Golem

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Rabbi Löw and the Golem (drawing by Mikoláš Aleš , 1899)

The golem has been the name for a figure in Jewish literature and mysticism in Central Europe since the early Middle Ages . This is a mute, human-like being formed by wise men using the mysticism of letters from clay, which is often of enormous size and strength and can carry out orders.

etymology

Golem ( Hebrew גולם golem) is the Hebrew word for “formless mass; uncouth human ”, but also for“ embryo ”(see Psalm 139.16 EU ). In modern Iwrit the word golem means "stupid" or "helpless". The rabbinical tradition calls anything unfinished as a golem. A woman who has not yet conceived is also referred to as a golem (e.g. in the Babylonian Talmud , Tractate Sanhedrin 22b). In the sayings of the fathers , "golem" is the name for an uneducated person ("one recognizes the uneducated by seven things, and the wise by seven things"; 5.9).

Origins of the legend

Different variants of the golem legend are known. However, their origin is obscure. The first written mention dates back to the 12th century . At that time, a commentary on the Book of Creation ( Sefer Jetzira ), a text of the Kabbalah , was written in Worms , in which numerical mysticism about the ten original digits, the Sephiroth , and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet play a role. In this only fragmentary text, a ritual is mentioned which was supposed to bring inanimate matter to life through certain combinations of these letters and numbers.

In the Talmud (tract Sanhedrin 38b) the creation of Adam is described in such a way that he was shaped like a golem from a shapeless chunk. Like him, all golems are described as being made of clay, namely as the creation of those who are considered particularly sacred , since they were given his wisdom and powers in their proximity to God . Of course, even the creation of a golem did not come close to creation: Golems are generally described as incapable of speaking. As a result, the legend was enriched by other such characteristics, such as the one that only a note or plate under the tongue brings the golem to life.

Since the creation of a golem was consequently regarded as a sign of great learning and wisdom, golems were ascribed to various Jewish scholars and rabbis in the Middle Ages. There are apparently several reasons why Prague was increasingly viewed as the setting for the Golem history: In the late Middle Ages, the largest Jewish community in Europe, with numerous scholars among its members, was located there . In addition, from his seat in Prague Castle , Emperor Rudolf II promoted science as well as occult arts and alchemy . Furthermore, consultations between Rabbi Judah Löw and the emperor have been handed down.

The historical figure of Rabbi Löw was not mythologized until around 1725, when Löw's tombstone was restored and Prague was the center of a renewed engagement with Kabbalah.

The legend of the Prague Golem

Among others, Rabbi Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Davidl Jaffe are credited with creating the golem. Rabbi Jaffe is said to have used the golem essentially as a substitute for a " Schabbesgoi ", ie for a non-Jew who does the necessary work for Jews on the Sabbath.

By far the best-known version of the Golem legend is the one about the Prague Rabbi Judah Löw (1525–1609), who came from Worms and who also distinguished himself as a philosopher , Talmudist and Kabbalist . As far as is known, this version of the story appeared in print for the first time in 1836 (in the Oesterreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichts- und Staatskunde ). Shortly thereafter, the writer Berthold Auerbach reproduced it in his novel Spinoza (1837). In 1847 the legend was part of a collection of Jewish fairy tales called the Gallery of Sippurim by Wolf Pascheles from Prague. Sixty years later, Judl Rosenberg took up the subject in literature in 1909.

The legend is shown in extracts below.

The creation of the Prague Golem

According to legend, the activity of Rabbi Löw was aimed at helping the oppressed people of the Jews of Prague and freeing them from the repeated accusations that they used the blood of young children for ritual purposes, on whom they allegedly committed ritual murders . In 1580 a clergyman by the name of Thaddäus is said to have turned against the Jews again and accused the Prague Jewish community of ritual murder. Heaven gave the rabbi the idea of ​​forming a picture of a person out of clay in order to thwart the plans directed against the Prague Jews ( ata bra Golem devuk hakhomer v'tigtzar tzedim khevel torfe yisrael - “you create from clay a golem and overcome the hostile pack that wants the Jews evil ”).

Rabbi Loew then called his son-in-law and a student over and told them about his vision . The four elements earth, water, fire and air were required to create the golem . Rabbi Löw assigned the properties of wind to himself, his son-in-law embodied fire, while the pupil was assigned the properties of water. The oath was taken from the two of them not to announce anything about the project, and the rabbi ordered that they should diligently prepare for the work in prayer for seven days.

