While Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague (d. 1609), known by the Hebrew acronym Maharal, is most famous today because of the legend that he used kabbalistic magic to create a golem that could defend the Jews of his city from anti-Semites, his real legacy consists of his towering achievements as a talmudist, philosopher, mystic, and leader of one of the world’s largest Jewish communities. The golem legend stems from a popular Hebrew work, published in Poland in 1909, that record various stories about the Maharal’s wondrous doings. Zack Rothbart recounts one of these—concerning the rabbi’s wife, Perl.
Reb Shmelke Reich was a wealthy and respected figure who arranged for a marriage between his daughter Perl and Judah Loew, a promising fifteen-year-old Torah scholar. Young Judah headed off to yeshiva to study and in the meantime, Reb Shmelke’s fortunes reversed and he became very poor, unable to pay a dowry for his daughter to wed.
Three years after the marriage was arranged, Reb Shmelke wrote to his son-in-law to be, letting him know that seeing as he could not afford a respectable dowry, the young man was freed of his commitment and didn’t have to marry Perl after all. The young man wouldn’t hear of it, writing back that he would wait for assistance from on high.
The righteous young Perl decided to help her parents out by opening a small bakery and selling bread to support her family. She worked in the bakery for ten years, while her betrothed continued studying Torah, waiting for the day he could marry his beloved. . . .
The story, of course, concludes with a fairy-tale ending.
More about: Golem, Jewish folklore, Maharal