February 8, 2012

The Golem Rides Again

Book Review by Daniel E. Levenson

 

Books mentioned in this essay:

 

The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague

by Yudl Rosenberg and translated by Curt Leviant

Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007

 

The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality

by Gershom Scholem

Schocken Books, New York, 1985

The tales of the golem are among the most fascinating of Jewish legends, but for a generation which has no living memory of shtetl life, it could be argued that the golem and the tales surrounding him, has become less of a presence over time. As we move about our daily routines in twenty-first century America it is perhaps not surprising that the golem and the deeds he performed on behalf of the Jewish people, are not at the forefront of our minds. And yet, just when we think the Golem is safely stowed away in an attic somewhere, lying peacefully beneath a pile of discarded prayers, he reappears, ready to remind us of the trials and tribulations that Jews have faced over the last two thousand years.

 

In the latest version of Rabbi Yudl Rosenberg’s The Golem and The Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague, editor and translator Curt Leviant has done an excellent job of introducing the English-speaking world to the author’s vision of the golem and his beleaguered master, the Maharal of Prague. Although the word “golem” may conjure up a basic familiar image for many people of a silent, man-like figure made of clay and imbued with supernatural strength, few people probably know the history of the golem legend itself, or have actually read the stories which made this character famous.

 

Leviant notes in his thoughtful and thorough introduction that although the word “golem” itself has ancient roots, in writing his book Rosenberg is the one who created the golem that we know today, carefully crafting the legend of a silent automaton brought to life by the Maharal and his two assistants through the manipulation of secret, divine knowledge. Leviant writes that “The myth of the golem who defends Jews during times of persecution, which many people nowadays mistakenly trace back to the sixteenth century, is actually a modern literary invention, a brilliant stroke created single-handedly by Yudl Rosenberg.”

 

From a literary perspective the stories are interesting and creative, and in places Rosenberg’s familiarity with literature beyond his own traditional Jewish education come through. As Leviant notes:

Unique among his Orthodox peers, Yudl Rosenberg read widely in secular literature, displaying an interest in modern Hebrew writing and books on science in Hebrew. After mastering Russian he was able to read works from other languages in Russian translation. Depsite his being labeled a folk writer, he was not a naïf. He was familiar with the Sorcerer’s Apprentice motif, which he incorporated into one of his stories where the golem keeps on pouring until the room is flooded. Rosenberg also read a Russian version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “The Jew’s Breastplate,” which he adapted for another book …

But it is clear in this book that Rosenberg is not only interested in telling a good story. He is also creating a spark of hope for the Jewish people in the early twentieth century by suggesting that god has not abandoned us, despite our exile from Israel and the persecution we face from our enemies. He is suggesting that not only does the power of creation still exist in the world, but the connection between our world and heaven may not be quite as broken as it was perceived to be.

 

One question that continues to be relevant to the legend, is what exactly is the golem? In some ways he is not unlike an angel, created for a specific purpose to do an important job not just in the realm of man, but as a kind of intermediary between heaven and earth. In other ways, he is more like a human, although one that has somehow been created in the reverse – instead of god gathering mud from the earth out of which to fashion the first human, it is the Maharal, a man, who takes the initiative, gathering the physical material from which the golem of the body is constructed, followed by his carrying out of a kind of Kabbalistic ceremony that imbues the figure with life.

 

One of the important features of the golem that Levant mentions in his introduction is that the golem cannot speak, which is very interesting, given the importance of speech not only in everyday human life, but in the way that we traditionally connect to the divine. If the golem cannot speak, his autonomy is limited. He cannot speak to god in an audible way and he cannot speak to humans. He becomes something in the middle, a seemingly “alive” entity, but one that lacks the ability to make independent decisions or express himself. He is not only without a literal voice, but a metaphorical one as well. So the golem is neither wholly of heaven nor wholly of earth, neither angel nor man, but something in the middle. Similar to man in his origins and the animation of his “spirit,” but lacking autonomy and independent thought, and like an angle he is seemingly not subject to some of the constraints of man. Yet he is clearly not an angel – his provenance, in these tales, anyway, is very clear.

 

Gershom Scholem also tackles this question in The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. In his essay “The Golem of Prague and the Golem of Rehovot” Scholem considers the origins of the Golem and the similarities and differences between a human being and the golem. Scholem’s analysis is slightly different, given that he relates in his essay, one example of the golem escaping his original purpose and going on a rampage in the ghetto.

 

In this way, Scholem makes an even closer comparison between humanity and the golem, writing ”… the Golem – a creature created by human intelligence and concentration, which is controlled by its creator and performs tasks set by him, but which at the same time may have a dangerous tendency to outgrow that control and develop destructive potentialities – is nothing but a replica of Adam, the first Man himself.” Later, Scholem adds that “Without this intelligence and spontaneous creativity of the human mind, Adam would have been nothing but a golem – as, indeed, he is called in some of the old rabbinic stories interpreting the biblical account.”

 

Scholem also picks up on the importance of speech, both in the various legends of the golem and in traditional Jewish thought, noting “… Man can assemble the forces of nature – identified by him as the basic forces of material creation – and combine them into a semblance of the human pattern. But there is one thing he cannot give to his product: Speech, which to the biblical mind is identical with reason and intuition.”

 

Another fascinating feature of the golem legend is the role that the name of god supposedly plays in the animation of the clay figure. From a theological perspective, it raises many questions, among them why would god allow his name to be used in this way? And what does it say about the presence of the divine in a world that is not only some 1500 years past the time of the temple, but caught up in a tumultuous kind of exile in Europe, that simply through the act of writing or saying the name of good, humans have the power to make manifest something akin to the original act of creation?

The appeal of mysticism has always been in the prospect of a direct connection to the divine. Whether this is sought for deeper knowledge about the nature of existence or to seek protection from one’s enemies, the desire to transcend daily reality often seems to arise during periods of great persecution. We can see this in the many Hasidic tales that arose after the holocaust, and we can see it in Rosenberg’s work as well, in which the main source of tension and anxiety throughout the collection of interconnected stories is the mistrust that exists between the Jewish community and the Christian citizens of Prague. In Rosenberg’s tales, the Jewish community is constantly besieged by conniving Christians who bear a grudge toward the Jews and seek to defame them by spreading a Blood Libel about them, in which they claim that in order to make Matzot for Pesach, the Jews need to ritually kill and take the blood of a Christian child.

 

Many in these tales take this malicious fantasy well beyond words: They actually go so far as to dig up the corpses of Christian children, or if none have recently died, they kill a child themselves, and plant the body of the victim in the home of an unsuspecting Jew. No one figure is more despicable in this regard than the evil priest Thaddeus, who will seemingly stop at nothing to frame the Jews for this kind of horrible crime. In one story he even murders the child of his own servant and convinces the family to go to the authorities and report that the boy has been kidnapped and killed by the Jews.

 

But not everyone and everything in Rosenberg’s world works against the Jews, and not all of the gentiles in his stories are bad people, as Leviant notes. In fact, sometimes the gentiles who do the most evil things in these stories are the characters who are suffering the deepest personal pain, and appear to be at least partly lashing out at a convenient scapegoat. It is also noteworthy that some church officials come to the aid of the Jews and secretly help the Maharal to fight against the false and inflammatory lies being spread about them.

 

With themes of alienation, religious intolerance and the enduring power of the Jewish faith, Rosenberg’s stories still speak to us today. Curt Leviant has done a valuable service in his translation and introduction, helping to spread the tale of the golem to a new generation of Jews who continue to struggle with many of these same issues today.

 

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2007

Part of this essay originally appeared in The Jewish Advocate newspaper.