Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (47 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
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The demands for a rigorous reform of the rabbinate, strict education of young people, and a turn away from pilpul to the more rewarding study of the Torah and Haggadah are intimately related to Rabbi Loew’s idea that the Jewish people should not, in a late moment of their history, encounter the coming of the Messiah unprepared. It is curious that he expressed these ideas, ultimately aiming at self-assertion, in Aristotelian terminology. To Rabbi Loew, the non-Jew is but unformed matter, but the Jew is form; and from these assumptions (and after the Jews had been cruelly persecuted and expelled from Spain in 1492) he derived other definitions that elevated the Jew above the non-Jew. For him the non-Jew, biblically incarnated in Amalek (the Israelites’ first enemy after their crossing of the Red Sea, Exodus 17:6-7, 8-16), is but matter, water, accident, and history; the Jew, incarnated in Israel, lives in the sphere of form, fire, the necessary, and eternity; it follows (though not all Jewish contemporaries were ready to accept these deductions) that the non-Jew can become a Jew, matter seeking its form (as woman, or matter, longs for man, the principle of form). Jews, even those who converted to Christianity, as happened during the expulsions in Spain, cannot be disloyal to form and remain Jews. Anticipating the ideas of the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (later used in the defense of the Slavic peoples), Rabbi Loew declares that each group of people is called to fulfill its own and proper tasks; each must remain pristine and unsoiled in its beliefs, idiom, ways of behavior, even its code of dress. A cohesive community cannot be of evil but, on the contrary, constitutes the precondition of all integrity.
The question discussed for now more than two hundred years as to whether or not Rabbi Judah Loew was a Kabbalist of the mystical kind often coincides with the popular belief that “magic Prague,” or its mysterious Jewish community, has been an eminent and unique place of mystical practices and speculations. In the history of the Kabbalah, however, Prague never had the same importance as Safed in Israel or Gerona in Spain, and in Moshe Edel’s modern history of the Kabbalah, Prague does not appear at all. Rabbi Loew, who was chief rabbi in Moravia and Poland for many more years than he was chief rabbi of Prague, cannot be considered an incarnation of a Kabbalistic tradition in Prague, much as the recent tourist trade would like to sell him that way—quite apart from the historical circumstance that the traditions of rabbinical Prague were predominantly Tosafist or pilpulist, of the highest exegetic perfection. It is
also true, however, that many of the Prague Tosafists—including Isaac ben Moses, in the P
emyslid period, as well as Jom Tov Lipmann-Mülhausen, the most prominent scholar of the post-Carolinian period and a valiant defender of the rationalist Maimonides—played speculative games with numbers and letters or both; it cannot be said that Rabbi Loew did not intimately know the Jewish mystical tradition (perhaps with the exception of books written by his contemporary Luria). The drama of new Renaissance ideas and Jewish tradition was played out in Rabbi Loew’s mind, and he did not hesitate to refer to the mystical tradition whenever he defended the old purity of the Torah against recent scientific doubts. When the Jewish Renaissance scholar Azariah ben Moses dei Rossi demanded that the truth of the Torah be tested against the new knowledge developed in many nations, Rabbi Loew angrily argued that scientific knowledge, though legitimate in itself and worthy of being known, could not touch the Torah, which was radically different. He used the Zohar (a collection of mystical texts written in 1270-1300) to show that, in contrast to the developing knowledge of nations, the Torah was totally above all history.
