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 chapter introduces Ruby, a computer programmer living in America in the not-too-distant future, in a world dramatically changed by the events that followed October 7 – some real and some imagined. Many of the scenes in these chapters are shaped by the headlines of the past few years. 

If you’re just joining us, welcome! You can catch up anytime using the full Chapter List below. 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

Prologue

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 Three: The ADAM Project

New York City, 2049

The crowd at gate D3 at LaGuardia airport swarmed toward the counter like an undulating wave. The flight to San Francisco had been delayed for nearly two hours, and now the weary passengers were finally beginning to board. Lifting her bag from the floor, Ruby took a final sip of her pumpkin spiced latte before throwing her purse over her shoulder and joining the line slogging forward. 

     Her visit to New York had been enjoyable at first, but now she was ready to go home. She had seen her share of snow and gray skies and dirty slush closely resembling sludge. Steam from the vents over the subways issued forth like the foul breath of a subterranean beast, and the crowds had begun to feel suffocating. Times Square, with its lights and noise, had felt like a cesspool of humanity, but since that’s where they had booked her a hotel room, she couldn’t escape it. Every night, she pushed her way through the mob beneath the neon lights and the multistoried digital billboards, jostled by tourists taking selfies, Broadway showgoers, and native New Yorkers. She heard the call of panhandlers and vendors, the music from street performers, and the proclamations from self-appointed prophets holding signs reading, “The End is Near,” “2050 = The End Times! Repent Now!” and “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth!” Even at the airport, she saw the white-robed prophets weaving between the travelers and sighed. She was ready for the sanctity of her small one-bedroom apartment and the quiet it afforded her. 

     Just as the line was beginning to move, it suddenly came to a stop. Ruby noticed a commotion by the ticket counter and realized something was going on. She had thought the voices, low at first, were just part of the general hum, but as though some inner radio frequency had hit a channel, she became aware of the words being said and the steady rise in volume from the man at the front of the line. Others were beginning to look as well. It was hard to miss. 

     The man facing the counter wore an oversized sweatshirt and baggy jeans, and his face was beet red. He let out a stream of obscenities before turning to those who were staring and abruptly throwing up his hand in a salute, yelling, “Sieg Heil!”

     Ruby froze and blinked, glancing surreptitiously at those standing beside her. Many faces mirrored her own confusion, but many more appeared unbothered, staring down at phones, either unaware of what was happening or pretending to be engrossed in an all-important email or text. The man began to march in circles with his arm still raised. Just the sight of the salute sent a chill through Ruby’s veins. 

     “Sir,” the woman behind the counter uncertainly, “I must ask you to stop.”

     “I’m not doing anything wrong,” the man insisted, though he lowered his hand and turned to face the woman. “This is America. I have the constitutional right to say whatever the hell I want.”

     “Sir,” the woman began again, “if you don’t stop making a scene, I’m going to have to call security.”

     The man scowled then spat the words, “You’re a Zionist, aren’t you?” and Ruby reached out to support herself as the blood drained from her limbs. 

     “I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” the woman replied in a flat voice.

     “Those Zionists are everywhere,” the man ranted. “You’d be foolish to think otherwise. They’ll resurface like rats to take everything away from us. They lost what they once had when the world woke up to their depravity, but they’re still among us. They run everything, even if you don’t know it. I bet they run this airline. You aren’t allowing me the seat I paid for with my good money, so I want to speak to your Zionist of a manager. I’ll put him in his place.”

     What the hell was happening?

     Ruby reached up and pressed her hand to her chest, feeling beneath the fabric of her shirt the hard edges of the gold Star of David she wore on a chain, always hidden. It had once belonged to her great-grandfather and had been passed down to her shortly after the Great Middle East War and the Mass Exodus from Israel, when the world had nearly been engulfed in a third world war and the Jewish people had to essentially go into hiding. Her mother had placed it gently in her palm and whispered, “This makes you a target, but it also makes you strong. Never forget that.”

     The man continued to yell at the airport employee, who was quickly joined by another woman from the next counter. Out of the corner of her eye, Ruby noticed a security officer dressed in a dark uniform approaching the gate, his hand on his holster. The stalled line parted as the officer made his way to the ticket counter to apprehend the man. Ruby wondered if there would be a fight, if the man had a weapon stashed somewhere that had gone undetected through security. Surprisingly, the man stopped ranting when the officer reached his side. They exchanged a few words in lowered voices, and try as she might, she couldn’t make out what they said. She watched along with everyone else as the officer escorted the man away, leaving a palpable silence amongst the crowd. 

     “Ladies and gentlemen,” the woman said into a microphone, now projecting an overly cheerful voice across the rows of chairs near the counter, “I apologize for the disturbance. We will now continue with boarding.”

     And just like that, life resumed. 

     As Ruby joined the line once more, she swallowed over a lump in her throat and tried to steady her racing heart. A buzz of conversation picked up as most of the strangers around her shrugged off what had happened. Ruby was sure that, by the time they boarded the plane, the incident would be forgotten. Confrontations like this had become commonplace. Most people looked on but never did anything, like slowing down momentarily to witness a car accident before speeding up once more, leaving the scene behind, turning a blind eye to the aftermath. 

