A Golem (Hebrew: גולם, “embryo”, “formless” or “unfinished”) is, in mysticism and Jewish mythology, an artificial being, usually humanoid, made of clay, incapable of speech and devoid of free will, shaped to assist or defend its creator.
| Golem | |
|---|---|
| Creature | |
| Hebrew name | גולם |
| Group | creature of religions (Judaism) |
| Subgroup | Artificial creature |
| Close creature | Homunculus |
| Origin | |
| Region | Middle East |
| First mention | Talmud |
Already mentioned in Talmudic literature, it gained considerable popularity in Central European Jewish folklore, where it was associated with the figure of the Maharal of Prague and accusations of ritual murder against Jews. In one of the most popular versions of its legend, taken up by some Christian tales, it is born from clay after four wise men, representing the four elements, have provided its formless matter with their attributes; on its forehead is the word emet (אמת, “truth”) which becomes, when its first letter is erased, put (מת, ” death”), making the artificial man return to dust.
Neglecting the specificity of this creature, some authors claim that the legends of the Golem could have inspired many figures of the modern imagination including Frankenstein’s monster (in its film version) or Superman.
Etymology of Golem
Golem (Hebrew: גֹלֶם golem) is the Hebrew word for “shapeless mass; unslaughtered man”, but also for “embryo” (see Psalm 139:16 EU). In modern ivrite, the word golem means “stupid” or “helpless.” The rabbinic tradition refers to everything unfinished as a golem. A woman who has not yet conceived a child is also referred to as a golem (e.g., in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 22b). In the Proverbs of the Fathers, “Golem” is the term for an uneducated person (“By seven things one knows the uneducated, and by seven things the wise”; 5:9).
The Golem in Jewish Sources
The first occurrence of the term golem appears in Psalm 139:16: “Galmi (i.e. my Golem) your eyes have seen”—the psalmist thus praises God who knows him even before his flesh has taken shape. Commenting on this verse, Rabbi Yonathan interprets the golem as an embryo whose members have not yet been formed, and the Mishnah figuratively designates as a golem the person whose intellectual and social gifts have remained in their raw state.
Based on the same verse, the Talmud teaches that God, creating Adam, first made him a golem, raising him from the ground to the firmament before infusing him with his soul. Moreover, since “it is your faults that have dug a gulf between you and your God” (Isaiah 59:2), Rava, a fourth-century Babylonian commentator, asserts that the righteous who have preserved themselves from faults could, if they wanted to, create a world. So he creates a man that he sends to help Rabbi Zeira but the latter, realizing that “man” does not answer him, understands his nature and orders him to return to dust. Similarly, Rav Hanina and Rav Ochaya fashioned a calf by devoting all Shabbat vigils to studying the Sefer Yetzira.
It is not certain that this is the Sefer Yetzira known as the oldest treatise on Jewish mysticism (some exegetes lean rather for a nickname to the Book of Genesis) but this hypothesis is retained by popular belief, quick to recognize the creative power of Hebrew letters. The Sefer Yetzira was studied in the Middle Ages in order to create and animate a golem, following an ecstatic experience induced by the ritual use of various letters of the Hebrew alphabet forming one of the names of God.
The Legend of Rabbi Loew
According to other sources, the rabbi who designed it in the sixteenth century was the Maharal of Prague named Yehudah-Leib or Loew ben Bezabel.
His goal was to defend the community from pogroms.
He gave him life by writing EMET(H) (אמת, truth in Hebrew and one of God’s names) on his forehead and inserting into his mouth a scroll on which was inscribed the ineffable name of God, sometimes called Hashem (The Name) so as not to pronounce it.
To stop it, it was necessary to erase the first letter (the aleph) because MET(H)(מת) means death. The golem having become too big for the rabbi to erase the aleph, so Rabbi Loew asked him to tie his shoes, which he did. The creature stooped and put his forehead within reach of his creator, the golem became again what had served his creation: clay.
Legend has it that the inactive golem is stored in the genizah (warehouse of old Hebrew manuscripts, it is forbidden to throw writings that contain the name of the Most-High) of the Jewish community of Prague, which is located in the attic of the Old New synagogue of Josefov, which would also always be sealed and guarded.
The current vision of the Golem
The legend of the golem has inspired many authors over the years, and the creature has been used in many fantasy works with varying degrees of fidelity to the original legend.
