Judah Loew ben Bezalel
Judah Loew ben Bezalel was born in 1512 and lived until September 17, 1609. He was an important Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, serving as a leading rabbi in the cities of Mikulov in Moravia and Prague in Bohemia. To scholars of Judaism, Loew was known as Rabbi Loew, Maharal of Prague or The Maharal. Loew was a prolific writer and recognized for his work on Jewish philosophy and Jewish mysticism, in particular his Gur Aryeh a HaTorah, but more than his literature, he was recognized as the creator of the Golem of Prague, an animate fashioned from clay.
Judah was born in Poznan, Poland to Rabbi Bezalel (Loew) whose family originated in the Rhenish town of Worms, Germany. It is claimed that he came from nobility and that Judah’s grandfather, Chajim of Worms, was the grandson of Judah Leib the Elder, linking him to the House of David/Davidic Line. Two discrepancies exist with his Life History - It is possible through this familial association that Judah’s birth town is mistakenly listed as Worms in the Holy Roman Empire. Another discrepancy exists with his birth year with different sources claiming 1512, 1520 and/or 1526.
Two discrepancies exist with his Life History - It is possible through this familial association that Judah’s birth town is mistakenly listed as Worms in the Holy Roman Empire. Another discrepancy exists with his birth year with different sources claiming 1512, 1520 and/or 1526. His birth was said to have a Legend about it - In the 16th century, Jews were being accused of blood libel and persecuted. Barbarous behavior Jews were said to kidnap Christian children to bake matzah for Passover with their blood. This accusation led to the deadly ritual of pogroms against the Jews, erupting throughout the city especially around the time of Passover. On the night of the Passover, his mother began having labor pains and guests ran out to fetch a midwife. At the same time a perpetrator walked through the Jewish quarter of the town lugging a sack with the corpse of a child. His plan was to plant the body in the Jewish neighborhood to implicate the community in a crime.
As the legend goes, the birth and associated complications with it, sparked the cascade of events that led to the arrest of the perpetrator and thus, that Passover, Jews were not subjected to persecution - Savior of the Jewish People
The name Loew (Low) is derived from the German word Lowe, meaning “lion”. Which is somewhat of a substitute name for the Hebrew name Judah or Yehuda, in which the biblical Judah was likened to a lion (Genesis 49:9). Commonly seen in the Jewish naming tradition the Hebrew name and the substitute name to be combined into a pair, which is the case with Judah and Loew. In his Rashi’s Torah commentary, which I just mentioned Gur Aryeh a HaTorah, it translates to “Young Lion commenting upon the Torah.”
It is said that at the age of 12, Judah went to yeshivahs in Poland and studied under Rabbi Yaakov Pollak. Yeshivah was the traditional Jewish educational institution focused on Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud, halacha (Jewish law), Torah, Jewish philosophy; involving both lectures and classes (shiurim) and studying in pairs (chavrusas) which is a unique feature of the yeshiva. Historically, these were for men only. Judah was a student of Pilpul, the Polish method of Talmudic study founded by Jacob Yaakov Pollack. “Judah Loew ben Bezalel (the Maharal), in a famous polemic against pilpul, wrote: It would be better to learn carpentry or another trade, or to sharpen the mind by playing chess. At least they would not engage in falsehood, which then spills over from theory and into practice..."
Pollack leaves Poland and Loew is left wandering from place to place for about 2 years, bearing in mind he was 12 when he went to first study in Poland. Loew then goes onto to the yeshivah of Rabbi Yitzchak Clover/Wormz (also a previous student of Pollack) and learned with Maharshal (1510-1573) - one of the great Ashkenazic legal scholar and teacher of his time known for both his work of Halakha, Yam Shel Shlomo and Talmudic commentary and his student Elijah Ba’al Shem of Chelm (who also created a golem) - and with Rema (1530-1572), the an eminent Polish Ashkenazi rabbi, talmudist and posek (legal scholar of Jewish law).
Judah married his wife Pearl at the age of 32, due to financial troubles with her family. They would go one to have 6 daughters and 1 son. Being an self-taught independent scholar herself, Pearl would become an integral part of his work, where he would dictate his work to her and she would transcribe it onto paper as well as proofreading and editing all his work.
