The World That We Knew(4)

Ruth covered her hair with a black scarf she had worn ever since she’d lost her husband. His ghost was beside her each night in her small bed, but every time she reached for him, he disappeared. This was how life was, tragic and unexplainable. When you were young you were afraid of ghosts, and when you were aged you called them to you. She knew it was impossible to completely understand the world God had created, but she had lived with two men who knew the seventy-two kinds of wisdom that were contained within God’s seventy-two names. Despite everything she had witnessed and all she had lost, she still believed in miracles.

Her father, The Magician, and her husband, his Assistant, had access to books from Spain that revealed the inner workings of the known world through sacred geometry. The circle, for instance, was a perfect shape that possessed the power to ward off evil. In the first century B.C.E. a miracle worker named Honi Ha-Me’agel stood in a circle to call down rain upon the parched earth. Even now, on a couple’s wedding day, a bride must circle a groom, as mourners must circle the graves of the pious with thread. Numbers and shapes revealed the mysteries of the universe and the sacred name of God, which numerically represented the divine, and was present in all of His creations, including the mathematical equation of pi. Therefore it was through the purity of numbers that the rabbis attempted to understand God’s miracles. It was believed that all creation came from thought, language, and mathematics.



When Hanni knocked on the door, Ruth drew her distraught neighbor into her tiny apartment and listened as Hanni wept, insisting she must send her daughter away. Ruth didn’t need magic to see the blood under her neighbor’s fingernails. It was indeed a terrible time.

As Ruth made tea she thought over Hanni’s predicament. Ruth knew what evil could befall a young girl traveling alone, especially now, when there were demons dressed in army uniforms on every corner. Ruth knew of them as mazikin, terrible creatures whose work was the misery of humankind. They had accomplished their work in Berlin. Her neighbors hadn’t listened to Ruth when Nazi policy first began to separate Jews from the rest of the population. She had seen children and their mothers standing in the snow, begging for food, while the newspapers printed captions beneath photographs of Jewish businessmen and lawyers and professors. Here are the animals. Do you know this Beast?

That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that evil had come to save mankind. It brought up ancient fears and scattered them on the street like pearls. To fight what was wicked, magic and faith were needed. This was what one must turn to when there was no other option.

“My father once told me of a creature.” Ruth lowered her voice as she poured the tea. “The golem.”

She went on to explain that this monstrous entity was made of earth, but imbued with life by God’s allowance and man’s practice. A golem was created by use of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. First mentioned in the Book of Psalms, it had no soul, only ruach, the life and breath of animals. The Talmud stated that Adam himself was a golem until God gave him a soul, for a soul is said to be what divides us from all others.

“What good would such a thing be to me?” Hanni wanted to know.

“Have you no idea of what a golem can do? It can use the language of birds and of fish, tell time without a clock, and leap from a roof like a bat. It can see the future, commune with the dead, overcome demons. It can tell the day and hour of a person’s death. It can speak to angels and live among them. It cannot be stopped from any act unless it is held ten cubits above the ground, for at that height it is powerless. It continues to grow stronger each day, so much so that it can become too dangerous to keep. This creature has protected our people since the beginning of time. For one girl, it is likely this cannot be done. But one never knows what might be possible. With a golem beside her, your girl would be safe.”

Ruth gave Hanni the address of a rabbi who was famous for his knowledge of spirits and magic.

“The rabbi will refuse to talk to you,” Tante Ruth warned. “He will not even be in a room with a woman other than his wife. So you must go to her. Perhaps she will understand you, woman to woman. She brings babies into the world, so she may have a tender heart. But in case she doesn’t, bring something valuable with you. Perhaps, if she has knowledge, the wife can be bought. If you want a champion to protect your daughter, one who will follow her to the ends of the earth and never abandon her, a golem is the only answer. And only the most learned person can use the seventy-two names of God to bring forth the creature.”



Hanni went to Bobeshi and sat beside her in bed. Whole families were disappearing every day. From her window, Bobeshi could see people using mirrors to communicate with their neighbors in code as they planned to flee.

“We saved our treasure for a desperate time,” Hanni told her mother. “Now that time has come.”

Bobeshi immediately gave her blessing.

There was a small suitcase beneath the bed. In the lining was a slit no one could see, although Hanni knew where it was, even in the dark. She had made the cut, then sewn the seam closed with tiny, miraculous stitches that were nearly invisible. Her husband always said that if times had been different, she might have been a surgeon herself.

She reached inside for the jewels they had brought with them from Russia. A poor man, Lea’s grandfather had come across a stranger in the woods who was being attacked by wolves. Lea’s grandfather shot each wolf, not knowing who it was he had saved. He cursed himself upon seeing it was the landowner and berated himself for the beautiful, wild lives he had taken; he had always felt they were his brothers. Still, he carried the master over his shoulder all the way home. In return for what he’d done the landowner’s wife had taken off her diamond ring and emerald earrings and placed them in his hand as he stood outside in the snow. Never sell these jewels for profit, he told his wife and his daughter. When the time comes, and you need them, know the wolves were the ones who saved us.