The Great Karaite Debate Part 1

In the old days it was not unusual for a Karaite scholar to sit across from a Rabbanite clergy and debate the essential differences between our two sects. Those days are sadly gone becuase with our dwinding population, there is no longer a concern that as Karaites we will persuade the mass of Jews to switch their theological allegiance to our view. As Yakov Kahana and Judah Loew continue the ancient debate in Shadows of Trinity (http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html) it is obvious that the Rabbanites have dismissed any concerns regarding Karaites. That being the case, the Rabbis are no longer worried that we represent a threat to their coveted authority and therefore they no longer believe there's a need for direct debate. Essentially its a form of contempt but that is nothing knew from those that have always held us in low regard. But that's fine since there are enough recent literary discussions regarding their views of Karaism that I can take my proper place in my third great grandfather's shoes and challenge them through the utilisation of their own media releases. Dan Ross's Acts of Faith which is subtitled "A Journey To the Fringes of Jewish Identity" provides you with the author's attitude before opening the book cover. Already labelled as a fringe of Jewish identity, the implication is already implanted in the reader's mind. What else do we associate with 'the Fringe?' There's lunatic fringe, societal fringe, the paranormal Fringe television series, outsider's fringe, religious fringe, being on the fringe, in fact almost all have negative connotations except for one which is fringe benefits. But even then it is an implication that the benefits are outside the so-called norm.


The True Heretics
Ross begins his chapter with the comment that Karaites benefitted in World War II from the Nazi obsession of who was a Jew and who wasn't. The implication is that somehow all Karaites escaped the death camp because the Nazis were confused by our origins. Yes, there were many that survived the persecution because the Nazi Home Office was persuaded that Karaites were all of Tartar origins and therefore did not meet their definition of who was a Jew. But at the same time, many of the death squads never bothered to try and sift through the Jews in the communities they were assigned to cleanse. It was too much of a bureaucratic nightmare and when it became time to round the people up and shift them out it was done with big nets that didn't descriminate. Those in my family taken from their homes in Vienna and sent to die at Thereisenstadt certainly didn't have an identity card that said "we are Karaite." It didn't matter. And when Dr. Rikhail Iosefova Goldenthal refused to leave off her medical administrations to the Jews in Odesssa being abused by the Nazi occupiers, it was far more expedient to kill her than keep sending her warnings to stop. So yes, there were some stories of leniency in Romania, the Ukraine, etc. that meant that even the Final Solution would never have been final since there would have been survival of some Karaites but to suggest that somehow in general we were left completely untouched by the Nazi oppression and death camps is a complete falsehood.

Ross makes it clear that he sees the Karaites as something outside Judaism, not part of it. He says we practice a truncated form of Judaism, rejecting the Talmud and other rabbinical writings. That we all claimed to be from Tartar tribes who adopted a Jewish like religion and we all spoke a Tartar dialect. Yes, the genes for blonde hair and blue eyes run in my family. Three of my four children have blonde hair and blue eyes, but that does not make myself or them any less descendants of Semitic stock than any other Jew. Tartar dialect, no, but Arabic spoken in the family, yes but not since the passing of Jakob Goldenthal in 1867. What would have been more accurate was to suggest that Karaites were probably more likely to adopt the dialect of the land in which they lived and use it more commonly than Yiddush or Hebrew in every day life. And not only did we adopt the local language but often the local dress code as well, appearing more like the general population than the Ashkenazi Jews that surrounded us. Did that make us Tartar? No, that made us in many ways more progressive even though the accusation was that our practices were archaic and that we as a people were trapped in a time warp. To infer that our Judaism was truncated also suggests that in some way it is incomplete. And rejected the Talmud and rabbinical writings implies that somehow we turned away from something that is right or unquestionable. How about expressing it more correctly in that we only follow what was given to us by God and we are unwilling to accept the writings of men that have often twisted or corrupted the original words. What we have been accused of rejecting is nothing more than a commentary and implying that by doing so we have rejected part of the religion is not only false and misleading but displays an arrogance that is the hallmark of Rabbanite Judaism.

Ross qualifies his non-Jew statement by saying that this was the claim made by the Karaites themselves but most non-Karaite scholars knew they were Jews but just happened to be heretics. Once again we are being labelled with the term 'heretic'. How is it that disagreeing with Rabbanite interpretations makes us heretics? Logic would say that those that have insisted there is a need to interpret and twist the words of the Torah to suit their own end would be the heretics. A heretic is one that rejects the original word and sees a need to interpret it in a different way. That being the case, then the Rabbanites are actually the heretics. Rather than having endured this accusation for a thousand years, my Karaite brethren and ancestors failed to reverse the accusation and call a spade a spade. We were the orthodoxy, they were the heretics and we permitted them to brand us incorrectly.

