At a bar mitzvah lesson in late November, Isaac asks if Harry Potter is a golem. It’s two months since his older brother Josh’s death, and three days since his first failed attempt at making a golem of his own. Rabbi Bloom laughs, but the sound is less of the barn-owl in the belly Isaac hoped for and more of a crow in the throat. Even though the Rabbi looks like a brown-bearded version of Santa Claus, he never sounds like it.
“Why do you ask?” the Rabbi says, leaning back in his all-wooden swivel desk chair. There’s an inscription on the back of it in Hebrew letters that Isaac doesn’t yet know how to read, the initials E.D. carved just underneath. During Isaac’s first lesson, the Rabbi told him it was made six years earlier by a close friend. It’s the closest thing to personal information he has ever divulged to Isaac.
“Well, the foreheads,” Isaac says. He believes that if anyone has the information he needs to succeed, it’s the Rabbi, but he can’t ask directly. Golems aren’t supposed to be real, and he doesn’t want the Rabbi to think he’s delusional.
“The foreheads?”
“Yeah. Harry has lightning on his forehead, and the golem has the words in Hebrew.”
“‘The words in Hebrew!’” The Rabbi laughs again, louder, and Isaac wishes he could put a hand over the Rabbi’s mouth to stifle the sound. “Do you know what they mean?”
“I think so.” Isaac stares at the dull green stripes on the carpet of the Rabbi’s office. “They’re the names of God.”
“Right.” The Rabbi tries a smile without teeth, but Isaac doesn’t believe his smiles. “I shouldn’t have laughed just now. I was just surprised at the way you said it. They’re written in Hebrew, but they’re not just any words.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry. But golems and names of God are serious things, and you should treat the history of our people with respect.” He says our people like the title of a book Isaac should have read, but he’s the last person Isaac would take a book recommendation from.
At Josh’s funeral, after Rabbi Bloom finished guiding them through the prayers and blessings, the adults took turns shoveling dirt on top of Josh’s pale wooden coffin. Isaac’s parents went first. Both were sobbing, which was strange because Isaac himself hadn’t cried at all, even though his peers called him a crybaby. After they tossed their clumps of soil, they moved away from the grave and held each other, leaving Isaac next to his grandparents, who were also distracted by tears. Other adults began walking around the grave and heaving dirt on top of it, and since no one was paying attention to him, Isaac joined the back of the line. When it was his turn, Rabbi Bloom smiled at him, but said nothing. Isaac’s arms had been shaking all day, but he grabbed the handle of the shovel anyway. He tried to pull it from the mound of earth where the last person had left it. It was heavier than he’d expected, so he dropped it immediately, scattering the top half of the mound across the Rabbi’s pants. The Rabbi’s smile held, but grew tighter, and he took the shovel from Isaac. It’s alright, he said, you don’t have to do this part. Isaac wished, then, that he was strong enough to throw the Rabbi into the grave on top of Josh.
“Fine,” Isaac says. “But you didn’t answer my question.”
The Rabbi laughs for a third time, and Isaac clenches his fists. “Well, I think I have. Is a lightning bolt one of the names of God?”
“Well, not the Jewish one.”
“He’s not ‘the Jewish one,’ Isaac. Hashem is everyone’s God, even if they don’t know or believe it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a modern Jew or British wizard-boy. And Harry Potter isn’t real.”
“But couldn’t Harry still be a golem inside his own story?”
“If he isn’t created from the earth to protect the Jewish people, then no.” He reaches into a desk drawer and takes out the large black binder he’s been using to teach Isaac how to read the Torah. Isaac wishes he could ask if a golem needs to protect every Jew, or if it can be just one: a boy whose brother, his protector, has died from leukemia. But he does not want the conversation that will come after, so he allows the lesson to begin.
◆
Three days earlier, Isaac bought red modeling clay from an art supply store in Park Slope, using money he’d told his father was for a book he needed for school. The clay was the color of a cherry Jolly Rancher, and at thirteen he was the youngest person in the store by at least twenty years when he paid for it. When he got home that evening, he looked up how to write “God” in Hebrew on the family computer while he was supposed to be doing homework. He wrote down every name he found on a scrap of notebook paper.
