Trutharchivist

So, golem. Plural form in Hebrew: glamim. In English: golems. Meaning in Mishnaic Hebrew: dumb, more or less. Common meaning in modern times: a legendary human-like creature made of clay and animated using Kabbalah (usually a piece of paper with holy names on it is included). You've probably heard of those at some point - they're not uncommon in Fantasy novels nowadays. You could perhaps call them the Jewish contribution to the Fantasy genre.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan. I mean, yeah, I love Fantasy, and my Judaism is a huge part of my identity, so connecting the two would naturally interest me. And it does. But like my many complaints about underrepresentation of Judaism in Fantasy literature, I just don't see glamim as a good representation. I'll get to it in more depth later - because I want to first give address the origin of the golem. Not etymologically - I'm afraid I didn't do much research on why a word for a dumb person became the word for an artificially created human - but where did the idea of an artificially created human originated from. 

Well, the first time I know of that mentions such a thing is the Talmud (Sanhedrin 65B): it says that one Amora (a sage of the Talmudic era) created a man and sent it to another Amora. The other Amora trued talking to him and when he didn't reply he realized he was created by his friend and told him to turn back to dust - which he probably did. Afterwards two Amoras are said to have created a calf using Sefer Yetzira (lit. Book of Creation) and ate it. Anyway, we see here that: a. Supposedly, some people can create living beings using knowledge from a certain book, and b. The creation is distinct from humans by inability to speak, or perhaps inability to understand human languages. There has been later some halachic discussion on whether killing such a man is forbidden, and even later - on whether such a man can join a minyan - there are things that require ten Jewish men older than 13 to say, so does such a man that was created count? The discussion over both questions is not very elaborate, but it exists. Anyway, this also gives us Sefer Yetzira as the origin of the ability to create people. This book still exists and is known today - it's one of the oldest books of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, we have. To my knowledge, though, it doesn't explain in detail how can one create a man - it deals more on how G-d created the world, from the little I know of it.

Not much is said about creating people like this for centuries - until about the 18th century, when people started telling stories about the Golem of Prague. The story goes that Rabbi Yehudah Loew, better known as the Maharal of Prague, created a golem using Sefer Yetzira to help him against blood libels and anti-Semitic stuff in general. The golem served as Maharal's aid and was mute and deaf - and also very strong. There are many tales about him - mostly about blood libels being disproven and such things. The last story says that Maharal forgot one week to turn him off before Shabbat (I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's what it says. He used to turn him off every week, apparently), so the golem caused mayhem and promptly was shut down. Its body is said to be in the attic of Maharal's synagogue - the Altneuschul in Prague. It's forbidden to go to the attic - I'm being serious, they don't let people go up there - though some people probably do enter every now and then. I don't even know if people still pray in this synagogue (I never was to Prague myself, otherwise I would've checked), but it's something of a tourist attraction.

The sad part of it all is really how most people remember Maharal just because of thus story. He wrote plenty of books that people study to this day, but outside of Jewish places of learning he's mostly the guy who created a golem.

Anyway, that's the most famous golem story. There are at least two others I've heard of - both end with the golem malfunctioning somehow: one grew uncontrollably, another was asked to oil a wagon's wheels and oiled the entire wagon. Both were subsequently turned off - somewhat less dramatically than in the Prague golem's story. None of them was known to speak.

Yeah, yeah, I've mentioned this part quite a few times. I think it's rather important: in the creation of Adam, the first human, G-d is said to breath the breath of life unto him, and thus man became a living being - only the old translator Onkelos interprets it a tad differently. He says that Man became a speaking creature. Speech is something unique to human beings, and so is (supposedly) not for men to give. It doesn't make mute people to any less human, but this is probably why every golem in the original folklore is mute.

And now for what I hinted on in the start: what's my problem with this representation of Judaism? It's understandable if we're talking about things like Feet of Clay, which just uses glamim as a Fantasy creature without anything of the Jewish context, since it doesn't even try to do that. But what about the Golem and the Jinni? This book occurs in our world, and does present Jewish (and Syrian-Muslim) culture. 

So, yeah, I just wrote the whole thing because someone offered me this book as possibly good Jewish representation. And the thing is, I've read this book (well, the first book, a sequel was published two years ago) a while ago. I still more or less remember it. I think I've somewhat liked it at the time. But I'm not sure I'd go for it as good Jewish representation.

Why that is? Well, let's start from the fact glamim are connected to Kabbalah. Now please, don't assume that this is all Jewish mysticism is about - creating glamim - because it's not. Just like most of Judaism, it's a way to study the Torah - focusing on how G-d created the world, more or less. I didn't study it much, for multiple reasons - one of them being a traditional prohibition against studying it before turning 40 and being well-versed in other parts of the Torah (in this case used as a term for the entirety of Jewish religious texts). And that's rather the point: by focusing on glamim, one tends to focus on Kabbalah - not only that, it's a very specific branch called Kabbalah Ma'asit, or Practical Kabbalah, which is uncommon even among people who do study Kabbalah. There's no way you'll get it right, but even ignoring that, it's taking a very specific part of Judaism and taking it somewhat out of context. Whether Practical Kabbalah is an actual possible practice or not (I'm not going to get into that right now), it's not really a good representation of Judaism as a whole. Now, it's not all focused on that; there are points where the Jewish community of New York is present. I still think it's not much, and while my memory is fuzzy about it, I think a lot of it is non-religious people and that it shies away from actually presenting much of the religious community. Plus Kabbalah is basically treated as magic, but I can get where that comes from.

Anyway, hope that explains why I don't think the Golem and the Jinni is a good Jewish representation, and why I might be hesitant on reading books that supposedly where inspired by Kabbalah. Maybe I'm just speaking nonsense, maybe I failed to explain the depths of it all. Anyway, hope you've enjoyed reading that.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day!