While some works clearly refer to the Jewish creature, most medieval-fantasy works use the word golem to refer to any humanoid creature created from inert matter by a magician. Most often, it is no longer a question of Jewish tradition, of words placed in the mouth or head of the creature, and it is no longer necessarily made of clay.
The word golem is no longer always used to describe these creatures. It is often a question of “elementals” (creature made of an element) or simply names invented by the author. Nevertheless, we still recognize the notion of a man-made servant, which refers to the original legend.
The golem directly inspired Yiddish folklore: many Jewish theater groups in Eastern Europe performed adaptations of the legend of the golem. The Golem and its variations are present in the majority of media (TV series, cartoons, comics, novels, movies, video games, etc.).
More recently, the term “golem” has been taken up by the far right, originally on the English forum 4chan, then on forum 18-25 of jeuxvideo.com, to designate a person devoid of free will and obedient. According to journalists Maxime Macé and Pierre Plottu of Libération, this meaning refers in particular to an anti-Semitic or conspiracy imaginary.
Film and television
The Golem also inspired German cinema of the early twentieth century.
- The filmmaker Paul Wegener made a first film on this theme in 1915, a second in 1917, The Golem and the Dancer, and a third, more successful, in 1920, entitled Der Golem, Wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem, How to the world it came).
- The Golemis also a 1936 fantasy film directed by Julien Duvivier.
- Martin Frič, a Czechoslovak filmmaker who, under the title The Golem(cs) (Císařův pekař – Pekařův císař, literally “The Emperor’s Baker and the Baker’s Emperor”), directed two films in 1951, which were presented in one in Europe in 1952 under the title The Emperor’s Baker.
- Le Golem, a television drama, by Louis Pauwels, directed by Jean Kerchbron, broadcast on February 18, 1967, on the second French channel (rebroadcast on September 16, 1971, on channel 1), very faithful to the work of Gustav Meyrink. A version inspired by Paul Wegener’s Expressionist Golem (1922) was made as a cartoon by Gyora Gal Glupczynski (Atelier de Production de La Cambre – Brussels 1983).
- In 1993, Jiří Barta directed Golem, an unfinished animated feature film.
- The Golem also appears in episode 813 of the series Supernatural, the brothers Dean and Sam Winchester having to ally with a golem, and in episode 70 of the series Grimm (The Colossus with feet of clay), evoked by a rabbi to protect his family.
- The Golem is the central element of the episode “Kaddish” of season 4 of the X-Files series, where a man who is murdered is recalled from the dead in the form of a golem. At his resurrection, the link with the earth (the land of the cemetery where the body is buried) is strongly suggested. His wife frees him by erasing the first letter of the word emet, according to legend, but written on his hand. The body then disintegrates into sand.
- The legend of the living or dead golem according to the inscription engraved on its forehead is evoked in the animated film Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. When Batou and Togusa meet in Kim’s house, Batou is led to understand that he is the victim of an illusion thanks to the cyborg body (previously occupied by Major Motoko Kusanagi) that he sees in the entrance hall: cards are arranged on the ground and form the word aemaeth (truth) when Batou is still in reality, then the word maeth (death) when it is in Kim’s illusion.
- The Golem is also the central element of the episode (Halloween special) 4 of season 18 of the animated series The Simpsons. These special episodes are usually divided into three mini-stories, for a total duration of about 20 minutes. The golem appears in the second part, entitled “The Golem Must Be Practiced.” Bart finds an imposing clay statue in Krusty the Clown, the latter explains that he performs the actions written on a parchment and put in his mouth (slightly open). Bart will then use it as a “servant” to carry out very diverse actions.
- In episode 3 of season 3 of Warehouse 13, the Golem is mentioned. Indeed, the D Calder requires the help of Artie to solve a mysterious case of infection, a necklace inscribed with the word “emit“, meaning truth in Hebrew and in legend, also inscribed on the forehead of the Golem allows its holder to transform a person into a clay statue.
- In episode 3 of Season 1 of the cartoon Huntik: In Search of the Titans, the team’s mission is to travel to the Czech Republic to find the Golem of researcher Jodis Lore (deformation of Judah Loew) in the Prague cemetery. The Golem of legend turns out to be the titan Metagolem, who befriends the researcher Dante Vale.
