Elan M Cole
P005 → New Colossus :: Short Fiction
This is what I was told. About my birth, this is what I’m told. At least the part what came before what I remember.
There was a man. An evil man. A terrible cunt of a man. This man, his name was Mandelbaum. Eddie “Gurrah” Mandelbaum. He was a powerful man, he was. He owned a big bunch of lower Manhattan. Bowery to the East River, the 14th Street to Park Row. What I means by ‘owned’ is, it is this: he had a strong and powerful gang. They was called the Pell St. Cannoneers, they was. They was joined by many smaller gangs. Daybreak Boys and the Patsy Conroys. East River Angels and the Corlears Rangers. The Madelyn Murphys. The Butch Slaughters. Shang Draper’s Forty Thieves (but of which they was only fifteen thieves, sometimes sixteen when “Yakey” Allen was let out the Tombs). But Gurrah, he controlled them all.
By ‘controlled them all’ what I means is, he controlled all their activities. The clip joints and saloons, panel houses, stuss parlors, whorehouses, groceries, and everything all the ways down to the little fagan gangs and solo pickpockets. Why? Because he was a right beast and because of Tammany Hall. Gurrah ran the neighborhoods but Tammany ran the whole of the city, because that was politics, it was indeed. And Tammany let Gurrah do what he wanted.
Why would Tammany do such a thing as let mean little men such as Gurrah bring such mayhem to the streets of lower Manhattan? Two reasons and I’ll tell you what they were. The first is, they was all gangs and immigrants down there, as far as they wanted to care. And as long as things stayed quiet in the papers, nobody in Tammany Hall gave a damn about no gangster or immigrant excepting for reason number two: votes. Gurrah made sure everyone under his thumb went the right way come election day.
Now, there was another man. Also a terrible man. His name was Dante Moretti, but he actually called himself ‘Diamond’ Dan Morris. He owned everything west of Bowery below the 14th St. His gang was called the Dan Morris Association, they was, and he also had other gangs under his own thumb. He himself was the same kind of important to Tammany Hall as Gurrah. I got no need to elaborate to you on why because I just explained it to you about Gurrah. What I will explain to you is this. Diamond Dan had ‘airs’ and that made Gurrah and folks like him hate Diamond Dan. ‘Airs’ means that Diamond Dan acted like he was better than everyone else. He called his gang an ‘Association’ and put up fundraising parties and he would dress nice and make his people only speak English.
Diamond Dan Morris and Gurrah Mandelbaum particularly hated each other, they did. Their gangs fought each other. Tooth and nail as they says. All the time they fought each other. So often and all over the place they fought. Sometimes regular people, people who went to buy shoes, or sold apples from their carts or ladies walking across the street. They would get injured. They would be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They would get hit by a bullet, or a flying brick they would. It became such that this part of Manhattan was always the wrong place, and it was always the wrong time to be there.
This one time a person did not get injured. This one time there was a furious gun battle all across Rivington Street. On this one time a person got plugged. Indeed she got good and killed. The newspapers wrote much about this. They made hay of it, as they says. Young innocent lady like that, murdered in cold blood. She was actually a whore what worked a small panel joint and opium room, but the papers didn’t want to know nothing about that. This city loves its slums, and it loves tragic stories about innocent folks, especially young innocent ladies. What I means by ‘love’ is that they can’t get enough stories about crime and blood and mayhem and innocent ladies. That’s what I means by ‘loves.’ As long as they ain’t the one’s getting plugged, the papers can’t but get enough.
And while that’s dead bright for them newspapers, it ain’t good for Tammany Hall. Them people was voters, they was, and all them other voters who loves to read them stories but lives in nicer parts of the city, well they get to be heated and say things like ‘this city is going to the dogs it is,’ even though they got dogs themselves and them dogs live better than them folks they was pretending to be all upset about.
Tammany Hall. Yes. Tammany Hall needed them lower Manhattan votes and them fancier uptown votes more than they needed Gurrah Mandelbaum and Diamond Dan. But they also did need Gurrah and Diamond Dan, because even though them votes in lower Manhattan wasn’t so fancy, there surely was a lot of them. More per square block than anywhere else. Tammany was in a pickle, as they says. So, they told them two gang leaders, Gurrah and Diamond Dan, to settle it man-to-man in a boxing match. Sporting like, with rules. Once and for all, to settle the score.
A fine place was selected. A barn up in The Bronx, where important people from Tammany Hall and a bunch of others came to watch and to witness, and to crown the victor, as they say. Them two guys fought. For almost three hours they fought each other. I wasn’t there, I didn’t see of course. I wasn’t born yet. But I was told many times through angry boozy-breathed words. They beat each other and beat each other but neither one gave up. It was declared a draw. Tammany Hall threw up their hands as they say. Everyone left angry. As I am told, everyone left angry.
Gurrah Mandelbaum was already an angry man, and he was most angry about not beating Diamond Dan to death. When he healed, his anger only got stronger. He vowed to destroy Diamond Dan. As it is said…’once and for all.’ This is a very dramatic thing to say, but as I’m told, Gurrah did indeed say it. These was dramatic times, as I’m told.
Gurrah was a horrible creature, a khazer gonif, but he was not stupid. Tammany was not happy. The people in his territory was very much not happy. Strong and terrible as he was, the people could be stronger and more terrible if they got themselves a notion to be so, and Tammany knew that too. But Tammany didn’t like to upset the order of things as long as men like Gurrah kept the order of things. So he knew that he could most certainly not win by shooting more bullets. He needed something new, something different, a secret weapon. He asked his people, but nobody had even an idea.
Comes a day though, he hears one of his boys Nathan Kaplan, who was called Kid Dropper, yapping about his dead auntie’s necklace, a very fine piece of glimmer, a bright sparkler. Thing is this auntie happened to have died. And while Kid Dropper did love his auntie—who wasn’t his auntie through blood but through kindness—and he was greatly saddened by her passing, he also was waiting on that fine, bright sparkler. Kid Dropper was an avaricious type, not one to be separated from the shiny, particularly not the flash what he believed was his to begin with. On the very day he learned of her passing, Kid Dropper in his grief searched everywhere, but it was nowheres to be found.