The Census
At the time Ross wrote his Chapter he siad there were about ten thousand Karaites living in Israel. He could not give exact numbers because Karaite Law forbids their being counted in a census. Funny that, I thought that was Tanach Law. That God instructed his prophets to condemn any King in Israel that tried to take a census. That he forbade Jews from doing so as no man was to know the actual count of the Children of Israel. They were to be like the stars in the heavens; innumerable. Thus, an ordination from God is now being accused of being a Karaite Law as if we were in the wrong. Very peculiar.

Ross then states that Karaite status under Israeli law is ambiguous. That they are considered Jews but have their own rabbis, chief rabbinate, national council, kosher slaughterers, mohels, and religious courts. And then makes the statement that they are not legally permitted to marry other Jews. I fail to see the ambiguous part. Having our own religious structures and religious services should not implay in any way that our status as Jews is doubtful. The Rabbanite orthodoxy, conservative and reform movements all have their own councils, teachers and practices and no one is accusing any of them of being of an ambiguous status. And as far as I understand it, the illegality of Karaites marrying a Rabbanite Jew is imposed by the Rabbanite orthodox courts insisting that a Karaite must abandon his/her centuries old faith and become a Rabbanite in order to marry. Ambiguous? Sounds prejudicial and smacking of religious intolerance. There is nothing ambiguous about it. In fact it is all very obvious.

The ground work is now laid for this debate. Over the next few articles I will challenge statements made by Dan Ross in his book. Hopefully it wil invite comments from both sides. The hiatus is over. It is time for Karaites to rechallenge the old accusations and let the world know that we are a presence and we do not intend to fade away.

Saying No to the Talmud

The essential and fundamental concept within Karaism is that there was never any Oral Law or Tradition that was given to Moses on Sinai at the same time he was receiving the Written Law. This debate could go on for an eternity with my Rabbinic adversaries which it has done already for over two millennia without any end in sight. In previous arguments I have taken the more traditional course of argument and used many of the standard quotations derived from the Torah, as one can read in my hub, http://hubpages.com/hub/And-Joshua-Said but this has been a debating tool that we Karaites have used for centuries without any progress in having the correctness of our stance acknowledged by Rabbanites. And the few Rabbinical scholars that have admitted that we are possibly correct in stating, “that is what the Torah stipulated” have always qualified their acknowledgement with a ‘but’ insisting that the Torah can’t be accepted literally in every particular instance. If that were true then their argument would suggest as an extension of logic that no part of the Old Testament should be taken literally; that in its entirety it is merely an incomplete guideline that has always required human intervention and interpretation. Therein is the first fallacy Rabbanites have concocted since the actual Talmud was only compiled between the second and fourth centuries AD and even then it was always under constant debate and modification, indicating that it was still conjectural. This completely ignores the fact that the Jewish people had already survived for fifteen hundred years without the Talmud. Since most of that period had been under the jurisdiction and jurisprudence of the priesthood or Sadducees, then it was only the literal Torah with its written laws that governed the people thereby proving that the written laws that were already in existence were sufficient without the human application of ‘oral laws’ the rabbis insisted upon.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the Torah or written law was insufficient and not intended to be taken literally or at face value. That being the case, then the extension of that Rabbinical argument would be that the Ten Commandments weren’t actually written in stone, pardon the pun, but merely suggestions that required Rabbinic interpretation as well. By casting doubt on one part of the Torah, in effect doubt is cast on all parts. By their own willingness to include a fudge factor, being the Oral Law that constitutes the Talmud, the Rabbis in fact have opened a virtual Pandora’s Box which in turn led to the eventual schisms that birthed Christianity and Islam as I will explain.

