Golem

In Jewish folklore, a golem (גולם, sometimes, as in Yiddish, pronounced goilem. From the Hebrew word גֶּלִם, material) is an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter. In modern Hebrew the word golem literally means 'cocoon', but can also mean "fool," "silly," or even "stupid." The name appears to derive from the word gelem (גלם), which means "raw material."

History

Origins of the word

The word golem is used in the Bible to refer to an embryonic or incomplete substance: Psalm 139:16 uses the word "gal'mi," meaning "my unshaped form" (in Hebrew, words are derived by adding vowels to triconsonantal roots, here, g-l-m). The Mishnah uses the term for an uncultivated person ("Ten characteristics are in a learned person, and ten in an uncultivated one," Pirkei Avoth 5:7). Similarly, golems are often used today in metaphor either as brainless lunks or as entities serving man under controlled conditions but hostile to him in others. Similarly, it is a Yiddish slang insult for someone who is clumsy or slow.

Earliest stories

The earliest stories of golems date to early Judaism. Adam is described in the Talmud (Tractate Sanhedrin 38b) as initially created as a golem when his dust was "kneaded into a shapeless hunk." Like Adam (whose name literally means "earth,") all golems are created from mud. They were a creation of those who were very holy and close to God. A very holy person was one who strove to approach God, and in that pursuit would gain some of God's wisdom and power. One of these powers was the creation of life. No matter how holy a person became, however, a being created by that person would be but a shadow of one created by God.

Early on, the notion developed that the main disability of the golem was its inability to speak. In Sanhedrin 65b, is the description of Raba creating a golem using the Sefer Yetzirah. He sent the golem to Rav Zeira; Rav Zeira spoke to the golem, but he did not answer. Said Rav Zeira, "I see that you were created by one of our colleagues; return to your dust." It is said that if a golem were made able to speak, that would give it a soul, and—because a golem cannot be made perfectly—that ability could make it very dangerous.

Owning and activating golems

Having a golem servant was seen as the ultimate symbol of wisdom and holiness, and there are many tales of golems connected to prominent rabbis throughout the Middle Ages.

Other attributes of the golem were gradually added over time. In many tales the Golem is inscribed with magic or religious words that keep it animated. Writing one of the names of God on its forehead, a slip of paper attached to its forehead, or on a clay tablet under its tongue, or writing the word Emet (אמת, 'truth' in the Hebrew language) on its forehead are examples of such words. By erasing the first letter in Emet to form Met (מת, 'dead' in Hebrew) the golem could be deactivated.

The classic narrative

The most famous golem narrative involves Rabbi Judah Loew the Maharal of Prague, a 16th century rabbi. He is reported to have created a golem to defend the Prague ghetto of Josefov from Anti-Semitic attacks. The story of the Golem first appeared in print in 1847 in a collection of Jewish tales entitled Galerie der Sippurim, published by Wolf Pascheles of Prague. About sixty years later, a fictional account was published by Yudl Rosenberg (1909).

According to the legend, the Emperor made an edict proclaiming that the Jews in Prague were to be either expelled or killed (depending on the version of the story). A golem could be made of clay from the banks of the Vltava river in Prague. Following the prescribed rituals, the Rabbi built the Golem and made him come to life by reciting special incantations in Hebrew. The Rabbi's intention was to have the Golem protect the Jewish community from harm. As Rabbi Loew's Golem grew bigger, he also became more violent and started killing the Gentiles (non-Jews) and spreading fear. Some versions also add that the Golem turns on his creator and attacks either his creator alone or the creator and the Jews as well.

In the face of the strength demonstrated and violence perpetrated by the Golem, the Emperor begs Rabbi Loew to destroy the Golem, and in return he would promise that the persecution of and violence towards the Jews would stop. The Rabbi accepted this offer. To destroy the Golem, he rubbed out the first letter of the word "emet" or "aemaeth" (God's truth) from the golem's forehead to make the Hebrew word "met" or "maeth," meaning death. It was made clear to the Emperor that the Golem of Prague's remains would be stored in a coffin in the attic of the Altneuschul in Prague, and it can be summoned again if needed. By legend, that coffin with the unformed earth inside is still there today.

The existence of a golem is sometimes a mixed blessing. Golems are not intelligent - if commanded to perform a task, they will take the instructions perfectly literally.

