I’m re-reading Michael Chabon’s book, The Amazing Adventure’s of Kavalier and Clay (be warned this is an INCREDIBLE website and you’ll spend a lot of time there if you follow the link).
If you haven’t read it, you should! But that’s not really my point this morning.
My point is that the book begins with a Jewish man (Kavalier) being snuck out of Hitler’s Prague in a massive coffin, alongside the body of the Prague Golem:
The most famous golem narrative involves Rabbi Judah Loew the Maharal of Prague, a 16th century rabbi. He is reported to have created a golem to defend the Prague ghetto of Josefov from Anti-Semitic attacks. The story of the Golem first appeared in print in 1847 in a collection of Jewish tales entitled Galerie der Sippurim, published by Wolf Pascheles of Prague. About sixty years later, a fictional account was published by Yudl Rosenberg (1909). According to the legend, Golem could be made of clay from the banks of the Vltava river in Prague. Following the prescribed rituals, the Rabbi built the Golem and made him come to life by reciting special incantations in Hebrew. As Rabbi Loew's Golem grew bigger, he also became more violent and started killing people and spreading fear. Rabbi Loew was promised that the violence against the Jews would stop if the Golem was destroyed. The Rabbi agreed. To destroy the Golem, he rubbed out the first letter of the word "emet" or "aemaeth" (God's truth) from the golem's forehead to make the Hebrew word "met" or "maeth", meaning death. (According to legend, the Golem of Prague's remains are stored in a coffin in the attic of the Altneuschul in Prague, and it can be summoned again if needed.) The existence of a golem is sometimes a mixed blessing. Golems are not intelligent – if commanded to perform a task, they will take the instructions perfectly literally.
Pretty fascinating.
The last time I read the book, I didn’t take so much notice of the Golem thread. But it’s funny, now that I’m writing for Faithhacker, I’m more inclined to stop and think about the Jewish aspects of whatever I do more carefully. (which is a good argument for keeping a daily journal, I suppose)
So this morning, after my coffee, I ran to look up the Golem. First I re-read Singer’s version. Then I got online.
And though I found a good number of Golem sites, I kept coming back to Wikipedia. To this sentence, “The existence of a golem is sometimes a mixed blessing. Golems are not intelligent – if commanded to perform a task, they will take the instructions perfectly literally.”
Hmmm. So intelligence=non-literal interpretations?
And this sentence, “It is said that if a golem were made able to speak, that would give it a soul, and—because a golem cannot be made perfectly—that ability could make it very dangerous.”
Hmmmm.
I found myself thinking about what it means to be a good Jew. I found myself thinking about the line between literal interpretation and more complex kinds of understanding. I found myself valuing willful human thought. I found myself thinking about obedience.
And speech. I found myself thinking about the danger of one who can speak, and fears the analytical process. Fears testing and wrangling. But speaks loudly.