Creating a Historical Claim of Hearing it From Moses

Whereas my predecessors within Karaism have always taken the more confrontational stance against Rabbinical Judaism, instead I will take this opportunity to approach the argument from the Rabbinical viewpoint and in doing so, hopefully demonstrate the folly of the Oral Law. As highlighted in the previous paragraph, all dictums and laws in the Torah become susceptible to rabbinical debate and interpretation, even the aforementioned Ten Commandments. Way back when the Talmud was first being documented, the rabbinical sage, Rabbi Joshua said that he had received the laws he was expounding as a tradition from Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai, who heard it from his teacher, who heard it from his teacher and so on, all the way back to the laws given to them by Moses at Sinai. In fact you will find a lot of quotes to that effect in the Talmud. The old, “Heard it from Moses at Sinai,” thereby elevating their opinion to a level beyond dispute because they claimed Moses said it. By creating an ‘authentication history’ these Rabbis were able to enforce their dictums on people that would not go against anything Moses said. The problem with this argument was that there was no historical connection between the Rabbis and Moses. In fact prior to the development of the Pharasaic sect in the second century BC, there weren’t any rabbis at all. Any laws were passed down through the Beth Din (courts) which were institutes under the control of the priesthood. So if Moses had actually passed down traditions orally, it certainly would not have been through a chain of Rabbis that never existed. Once again this is just another fallacy being foisted upon the adherents of Rabbinical Judaism.
As an extension of the Rabbinical argument that the Torah was merely a bulletin point document that required the Talmud to explain its actual intellectual intent, I’ll return to the subject of the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 20:3 God commands that the people will have no other gods before him. In fact he confirms this in 20:5 that He is a jealous god. If this commandment was open to interpretation as the Rabbis have suggested in their justification of the Talmud, then it could be argued that God was suggesting that there were other gods in existence just that none of them were to be worshipped ahead of Him otherwise He would become jealous. After all, as I pointed out, if you argue that the Torah is incomplete and required Oral Traditions in order to provide its exact meaning, then I could equally claim that there was a rabbinical scholar that had a teacher, who had a teacher and so on that heard from Moses directly at Sinai that God did say that there were lesser gods in existence that weren’t to be worshipped. You either have to apply the concept of Oral Law to everything, or nothing at all. You can’t have it both ways. As soon as the Rabbis opened this non-negotiable issue to debate they unleashed the inevitable, which manifested itself in the concept that there could be secondary gods within Judaism and this in turn resulted in ‘the Son of God’ sect which began as a Jewish subgroup.

Even Rabbinic Legends Admit The Oral Tradition is a Fabrication

It is not as if the Rabbis themselves do not acknowledge that the claim of the Talmud being sacrosanct and passed down by Moses is a fabrication. Their own legends basically admit to this. In one of their many stories regarding the Talmudic scholars, they talk about King Manasseh who brought back idol worship into Israel. As the Rabbis discussed why he had done so, they acknowledged that it was due to his intense study of the law in which he had arrived at fifty-two different interpretations of the book of Leviticus; that in so doing he had become confused and this weakened his moral strength thus turning to idolatry. As if that is not admission enough that their own endeavors to interpret the written law of the Torah via multiple oral traditions and laws would lead to dysfunction and immorality within Judaism, they tell another story about Rab Ashi, their famous compiler of the Talmud that one day he announced to his students, “Tomorrow I shall speak about our colleague, Manasseh.” To refer to King Manasseh as their colleague by the Rabbis is definitely Freudian when analyzed. That night when Rab Ashi slept, King Manasseh came to him in a dream. The Rabbi put a question to the king regarding the interpretation of a ritual that he himself could not find the answer for. The king was able to answer without hesitation, amazing the rabbi with his fount of knowledge. Stunned by the King’s intellectual abilities, he asked how one so intelligent could have worshipped idols. To which Manasseh answered, “If you had been around at the time I lived, you would have caught hold of the hem of my garment and run after me!” Simply put, the Rabbis with this story were admitting that their great sage, Rab Ashi, compiler of the Talmud, teacher and expounder of what became rabbinical Judaism was in fact no different from the man referred to in historical legend as ‘evil King Manasseh.’ By creating and compiling the Talmud he had set Judaism on the same course that Manasseh did with his idolatry. By their own words they condemn themselves. So why Karaism if I was to put it simply? Because even the Rabbanites recognize the error of their ways. In the famous discussion between Rabbi Judah ben Loew and Yakov Kahana, as they sat on a bench together in the island park of Prague, (see Shadows of Trinity from Eloquent Books: http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html)it became clearly evident that the Rabbis would say and do whatever they deemed necessary to lead the people. It is not to say that there intention was evil nor necessarily for the purpose of attaining atuhority and power, but as Yakov recognized from his meeting, merely the misguided and deluded notions of men blinded by the magnificence of their own self-agrandizement.

