Golem
In the attic of the Old New Synagogue in Prague, one rabbi turned back before he reached the top. Yechezkel Landau, Chief Rabbi of Prague, reportedly wanted to climb the steps to check an old tradition. He fasted first. He immersed himself in a mikveh, wrapped himself in phylacteries and a prayer-shawl, and began to ascend. At the top he hesitated. Then he came straight back down, trembling and frightened.
What did he fear? According to legend, the attic holds a golem. A golem is an animated, human-shaped being from Jewish folklore, built entirely from lifeless matter, usually clay or mud. The most famous golem story belongs to Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late-16th-century rabbi of Prague.
But the word is much older than that story, and the idea has travelled far from it. Moment magazine called the golem "a highly mutable metaphor with seemingly limitless symbolism." Over the centuries it has stood for war, community, isolation, hope and despair.
This documentary asks where the word came from and how a golem was supposed to be made. It asks why historians doubt the Prague tale, and how a clay servant turned into a robot, a video game monster and a Pokémon.
The word golem appears just once in the Hebrew Bible, in Psalm 139. There the form golmi can be read as my golem, my light form, or raw material. It describes the unfinished human being as God sees it, before it takes shape.
Pirkei Avot 5:9 gives the word a harsher turn. It names seven things found in a clod and seven in a wise man, so a golem becomes an unsophisticated person. Modern Hebrew keeps that edge, using golem to mean dumb, helpless, or a pupa. In Yiddish it became goylem, meaning someone lethargic or in a stupor.
Today the word is often a metaphor for a stupid man, or for any servant that obeys under controlled conditions but turns hostile in others.
The oldest golem stories date to early Judaism. In the Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 38b, Adam begins as a golem, his dust kneaded into a shapeless husk. Every golem after him is made from mud by people close to divinity, yet none becomes fully human.
In those early stories, the main flaw was silence. Sanhedrin 65b tells of Rava, who creates a man called a gavra and sends him to Rav Zeira. Zeira speaks to him and gets no answer. He tells the creature, "You were created by the sages; return to your dust."
A written recipe for building one of these beings would not appear until the Middle Ages.
Medieval scholars studied passages of the Sefer Yetzirah as a way to create and animate a golem. Little in Jewish mystical writing actually supports that belief. The earliest known written account of the method appears in the Sode Raza, by Eleazar of Worms, who lived in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. It is a commentary on Merkabah mysticism.
The method relied on letters. An ecstatic experience, induced by ritual use of Hebrew letters that formed one of the names of God, was thought to bring a golem to life. The name was written on a piece of paper and inserted into the creature's mouth or forehead.
In some tales, including certain stories of the Chełm and Prague golems, the word emeṯ, meaning truth, was inscribed on the forehead instead. Removing the first letter, the aleph, turned truth into mēt, meaning dead. One missing letter switched the golem off.
Other makers are named in scattered traditions. One source credits Solomon ibn Gabirol, who lived in the 11th century, with creating a golem for household chores, possibly a female one. Another legend says Samuel of Speyer made one in the 12th century.
By 1625, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo could write that "many legends of this sort are current, particularly in Germany."
The oldest account involving a real, identifiable person, however, comes from Poland and concerns a folk healer.
Elijah of Chełm, who lived from 1550 to 1583, was a Baal Shem, a folk healer, and the first historical figure said to have made a golem. In a letter of 1674, the Christian author Christoph Arnold recorded what Polish Jews told him. Rabbi Eliyahu shaped a servant from lime for housework and brought it to life by writing emes on its forehead.
The servant kept growing stronger. To stop it, the aleph had to be erased, leaving meis, dead. Soon the rabbi could no longer reach its forehead. He ordered it to take off its boots, expecting it to bend over. When it did, he erased the letter, the golem turned back to clay, and its weight fell on him and crushed him.
An unnamed Polish Kabbalist, writing around 1730-1750, told a milder version. A creature of matter and form worked hard for Eliyahu for a long time, until he removed the name of emet hanging at its neck and it turned to dust. This writer reasoned that the legend had circulated before anyone wrote it down.