And yet, at his auntie’s shiva—which is like a wake for Jews that lasts a week—he spies a small curious fellow sat alone in a corner. Old he was at first glimpse, looking twice over like Methuselah and bent over a prayerbook. And what do you think was held in his curled up hand like a goyische rosary? That very same fine, bright sparkler.
Now what was this, an old thief preying off the dead? Kid Dropper was right boiled he was. He took a step to this old man to claim that sparkler. Pressed on a creaky board as he did so. All boards are creaky you might say, and I would tend to agree with you in that shoddy part of town, but this board let out a groan like the dead was deeply irritated. Kid Dropper froze on instinct—froze like he was alone in a fancy house at midnight pinching clattery silverware—but no one else in the room seemed to notice except for the old man in front of him. This man did not move, he did not. He just raised his eyes from the prayer book to Kid Dropper and that sure enough stopped him fast right on that creaky floorboard. Let me tell you, Kid Dropper was not one to heed most anyone else’s attitudes one way or another. But, heed this attitude he most certainly did. This was no Methuselah. He backed away, nice and slow.
Kid Dropper was not one to ever entirely lose his wits. Even as he made clear of the old man in the corner he gleaned this was a mystery what needed solving. Quite the fellow for the challenge, he knew how to find things out and he had the patience to do so. This is what made him valuable to awful men like Gurrah. So person to person, whisper to whisper, he worked his trade. Said one fellow, putting a finger to his eye, meaning to beware of the evil eye, this fellow said “Disturb that man at your own peril,” but then clammed up tight. Said a lady under her breath, “Ayinhara,” also meaning to beware of the evil eye, and she too clammed. And more just like this. All clams and no canaries. Almost out of folks he was on this first night of shiva.
He peeped one last mark sitting by herself, the lady what lived across the hall from his auntie. So he sat in a chair next to her and before he even opened his mouth she took his arm and sang a mournful tune of grief and loss and ‘who will she spend the days talking to me’ now that his auntie is gone. Kid Dropper let her sing like such and tutt-tutted her in all the right ways until he found the moment to ask about the old man. She stiffened up and said “kinahora” and spat twice on the floor tfu tfu. Well, he thought, he sure queered the pudding right there asking as he did. Just as he was about to call the game and get a move on, the neighbor turned out to be just the canary he was looking for.
According to this neighbor, who got this all from his auntie over tea and biscuits, the old man was named Judah Low and lived in a basement room down an alley in Ludlow Street filled with books and he never talked to nobody. Except for he did come to Kid Dropper’s auntie’s home almost every Friday night for the sabbath.
Judah Low and his tragic tale was known amongst these secretive folks at the shiva. He was in truth named Yehudah Loewenstein and he was once a powerful rabbi. Before he came to America he was called by his people Maharal. Let me explain to you that in the old country when you were an important and powerful rabbi, they took all of your initials and titles and made a new name out of it. It is something that was done. It was done for Rabbi Yehudah Lowenstein. But he was no longer Maharal, and hadn’t been for many years. In America he was just Judah Low.
He came from the same town as Kid Dropper’s auntie he did, but she came over when she was a girl many years before Judah Low came over. When he came for his visits they was both very sad together because, since between the time she came over and the time he came over, the town had been burnt off the face of the map and off the earth itself. I will get to that part in a moment.
Now, at this point in Kid Dropper’s retelling, Gurrah became impatient. No, he was not interested in dead aunties or their neighbors, old world shtetl rabbis or their sad tales. There was plenty of all of them in the Lower East Side. Dime-a-dozen, as they say. He especially had no use for no rabbis except for what they can tell their congregation who to vote for. And this old man, former rabbi from a burnt up town, had no congregation. So he was worthless to Gurrah he was, on account of he had nothing of value, and Kid Dropper was himself starting to be less than worthless, he was starting to be an annoyance.
But Kid Dropper risked a beat down and kept at it. Apparently Low did outlandish things back in the old country, and she told him an outlandish tale. It was such a tale that it haunted him enough to put aside his want of his auntie’s fine glimmer. This is the tale.
In the old country, back when he was called Maharal by his people, Low lived in a bustling town. We don’t know the name of this bustling town. I will tell you why but you already know this on account of Kid Dropper’s auntie saying as much to him: this town was wiped from the face of the earth. This town had itself a ghetto. It was the only place a Jew was allowed to live in those parts. Many times, especially on the gentile holy days, this ghetto was harassed. This was simply the way of things. Them Jews they ‘rolled with the punches’ as it is said. They had what, but no choice in the matter. No they did not. It was the way it had always been and the way it would always be according to them what lived in that place back then.
A time came, however. There was a time indeed that came when the bustling stopped. There was famine in the land, and sickness. This was not a problem in times when the mayor could hold festivals for them townsfolk and make them feel good with words. There was nothing now what with to have a festival, and the mayor’s good words fell meaningless from his mouth. It got so very bad that the people began to turn against him.
But the mayor, shrewd as he was, gave them something else to blame instead. If you guessed that he gave them the Jews to blame, you would be correct. And so he outlawed all the Jews. He decreed that on a particular date, at a particular time, them Jews was all to leave the city. If they didn’t, they would be wiped out. Them Jews was cursed, was they not? Why else is such misery lumped upon our sweet town, asked the mayor of his townsfolk.
The Jews of this town had never heard words like this. Heard tell, they did, about other places the Jews were cast out from—indeed they was a people who’s whole thing was being cast out—but not here. This was their home. For generations on generations this was their home. And where would they go? There was nowhere. Their little ghetto was a tiny island in a hostile ocean. There was no Jews elsewhere what to go to.
The people wept and tore at their clothes in despair. But Maharal did not weep or tear his clothes in despair. Maharal had had enough. With the years and years of harassment. With the never fighting back. He was fed up with the fear he saw all the time on his people’s faces. Enough was enough. So when the town coppers came to the ghetto gate to hammer up the mayor’s decree on the walls inside, Maharal met them there. Gey kaken yam! he bellowed at them. Go shit in the sea!
