Golem

Lore & Background

The most famous golem narrative involves Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late-16th-century rabbi of Prague. According to Moment magazine, 'the golem is a highly mutable metaphor with seemingly limitless symbolism. It can be a victim or villain, man or woman—or sometimes both. Over the centuries, it has been used to connote war, community, isolation, hope, and despair.'

The Golem, in Jewish tradition, may be compared to the popular trope of the Frankenstein monster. Legends of the Golem go back to the 12th century in the tradition of Jewish Kabbalah, if not further, back to the Talmud. In the Talmud, Adam is initially created as a golem when his dust is 'kneaded into a shapeless husk.' Early on, the main disability of the golem was its inability to speak.

The earliest known written account of how to create a golem can be found in the Sode Raza, a commentary on Merkabah mysticism by Eleazar of Worms, who lived in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. It was believed that golems could be activated by an ecstatic experience induced by the ritual use of various letters of the Hebrew alphabet forming one of the names of God, written on a piece of paper and inserted into the mouth or forehead of the golem.

In some tales, a word such as 'truth' is inscribed on the golem, sometimes on its forehead; the golem could then be deactivated by removing the aleph, changing the inscription from 'truth' to 'death.'

Reader's Guide

In modern culture, the term denotes 'any magically created human figure', with such beings appearing frequently in tabletop role-playing games and video games.

Did You Know?

• The word golem occurs once in the Bible, in Psalm 139, to connote the unfinished human being before God's eyes.
• In Modern Hebrew, golem is used to mean 'dumb', 'helpless', or 'pupa'.
• The most famous golem narrative involves Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague, who reportedly created a golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava River.