Golem

In Jewish folklore, a golem (from the [[Hebrew language|Hebrew "gelem" ((גלם), meaning "raw material") is an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter, and given life through a mystical process involving the secret name of God. The origins of the golem are often traced back to the "Sefer HaYetzera" (the "book of formation"), a Kabbalistic text that deals with the process of the creation of the universe. The most well-known golem in Jewish folklore was created by Rabbi Yehudah Leow of Prague in 1580 to protect the Jewish people from blood libel, or allegations that Jews were killing Christian children and using their blood to make unleavened bread (matzah).

History of the Term

The Hebrew word "golem" has been interpreted in multiple ways. The term is used in the Bible (Psalms 139:16), as well as in Talmudic literature to refer to an embryonic or incomplete substance. Commentaries on the Mishnah, specifically the Pirkei avot, use the term to refer to a person whose behavior is unbalanced, or "uncultivated", in contrast to "learned" or "wise" men. The word was incorporated into Yiddish to refer to a person who is stupid, clumsy, or inconsiderate.

References to golems occur as early as the scriptural describtion of creation; Adam, the first man, is described as having been initially created as a golem. Formed from dust, Adam was a golem, or "shapeless mass", before becoming imbued with a soul.

Golem Legends

The first known instructions for the creation of a golem are found in commentaries on the Sefer Yetzirah during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The creation of a golem was first seen as a initiary mystical experience. It was not until later that the golem came to be seen chiefly as a servile entity.

A sixteenth century rabbi, Elijah of Chelm, is the first person credited with the creation of a golem using a shem, or paper with the name of God written upon it. Similarly to the tale of Frankenstein's monster, Elijah's golem grew to be a monster. Fearing the destruction of the world at the hands of his golem, the rabbi removed the shem from the golem's forehead, and the golem returned to dust.

The most famous of golem legends also takes place in the sixteenth century. Rabbi Loew, also known as the Maharal, reportedly created a golem to defent the Prague ghetto from anti-Semetic attacks.

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 Loew's golem was written by Wolf Pascheles in 1847, appearing in a collection of Jewish tales entitled Galerie der Sippurim. Other accounts later followed, including the 1909 publication of the legend by Yudl Rosenberg, who was the first to mention blood libel, and claimed to be publishing an original letter of Loew's, along with a manuscript by Loew's son-in-law. The tale appears in several variations.

According to legend, the Jews in Prague were being persecuted by the Christians, who often accused them of ritually murdering children to make matzah bread, known as "blood libel". Some even snuck into the Jewish ghetto to deposit the body of a child on Jewish streets, in an attempt to further incite people against the Jews. Rabbi Loew, always devoted to the welfare of his people, prayed for a vision to tell him how to stop these false accusations, and was told by Heaven to "make a human image of clay." The rabbi took his son-in-law and his favorite pupil down to the river, and formed the shape of a man from clay. They each walked around the figure seven times, reciting a [Kabbalah|Kabbalistic} formula, and the golem was brought to life. The golem appeared to be a man of thirty, and the Rabbi clothed him and named him Joseph. Through the use of an talisman, the golem could appear invisible, and was sent out to stop anyone carrying a large parcel. When he found a person intending to deposit the body of a dead child in the Jewish streets, the golem would tie up the offender and the evidence, and carry both to the authorities. Once the blood libel was declared to be groundless and persecutions became forbidden, Rabbi Loew removed the breath of life from the golem Joseph by walking around the figure seven times, repeating the same words in reverse order.

Other versions of the story involve destruction by the golem. In many versions, the golem becomes uncontrollable, wreaking havoc on the community or the entire city, attacking Jews, Gentiles, and even Rabbi Loew. Many also claim that the golem was brought to life through the means of a shem, or piece of paper with a holy and magic word, placed in its mouth, which was subsequently removed to deactivate the golem. Other variations say that the word meaning "truth" was put on the golem's forehead to animate it; to return the golem to a lump of clay, the first letter was rubbed out, thus spelling "death". The golem has various powers, according to different legends: invisibility, a heated touch, and the ability to summon spirits of the dead to serve as witnesses for the crimes against the Jews. Many legends claim that remnants of the golem can still be found in the attic of the famous Prague synagogue Altneuschul.

The legend of the Prague golem inspired Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel Der Golem, which in turn inspired Paul Wegener's classic set of expressionistic silent movies, of which The Golem: How He Came Into the World (also released as The Golem, 1920, USA 1921) is particularly 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.

Features of Golems

The creation of a golem was often viewed as a symbol of holiness, as only the very righteous are successful at bringing the godly powers into inanimate clay. Persons attempting to create golems for improper or self-serving purposes would not be given the ability to do so. Golems were usually connected with Rabbis throughout the Middle Ages.

As in many of the tales of the Prague Golem, the animation of a golem often involved the use of one of the secret names of God, which could be found on a slip of paper attached to its forehead, arm, or on a clay tablet under the tongue, which were removed to deactivate it. The word Emet (אמת, 'truth' in the Hebrew language) on its forehead was also commonly used to give golems life. By erasing the first letter in Emet to form Met (מת, 'dead' in Hebrew) the golem could be deactivated. The golem is often said to continue to grow until it dwarfs all members of the household and must be deactivated.

In nearly all versions of golem legends, golems lack the power of speech, as well as the inability to make moral judgements. Since they are created by man, not God, they do not possess a soul, and therefore can do no more than what is asked of them by their creator. In almost all Jewish kabbalistic descriptions of Golems, they are incapable of disobeying the one who created them. The theme of hubris is common to most golem tales, as with the tale of Rabbi Elias, who created a Golem that grew so large that the rabbi was unable to reach its forehead to erase the letter to deactivate it. The rabbi then commanded the golem to remove his boots, thinking that he would then be able to erase the letter, which worked exactly as planned. Unfortunately, once the golem was deactivated, it returned to clay, which fell upon the poor rabbi, crushing him. This type of hubris theme is common in stories of golems, where the creation of the golem often leads eventually to destruction, similar to the moral found in stories of the monster of Frankenstein and of the broomstick in The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

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.

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

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

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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