The Golem: Super Villain or Super Hero?

The creature made of clay was brought to life by the name of God to protect the Jewish people. Did it fulfill its purpose?

Throughout Jewish history, there have been different incarnations of the Golem – an amorphous creature made of mud or clay that was given life using the extended name of God. Some have painted the Golem as a hero, coming to life just in time to save the Jewish community, while in other stories the Golem is depicted as a murderous villain and uncontrollable demon.

Though there have been many iterations of the Golem, in the classic telling of the story, Judah Loew Ben Bezalel, the late 16th century rabbi known as the Maharal of Prague, was said to have formed a Golem out of clay after deciding that the Jewish community was in need of a defender against rising anti-Semitic attacks. The Maharal brought the figure to life using magic rituals, Hebrew incantations and by placing the ineffable name of God in the clay figure’s mouth. Thus was born the Golem of Prague whom the rabbi named Yosseleh.

Jewish museum with a statue of the Golem in Úštěk

Yosseleh the Golem possessed a unique skill set. According to the classic tale, the Golem could make himself invisible and summon the spirits of the dead. Defender of the Jewish community during the week, the Maharal allowed Yosseleh to rest on the Sabbath along with the rest of the community. He would deactivate the Golem every Friday evening by removing the name of God from his mouth.

According to some of the legends, one Friday, the Maharal forgot to deactivate the Golem. Yosseleh, in a fit of rage, ran amok, damaging the city and causing physical harm to the unfortunate people who happened to be in his way. The Maharal, realizing what happened, ran out into the streets and managed to deactivate the rampaging Golem and put an end to the destruction.

An alternative end to the story of the Golem explains that the threat of anti-Semitism had passed and the clay protector was no longer needed. Rabbi Loew quietly removed the name of God from his mouth and the Golem was deactivated forever. The mute presence of Yosseleh, simply disappeared from community life, and the clay form of the Golem was put in storage in the attic of the synagogue where it still believed to be resting today.

Old New Synagogue or Altneuschul Prague as photographed by Øyvind Holmstad

The Golem, a creature shrouded in mystery, has drawn continued interest over the centuries. The story of the Golem has been reenacted and reinvented many times and has served as a source of inspiration for artists, sculptors, scientists, movies, books, dramatic productions and comic book heroes.

There is much speculation as to whether the Golem was a benign creature expected to obey its creator or if it was a monstrous creature, prone to fits of rage and destruction. The Golem’s silver screen debuts came in a series of movies produced between 1915 and 1920. The most popular film in the series was a silent horror film where the Golem is used without the permission of Rabbi Loew by his assistant. The assistant, not knowing how to properly control the Golem, sets the Golem on a destructive rampage in which a man is killed and fire is set to the synagogue.

In 1925, in the Land of Israel, the Golem was adapted for the “Habimah” stage. In the original performance, the Golem, brought to life to protect the Jewish ghetto, was treated with much suspicion by the local community. The Golem turned his frustration at being different back onto the community and used his tremendous strength, the very thing that was supposed to protect the Jews from anti-Semitic attacks, to murder the Jews themselves. In the face of the evolving catastrophe, the Maharal was forced to return the Golem to the lump of dirt from which he came.

The Golem took to the stage many times in the years following, enthralling the community in the Yeshuv.

A poster advertising a performance of “The Golem’s Dream,” at Habimah theater, from the NLI Ephemera collection.

The Golem returned to the public in later years in the form of a Marvel comic book where the Golem, “The thing that walks like a man,” was featured as the great defender who draws his strength from the truth and has the Hebrew letters אמת (truth) emblazoned on his forehead.

Elie Weisel, in his retelling of the classic tale, wished that the Maharal would have allowed the Golem to continue his work as defender of the Jews.

“Ah, if only the Golem were still among us… I would sleep more peacefully. Why did the Maharal take him from us? Did he really believe that the era of suffering and injustice was a thing of the past? That we no longer needed a protector, a shield?”

While the Golem has captured audiences worldwide, there is no proof that the Golem ever existed. Aside from the fact that the story requires a firm belief in the supernatural, Rabbi Loew himself, the purported creator of the Golem, never mentioned creating a Golem in any of his writings.

Real or not, the existence of a creature fighting in defense of the downtrodden in the spirit of truth, carries a universal message that has inspired audiences across the globe for centuries on end. Who knows? Maybe someday the Golem will return to defend the truth in an ever evolving world.