The Trial of Jesus: Toldoth Jeshua

You're probably wondering what am I talking about this time. Well, it's pretty simple. I'm going to talk about another book I happen to have in my collection. You guessed it, it's called “Toldoth Jeshua". But what's it mean. Translated, it means the Generations of Jesus. Odd title you'd think since according to the New Testament, Jesus didn't have any generations to speak of. But this book that was written in about the 14th century and based on material from the second century had a lot of interesting things to say. I came into possession of this document after I wrote and published Caiaphas Letters, so its quite amazing that it confirms many of the statements I make as fact in my book.
One of the most serious libels made against the Jews was the blame for killing Jesus. Pope John Paul II fortunately condemned this libel and expunged it from the Roman Catholic teachings, and this should be appreciated, but it was long in coming and over the last two thousand years the number of Jews that died because of this libel was astronomical, especially when one considers it as a premise to the Nazi holocaust.
Now this may sound a little controversial coming from me but what if I was to say that it wasn’t really all the Church’s fault for fostering this belief in the first place? What if I was to say that the great sages of Judaism in the second century,the Tannim or these Rabbis of reverence that put together the Talmud were responsible for the libel themselves! That in an effort to show the world how strict they were as enforcers of God’s will, they were willing to spread a lie that either because their brains were too addled with age, or as a Karaite I beleive they were only interested in hearing the sounds of their own voices and were more than too happy to tell everyone a lie.”
What most people don't realize is that these so called paragons of virtue and Judaism actually wrote a section into the Talmud concerning their role in Jesus’ death! Let me tell you quickly what it said:
“It is taught that for all others liable for the death penalty, except for the enticer to idolatry, we do not hide witnesses. They light a lamp for him in the inner chamber and place a witness in the outer chamber so that they can see and hear him while he cannot see or hear them. One says to him,” Tell me again what you said to me in private.” If the prisoner repents, then good, but if he says, ‘This is our obligation and what we must do,’ then he is to be brought into the courtroom and stoned. And then they hung him on the eve of Passover.”
If you're trying to follow the connection let me explain that these Rabbis were trying to recall a very special meeting of the Sanhedrin that happened a couple of hundred years earlier. I'll point out some of their controversial comments. It was a night meeting, hence the need for the lamp. The courts of the Sanhedrin were held in buildings that relied on natural light, therefore it was prohibited to meet at night unless it was an emergency. In this case it obviously was one. But they got it wrong. The witnesses placed outside were there to come in and defend the accused. They already had their numbers to make up the tribunal inside. They were the judges, not the witnesses. As we know from the stories about that night, Jesus's witness refused to enter into the chamber and three times Peter denied not knowing him. Without his second witness, (it took two to prove you innocent of the charges), Jesus was condemned. Now the rabbis in this particular paragraph never refer to Jesus, only to an idolator, so the question should be how do I know they’re not talking about another case? Because they refer back in the Toldoth Jeshua to this section of the Talmud as being the trial of Ben Stada. Now I probably have you completely confused. It would have been more correct to refer to what is a Ben Stada in order to understand their play on words. The Rabbis loved to do that back then. They thought they were quite funny. They did it with the next messiah too, Simon Bar Kochba. As soon as he lost the war, they referred to him as Simon Bar Kosiba, or ’the son of lies’. Somehow they forgot that it was one of their own that proclaimed him as the messiah in the first place. So they did the same thing to Jesus as well. He would have been referred to as Jesus Ha Stadlan. The intercessor by his followers. Because that’s what he did. He was the intercessor for people to reach God. Remember that he said everyone seeking God must come through him.
So, now that you have an appreciation for their sense of humor, these rabbis don’t refer to him as an intercessor for God but instead call him Ben Stota or Stada in an alternate dialect; the ‘son of absolute utter nonsense’ or as we would say today, the son of bullshit.”
Also remember that in the Talmud is says that he was taken out and stoned and then hung from a tree on the eve of Passover.”
There are three important things you should notice right there. Firstly, if he was stoned to death, why were they bothering to hang him on a crucifix? Couldn’t kill him twice. And then secondly there’s the matter that the Roman authorities only let the Sanhedrin stone people, they didn’t have the authority to crucify a prisoner. And lastly, notice how it was the eve of the Passover. Just as I described it in Caiaphas Letters. The Gospels all say the crucifixion happened on the Passover. So this passage from the Talmud is in harmony with what I've written.
In another passage of Toldoth Jeshua it is written: ‘On the eve of the Passover they hung Yeshu and the crier went forth for forty days beforehand declaring that Yeshu is to be stoned for practicing witchcraft, for enticing and leading Israel astray. Anyone who knows something to clear him should come forth and exonerate him. But no one came forward in his defense and they hung him on the eve of Passover. Yeshu was different because he was close to government.’ So now you have the Toldoth Jeshua in harmony with that passage from the Talmud and both confirming it was the eve of the Passvoer and that this individual was named Jeshua or Jesus.
Once again the Toldoth Jehsua is providing some interesting aspects that other than in Caiaphas Letters, no one else has ever mentioned. For almost a month and a half there’s this attempt to try and create a case so that he can’t be touched. The emphasis in Toldoth Jeshua was they they tried to prove him innocent asking people to come forward to clear and exonerate him. Very different from the condemning version in the Talmud. But when it came to the night of the trial, those that were supposed to exonerate him never came through. In other words, Peter didn’t do his part of the plan. The writer of the Toldoth Jeshua tries to explain this special treatment of trying to save him was due to the fact that he was close to government. Well, they might as well have said because he was related to the High Priest because the only Jewish government at the time was the High Priest, and to be close was another way of implying a familial relationship. It also says that he was being helped by the High Priest at the time who just happened to be Caiaphas. Again this confirms the High Priest family connection I described in Caiaphas Letters.

