Chapter Twenty-Nine
TWENTY-NINE
The sun hadn’t yet risen when Faye peeked her head out of her bedroom. Down the hall, Greg was still sleeping. Grabbing her purse, she snuck out of Magic Mud Pottery and went to the local train station, where she boarded the first train for Manhattan. Three hours later, she arrived in Greenwich Village.
Finding the address for Rabbi Nachum Solovechick, an expert in Jewish folklore currently teaching at NYU, she made her way to his office. Heading up the stairs of a brownstone, she envisioned an old man, long beard, mumbling words of wisdom beneath a heavy Yiddish accident. He was anything but. Instead, a young man sporting a black kippah and talking on his cell phone waved her inside.
“I’m Faye,” she whispered, trying not to interrupt the conversation. “We’re supposed to be meeting at ten o’clock...to talk about golems.”
“One second,” Rabbi Solovechick mouthed back, pointing to a chair in front his desk, before returning to his conversation on the phone. “It’s in the box marked candles . I know it’s not a candle, but the box was open. I put it inside.”
Faye took a seat and glanced around the room. Serious-looking works of Jewish texts exploded from every shelf and corner. On his desk, next to the computer, sat a tiny golem figurine. To the side, a series of boxes, filled with even more books, was still in the process of being unpacked.
“Alright,” Rabbi Solovechick said. “I’m sorry. I know... Well, I love you, too.”
He clicked off the phone, putting it back into his pocket and turning to Faye.
“Sorry about that,” he said, taking a seat across from her.
“Not a problem,” she said. “I’m Faye. Faiga Kaplan. Our mutual friend Shulamit sent me.”
“Ah, right... Shulamit. How’s she doing?”
“Wonderful,” Faye said. “I see her almost every week, in some form or another.”
He nodded, and they spent a few more minutes talking mutual friends and upstate New York, before Rabbi Solovechick got right down to business. “So, what can I help you with today, Faye?”
An awkward silence filled the room. Despite spending all morning practicing her spiel, it still felt hard to continue. “I’m a ceramicist. I have a business in upstate New York called Magic Mud Pottery, where I make and sell my own pottery...and recently, I’ve gotten very interested in golems.”
He pursed his lips together. “Interesting.”
She shifted in her seat, trying to appear logical, an artist just doing research. “Before I begin, I felt it was important to do some research. I asked Shulamit to recommend me someone who would be considered an expert on the matter, and she suggested you.”
“She’s absolutely right,” Rabbi Solovechick said. “Golems are one of my favorite topics to teach. They are also what originally brought me to the world of the Jewish paranormal.”
“Really?”
“Of course.” He pushed that little clay man across his desk. “There isn’t a single creature in all of Jewish folklore that better encapsulates the story of the Jewish people. In many ways, you can say that the golem is the essence of the Jewish experience.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, let me ask you a question.” Rabbi Solovechick had a twinkle in his eye. It was obvious this topic excited him. “What do you know about the golem?”
Faye thought back to all the stories she had heard growing up as a kid, all the movies and TV shows she had seen, too. “I know that they’re usually created from clay. And you’re supposed to use Hebrew words to breathe life into them.”
“Good,” Rabbi Solovechick said, egging her forward. “Keep going.”
“And I know that they were most often created to defend Jews against anti-Semitic attacks, that there was a really famous rabbi in Prague who had one... But eventually, the golem becomes destructive. Dangerous. He winds up hurting the very community he is designed to protect and often...kills his creator.”
Rabbi Nachum Solovechick was smiling.
Faye didn’t understand.
“What?” Faye said. “Did I get something wrong?”
“It depends.”
“Depends?”
“On who’s telling the story...”
“I’m sorry.” Faye was really confused now. “I’m just... I’m not following you completely here. Did I get something wrong, or not?”
“Well, to understand that question,” he said, “we have to start at the beginning.”
“The first golem created?”
“The first appearance of the word.” He rose from his seat and, pulling a Hebrew English Tanakh, flipped to a page before handing it to Faye. “Psalm 139, verses 15 and 16. ‘Your eyes saw my undeveloped substance.’”
“Undeveloped substance?”
“Or unformed limbs,” he said, returning to his seat. “The meaning isn’t exactly clear...but this is the verse where the golem legends begin.”
“So, that’s all the golem story was in the beginning. One word?”
“One unclear word, and then, extrapolation. The rabbis of the Talmud want to understand what this word golem means...and so they study it, and eventually, a consensus emerges that the speaker of this phrase is Adam, the first man, and that he is praising God for forming him from this undeveloped substance of the earth.”
Faye couldn’t help but think back to the way she had created Gregolem. “So that’s why a golem is always made from clay and mud?”
“Not always,” Rabbi Solovechick said. “You see, for the next few centuries, we start to get these tales of rabbis who successfully create life. Sometimes, they do this through magic. Sometimes, they need the words of an innocent, like a child, to bring this artificial man to life. Usually, this creation is lacking something—he may be mute, for instance, unable to speak, or he can acquire the ability to speak over time. And yet, do you know what word never appears in these fantastical tales of our rabbis?”
