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hyperpotamianarch · 4 months ago

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Golem

All right. So, I wrote a piece on the topic in the past in the 17th Shard forum, this is going to be slightly revised and hopefully deeper.

TL;DR: Golems as represented in modern media are slightly inaccuate, as the original Jewish folklore indicates they should look human and be incapable of speech. Also, their name means, more or less, "half-made". Long elaboration follows.

Anyway, Golem. You've probably heard of the concept in the past: a man made of clay, artificially animated via mystical means, from Jewish folklore. Today, I am here to talk a little about the history of this concept and term, and state some personal opinions on its represantation in modern Fantasy literature. So, let's begin!

The most famous Golem in folklore is likely the Golem of Prague. It is fabled to have been created by the Jewish rabbi Yehudah Loew (more commonly known as Maharal) to defend the local Jewish community from blood libels during the 16th century. Without getting into too much details, the Golem officially served as an aid in the local synagogue (more or less), was deaf and mute and dealt with blood libels mmostly using brute force to bring in witnesses, generally. I might be basing it too much on my great-grandfather's retelling, though. Either way, at some point due to a malfunction Maharal was forced to turn it off and leave it in the attic of the Altneuschul in Prague.

At least, that how the stories go. Stories, I might add, that were only popularized by the 19th century, long after Maharal has died. It is, though, one of the most famous Golem stories - so much so that it got readapted multiple times by Jews and Gentiles alike, and serves as one of the tourist attractions in Prague (or so I'm told). It is not the origin of this specific mythical creature, though.

You see, going back all the way to the Talmud, we find in the tractate of Sanhedrin, 65B:

"Rava created a man, and sent him before Rabbi Zeira. Rabbi Zeira would speak to him but he would not reply. He said to him: You were created by one of the members of the group [one of the Sages]. Return to your dust." (translation from Sefaria)

Meaning, essentially, that creating what we now call a Golem was known back in that time. The creature is not called a Golem in the Talmud, though. The method of creation is sort of unspecified, but the next line mentions using the Book of Creation - Sefer Yetzirah - to create living beings (in that case, livestock), so one might assume the creation of a man is the same. Surprisingly enough, Sefer Yetzirah is still a known book of Kabalah. While it doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) contain detailed instructions o how to create humans, it does tell you about how G-d created the universe.

Two further points of note in the story will be how the nature of the Golem is discovered through it's seeming inability to reply, and how in the moment Rabbi Zeira finds out what he is - he kills the Golem.

That last point is one of the arguments being used by the 17th century rabbi ḥacham Tzvi Ashkenazi in his resposa book, regarding whether or not a Golem could be counted for a Minyan - a group of ten men that is required for certain Jewish prayers. The question is, essentially, does a Golem count as a person? Rabbi Zeira killing one is relevant, because murder is obviously not fine in Judaism, so since he did that - perhaps it's because a Golem does not count as a human. I don't really remember if this argument is what decided the final conclusion, but I'm pretty sure the answer ended up being that a Golem isn't elligible for a Minyan.

Who asked ḥacham Tzvi this question? ... Is something you might ask, had I given you the time. The answer is... well... no one. While Jewish responsa literature is usually based on real life Halachic questions and answers, sometimes there are rabbis who invent questions. This one specifically is likely related to what ḥacham Tzvi says about his grandfather, Rabbi Eliyahu of Chelm - that he created a Golem.

Now, a couple of things: a. You may be interested to learn that this particular piece of resposa became surprisingly relevant with the advent of artificial insemination, proving that even the weirdest of questions can be meaningful. b. This is more or less, among reports of Golems, the one closest to its supposed original time. This is why you might see people consider the Golem of Chelm a more reliable story than the Golem of Prague. c. While ḥacham Tzvi doesn't give any details, the regular story of the Chelmic Golem is that it never stopped growing for some reason and that's why Rabbi Eliyahu had to turn it off. d. ḥacham Tzvi never referred to the created man as a Golem.

So, now that we're caught up on two major folktales about Golems, why are they even called that? What does the name mean?

Well, apparently the term was used for this kind of artificially created humans since the 18th century, if you believe Wikipedia. The word itself, though, appears in the Mishnah in the tractate of Avot, 5:10, where it's used as the opposite of a wise man. There, we are given 7 defining traits for a wise man - mostly simple requirements of polite conversation. Those traits include: not talking before some wiser than you, not interrupting while your friend is speaking, not being too quick to answer, asking and answering in accordance to context, replying to things by order, admitting when you don't know something and admitting to the truth. A Golem is a person who does the exact opposite.

When I first thought of that, I thought that it might be a good idea to popularize "Golem" as a term for the Internet Troll, who tends to, indeed, be the opposite of the above. feel free to use it like that if you want - and please let me know if I'm acting like a Golem, I would like to know to correct myself when I require correcting. Anyway, when you look at it this way it almost sounds like an insult: this man created by other humans is the polar opposite of being wise. And maybe it is, but I'm not sure this is the whole reason for using this name for a Golem.

All right, maybe I've been dragging it like this for long enough. So, ina an attempt to avoid too much theatrics, I'll just say that in Hebrew the word Golem sometimes is used to mean "an unfinished tool", or "half made", and one could claim that this is something the fool and the Created Man have in common: both are not quite finished, one mentally and the other spiritually. The Created man is incomplete spiritually because he lacks a soul, something only G-d can give. This is also why a Golem can't speak, since this divine soul is the source of Human speech, as per the Onkelos translation for Genesis 2, 7: "and it became in Adam into a speaking spirit" (rough personal translation from Aramaic).

So, here's the point: according to all of the above, you might realize that a. a Golem should be incapable of speech, and b. it kind of should look more human than a lump of clay. Obviously, it doesn't matter in modern culture, where there is already a clear image of what a Golem is - even if it's a little inaccurate. Still, I enjoy being somewhat pedantic over stuff. I have read a couple of books with Golems in them, and I don't think many of them were actually loyal enough to the source of the myth. That doesn't make them bad, but I'd like something more accurate for once. Unsong might be a good example for a work that did it somewhat right - but I'm currently stuck in the middle of it and unsure whether I'll continue for different reasons, so that is that.

In Hyperpotamia, such as it is, Golems might be used as guards. The more Internet-Trolly kind are, sadly, citizens - they do go against the grain, afer all - but are not much well liked. Ad yes, this is a weak attempt at creating a gag for my blog. Feels a little forced, to be honest - we'll see if it works.

Thank you for reading, and have a pleasant day!

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