Them coppers was stopped in their tracks they was. This was not how Jews talked or behaved! This was more than enough to glean a proper bust up. Unsure they was though. The copper in charge, the one what had the hammer and the paper and the nails, he stared into them Jew eyes he did. Small as this old Jew was, his eyes was like fists. That copper shrugged, threw the hammer and paper and nails at Maharal’s feet and led the rest of them away.
Maharal returned to the square of the small synagogue in the middle of the ghetto from where he led his congregation, and he called his people forth. He demanded of everyone to bring him buckets of dirt, and bricks, and mud and leave it at the synagogue door. He forbade anyone from entering. Even his wife and many children included, he forbade them to enter the chapel. To all the Jews of the ghetto he said, of the day that the mayor had designated, that on that day, at the given time, they must stay in their homes. No matter what, they must stay in their homes and barricade their doors with every heavy object they had and board up every window. God would ensure the strength of these barriers, no one will get in or out. Such was his power, and such was his people’s faith that they obeyed.
On the day, at the given time, sure as clocks tick the day away, the mayor, the town police and all the townsfolk came to the gates of the ghetto with clubs and dogs and torches and knives and the like. Drinking the last of the town’s thick beer they was, and the last of the town’s liquor too. They pushed a cartload of pigs up to the gate. They was reveling they was. Today was the day they would get to chase the frightened, dirty little Jew from their city once and for all! The famine and the sickness, their privation and their fear was gone for the moment.
At the ghetto gate, standing on top of the pig cart, the mayor held aloft a paper that had the words of the new law printed upon it. “It is time Jews!” he called out. The people poked at the pigs through the wood cage and the pigs squealed and screamed and the people squealed and screamed along with them.
The mayor threw open the gate of the cart and sent them pigs scrambling forth. The crowd waited to hear the rousing of the Jews as them piggies disappeared into the ghetto. Their torches crackled and their dogs pulled on their leashes. But nothing stirred. There was not a sound but for the distant grunting of pigs. This was not what the mayor had promised his town. The silence made the people miserable and irritated.
This mayor, now, he was a man what knew the difference between a crowd and a mob. Let me tell you he knew when the one was about to turn into the other. He was not one to let that happen without his say so. He was a man what knew how useful a good mob can be. So this mayor, he made a fist with the hand that held the paper that held the words of the law. He conjured from the angry crowd a roar and let it turn into a hungry mob. And this mob, he sets them loose into the ghetto just like the pigs. They ran amok, those townsfolk did, unawares as they was of the gates shutting behind them all by themselves.
They waved their hissing crackling torches and hollered terrible and hateful words. Men and women and children and pigs and dogs rumbled through the ghetto in a river of mayhem. The townsfolk yanked at doors and beat at windows. But the doors wouldn’t open and the windows wouldn’t break. They threw their torches onto the roofs, but the flames didn’t catch. Nothing would burn. The mob howled in rage as they tumbled into the central square and busted hard up against the humble synagogue there. They pounded on the doors but it held. The longer it held the harder they threw themselves at it.
This was not what they were promised! They were promised Jews! There was not a Jew to be found! Where was them Jews? At this, the peak of the mob’s frenzy, a terrible and tremendous thunder crack burst from within the building. The earth itself lurched in response and the mob froze in shock. Another terrible jolt made the crowd jump. A third caused them to jerk backwards and freeze. The square in front of the synagogue got quiet as the grave, it sure did. Even the torches and the dogs held their crackling and growling. Not a pig did snort. Not a peep was peeped.
It was only now that the doors opened slowly, but just enough to reveal Maharal, eyes feverish and aglow. Those in the front who could see remained frozen. Those in the back who could not see regained their wits and cried out to move forward, to get the Jew, but no one moved. The mayor pushed his way to the front to stand between the crowds and the lone Jew. He knew a mob must keep moving or it would die, and so he shook the paper with the words of the law written on it clutched in his hand and demanded that Maharal and his people leave. He turned to his townsfolk to stoke them again but before he could open his mouth the mob fell apart into hundreds of terrified people trying to flee the square, tripping over the pigs and dogs and children who was doing their own very best to flee.
The mayor turned back around to the synagogue.
Next to Maharal stood a terrible beast the likes of which he had never imagined. A lumpy man-shaped hulk of dirt, stone and clay as large as the largest bear, larger even. It looked formed as if by a child, it did, with two simple holes for eyes and a larger hole the same kinda simple for a mouth. Aglow on its forehead, a Hebrew word, Esh, Fire. And truly, its hands was raging flames. This, indeed, was a golem. Of this there was no question.
Maharal leaned towards his golem to speak and it leaned down to listen. As I’m told, the rabbi pointed out to the mayhem in the square and said “burn.” The golem obeyed. This is what this type of beast does. It obeys the word. And this one proceeded to burn the entire place down, starting with the very ghetto itself, along with Maharal’s wife and many children and all the Jews barricaded in their homes. So too of course were the townsfolk burned, trapped as they was in the ghetto. There was no difference what screams was Jewish screams or what screams was gentile screams. All of them burned equally, jew, gentile, pig, rat, home, shul, shed and outhouse alike. Maharal’s righteous fury broke.
What had he done? This was not justice! This was not retribution! This was not what he promised his people! He ran about the square, hands to his head, pushed this way and that by the growing flames, unable to save a single soul. He left the square to catch up to the golem and put a stop to it while he still could, but so swift and intent it was, and so thick was the air with smoke and the smell of burning that Maharal could only find the merest of breath to stumble after it.
The golem smashed through the gates. Bereft and barely able to keep up, Maharal followed. He climbed to a high point on the old stone walls what surrounded the entire city to watch his creation finish the destruction. And when the city and all its inhabitants was wiped from the earth with its outstretched arms and flaming mitts, the beast stopped, having completed its task. Maharal climbed down from the stone wall. He found his golem and wiped the word from its forehead. After watching it collapse back into a pile of dirt, he gathered a fistful of its remains. He found a pouch and poured the dirt into it, and hung it from his neck with a length of cord. He tucked the pouch down his shirt where it rested on top of his busted heart.
Maharal left the remains of the town forever, and wandered until he came to a port. There, he surrendered himself to exile in America.
Let me ask you who can be more bereft than the righteous man what walks out of the hell he himself created? No one, I would say. Not a one.
