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The universal consensus on the
matter of golems is that Prague had one. The matter of why depends on who you ask, and the issue of whether said golem
still exists is entirely undecided. The important part, though, is that Prague
had a golem.
There are, essentially, two versions
of the story, and which you tell is entirely dependant on how fond of late 16th
century Jews you are. And while the why
of the golem is the source of deviation in each of these narratives, the basic
facts (and they are facts) are the same.
First, a golem is a creature in
Jewish lore made of earth (whether this means stone or clay depends on the
scholar) animated by the power of God. However, since God has become very hands
off since making his own golems in the garden of Eden, “the power of God” is
directed through a very well read rabbi. Golems are massive, dumb brutes who
serve only their creator, and because no one ever needed an animated hat rack
(except Alan Rydnik of New Jersey in 1976. No word on whether he ever got it),
golems are predominately used as mobile battering rams. Their purpose being
almost exclusively destruction – whether the enemies of God’s Children,
debtors, or yowling cats – their narratives inevitably end with someone or
something that wasn’t supposed to be smashed to bits getting smashed to bits.
Nuanced, they are not.
The other major detail, besides the
Golem of Prague being a golem, is the creator. Rabbi Loew (or Lowe, or Loeb, or
Löw, or Judah Loew ben Bezalel, or the Maharal, or as his wife called him when
no one was listening, Shnuckums) crafted the golem out of mud from the banks of
the Vltava during the reign of Rudolf II with his Cabalistic arts. Not much is
known about Rabbi Loew, except that he was well respected inside and outside
the Jewish community, he was incredibly long lived for the time, he had a
magnificent beard, and besides golem crafting, he was extremely good at
pickling various foods, not the least of which being courgettes and hermelin
cheese. Loew was an extremely talented mystic, but even for mystics, creating
life is forbidden as it requires the Shem Hameforash – the true name of
God, which is known only to a few holy men in each generation, and is very
dangerous to pronounce. The power it unleashed could turn against the man who
uttered it, so for the most part it was left alone.
As mentioned, there are two ways to
tell this story. Well, actually three, but the third isn’t very exciting.
In the first version, the Rabbi’s
creation of life and use of the true name of God was justified by Rudolf II’s planned
pogroms against the Jews in Prague. See, Christians at the time were forbidden
from charging interest on loans, which made money lending so unprofitable as to
be on par with opening a snow cone stand in Moscow in the dead of winter.
Judaism had no such prohibition, and Prague’s Jewish quarter eventually became
a rather wealthy neighborhood despite heavy anti-Semitic economic policies such
as the common practice of “You’re Jewish and I’m not, therefore I’m taxing the
hell out of you.” The fact that despite all their best efforts, the Jews were
living comfortably irritated the Christians, and Rudolf decided to just throw
tact out the window because he was the Holy Roman Emperor, god damn it.
According to some, there was also a priest named Taddeush who planned to accuse
the Jews of ritual murder to justify the pogrom, but in 1580 a blatant lie to
vilify a minority was more formality than anything.
Word got back to Loew, and he
prayed his ass off looking for a solution. After finally passing out from the
effort, the Rabbi had a dream in which he received his answer in an order that
is alphabetical in Hebrew: Ata Bra Golem Devuk Hakhomer VeTigzar Zedim
Chevel Torfe Yisroel. Basically, “Make a Golem of clay and you will destroy
the entire Jew-baiting company.” In the message also existed the Cabalistic
formulas to even do such a thing, giving him the ultimate way to protect his
flock.
So late one night, the Rabbi, his
son-in-law, a Kohen (a Jew descended from the ancient order of priests) and his
pupil, a Levite (a Jew descended from the servants of the Temple) stole away to
the banks of the river after purifying themselves to avoid being destroyed by
the Shem Hameforash. By the light of the moon and the stars, the three
men sculpted a giant man of clay and performed the ritual, which involved a lot
of walking in certain directions, speaking certain prayers, and hoping
desperately no one saw three grown Jewish men playing in the mud in the wee
hours of the morning.
They named him Joseph.