At four in the morning (it is said to have been Adar 20, 5340 , which would correspond to March 17, 1580) the three men went to a clay pit on the Vltava River outside the city. They made a three ells high figure out of damp clay, which they gave human features. When this was done, Rabbi Loew ordered his son-in-law to go around the golem seven times and recite a formula ( tzirufim ) that the rabbi gave him. The clay figure then began to glow as if it had been exposed to fire. The student then walked around the golem seven times: the body became damp and emitted fumes, and hair and fingernails sprouted from the golem. As the last, the rabbi stepped around the golem seven times, and finally the three participants stood at the feet of the golem and together said the sentence from the creation story : “And God blew the living breath into his nose, and man came to life . "

The golem's eyes opened. When Rabbi Loew had him stand up, the golem rose and stood naked in front of the three men. Then they dressed the golem in the robe of a synagogue servant and Rabbi Löw gave him the name Joseph after the Talmudic Joseph Scheda, who was half human and is said to have assisted the scribes in many hardships.

In the rabbi's room the golem used to sit in a corner and no life could be seen in him. The golem was only brought to life through kabbalistic rituals with the help of Sefer Jezirah . For this purpose, a note with the Schem , the name of God, had to be placed under his tongue. This note gave him life; If the golem should not be seen on his missions, the rabbi also put an amulet made of deerskin around him. The golem's job was to roam through the city every night before the Passover festival, stopping anyone who was carrying a load to see whether they were carrying a dead child with them, to the ruin of Prague's Jews to throw in the Judengasse. In addition, the golem made itself useful as a shame by sweeping out the synagogue. The slip of paper under the tongue had to be removed on every Sabbath (the day on which work is not allowed according to Jewish belief).

In a modification of the motif of a note with the scheme, a "seal of truth" is reported that the golem wore on his forehead. This seal represented the Hebrew word for "truth" (ie AMT (transcribed: EMETh)). If you remove the first of the three letters of this word, the Hebrew word for "death" remains (ie MT (transcribed: METh)). The removal of the letter therefore represented a possibility to deactivate the golem.

More legends from the legends of the Prague Golem

The Old New Synagogue in Prague - west facade

When Rabbi Löw once forgot to take the note out of his mouth, the golem began to race through the streets of the Prague ghetto and smash everything that stood in his way. The rabbi threw himself in front of him, removed the note and destroyed it, whereupon the golem fell into pieces. According to another version of the legend, however, Rabbi Löw is said to have interrupted the service in the Old New Synagogue when the news came that the golem was out of control. Löw is said to have gone into the street and called out loudly: “Joseph, stop!” The golem then stopped and the rabbi told him to go to bed. Rabbi Löw, having returned to the Old New Synagogue, ordered the Sabbath song to be sung again, which is why it has allegedly been sung twice since then in Prague - and only there - as part of the Jewish worship service.

Another version describes how Rabbi Löw's wife - contrary to the rabbi's express command that the golem should not be used for such work - ordered the golem to bring water into the house. Then she went to the market and the golem kept carrying more and more water into the house because he was not told to stop. This legend could possibly have served as a template for Goethe's ballad about the sorcerer's apprentice .

Furthermore, on Yom Kippur in 1587, a community leader is said to have dropped the Torah scroll, which was considered a bad omen. In a dream Rabbi Löw asked what sin this bad omen was due to. The answer was a sequence of letters that he couldn't explain. So he asked the golem to find an answer to what those letters meant. In the Torah, the golem found a verse in the Decalogue , the words of which began with the said letters: “You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.” With this verse, the rabbi confronted the community leader, who weeping confessed his sin.

The destruction of the Prague Golem

After a long time had passed and no more defamatory accusations were made against the community, the rabbi decided in 1593 that the golem was no longer needed. According to Isaak Kohen, the rabbi's son-in-law, this is said to have taken place after Rabbi Löw had obtained a promise from Emperor Rudolf II in an audience dated February 23, 1592 that he would refute ritual murder accusations against the Jews in the future will be acted relentlessly.

Rabbi Löw therefore called Joseph, the golem, not to sleep in the rabbi's apartment as usual, but to put his bed in the attic of the old synagogue. Again he gathered his son-in-law and the student who had already helped create the golem. He asked her whether the golem, which had been converted back into clay, caused contamination like an ordinary dead man, but after careful consideration both of them denied. As in the creation of the golem, the three gathered at his bed in the attic of the Old New Synagogue, where the golem slept, but proceeded in exactly the opposite order to what they had done when creating the golem. Instead of standing at his feet, they stood by his head, and the tzirufim said them backwards. The golem then disintegrated again into a pile of clay, as it had been before it was created. Rabbi Löw covered him with the old prayer robes and scrolls that were lying around in abundance in the attic of the Old New Synagogue: The next day Rabbi Löw had it spread that the golem had escaped with an unknown destination, and he forbade anyone to ever enter the attic of the Old New Synagogue. According to legend, a heap of clay in the attic of the Prague Old New Synagogue, which was not destroyed during the Second World War , is considered to be its remains.

