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cries enter through every window and crack, as do the rats that breed in the cellars. Rabbi Loew had quarrelled with the wealthy, because he calls them to account, he scolds them, and he insists the poor have the right to the same education as the sons of the well-to-do.
    Let’s look at Judah Loew, about whom this story gathers itself like a cloud that rests on the shoulder of a mountain. He’s called the Maharal. In those days big rabbis have nicknames like sports stars and stars of stimmies. In the embattled ghettos, they are culture heroes and entertainers besides. His given name: Judah Loew ben Bezalel, Judah the Lion. A lion among the Jews.
    The Maharal is a bright fierce man, a hotheaded kabbalist, steeped in ancient tradition so that Torah haunts and informs and sculpts the world for him, but curious, open to the science and the speculation of his time. The Maharal is a crabby saint of towering intellect with a fondness for having at the opposition with every weapon in his arsenal, from reason to high rhetoric to sarcasm to ridicule. He is free with his invective, his insults. In any intellectual contest, the desire to win takes him over and he fights to kill his opponent. He is almost alone in his time in believing that any opinion has the right to be uttered ― he believes anachronistically in free speech, not because he is a relativist. No, he believes in the truth of his religion. But he believes too strongly in the sacredness of the intellect to cripple it by forbidding any ideas whatsoever. He conducts running wars of words with most other famous rabbis of his time. But in December of 1599, he receives a summons to debate a priest in public, a dangerous agon, because as a Jew he is supposed to lose. If he doesn’t, the opportunity of the Church for revenge will be multiple, swift or slow-moving as they wish, and never-ending ― or ending the usual way. It is not a time when someone wishing the sight should lack for the spectacle of burning Jews. But how can the Maharal throw the debate? G-d would not accept less than victory. As a Jew, he is obligated to use his entire mind. The early Biblical critic dei Rossi, whose ideas the Maharal detests, said if you want to offer a sacrifice to G-d, offer it to truth, and perhaps that is the only thing Rossi ever uttered with which the Maharal is in agreement.
    The Maharal prepares for a public debate with the priest, Thaddeus, a Dominican formerly in the office of the Inquisition in Spain. Thaddeus was recently posted to Prague, where it is felt a climate of some toleration has been flourishing under the emperor Rudolf, which cannot be permitted to continue or to expand. Judah finds in his heart fury and contempt for this opponent who causes such ruin, torture and death in other lives while enjoying the security of his own position, but he strives to overcome his rancour. He wonders if he should not plead ill health, but special pleading seldom works. His health is fine, although he is an old man, but he had been depressed this winter. He has not recovered from the death of his only son.
    When he sees his son in his mind, he does not see the fifty-five-year-old with the grey streaks in his beard but rather the gifted but often too sensitive child with his weak eyes and quavering voice. He thinks he was a poor father to his only son and probably to his daughters as well, although he left them largely to Perl, his able balebusteh of a wife. He had huge expectations for the son for whom he had waited so long, the successor, the bearer of his name into the future. Now he has outlived him. This is a pathetic fate I particularly fear. I have raised an outlaw who operates far from me with a price on her head. Will I even hear of her death? While I walk through my busy comfortable days, often my mind drifts towards Riva. Like the Maharal, I have been a poor parent and a fine grandparent.
    Although the Maharal is old ― not as people call me old, and then I look with surprise