In some incarnations of the legend of the Maharal's golem, the golem has powers that can aid it in its tasks. These include invisibility, a heated touch, and the ability to use the Maharal's walking stick to summon spirits from the dead. This last power was often crucial, as the golem could summon dead witnesses, which the medieval Prague courts would allow to testify.

The hubris theme

In all Jewish kabbalistic descriptions of Golems, they are incapable of disobeying the one who created them, but in one version of the story, Rabbi Eliyahu of Chelm created a Golem that grew bigger and bigger until the rabbi was unable to kill it without trickery, whereupon it fell over its creator and crushed him. The hubris theme in this version is similar to that in the stories of the monster of Frankenstein and of the broomstick in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. It remains a standard feature of golems in popular culture.

The golem in European culture

In the late nineteenth century the golem was adopted by mainstream European society. Most notably Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel Der Golem based on the tales of the golem created by Judah Low ben Bezalel. This book inspired a classic set of expressionistic silent movies, Paul Wegener's Golem series, of which especially The Golem: How He Came Into the World (also released as The Golem, 1920, USA 1921) is famous. Another famous treatment from the same era is H. Leivick's 1921 Yiddish-language "dramatic poem in eight sections" The Golem. Also notable is Julien Duvivier's "Le Golem" (1936), a sequel to the Wegener film. Nobel prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer also wrote a version of the legend.

These tales saw a dramatic change, and some would argue a Christianization ^{[citation needed]}, of the golem. The golem became a creation of overambitious and overreaching mystics, who would inevitably be punished for their blasphemy, as in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the alchemical homunculus.

The Golem in the Czech Republic

The Golem is a popular figure in the Czech Republic. There are several restaurants and other businesses named after him. Strongman René Richter goes by the nickname "Golem," and a Czech monster truck outfit calls itself the "Golem Team." ^{[citation needed]}

It is said that the body of Rabbi Loew's golem lies in the attic where the genizah of the Old-New Synagogue in Prague is kept. A rabbi visited the attic in the late 20th century, and came down "white and shaking"^{[citation needed]}. A legend is told of a Nazi agent during World War II ascending the attic and trying to stab the golem, but perishing instead. ^{[citation needed]} The attic is not open to the general public.

The Golem got a main role in the 1951 Czech movie Císařův pekař a pekařův císař (see link for details).

In popular culture

The golem concept has found its way into a wide variety of books, comic books, films, television shows, and games. This use covers a wide range, from "golem" used as an umbrella term to refer to automata and simulacra made of anything from steel to flesh, via clay monsters called golems, to full adoptions of the golem mythos.

Similar myths of other cultures

In Norse mythology, Mökkurkálfi (or Mistcalfa) was a clay giant, built to help the troll Hrungnir in a battle with Thor.

In Jewish folklore, a golem, is an animated being which is crafted entirely from inanimate material.

Probably as a result of the popularity of Gustav Meyrink's work The Golem, the golem concept has found its way into various elements of popular culture. Examples include:

Books, Comic books

• The Golem of Prague has appeared in stories across many media, including the novels The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, in which Josef Kavalier helps save the Golem of Prague from nazi invasion, A Calculus of Angels, Foucault's Pendulum, He, She and It, Pete Hamill's Snow in August, the 1990s cartoons The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, The Golem's Eye the second book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy written by Jonathan Stroud and Gargoyles. On The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XVII, one of the three plots involves the Golem of Prague.

• Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote a retelling of the legend of the Golem in 1969.

• In a 1970s issue of Marvel Comics' The Hulk, the ancient legend is capsulized and the story then segues into The Hulk taking on the Golem's role to protect people living under a dictatorship

• Edward Einhorn's Golem Stories appearing in his book of plays entitled The Golem, Methuselah, and Shylock includes a golem that has the soul of a young man who was the fiance of the Rabbi's daughter.

• Also inspired in part by the story of the Golem of Prague, Ted Chiang wrote a short story Seventy-Two Letters which explores the role of language in the creation of golems. The story won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History in 2000. It can be found in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others.

• Karel Čapek's 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) included robots which are not machines, but synthetic humans made from a claylike goo.

