A haunting voice, a forgotten legacy, and a golem waiting to wake.
Welcome to ADAM, a bi-weekly serialized historical fantasy rooted in Jewish mysticism and folklore. Each installment reveals a new chapter in the unfolding tales of three Jewish women living during three different moments of history.
This first chapter continues Gitele’s story and gives readers a glimpse into her childhood and the relationship she shares with her father, the Maharal of Prague.
If you’re just joining us, welcome! You can catch up anytime using the full Chapter List. If you’re back, I’m so glad to have you here! You can start reading below.
If you’re curious about the inspiration behind ADAM, this article shares how the story came to be and why I’m telling it one chapter at a time. Thank you so much for reading and being part of this journey — it means the world to me.
I’d love to know what you think so far. If you have thoughts, questions, or favorite moments, drop a comment below — I welcome the conversation and am so glad to have you with me.
Chapter List
Chapter One: The Maharal’s Daughter
Chapter Two: The Witch of Döbling
Chapter Three: The ADAM Project
Chapter Four: The Sacred Shidduch
Chapter Five: The Fifth Aliyah
Chapter Six: Interface
Chapter Seven: The Golem of Prague
Chapter Eight: Under the Olive Tree
Chapter Nine: That Night OR The Incident
Chapter Ten: Unseen
Chapter One: The Maharal’s Daughter
16th Century Prague
On summer evenings, Gitele often joined her father at the river’s edge on the outskirts of the Jewish quarter. She held onto his hand as they crossed the cobblestoned streets to the fields that led to the Vltava River, the tall grasses, stalks of white yarrow, and wild roses brushing lightly against her leather-clad feet and bare thighs. She was careful to avoid the roses’ thorns and the stinging nettle her mother had cautioned could prick and irritate the skin yet could also be used for medicinal purposes.
Once at the riverbank, she skipped stones across the surface of the cold, dark water, or chased after the ducks that nested near the rocky shore. Her father repeatedly scolded her for disturbing them, and he warned her never to upset the geese that flocked in herds by the bank lest she get nipped. After he settled on the fur pelt he’d brought from home, he beckoned her to his side. It was there that he shared his stories with her.
Gitele loved her father’s tales. His words brought to life a world of magic and wonder, filled with the people he knew and the many experiences he’d had. She knew her father was a revered individual both amongst their own people and the greater community. They came to visit him in his study at all hours of the day. She liked to eavesdrop on the landing of their home, listening to those who came in secret after nightfall to consult with the Maharal. Perhaps the most famous of these was Emperor Rudolph II.
Once, her mother had caught her out of bed and scolded her for interloping. She was pulled by her ear back to her room, where her sisters pretended to sleep beneath their blankets. After being tucked back in bed with a severe warning not to leave her room again, they threw back their covers and ran to her side, giggling, asking to be told all the details of their father’s latest audience with the emperor. They whispered together until they heard the front door close and the emperor’s retreating steps on their front path.
“Tell me again,” Gitele said one evening when she was in her 10th year, and she and her father sat watching the sun sink behind the trees of the forest on the far side of the river. “Tell me about the night you were born.”
The Maharal chuckled and stroked her head. “Ah yes,” he said softly. “I was born in the town of Posen, on the first night of Passover. When my mother first felt the pains of labor, she sent for the midwife,” the Maharal told her.
As the Maharal’s eldest daughter, Gitele recalled the many times the midwife had come to their own home to help deliver her sisters. She had cowered behind her door, listening to the sounds coming from her parents’ chamber as her mother labored for hours on end. It had frightened her to hear the screaming and moaning, the pain that came with giving birth.
“Did your mother cry out?” She asked, her hands pausing in their pursuit of braiding the daisy stems and English ivy that lay in her lap.
“I believe she must have,” the Maharal nodded.
“When Mama had my sisters, it sounded painful,” Gitele murmured. “I don’t ever want to feel that. I don’t ever want to have children.”
The Maharal put his arm around his daughter and pulled her close. “Remember, Gitele, it is a cry that is full of power. Only women can make that sound. No matter how hard we try, men will never have the power to bring new life into the world.”
Her father often said things like this, showing a respect for women, and particularly her mother, that she did not hear from the other men she knew, including her Uncle Joshua or her brother “Charif.” The women in her town were caretakers and homemakers, responsible for the family, while the men worked or studied. Yet behind the closed doors of their home, her mother joined her father nightly in his study, their heads bent together over his writings, discussing everything from the Torah and Talmud to ethics and philosophy.
“And having children is God’s greatest gift to man,” her father added, tweaking her nose and putting her at ease.
Not wanting to think about motherhood, she leaned against her father and asked, “What happened next?”
