“Hm.” Avram stared at the pair of statues which flanked the Cathedral of Our Lady. “So—they think that a stone statue can defeat us?” 

“Welcome to Paris.” said Yosef to his cousin Avram. 

The two statues, quarried from identical fine white marble, depicted two women. But their aspects could not be more different. One stood tall and triumphant: a conquering hero. A crown topped her head. In one hand she brandished a sword, in the other, a cross taller than herself. ECCLESIA, read the letters carved beneath in Romanesque capitals. The Church. 

The other statue represented that which had been conquered: a woman slumped in defeat and shame. Her crown lay broken at her feet. A serpent wound itself around her head, covering her eyes and twining in her hair. She carried no weapon, but only a pair of stone tablets—the Tablets of the Law--split down the middle. The carved letters beneath this figure named her SINAGOGA.

“You see?” said Yosef. “It’s Church and Synagogue. A parable for the ignorant, to show how the Church has triumphed over us Jews.” 

Avram grimaced. “How insulting. Would it not be wonderful, my good cousin, if these statues could be brought to life for another round of battle? Perhaps the outcome would be different.” 

Yosef gave his cousin a pitying smile. “Still living in your Kabbalah world of dreams and magic, aren’t you. Come, let’s get to shul in time for evening prayers.” 

*** 

“How strange, the way you do things in Paris.” Avram had to duck his head to enter the low doorway of the synagogue, which was built below street level. “Why, I wouldn’t even have found this shul if you weren’t with me.”

“That’s the way the Bishop has decreed it, my dear cousin. While the church’s spires reach to the heavens, the Jewish worship house should be low, ignoble, tiny, and nearly invisible. So that all may see the superiority of the Christians’ faith over ours.” Yosef, the Rabbi, set a pair of Shabbat candles in the silver holders.

Avram wrapped the prayer shawl around his shoulders. “I liked it better in the hills, away from the evil world of men.”

“Yes, we heard, you went to live in the mountains like the wild beasts of the wood.” Yosef put a comforting hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “I suppose I don’t blame you, after…what happened. We’re all sorry about your dear Sarah.”

Avram shut his eyes. Dear Sarah. She could have handled this Bishop. Oh, she had a mouth on her, did my Saraleh.  A man had to stuff his ears with wool to escape her barbs. She was impossible to please. In fact, after Avram had married, he had become a very pious man, spending all his time in shul…

But when that pack of drunken goyim swarmed outside the door, screaming vengeance on the Christ-killers… it was Sarah’s sharp tongue, her indignant curses and her rolling pin that held them off long enough for the rest of the family to escape. Brave as Queen Esther…a lioness of a woman. 

A single tear leaked from Avram’s eye. He bowed his head with the other men, welcoming Shabbat.

***

“Father, did you come to Paris just to stare at those statues?”

His son tugged at his hand.

“Reuven, listen.” He lowered himself to his son’s level. “Remember Reb Moshe, the great Kabbalah Master? Remember when he stumbled on our hut, while he was on a fast in the wilderness?”

Reuven began to smile. “He said that with the right prayers you could make wood sing and stones dance. Father, is that true?”

Avram put an arm around his son and drew him close. “He said that God Almighty made the whole universe come to life, just by speaking the right holy words. Remember when he made a dreidel dance for you children? Well, I’ve got a secret. I listened closely, and heard the Word that he spoke.”

***

On the night of the full moon, Avram came back to the main square. Making sure no town watchmen were about, he approached the two stone statues.

“Almighty God, bless this deed I am about to do for the uplifting of Thy People,” he murmured. And, standing before the statue of Sinagoga, he unwrapped a cloth bundle.

By the full moon’s light he climbed the block on which the statue stood. With trembling fingers, he tied an object around the statue’s shoulders. “O thou block of dead stone, I gift thee with the shawl worn by the strongest woman in all Israel—Sarah bat-Esther, my late wife. May her strength enter thy limbs. May her fire enter thy spirit. May her rage enter thy soul.” He whispered a secret word in the statue’s ear and then began to intone at the top of his lungs. “By Adonai Saboath, the Lord of Hosts—by Keter and Binnah, Crown and Wisdom, I bid thee awake!”

A roll of thunder sounded. A great wind swept across the town square. Avram jumped backward as a great crack appeared in the statue’s stone face.

As he watched, entranced, fissures appeared all across the statue’s marble surface. The marble flaked off like pieces of eggshell, revealing soft flesh underneath. Sinagoga flexed limbs that had never moved before. Slowly at first, she came to life, and straightened up her bent back and shook off her posture of shame. For the first time since Sinagoga had been a chunk of uncut stone, she stood proud.

“By the Holy Name…it’s happening.” Avram marveled, weeping tears of joy.

Sinagoga turned, hearing his voice. She stared at him in wonder. “Art thou my Master?”

Avram nodded, afraid to say more.