Now this is some tale, I’m sure you would agree. It sure stuck in Kid Droppers nut, it did. So he stretched his legs about the streets, plying his trade as he did, looking for the dirt on this here Low in Ludlow Street. And don’t you know he gets the same headlines as from the fine folks at his auntie’s shiva. Not just from the Hebrews, mind you. The Italians, they give him something to say, they sure do. They say he got the word of god stuck in his throat. They make the cross sign and say ain’t no one throwing stones at that old Jew. Holloran from the Shea’s Oyster Saloon in Corlears Hook says to him, finger to nose, “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no one like that and if I did, see, I’d sure as day stay away from lockin’ peepers wit’ him.” Sing Lee at the Hop Sing Den in Pell Street, he says to Kid Dropper, he says he ain’t never met the man but heard tell from the washerwomen who took in his soiled linens, who themselves didn’t know first hand but shuddered at the memory of hearing the tale.
Gurrah was a terrible and impatient ballbuster forty times over but he was not dumb. If there was a thing he was, it was not an idiot. He was a shrewd prick. With such a rumor already sunk stiff as a bit into every noggin in lower Manhattan, he could grab the reins and use it to beat Diamond Dan once and for all. If all them good folks around town heard tell that Low and his golem-making shenanigans was with him, he may just have his edge. Maybe with such an edge he could even beat Tammany itself. He needed to see this Low character himself and take the measure of the man, find out what he wanted most, so’s he could be hooked in good. He told Kid Dropper to bring this rabbi to him the very next day.
Kid Dropper ran this errand but returned without no rabbi. Gurrah did not like this and he was angry. Kid Dropper explained that this old Jew said gey kacken yam. Perhaps you can imagine how much angrier Gurrah became. I tell you he got very angry. So he went to see this rabbi himself. He stomped over to the little basement room in which this rabbi stayed. This room I know, and I can describe it to you because I have been there, not because I have been told of it. It is dark without no windows and many many books. There is a cot and there is a desk with a rickety chair and there is a narrow closet. I wasn’t there yet when Gurrah kicked in the door and demanded to talk to the rabbi. I wasn’t born yet. But this I know on account of Maharal putting it in my head.
Gurrah stood in the doorway peeping daggers into the room. That is a clever way of saying that he had a very hard look about his face aimed at Low, who was sat at his desk. “Rabbi, do you know who I am?” Gurrah says. It is the way of beasts to make such an introduction.
Low looked like a skeleton draped in old skin and wrapped in shirtsleeves and a vest. But he did not look frail. No. He looked more like them wires what pulls the Brooklyn Bridge up tight, straining under tremendous weight. “I’m no rabbi to no one,” he said. “Yes, I know who you are. You’re that shtarker gonif what runs all this mayhem in the streets. What do you want of me?”
Gurrah says “Tell me this bullshit shtetl fairy tale about your golem. Tell me the truth of it, what I need to know to frighten the children.”
Low was well awares that this beheyma sent his errand boy—this very errand boy what had designs on his daughter’s necklace at the shiva—to get the scoop on him. He was well awares of the gunfighting across the Bowery and the boxing match up in the Bronx. Low was expecting this visit well before Kid Dropper showed up at his door. He saw right through Gurrah Peeped into his crippled little heart he did. Low took the measure of Gurrah’s misery and greed, and of his pain, and of his desire to make himself safe in a world that showed him nothing but cruelty and theft and violence in return. Low saw the little filthy Gurrah child of Coentie’s Slip, pretty much motherless and stray. That little bastard was the key to Low’s very own redemption.
So he invited Gurrah in. Sat him down at the rickety table. Low held Gurrah’s eyes with his own and told him all about golems. He went into great detail about the history, the makings of them, the uses of them. And he told him his tale in ways that Kid Dropper could not. Gurrah was enthralled, he was. The meager light that came through the open front door dimmed to dusk.
When he finished, my rabbi reached down his shirt and pulled up an old and stained leather pouch. He held it in his hand and hefted it as one tries to guess the weight of something heavy. Gurrah nodded slow, mouth half open like a kid shown long promised candy. Low, he said nothing. Best way not to break the spell. He knew he had Gurrah. He knew what Gurrah would demand next, and it would not be the same thing as when he first entered this room. He knew what the terms of payment would be too. He knew but left it to Gurrah to speak the words. One cannot agree to an offer before it is spoken, and one should never agree too quick, lest one come off as a pigeon.
“Rabbi,” Gurrah says to him he says, “make me a goddamned Golem. A for-real Golem. Make me a Golem and you will never again want for anything in this life.”
There it was.
Low put the pouch carefully back into his shirt. He knew the truth of what this pisher of a gangster was offering. It was indeed the payment he had been hoping for since he left the ashes of his town behind him. But to accept the payment, he had to mend the destruction he had wrought. And he needed forgiveness. To do all this, he needed to truly set the hook.
Gurrah smiled an awful smile, extended his hand and asked, “whaddaya say rabbi?”
“No!” barked my rabbi. “Gey avec! Fuck off wit’ you. I give you what you come for, behema. Now go scare the children!”
Gurrah was startled and he was confused. No one says no to Eddie Gurrah Mandelbaum in his own territory. Yet here was an old man, a matchstick of a man saying just this. And yet Gurrah was compelled to leave. Unsure of what to do, he could not but do as Low commanded.
In the days that followed, three more times Gurrah kicked in the door of my rabbi’s room. Each time was he angrier and each time was he closer to violence—which ain’t too far a distance for a brute such as Gurrah. Three more times my rabbi turned him away.
One more time Gurrah came. This time he did not kick in the door. This time he knocked. This time my rabbi opened the door and welcomed him inside. Gurrah took off his hat and sat down on the edge of the cot. My rabbi offered him tea, which he accepted. “Rabbi,” says Gurrah. “I needs me a golem of the likes of which you have made before. Make me a golem and you will never want for anything in this life.”
Low asked him “for what do you need this Golem, Edward?” No one alive called Gurrah Edward but Gurrah did not even so much as raise a brow.
“I gotta protect us from that dopey hump Moretti. Diamond Dan. He’s gonna wipe us all off the map, we don’t do nothin.’”