Joseph excelled at his job, which
was to scare the living daylights out of anyone who even looked sideways at any
of the Rabbi’s community. He did his job so well that eventually Rudolf II sent
a message to Loew. Now, when the king calls, you answer, no matter who you are
or which God you worship, so Loew went off without even grabbing his hat. This
was the first time that the golem had been left unsupervised, though on his way
out, Loew had shouted over his shoulder at the golem to protect the quarter
while he was gone.
Up at the castle, which in the 16th
century was no small trip from the Jewish quarter, Rudolf and Loew got to
talking. In addition to being a magnificent pickler and a mystic, Loew was a
pretty talented diplomat. Rudolf… well, he was king, and that was mostly all he
needed. But they struck a bargain. That golem, every time someone came to round
up the Jews, did very serious damage, and not all of it impermanent. With a
pile of scared and maimed Christians stacking up, Loew’s golem was about to
stop being a deterrent and start being a more real reason to round up Jews than Taddeush’s ritualistic killing
fiction. Loew knew this, and Rudolf knew this, but they both also knew that not
only could Loew make more destructive clay men, even if the Christians stormed
the quarter this instant, that golem could flatten the city before they
destroyed it. They agreed to a truce. The Jews would be left alone, and Loew
would deactivate the golem.
After a long day of negotiations,
Loew headed home, happy that his people were safe. But as he got closer to the
quarter he got, he realized something wasn’t right. He kept hearing a gravely
ripping sound, bouncing cobbles, and a chorus of protests in Hebrew. Running
the last bit home, he turned the corner to find the Golem ripping a tree from
the courtyard of his neighbor’s home and tossing it into the middle of the
street, where apparently every tree in the quarter was piled in a haphazard
barricade.
Loew ran forward, awkwardly scaling
the barricade, turning his ankle in the process. “Joseph!” he yelled, unheard
over the sound of a lamppost being dislodge from a street corner. “Joseph!”
The crowd of frightened and
irritated Jews saw their Rabbi straddling the barricade, his robes bunching
awkwardly around the knees, and began shouting the golem’s name, too. “Joseph!
Joseph, the Rabbi is here! Joseph!”
The golem turned, dull brown eyes
registering his master. He stopped pulling at the lamppost and moved to the
barricade, waiting patiently at its base.
“Oh Joseph,” moaned the Rabbi. “My
child, what have you done?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, the
golem couldn’t speak.
After instructing the golem to open
the lane to traffic again, golem and rabbi went back to the Rabbi’s home and
climbed the stairs to the attic. Destroying a golem is a difficult thing to do.
But the word that breathes life is only one letter away from the word that
takes it, and so the rabbi spoke the word, sadness in his voice as the dull
brown eyes became mud, once more, in the dark cellar.
According to most, the golem was
kept in the attic as a sort of martial deterrent until the 19th
century when someone finally rebuilt the stairs to the attic (they’d been taken
down to prevent grandchildren from climbing on the inanimate clay man) and
pried open the bricked-over door. Whether they found the golem and moved it, or
if he just wasn’t there is again a matter of debate. But the golem was there,
and now he’s not.
In the next version of the story of
the golem, the significantly less popular version these days, Rabbi Loew
elected to use the Shem Hameforash for more nefarious purposes.
Anti-Semitism having fallen out of fashion, the story of the golem is most
often told with Rabbi Loew as the hero, when the reality is probably just that
Loew, being a cunning diplomat, out maneuvered a dull king. It makes a good
story as it is, there really was no need for the Jewish people to add a golem
to their narrative – so the golem must have been someone else’s invention. This
version, which is the older of the two and in all likelihood the first
appearance of Prague’s golem, comes at the narrative from the angle of the
thwarted Christians, who preferred to blame the egg on their faces on a giant
clay monster rather than a very smart old man.
Here, Rabbi Loew and Father
Taddeush reverse roles, our pickle-loving community leader becoming a conniving
Jew mystic terrorizing God fearing innocents and our sinister and simple priest
becomes a tragically unheeded hero. See, Christians at the time didn’t charge
interest on loans since benefitting from another’s misfortune and need was as
un-Christlike as bread without yeast. Jews, on the other hand, had no such
scruples, and continually thwarted any attempt at imposing common decency on
their Yarmulke-adorned heads. Exasperated by the situation and fearing that he
was failing his divine kingly duty to protect his people from the forces of
evil, Rudolf II asked Taddeush to look into a solution. Taddeush, a smart man
with a cursory knowledge of the mystical nature of the Jews warned Rudolf II
that overt measures against the Jews would only be met by dark arts, solutions
too unholy for the good priest to counter. Rudolf, instead, levied another tax
against the Jews, a tired and oft-tried measure that in the past had had only superficial
effects.
