As Golems Go, by Benjamin Kuras

Kuras portrays The Maharal as the new sheriff in town, who came to Prague to whip the Jewish community into shape. The new Rabbi finds that the Jews have joined the gentiles in their frivolous habits, and proceeds to scare his people into a more divine state of mind. The Golem doesn’t appear in this non-fiction book; it is the Maharal himself who does the “rescuing.”

    According to Kuras, Rabbi Judah Lowe, aka The Maharal, was a conservative Ashkenazi Jew with a problem. He came at a time of double trouble, where you had the Protestants versus Catholics, the Poles versus Germans, and the Renaissance, which started years earlier, was making non-Jewish philosophy very attractive. If that wasn’t bad enough, Sephardic Jewish philosophers had the chutzpah to question the sages, mixing their religious learning with scientific theories. Aaria De Rossi wrote Meir Haeynayim, and in response, Rabbi Lowe wrote Be’er Hagolah.

    However, though he had no sympathy for heresy, Rabbi Lowe was not dead set against questioning. He believed that a question as half way to knowledge, and urged teachers to be patient, not the “Mister Garrison” type who thinks there are no stupid questions, only stupid people. Nonetheless, the Maharal did not appeal to those who wanted secular education.

    There is a funny scene where Rabbi Lowe sees a group of teenage boys stumbling out of a house drunk, and by their feathered caps, he can tell they’re not Jewish, so he takes no notice. But then he sees boys with skullcaps, and thinks “Jewish boys getting drunk with the goyim, no way!” This wouldn’t have raised eyebrows for a Prague Jew, since the Jews of that city were wealthy, worldly, and more in tune to free thought. Rabbi Lowe, however, was a “yekkeh,” a German Jew not trusted by the city people. They looked at him as a country bumpkin Rabbi, riding into their town and telling them off.

    This scenario would play over again and again, from the time of Jesus all the way to the modern era. The same way Jesus, a country bumpkin Rabbi, marched into town and chased the moneychangers out of the temple, your new Rabbi will do the same now. Every time a Synagogue gets the new Rabbi, he’ll make demands. Maybe it’ll be that long sleeves have to be worn? No short skirts? Cover up the tattoos? Ban alcohol from Bar Mitzvahs? I always wait with baited breath to see what the next rule will be.