“And how much do you want this Golem, Edward?” asked Low.
“Oh more than any’ting in the world rabbi.”
Low leaned in and put it straight to Gurrah. “And what are you willing to give, Edward?”
Gurrah pulled a twisted mug. “I toldja, you won’t never want for nothing any more in this life.”
“No Edward. This is not what I am asking you. I am not asking what you are prepared to give to me. I am asking you what are you prepared to give of yourself?”
“Whatever it takes, rabbi. I needs me this golem.” Low knew there that Gurrah was as true and honest as ever he could be. The man would give of himself what would be asked, without which Low could not achieve his full and total redemption.
Low said “Then Edward, I need what’s left of your heart and your soul.”
At this here Gurrah laughed. What is something as abstract as a heart and soul to a man of gold and silver and lead such as him? Gurrah put his hat back on his head and stood. “You got it rabbi. Heart and soul. What I gotta do to get this thing started?”
Low did not stand as is customary when one’s guest stands to leave. He explained, “In three weeks, the start of the next Hebrew month will fall on Friday night. Come back then at sundown. Come alone. Bring mud from the East River. Bring cobblestones. Bring gravel and dirt. You will give me the rest of what I need then. Now fuck off wit’ yeh, and don’t bother me until then.” Gurrah had nothing to say to that and so he left the Rabbi in his room.
Three weeks later, Gurrah returned with two of his biggest shtarkers, Hiram ‘Fancy’ Guzik and Boris ‘Gyp The Blood’ Gelber. The Rabbi’s floor was clear of clutter, his cot removed. His small desk was shoved to the corner on top of which was set two shabbos candles. “Rabbi,” says Gurrah. “I am arrived here with my heart and my soul,” by which he meant Fancy and Gyp. “These two here are like brothers to me.”
Low was angered that Gurrah did not come alone. And he was irritated that this bum was so glib about his heart and his soul. Gurrah saw the fury in the Rabbi’s eyes. “What, Rabbi? I cannot bring all what you ask by myself.” He waved his hand at his two men. They left the room and returned with giant baskets filled with dirt, and with wet mud and with gravel and bricks. Three times they left, three times they returned. My rabbi watched them heave the giant loads into the room as if they was baskets of bread. He reconsidered. Them two shtarkers would be a boon to the final product. Low nodded his head and told the shtarkers how to dump out the dirt in a long pile like a challah bread in the middle of the room.
Low went to one of his walls of books and papers and with great care and delicacy picked out a long blue velvet box rimmed with gold. It was faded and balded in some spots. He placed it gently on the table in front of the candles. Along the top of this box was written there in Hebrew the lines of a very beautiful song. This song, it is known as L’cha Dodi and it goes just like this:
Come my beloved, let us meet the Bride
and welcome her presence this Shabbos
This is a very beautiful love song. It is about the love of the heart and soul that arrives to bless a happy home every Shabbos and provide the spirit of peace and rest at the end of a toilsome week. My rabbi, Yehudah Lowe, Ha Maharal himself sang this song to me once and placed it forever in my very own heart. Of the box, he opened it. Resting on pretty blue satin was a silver challah knife so perfect it glowed in that special way what silver does glow.
When it was time, Low struck a match and lit the candles and said the blessing and sang the L’cha Dodi. He sang softly. And then he prayed. A peace came about the room. This was the gift of the Sabbath Bride of which Low sung in L’cha Dodi. All the menace and anger bled from Gurrah and his two shtarkers.
My rabbi took the knife into his hand. To the shtarkers he says “stand on the dirt. Take your coats off and roll up your shirtsleeves, far as they will go.” And to Gurrah he says “there will be blood, but there will not be injury. There will be pain, but there will not be death. This is the ritual. You will assure me these gonnifs of yours will behave, and that you will behave, no matter what I am doing to you? This you will do, or you will have no golem. It is your choice.” And Gurrah agreed.
Low stepped to the shtarkers standing on the pile of dirt. To Gyp the Blood he says “Gib mir dayn hant.” But the Gyp don’t speak Yiddish and this disgusted my rabbi so he says “Give me your hand!” And the Gyp did as he was commanded. Low struck like a serpent, gripped Gyp’s thick hand, and sliced deep into his forearm to the bone with the challah knife. Gyp howled in pain like an animal but didn’t move. Fancy and Gurrah did nothing, in the thrall as they were of the Sabbath Bride. Low let the Gyp’s arm fall, took him by the shoulders and moved him a little bit further into the dirt pile for it to catch the blood better. Low then did the same to Fancy, who did not yell but let out a long growl and twisted his face. And then he left them two shtarkers to stand on the dirt dripping their blood while he chanted for a bit until it was time for Gurrah.
And when it was time for Gurrah, Low says to Gyp and Fancy, he says “gey avec. Now fuck off wit you two. Roll your sleeves down and get your coats and fuck off wit yiz. Wait outside.” And they rolled their white sleeves down and no blood seeped through. Out the door they went.
To Gurrah now, my Rabbi instructed him to open his shirt. As with Fancy and Gyp, he commanded Gurrah to give his hand. But my Rabbi did not slice his arm. Instead he sliced deep between the ribs of his left side. Gurrah did not flinch or cry out in pain and when my Rabbi commanded him to lean over the pile he did so and stayed that way as my rabbi chanted. And the both of them stayed that way, Gurrah leaning so his blood rained on the dirt and my Rabbi chanting, until the sabbath candles burned down and almost out. In the last flickering of the candles my Rabbi commanded Gurrah to put his shirt and coat back on. And as with Gyp and Fancy, Gurrah’s shirt did not stain but was instead just as white as when he walked in the room many hours ago.
The candles expired, and the calming presence left the little room. Gurrah’s eternal anger returned and he demanded to see his golem. Low was exhausted now and made feeble from his efforts. He sat hard to his desk and knocked a candlestick over. His voice was weak, but not without command and he chided Gurrah against wanting a thing today that takes many days to make. And so Gurrah left.
Now Low began the hardest part. What made this part so hard you may ask? Well, now Low had to face the memories what he had kept locked away for so very long.. Once he opened that vault, the tears came. They came on sudden and heavy, like a sea squall. Decades of tears spilled out. The volume of them brought Low to his hands and knees on top of the pile. Here it was that he took the knife to his very own ribs and it hurt him so much less than the memories. Of that Friday night, he drained himself into the pile, and the first part was finished.
