Night Tales from Long Ago

Good evening, Rabbi. Of course–please sit here by the stove; the late-night fire helps me to become sleepy also. I look into the warm white glow and my mind floats far away. I find myself rolling along, traveling old country roads and mountain lanes and weedy riverside paths–and then before I know it I have nodded off. Now that I am old, I am always musing and napping, dozing and traveling, just like the old rabbi that my grandmother loved so much, the mystic writer Achselrad of Cologne.

This was Rabbi Abraham ben Alexander who headed the Jewish community of medieval Cologne in the last half of the twelfth century. Rabbi Abraham was a student of Eliazer ben Judah, the mystic rabbi of Worms, and Abraham ben Alexander was somewhat of a mystic himself. But even in those far distant days, the ordained rabbi–the semikhah–concentrated first on scholarship. The rabbi was the head of a medieval Jewish university; his primary task was to interpret the holy written and oral literatures. Still, old Achselrad was magic.

I mean no disrespect to you rabbis by this. In those days there was more magic abroad, even in the synagogue. Why, the youngest schoolboys in the yeshivas could recite a verse from the Holy Scriptures and make the pages in their prayerbooks shiver when there was not the slightest breeze at all. Rabbi Eliazer ben Judah had actually made a Golem, and Rabbi Achselrad slowed the day in order to stretch out a Friday Sabbath eve. . . . You do not know about Achselrad’s stretched-out Sabbath eve? Well, let me tell you exactly what my grandmother told to me:

This particular Sabbath eve began with a ki tov dawn. It was early one Friday morning. The world seemed young and fresh. Yes, Rabbi, it was very early in the morning, one day long, long ago, in old medieval Cologne. The sun was out and no one was about at the old yeshiva. Rabbi Abraham Achselrad stood up. He walked through the main prayer hall; he looked out the front door. Old Achselrad took a deep breath. It was the great ki tov dawning of the day.