leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (09/11/85)
THE GOLEM IN LITERATURE
An article by Mark R. Leeper
An Introduction
Back when I was ten or eleven years old I used to get monster movie
bubble gum cards. They usually had familiar stills from monster movies.
One, however, puzzled me a bit. It looked like a human-shaped furnace with
glowing eyes and a disproportionately big fist. It was labeled simply "The
Golem." There was no explanation as to what the Golem was. Since I usually
recognized what was on these cards, I filed in the back of my mind that
there is something called a "Golem" that I wanted to know more about. It
didn't occur to me to look in a dictionary any more than it would to look up
"Godzilla." Dictionaries never have the really interesting words!
A month or so later my parents were going to a Yiddish play put on at
the Jewish Community Center. It was called "The Golem," and was written by
H. Leivik. Now I knew darn well that my mother did not go to plays about
monsters that looked like human-shaped furnaces with glowing eyes and
disproportionately big fists. She saw BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN when she was
growing up and decided on the spot that any story with a monster was stupid.
It had to be just a co-incidence of name, right? Well, my parents came back
from the play and told me I would have liked the story..."it was weird." It
was about a rabbi who made a man out of clay. At this point I realized that
the bubble gum card and the play were somehow related, and even more
surprising, this monster was somehow a Jewish monster.
I did some research into Golems and discovered that they are indeed
creatures of Jewish folklore that have been the subject of monster movies.
(Incidentally, there turned out to be one other traditional Jewish monster,
a dybbuk. It is a possessing spirit, not too unlike the one in THE
EXORCIST.)
There are apparently several Golem stories in Jewish folklore, but I
have found nothing but fleeting references to any Golem legend other than
"The Golem of Prague."
The story is set in Prague in the 16th Century. The Jewish community
is threatened by blood-libels--claims that they were murdering Christian
children and using their blood to make matzoh. (Actually, Jewish law
strictly forbids the consumption of any blood at all.) A Christian who
murdered a child and planted it in a Jew's house could report the Jew. The
Jew would be executed and his property would be split between the Christian
who reported him and the government. Clearly the ghetto needed a very good
watchman.
Rabbi Judah Loew used information from the Kabalah--the central book of
Jewish mysticism--to learn the formula by which God first made man out of
clay, and with the help of two other pious men built a man out of clay and
brought him to life. The final step of this process was to place God's
secret name on a parchment and place it in the forehead of the Golem.
Loew's Golem was between 7-1/2 and 9 feet tall and had tremendous
strength, but had a very placid and passive disposition when not under
orders to act otherwise. He also lacked the one faculty that only God can
give, the power of speech. Because this giant was passive and mute, people
in the ghetto assumed he was half-witted and the word "golem" has also come
to mean "idiot."
One story about the early days of this Golem was probably inspired by
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice." The Golem was told to fetch water, but was not
told how much. The result was a minor flood. This tendency to do what he
was told to do, not what he was expected to do, has endeared the Golem story
to computer people like Norbert Wiener. It may also be part of the basis of
Asimov's robot stories.
At night the Golem guarded the ghetto, catching all would-be libelists
red-handed. He single-handedly ended the possibility of successfully
blood-libeling the Jewish community. Loew then got the Emperor to end the
practice of letting blood-libelers profit from their actions. When the
Golem was no longer needed, Loew removed the parchment, returning the Golem
to being a statue, and the statue was laid to rest in the attic of the
synagogue.
A popular variation on the story has the Golem rebel and become an
uncontrolled monster before being stopped and returned to clay. It has been
speculated that Mary Shelley patterned FRANKENSTEIN on this story.
The Golem has appeared several times on the screen, though only once in
an English-language film. The first cinematic appearance was in DER GOLEM
(1914) with Paul Wegener in the title role. The story deals with the modern
discovery and re-animation of the Golem. This was apparently a lost film
until it was found again in 1958. It still is almost never seen.
Wegener returned to the role in a second German film, also called DER
GOLEM (1920). This film is loosely based on "The Golem of Prague." The
Jews are portrayed as being weird magicians who live in a strange
expressionistic ghetto. In fact, the early parts of the film seems to
presage the anti-Semitism that was soon to engulf Germany. The images of
the Jewish community are not all that different looking than those of
propaganda films of the following years.