The question one has to answer is why, if as in the Toldoth Jeshua there is recorded a definite attempt by the officials in Judea to save Jesus, and this book was based on original documentation from much earlier times, why would a group of supposedly educated men, paragons of virtue write such a stupid and inaccurate thing in the Talmud that actually suggests the Sanhedrin wanted to kill Jesus. The answer is simple; they couldn’t stop themselves. The whole idea behind the Talmud was to write as much down as they could remember because there was no central stores or archives left following the destruction of the Temple. Then they would analyze and embellish what they had written. But in a lot of the cases, this embellishment was merely the addition of hearsay and innuendo. Their memories of events may have been poor, but their imaginations certainly were not. They were in overdrive. They didn’t even try to be accurate. By the time the Talmud was being written, Christianity was already becoming the new power and Jews were already being persecuted by this new religion. So why not tell a very disparaging story and gloat about the death of the Christian messiah. Human nature has remained a constant throughout history. And this was one way of saying, “in your face, buddy! Stupid, yes, but then these supposedly intelligent men never thought the Talmud would be read by anyone that wasn't Jewish.
In their minds they were disproving the claims of Christianity by saying they were responsible for the death of Jesus. After all, how could he be the son of God, or for that matter, even the messiah, if they could kill him? So this invented story of theirs became our own undoing. We suffered because they gloated. But worst of all, they gloated over an entirely false and ludicrous story that they created for their own personal egos.”
Now one might point out that as a Karaite, I have no fondness for the Rabbis of old, I certainly don't give any credence to the Talmud and therefore I view them in a negative light. True, I admit it. We suffered for two thousand years because of their misguided beliefs. Had they only stayed to the facts, I think they would have found that most educated people would have understood what occurred in the framework of the time and circumstances. I'm not naive and saying that the early Church would not have pursued its policy of deicide if they hadn’t written the inaccurate story of Jesus into the Talmud but I don’t believe the persecutions would have been conducted as vehemently as they were. What you have in the Gospels is the story of Caiaphas sending Jesus to Antipas, and then to Pilate. Pilate pronounced sentence and Roman soldiers performed the execution. You actually have evidence of the Jewish authorities abdicating their responsibility and handing it over to these other powers. Therefore the role of the Jewish authorities is minimalized.
When you read about the confrontation between the Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew, and the Nasi, Yakov Kahana in Shadows of Trinity, you are seeing the two worlds of Karaism and Judaism clash. The former regarding the Talmud as the work of foolish men and the latter that deemed themselves worthy of interpreting Gods words, convinced that there were hidden meanings, detailed instructions, and numerous restrictions behind every word. But as the above story has pointed out, words can be very dangerous when they used improperly. Less would have definitely been better!

Celebrating Murder

As extreme as the title might appear, that is exactly what will be happening in the beautiful city of Prague in September of this year. It's not a theatrical production, or a Mardis Gras, or even a Cinco de Mayo type celebration, it is the celebration of what everyone presumes to be a myth, but in reality was a series of murders conducted over a couple of years which have now been overlayed with a legend of mythical proportions in order to protect the people involved.