Feeling their purses under attack,
the Jews of Prague came to their Rabbi, a dark man whose interests in the
unnatural was demonstrated by his love of pickling, and also supposedly by his
wife’s pet name for him. Loew listened to his flock of thieves about how the
good king’s new tax cut into their deep, deep pockets. He suggested they raise
their rates. But Rabbi, came the collective response, the Christians will not
pay that much, not of their own free will.
The Rabbi smiled darkly, told his pack
of wolves to raise their rates, and leave the rest to him.
Taddeush, whose parish was adjacent
to the Jewish quarter, heard murmurings that the Jews had raised the rates of
their usury, and were robbing the good Christians of even the bread off their
table. Worse yet, Taddeush’s flock said that when they refused, the Jews hinted
of some sinister act their Rabbi was in the midst of, that it was in their best
interest to pay now before he’d finished. Knowing a little about the dark
Cabalistic arts, Taddeush assumed the worst, a new ritual of blood, darkness,
and innocent lives lost. He ran to his friend, the king. Rudolf listened to the
grim news, his subjects about to be slaughtered for the Jews dark love of
money, and sprang to action. He announced he would remove the Jews from his
city, and they could leave with or without his army’s help.
But Rudolf and Taddeush were too
late. In the dark of that same night, Loew had crafted a monster of clay and
darkness, a beast of earth shaped like a man. They called it Joseph, its name a
mockery of God. Using the Shem Hameforash, Loew had defied the Holy
Father himself and mimicked the great creation of life. But the abomination was
obvious, the beast massive and barely human, incapable of thought and certainly
incapable of speech. Where its master willed the golem go, it went, raining
destruction on anyone who might try to persuade the Jews to leave, or could not
pay the abhorrent rate on his loan. The Christians lived in fear of the golem,
terrified of being ripped limb from limb for not lining the pockets of their
Jewish tormentors. Taddeush
watched in horror, helpless to aid his congregation as the murders of
the Son of God executed a reign of terror that could only end badly.
Tax failed, pogrom thrwarted,
Rudolf was enraged. He began to amass an army, calling for aid from his fellow
God-fearing Christian kings and princes to march on Prague’s Jewish quarter and
eliminate the monster of clay and his dark master. As pledges to support Rudolf
flooded in, Taddeush saw stretch before him a long and bloody war like a sea of
evil about to swallow his beloved city whole. He begged the king to reason with
the Jew, to emulate the Prince of Peace before plunging their word into chaos.
After much pleading on the priest’s
part, Rudolf relented. They called Loew to the castle to negotiate, hoping they
could persuade the Jew to deactivate the monster in exchange for leaving the
Jews alone. In his arrogance, the rabbi came the third time they summoned,
calmly, slowly, and wearing a very nice hat. But not before ordering the golem
to rip every Christian tree from its roots in his absence.
The three men spoke all day, and
long into the night, exchanging harsh words and almost coming to blows once or
twice. It was only Taddeush’s reasoning with the king that kept Loew’s head on
his shoulders and off a pike by the city gate. Finally, Loew agreed to
deactivate the golem after Taddeush revealed the king had sent for support from
neighboring principalities, and they too would send their armies to remove the
Jewish threat, should negotiations fail. They were ready to march – could Loew
raise his own army of clay monsters fast enough? He could not, and caught thus,
an agreement was reached. Loew would destroy the golem, and Rudolf would leave
the Jews to their usury.
The rabbi didn’t keep his word,
though. Instead of destroying the golem, he allowed it to continue its
tree-ripping rampage for a whole day before deactivating it in his attic where
it stayed, a dark and constant threat against the Christians until it
disappeared, presumably stolen by someone of ill intentions.
If you’ll recall, I mentioned that
there are many ways to tell the story of the Prague Golem – the Jewish way, the
bigoted Christian way, and a third, unexciting one. The unexciting one is
unexciting because it is closest to the truth, and the truth has always been
demonstratively more boring that its fictionalized counterparts.
But we’ll get there.
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