Episode 9: The Maharal and the Prince

00:01 We continue with the remarkable story of the young Prince Ferdinand and the Maharal. The words of Moshe Yitzchak, the Jewish manager of his estates, had made a deep impression on Prince Ferdinand, the Archduke of Bohemia and son of King Ferdinand I. For the first time in his life, he had heard things about the Jews that he had never known. The prince knew that the royal court was rife with intrigue and plots, and that the Catholic priests were conducting a wild campaign of incitement against the Jews. He also knew how powerful the priests were, and that his father the king was often helpless against them. Moshe Yitzchak’s explanations opened the prince’s eyes and affected him deeply. He began to feel that the Jews were being wronged. For several days the prince went about lost in thought, as though he were struggling to make a decision. Finally, he summoned Moshe Yitzchak. As we recall, Moshe Yitzchak had advised the prince to invite the Maharal to help with the mathematical problem and the wager with the Archduke of Moravia. He had described the Maharal as a man of great knowledge, not only in Jewish studies but in general subjects as well, and therefore the person best suited to find a solution for the prince. Now the prince spoke with Moshe Yitzchak and asked him to bring the Maharal to him. He said, “Be my emissary and convey to the rabbi of Prague my request that he be my guest.” Moshe Yitzchak answered, “Forgive me, sir, but I cannot undertake such a mission—to come to that great scholar and demand that he appear before you. First I must ask whether he agrees to come. It would not be proper to order a person like the Maharal to come to the prince.” Prince Ferdinand understood and took no offense. On the contrary, his estate manager’s approach made him curious to learn more about

02:56 the Maharal, his position as rabbi, and the great Torah scholars of the Jewish people in general. The prince then asked Moshe Yitzchak several questions about the Maharal. “Is the chief rabbi an elderly man, for whom a journey of thirty parasangs in a fine carriage would be difficult?” “No,” Moshe Yitzchak told him. “The chief rabbi is in the prime of life, about forty-five years old. Already at the age of twelve, the great Jewish sages praised him. He studied for some twenty years in the foremost houses of study in Germany and Poland, and about ten years ago the Jewish community of Prague had the privilege of his agreeing to accept the post of chief rabbi in the capital.” The prince went on: “Surely he receives a large salary and has considerable income?” Reb Moshe Yitzchak told him, “The chief rabbi donated his salary to support a house of study for young Jewish men learning Torah under the direction of one of the great teachers. The community pays only the expenses of the chief rabbi’s meeting house.” “Then how does he earn a living?” the prince asked. “His livelihood,” Moshe Yitzchak replied, “comes from a partnership with a Jew in a grocery store, and another with a leather merchant. These two businesses provide him a comfortable living. Day and night he devotes himself to Torah, and every day he receives dozens upon dozens of letters from leading rabbis in nearby and distant lands, who turn to him with questions and doubts about various halachos.” Moshe Yitzchak continued telling the prince about various aspects of Jewish life. Then, at the first opportunity, he visited the Maharal and told him of the prince’s request. He said that if the Maharal agreed to visit, the prince would send his own carriage to bring him to the castle. The Maharal agreed, but declined the prince’s offer of a carriage, saying that he would come to the castle in an ordinary passenger wagon. A week later, the Maharal visited the prince. When the prince presented him with the mathematical problem

05:57 that no one had been able to solve, the Maharal solved it immediately and without difficulty. This impressed the prince greatly. He was even more surprised when the Maharal wrote out the solution in the prince’s own language. The prince offered to pay the Maharal for his trouble, but the Maharal declined. He told the prince, “The Jewish people have a tradition dating back to Moshe Rabbeinu of teaching Torah and knowledge to anyone who seeks them, without payment. Only those who need the money for their livelihood are permitted to accept payment, and then only an amount equal to the wages they could have earned at other work during that time.” At the prince’s request, the Maharal remained at his castle for a week. He ate and rested at Moshe Yitzchak’s home nearby, but spent much of each day at the castle, talking with the prince about science and wisdom. The prince discovered that there was no field in which the Maharal lacked knowledge. A substantial part of their conversations concerned the situation of the Jews, their history, and the foundations of their faith. “Where did you acquire so much knowledge?” the prince asked in astonishment, expressing his profound admiration. One day the prince asked the Maharal why he had studied natural science, mathematics, botany, and the study of the soul; from whom and from which books he had learned them; and what use he had for them. Ordinarily, a person chooses one or two fields, studies them in depth, becomes proficient in them, and develops and refines them. If he succeeds, he earns a good name, gains great respect, and becomes known as an expert in that field. The prince then asked, “And what is the wisdom of the Torah?” The wisdom of the Torah, the Maharal explained, is the teaching and knowledge of the mitzvos that the Creator of the world commanded humanity, from Adam, whom G-d created, until the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. G-d commanded seven mitzvos to all humanity. To the Jewish people, however, He commanded 613 mitzvos, along with seven more received through tradition,