also true, however, that many of the Prague Tosafists—including Isaac ben Moses, in the P
emyslid period, as well as Jom Tov Lipmann-Mülhausen, the most prominent scholar of the post-Carolinian period and a valiant defender of the rationalist Maimonides—played speculative games with numbers and letters or both; it cannot be said that Rabbi Loew did not intimately know the Jewish mystical tradition (perhaps with the exception of books written by his contemporary Luria). The drama of new Renaissance ideas and Jewish tradition was played out in Rabbi Loew’s mind, and he did not hesitate to refer to the mystical tradition whenever he defended the old purity of the Torah against recent scientific doubts. When the Jewish Renaissance scholar Azariah ben Moses dei Rossi demanded that the truth of the Torah be tested against the new knowledge developed in many nations, Rabbi Loew angrily argued that scientific knowledge, though legitimate in itself and worthy of being known, could not touch the Torah, which was radically different. He used the Zohar (a collection of mystical texts written in 1270-1300) to show that, in contrast to the developing knowledge of nations, the Torah was totally above all history.Rabbi Judah Loew’s intellectual independence clearly emerged in the way in which he handled the concepts of the Sefirot, fundamental to Jewish mysticism. At the core of their teachings, the Kabbalists believed that God the invisible turned to the world of visibility in ten Sefirot, or “powers,” “energies,” and in various ways they defined these “powers”—e.g., knowledge, glory, or majesty—as essences, elements, or revelations of a divine unity-in-itself. Insisting on the invisibility and the distance of the Highest, Rabbi Loew argued against the Sefirot as concepts about the being of Being and accepts them in a mere anthropological sense—in a Kantian way, as it were. They have nothing to do with the Highest, and are only categories of human perception which are of help to our knowledge. He saw the only possibility of coming closer to God or “clinging” to him in the study of the Torah (not in pilpul casuistry) and in active fulfillment of the Ten Commandments. Later Prague Kabbalists, and the Hasidim particularly, attached themselves to Rabbi Loew’s active “clinging” to the divine, and in their stories and legends changed the learned scholar into a Zaddik, one of the miraculous and exemplary men of extraordinary power who performed many miracles and had the unusual ability to call God’s blessing upon a pious and closely knit community.
The story of the golem (Psalm 139:16, an “embryo” in the appropriate commentaries and “imperfect matter”), or the Jewish Frankenstein, has done much more to strengthen the legend of mystical Prague than all of
Rabbi Loew’s treatises and books about Jewish tradition put together. Yet the first creation of a golem antedates its appearance in Prague by many hundreds of years. A Hebrew commentary, written at Worms at the end of the twelfth century about the mystical treatise
Sefer Gezirah
, suggests that a golem can be created by a magic ritual in which gestures are as important as combinations of letters and numbers; such
gematria
was studied by the rabbis of Worms and Regensburg. Subsequent legends attach a golem to rabbis of mystical powers as proof positive of their skills, and in the late sixteenth century an early golem was ascribed to the great Rabbi Elijah Baal Shem of Chelm by the Christian writer Christoph Arnold. Rabbi Loew’s contemporaries did not speak of a Prague golem, though the situation may have changed a few generations later: in 1725, the Loews’ gravestone was piously restored, his descendants suggested that a memoir of his life and achievements should be published, and gentle hints about his more than intellectual powers began to appear in letters and
responsa
(no golem yet). Within a few decades the Jewish community was disturbed, if not rent apart, by conflicts between traditionalists and the followers of Shabbetai Zevi, a self-appointed Messiah and, later, of Jakob Frank (who claimed to be Shabbetai Zevi reincarnated), and everybody was eager to appropriate the heritage of Rabbi Loew, especially the later Hasidim of Eastern Europe. We cannot but speculate; at any rate, the first printed evidence of a Prague golem narrative, possibly long in oral circulation in Yiddish, is to be found only in the year 1841 in
Panorama des Universums,
a popular Prague German periodical. There, the story is told by the German-Czech journalist Franz Klutschak, who made a later career in Bohemian politics; he was not of Jewish origin himself and simply wanted to tell an exotic story.
