Etymology
The word
golem is used in the
Bible to refer to an embryonic or incomplete substance.
Psalm 139:16 uses the word גלמי, meaning
my unshaped form, which then passed into
Yiddish as
goylem.
[2] The
Mishnah uses the term for an uncultivated person: "Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one",
Pirkei Avos 5:9 in the Hebrew text (English translations vary). Similarly, golems are often used today as a
metaphor for brainless lunks or entities who serve man under controlled conditions, but are hostile to him in others. Similarly, it is a Yiddish slang insult for someone who is clumsy or slow.
[edit] Earliest stories
The earliest stories of golems date to early Judaism. In the
Talmud (Tractate
Sanhedrin 38b),
Adam was initially created as a golem when his dust was "kneaded into a shapeless husk". Like Adam, 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. However, no matter how holy a person became, a being created by that person would be but a shadow of one created by God.
Early on, it was noted, that the main disability of the golem was its inability to speak.
Sanhedrin 65b describes
Rava creating a man (
gavra). He sent the man to
Rav Zeira. Rav Zeira spoke to him, but he did not answer. Rav Zeira said, "You were created by the magicians; return to your dust."
[edit] Activating golems
During the
middle ages passages from the Book of Creation,
Sefer Yetzirah, were studied as a means to attain the mystical ability to create and animate a golem, although there is little in the writings of Jewish mysticism that supports this belief. It was believed that golems could be activated by an
ecstatic experience induced by the ritualistic use of various letters of the Hebrew Aleph-Bet. Some scholars believe that no actual physical activation of an anthropoid object took place.
[3]
In some tales, a golem is inscribed with Hebrew words that keep it animated. The word
emet (אמת, "truth" in the Hebrew language) written on a golem's forehead is one such example. The golem could then be deactivated by removing the aleph (א) in
emet, thus changing the inscription from 'truth' to 'death' (
met מת, "dead"). Legend and folklore suggest that golems could be activated by writing a specific series of letters on parchment and placing the paper in a golem's mouth.
[edit] The classic narrative
Rabbi Loew and golem by
Mikoláš Aleš, 1899.
synagogue of Prague with the rungs of the ladder to the attic on the wall.
The most famous golem narrative involves
Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th century chief
rabbi of
Prague, also known as the Maharal, who reportedly created a golem to defend the Prague
ghetto from
anti-Semitic attacks,
[4] and
pogroms. Depending on the version of the legend, the Jews in Prague were to be either expelled or killed under the rule of
Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. To protect the Jewish community, the rabbi constructed the Golem out of clay from the banks of the
Vltava river, and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations. As this golem grew, it became increasingly violent, killing
gentiles and spreading fear. A different story tells of a golem that fell in love, and when rejected, became the violent monster seen in most accounts. Some versions have the golem eventually turning on its creator or attacking other Jews.
[4]
The Emperor begged Rabbi Loew to destroy the Golem, promising to stop the persecution of the Jews. To deactivate the Golem, the rabbi rubbed out the first letter of the word "emet" (truth or reality) from the creature's forehead leaving the Hebrew word "met", meaning dead. The Golem's body was stored in the attic
genizah of the
Old New Synagogue, where it would be restored to life again if needed. According to legend, the body of Rabbi Loew's Golem still lies in the synagogue's attic. Some versions of the tale state that the Golem was stolen from the genizah and entombed in a graveyard in
Prague's Žižkov district, where the
great Žižkovská tower now stands. A recent legend tells of a
Nazi agent ascending to the synagogue attic during World War II and trying to stab the Golem, but he died instead.[
citation needed] The attic is not open to the general public.
[5]
The famous story of the Golem of Prague is usually considered to be a Jewish folk story from the 18th century at the latest. Israeli literary historian
Eli Eshed considers it to be a later literary invention.
