Golem Comes Alive in Prague

If the Golem ever was, well, he is now:

Hard Times Give New Life to Prague’s Golem

They say the Golem, a Jewish giant with glowing eyes and supernatural powers, is lurking once again in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue here.

The Golem, according to Czech legend, 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.

There are Golem hotels; Golem door-making companies; Golem clay figurines (made in China); a recent musical starring a dancing Golem; and a Czech strongman called the Golem who bends iron bars with his teeth. The Golem has also infiltrated Czech cuisine: the menu at the non-kosher restaurant called the Golem features a “rabbi’s pocket of beef tenderloin” and a $7 “crisis special” of roast pork and potatoes that would surely have rattled the venerable Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Golem’s supposed maker.



source (and here)

Even the first lady, Michelle Obama, paid her respects, when she visited Rabbi Loew’s grave last month and, following Jewish tradition, placed a prayer on a piece of paper and put it near his tombstone.

and this:

“We say the Golem is in the attic, up there,” Rabbi Sidon said. “But I have never gone there. I say that if the Golem was put there 400 years ago, then today he is dirt and dust and can’t do anything to disturb anyone.”

Asked if the Golem was fact or fiction, Rabbi Sidon shrugged and sighed. “It’s possible he is real,” the rabbi said. “I just don’t know.” But he noted that there had been several cases of sage rabbis who had supposedly created golems.

Rabbi Sidon recalled that in the late 1990s, an elderly Jewish woman asked him where the Golem was. “I told her he was in the attic,” Rabbi Sidon said. “ ‘Not that one, the real one,’ ” he said the woman replied, insisting that she had been at the synagogue a year earlier and had met Mr. Golem, a lanky figure with ruddy cheeks.

Recognizing the description, the rabbi said, he confronted the synagogue’s shamash, or attendant, a man called Josef, who shares the Golem’s first name. Josef eventually confessed that he had been telling visitors he was the Golem’s great-grandson.

Golem instructions.

Golem story not reliable. Here and here.

This is interesting:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes...composed a story entitled "the Jew's Breastplate" which deals with a fictitious theft of the artifact from the British museum. The story was first printed in a magazine in 1899 and subsequently included in a collection entitled "Round the Fire," published in 1908. The story is admittedly not one of his better known works, and has rarely been reprinted.

In 1913, there appeared in Piotrkow, Poland, a book entitled "Sefer Hoshen ha-Mishpat shel ha-Kohen ha-Gadol"--"the Book of the High Priest's Breastplate." The Hebrew volume told a story that was virtually identical to Conan Doyle's with one significant difference: the hero was the 16th century Bohemian Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, better known by his acronym "the Maharal." In the story, the Maharal journeys to London in order to solve the mysterious theft of the breast-plate from the "Belmore Street" museum.

The author of this story was one of the most popular Hebrew writers of the early twentieth century, Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg. Combining traditional rabbinical education and a broad general literary erudition, Rosenberg authored over twenty works while serving as Rabbi in various Polish communities. He was best known for his collections of wondrous tales about famous Rabbis, especially Hasidic masters. Most of these stories were works of out-and-out fiction, though usually not presented as such.

The Maharal was one of Rosenberg's favourite protagonists and appears in several of his books. In fact, Rosenberg (who apparently believed himself to be a descendant of the Maharal) is responsible for inventing the one detail about the Maharal with which most people are familiar; the famous "Golem," the artificial monster allegedly created by the Rabbi to save the Jews of Prague from anti-Semitic plots. So popular did this "super-hero" become that we find it difficult to believe that the story had no basis in either fact or legend before Rosenberg introduced it in a book published in Warsaw in 1909!

It appears that several of Rosenberg's stories, whether about the Maharal or Rabbi Elijah Guttmacher the "Greiditzer Rebbe" or others, were really Judaized versions of popular whodunits and adventure stories.

Follow-up:

Already in 1837, references about the Maharal and the Golem appeared in print. The early printed accounts indicate that these accounts had an oral history before being recorded." The article then goes on to cite sources from 1837, 1841, 1842, 1864 and 1856. It is clear, then, that Rosenberg did not invent the golem in 1909.

To claim that Rosenberg invented the Maharal's Golem seems as ridiculous as claiming that Stoker invented Count Dracula, and to claim that he invented the golem is like claiming that Stoker invented the vampire. Both took existing legends and elaborated on them to produce popular works of fiction, in the process inventing details which subsequently became part of the legend. And there is good reason to believe that, in
Rosenberg's case, the legend on which he based his book had a factual basis...

...One does not have to look far for pre-1909 references (legendary?) to the golem. For example, R. Yisroel Salanter (1810-1883) famously observes: "The Maharal of Prague created a golem, and this was a great wonder. But how much more wonderful is it to transform a corporeal human being into a mensch!"

And this:

Rava said: If the righteous wished, they could create a world, as it is written [Isaiah 59:2]: "it is your iniquities that have separated you from your God" (i.e., made a distinction between you and God). Rava created a man and sent him to Rabbi Zera. Rabbi Zera spoke to him but he [the man] did not answer. Then he [Rabbi Zera] said to him: You are from the companions (i.e., a creature created by the rabbis). Return to your dust. Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Oshaia spent every Sabbath eve studying the Book of Creation (Sefer Yezirah); a third-grown calf was created for them, and they ate it. --Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 65B