He wanted to recreate what he’d seen when he was eleven and Josh, then thirteen himself and three months into studying for his bar mitzvah, came home early from a lesson on a Thursday afternoon. Isaac was lying in the top bunk of their bed, reading Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins. At the time, he said it was his favorite book series, mostly because Josh’s was Harry Potter and he wanted to pick something different. He heard the front door of the apartment slam, and Josh came running into their room. He grinned so widely his braces seemed to stretch like elastic, and Isaac saw his jacket pocket shudder. Josh called him down to the floor, saying he had to show Isaac something. I figured it out, he said. This is how I’m going to get Andrew to stay away from you. He pulled a small dirt-brown clay figurine out of his pocket.
In the same room two years later, Isaac molded his clay into the echo of a person, with smooth limbs and an empty face. The whole figure was the size of his fist, because even though he wanted to make one much larger, he thought it a good idea to start small. He crumpled up the scrap of paper bearing the names of God into a ball, then wrapped a small piece of clay around it. He pressed the ball into the back of his golem.
Nothing happened. He focused on his memory of Josh’s golem, looking for clues about what he’d done wrong. After Josh took it out, he lowered it to the carpet. It jumped and spun toward the bookshelf beneath their window, Josh following close behind. It wants to go to the window, Josh said. He lifted it up, and was about to place it on the sill when their mother knocked on the door. He broke it in half in a single motion, then removed a slip of paper from its center. He put a finger to his lips and mouthed, I can fix it, before shoving the golem’s pieces back in his pocket. The next day, Isaac’s mother told him about Josh’s diagnosis, which swallowed up their whole lives, and he never found a good moment to ask Josh about the golem.
After his first failure, Isaac tried the same steps in a different order, starting with the names and building a body around them. Again, no movement. He wondered if he’d imagined Josh’s golem, or if Josh had been tricking him. But he knew Josh wouldn’t do that; Josh was one of the only people who was always honest with him. He also knew that, after that night, Andrew Feldman stopped shoving Isaac to the ground in the hallways at school and calling him gay.
The problem wasn’t that golems weren’t real; the problem was that Isaac was alone and clueless. He began to cry, soft and quiet, his tears leaking onto the clay. For a moment, even though he knew he was too old to believe this, he hoped this would do it: that there was enough magic in crying to bring the golem to life. But nothing happened. The sobs came quickly, then, and his ribs rattled with each one.
◆
On the evening of his lesson with the Rabbi, Isaac sits across from his mother and eats the same dinner they’ve been having for three days in a row: macaroni and cheese from a box, a bag of frozen peas emptied into the boiling water when the pasta is two minutes from done. Isaac’s father is usually the one who handles cooking, but he’s been working late at his law firm more often since Josh died. Isaac didn’t know, before the funeral, that Josh was his father’s favorite, but now it’s hard to ignore.
“So,” Isaac’s mother says, after they’ve already spent several minutes eating in silence, “how was school today?”
“Fine.” He pushes a single pea to the edge of his plate, then pulls it back into the center. He doesn’t know how to tell her Andrew has started being mean to him again, because he didn’t tell her when it was happening the first time. Josh was the only one he’d ever told.
Two years ago, Isaac’s mother made him attend Andrew’s eleventh birthday party in Prospect Park, which every boy in their class was invited to. The main activity was a touch football game, and Isaac felt like he had to play, even though he hated football. In the opening huddle, Andrew called him my kike, smirking, and said it was like when Black people say ‘my n-word.’ Isaac didn’t think the two things were the same at all, but he worried saying so would make things worse. After the game, Andrew dumped two cups of lemonade on his head when he caught Isaac staring at Michael Akerman, whose sweat-slicked black hair gleamed in the afternoon sun. Andrew whispered the word faggot, then, with so much malice that Isaac melted into shuddering wails, even though he didn’t quite know what it meant at the time. A month after Josh died, he found a scrap of paper with the word written on it in red marker taped to the underside of his desk at school.
“How was your lesson with Rabbi Bloom?” Isaac’s mother asks.
“Okay, I guess. I think he doesn’t like me, though.” He can’t tell his mother about the golem for the same reason he can’t tell the Rabbi; she’d think he was crazy.
“I’m sure that’s not true, bearcub.” She only uses this nickname when she thinks he is sad, which Isaac resents, but he lets her grab his hand anyway.