• Piers Anthony's popular Xanth novel series includes tiny Golems as characters. A golem named Grundy is the lead character in Golem in the Gears (The Magic of Xanth, Book 9 (1986)).

• 1966 saw the U.S. theatrical release of the low-budget horror film, "It," aka "Anger of the Golem" aka "Curse of the Golem," starring Roddy MacDowal as a man who commands an indestructible golem."

• In the Final Fantasy series, golems appear several times. One example is the Golem Esper in Final Fantasy VI, which serves to protect the party, and mitigate damage taken from enemies.

• The science-fiction novel Kiln People by David Brin features short-lived duplicates of people created from mud, and a character named Maharal.

• The series Apprentice Adept by Piers Anthony features many characters as golems made by the Brown Adept. The main character in the world Phaze has a significant other who is a golem. Golems also make various appearances throughout Anthony's Xanth series.

• Golem XIV is name of a hyper-intelligent computer from a sci-fi novel written by Stanisław Lem in 1981.

• Stel Pavlou uses multiple golems created from carbon based nanotechnology as the guardians of Atlantis in the novel Decipher 2001.

• Roger Zelazny uses the golem metaphorically as an android sparring partner, literally called a golem, in the novel This Immortal.

• Traditional Golems also exists in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Feet of Clay satirizes many of the clichés of the golem genre. Another Discworld novel, Going Postal sees golems trained as postmen, and compares them to the robots of Isaac Asimov. The oldest of these golems carries clay tablets on his arm and in his head, alluding to Jewish mythology. See Golems (Discworld).

• The DC Comics's Detective Comics # 631 features the beginning of a two-part Batman story: "The Golem of Gotham" by Peter Milligan and Jim Aparo. In it, Batman confronts a clay golem made by an elderly Holocaust survivor, in the context of modern race riots.

• A golem is eventually destroyed by changing the word 'emet' on its forehead to 'met' in an early issue of the DC's Swamp Thing and Marvel Comics' The Invaders comic books.

This is possible because the Golem in many historical versions of the tale had been animated using the Hebrew word "emet" written on its forehead. When one wipes off the aleph which is the first letter that spells "truth" (emet) in Hebrew, the word then becomes "met" (also pronounced "mayt" and "mays," depending upon one's accent) and "met," "mayt" and "mays" in Hebrew and Yiddish mean both "died" and "a dead one."

Likewise, the Marvel superhero Moon Knight, a Jewish-American hero infused with mystical powers while in Egypt, defeated a golem enacted by his father. In Manhattan Guardian, this tactic simply makes the golem inactive.

• Golem, a novel by Greg Vilk, tells the story of a U.S. Rangers commando fighting a malicious Golem-like entity brought to life in a remote Nazi base in Greenland. The book features an invented "ancient alphabet" used to control the Golem.

• A story by writer Steve Gerber and artist Pablo Marcos in Marvel Comics' black-and-white horror-comics magazine Monsters Unleashed #4 depicts a rabbi revitalzing the congregation of an empty synagogue by creating golems out of corpses from a morgue.

• Golem is Monster in My Pocket #54. In this comic book by Dwayne McDuffie, he is allied with the good monsters. He is able to speak, though his only line is, "Watch out!," spoken in the third issue. His appearance is roughly similar to that of the Paul Wegener likeness, particularly in the first issue, illustrated by Ernie Colon. In subsequent issues, he appeared more like the toy in the artwork of Gil Kane, with a much more streamlined head, looking more like it bears a hood than a wig. His most important act in the comics is to help Vampire transport Cheerios, which Frankenstein's Monster mistakes for bagels until he tastes them. In addition, several panels feature reaction shots from Golem that suggest a cynical personality.

• In 2005, the story of the Golem was returned to its Jewish roots, as a new comic strip in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth depicted the Golem as a government-funded superhero protecting Israel from its domestic and existential difficulties.

• In the Dreamhunter Duet by Elizabeth Knox a young dreamhunter replaces her missing father with a golem.

• In the novel Iron Council by China Miéville a Thaumaturge named Judah Low learns how to create powerful golems from almost any material. These are used to assist a group of rebels.

• In Watch Your Mouth, a novel by Daniel Handler, one of the main characters creates a golem to get revenge on her family.