In the week that followed, my Rabbi chanted and prayed and he read from many many texts. And so is the way of these things that he did not read the ink of the Hebrew and Aramaic letters so much as the spaces between the ink of the letters and this is where he spent his time in ecstatic prayer. Standing over the dirt and the bricks and the mud he davened as such. Come Monday, from this pile of nothing, a form of something, of a rude and rocky something gathered.
As the week passed into Tuesday and as Low rocked deeper into ecstatic prayer, this shape slowly softened into a clay-like human form. Arms split from the body and the ends of the arms bent into clumsy mitts. Legs cleaved apart below the shapeless waist. Feet bent up like the mitts did. This would have been enough. Indeed, this was enough back in the old country. It was enough to destroy his town. But here in New York City, to do what Low desperately needed to do, it was not enough. And so he kept going, pushing his will beyond any limit he had ever known.
Wednesday brought sharp features to the lump of a head. It brought hair and stubble. It brought fingers and fingernails, toes and toenails. It brought scars and lumps and muscles and nipples and a belly button. It did not bring genitals, because why would something that could live forever need to be fruitful? But it did bring ears and a mouth and teeth and a tongue.
Thursday dawned and Maharal drifted back into this world from the spaces between the letters to look down on a cold clay man. It had the likenesses of Eddie ‘Gurrah’ Mandelbaum, Fancy, Gyp and Low himself all blended together. It was good.
Low brought the knife from the blue box, still on the table since last shabbos, and bent to the figure’s forehead. Here he carved Hebrew words. Words for strength and righteous fury, words for a mighty and unbreakable constitution, words for persistence, resilience, and the unstoppable and relentless pursuit of anything asked of it. These words were easy because they was dumb and mindless in their activation. They was the soulless words of Gyp and Fancy, and of Gurrah’s brute nature. But he also carved words that was difficult and taxing to carve. He lifted the figure enough to carve them between the hairs on the back of its head, where no one could see them. These was words of compassion and love, of creativity and fair judgment, of self-restraint and purpose, wisdom and fair judgment, and of curiosity and generosity. Deepest he carved this one word: emmes. It means ‘truth.’
These was the words found in between the letters of L’cha Dodi. And though he was obligated to carve words of obedience to Gurrah that would last for as long as that beast lived, Low also carved deeper words of obedience to the Sabbath Bride, words only the rabbi himself knew was there, words that would be activated upon his very own death.
Come Friday morning my rabbi had one more word to carve into the figure. As he knelt next to the figure, he held its head gently. He once again chanted his way back into the spaces between letters. And when he returned, he carved the final letters into the center of the figure’s forehead. These letters formed the name of the Lord our God, King of the Universe, who created the heavens and the earth. Deep as he carved them, they faded as he did so, as if he was painting with water on a desert stone.
Low leaned into the ear of the figure and whispered “l’chaim” which means ‘life’ and this then was the first I ever opened my eyes and beheld my rabbi.
We are now in the part of this story where this is what I know to be true because I seen it, because it happened to me. This is now no longer only what I was told, or what was given to me, this is now what I remember.
My rabbi’s eyes was the first thing in the heavens and earth that I seen. His eyes was aglow with sadness and pain and hunger. I knew this without needing to know why I knew this. I just did. Of me, there was simply the beginning, and in the beginning was his eyes, full with tears.
He sobbed just then, a mighty sob indeed. And he bent over me with them hungry eyes, both of his hands squashed together like the way the goyim pray in churches and he begged me for forgiveness from God for what he had done. I do not have tears but I felt his sadness in my very own chest and I sat up for the very first time and I embraced my Rabbi because he needed comfort. His body was so tight it was trembling. I held him firmly and into his ear I uttered my first words on this earth. I says to him, I says “you must forgive yourself Rabbi.” I says exactly this, and my rabbi sobbed again, a mighty and bone shaking sob, and the tension that strung his bones tight left him right quick-like. He sagged like an old sheet. It was only me what held him up from flopping to the floor.
We stayed just so for a spell. My rabbi then gathered himself up as best he could and released himself from me. “So. I must tell you,” he says to me. And then he spills. First he spills the tale up to this here point I tells you. Then he commanded me to imagine, he did.
He commanded me to imagine the ocean’s surface, what with it moving and shifting and changing all the time, and pick a spot and try and follow it. I ain’t never seen an ocean in them first hours of my life, but I had the knowledge in my substance and I closed my eyes and imagined, sure enough. And it was very clear: high above a dark green grey world thousands of miles in all directions, a world of water heaving and swelling and shifting and stretching, waves upon waves upon waves. I picked a spot but I could not follow it. I imagined so good I shot my hands to the floor to steady myself. My Rabbi patted my shoulder and told me again that I was very good and then he commanded me to imagine that I was on a boat looking out over all that there water. So instead of just floating in the sky over all that there water I imagined myself on the deck of a big boat. And he says to me then he says that the boat is rocking thisaway and thataway and I have to hold on tight to the railing or I’ll be thrown over the side. And I made tight fists because I did indeed imagine just that very thing.
He says to me then, he says, “The streets here. They are paved with cobblestones. Them stones came in the bellies of many many boats. Why did these boats carry nothing but such stones in their bellies? It is because they kept these very boats stable and balanced on the long and perilous journey from the old world to the new. Without these stones them boats would have rocked back and forth like you are imagining now. Too much rocking and they would have rocked all the way over top to bottom and all would have been lost. What we call them stones is ‘ballast.’”
And a third time he commands me to imagine something, but in a different kind of way. “Imagine now that our city is like them boats. This boat is taking folks on a long and perilous journey from what they left behind to where they dream of going. They are missing something on this boat, however. You can see in the mayhem of these streets that something is missing.” And so he asks me the first question anyone ever asked me on this earth. He asks me “do you know what this boat is missing?”
And so I says to him I says “ballast.”
My rabbi smiled. And that was the first smile I ever seen on this earth. He told me that was a very good answer. He told me that was the correct answer.