Another version of the end of the golem, which is more similar to the version of the end of the golem running amok, reported above, reports that Rabbi Loew ordered the golem to take off his shoes. At that moment the rabbi tore the “seal of truth” (emeth) from the creature's head and killed it. However, according to this story, the rabbi was killed by the falling golem.

The golem of German romanticism

A note by Jacob Grimm in the newspaper for Einsiedler (1808) made the golem known among the German romantics. Because of the prevailing anti-Semitism, the golem was then assigned a predominantly negative role ( Achim von Arnim : Isabella of Egypt ) or as a synonym for stupidity as in the poems of Theodor Storm ( The State Calendar ) or Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ( The Golems ) (1844 ) is used. ETA Hoffmann uses the golem motif, alienated, in his story The Sandman , in The Secrets (1822), Master Flea and The Elemental Spirit, the golem bullies the world as a kind of non-person and soulless snob .

Reception history

1927, Golem after Meyrink, Salzburg Festival 2014 Photo: Christian Michelides
Golem figure as a souvenir

The golem theme has been taken up on various occasions in literature, film, radio and computer games.

Fiction and theater

Gustav Meyrink published his novel Der Golem in 1915 , of which 100,000 copies were initially distributed among soldiers in a cheap field edition , which was what made Meyrink notoriety. The novel is considered a classic of fantastic literature . Meyrink's golem is a kind of ghost that appears every 33 years in the Prague ghetto to spread fear and terror and is described as a pale, Mongolian type with stooped, creeping gait and medieval clothing: Meyrink's golem is far from the Jewish idea of ​​the golem, he is an Ahasverian figure, he embodies the ghetto. In 2014 the director and dramaturge Suzanne Andrade developed a staged version of Gustav Meyrink's novel at the Salzburg Festival , which “enchanted” the audience and the press and finally went on a European tour.

The “robots” in Karel Čapek's drama RUR (1920) are clearly influenced by the golem myth. The word "robot" (from Czech robot ) was taken from this piece in numerous languages.

Eugen d'Albert 's opera Der Golem, premiered in 1926, deals with the subject; as well as poems by Jorge Luis Borges ( El Golem , 1958) and John Hollanders ( A propos of the Golem , 1969).

Friedrich Torberg transfers the golem in his story Golems Wiederkehr, published in 1968, to the time of the Second World War in Prague . These are events that accompany the establishment of the Jewish Museum by the SS .

Even Terry Pratchett used the motif of the Golem in many of his Discworld novels.

The science fiction -literature attacked the myth often, about Stanislaw Lem's Golem XIV (1981). Marge Piercy uses the legend in her novel Er, Sie und Es (1991) as a backdrop for the creation of a cyborg . Golems populate the “ discworld ” of fantasy author Terry Pratchetts . They play a central role in Hollow Heads (1996) and Ab die Post (2004).

Mirjam Pressler's youth novel Golem silent brother from 2007 is set in the setting of Rabbi Löw in Prague around 1600, but according to the author it is also to be understood against the background of modern phenomena such as artificial intelligence and cloning .

Non-fiction

Arnold Zweig wrote in 1915 a review, the film Golem Wegener, Meyrinks novel and the play at first The Golem of Arthur Holitscher concerns of the 1908th

In Ludwig Klages ' philosophy ( Vom Kosmogonischen Eros , 1922), Golem describes the triumph of the “ larva ”, the “last man”, the “post-historical” man ruled by the “spirit as adversary of life” at the moment of his downfall.

In 1925 Egon Erwin Kisch published a report on the track of the Golem , in which he pursues the legend. Hans Ludwig Held wrote Das Gespenst des Golem in 1927 . A study from Hebrew mysticism, with an excursus on The Essence of the Doppelganger .

Movie and TV

Directed by Paul Wegener , three silent films were made that deal with the golem: The Golem (1915) , The Golem and the Dancer (1917) and The Golem as He Came into the World (1920), the latter in particular being the highlight of expressionist film and helped make the Golem saga widely known.

In the cartoon series " Gargoyles " an entire episode is devoted to the Prague Golem in Season 2, Episode 27: "The Golem" (1995).

In the series " The X Files - The Scary Cases of the FBI " the golem is dealt with in season 4, episode 15, The Golem (in the original: Kaddish , 1997). The makers of the animated series " The Simpsons " also take up the character of the golem in the episode Treehouse of Horror XVII (2006).