Rabbi Loew’s treatises and books about Jewish tradition put together. Yet the first creation of a golem antedates its appearance in Prague by many hundreds of years. A Hebrew commentary, written at Worms at the end of the twelfth century about the mystical treatise
Sefer Gezirah
, suggests that a golem can be created by a magic ritual in which gestures are as important as combinations of letters and numbers; such
gematria
was studied by the rabbis of Worms and Regensburg. Subsequent legends attach a golem to rabbis of mystical powers as proof positive of their skills, and in the late sixteenth century an early golem was ascribed to the great Rabbi Elijah Baal Shem of Chelm by the Christian writer Christoph Arnold. Rabbi Loew’s contemporaries did not speak of a Prague golem, though the situation may have changed a few generations later: in 1725, the Loews’ gravestone was piously restored, his descendants suggested that a memoir of his life and achievements should be published, and gentle hints about his more than intellectual powers began to appear in letters and
responsa
(no golem yet). Within a few decades the Jewish community was disturbed, if not rent apart, by conflicts between traditionalists and the followers of Shabbetai Zevi, a self-appointed Messiah and, later, of Jakob Frank (who claimed to be Shabbetai Zevi reincarnated), and everybody was eager to appropriate the heritage of Rabbi Loew, especially the later Hasidim of Eastern Europe. We cannot but speculate; at any rate, the first printed evidence of a Prague golem narrative, possibly long in oral circulation in Yiddish, is to be found only in the year 1841 in
Panorama des Universums,
a popular Prague German periodical. There, the story is told by the German-Czech journalist Franz Klutschak, who made a later career in Bohemian politics; he was not of Jewish origin himself and simply wanted to tell an exotic story.
In 1838, Klutschak had published in the
Panorama des Universums
a few stories relating to the old cemetery and Rabbi Judah Loew, and he called his two-column contribution “The Golam [sic] and Rabbi Loew.” The rabbi created “by his magic powers” a near-human being, made of loam, Klutschak writes, and employed this golem as a servant in the Old New Synagogue. Unfortunately even Rabbi Loew was distracted by his scholarly studies at times and had forgotten a particular prayer while creating the golem. As a consequence, the golem, at least potentially, was more powerful than his creator, and the only way to discipline him was to slip an amulet into his mouth, every day of the week, and keep him, by that magic sedative, quiet and intent upon doing good. One day, the rabbi’s daughter Esther fell ill and her father’s magic powers were insufficient to alleviate her sufferings. It was near the evening of the Sabbath,
and the rabbi decided to stay and pray with his daughter, but suddenly the cantor came running from the synagogue, all in terror, screaming that the golem was loose and raging. The rabbi had forgotten to put the Sabbath amulet in the golem’s mouth, and when he arrived at the synagogue the raging golem was shaking the old walls and the lights were tumbling down “as if the world had come to its end.” The rabbi immediately commanded the prayers to cease (as long as they had not been completed, the Sabbath had not begun), the earlier amulet in the mouth of the golem regained its original power, the golem turned docile again, and the community prayed in unison for the rabbi’s daughter Esther, who was soon healthy again. The golem, or what was left of it, was put in storage in the attic of the synagogue, Klutschak writes, a remark that later prompted Egon Erwin Kisch, when he was an eager local reporter and not yet star journalist of the Communist International, to write an entertaining story about how he put up a ladder and searched the attic of the synagogue for the golem but, alas, in vain.
Panorama des Universums
a few stories relating to the old cemetery and Rabbi Judah Loew, and he called his two-column contribution “The Golam [sic] and Rabbi Loew.” The rabbi created “by his magic powers” a near-human being, made of loam, Klutschak writes, and employed this golem as a servant in the Old New Synagogue. Unfortunately even Rabbi Loew was distracted by his scholarly studies at times and had forgotten a particular prayer while creating the golem. As a consequence, the golem, at least potentially, was more powerful than his creator, and the only way to discipline him was to slip an amulet into his mouth, every day of the week, and keep him, by that magic sedative, quiet and intent upon doing good. One day, the rabbi’s daughter Esther fell ill and her father’s magic powers were insufficient to alleviate her sufferings. It was near the evening of the Sabbath,
and the rabbi decided to stay and pray with his daughter, but suddenly the cantor came running from the synagogue, all in terror, screaming that the golem was loose and raging. The rabbi had forgotten to put the Sabbath amulet in the golem’s mouth, and when he arrived at the synagogue the raging golem was shaking the old walls and the lights were tumbling down “as if the world had come to its end.” The rabbi immediately commanded the prayers to cease (as long as they had not been completed, the Sabbath had not begun), the earlier amulet in the mouth of the golem regained its original power, the golem turned docile again, and the community prayed in unison for the rabbi’s daughter Esther, who was soon healthy again. The golem, or what was left of it, was put in storage in the attic of the synagogue, Klutschak writes, a remark that later prompted Egon Erwin Kisch, when he was an eager local reporter and not yet star journalist of the Communist International, to write an entertaining story about how he put up a ladder and searched the attic of the synagogue for the golem but, alas, in vain.