“I guess. He’s kind of condescending sometimes, though.” Isaac tries to drop vocabulary words from school into conversation as often as possible, because he thinks it makes him seem older and he needs any scrap of maturity he can get. Everyone in his life has treated him like a glass sculpture since Josh died, and he thinks it’s because they see him as childish.
“This was only your third lesson. Give it time.” She pulls her hand away, and continues eating. “Your brother liked him, eventually.”
Isaac taps his fork against the edge of his plate. He doesn’t believe her. Josh never talked with Isaac about his bar mitzvah lessons, even though he told Isaac everything. Whenever Isaac asked, Josh would shrug and say his meetings with Rabbi Bloom were boring. After the start of his cancer treatment, he continued going to lessons, and he always collapsed onto the couch when he came home, too exhausted to talk, or even play video games.
“Fine,” Isaac says, “I’ll give it more time.”
◆
“Rabbi,” Isaac says as he sits down for his lesson two weeks later, “what does the Torah say about golems?” He waited until after Chanukah to ask, to make himself seem less eager. He has attempted to make a golem three more times, swapping out brands and colors of clay, trying different names of God in different forms or orders. He even gathered a bit of mud from the edge of Prospect Park after the first snow thawed and mixed it into the clay; he thought the golem might need real earth from its home to come alive. Nothing has worked.
“Again, Isaac? Like I told you before, Harry Potter isn’t a golem. He isn’t made of clay, for one thing.”
“No, it’s not that,” Isaac says. Rabbi Bloom raises his right eyebrow while keeping the left still. Isaac has seen him do this when speaking to young children in the congregation, and he has always wondered how the Rabbi does it. Now, though, it annoys him.
“I’m just curious,” he continues, “because I think the idea of a golem is cool. My parents used to read us this picture book when we were little, about how a rabbi made it to protect all the Jews in his city. I was thinking about mentioning it in my d’var Torah.” Isaac doesn’t care about his d’var Torah, at all; he’s only having a bar mitzvah because his parents want him to, anyway.
“Golems are, absolutely, cool,” the Rabbi answers, over-stressing the last word as if it’s part of another language. “But I’m not sure how they relate to the twelfth chapter of Bemidbar.” This is the chapter of the Torah Isaac will be reading at his Bar Mitzvah. According to the Rabbi, it’s about how Moses’ siblings, Aaron and Miriam, were frustrated that God only spoke to Moses, and how God got angry with them for complaining.
“I guess they don’t really. But they’re another example of God’s power, like how he puts scales on Miriam’s face when she complains. And you said I should talk about something that’s interesting to me for my speech.”
The Rabbi sighs, then sits up and makes eye contact with Isaac. “This might surprise you,” he says, “but golems are not actually mentioned anywhere in the Torah.”
Isaac wonders if the Rabbi is lying to him, then realizes it would be stupid for him to lie about what’s in a document Jewish people have been studying for thousands of years. Isaac grips both knees, to steady himself, and presses on. “Can I ask another question, Rabbi?”
“Sure, if it’s a quick one,” the Rabbi says, his voice edged with weariness.
“It is. It’s about you, actually.”
“Is it?” The Rabbi chuckles, and the edges of the sound feel softer than they have. “I appreciate it, but I’d prefer not to talk about my personal life.”
“C’mon, just one question,” Isaac pleads, with as much sincerity as he can muster. He doesn’t want to beg, but Rabbi Bloom is the only person who can help him figure out how to make a golem. Isaac needs whatever information the Rabbi has.
The Rabbi puts his hands up in surrender. “It depends on the question, but I’ll at least let you ask it.”
Isaac’s chest tightens. He wants to make sure he says this right.
“Do you know how to make a golem?” he asks.
The Rabbi takes a while before answering, looking at Isaac the whole time. The pause gives Isaac more hope than it should – maybe the Rabbi is trying to figure out how much Isaac can be trusted. Maybe there’s so much to tell, and he’s just trying to figure out where to start. But in the end, he gives the answer Isaac should’ve expected.
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, do you know someone who does?” Isaac’s voice speeds up, desperate. The Rabbi must be lying. There’s no other explanation for where Josh’s golem came from. Even if he wasn’t the one who taught Josh, he has to know more than he’s letting on.