In 1748, Rabbi Jacob Emden recalled in his autobiography Megillas Sefer what his father had told him. Eliyahu feared his growing golem might destroy the universe. He pulled out the Holy Name on its forehead, but as the golem fell apart it scarred his face.
A different tradition clings to the Vilna Gaon, who lived from 1720 to 1797. Rabbi Chaim Volozhin, who lived from 1749 to 1821, wrote that he once gave the Gaon ten versions of a passage in the Sefer Yetzira. The Gaon instantly picked the correct one.
Amazed, the student said such clarity should let his teacher create a living human. The Gaon agreed. He said he had begun to make a person as a child under 13, but a sign from Heaven ordered him to stop because he was too young.
None of these rabbis, though, is as famous as the one who supposedly built his golem beside a river in Bohemia.
According to the legend, Rabbi Loew, also called the Maharal, dug clay from the banks of the Vltava River. Through rituals and Hebrew incantations, he brought it to life to defend the Prague ghetto from antisemitic attacks and pogroms. In some tellings, the Jews of Prague faced expulsion under Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. In others, they faced death.
The golem was called Josef, or Yossele. He was said to be able to make himself invisible and to summon spirits from the dead. Every Friday evening, Rabbi Loew removed the shem, the name that animated him, so the creature could rest on the Sabbath.
One Friday the rabbi forgot. He feared the golem would desecrate the holy day. A separate story says the golem fell in love, and when rejected, became the violent monster of most accounts. Some versions end in a murderous rampage.
The rabbi pulled the shem from the golem's mouth in front of the synagogue, and the figure fell to pieces. Its remains were stored in the attic genizah of the Old New Synagogue, where it could be restored to life if ever needed. Rabbi Loew forbade anyone but his successors to enter that attic.
When the attic was renovated in 1883, no trace of a golem turned up. Some tellings say it was stolen and buried in a graveyard in Prague's Žižkov district, on the site of the Žižkov Television Tower. A recent legend adds a Nazi agent who climbed to the attic and died soon afterward under suspicious circumstances.
Some Orthodox Jews believe the Maharal truly made a golem, and Shnayer Z. Leiman has examined the evidence for that belief from an Orthodox perspective.
Historians and critics generally treat the Prague story as a German literary invention of the early 19th century. John Neubauer lists the first writers to tell it. In 1837, Berthold Auerbach included it in Spinoza. In 1841 came Der Golam, eine Legende, and Franz Klutschak's Der Golam des Rabbi Löw. Der Golem des Hoch-Rabbi-Löb followed in 1842, and Der Golem in 1847. A few slightly earlier examples are known from 1834 and 1836.
All of these early accounts are in German, by Jewish writers. They are suggested to have emerged as a Jewish counterpart to the German folklore movement of the time.
The story's real age was later disguised. Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg, who lived from 1859 to 1935 and left Tarłów to become a prominent rabbi in Canada, is said to have begun the idea that it dated from the Maharal's own era. In 1909 he published Nifl'os Maharal, in Piotrków. It claimed to be an eyewitness account by the Maharal's son-in-law, who had helped build the golem.
Rosenberg said he found the manuscript in the main library in Metz. Rabbi Meir Mazuz called him a forger. The book "is generally recognized in academic circles to be a literary hoax," and Gershom Sholem said the manuscript "contains not ancient legends, but modern fiction." Chayim Bloch, who lived from 1881 to 1973, spread the claim further in an English edition of 1925.
The silence of older sources is striking. David Gans, a disciple of the Maharal, wrote in his 1592 work Zemach David about a private audience with Rudolph II. He called their words mysterious, sealed and hidden, yet he said nothing of a golem. Neither did the Maharal's epitaph, nor his own writings.
Rabbi Yedidiah Tiah Weil, who lived from 1721 to 1805 and resided in Prague, described golems made by Avigdor Kara, who died in 1439, and by Eliyahu of Chelm. He never mentioned the Maharal. Neither does Meir Perils' biography of the Maharal, published in 1718.