Klutschak’s story of the golem has long been forgotten, and now most scholars wrongly assume that the first printed narrative about the golem appeared in
Sippurim
, or “stories,” published in German in Prague in 1847. The
Sippurim
merely retell the Klutschak story in a simplified form, together with other legends about Rabbi Loew, and yet they are of essential importance in the cultural history of Prague because they constitute the first volume of a local Jewish literature written in German, not Hebrew or Yiddish, and prepare the way for future generations of Jewish authors writing in German, including Franz Kafka. The
Galerie der Sippurim
was a collection of fairy tales, legends, and biographies of famous Jews, published by Wolf Pascheles, an innovative Prague bookseller and printer who, sensing a change in the marketplace, was rightly convinced that there was a growing Jewish audience for texts in literary German, printed in German letters, not in Hebrew type. His project, later continued by his son-in-law, was eminently successful; the last popular edition of the
Sippurim
appeared in the early twentieth century. Pascheles, who had begun by selling prayer books from his
Pinkel
(backpack), employed young intellectuals of the first Jewish generation trained in philosophy, literature, and the law at Prague University (medical studies had been opened to Jews earlier) and, being rationalists, they all had a difficult time telling interesting stories of mystical purport in which they had long since ceased to believe. They belonged to a generation enchanted by Moses Mendelssohn’s Berlin Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah, and argued against the mystical and Kabbalistic aura that darkened the image of the Maharal
and his contemporaries. The writers of the
Sippurim
distinctly favored enlightened rabbis; the ideal was not a scholarly pedant, living in clouds of dust and hidden behind “the entrenchments of the Talmud” (
Talmudschanze),
but a teacher of humane engagements. They argued “against a mysticism that contradicts common sense, and, like a Chinese wall, stands in the way of all progress, all culture, all science.” Divesting Rabbi Loew of mystical glory and speaking of Jewish community life in surprisingly unsentimental, often even self-ironic terms, the
Sippurim
are fully satisfied with a brief narrative reference to the golem (he is, evidently, below the dignity of an enlightened writer and reader), and, in a didactic story, Rabbi Loew warns a nobleman not to study the Kabbalah and practice magical arts. Another story (later used by Alois Jirásek in his famous
Old Czech Legends
and in Paul Wegener’s expressionist film
The Golem)
shows Rabbi Loew, at the emperor’s wish, magically conjuring up the patriarchs of Jewish history. The writers of the
Sippurim,
however, did not believe in this magic and dryly remarked that he had simply used a
laterna magica
, possibly being the imaginative inventor of that technological toy.