He says to me that in this world there are those what seek for others, and this is good, but them same folks can go to great and terrible lengths with hot and righteous fury, and that can be very bad. There are also those what seek only to empower and enrich themselves. They will go to great and terrible lengths with cold and ruthless force to do so, and this is bad. But them same folks can bring about new and wonderful things what never existed before that can benefit many others, and this can sometimes be good. Sometimes it is one in the very same person who seeks both, but it cannot be done, try as they might. Sometimes a person starts one way and goes another way. It is all very confusing, he assured me, knowing who is what and when. Just like following a spot on the ocean. “And so for all these folks on this here boat, tossed this way and that between righteous fury and ruthless force, all they can do is hang on and hope the boat don’t capsize. For that, I made you.”
I glean what he was saying and so I stop imagining and I open my eyes and I says “I am ballast,” and he smiled even bigger. But his eyes looked even sadder, and he got teary. And so he says to me he says “yes, you are correct. As you are made with numerous gifts, you are ballast.” And so he names for me these gifts.
First and most valuable of all the gifts I was given was the very mud and dirt and bricks I got from this city itself. These gifts rooted me deep in this place. I cannot stray, no I cannot. Just like with the stuff of my substance, I have always been here and here I will always be. My rabbi was unsure but pondered that was I to drift from these five boroughs I may very well tire and slow and eventually crumble back into the very stuff of my substance. He made me promise to him that I would not test that hunch. This he did say clear like a bell to me: “I will not command you in this, as I will not command you how to pursue this life you have been given. You must have the power to make your own choices, else you become just another tool of a righteous fool. I can only ask of you a promise. It will be your choice to keep it or to break it.” I did promise this to him. So he says to me, with more tears, that I will learn that promises are easy to give and hard to keep.
He continued. From Gyp and Fancy I got muscle. Enough as much as a whole team of oxen. More even. Lift a whole building on my very own back, I could, was I so inclined. This I felt in all my limbs and my shoulders and my back and even in my head. From Gurrah I got murder. Cold hard ruthlessness. I felt it in my throat and behind my eyes. From my rabbi I got something very hot that burned through my guts and in the middle of my head. Righteous fury. With these three gifts could I walk unstoppable-like through walls I could, but not like a ghost. Like a wrecking ball.
But my rabbi said of these gifts that muscle, ruthlessness and righteous fury is not strength. He poked my chest with his finger and said strength comes from here. And from his pocket he drew out the very same fine glimmer what Kid Dropper spied him holding at the shiva. It was a mogendavid, a gold six pointed star and this one had a blood red ruby in the center. It was hung from a long thin gold chain. He draped it around my neck and dropped it down my shirt. Where the star touched my chest, I felt powerful warm on the inside. Powerful warm, I tell you, this felt. Choked me right up, it did. There would have been tears flowing like the Nile from my eyes if I had them. There was also another feeling there too. It did not feel good. It felt just like when I imagined all that water but a minute before, and on top of that something else. It felt like something was gonna happen to that warm feeling, something real bad, and I needed to stop it. I needed to find what was gonna hurt the warm feeling and I needed to destroy anything that meant it harm. I was twisted, right then I was. A roar brewed itself up in my belly and I was about to spring up, both my fists balled tight and ready to start swinging.
My rabbi clutched my shoulder and he gets me right at ease. He says to me “good, good.” And here he was teary again. My rabbi, he had so many tears. He says to me this, he says. “I had this made for my eldest daughter, my first child, when she was born so many many years ago. When I saw her for the first time I felt something I never felt before. The root of all emotions. For all my searching before and since in the spaces between the letters of all of the scriptures, this was the closest I ever did feel to the divine. This was the purest feeling I can ever describe. It was too much for me to hold all by myself, so I had this made to help me bear the glorious weight of it and I gave it to her. She grew and it was clear she overflowed with this feeling. All the children of our ghetto fluttered around her, and she cared for anyone who needed help.
“She had a very best friend, she did. I knew this friend. She was no one special. But my daughter loved her, and it was enough for me. They grew up and found husbands and had their own children. In the midst of such a full life this best friend suffered a terrible tragedy. Sickness found their home and took her husband and her children. She could not find comfort from me, her rabbi, but it was my daughter what truly helped her as she could.
“My daughter eased this one through her heartbreak and sorrow. She was wise, my daughter, and understood of her friend that should she stay in our little ghetto she would surely perish. My daughter loved her deeply, as was her way, and she would rather have her on the other side of the world, but alive, than to see her stay and waste away to death. So she convinced her to go to America, and this her best friend agreed to do. To keep her safe, and to remind her that there are those in the world what love her deeply, my daughter gave her the necklace I made for her.
“This I did not know until late, until after my crime and my exile. Those many years later that I arrived here, this friend of hers found me. A miracle. She had found her way in this beguiling and far-away place, and tended to these people like my daughter once did in the place that I destroyed. She became tzadeket, here, a righteous woman. Truly righteous. One without hubris. One who gives. It was she what found me wandering about these streets with no aim, lost even for something worth finding. She took me in without judgment, even after learning what I done. That she held my daughter’s necklace close to her heart all these years was the one joy I ever did allow myself here. She died not very long ago, may her memory be a blessing. She knew she was dying and gave me back my daughter’s necklace. It was her shiva I most recently sat.
“It is this very same necklace of course that you wear on your chest. This is love, it is. The mother of all emotion. It will focus all your gifts into true strength. Keep this always. Without it, you are merely wrath. Like a typhoon. You will capsize any boat in your path, killing all who cling desperately to the rails and masts. But with it, you are ballast, and you can keep the ship straight and all its souls safe through any gale or wave.”
He stood just then and his body made popping sounds. He told me to stand up and I did just so for the first time on this earth. My head came close to the ceiling. I stood well taller than my rabbi. His head was no higher than my chest where the necklace hung right in front of his forehead. He looked me over and left the room.