Faye swallowed. “Golem?”
Rabbi Solovechick snapped his finger, excitedly. “That’s it,” he said. “Not once do they use the word golem . Instead, for centuries, we have these different stories floating around, and we have these stories of rabbis creating men, because creation is their primary focus. And this idea of a golem as a helper, or a defender against anti-Semitism, doesn’t even exist.”
“Huh,” Faye said, chewing on her lower lip. “I had no idea.”
“Now, something very important also happens during this time. A book called the Sefer Yetzira comes into creation. And this book, only about two thousand words long, suggests that letters of the Hebrew alphabet have divine power. That words, themselves, have power. And I’m not talking about just the power to hurt someone’s feelings, or even change someone’s political viewpoint... I’m talking about an actual mystical power to create a new reality. And do you know why we believe this?”
“No idea, actually.”
“Because God created the universe with a word,” Rabbi Solovechick said, pointing back to the Tanakh she was holding. “Turn to the first page of that. Genesis 1, verse 3...”
Faye flipped to the beginning of the Hebrew Bible.
“‘And God said—’” Rabbi Solovechick pointed to his lips “‘—let there be light, and there was light.’ He spoke, and the world came into creation. Language. The thing that separates us from all the other creatures. The ability to name. The ability to communicate, tell stories, transmit those stories to others. For Jews, language is creation. ”
Faye couldn’t help but think back to the anti-Semites operating in her town. They also used words, but unlike with Shulamit and her Say No to Hate Rally, they spread a gospel of hatred in order to do harm.
“I do understand,” Faye said, shifting in her seat. “I’m a Jewitch.”
“Ah,” he said, without any judgment. “So you’re familiar with this concept?”
“Words are the most powerful type of magic.”
“Indeed.”
Still, as much as she was enjoying these larger metaphysical questions on the nature of creation and narrative, she was here for more practical concerns. “But in terms of my project, and the golem...”
“Right,” he said, tapping himself on his forehead. “Sorry. I get carried away. Anyway, what I’m trying to explain to you is that, for many centuries, we have a word for golem, and we have stories of the rabbis creating life, but the two concepts haven’t merged yet. In fact, it’s not until we get to the eleventh and twelfth centuries that we start to see golems being created for utilitarian purposes.”
“Utilitarian purposes?” Faye asked. “Not against anti-Semitism.”
“Not yet,” he said, growing more animated with each stage of history described. “Solomon ibn Gabriol, a Spanish poet and philosopher, has a skin disease, and he makes a female golem to help him with household chores. Unlike later golems, she’s not made out of clay or mud...but wood and metal. And we see the golem story shift again. It’s not about creating life, but creating life to perform some service. And this continues, in various evolutions, in various transmissions, until we get to the story of Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague. Perhaps the most famous golem story of them all...”
Faye knew that story, too. She had learned that Rabbi Judah had made a golem to defend against anti-Semitic attacks in the ghetto where he resided.
“Except,” Rabbi Solovechick interrupted himself, “we have pretty clear evidence that Rabbi Judah Loew did not believe in magic or miracles. Also, historically speaking, blood libel charges were not happening in his community in the sixteenth century, so there would have been no need for him to create a golem to defend against charges of anti-Semitism. In fact, when we line up everything we know historically regarding the real Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, we come to learn that the entire story is legend, written and developed years after his death.”
“Wait.” Faye swallowed, her heart beginning to race inside her chest. “So if there was never a real golem of Prague, what about all the stories I’ve heard about golems being created to defend against anti-Semitism turning bad and destroying their creators?”
“And again—” he leaned back in his chair “—I ask you, who’s telling the story?”
“I don’t understand. Jews, right?”
“Take a trip back in time with me,” he said, waving his hand in the air, “to the years between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries.”
“Okay,” Faye said, willing to play along.
“Things are not going well for the Jewish people,” he said. “They are living in ghettos. They are experiencing horrible anti-Semitism. Blood libel charges, accusations that Jews engage in ritual murder of non-Jewish children, are frequent. Jews are being arrested, forced to undergo sham trials, murdered. In Russia, they are experiencing some of the most violent outbreaks of organized anti-Semitic violence. Their businesses are taken away from them, their homes burned down to the ground. There is a mass wave of refugees fleeing to places like America. And in the midst of all this terrible, awful, increasing hatred...two heroes appear.”
“Golems?” Faye asked, hopeful for the answer.
“Authors.”
“Oh.”
Faye slumped, disappointed, in her chair. It was not what she wanted to hear.
“Yudl Rosenberg is a rabbi living in Prague, and to enhance his income, he’s writing books on Jewish law, and midrash, and kabbalah. But unlike most of his peers at the time, Yudl also reads secular fiction, and understanding that the Jewish world he came from would not read such books, he crafts a story. He makes it look like a tale he discovered and translated from Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, and he writes it in a way that the Jewish world will accept it as a Jewish text. But it is absolutely a fictional story.”