Sippurim
, or “stories,” published in German in Prague in 1847. The
Sippurim
merely retell the Klutschak story in a simplified form, together with other legends about Rabbi Loew, and yet they are of essential importance in the cultural history of Prague because they constitute the first volume of a local Jewish literature written in German, not Hebrew or Yiddish, and prepare the way for future generations of Jewish authors writing in German, including Franz Kafka. The
Galerie der Sippurim
was a collection of fairy tales, legends, and biographies of famous Jews, published by Wolf Pascheles, an innovative Prague bookseller and printer who, sensing a change in the marketplace, was rightly convinced that there was a growing Jewish audience for texts in literary German, printed in German letters, not in Hebrew type. His project, later continued by his son-in-law, was eminently successful; the last popular edition of the
Sippurim
appeared in the early twentieth century. Pascheles, who had begun by selling prayer books from his
Pinkel
(backpack), employed young intellectuals of the first Jewish generation trained in philosophy, literature, and the law at Prague University (medical studies had been opened to Jews earlier) and, being rationalists, they all had a difficult time telling interesting stories of mystical purport in which they had long since ceased to believe. They belonged to a generation enchanted by Moses Mendelssohn’s Berlin Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah, and argued against the mystical and Kabbalistic aura that darkened the image of the Maharal
and his contemporaries. The writers of the
Sippurim
distinctly favored enlightened rabbis; the ideal was not a scholarly pedant, living in clouds of dust and hidden behind “the entrenchments of the Talmud” (
Talmudschanze),
but a teacher of humane engagements. They argued “against a mysticism that contradicts common sense, and, like a Chinese wall, stands in the way of all progress, all culture, all science.” Divesting Rabbi Loew of mystical glory and speaking of Jewish community life in surprisingly unsentimental, often even self-ironic terms, the
Sippurim
are fully satisfied with a brief narrative reference to the golem (he is, evidently, below the dignity of an enlightened writer and reader), and, in a didactic story, Rabbi Loew warns a nobleman not to study the Kabbalah and practice magical arts. Another story (later used by Alois Jirásek in his famous
Old Czech Legends
and in Paul Wegener’s expressionist film
The Golem)
shows Rabbi Loew, at the emperor’s wish, magically conjuring up the patriarchs of Jewish history. The writers of the
Sippurim,
however, did not believe in this magic and dryly remarked that he had simply used a
laterna magica
, possibly being the imaginative inventor of that technological toy.
The
Sippurim
view of Rabbi Judah Loew as an enlightened philosopher avoids the question of Loew’s unshakable insistence on the sacred primacy of the Torah and his difficulties with the claims of the new Renaissance science, especially mathematics and astronomy, which were being tested and defined, by the grace of the emperor, not far from the Jewish Town. Rabbi Loew did not deny the usefulness of scientific study—e.g., in the calendar calculation of Jewish holidays and in the effort to know more about divine creation—yet he absolutely and coldly rejected any potential transition from the sciences to the wisdom of the Torah, and categorically separated the secondary realm of natural sciences, concerned with a merely fragmentary view of matter, from the sacred essence of the Torah, which would yield to the pious student a total grasp of all existence.
Sippurim
view of Rabbi Judah Loew as an enlightened philosopher avoids the question of Loew’s unshakable insistence on the sacred primacy of the Torah and his difficulties with the claims of the new Renaissance science, especially mathematics and astronomy, which were being tested and defined, by the grace of the emperor, not far from the Jewish Town. Rabbi Loew did not deny the usefulness of scientific study—e.g., in the calendar calculation of Jewish holidays and in the effort to know more about divine creation—yet he absolutely and coldly rejected any potential transition from the sciences to the wisdom of the Torah, and categorically separated the secondary realm of natural sciences, concerned with a merely fragmentary view of matter, from the sacred essence of the Torah, which would yield to the pious student a total grasp of all existence.
Among the Maharal’s disciples there was a man who began to disagree, modestly and hesitatingly. David ben Salomon Anza, also called David Gans, born in Westphalia, was the scientist of Prague’s Jewish community; he had studied in yeshivot in Bonn, Frankfurt, Cracow, and Prague, and it is more than probable that he followed the example of Rabbi Moses Isserles of Cracow, a renowned philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer. Gans distinctly praised the Cracow rabbi because, in trying to reconcile the sciences and Jewish sacred tradition, he had suggested possibilities of theoretical compromise presented as attractively as “oranges in a silver basket.” In particular, Gans studied Euclid with great
enthusiasm, praising him as the most celebrated genius among the nations, and believed that his teachings created a “ladder thrown between earth and heaven.” He went pretty far: “Take away Euclid’s book, and it will be impossible for you to mount heavenwards.” To Rabbi Loew’s sensibility, these must have been nearly blasphemous statements.
enthusiasm, praising him as the most celebrated genius among the nations, and believed that his teachings created a “ladder thrown between earth and heaven.” He went pretty far: “Take away Euclid’s book, and it will be impossible for you to mount heavenwards.” To Rabbi Loew’s sensibility, these must have been nearly blasphemous statements.
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