In 1553, Loew accepted a Rabbi position at Moravia in Mikulov, where he was in charge of directing community affairs and determining which part of the Talmud was to be studied in the communities of his employed location. He went on to revise the taxation process and the community statues of elections, with these communities still considering him the authority long after his retirement from said position (retired in 1588 at 68).
In 1583, he was also involved in rallying against slanderous slurs on legitimacy (Nadler) of certain families that could ruin and prevent finding a marriage partner of those children from those families. An issue that also had an effect on his family. He was known to denounce this phenomena in his bi-annual grand sermons. Then in1588, Loew moves back to Prague, accepting another rabbinical position and continues with his Nadler campaign. On the 23 of February 1592, he captures the audience of Emperor Rudolf II (patron of mystics and the occult sciences), in which the conversation was related to Kabbalah, a subject that the Emperor found and held much fascination for. Emperor Rudolf II, was a great patron of alchemy, a magnet for alchemist, magicians and cabalists, such as the famous astronomers Tycho Brache and Johannes Kelper, prior to his imprisonment in 1611. Loew the moved to Poland in 1592 and is elected Chief Rabbi of Poland; where he wrote the famous Netivoth Olam and Derech Chaim. It is unknown how many Talmudic rabbinical scholars Loew taught in Moravia, but the main disciples from the Prague period include Rabbis Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller and David Gans. Both Loew and Ganz were in contact with Tycho Brahe, the famous astronomer.
Numerous philosophical works by Loew have become the cornerstone of Jewish thought and was considered as one of the most creative and original systems of thought developed by East European Jewry. In his writings he would use rationalist terminology and classical philosophical ideas with supporting scientific research only up to the point that it did not contradict divine revelation. A constant object of Loew, as revealed in his work, was to show how earlier literature was in fact full of insightful commentary on humanity, nature, holiness, and the like. He showed that despite the multitude of disconnected opinions and perspectives, it demonstrated the diversity of meanings that can be extracted from a single idea or concept, rather than disjointed literature.
Loew developed a comprehensive philosophical system with accompanying terminology through literary and conceptual analysis of Biblical verses and recorded traditions of the rabbis. An example of this terminology is Loew's philosophical interpretation of the following midrash: "The world was created for three things: challah, maaser, and bikkurim." According to Loew, bikkurim represents yesodot (as individual fruit are given), maaser represents taarovot (as the fruit are gathered together and a fraction of them separated as a tithe), and challah represents tarkovot (as a new substance, dough, is created from the ingredients).
Loew's worldview assumed that reality consists of a single cause and there is no room for randomness in reality as it would indicate an absence of omnipotence or omniscience in the Cause. The uniform-caused nature of reality also indicates the existence of moral order in the world. And while science can describe the phenomena in the world, it cannot create a preference for one over the other; such moral preferences must come from the higher order of the Torah, which Loew called the "higher intellect".
Loew emphasized the value of honesty and straightforwardness. This led him to criticize the pilpul methodology common in yeshivas of his time; even suggesting to avoid learning the commentaries of Tosafot until one has reached an advanced level of understanding. He was a critic of the narrow tradition of this Talmudic learning as it had popularized several key kabbalistic concepts such as holiness of sexuality and correspondence of the spiritual and physical worlds. By this time, we start to see his focus on the distinction between the physical and the spiritual, seeing the Jewish people as possessing an essentially spiritual nature which distinguishes it from all other phenomena in the world. His teachings later went on to become influential in Hasidic Judaism (founded by Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, aka Ba’al Shem Tov).
While Loew is most famous for of his association with the legend of the golem, it is said that Maharal's most important legacies are his contribution to the midrashic tradition through his commentary on Rashi, his influence on his pupils and his works inspiring the Polish branch of Hasidism in following century, as well as the more recent wave of Torah scholars originating from Lithuania and Latvia. Most notably Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler (1892-1953) and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1864-1935). A recent authority who had roots in both of these traditions was Rabbi Isaac Hutner (1906-1980). As a mark of his devotion to the ways of the Maharal, Rabbi Hutner bestowed the name of the Maharal's key work, the Gur Aryeh, on a branch of the yeshiva he headed in New York during the 1950s, known as Kollel Gur Aryeh. Various books have been inspired by the legend of the Maharal's creation of the golem, such as Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel Der Golem.. The Maharal is featured in the book He, She and It and the Dutch work De Procedure ("The Procedure," Harry Mulisch, 1999), both retellings of the golem legend. A poem by Jorge Luis Borges, entitled "El Golem" also tells the story of Judah Loew and his giving birth to the golem.