One of the most interesting touches of the film is the subplot of
Prince Florian. The beautiful Prince Florian wants to save the rabbi's
daughter from the destruction that is to come to the Jews. However, Florian
is so unctuous and disgusting that when he is killed by the Golem, the
viewer is more relieved than shocked, and perhaps that is just what was
intended. In any case, the Golem is able to avert destruction of the Jewish
community. Then the Golem's own love for the rabbi's daughter is denied and
he becomes a dangerous monster only to be destroyed by a child's hand. The
rabbi then praises God for twice saving the Jews of the ghetto.
Wegener may have also made a lesser known German film, THE GOLEM AND
THE DANCER, in 1917. The actual existence of this film has never been
established. A French-Czech film called THE GOLEM was made in 1935. Harry
Baur starred in the story which was done much in the style of a Universal
horror film. The story deals with another tyrannical attempt to destroy
Jews. Through much of the film, the rediscovered Golem remains chained in a
tyrant's dungeon. Just when things are at their blackest, the Golem comes
to life and destroys everything, once again saving the Jews.
A number of Czech comedies have been about the Golem, including THE
GOLEM AND THE EMPEROR'S BAKER (1951). In this, the Golem ends up as an oven
for the baker.
The only English-language Golem film I know of is a British cheapie
called IT! (1967) with Roddy McDowell. A psychotic museum curator who lives
with the corpse of his mother acquires the Golem of Prague and uses it for
his own purposes. In the end, the Golem survives a nuclear blast that kills
his master and he quietly walks into the sea.
This article will cover all those books about the Golem that I wanted
to read for years and never got around to. This article was a good excuse.
So here goes.
THE GOLEM by Gustav Meyrink (Dover, 1976 (1928), $4.50*.)
This is not actually a tale of the supernatural, in spite of the title,
though at time the strange things that happen border on the supernatural and
the events are all overshadowed by the legend of the golem.
Athanasius Pernath is a Christian living in the Jewish quarter of
Prague. He is interested in the golem legends, particularly the Golem of
Prague, but as someone comments, everyone seems to be talking about the
golem. Pernath's own personality seems to parallel that of the golem--he
seems to have little will of his own other than that of altruism. Much of
the book is really just observation of the inhabitants of the Ghetto until
Pernath becomes embroiled in a crime that another has committed.
This is not light reading any more that Camus's THE STRANGER is. It
has a plot but more important is the character's introspection, the truths
the character is learning about himself and the characters around him. Time
and again Pernath returns to the legend of the golem in his thoughts as his
life patterns itself after the golem's. He is used my many of the
characters, some well-meaning but needing help, others selfish, and his wish
to set things right is his only reward. In essence he is a human golem.
Meyrink found writing the novel almost as bewildering as it is for the
reader to read it or the character to live it. Somewhere towards the middle
(Bleiler says in the introduction to the Dover edition), Meyrink lost track
of the multiplicity of his characters and needed a friend to graph them out
geometrically on a chess board before he could proceed. The result is not
one, but many stories intertwined, which adds to the difficulty in reading
the novel, but also gives a number of views of the Jewish Ghetto in pre-
World-War-II Prague. This is not an entertaining novel, but it is
worthwhile to read.
*The Dover edition also includes THE MAN WHO WAS BORN AGAIN by Paul Busson.
THE GOLEM by H. Leivick
(in THE DYBBUK AND OTHER GREAT YIDDISH PLAYS, Bantam, 1966, $1.25.)
This is one of the most famous plays of Yiddish theater. H. Leivick
(actually Leivick Halper) re-tells once again the story of the Golem of
Prague, but in more obscure and symbolic terms. To be frank, the play
probably requires a closer reading than I was willing to give it (if not
actually seeing a production). It is a long play, written in verse, that
requires study and an investment of time rather than the quick reading I
gave it, so these comments should be taken as first impressions.
