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And as he carved the final letter, the creature opened its eyes.

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The rabbi looked at his creation. Your only job is to protect the Jewish people. The Golem opened its mouth to speak but nothing came out. It was mute. It couldn't talk. So it nodded its head yes and followed the rabbi back to Prague. The next night soldiers attacked the community. But in the dark a sword was knocked away!

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Another axe was broken in two! One soldier went to attack and was thrown into a wall. All of the soldiers ran away. The next night twice as many soldiers showed up. Again, their weapons were shattered, and their bodies smashed. They came back in the daytime, but now they saw this giant creature silently defeated every soldier defending everyone in the Jewish community and was seemingly unharmed by any weapon. The soldiers complained to the emperor about the creature. And so Rabbi Loew was called to appear at the palace.

No Jew had ever appeared in the palace or before the emperor and Rabbi Loew set foot in the throne room. The emperor said, "I have heard that the Jews have some sort of secret weapon that they are going to use to attack the palace. Rabbi Loew remained silent at first. Then he said quietly, "Whatever might or might not be helping the Jews is only to defend the people from attacks.

Stories We Tell: The Golem

If the soldiers stopped attacking there would be no need for whatever the Jews might have. And the soldiers stopped.

Rabbi Loew waited a day. But still no attacks. Then a week. Then a month. Then a year to be sure that there were no more attacks. And so on a moonless night the rabbi brought the Golem to the Vltava River. The Golem shook its head no as if it knew what was coming. But Rabbi Loew reached up with a stick and erased the aleph on his forehead, leaving only the mem and the tav , or the Hebrew word met -- death.

The Golem collapsed in a pile of mud, lifeless like before.

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Some say Rabbi Loew took the mud and hid it in the attic of the Altneuschul , the old new shul in Prague, to be brought back should anyone attack the Jews. Some say the Golem is a myth and never existed. After hearing that telling of The Golem, we have a simple question for you: who protects you? If you'd like to share that with us on social media, we'd love to hear about it a little.

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Skip to main content. Google Tag Manager. They took "virgin" that is, unworked soil, shaped it into a golem, and then recited the prescribed permutations over the inanimate figure. If they did this in the correct order, the golem came to life and got up from the ground. This kind of golem, though, had no practical functionality. Making it was a ritual that served only to demonstrate the creative power of the Jewish "pietists.

This ritual, free of practical use, was not the end of the matter. And what purpose could be more important than using the golem to defend the Jews from persecution? In many ways, it was perfectly suited to the task.

It had no will of its own, but obeyed only its creator, the rabbi. It was big, it was strong, and it was discreet, originally being unable to speak. Most importantly, the golem could not be killed by external violence—only when the rabbi revoked the magical charm that kept it alive did it dissolve back into dust. This repurposing marks the beginning of a new stage in the golem tradition, one that would bring forth a whole flood of legends. The first point of crystallization for such stories was the figure of Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague d.

He is said to have been the first person to successfully create a golem, doing so in order to defend the Jews of Prague. Thanks to Rabbi Loew, Prague has remained a focal point of golem traditions, or even what might be called a golem cult. The golem of Prague was not immune to misappropriation, however. The inexperienced apprentice enchants a broomstick to carry water for him, but the broomstick cannot be stopped and soon the whole house is awash, until the sorcerer, the only one who knows the spell, finally gets home and puts an end to the commotion.

The golem of Prague generated an almost explosive proliferation of golem ideas and images.

Meyrink (Gustav); Kauffer (E. McKnight, jacket artist) The Golem.

In Jewish settings, the predominant aspect has been protection against persecution—whether the medieval blood libel or Nazi racism. But the dark side of the golem also makes itself felt: a golem can get out of control and run amok. If that happens, the rabbi who controls it must quickly turn it back into dust which sometimes results in the golem, now grown to enormous proportions, completely burying the poor rabbi under a heap of earth. A question around which many portrayals of the golem revolve is whether the golem can be described as a human being, and if so, in what sense.

Certainly, it is alive, but it has no will of its own and only executes the orders of its creator.

Some sources attest to a scholarly debate over whether a golem can be counted as part of the minyan, the quorum of ten male members of the congregation that is required for a regular religious service to take place. If the golem is a human being, is the rabbi permitted to "kill" it just as he sees fit—does the rabbi rule over life and death, like God? Or is the golem not a person at all, but just a lump of clay that simply borrows "life" for a limited time and a defined purpose?

In fact, the golem itself sometimes ponders these questions. In some tales, it begins to acquire consciousness, wishes to go to school and study, or even falls in love. Often, this is exactly what triggers to the destructive force of the golem, a force almost impossible to control. One thing is for sure: in principle, the golem is male.

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She turns into a man-eating monster and drives the whole of New York to destruction. All these topical and highly controversial themes may be regarded as the direct continuation of an ancient human dream, the dream of creating a golem and thereby imitating the creative power of God. When Gershom Scholem, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, was asked to deliver the ceremonial address dedicating the Israeli mainframe computer at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot in , he suggested calling the computer—what else?