[6] According to Eshed, the story was created by Jewish German writer
Berthold Auerbach for his 1837 novel
Spinoza. Eshed argues that the story served as a "trigger" for an almost immediate explosion in publication for various poems, stories, plays, and novels, creating a false impression that it is an "ancient folk story" when in reality it was a completely modern invention by a well-known writer. This story of the Golem later appeared in print in 1847 in
Galerie der Sippurim, a collection of
Jewish tales published by
Wolf Pascheles of Prague as if it was a well known "old" folk story.
Ultra-Orthodox writers claim that there is earlier evidence of the golem narrative. Rabbi
Menachem Mendel Schneerson (the last
Rebbe of
Lubavitch) wrote that his father-in-law told him that he saw the remains of the Golem in the attic of Alt-Neu Shul. Rabbi Chaim Noach Levin also wrote in his notes on
Megillas Yuchsin that he heard directly from Rabbi Yosef Shaul Halevi, the head of the Rabbinical court of
Lemberg, that when he wanted to go see the remains of the golem, the sexton of the Alt-Neu Shul said that Rabbi
Yechezkel Landau had advised against going up to the attic after he himself had gone up.
[7]
Many modern versions of the golem legend are based on the Katz Manuscript. This manuscript is supposedly the long-lost diary of Rabbi Loew's son-in-law, who had helped create the golem. It was published in
Warsaw in 1909 by
Yudl Rosenberg. He claimed he found the manuscript in the main library in Metz, translated it into Yiddish as "Niflaos Maharal: Ha Golem Al Prague" (Wonders of the Maharal: The Golem of Prague). Most scholars think the Katz manuscript was fabricated by Rosenberg, and that his stories are embellishments of the older legends.
[8]
[edit] Hubris theme
The existence of a golem is sometimes a mixed blessing. Golems are not intelligent, and if commanded to perform a task, they will perform the instructions literally. In many depictions golems are inherently perfectly obedient. In its earliest known modern form, one story has
Rabbi Eliyahu of
Chełm creating a golem that became enormous and uncooperative. In one version of this story, the rabbi had to resort to trickery to deactivate it, whereupon it crumbled upon its creator and crushed him. There is a similar
hubris theme in
Frankenstein,
The Sorcerer's Apprentice and some golem-derived stories in popular culture. The theme also manifests itself in
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots),
Karel Čapek's 1921 play which coined the term
robot; the play was written in Prague and while Capek denied that he modeled the robot after the golem, there are many similarities in the plot.
[9]
[edit] Linguistics
Stories about golems gained popularity in medieval Bulgaria and Macedonia. The word "golem" (
Bulgarian: голям,
Macedonian: голем, meaning "big, large") is an integral part of the language in the region to this day and replaced the old word "velik" (
Old Church Slavonic великъ), which only kept the meaning of "great".
[edit] In modern culture
Statue of Prague Golem created for the film
Císaruv pekar — Pekaruv císar
[edit] 20th and 21st centuries
This "
In popular culture" section
may contain minor or trivial references. Please
reorganize this content to explain the subject's impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and remove trivial references.
(September 2009) In the early 20th century, the golem was adopted by mainstream European society. Most notably, Gustav Meyrink's 1914 novel
Der Golem is loosely inspired by the tales of the golem created by
Judah Loew ben Bezalel. These same tales inspired a classic set of
expressionistic silent movies, Paul Wegener's Golem series, of which
The Golem: How He Came into the World (also released as
The Golem, 1920, USA 1921: the only surviving film of the trilogy) is especially famous. Another famous treatment from the same era is H. Leivick's 1921 Yiddish-language "dramatic poem in eight sections"
The Golem. There was a 1966 film entitled
It!, starring
Roddy McDowall, about a 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.
Elie Wiesel wrote a children's book on the legend.
Pete Hamill's 1998 novel
Snow In August includes a retelling of the story of Rabbi Loew and the Prague golem. The 2004 novel
The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud revolves around a golem.
Ted Chiang makes use of the myth of the Golem in his novella "Seventy Two Letters".
[10]
Michael Chabon's 2001 novel
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay features one of the protagonists, Josef Kavalier, an amateur Jewish magician smuggling himself out of Nazi Europe along with the Prague golem. The theme of vengeance against anti-Semites and subsequent regret of such deeds pervades the novel, culminating in Kavalier's own drawing of a modern graphic novel centered around a golem.