- In Iron Invader, alien bacteria animated an iron golem.
- In the movie Warcraft: The Beginning, an earth golem created by the mage Medivh becomes one of the film’s antagonists.
Radio
- “The Golem of Gustav Meyrink” [archive], on fr, October 29, 2016 (from October 28, 2016, for 3 years of listening, 1 year of downloading (podcast).
Literature
- The Golem, by Gustav Meyrinkpublished in 1915.
- The Kabbalist of Prague, by Marek Halter, published in 2010.
- Golem, by Pierre Assouline, published in 2016.
- Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, published in 1818.
- Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991), a Yiddish writer, and Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, is also the author of a version of the story of the Golem.
- Terry Pratchett’s Feet of Clay, a novel from the Annals of the Discworld, features golems who create a golem themselves to make them their king.
- In his novel Golems (2004), Alain Delbe imagines that Nazi occultists (Otto Rahn and Wiligut) will on Himmler’s orders to wrest the secret of the Golem from the Jews of Prague.
- The Golem is a fictional character in the comic books of writer/penciler Joann Sfar. He appears in one of his first works, Le Petit Monde du Golem, 1998, published by L’Association and, among others, in the album Le Grand Vampire Le peuple est un golem published by Delcourt in 2005.
- The Golem is also the title of the first album of the comic strip Carland Cross, including seven in the collection, Michel Oleffe (scenario) and Olivier Grenson (drawing), published by Lefrancq and published in 1991.
- The Legacy of the Alchemist (comic strip) by Bachelier and Hubert (Glénat edition) gives a large place to the character of the Golem as well as references to the legend of Rabbi Loew in its volumes 1 (Joachim Overbeck, 2002) and 5 (Anna and Zaccharia, 2007).
- The principle of the Golem and the legend of the Golem of Prague are reused in the fantasy tetralogy, The Age of Unreason, written by Greg Keyes: it would then have been created by Isaac Newton thanks to alchemy.
- The myth of the Golem occupies an important place in Harry Mulisch’s The Procedure, where the legend is reported, and where the narrator, a biologist, has managed to create a human being in our time.
- The Master of the Golems also appears in The Iron Council of China Miéville. The author presents a man with powerful powers who fights for the survival of the mythological train against the armies of New Crobuzon, the sprawling and cruel city-state.
- In the collection great detectives (10/18), the central theme of the book The Traps of Twilight by Frank Tallis is the reproduction of a golem in early twentieth-century Vienna.
- In the adventures of Bob Morane, The Tree of Eden, (text Vernes, drawing Coria, edition Le Lombard). A Jewish community is protected by Golems hunting down supporters of the “Black Order”.
- In his collection of short stories Les Oliviers du Négus, Laurent Gaudé makes the Golem one of the main characters of his third short story Je finirai à terre. During the First World War, the earth itself makes the Golem, made of mud, to avenge the wounds that men inflict on it.
- In his collection of short stories Loin à l’intérieur (Price Littré 2006), Armand Cabasson places a Golem at the heart of his short story entitled Cassés comme des Bois Verts.
- The Hollywood Golem by Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman published in 2015, a police investigation based on the legend of the Prague Golem and its creator the Maharal.
- The Return of the Golem by Jean-François Vilar. A short story published in 1991 in the collection The City is a novel (Denoël), whose action takes place just after the Prague Spring and then at the time of the Velvet Revolution.
- In volume 2 of the Bartimeus trilogy, The Eye of the Golem, by Jonathan Stroud, published in 2004, the figure of the Golem holds an important place at the heart of the plot.
- Writer Ted Chiang describes a golem in his short story Seventy-Two Letters (Collected The Tower of Babylon)
- In The Extraordinary Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by American writer Michael Chabon, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, the Golem of Prague is an important figure in setting up the plot, at the heart of the Second World War.
- The comic strip “The Silence of Malka” by Jorge Zentner (scriptwriter) and Rubén Pellejero (artist), Casterman editions, awarded at the Angoulême festival in 1997, gives an original re-reading of the legend of the Golem. The plot takes place mainly in Argentina at the very end of the nineteenth century.
Golem in Music
- The Golem is an album by Black Francis, commissioned by the San Francisco Film Festival in 2008, to be performed at the screening of Paul Wegener’s film The Golem.
References (sources)
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