In the series Grimm , the golem is treated in the 4th season, episode 4, The Golem (in the original: "Dyin 'on a Prayer", 2015).

science and technology

Norbert Wiener interpreted the golem in God & Golem, Inc. (1964) as the forerunner of cybernetic machines. When the Kabbalah researcher Gershom Scholem heard that a new mainframe computer was to be put into operation at the Weizmann Institute in Rechovot (Israel) in 1965 , he suggested that the computer designer, Chaim L. Pekeris , name it "Golem I." . Pekeris agreed on the condition that Scholem give the dedication speech.

Games

Various branches of fantasy, especially role-playing games , describe golems as human-like, magically created creatures that are made of different materials and have matching properties.

folklore

The golem is now part of Prague folklore , and tourist golem souvenirs are everywhere.

See also

literature

Retellings and literary adaptations of the Golem saga (selection)

Literature about the saga

  • Chajim Bloch : The Prague Golem. Harz, Berlin 1920, DNB 572429932 .
  • Frank Cebulla: Snake and Messiah. Hadit, Kahla 2002, ISBN 3-9808560-0-3 .
  • Raphael Gross , Erik Riedel (eds.): Superman and Golem. The comic as a medium of Jewish memory. Jewish Museum, Frankfurt 2008 (catalog for the exhibition December 2008 - March 2009, without ISBN) bilingual German / English.
  • Konrad Müller: The golem legend and the legend of the living statue. Communications of the Silesian Society for Folklore 20 (1918), pp. 1-40.
  • Elie Wiesel : The Secret of the Golem. With drawings by Mark Podwal (original title: The Golem , translated by Ursula Schottelius), Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1986, ISBN 3-451-20278-6 .
  • Beate Rosenfeld: The golem saga and its utilization in German literature. Priebatsch, Breslau 1934, DNB 362188203 .
  • Harald Salfellner (ed.): The Prague Golem. Jewish legends from the ghetto. Vitalis, Mitterfels 2007, ISBN 978-3-89919-099-1 .
  • Thomas Schlich: From Golem to Robot. The dream of an artificial human. In: Richard van Dülmen (Hrsg.): Invention of humans. Dreams of Creation and Body Images 1500–2000. Böhlau, Weimar, Vienna, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-205-98873-6 , pp. 543-557.
  • Gershom Scholem : The Golem of Prague and the Golem of Rehovot. Judaica 2, Suhrkamp Library, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-518-01263-0 .
    • ders .: On the Kabbalah and its symbolism. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1973, ISBN 3-518-07613-2 (= suhrkamp-taschenbücherwissenschaft , Volume 13; previously at: Rhein Verlag, Zurich 1960, DNB 454453256 ).
  • Klaus Völker (Ed.): Artificial people. Seals and documents about golems, homunculi, androids and living statues. Hanser-Verlag, Munich 1971, new edition: Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-518-38793-6 .
  • Alexander Wöll : The Golem: Will the first artificial human and robot come from Prague? In: Marek Nekula, Walter Koshaben , Joachim Rogall (eds.): Germans and Czechs. History, culture, politics. Beck, Munich 2001; ISBN 978-3-406-45954-2 ; Pp. 235-245.

Web links

notes

  1. ^ Digitized version of the Bavarian State Library .
  2. ↑ There are currently 3 different Sippurim editions known, see the preface by the publisher Pascheles to the 3rd episode, 1854, here , without the institutions publishing today making this clear. The golem is in volume 1, p. 51f., Told by "L. Weisel". Volume 1. Here 3rd edition 1958
  3. ↑ Tim Adams: Golem, the clay man with a message to subvert our Christmas tech-fest , The Guardian , December 21, 2014
  4. ↑ Norbert Mayer: A golem made of plasticine haunts the Salzburg Festival , Die Presse , 23 August 2014
  5. ^ Nicola Morris: The Golem in Jewish American Literature. Peter Lang, New York a. a. 2007, p. 119.
  6. ^ David E. Newton: Robots. A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara (CA) 2018, p. 130.
  7. ↑ Tanya Lieske: On the death of Mirjam Pressler - "When happiness comes, you have to put him a chair". In: Books for Young Readers , Deutschlandfunk, January 19, 2019.
  8. ↑ cf. Klages: From Cosmogenic Eros.
  9. ↑ Allgemeine Verlagsanstalt, Munich. - In 1933, Held was one of 88 signatories of an address of allegiance to Hitler: pledge of most loyal allegiance ; Thomas Mann described this as a shame in his case (as one of two).
  10. ↑ Online see web links, full text