She turned to gaze at the town square, the church, with its torches and its stained glass windows. Her eyes fell on the white statue called Ecclesia that stood across from her.

“Who’s that? My sister?” She pointed at the statue.

“Your rival,” Avram told her. “See how smug she looks? She thought she could defeat you, and grind you into the dust.”

“Did she? Well…she was wrong,” cried Sinagoga. And she sprang into motion. Taking the broken piece of the Tablets of the Law in both hands, she leaped from her stone block and approached her sister Ecclesia.

“How dare you stand there thinking you’re better than me,” cried Sinagoga.

But Ecclesia made no reply.

“Well? What do you have to say for yourself? Look at you with your chin in the air—too good to talk to me, aren’t you?”

Still, the statue that represented Church Triumphant did not deign to reply.

“Aren’t you even going to give me a sermon about how God chose you and cursed me? Don’t you have any honey-frosted, queenly, snoot-in-the-air lies to dazzle me with?”

Avram stifled a laugh. His creature had certainly inherited Sarah’s clever tongue!

“Why don’t you wake up and come off that pedestal, and let’s have it out,” Sinagoga said to her rival. “You’d like to claw my eyes out—wouldn’t you? Oh yes, I dare you to!”

And when Ecclesia still made no answer, Sinagoga gave a howl of frustration. “You bitch! You think you beat me? Well, I’ll show you—“With the strength and fury of Moses himself, as he broke the Ten Commandments at Sinai, she brought the fragment of the Tablet over the head of Ecclesia.

Ecclesia’s white marble head, with its triumphant smile, cracked off at the neck and toppled to the pavement. “There,” Sinagoga cried. “Now who rules!”

Avram gave a great cheer. “Well done, my creation!”

The commotion had drawn others. “Avram, what in God’s name—“ Yosef emerged from the shul in time to see Sinagoga snatch the sword from the now-headless Ecclesia.

Reuven and several of Avram’s relatives arrived, to break out in great cries of astonishment. “It’s a miracle! God be praised!”

But the miracle had only begun. With a great yell, the Stature swung the sword double-handed and lopped Ecclesia’s great cross in half. “I’m not afraid of you or your filthy symbol of idolatry,” she cried, just as two priests emerged from the church.

“In God’s name, what’s happening,” cried one. “Fetch the Bishop immediately!”

“Sure, go ahead and fetch him,” Sinagoga cried with a voice like a brass trumpet. “I’ll lop off his head too! I’ve a mind to do some damage. I’ve had my fill of your scorn. I’m ready for vengeance!”

Father Helmut made the sign of the Cross. “Get thee hence—“

“Get out of my way, skirt-wearer,” Sinagoga said. She picked up Ecclesia’s stone head and with a great laugh hurled it through the air. The Priest barely managed to duck in time to avoid having his own head smashed. The stone chunk sailed across the square to shatter the great stained glass front of the cathedral.

Sinagoga’s tremendous howl of triumph filled the square, along with the sound of broken glass.

Avram and Reuven and Yosef and the neighbors of the Jewish quarter began to embrace each other and weep with joy. “Our Deliverer has come!”

***

The Statue was just getting started. After she’d put a hole in the Cathedral, she gave herself up to the joy of destruction. She ripped out a wall and pulled down one of the altars. The priests came streaming out of the side exit in time to see a huge gold crucifix sailing toward them. She stormed over to the monastery to exact her vengeance. Candlesticks, manuscripts, incense holders…they whirled through the air as if by the power of a cyclone.

“Somebody stop her,” Father Helmut cried. He ran to the Bishop. “Surely you know of a prayer to stop demons!”

They knelt and sang Ave Maria, but it did no good.

Sinagoga headed off to the Church of the Blessed Nativity, and then to the Abbott of St. Mary’s. “Where does your King live,” she called out to the terrified spectators. “ I think I’d like to visit his palace!”

The Bishop finally did the unthinkable: he entered the Jewish quarter. It was Saturday morning and the minyan had just completed the Torah reading. They turned to see the Bishop entering, flanked by his men-at arms. Everyone stood silent as the Bishop took off his tall hat and stooped down low so that he could enter the Jewish worship-house.

 “So, the Reverend Bishop visits our humble little hovel,” said Yosef. “To what do we owe this honor?” Though his words were polite, his voice sounded like a knife ground on a stone.

“You’ve got to stop this madness,” the Bishop said, with no preamble. “Your creation—your demoness, or whatever it is—is making a shambles of our town. Now she’s planning to visit the King himself.”

Smiles crept onto the worshippers’ faces. “Is that right? Maybe it’s time the King received a visit from a Jew who wasn’t terrified and pleading for mercy,” said Isaac the caretaker.

“Sir Reverend Bishop, do you remember me?” said Yosef.