• The author A.M. Homes collaborated with the music group One Ring Zero on a story about a golem, and called simply Golem, featured on the album As Smart As We Are.

• The webcomic Dominic Deegan: Oracle For Hire, features several golems, including Quilt, a necromantic golem built by Jacob Deegan to help him in finding "the secrets of undeath."

• In her book The Puttermesser Papers, Jewish-American writer Cynthia Ozick has a story entitled "Puttermesser and Xanthippe" in which an aging female lawyer unintentionally creates a golem.

• The Golem appears in Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods with a host of other gods in the climax of the novel.

• A golem most commonly in the shape of a hobo is used by a psychic evil doer to intimidate and kill its victims in the novel Dragon Tears by Dean Koontz.

• In the second of the Bartimaeus series of books, The Golem's Eye, golems are controlled by a human magician behind a magical crystal. This crystal allows a first-person viewpoint through a crystalline "eye" in the centre of the golem's forehead. Its instructions are written in blood on a piece of parchment placed in its mouth and if the parchment is removed, the golem returns to its master, progressively losing more and more of its clay mass along the way.

• Alexander Irvine's The Narrows is an alternate history science fiction novel in which the Ford Motor Company is put to use producing golem's for use in World War II.

• A golem sculpted from modelling clay is a recurring character in the online webcomic Beaver and Steve.

• In Tales of the TMNT #10 Donatello faces off against a golem charged with protecting a sick little boy.

• Golem is used as a term referring to androids designed to look like humans in Neal Asher's Polity universe of science fiction stories.

• Harry Turtledove's short story "In This Season," published in the 2002 anthology "Counting Up, Counting Down" describes a Jewish family's encounter with a golem that aids them in their escape from Nazi-occupied Poland.

• Jonathan Stroud's book, The Golem's Eye, an enormous clay golem is controlled by the main antagonist of the book to destroy various landmarks around London.

• In Steve Niles' "Feat of Clay" one-shot comic, Cal McDonald investigates a masterless golem.

Note: The only similarity between the character of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and a golem is in the name.

Films and TV

• The first trilogy of movies about Rabbi Judah Loew and his golem were Der Golem (1915), the Golem and the Dancing Girl (1917), and The Golem: How He Came Into the World - Der Golem, wie er in die welt kam (1920) Directed by Paul Wegener. Only the last film, which is a prequel, has survived, though stills exist of the earlier films.

• The British film "It!" showcases the Golem of Prague constructed by Rabbi Judah Loew in the mid 16th century. It is evoked (brought to life) by a mad assistant museum curator, Arthur Pimm (Roddy McDowell), and proves to be indestructible. The American expert in the story discusses the reason for the golem's construction, i.e. to protect the Jewish community, but warns of the possibility that the Golem could run amuck as he states it did in the past.
• The television program The X-Files aired an episode, "Kaddish," in which a young Hasidic woman creates a Golem who avenges her husband's murder by neo-Nazis.
• In the anime series RahXephon, the main weapons are called "Dolems." Like golems, they are made from clay and may be difficult to control. The name "Dolem" comes from a mixture of "Do-Re-Mi" and "golem."
• The Batman Beyond episode "Golem" featured a robot call the Galvanic Lifting Machine, which is set upon a teenager's tormentors.

File:Golem of It!.jpg

The Golem in It!