He returned shortly with clothes, shoes and a hat. This in a bundle put at my feet and pointed from it to me and back. My rabbi watched me pick each piece from the bundle and pull them onto myself. Drawers first. Then the undershirt. Then socks. It felt right to put these on in the way I did. After socks I bent to reach for the shoes. Maharal raised his head to look down his nose at me—which now I know is what people say when they think someone is judging them, but this he really did do, and so I stopped and stood up. I looked at the pants and that felt right, so I took them and pulled them onto my legs. There was braces there on the bundle and it felt right to pick them up and attach them to the buttons on my pants. The shirt and the jacket next.
Before I contended with the shoes my rabbi took a step back to look at me. He told me that the jacket was too tight and the pants was too long. I did not want to disappoint him. It felt right to narrow my shoulders and make my legs longer, which put me closer to the ceiling and brought the bottom of the pants up to my ankles. My rabbi made a gasp and I stopped. I said I was sorry, but he shook his head and said “gut, gut” and clapped his hands together. It was okay for me to do such things.
I bent once more to pick up the shoes. It occurred to me that I could not put these on standing up so I sat myself down on the bedboard what was laid across a couple stacks of bricks. The board sagged and made funny noises as I moved about pulling them shoes onto my feets. The laces was only threaded through the holes halfway up so I had to put them laces through all them holes, going from one side to the other up above my ankle and then tie it up tight so it didn’t unravel. I had to do this with both my feet and while I did just so I could feel my rabbi watching me do this. I knew I did this correct because it felt correct to do it just so, but I also knew because my rabbi said “gut gut” again. That made the feeling of being correct feel stronger.
When I was done with the shoes my rabbi sat next to me. He says to me he says “Now. Here you are in this world. With all that you are made of and with shoes and a hat. You are missing one last thing. You are missing a name.
“I have thought as much about this as I have the making of all the rest of you. You will have two names. One will be only for you and me. I will speak to you of this first name now. This name I will tell you and you will keep it safe and within yourself like the true name of the Lord, baruch ha’shem. In this name you will carry and protect the memory and future of all of our people, all of our sorrow and tragedy, and all our love and beauty and potential. And he leans next to my ear and says this name.
A great weight snugged up in my chest, right inside the warm feeling from the necklace. All the feelings what had been given to me binded up inside it and I had to clutch my chest. I don’t have to breathe, but I opened my mouth to gulp down air. My rabbi said that this is my own ballast, it will keep me from capsizing and drowning in my own storms. Alls what I needs to do is remember all whats come before me, and all what can come after. That’s what this name gave me. I now had love and something to love. I spoke the name and my rabbi held up his hands. He insisted again that I must never reveal this name. “This world must never know you are Jew. They will come for you and you will be forced to destroy them, but you will only destroy yourself. This too I will not command of you. You must know how to keep things to yourself of your own efforts.”
My rabbi then patted my shoulder and says to me “now you need a name what for the world to know you by. This name must be a name what will be whispered by those who will fear you and by those who depend on you. It must be a name what is already infused with power. It must be plucked from legend and superstition.
“Indeed there is a legend here. Like the Paul Bunyan them yokels out west have. This legend, he come right from these very streets here. His name will be your name and this name is Mose. Like all such legends the legend of Mose is a simple one that idiots and children delight in. A man what can drink five barrels of hard beer and put out a blazing fire with his piss. A man what can swim the length of the Hudson in two strokes. A man what can dig a ditch a mile long with his right hand and toss in a line of watermain with his left. You will inhabit this name and take it from legend to rumor, and from rumor to hearsay. And through your exploits you will bring those who need it hope, and those who deserve it fear.
“Mose. You will be for this city when no one else can, and even worse, when no one else will bother. You must begin with Gurrah so you know terrible people and understand terrible things.” He put his finger on my chest. “You will be tested in terrible ways, Mose. But you will be kept upright by what’s in here. This is how you will grow. Gurrah will die, and likely sooner I will die and long after we are gone, you will continue. I have given you what is left of my heart and soul and what is left of Gurrah’s also just for this purpose.”
He explained what Gurrah offered to him for making me, and how Gurrah wasn’t half as clever as the pencil the smart man uses it to write smart things. He was finally prepared to accept this payment, and that I should honor that. “This is the world we are in. You must always try and make the best of what is given to you and what is asked of you, but you may also have to do what is worse so that others cannot do what is worst. To find your way through this terrible maze, and to help others do so, this is why you exist. You will learn all about the ways of this city, about its pain and its struggles, and most of all, about the greatness of its potential and all its people. You are New York City, Mose, in all its filth and its glory.”
With that my Rabbi whispered baruch hashem, blessed be the name of God, and kissed the top of my head. “In time, Mose, you will be the most human of us all.” And then he was silent.
We sat on the bedboard until my rabbi declared that it was sundown. He rose, and set and lit new shabbos candles at the table. It was then that he sang L’cha Dodi to me for the first and the last time. His words was almost silent as he sung because they was very difficult for him to sing. The feelings in my chest made it feel like there was a fist inside clenching up. I since learned that that feeling is sadness for another person. I was sad for him. Brand new to this earth as I was, I seen he hadn’t much left of himself. But the song was still pretty.
He came back to the bedboard and sat back down. His final words to me was this: “when you leave here, walk out on your right foot. It is a superstition Mose, but there is meaning in even the silliest superstitions. When you cross a threshold, be a good boy, cross with your right foot forward.” He patted my cheek and smiled.
It was not long before Gurrah came to collect me. He banged on the rickety door and I opened it to him. This was the first I ever did see of him. His eyes was dead. Not at all like Maharal’s eyes. I knew too little to know what marbles was right then, but I know now they looked as bright and dead as marbles. He looked at me with them dead eyes and smiled. This was not like my rabbi’s gentle and loving smile. This was the grin of a mean and soulless cunt. And so it was the first lesson I ever got from Gurrah: A smile can mean many things, and a man’s gotta look deeper for the truth of it.
He said nothing to me, and nothing to my rabbi as he walked into the room. Gyp and Fancy was behind him. They stayed in the alley.
My rabbi did not get up to greet Gurrah and he did not say anything to him. He nodded to me and cocked his head towards Gurrah. I put my hat on.
Gyp and Fancy passed me and entered the little room. Gurrah walked out and I followed. They closed the door behind me and stayed to give my rabbi his payment.
I walked into my city with my right foot forward.
New Colossus © 2024 Elan M Cole