The Golem

She heard this story from friends at the Jewish school. She went to school in Los Angeles. She explains that her family is Spanish and the story of the Golem is an Eastern European story so she didn’t grow up with it like her classmates did. She states that she heard from her friends who were Ashkenazi. The basic story goes like this:

The story takes in a town in Prague. A rabbi created a Frankenstein-like monster called a Golem to protect the Jewish village. The Golem was a giant creature with the word Emet, which is Hebrew for truth, written on its head. This word brings the creature to life. He was created to ward of attackers but it eventually runs amuck and starts attacking people. It couldn’t be stopped until the rabbi who created it erases the first letter of Emet from its head. Emet without the first letter, spells met which means death. This doesn’t kill the golem it just shuts it off like a robot. To revive the Golem all one has to do is fill in the first letter.

The informant mentions that she heard slightly different versions of the story. In some versions the person who brings the golem to life is a rabbi, sometimes it’s a mad scientist, other times it is just some guy. The nature of the golem itself varies in some versions it is aggressive in others its docile like a baby.

The informant doesn’t think the story itself is very important but the ideas related to it are important. She says that the story is related the history of antisemitism and it stems from the idea of having a magical protector.

I’ve heard of the story of the Golem of Prague before but in the version I read the Golem only goes berserk because the Golem had the ability to turn invisible and there were more explicit mentions of magic. In the version I heard the Golem was made from the clay of the banks of the river and the ceremony that brought it life mentioned the use of Kabbalah mysticism. In the version the informant told me she makes numerous references to Frankenstein and mad scientists. It seems like the scientific bent of contemporary society got fused with this older primarily magical society. The story is the same but the motifs are slightly different.