• In the anime series Slayers, golems are summoned to do the spell caster's bidding. One of the main characters, Zelgadiss, is a chimera made of a human, golem and demon/mazoku. In the third Slayers movie, Slayers Great, golems are featured prominently.
• In the anime series Monster Rancher, one of the main characters is called Golem, and seems to be made of large stones and boulders which he can split apart to attack.
• In the Superboy television-series episode "The Golem," a golem was created to attack anti-Semites. Whilst doing so it accidentally killed its own creator.
• The Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer depicts a golem in his film Faust. The main character, while in an alchemist's studio, animates a clay infant by placing a shem in its mouth. The shem is a scroll or slip of paper containing the tetragrammaton.
• There are several instances of golems appearing in the Super Sentai franchise. For example, in Kyouryuu Sentai ZyuRanger enemy footsoldiers were Golem soldiers made from clay; their Mighty Morphin Power Rangers counterparts are the Putties.
• In The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XVII, Krusty has the Golem of Prague in storage at the beginning of the second story, which has a very neurotic personality.
• In the French-Canadian movie Le Golem de Montréal, a young boy creates a golem with snow instead of mud, and sees him as a surrogate father.
• In Comedy Central's Upright Citizens Brigade, a golem is created in the episode on spirituality. Several times through the episode, he's seen doing minor chores, and is belittled by other for his lack of ferocity as a perceived monster, sending him into a rampage where he makes a small mess. However, he proves them right in their perception by guiltily cleaning up his mess.
• In Stranger than Fiction, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) consults literature Prof. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) in order to change his fate which is being written and narrated by the author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). Prof. Hilbert reads off a list of apparently incoherent questions to narrow down the book genre Harold might be a character of. After ruling out that Harold is not apart several genres, including Horror, Prof. Hilbert asks “Aren’t you relieved to know you’re not a golem?” To which Harold sarcastically replies, “Yes...I am relieved to know that I’m not a golem.”
• In The Cotton Club, Fred Gwynne's character, Frenchy Demange, is referred to as "The Golem."
• In the Extreme Ghostbusters episode "The True Face of a Monster," a young man working in the synagogue sets a golem loose after the synagogue is repeatedly attacked by a group of vandals.

Golems in modern games

Golems also appear as a popular feature of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games and are almost ubiquitous in the many fantasy computer and card games inspired by it, such as NetHack, Jade Empire, the Dragon Quest, Warcraft, Diablo series, Ragnarok Online, and Magic: The Gathering. In these games the word is generally used as an umbrella term to refer to automata and simulacra from many mythologies. The convention is that they are named after the material of construction. Examples include clay golems (most like the original Jewish golem), flesh golems (reminiscent of Frankenstein's monster), iron golems (animated metal statues), and a host of others including (but not limited to) gold, stone, blood, and even paper golems. The Pokémon Regirock, Regice, Registeel and Regigigas are loosely based on Golems, Another one, Golem was named after said creature.

In the Tecmo's Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 JRPG Enchanted Arms artifact creatures are called "Golem." Some very powerful golem generated an ancient struggle called The Golem War, which caused entire civilizations to crumble.

There is a long list of other games which have creatures called "golems," made of clay, or are animated by writing on them, since the golem has become part of the generic stable of game characters.

Other media

In America, the opera 'The Golem' by Abraham Ellstein retells in 20th-century harmonic language the centuries-old tale of a creature fashioned from clay and brought to life by kabbalistic spells who ultimately threatens the very people he was intended to serve. Selections are available on disc from the Milken Archive of American Jewish music. Another opera with the same title has been written by British composer John Casken.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Moshe Idel. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid. State University of New York Press, 1990.

• Gershon Winkler. The Golem of Prague: A New Adaptation of the Documented Stories of the Golem of Prague. Judaica Press, 1980.

• Geoffrey Dennis, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism, Llewellyn Worldwide, 2007.

• Emily D. Bilski (Ed.) Golem! Danger, Deliverance and Art. The Jewish Museum, 1988.

• Arnold L. Goldsmith. The Golem Remembered 1909-1980: Variations of a Jewish Legend. Wayne State University Press, 1981.

• Maureen T. Krause. "Introduction: Bereshit bara Elohim, A Survey of the Genesis and Evolution of the Golem." Journal of the Fantastic, 7.2/3, pages 113-36.

• Norma Comrada. "Golem and Robot: The Search for Connections." Journal of the Fantastic, 7.2/3, pages 244-54.

• Jonathan Stroud. "The Golem's Eye." Corgi, 2004.

• Marge Piercy. "Body of Glass." Penguin, 1993.

• Jorge Luis Borges. The Golem. "Selected Poems." Penguin, 1999.

• Frances Sherwood. The Book of Splendor. W. W. Norton, 2002.

• Joachim Neugroschel. The Golem: A New Translation of the Classic Play and Selected Short Stories. W. W. Norton, 2006.

External links

• Historical Figures from the Golem Legend
• Background on the Golem Legends
• Rava's Golem (essay in the Summer '96 issue of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts)
• The Golem
• The Golem in Literature, Film, and Stage
• Prague's Golem
• The Golem Group (robot builders)
• The Golem Project - Automatic design and manufacture of robotic lifeforms

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