“Well,” the Maharal said, “a table the length of my mother and father’s home had been laid for the Seder. It was draped in my mother’s best damask linen, the goblets were filled with the sweet wine, the matzo waited under an embroidered cloth, and all but the two largest candlesticks in the center of the table were lit. The guests had all arrived by that time, waiting on my father. When my father came through the door of my mother’s chambers, he exclaimed, ‘The child is on its way! Fetch the midwife!’ And a number of the guests did just so.”
Here, her father paused, and she looked up at his face, knowing the rest but eager to hear him tell it: How the midwife had arrived and was admitted to his mother’s chambers only moments before he was born. How the house guests waited outside the room, and when his father emerged with him wrapped in a bundle in his arms, everyone cheered and proclaimed it was an auspicious omen that the Maharal would be someone of great importance, because he was born on the Seder.
But on this particular evening, as she sat beside her father, his eyes had a glazed, far-off look, and he seemed to be weighing something in his mind.
“Go on, Papa,” she encouraged, and when he began to speak again, his words were not what she was expecting.
“At that very same time, concealed by the darkness of night, an evil man lumbered through the streets of our town. He hauled something behind him, tied within a large sack that dragged on the cobblestones.”
“What was it?” Gitele asked in a hushed voice. This was a turn to the story, something she hadn’t heard before. A thrill suddenly ran down her spine. The Maharal gazed down at her with a serious expression and said, “It was the body of a child.”
At this, Gitele shrank back. “A child?”
“Yes,” the Maharal nodded.
“What was he doing with a child?”
“The child was dead,” the Maharal replied, his voice sober. “Died of the plague. But the evil man intended to leave the corpse in the streets where we lived.”
“Why?”
After another pause, in which her father seemed to be silently pondering a serious question, he said slowly, “It is often the case that those not of our faith accuse us of sacrificing Christian children for our Seder.”
The idea was so preposterous and disturbing to Gitele that she blinked several times, trying to comprehend her father’s words.
“But why?” She asked again.
“Why indeed?” Her father mused, staring out at the river sprawled before them. The setting sun glinted off the surface, shards of brilliant light that blinded Gitele when she followed his gaze. She waited patiently for him to respond. Finally, he turned back to her and said, “Our history is long and complicated, Gitele, and we have often been accused of acts we have not committed. Remember the story of Faivish the Fox your mother told you before bed?”
Gitele nodded, recalling one of the many tales her mother had told her and her sisters in their nursery when they were younger.
“Once upon a time, there was a clever and resourceful fox named Faivish,” her mother would recite. “He lived in a den with his family in a forest next to a farm. Most days, the pups stayed close to home, but as they grew older, they liked to explore, braving further distances and sometimes ending up unsupervised on the farm, where the farmer shooed them away. ‘You are not to go on the farmer’s property,’ Faivish told his children, but being the curious little rascals that they were, he worried that they might not listen. So he ended up standing watch at the farmer’s fence most days to protect his children from wandering too far away. When the farmer saw him, they exchanged suspicious glances, but Faivish never ventured on the other side of the gate onto the farm.
“One morning, the farmer came out to the hen house to collect his daily eggs and found them cracked and broken all over the ground. ‘It’s that trickster of a fox,’ the farmer exclaimed, waving his fist in the air. He began to tell his neighbors to watch out for Faivish, for it was well known that foxes prized fresh eggs. ‘He’s mischievous! A villain! A thief!’ The farmer cried, and the townsfolk believed him. They soon became distrustful of Faivish and would set traps in their own yards to catch him. But Faivish never went into the farmer’s yard, let alone stole any of the eggs. In fact, he had seen for himself that it was the squirrels who lived in the trees that invaded the hen house each night.
“In an effort to clear his name and keep his pups from harm’s way, Faivish waited one night outside the hen house. He watched as the squirrels emerged from the branches in the moonlight and crept into the hen house for their nightly raid. It was at that moment that Faivish bolted into the yard, barking and yelping and making such noise that the farmer emerged in his sleeping gown to see what was happening. Once the farmer came into the yard, Faivish darted back into the trees and watched safely from the shadows. When the farmer threw open the door to the hen house, he saw the squirrels causing a commotion and realized he had been wrong about Faivish all along.”
Now, the Maharal said, “Like Faivish, the Jewish people have been blamed for many of the misfortunes that have fallen over humanity over the years. And like Faivish, it is important to protect our people from the harm that can arise from baseless accusations and expose the truth whenever we can.”
Gitele considered her father in silence for a moment before asking in a small, timid voice, “Papa, what happened to the bad man who came into your village the night you were born?”
“They say that when he saw the crowd coming from my parents’ home in search of the midwife, he feared they were coming for him, and he turned and ran. Our town was spared that night. We would not witness a pogrom that year.”
“What is a pogrom?” Gitele asked. The Maharal gazed down at his daughter before pulling her hand into his and smiling gently.
“That, my dear, is a story for another time.”