Her mouth went dry. “It is?”
“But Yudl Rosenberg gives the Jewish people a hero. He writes this book about a golem, and he humanizes it. He gives the golem a name, feelings. The golem can be hurt, get angry and take revenge. The golem also does chores. He reads and writes. He can follow complicated instructions. He fights for and protects the Jewish people absolutely...and when the golem eventually dies, he dies peacefully. He is surrounded by his community, when Rabbi Judah lovingly removes the words from his mouth.”
Faye didn’t know what to say. “I’ve never... I didn’t know this story.”
“Most people don’t,” Rabbi Solovechick said sadly. “In fact, poor Yudl almost never gets remembered for the contributions he made in terms of the golem tale, even though that book he wrote went on to become a bestseller in the Jewish community during its time and even inspired other Jewish writers, such as a man named Chayim Bloch, to begin writing their own version of golem stories for the Jewish world they lived in. And yet you can see in Rabbi Rosenberg’s version all the golem stories that preceded it, all the history of these various Jewish moments, into one.”
It was fascinating. But it still didn’t answer one big question. Faye shifted in her seat. “So, when does the golem go bad? When do the stories start changing, and the golem becomes destructive?”
“You ready for it?” he said. “Pretty much at the same exact time.”
“I don’t... I don’t understand.”
“Gustav Meyrink, a German language writer, pens Der Golem in 1915. And because we are in a time period that is rife with Jew-hatred, his version of a golem reflects his anti-Semitic beliefs...”
Rabbi Solovechick picked up the golem doll on his desk, analyzing it.
“The Jews in his story,” he continued, “are not just outsiders, but parasites. They use the blood of Christian babies in their magic rituals to destroy the nations they are a part of...and for creating a golem, they are punished. The golem returns every thirty-three years to wreak havoc on the Jewish people.”
Faye didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t believe that the story of the golem she knew, the one she had held in her head when first creating her golem doll...was inherently anti-Semitic.
“That story,” Rabbi Solovechick explained, “would go on to be a bestseller, as well, though amongst a broader non-Jewish audience. It would be translated into multiple languages, get reviewed in the New York Times , and go on to serve as the basis for films, which Meyrink himself worked on.”
“And what about Yudl?” Faye had to ask. “What happened to his version of the golem story?”
“Largely forgotten, I’m afraid.”
Faye stared down at her shoes. “So that’s what you mean by it depends on who’s telling the story...”
“The thing you need to understand about the golem,” Rabbi Solovechick continued, “is that there isn’t just one real version. That’s why I say there is no better barometer for the Jewish experience, and Jewish folklore, than the golem. The golem is a Rorschach test for what Jews are currently experiencing in their history, in their time, and as times change, the legend of the golem changes with it. It builds, and builds, and builds on the stories that came before it.
“Until the golem is the past, present, and future, all wrapped into one.”
She sighed. This had not gone the way she had hoped, or expected.
“So, you don’t actually believe that a golem can exist?”
“Oh no,” Rabbi Solovechick said resolutely. “I absolutely believe that golems exist.”
Her hope reappeared. “You do?”
“I believe in sheydim , mazzikin , and the power of a bracha . I believe that a word can literally change our reality. So, of course, there could be real-life golems out there. Because words create and words destroy. Which means, when we write a golem story, tell the narrative, reclaim what came before in order to make it our own...then somewhere, at least according to our tradition, that golem exists.”
“Great,” Faye said, pulling her chair in closer. “Staying on this topic for a moment, how would one get rid of a golem that they created?”
“You mean a real golem?”
“Yeah,” she said. “If there isn’t one version...if you’ve already tried all the ideas offered up online, and your golem is still...you know, living in your house, sometimes disappearing for hours without explanation?”
Rabbi Solovechick thumbed his lower lip, thinking it over. “I’m not sure.”
Faye grimaced. “Could you maybe try and venture a guess here?”
“I suppose,” Rabbi Solovechick said finally, “if the golem is an amalgamation of its creator’s will and desire, along with the memory of golem stories that came before, then my hunch would be that only the creator can write the story of its destruction. The spell for removal must come from them, from their words and actions—whatever that looks like—because it was their words and actions that created the thing to begin with.”
It was something.
Faye thanked the rabbi for his time and, gathering up her things, moved to return to Woodstock.
On the train ride back home that afternoon, Faye reflected on her meeting with the rabbi. On the night she had created Gregolem, she had been drunk. She had created him from clay, writing words, a wish list for the perfect man—the perfect hero against anti-Semitism—onto his head and body. But she also had, in the back of her mind, in her memory, the history of all those golem stories she’d heard before.
Perhaps it was a self-fulfilling prophecy that she was losing control of her golem. But then again, Rabbi Solovechick had provided one very helpful piece of advice. Only the creator can write the story of its destruction.
Pulling out a notebook and pen from her pocketbook, she began sketching a spell. If Faye had created Gregolem from words and memories, she could certainly get rid of him that way, too.