In one common Russian folktale, an older couple whose children have left home makes a boy from clay and dries him by the hearth. This Clay Boy, a Yiddish and Slavic cousin of the golem that also borrows from The Gingerbread Man, comes to life. The couple is delighted at first.
But he never stops growing. He eats all their food, then all their livestock, then his parents. He rampages through the village until a quick-thinking goat smashes him.
Golems are not intelligent. Given a task, they follow instructions literally, and in many tellings they are perfectly obedient. That makes a golem a mixed blessing. The earliest known modern form of the Chełm story already shows the golem growing enormous and uncooperative.
The same theme of hubris runs through Frankenstein, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and later stories such as The Terminator.
It appears most pointedly in R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), a 1921 play by Karel Čapek. The play coined the word robot. Čapek wrote it in Prague and denied modelling his robots on the golem, though many similarities can be seen in the plot.
Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel The Golem was briefly popular in the Czech Republic and helped keep the creature alive in the imagination. Several restaurants and businesses there carry the name. A Czech strongman, René Richter, goes by the nickname Golem, and a Czech monster truck outfit calls itself the Golem Team.
Filmmakers took up the figure early. Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen made The Golem, a German silent horror film, in 1915. Wegener returned with The Golem and the Dancing Girl in 1917, and with The Golem: How He Came into the World in 1920, directed alongside Carl Boese. Julien Duvivier directed Le Golem in 1936, and Jan Werich starred in The Emperor and the Golem in 1952.
Writers followed. Jorge Luis Borges published the poem El Golem in 1959, retelling Judah Loew's creation. Marge Piercy's 1991 novel He, She and It weaves a Prague golem story into science fiction. Terry Pratchett's 1996 Discworld novel Feet of Clay places golems in Ankh-Morpork, where they play the role of robots. Ted Chiang's 2000 novella Seventy-Two Letters imagines a world whose technology is built on golems and the Kabbalistic names inside them. Helene Wecker's 2013 novel The Golem and the Jinni sets a golem in 19th-century New York.
The creature also entered games. Dungeons & Dragons, first published in 1974, includes many golems, and Backstab reviewer Philippe Tessier called the creature a "classic of D&D." The game's clay golem is based on the folkloric one, but changed from "a cherished defender to an unthinking hulk." Minecraft has iron, snow and copper golems. The Pokémon named Golem has a body of rocks, while Golett and Golurk were inspired by the Golem of Prague.
Music has taken up the legend as well. Abraham Ellstein's opera The Golem was commissioned by the New York City Opera and premiered there in 1962. In 1994, Richard Teitelbaum composed a piece called Golem that combines music with electronics.
The name even reached the laboratory. In the 1960s, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel built three custom computers and called them GOLEM.
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Common questions
What is a golem in Jewish folklore?
A golem is an animated, human-shaped being in Jewish folklore, created entirely from inanimate matter, usually clay or mud. The best-known golem story involves Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late-16th-century rabbi of Prague.
Where does the word golem come from?
The word golem appears once in the Hebrew Bible, in Psalm 139, where golmi means my golem, my light form, or raw material. It later came to mean an unsophisticated person in Pirkei Avot 5:9.
How was a golem brought to life and stopped according to legend?
A golem was activated by Hebrew letters forming a name of God, written on paper and placed in its mouth or forehead. In some tales the word emeṯ, truth, was inscribed on its forehead, and removing the aleph changed it to mēt, dead.
Who created the Golem of Prague and why?
According to legend, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, also called the Maharal, made the golem from clay from the banks of the Vltava River. He created it to defend the Prague ghetto from antisemitic attacks and pogroms.
Is the Golem of Prague story historically true?
Historians generally view the Golem of Prague story as a German literary invention of the early 19th century. No Hebrew work published in the 16th, 17th or 18th centuries says the Maharal created a golem.
Who was Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg and what did he have to do with the Golem legend?
Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg, who lived from 1859 to 1935, published Nifl'os Maharal in Piotrków in 1909. The book claimed to be an eyewitness account of the golem's creation, and it is generally recognized in academic circles to be a literary hoax.