This year is the 400th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Judah Loew, often referred to as the Maharal, a kabbalistic master that has been credited with the saving of the Jewish community of Prague in the sixteenth century by magically creating a Golem. For those that don't know the Kabbalah, that is the same Jewish mystical arts that Madonna is both student and adept at. A golem was an artificial human created from clay that could be brought to life through the use of magical arts. Having suffered through several persecutions, the worst being a mob led by the priest Taddeush that tore apart not only the Jewish Quarter of Josefov but several of the Jews residing there as well, Rabbi Loew and his son-in-law, along with several others decided to create the Golem. The story goes that at first he would only strike at those that tried to harm the Jewish community but then something went wrong and it started to attack innocents as well. Rabbi Loew then had to stop the creature by rubbing one of the letters (aleph) off its forehead, which caused it to die (if an artificial human can die) and then concealed its body in the synagogue attic where some say it still rests today.

Strangely, the claim today is that no one knows why this story came about nor why Rabbi Loew was attributed to have made a Golem. A story which has been fairly common for the last two centuries and is now widely distributed. There really is nothing strange about it. Why do we have any of the many legends that surround famous people from the past? Because they did do something at least similar to the myth that's being told. King Leonitis did take on a massive Persian army with only 300 Spartans. Course there were several thousand others from different Greek cities but we won't destroy a good legend by mentioning them. And Helen did have a face that launched a thousand ships, but we won't mention that it was her infidelity that practically destroyed all of Greece with ten years of bloodshed. The point that I'm making is that we have our modern day myths as the result of actual historical events and the Legend of the Golem of Prague is no different.

The actual events are historically recorded, with the killing of the priest Taddeush, as well as the Archbishop, the nephew of Pope Sixtus V, and several other prominent people. These all were attibuted to a terrifying protector of Josefov that had been conjured from the dark arts by its kabbalistic master. For those interested in reading the story behind the myth, I suggest you pick up a copy of Shadows of Trinity, which can be found at the publishers website at http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html or from places like Amazon and Barnes and Noble on their websites. Truth makes a great story and as they say is often stranger than fiction.

But back to the celebration. Here is an individual that did feel he was protecting his people from the scourge of anti-semitism. No doubt that was his motive. Noble in its intent but when the loss of innocents become involved then doesn't the solution become as bad as the cause? And what did Rabbi Loew actually achieve? Yes, for a period of 19 years, the community was protected from further threats of pogroms and riots, but not long after his death, once those hate mongerers knew he wasn't coming back from the grave, they led a massive attack against the Jews of Prague. This took place during what was a dynastic war between the Catholics and Protestants (amazing that they actually took time out from killing themselves to go kill the Jews in the city) and then to celebrate their peace accord in which both churches agreed to live harmoniously in Bohemia, they burned 86 prominent members of the Jewish community at the stake claiming that they had attempted to poison the Christian leaders of these two factions and were therefore the root cause of the actual civil uprising. The reality is that once you have a Golem, then you must always have a Golem otherwise the threat that you used to achieve your intended goal is no longer there and you've actually encourage the exact opposite to occur because of retribution. The massacre of 1611 was retribution!

And was Rabbi Loew this saint of a man that was given the accolades of being Chief Rabbi of Prague? No, there's where myth has definitely taken over from reality. Judah Loew was actually turned down twice by his own community for the position of Chief Rabbi. The first time in 1587 when Rabbi Melling was elected to the position and the second time in 1604 when they elected Rabbi Ephraim. Simply, the leaders of the community and the other Rabbis didn't want him as their spiritual leader. Not only didn't they want him, in many cases they feared him. On February 23rd, 1592 Rabbi Loew was summoned to the palace to meet with the Emperor Rudolf II. I guarantee it wasn't to talk about Kabbalah as the supporters of the rabbi claim. Within a few weeks Rabbi Loew had packed his bags, packed his family and was gone to Posen, not to return to Prague until shortly before his death in 1609. Does that sound like the act of a man that was given the keys to the city as they would want you to believe? Only after several hundred years have passed, has all this been forgotten and the same man is now being celebrated as the saviour of Prague.

So for all those intending to attend the celebrations in the Czech Republic this year, think about what I've had to say. And if you are there, take the time and search for the grave of one Yakov Kahana, the real hero behind the Golem story as you discover in Shadows of Trinity. He's buried there somewhere and that's the real mystery!