Cover

THE TRIBE

BARI WOOD

With a new introduction by

GRADY HENDRIX

VALANCOURT BOOKS

Introduction by Grady Hendrix

INTRODUCTION

Besides Steven Spielberg, the Golem is Judaism’s most famous contribution to show business. Formed from clay, usually silent, oversized, and superstrong, with the Hebrew word emeth (truth) engraved on its forehead,* it’s been a Pokemon (card #076), the subject of numerous movies (The Golem and the Dancing Girl, 1917; Der Golem, 1920; Le Golem, 1936; The Emperor and the Golem, 1951; It!, 1967), the focus of a 1974 CBS Radio Mystery Theater episode set in Central Europe during World War II, and even the star of the Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror XVII” segment, “You’ve Gotta Know When to Golem”. On the literary side, it featured in Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, appeared as a superhero in DC Comics’ 1991 Ragman miniseries, and in three of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.

Golems are only mentioned once in the Bible as an “unformed body” (Psalms 139:16), the Talmud refers to Adam as a Golem before life is breathed into him, and there are references to Golem in the Sefer Yetzirah, an ancient book of Jewish mysticism. There’s also a vaguely anti-Semitic sketch of a Golem published by Jacob Grimm (of Brothers Grimm fame) in 1808, and an extremely anti-Semitic gold-digging, penny pinching lady Golem created to be a sexual surrogate in Ludwig Achim von Arnim’s gothic novel, Isabella of Egypt (1812). But the Golem we know and love originated in the early 19th century, about eighteen years after Mary Shelley’s similar-­but-different monster debuted in Frankenstein (1818).

Our Golem is the Golem of Prague, who first appeared in print sometime between 1836 and 1847, a clay humanoid animated by an all-star mystic, Rabbi Loew (d. 1609), who placed a piece of parchment containing a magic formula in its mouth. Created to perform menial tasks, the Golem rested every Sabbath in accordance with Holy Law when the Rabbi removed the parchment from its mouth. But one Sabbath he forgot and the Golem ran amuck until the parchment was removed and the Golem collapsed into a pile of dust.