     But for Ruby, the moment was seared into her brain, adding to the many, many moments she had experienced in her life, turning her blood to ice and making her want to scream.

* * *

     Once the plane reached its cruising altitude and the “Fasten Seat Belt” sign went off, Ruby relaxed against her seat. The tension she always felt during take-off eased from her limbs: her hands unclenched in her lap, and her breathing returned to normal. She didn’t care for flying, but she knew it was the fastest way to get from point A to point B. Today, point A was New York, and point B was San Fransico. Point B was home.

Ruby turned to the window and slowly raised the shade. Below her was a landscape of plump clouds, and overhead was a flawlessly blue sky. Her adrenaline and trepidation were gradually replaced by a sense of calm, of awe, as she stared out the window, following the plane’s shadow as it rippled on the downy-soft, blindingly white terrain.

Leaning back once more, Ruby thought back to the previous day’s meeting. She had been sitting in a large conference room fifty stories above Manhattan. Every surface was either gleaming metal or polished wood, from the heavy oak conference table to the rows of chrome and glass shelves that lined the walls opposite the floor-to-ceiling windows, to the contemporary pendant lights that hung overhead. Across from her was a large screen, and on that screen were the charts and graphs that reflected the years of research and tests she’d run.

“We are very impressed by your prototype,” Alan, President of the Anti-Defamation League, said. “If what you’re saying is true, this program could be a game changer.”

“We know what we’re up against,” Shoshana, the representative for the newly created National Association of Jewish Citizens (NAJC), added as she stood and approached the screen. “Hate speech is most prevalent on the Internet . . . May I?” She indicated the iPad in her hand, and Ruby nodded. The image on the screen suddenly compressed to one side as the diagram on Shoshana’s iPad was projected beside it. “We have been following posts across all social media platforms that target Jews, promote antisemitism, or reflect antisemitic rhetoric and hint at hate crimes. So far, this has been a human effort. Narrowing down which accounts are bots and which are credible is a challenge, and the number of new accounts constantly being created is almost impossible to keep up with. What you’re saying is, your program can essentially keep track of these numbers in real time, identify reliable threats, and terminate accounts before they reach the public. Is that correct?”

Ruby nodded, and Shoshana glanced back at Alan, satisfied.

“Very good, very good,” Alan muttered, pressing his fingers together beneath his chin as he stared at the screen.

“We have more testing to do,” Ruby added, “but yes. Our program can browse the web at faster rates than any human and can ‘red flag’ anything that poses a plausible danger. It will also be able to sync with any organization to alert them of threats so that action can be taken before things get violent, by police or . . .” She left the rest unsaid, but it was understood that the program would best be used by the Jewish vigilante groups that had formed to combat antisemitic activity whenever the legal system was slow to respond. The group in the room glanced around 

“I assume there is a cost for these groups to use this information?” Alan asked.

“It is negotiable, but yes.”

“I found your story very moving as well,” Shoshana’s co-worker, Michelle, remarked from where she sat. Ruby knew that Michelle, an older woman approaching her eighties, had worked on the government coalition in the mid-2020s to counter antisemitism before it was disbanded. “We all had stories following October 7,” she sighed. “I imagine that’s what makes this work so important to each one of us.”

“Yes,” Ruby agreed softly. She had shared with them her own story about her family’s loss when she was only four years old. She couldn’t remember a lot of details about her Aunt Leora; most of her memories came from the pictures her mother showed her every year on her aunt’s birthday. Together, they sat on her parents’ couch, the photo album opened on their laps. “She loved you so much,” her mother told her. “She wanted more than anything to be a mother one day. She spoiled you rotten when she came to visit each year. And you idolized her, always asking to be held or running after her, and crying when she left. She loved taking you for ice cream and to the park and to ball games. She bought you your first Barbie doll. She always sent you the prettiest dresses for Hanukkah and your birthday.”

Ruby also grew up knowing Leora’s fate. After visiting Israel in high school, her aunt fell so in love with the country that she decided to move there after college.  “I hated that we were so far away,” Ruby’s mother said, “but Leora was always headstrong. She had so much spirit. She wouldn’t be talked out of it. That made each visit so special.”

And on the morning of October 7, Leora and her friends were in the western Negev desert, at the Nova Music Festival, surrounded by other young concertgoers who had danced through the night, waiting for dawn to break. She never saw the sunrise. 

It always disturbed Ruby that one of her earliest memories was watching her mother’s face grow pale and her hand drop the phone when the call came. She remembered her mother collapsing on the floor, sobbing, as their TV silently broadcast what was happening a world away. She remembered her father tucking her into bed that night, and how, when she asked why her mother had spent the whole day in bed crying, her father’s own tears had fallen onto her cheeks. And she remembered the feeling that accompanied all the pain in her household from that moment on. Something came alive in her that day and only continued to metastasize as she grew older.       

After a few moments, Ruby opened her eyes and pulled her phone out of her purse. Connecting to the plane’s Wi-Fi, she waited until she had a signal, then pulled up her text messages. Seth’s name was pinned to the top of her contacts, and she clicked on his smiling photograph and typed out a short message:

“We did it. We got the grant money.”