He takes even longer to respond this time. He puts both hands on the table and says, “Isaac, is this about your brother?”
Isaac’s mind fills with smoke. He fumbles for a response, but he knows the Rabbi can tell he’s surprised by the question.
“Um, I don’t understand,” he says. His heart is making a drumbeat in his chest, and he can feel the back of his eyes ache with oncoming tears.
“I’m just wondering if your questions about golems have anything to do with Joshua.” He frowns, gently. It is the warmest look he has ever given Isaac, and it feels like an accusation.
“I know your brother’s loss was hard on your family,” he continues, leaning forward, “and I can understand wanting some kind of magical protection. However, a golem wouldn’t protect you from more pain.”
Isaac clenches his fists and digs his fingernails into his hand. How dare he, Isaac thinks.
“Fuck protecting my family,” Isaac says, and it comes out louder than he meant it to. Tears cascade down his cheeks; he’s never able to control them when he gets angry. “And fuck my Torah portion, and fuck my bar mitzvah!”
The Rabbi’s face sets into stone, the disappointed frown of a gargoyle. “Isaac, I understand you’re upset, but there’s no excuse for cursing.”
Isaac is so mad he can’t even speak: all he can do is cry, and shake, and scream. But he doesn’t want to do the last one, because then he would become the child the Rabbi thinks he is. Instead, he picks up his backpack and walks out of the office, not looking back.
◆
Two weeks later Isaac’s pursuit of a golem becomes more urgent. On Tuesday, the first day back from winter break, he brings his most recent attempt to school. He theorizes that it needs to be in the presence of a threat to activate. When he takes it out of his backpack at the end of the day to check on it, however, he sees faggot printed across its back in red sharpie. He doesn’t know how or when Andrew could have done this without him noticing, but he knows Andrew wrote it. He shoves the golem back in its pocket then dumps it in the first street-corner trash can he finds. The whole way home, every muscle in his chest fights to keep his emotions inside. He doesn’t know if Andrew is right about the kind of person he is, but he’ll do anything not to feel like this again.
The next day, he leaves school earlier than usual for his bar mitzvah lesson. The Rabbi dodged his real question to ask about Josh, so he must be hiding something. Plus, Josh was in the middle of preparing for his own bar mitzvah when he showed Isaac his golem; who else would he have learned it from? Isaac knows Rabbi Bloom usually has a meeting with their congregation’s cantor right before their lesson, in the cantor’s office. While his office is empty, Isaac will search it for information about golems. If he can’t find it, he’ll settle for something he can use as leverage to make the Rabbi tell the truth.
When Isaac enters the hallway containing the offices, the Rabbi’s door is open. He peeks around the edge of the doorway, sees no one inside. The whole room taunts him with possibility, but Isaac knows he needs to be smart about what he searches first; his time alone here is limited.
He moves to the Rabbi’s desk, checks through its drawers. In most, he sees nothing resembling helpful information. In the top right drawer of the desk, though, he finds a day planner with a navy blue cover, bound with silver rings, and recognizes the handwriting inside as the Rabbi’s.
He hears the door to the cantor’s office open down the hall, and the Rabbi’s voice stumbles out. He knows he should let the planner rest where it belongs, but it’s the only useful thing he’s found. He runs to the other side of the desk, shoves the planner deep into his backpack. He pulls out The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Nighttime, which he’s reading for school, and opens to a random page.
“Isaac?” Rabbi Bloom says, standing in the doorway. “You’re early.” Isaac knows this isn’t meant harshly, but the words are sharpened by adrenaline.
“Sorry,” Isaac says. He puts a hand on his thigh to stop it from bouncing. Is it his imagination, or was there suspicion in the Rabbi’s voice?
“No need to apologize,” the Rabbi says, coming around the desk and sitting in his chair. “I just wasn’t expecting it. But we can start now, if you’re ready.” He pulls their usual binder out of the desk’s bottom drawer. Isaac lets go of the tension in his hands, first, then the rest of his body. He puts his book into his backpack, and feels it knock against the Rabbi’s planner.