Certain concessions had to be made to dramatic style. The primary
concession was that this Golem speaks. A mute character in a stage drama
would be little more than a mime, and Leivick wanted to get into the
character of the man-made man. That he certainly does, more successfully
than any other version of the story I know of. In spite of the Golem's
stature, he is troubled and fearful. In following the rabbi's orders, he is
usually as fearful as any normal human would be. He is reluctant to go into
dark caves at the rabbi's bidding. He is stigmatized and lonely.
Much of what is happening in the play is going on on a symbolic and
metaphysical plane. Dark figures, never explained, appear and carry on
abstract conversations. I think that the style of the play can be
exemplified by stage directions like "the brightness of invisibility begins
to glow around him." Even the stage directions are obscure! I will leave
this play for others to interpret.
THE GOLEM OF PRAGUE by Gershon Winkler (Judaica Press, 1980, $9.95.)
Winkler's book is in two parts: an introduction and the story itself.
The story does not start until page 75, so the introduction is a major part
of the book and deserves separate comment. Part of the reason is not what
the introduction says about Golems but because of what it says about
Winkler.
In Winkler's description of his occupation, he says that he "teach[es]
Torah weekly on Long Island, primarily to young Jewish adults with minimal
Jewish knowledge and identity, and he has also been helping young Jews
return from 'Hebrew-Christian' and Far Eastern movements."
He begins his introduction with an attack on what he calls "sciencism."
The latter is apparently a belief, fostered by scientific reasoning, that
leads one to be skeptical of the existence of God and miracles. As an
example, he says, "For more than fifty years, the museum's exhibition of a
stooped, ape-like man helped many people in our culture to overcome their
guilt over the rejection of G-d and the idea of Creation... In 1958, the
Congress of Zoology in London declared that the 'Neanderthal Man' was really
nothing more than the remains of a modern-type man, affected by age and
arthritis... Nevertheless, these scientific errors were never expressed to
the subsequent generations of school children. Such a public revelation
would have been outright and left humanity with no alternative explanation
for the phenomenon of existence but G-d."
Winkler has a section on "Making Golems" in his introduction. He
rambles for 16 pages on a few Golem legends and references to the ineffable
name of God. On the actual subject of the section, he has only the
following helpful words to say: "It is not within the scope of this overview
to discuss the mystical mechanics of THE BOOK OF FORMATION and how to use it
to make Golems. Readers are advised to study day-to-day Judaism first,
before investigating its profound mystical dimensions. After many years of
having mastered the down-to-earth aspects of the Torah, on both the
practical and intellectual level, one can then examine books like DERECH
HASHEM... which discusses the interactive relationships of the natural and
supernatural, and the role of the Divine Names." If that was all he had to
say on the subject, it is not clear why he tried to tantalize the reader by
having an extensive section promising to tell more.
The introduction also includes a picture labeled "Monument to the
Maharal's [Loew's] Golem standing at the entrance of the old Jewish sector
of Prague." No further explanation is given. This would be an impressive
sight if it were not obviously a picture of a knight in Teutonic armor.
Anyone who recognizes German armor would not be taken in by this fraud
perpetrated by a man trying to convince us of the superiority of his
religious views.
In short, I am less than impressed with the introduction.
As Winkler gets into the main text of the story, he editorializes less
but there is still a strong undercurrent of didactic lecturing in his
writing. The story of the Golem of Prague is broken into short stories
extolling the values of a good Jewish education and traditional Jewish
values. The real common thread of these stories is Rabbi Judah Loevy
(a.k.a. Loew). In many of the stories the Golem itself is the most minor
of characters. The stories are really about the mystical wisdom and power
of the rabbi.
In these stories we see no end of evils caused by not giving a Jew a
proper Jewish education or by a young Jewish woman marrying a Christian.
The vehemence with which the Christians want to convert Jews verges on the
incredible. In one story, the Duke wants so much to win one Jewish woman to
Christianity that he is willing to marry his only son to her. The two do
indeed fall into love, but the bride-to-be decides she cannot betray her
family. Eventually the two marry, but only after the Duke's son converts to
Judaism.