The Bishop avoided the Rabbi’s eyes. In fact he seemed to have trouble looking anywhere in the small room.  Though humble on the outside, the worship-house held much beauty within: the walls were covered with painted Hebrew calligraphy intertwined with leaves and vines. An ornate Eternal Lamp hung from the ceiling, and a curtain of richly embroidered velvet covered the Torah alcove. But the Bishop and his soldiers would not look at these emblems of the Erroneous Faith. “Why should I remember you?”

“Because you hit me. Right here.” Yosef pointed to a scar on his cheek. “You see,” he told Avram, “Every year on Good Friday a Church representative gets to punish Israel for killing their Savior, by slapping a Jew in the face.”

The Bishop’s face turned a shade of red. “Well,” he finally said, “if you don’t put a stop to your sorcery, the punishment will be a lot worse than a slap in the face. That’s right,” he said, drawing himself up with more confidence. “The King’s soldiers will come and burn this house of heresy and all the rest of the Jewish houses. They’ll kill every Jew they can find, and then they’ll go on to do the same in Toulouse and Cologne and Rheims and—“

“All right, all right,” said Yosef, holding out a hand. “We get your point.”

“But, sir Bishop…” Avram stood forward. “That’s not how sorcery works. There has to be an exchange of energy, you see. It will cost me a great deal of power to undo what I’ve done. You must give me something to balance it out. A gift, or a promise. What can you give me?”

The Bishop looked puzzled. He was accustomed to receiving gifts, not the reverse.

 “How about this,” Avram said. “If I put a stop to the Statue’s rampage, you agree to stop slapping our people in the face—“

“-- and killing them at the slightest pretext,” Isaac the caretaker put in.

“Also,” said Yosef,” we’d like to enlarge this House of Prayer and adorn the outside, as befits a house of the Lord.”

***

Avram approached the Statue. She had ripped down most of the churches in the city and showed no signs of tiring.

She had grown quite a bit, he noticed. She had started out roughly the size of a human woman, but now she had grown to the size of a young oak. Her girth and muscles had also filled out; she could have wrestled ten blacksmiths with one hand. It was nothing for her to rip down walls, stomp on lintels, and grind large columns to powder.

“Sinagoga!” he called out her true name. It caught her attention and she turned. “I order you to stop your rampage.”

Her laughter resembled a mighty wind. “Why should I? I’m having fun!”

“It’s not right, this…wanton destruction.”

“Not right!” Another laugh, as she hurled a baptismal font to the pavement. “I stood there and took their abuse for hundreds of years. So did you! And you talk about right! You’re a fool, Master!”

Avram was beginning to sweat. If only he had managed to catch the word that Kabbalah Master Reb Moshe had used to make the dreidel stop dancing.

“But if you don’t stop, they’ll kill us all,” Avram pleaded. “They’ll send in the King’s soldiers and massacre us.”

“Then I’ll kill the King and his soldiers,” Sinagoga said. “I’ll stomp on them all with my foot. It’ll be great fun—like picking out lice and crushing them!”

Avram groaned inwardly. Obviously the fate of flesh-and-blood creatures was of little concern to a creature of stone.

“I am still your master,” Avram cried. “And I command you to obey me.”

He might as well have told a tree to hold still in the wind.

‘Very well then,” Avram said. He raised up his right hand, in which he held a wooden object. “By the powers of Gevurah and Yesod, Judgment and Covenant--and by this object I carry—I command your obedience!” 

The Statue stopped in mid-motion.

“This is the rolling-pin of my wife Sarah bat-Esther, the Lioness of Israel,” said Avram. “It is she whose name and spirit has animated you! Now I command you—“

The Statue picked up Avram under his arms and held him up to her face level, examining him intently.

“Why, yes,” she exclaimed, “I remember now. You tied Sarah’s shawl about me. And so her spirit animated me.”

The Statue’s voice had changed, becoming very familiar to Avram. A great smile crossed her face.

“I’ll give up my sport, Master,” she said, “but you know how sorcery works. You must give me a gift, or a promise, before I can give anything up.”

Avram felt sweat running down his armpits. “What promise do you want, Sinagoga?”

“That’s not my name.  I’m your Saraleh! Don’t you remember me, you worthless clod?” She yanked the rolling pin out of his hands. “You call yourself a sorcerer? You couldn’t charm a flea out of a mattress! All right, I’ll give up my fun—as long as you can provide me with better entertainment.”

Avram’s face went pale. “Entertainment? Wh-what do you mean?” 

But he guessed well enough. Oh Lord, you see the sacrifice I must make for Thy people’s sake! 

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean, you scoundrel. You spent all your time in shul. It’s about time you finally showed up. What did you expect me to do all day, play with my rolling pin? Well, now you’re here, let’s see what you’re made of. Come to bed, my little Avram.”

The giantess tucked her husband under her arm like a sack of grain. Smiling in anticipation, she carried him away.