ lips, as if they had all been slapped in the face at the same time. The gildn is a small gold coin worth about ten dalers.
“That is a great deal of money to spend on one man,” said Rabbi Hayyot.
“A merchant of feathers, no less,” someone said, bringing smiles to the round faces in the first few rows of benches.
I told them, “This is not about one man. They’re going to seal off the whole ghetto. And if the city authorities torture him, by Sunday night he’ll be telling them the Jews drink blood, and by Monday morning we’ll all be in deep tsures.”
“Then why hasn’t it been announced by the city criers?” Rabbi Aaron said, and cautioned me to be mindful of how I addressed this distinguished body. I had forgotten to use their titles.
I said, “Forgive me, your honors. Sometimes I have the manners of a Polish peasant. I don’t always knock on doors, either.”
Rabbi Joseph ignored my unseemly remarks and said, “There is a reasonable precedent in a case like this. The last time the goyim tried to expel us from Silesia, we bought them off with a couple of thousand gold pieces.”
“And we only had to put up one-fifth of the total amount,” said Rabbi Aaron. “The rest was collected from the communities in Moravia and the three lands—”
“We only have three days, your honors,” I insisted.
There were so many ways to make the case, but I needed time to prepare and the respect of my listeners, and I didn’t have much of either.
“Too bad you can’t pummel your way out of this one,” someone said, turning my hard-earned reputation against me.
“Yeah, we’re not a bunch of drunken Cossacks,” someone else agreed.
I searched the book-lined corridors of my mind for the best place to start the discussion. Always begin with a joke, urged a Babylonian sage cited in the tractate on Shabbes, but that wasn’t appropriate to every situation. So I appealed to the Sanhedrin, the council of seventy wise men convened to pronounce judgment on the weightiest issues.
Somehow my tongue turned my scattered thoughts into a reasonably coherent argument. “Your honors, esteemed burghers of Prague, and members of the Jewish community: the Rabbis taught us that no one member of our tribe may be sacrificed for the good of the many. If a group of Jews in a strange land is surrounded by a heathen mob who say, ‘Give us one of your number, or we will kill you all,’ they all must be killed, for no Israelite may be deliberately delivered to the heathen.”
The room grew tense as each of the spectators imagined his own death. They saw themselves run through with pikes and steel swords, felt the rough brown hemp tighten around their throats, the horses’ hooves crushing their bones, the Inquisitional flames consuming their clothes, hair, and flesh.
“Your logic is certainly to the point, except for one problem,” Rabbi Aaron replied. “The Christians aren’t heathen. And the rabbis also ruled that if the mob specifies an individual by name, we must surrender him and save our own lives.”
The benches exhaled with collective relief.
I was ready for that one. “But in what circumstances