That night, in his bedroom, he takes out the planner. Stealing it was the wrong thing to do, he knows, even if it might have useful information. The Rabbi will realize someone stole it, call all of his students and their parents, and Isaac will be caught and punished.
It’s too late to change that now, though, so Isaac searches the planner to see what he can find. Most of it is boring – bar or bat mitzvah lessons, meetings, funeral or wedding services. On the page for Thursday of this week, two days from now, he sees “Ethan birthday dinner, 7pm”, written in black pen and circled in red. He wonders who Ethan is, why his birthday is so important.
Isaac checks inside the back cover, and finds a list of addresses, one of which is labeled “home”. Isaac is confused, because the address is on the Upper West Side, in Manhattan, and he’d assumed the Rabbi lived close to their synagogue, in Park Slope. What if he lives far away because he has something to hide from the congregation? If the Rabbi has secret knowledge about making a golem hidden anywhere, it’s more likely to be at his home than the synagogue. When Isaac’s parents are asleep, he goes out into the living room, and looks up on the computer how to get to the Upper West Side using the subway.
◆
After school the next day, he stands in front of a brownstone on 83rd Street, shivering in the cold. He knows Rabbi Bloom isn’t home, because he saw an appointment for a bar mitzvah lesson in the planner. He still has to figure out how to get inside.
He walks up to the front door, inspects the buzzer. The Rabbi’s planner says he lives in the second apartment, but the name “Bloom” isn’t next to the corresponding button; instead, the label reads “Deutsch”. Isaac pulls out the planner and checks to be sure: he’s in the right place, but something is wrong. Maybe the Rabbi has moved recently, and never changed the home address listed in his planner. He buzzes “Deutsch”, just in case there’s someone there who can tell him what’s going on, but there’s no response.
He sits down on the stoop, puts his head between his knees. He came all the way from Brooklyn for nothing. He’s never going to learn how to make a golem, and Andrew is going to keep getting worse, and Isaac will be helpless. He cries, and big, honking wheezes escape along with the tears.
After several minutes, he composes himself. He places the planner on the top step. Whoever lives here can figure out how to get it back to the Rabbi. He gets up to go, but then the front door opens.
A man with dark, curly hair steps out. He stands at least a foot and a half above Isaac, and has a long, straight nose that aims downward to a pointy, clean-shaven chin.
“Excuse me,” he says, “but I thought you’d want these.” He’s holding a box of tissues. Isaac wonders how much of his crying the man saw, and his stomach churns with embarrassment. Part of him wants to flee, but instead he takes a single tissue, blows his nose with it, then stuffs it in his pocket.
The man introduces himself as Ethan, and a bright alarm blares in Isaac’s head. He must be the one whose birthday is circled in the Rabbi’s planner, which means Isaac hasn’t come here in vain.
Ethan kneels so their eyes are at the same height, then asks if Isaac is lost. Unable to speak, Isaac shakes his head, and points to the planner next to Ethan’s feet. Ethan picks it up, opens it, and raises a single eyebrow in the same way as the Rabbi, then looks back at Isaac.
“Are you one of Sol’s students?” he asks, then clarifies: “You might know him as Rabbi Bloom.” Isaac remembers that Rabbi Bloom’s first name is “Solomon”, but he’s never heard anyone use it, let alone a shortened version. He wonders who Ethan is to the Rabbi, to use a one-syllable nickname.
Isaac nods, and Ethan asks for his name. Isaac knows he has to lie, because if the Rabbi or his parents learn he was here, they’ll ask questions he doesn’t want to answer.
“Andrew,” he croaks, his voice full of phlegm. Ethan opens his mouth, then closes it.
“Can I come in?” Isaac says. Ethan looks behind himself at the building’s interior, then over Isaac’s shoulder, as if to make sure there’s no one else with him. “Just for a few minutes,” Isaac continues, “so I can warm up before I call my parents.” He may not know who this man is, but his apparent connection to the Rabbi is enough to convince Isaac he needs to see inside. Even if the Rabbi doesn’t live here now, he might have, once; there could be traces of his knowledge left behind.
Ethan agrees, and motions for Isaac to follow him. They climb to the second floor, and Ethan unlocks a black door with a metal ‘2’ on it, then holds it open for Isaac.