In this version of the story, the Golem is much less monstrous and
apparently indistinguishable from a flesh-and-blood human. Yet as the story
requires, he seems to have strange magical powers. In one story he can see
a soul hovering over a grave; in another he has an amulet of invisibility.
The stories start to lose interest as the Golem has too many powers, all
bestowed on him by Rabbi Loevy.
Oddly enough, the only character of real interest is the arch-villain
Father Thaddeus. From "the green church," as it is called, he hatches plot
after plot against the Jews. By turns he is charming and then vicious and
ruthless--whatever is called for in his anti-Semitic plots. The depth of
his hatred is never fully gauged by the reader until he cold-bloodedly
murders a young (Christian) child in order to frame the Jews for ritual
murder. After Thaddeus dies, the stories have a marked drop in quality.
Rabbi Loevy himself is the paragon of Jewish learning and knowledge. In
investigating crimes, his first question is always the one that leads to the
solution. Paragons make very dull characters, and since his thought
processes are arrived at only through religious knowledge far beyond that of
the reader, he never becomes a comprehensible character.
Winkler clearly looses steam in his story-telling in the second half of
his tale, but the first half is worth reading far more than the introduction
or the second half.
THE SWORD OF THE GOLEM by Abraham Rothberg (Bantam, 1970, $1.25.)
Of the various re-tellings of the story of the Golem of Prague, this is
certainly the most readable and the most enjoyable, though perhaps not the
most faithful to its source material.
The Golem in this version is, for the first time, a believable three-
dimensional character. He doesn't just walk, he talks, he feels, he loves,
he hates, and if pushed far enough, he kills. Instead of being broken into
short stories of threats against individuals in the Jewish community, this
novel is one continual threat and eventually a riot against the Jews. The
Golem in all this is not a protective angel sent by Rabbi Low (the spelling
in this version) who is just an extension of the Rabbi. The Golem
sympathizes with the Jewish community and considers himself to be Jewish,
but he has free will and his own reasons for doing what he does.
Another reason this is the most enjoyable version is that for once even
the anti-Jewish Christians are portrayed as more than just thugs. There is
more than one debate between Rabbi Low and Brother Thaddeus, the chief
instigator of the anti-Semitism. Of course, to the reader it is clear that
Thaddeus loses the debate, but his reasons for what Thaddeus does come much
clearer in any other version. One could almost stretch it to the point that
Thaddeus is a sympathetic character. He at least believes that his hatred
of the Jews is well-founded in Catholic doctrine and his arguments for
anti-Semitism do come out of a twisted idealism, rather than just
selfishness as other versions of the story indicate.
This 1970 novel is dedicated "most of all to the great Leivick, who
breathed new life into the Golem's clay." But I feel I can recommend the
book more highly than the play. In fact, this (which was the last major
Golem work I read) is the most satisfying and the only one I recommend as a
novel.
THE TRIBE by Bari Wood (Signet, 1984, $2.95.)
This was the first that I read of the works reviewed here. It gave me
the idea for this article. When I was growing up, I wanted to write a
horror novel about a golem. I had a whole story plotted out, but it was
never written. Now, unfortunately, Bari Wood has beaten me to the punch
with THE TRIBE. Sadly, it turns out to be more a murder story than the real
pull-out-all-the-stops horror story I had envisioned.
The story starts with the mystery of why one barracks of Jews at the
Belzec concentration camp given very special treatment. They were not only
left alive, but in addition, the SS gave them the best food available. They
were eating canned sausage while the SS were eating garbage.
Flash forward to the present when five blacks who mug and murder the
son of one of the survivors of that barracks are themselves brutally
murdered. The story then tells in boring detail about the affair between
the murdered Jew's widow and the black police inspector who was a close
friend of her husband's father.
Any given paragraph by Wood is clearly written, but this story seems to
jump back and forth in time with disconcerting rapidity. The legends that
this story was built around have a much greater potential than this story
would indicate. The whole story is preparation for the final few pages,
when the characters finally get to confront the evil that until that point
they had only heard about second-hand. Like too many contemporary horror
novels, there is too much writing without enough worthwhile story. If you
want to read a novel about the Golem, this is not the one to start with.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper