Bringing The Golem to Life Again

by David Klinghoffer, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 9/6/2006

Jews around the world today feel a renewed vulnerability to anti-Semitism. So the time seems ripe for a renewed interest in the Golem, the supernatural man-made creature said to have been created by a rabbi and cabbalist in 16th-century Prague to protect that city’s Jews from their enemies.

But when Norton senior editor Amy Cherry bought Joachim Neugroschel’s proposal for a translation of a famous Yiddish play by H. Leivick, The Golem (Aug.), it was five years ago, before the more recent worries about global anti-Semitism set in. For Jews in particular, Cherry told RBL, “It wasn’t such a terrible time as this past year.”

The resulting book also includes translations of Yiddish short stories on the same theme. Cherry said she commissioned the work from Neugroschel because of another vulnerability she noted in the Jewish community—that of Yiddish itself. It is a dying tongue that becomes harder to render into other languages with each generation as the number of fluent speakers dwindles.

Is the Golem a sort of Jewish Frankenstein? Not exactly. Golem, Cherry noted, “was created as a protector for the community. Frankenstein’s monster arose from a technological temptation. His creator was trying to be God. In the case of Rabbi Judah Loew, the Golem’s creator, there’s no sense that he’s trying to be God. It doesn’t come from ego, or from chutzpah. But there is a question of whether this is something you should do no matter what the motivation.”

Besides the risk in taking the creation of life into human hands, University of Pennsylvania folklorist Dan Ben-Amos pointed out that the Golem represents a rather imperfect defense against anti-Semitism. It is a clumsy creature that ultimately has to be deactivated by Rabbi Loew to keep it from doing damage to the Jews themselves. Ben-Amos, an Israeli-born scholar, drew a comparison from recent events in the Middle East: “If you want, I would say the war in Lebanon was the act of a Golem. It was not a very intelligent war. It was an exercise of might without mind.”

Would Rabbi Loew approve of the story that has become attached to his name? Ben-Amos, editor of the Jewish Publication Society’s Folktales of the Jews series, noted that the first time the legend was published was 300 years after the rabbi lived, and that the facts of his life don’t match up with the details of the story. The Yiddish tales also have a childish, naïve quality, in contrast to the actual works of Rabbi Loew, who wrote highly challenging religious and philosophical books.

Cherry said she sees the initial readership for the book as mainly Jewish and literary. When the paperback appears, she expects wider interest from enthusiasts of horror and fantasy, whom Norton hopes to try to reach through Web sites and magazines. She’s encouraged by the fact that the Golem has a long-established grip on pop culture. The monster has inspired an episode of The X-Files, a character in The Lord of the Rings (Gollum), some nine movies over the years, as well as more recent novels, including one from Norton: Frances Sherwood’s The Book of Splendor (2002).

Asked why the Golem continues to fascinate not only Jews, but also non-Jews, folklorist Ben-Amos pointed to a simple, intrinsic quality: “It is a good story!”