The Hilula of the Maharal - 18th of Elul and How He Saved Jew from Blood Libels
That same night when they told him in the dream, he called two other Torah scholars, his students, his disciples; they went into the deep forest, and there he formed a shape of the Golem from the earth, circled it with holy Names a number of times, again and again, more... hop! The Golem began to take on flesh and sinews.
Today is the yahrzeit of the Maharal of Prague. Didn't I tell you about this?
During that era of the Maharal, they used to frame the Jews, accusing them of mixing the blood of a Gentile into their matzahs. Yes, the blood of Christians. The entire goal of the Gentiles was to instigate riots against the Jews.
And they would throw the carcass of the Gentile into the yard of the Rabbi or the Jews, and in bottles, they would place blood of the slain person inside the synagogue.
And in fact, they say that the birth of the Maharal saved the community from a blood libel. His mother was pregnant, and on the night of the Seder she felt labor pains. The household members ran to call the midwife, and they noticed two Gentiles trying to throw into the house of the Maharal's father the corpse of the Gentile.
When they saw the group running towards them, they got scared, and so they started running in the opposite direction.
The household members ran toward the midwife while the Gentiles were fleeing,
they reached the street corner, and two police officers noticed them running, [asking,] "What's this, what's wrong with you? Why are you running? What happened?" They saw what it was—how they had two slain bodies inside their sack.
And so the Jewish people were saved through the birth of the Maharal.
Then afterward, when he grew up, he understood that it was difficult. He performed a dream fast to learn how to save the Jewish people, and they told him in a dream that he needed to create a Golem, and that it would save the Jewish people.
That same night when they told him in the dream, he called two other Torah scholars, his students, his disciples; they went into the deep forest, and there he formed a shape of the Golem from the earth, circled it with holy Names a number of times, again and again, more... hop! The Golem began to take on flesh and sinews.
And truly, though it had a strange appearance, it saved the Jewish people from blood libels, this Golem.
I was at his gravesite. There is a synagogue there... they placed the Golem there...
This is a translation of part of a Hebrew video by Rabbi Benayahu Shmueli, the Head of the Yeshiva