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I still remember the thrill I felt, when, as a young teen reading comic books, I first met the Golem bursting out of the pages.
Like many kids, I had heard the story of the Golem of Prague but to see a creature straight out of Jewish folklore in the pages of the fantasy comic 2000 AD was something else. The Golem of “Caballistics Inc” was powerful, scary and deeply Jewish — a combination I had never seen before.
Thanks to Maya Barzilai, many others now have the opportunity to feel that thrill of our own monster writ large across popular culture. For she takes you on a tour of the Golem as depicted in film, literature and comic books through the 20th and 21st centuries, from S Y Agnon to Superman.
The Golem is born from mud and clay but animated by Hebrew letters, usually the word Emet (Truth) being carved into the forehead. The Golem is a powerful servant but ends up leaving a trail of destruction behind it until it must be returned to dust, often by the removal of the name of God, or by erasing the Aleph from Emet, leaving only met, dead.
While most of us connect the Golem to (16th-Century) Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague, Barzilai shows its actual origins in Eastern Europe before taking us to the silent movie era and the films of Paul Wegener that has had such a profound impact on the depictions of golems ever since (even influencing the 2006 Halloween episode of The Simpsons).
Barzilai unravels the various genealogies of this man-made creature and shows what it has meant at different times and places. The basic elements of the legend have been used and reused in the contexts of the major wars of the 20th century — there are mud-cloaked, living-dead men who returned from the First World War; Jewish immigrants to New York in the 1920s dealing with what it meant to be Jewish in America; and Israeli depictions in the ’40s of Arab nations animated by distant British masters. There are revenge fantasies about the Second World War, in which the Golem becomes a Nazi-killer, and the Golem as robot and weapon of mass destruction, always threatening its creator.
The multiple strands of Golem are what constitute its great strength, presented not just chronologically but within themes that cross eras and borders.
Occasionally, it feels that Barzilai is reading too much into her story, but the book’s overall impact lies in its revelation of the Golem in all its glory, a monster that expresses the fear of modern warfare alongside an ambiguous relationship to Jewish heritage.
Barzilai painstakingly analyses films, books and comics to reveal the Golem’s enduring cultural presence and influence. And the violence of this appealing creature, especially the idea of Jewish violence, is what makes it simultaneously so threatening.
Roni Tabick is the rabbi of New Stoke Newington Synagogue in London