He steps into a living room that smells faintly of oranges and is full of bright pops of color: a couch and two armchairs that are all a dark, grape-flavored purple, which reminds Isaac of the sweet wine his parents let him drink during Passover. Paintings sit halfway up every wall, abstract and filled with wide, buzzing lines, the initials “E.D.” in the corner of each. The room has no TV, and Isaac realizes he’s never seen a home without one. There are bookshelves full of colorful novels, some of which Isaac recognizes. On the bottom shelf of one, he sees the same version of A Wrinkle in Time that he owns. He moves closer, to inspect it.
“Do you like reading?” Ethan asks. He closes the front door, stands with his back against it, arms crossed. “You’re welcome to borrow a book if you’d like. You can always give it back at one of your lessons.”
“Is this his book shelf?” Isaac asks. He stoops to pick up a Madeline L’Engle book he hasn’t heard of before, titled Many Waters.
“It’s both of ours,” Ethan answers. “Some of them are mine, some are his. Many Waters is Sol’s.” Isaac is glad he’s facing away from Ethan, so his surprised face isn’t visible. Ethan and the Rabbi live here together.
Isaac’s mind stretches to understand what’s going on. There was a narrow hallway to his left when he entered, and he saw two doors in it, with an opening at the end leading to a kitchen. One of the doors must be a bathroom, which means if Ethan and the Rabbi both live here, they share a bedroom. This must be why the Rabbi lives so far from their synagogue: he’s gay, and he doesn’t want anyone to know. Isaac knows men aren’t allowed to marry each other in New York, but he knows they are in Massachusetts. He imagines the Rabbi and Ethan driving there on a summer night, the windows of their car open, moonlight and wind streaming through. At the beginning of the school year, everyone in Isaac’s social studies class had to write an essay about a “current events issue”, and Isaac wrote about how he thought everyone should be allowed to love whoever they want. Now, though, the idea fills him with a strange, shapeless dread.
“Do you want a glass of water, Andrew?” Ethan asks, stepping into the hallway. Isaac takes a moment to remember the fake name he gave, then shakes his head.
“I think I’m fine. I just remembered my MetroCard has another ride on it, actually. And I can take the subway on my own, so. I think I’ll just go home and call my parents on the way.” Isaac doesn’t have a cell phone, but Ethan doesn’t know that, and he feels a vibrating sense of urgency to get far away from this apartment.
Ethan tilts his head, confused, but before he can say anything else, Isaac is out the door and down the stairs, his breath hard and ragged. He walks so fast it feels like he’s running. He doesn’t realize until he reaches the steps of the 86th street 1 train station that he still has the Rabbi’s book in his hand.
◆
Isaac brings Many Waters to his next bar mitzvah lesson. He wishes he’d spent more time in the Rabbi’s apartment, checked the other rooms for evidence of golems, but at least he has something he can use. Isaac will display the book as proof he knows about Ethan. He will say he is willing to tell the whole congregation what he’s learned, unless the Rabbi teaches him how to make a golem.
When he slides Many Waters across the Rabbi’s desk, he presses his eyebrows together to look serious, but the Rabbi doesn’t notice. He stares at the front cover of the book. Isaac waits for him to say something, but he doesn’t.
“This is yours,” Isaac says, impatient.
“Oh? Where’d you find it?” The Rabbi’s tone is cold, but not angry. He thumbs through the book for several seconds, then closes it abruptly, making Isaac jump. Isaac is sure, then, that the Rabbi knows exactly where he found the book, and he knows Isaac stole his planner, too.
“I got it at your apartment,” Isaac says. He tries to use the calm, even tone he practiced, but he can hear his voice quivering. “There was a man there, named Ethan. He said he lived with you. And I was surprised, because I assumed you lived by yourself.” Isaac clasps his hands on the desk in front of him, because he thinks of it as an adult gesture, but he has to grip so hard to keep them from shaking that his knuckles turn pale. “And I was thinking this probably isn’t something you want the whole synagogue to know.” He clasps his hands even tighter, counts each of his breaths. He knows blackmailing someone else is wrong, but there’s something else making him feel awful, even though his thoughts can’t reach it.
The Rabbi stands and turns to look out the window, lays his hands flat on the sill.“Think about what you’re saying, Isaac,” he says. “You’re old enough to understand that using the details of someone’s private life to blackmail them is wrong.”