Did the Golem inspire the word robot?
Karel Čapek's 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) coined the term robot and was written in Prague. Čapek denied modelling the robot on the golem, though many similarities are seen in the plot.
All sources
71 references cited across the entry
- 2How 'The Golem' Inspired 'Frankenstein'Sarah Rosen — 2021-10-28
- 3Joshua Trachtenberg. Jewish Magic & Superstition. 1939. p. 85
- 4The Golem of Prague & The Golem of RehovothGershom Scholem — 1966-01-01
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- 6golemClarendon Press — 1989
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- 11News36 Days of Judaic Myth: Day 24, The Golem of PragueMatthew Kressel — 1 October 2015
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- 13Kerstein, Benjamin. Jewish Ideas Daily. 14 September 2010. 24 August 2017.
- 16BookJewish Magic and SuperstitionJoshua Trachtenberg — University of Pennsylvania Press — 2004
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- 18BookOn the Kabbalah and its SymbolismGershom Scholem — Knopf Doubleday — 1996
- 19The Original Golem - Mishpacha MagazineCindy Scarr — 27 February 2024
- 22NewsHard Times Give New Life to Prague's GolemDan Bilefsky — 10 May 2009
- 24BookThe Golem of PragueGershon Winkler — Judaica Press — 1980
- 25BookMysteries of the Unknown: Inside the World of the Strange and UnexplainedTime-Life — 16 September 2014
- 26The Golem Lives OnOren Lee-Parritz — jewishpost.com
- 29BookDas Buch der Sagen und Legenden jüdischer VorzeitAbraham M. Tendlau — J.F. Cast'sche Buchhandlung — 1842
- 30BookPopuläres Judentum: Medien, Debatten, LesestoffeGabriele von Glasenapp — Walter de Gruyter — 2 June 2009
- 32BookOesterreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichts- und StaatskundeL. A. Frankl — Beck — 1836
- 36Sherwin, Byron L. (1985) The Golem Legend: Origins and Implications. New York: University Press of America
- 37Sholem, G., Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Schocken, 1961
- 42BookMegilas YuchsinMeir Perels — 1718
- 45MagazineLutoschenkaMary W. Cronan — 1917
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- 48VIDEO: René Richter, the Czech Man With the Strongest Jaws in the WorldVeronika B — 25 January 2020
- 50How Dungeon & Dragons shaped the modern videogameFebruary 8, 2007
- 51BookMonstrous ManualTSR, Inc. — June 1993
- 52MagazineBaldur's Gate IIPhilippe Tessier — November 2000
- 53Dungeons & Dragons Has an Antisemitism ProblemEric Silver — 2021-01-28
- 54Literary Sources of D&DAardy DeVarque
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- 57BookLanzando los dados: aproximaciones académicas a los juegos de rolMauricio Rangel Jiménez — Universidad Iberoamericana — 2021
- 58BookThe Golem Redux: From Prague to Post-Holocaust FictionElizabeth R. Baer — Wayne State University — 2012
- 59BookGolem! Danger, Deliverance and ArtEmily B. Bilski — The Jewish Museum — 1988
- 60BookThe Golem: Mystical Tales of the Ghetto of PragueChayim Bloch — Rudolf Steiner Publications — 1987
- 61BookFrom the World of the CabbalahBen Zion Bokser — Kessinger — 2006
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- 63BookThe Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and MysticismGeoffrey Dennis — Llewellyn Worldwide — 2007
- 64BookNorbert Wiener, le golem et la cybernétiqueMichel Faucheux — Editions du Sandre — 2008
- 65BookThe Golem Remembered 1909–1980: Variations of a Jewish LegendArnold L. Goldsmith — Wayne State University Press — 1981
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- 70BookPražské židovské pověsti a legendyV.V. Tomek — Končel — 1932
- 71BookThe Golem of Prague: A New Adaptation of the Documented Stories of the Golem of PragueGershon Winkler — Judaica Press — 1980