Some of Terry Pratchett's
Discworld novels have used golems as a central theme. The novel
Feet of Clay revolves around the attempts of golems to free themselves, and
Making Money describes the effect of free golems on the city of Ankh-Morpork's economy. Piers Anthony featured a golem character,
Grundy, in the novel
Golem in the Gears in his
Xanth series.
David Brin's science-fiction novel,
Kiln People, describes a future where humans make lower quality copies of themselves (
dittos or
golems) out of clay. After reaching their expiration date, the golem's memories can be reintegrated to the original person or not. There are references to the Jewish legend such as the name of the character
Yosil Maharal.
Marge Piercy's novel
He, She and It tells the story of a cyborg, Yod, who is deliberately contrasted with the Golem of Prague.
Two episodes of the
science fiction TV series
The X-Files, season 4's "Kaddish" and season 6's "Arcadia," feature Golem monsters.
[11][12] Simpsons episode "
Treehouse of Horror XVII" features Bart discovering the Golem of Prague in Krusty's storeroom.
In the film
Inglourious Basterds, the German army refers to the Basterd Donny "the Bear Jew" Donowitz as a golem.
[edit] Games
Golems often appear in the various editions of
Dungeons and Dragons, where they may be constructed of nearly any material from wood to spider silk. The large influence of Dungeons and Dragons on
video games and other
tabletop role-playing games[13] has led to the inclusion of golems in many other tabletop and video games.
[edit] Culture of the Czech Republic
Golem is a popular figure in the
Czech Republic. There are several restaurants and other businesses named after him.
[4] Strongman René Richter goes by the nickname "Golem",
[4] and a Czech
monster truck outfit calls itself the "Golem Team".
A golem had a main role in the 1951 Czech movie
Císařův pekař a pekařův císař (released in the US as
The Emperor and the Golem).
Abraham Akkerman preceded his article on human automatism in the contemporary city with a short satirical poem on a pair of golems turning human.
[14]
Composer
Karel Svoboda finished his last
musical based on the legend of the Golem.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Idel, Moshe (1990). Golem: Jewish magical and mystical traditions on the artificial anthropoid. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-0160-X. page 296
- ^ J. Simpson, E. Weiner (eds), ed (1989). "Golem". Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-861186-2.
- ^ Idel, Moshe (1990). Golem: Jewish magical and mystical traditions on the artificial anthropoid. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-0160-X. page xix
- ^ a b c d Bilefsky, Dan (May 11, 2009). "Hard Times Give New Life to Prague’s Golem". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/europe/11golem.html?hp=&pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2009-05-11. "According to Czech legend, the Golem was fashioned from clay and brought to life by a rabbi to protect Prague’s 16th-century ghetto from persecution, and is said to be called forth in times of crisis. True to form, he is once again experiencing a revival and, in this commercial age, has spawned a one-monster industry."
- ^ http://atlasobscura.com/place/old-new-synagogue
- ^ http://www.notes.co.il/eshed/60482.asp
- ^ http://www.rabbiyehudahyudelrosenberg.com/
- ^ Idel, Moshe (1990); see also, Sherwin, Byron L. (1985) The Golem Legend: Origins and Implications. New York: University Press of America.
- ^ R.U.R.- Rossums Universal Robots by Karel Capek, transl. By Voyen Koreis
- ^ The Bridge Between Truth/Death and Power/Knowledge: Ted Chiang's "Seventy-two Letters", Strange Horizons [1]
- ^ "The X Files" Kaddish, IMDB
- ^ "The X Files" Arcadia, IMDB
- ^ PC Gamer; How Dungeons & Dragons shaped the modern videogame
- ^ Akkerman, Abraham (2003/2004). "Philosophical Urbanism and Deconstruction in City-Form: An Environmental Ethos for the Twenty-First Century". Structurist 43/44: 48–61. Published also as Paper CTS-04-06 by the Center for Theoretical Study, Prague.