Isaac’s stomach feels like a boiling pot of water. He wants to interrupt, but he can’t think of anything to say.
“And if you know that,” the Rabbi continues, “you must be doing this for a good reason. So what is it?” He returns to his seat, and frowns with something like pity. This throws Isaac even further off balance – he wants to be respected, not pitied.
Isaac reaches into his backpack and pulls out his last attempt at making a golem, made the day after he visited the Rabbi’s apartment. It’s dry and brittle, now, and a nub of paper pokes out of its back. He places it on the table.
“I know you know how to make a golem, and I want you to teach me.”
The Rabbi picks up Isaac’s failed golem, turns it over to inspect it, then puts it back down between them. “Well then I need you to tell me,” he says, “what do you want a golem for?”
“I don’t have to answer that.” Isaac’s sternum buzzes with anger. The Rabbi has no right to be asking him anything; he doesn’t care about Isaac, and never has.
“You don’t. But I’d prefer you did.”
“There’s this boy at school,” he says, the words tumbling out before he can stop them. “He’s in my grade. And he’s an asshole to me.” Isaac pauses, expecting to be scolded, but the Rabbi doesn’t say anything about the curse word, so he continues. “And he wasn’t, for a while. But now that Josh is gone he’s starting to threaten me again.”
“Isaac, I need you to tell me what you mean when you say he’s threatening you.” The Rabbi’s voice sinks into a growl.
“He called me–I don’t want to say it. But it starts with an f. And it’s an insult to gay people.” His face flushes and burns. This conversation has slipped away from him, and he doesn’t know how to get it back. He was supposed to have all of the power, but he has none. His eyes flood with tears, and he hates how much weaker this makes him look.
“Isaac,” the Rabbi says. He half-extends his hand across the table, as if he wants to put it on Isaac’s shoulder, but then he pulls it back.
“No one should be calling you that,” he says. “It’s a horrible thing to say.” Isaac manages to contain the full sobs he feels coming, but this doesn’t feel like a victory. Heat spreads from his face down his neck, and his nose fills with snot.
“But,” the Rabbi continues, “you know it’s not a bad thing for someone to be gay, right? And, you know it’s not a bad thing if you are, right?”
“I’m not!” Isaac stands and shoves his chair backward. It clatters to the ground, and the sound echoes in the hallway behind him. His arms shake the same way they did at Josh’s funeral, and a wail climbs up the side of his throat, waiting to be let out. He grabs his golem off the desk, grips it so tightly he thinks it might stick to his hand from sweat. His whole body is warm, now, and his vision is blurred by salt.
“Isaac, I know you’re young, but I just meant it’s okay if –”
“And I told you I’m not!” His arm moves as if on its own, and Isaac throws the golem at the Rabbi as hard as possible. He misses, and it shatters against the wall at the back of the room. .
A moment of silence follows, and Isaac’s heart plummets. This whole conversation was a terrible idea. He will never learn how to make a golem, if they’re even real, and no one will ever protect him from Andrew, and he will have to go through his whole life alone. He lets out a howl, and more tears rush downward in a wild, stinging river.
The Rabbi gets up from his chair, walks to the door of his office, and closes it. He walks back to the other side of the room and begins picking up the golem’s pieces. He is slow, and careful, handling them one at a time and placing each on his desk before he grabs the next one.
Once Rabbi Bloom has gathered all the pieces he can find, he lays them out in a line. The room is quiet enough for Isaac to hear the buzz of the light overhead. The Rabbi reaches into a desk drawer, pulls out a roll of scotch tape and a permanent marker. He tapes the pieces of the golem back together, one by one. Isaac wants to scream at him that there’s no point, but the Rabbi’s gentle movements tell him to stay silent.
The Rabbi puts the arms and legs back in the wrong places at first, and has to swap them, but eventually remakes the golem. Then he takes the marker and writes the Hebrew letter yod on its forehead. He slides it across the table, back to Isaac.
“Did you forget about the foreheads?” he says. He smiles as wide as he can and for the first time, it looks genuine. Isaac’s chest bubbles with something like light. This is it, he realizes. The Rabbi is showing him what he knows. Isaac fixes his eyes on the golem, then, and waits for it to move.