08:56 making 620 mitzvos altogether. The Creator’s mitzvos fall into two categories: things He commanded us to do, and things He warned us not to do. To observe the mitzvos, we must know and be proficient in various fields of knowledge: mathematics, to establish the beginnings of the months and the dates of the festivals; botany and natural science, for matters concerning the kashrus of food; and the study of the soul, to acquire noble character traits. Above all, we must seek to understand, to the extent the human mind is capable, the Creator, blessed be He, who gives life to all creation as the soul gives life to the body. The difference is that the soul gives life to the body but does not create it, while the Creator, blessed be He, created everything and also gives life to everything. Therefore, the first step toward an intellectual understanding of the most subtle concepts in the study of the Divine is knowledge of the soul. The Maharal continued: All these fields, as well as other fields such as medicine and more, are found within the wisdom of the Torah. The wisdom of the Torah is the perfection of the sciences and their crowning glory. Some are set out explicitly and systematically; others are only hinted at in the Torah and have been transmitted from person to person by the great Jewish sages of earlier generations. In every generation, the leading sages write their explanations in books to clarify the words of the Torah and its wisdom. The prince went on: “Maharal, according to the history of the Jewish people you have told me, 430 years passed over six generations from the day the Creator made His covenant with Avraham until the giving of the Torah through Moshe Rabbeinu, most of them years of poverty and exile. From the time Yehoshua, Moshe’s successor, brought the Jewish people into the land of Canaan until the Babylonian exile, 890 years passed, and those years too saw various wars. Only about 500 years passed from the first exile to the second, and it has now been about 1,487 years since the Jewish people left their land and began wandering in exile.

11:40 In different countries, under the harsh yoke of those who opposed the Jewish religion. And how is it that the Jewish people did not forget their Torah? The Maharal told him: Our first forefather, Avraham, was the model of someone who gave his life to proclaim that there is one G-d, the Creator and Ruler of the world and all it contains. Avraham Avinu, who stood against the views of the unbelieving Nimrod, bequeathed to us, to the entire Jewish people, the courage and strength of conviction to believe with complete faith in the one G-d, Who watches over all creatures on earth and in the heavens. This Creator gives them life and guides them. Avraham Avinu passed on to us this willingness to give our lives for the sanctification of Hashem’s name. This sacred inheritance—the strength of conviction and the courage not to be swayed by anyone who comes to interfere with our faith and our religion—remains with us. Whether it is a learned person who seeks to lead us astray from our Torah way of life, or a king or minister who comes against us by force, we strive to stand firm and give up our bodies for the sake of our souls. The yeshiva is a place of study for the young, and it is the mother of all that lives among the Jewish people. Our forefathers Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov maintained yeshivas to teach their children and spread knowledge of the Creator. When Yaakov Avinu went down to Egypt, he first sent his son Yehudah to establish a yeshiva for the many members of his family and for anyone who wished to attend its lessons. Moshe Rabbeinu also established a yeshiva where he, his brother Aharon, their sons, Yehoshua and the elders studied. And in every generation, regardless of their financial circumstances, Jews strove to uphold the enactment made 1,650 years earlier. This refers to the enactment of Yehoshua ben Gamla: every Jewish community, group and settlement should have a cheder with a qualified teacher for children aged five and up, in addition to yeshivas for young men and young married students. These cheders and yeshivas protected the faith and the religion, and they raised—and still raise—

14:41 people of intelligence and integrity who study Torah and observe mitzvos with self-sacrifice. When six months had passed since the date of the princes’ wager—the time the two princes had allotted themselves—Ferdinand invited Johann, Archduke of Moravia, the bishop and his brother Maximilian to join him. In their presence, he showed them the solution to the problem over which they had made their wager. They were all captivated. The solution was full of wisdom and knowledge. “Do not think,” Prince Ferdinand told those present, “that this comes from my own wisdom and knowledge. The solution was given to me by a man whose identity, much as I would like to, I cannot reveal, because he insisted that I not disclose it.” Some time passed. The king called a meeting of his advisers and the princes. On the agenda was the question of how to replenish the empty royal treasury. Another question on the agenda was the priests’ demand that all the Jews be expelled from the country.