Creation of the Golem was the legend that Loew has become famous for, a creature made out of clay to defend the Jews of the Prague Ghetto from antisemitic attacks, particularly the blood libel. It is said that Loew used mystical powers based on the esoteric knowledge of how God created Adam; whereas, others claim the golem was created by use of magical powers derived from the Kabbalah. Blood libel was ritual murder libel or blood accusation which was considered an antisemitic canard, based on the “false” accusation of Jews murdering Christians in order to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals. This practice purports or echos very old myths of secret cultic practices leading back to descriptions of ritual child sacrifice in antiquity in prehistoric societies. The claim of blood libel practice was leveled against the Jews claiming that Jews required human blood for baking a matzos (unleavened flatbread eaten during passover/ crucifixion). The accusations would often assert that the blood of Christian children was especially coveted. These blood libels served as the impetus for the creation of the Golem of Prague. According to the legend, some of the persecutors would sneak into the Jewish ghetto to deposit the body of a child on the street in an attempt to incite people against the Jews. The Maharal, always devoted to the welfare of his people, prayed for a vision to tell him how to stop these false accusations, and claimed to be told by Heaven to "make a human image of clay." The rabbi took his son-in-law and his favorite student down to the river and formed the shape of a man from clay. They each walked around the figure a certain amount of times, reciting a kabbalistic formula, and the golem was brought to life.
Appearing to be a man of 30, and the rabbi clothed the golem and named him Joseph. Through the use of a talisman, the golem could appear invisible, and was sent out to stop anyone carrying a large parcel. When a person was found intending to deposit the body of a dead child in the Jewish streets, the golem would tie up both the offender and the evidence, and carry both to the authorities. Once the blood libel was declared to be groundless and persecutions were forbidden, Rabbi Loew removed the breath of life from the golem by walking around the figure repeating the same words in reverse order.
In other versions of the story, the golem becomes uncontrollable, a Frankenstein's monster wreaking havoc on the community or the entire city, attacking Jews, Gentiles, and even Rabbi Loew himself. Other variations say that the word meaning "truth" was put on the golem's forehead to animate it, and to return the golem to a lump of clay, the first letter was erased, thus spelling "death."
In Jewish folklore, a golem, meaning "raw material”, is an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter, and given life through a mystical process involving the secret name of God. The most well-known golem in Jewish folklore was this one created by Rabbi Yehudah Loew (Golem of Prague in 1580) to protect the Jewish people from persecution by Christians. Bringing a golem to life was understood to be a process that only those closest to God, the holiest people who had gained some of God's wisdom and power, could accomplish. However, the life that could be created by any man would always be less than that created by God.
The creation of a golem was often viewed as a symbol of holiness, as only the very righteous could be successful at bringing the godly powers into inanimate clay. Persons attempting to create golems for improper or self-serving purposes would not be given the ability to do so. Golems were usually connected with rabbis during the Middle Ages.
A collection of Jewish tales entitled Galerie der Sippurim, written by Wolf Pascheles in 1847, tells the story of Rabbi Judah Loew's golem. The story seems to be based on the earlier oral traditional legends of the Maharal's mystical powers. Other accounts followed later, including the 1909 publication by Yudl Rosenberg, who was the first to mention the golem as defending Jews from those who would raise the nefarious blood libel against them. The tale appears in several other variations.
The tomb of Loew in Prague contains the theme of a lion as it is decorated with a shield containing a lion with 2 intertwined tails, paying tribute to his first name and to Bohemia, whose coat of arms has a 2-tailed lion. In 1997 and then in 2009, the Czech Republic and Israel issued stamps commemorating Loew’s death and the Czech Mint issued a commemorative coin marking the 400 yrs milestone. A statue of Judah Loew ben Bezalel stands in Prague today.