This post was written as part of Gesher L’Europa, the NLI’s initiative to connect with Europe and make our collections available to diverse audiences in Europe and beyond.

How a Man Named Saul Became King for a Day in Poland

This is the legend of how a tiny Torah was commissioned by a Jew who served as king of Poland for just one day.

Chen Malul | 28.05.18

סודות כתבי היד העבריים

The Torah scroll dedicated to Rabbi Saul Wahl

A Jewish King in Poland? An oxymoron if ever there was one. Yet, at the National Library of Israel, we have a small and rare Torah scroll, no taller than 10 centimeters, dedicated to one Saul Wahl, the crowned Jewish King of Poland- for just one day.

Saul Katzenellenbogen was born in 1541 into a well-off Jewish family from Venice. His father, Rabbi Samuel Yehuda Katzenellenbogen, was the chief rabbi of the prosperous Venetian Jewish community. After growing up and receiving his education in Italy, Saul was sent to Poland to teach in one of its prestigious yeshivot.

Saul’s religiosity did not prevent him from entering more earthly business ventures. He entered the trade business and in 1580, Saul moved to Krakow to run the salt mines of the King of Poland that were leased out to make a profit for the monarchy. Saul was extremely successful in his time in the salt mines and quickly became a close and loyal adviser to the king.

Stephen Báthory, the king to whom Saul Katzenellenbogen advised

However, this is not the whole story. How could it be? Well, when you combine the real story behind the man, and the legend of the man, the combination makes for a story so fantastic, it is almost unbelievable.

When the king of Poland died, a painful war of succession began. The holy constitution of the Kingdom of Poland determined that a new king can be coronated only after he is elected by the lords of the court – a process that must not take more than 21 days. The Polish lords sequestered themselves and tried to make sense of the process, but the deliberations went on and on and instability reigned. There was no hint of a resolution on the horizon and the deadline to crown a new king was coming due.

In order to uphold the sanctity of the constitution and to keep the kingdom from falling to anarchy, an ingenious idea was proposed: Saul Katzenellenbogen, the late king’s trusted adviser and loyal friend, would be crowned temporary king for one day. They reasoned that, because everyone knew Katzenellenbogen to be an honest man, he would not consider usurping the throne nor would he stay upon it longer than was necessary. Thus, Saul Katzenellenbogen became Saul “Wahl,” which means “The Chosen” in Polish, and he was crowned king.

As the newly minted king of Poland, Saul Wahl Katzenellenbogen wasted no time. While the lords continued agonizing over the selection of a new king, King Saul put out multiple decrees aimed at improving the status of the Jews living in the Kingdom of Poland.

At the end of his first and only day as king, King Saul was asked to decide between the final two royal candidates and it was his choice that brought about the coronation of King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland.

The tiny Torah in the National Library’s collections dedicated to King Saul Wahl gives veracity to the idea that there really was a temporary Jewish King.

However, there is no true historical evidence to support this. The legend of the Jewish King of Poland comes to us from non-Jewish sources and may indeed be a fabrication, but does that truly matter?

Photos of the small Torah by Hanan Cohen, the National Library of Israel

The Red that Created a Revolution

In 1868, a German laboratory synthesized a color that changed the course of the Industrial Revolution.

The National Library of Israel | 27.05.18

History of Science

Friedrich Bayer & Co. Dye Label. 1865. From the Edelstein Collection in the National Library of Israel

The year 2018 marks the 150th anniversary of the first synthesis in a laboratory of a complex, naturally occurring organic chemical product. This was the important red dye known as alizarin, obtained from the root of the madder plant. The madder red, second in importance only to indigo blue, had been used as a versatile dye for hundreds of years and is best known for its application in production of the famous Turkey red cloth. By clever application of the agents used to fix the dye to cloth, various shades and hues could be achieved from the same dye.

Eduard Lauber, Praktisches Handbuch des Zeugdrucks, Moscow, 1887. From the Sidney Edelstein Collection, the National Library of Israel

The chemical synthesis of alizarin was achieved in early 1868 by Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann (a relative of the artist Max Liebermann), who were research assistants of the chemist Adolf Baeyer. The significance of this achievement lay in the tremendous industrial importance of the natural dye, which was often applied using high-speed printing machines that colored millions of yards of cloth. As an outcome of the synthesis, alizarin was manufactured on vast scales in Britain and Germany, which in a flash, almost wiped out much of the cultivation and trade in the natural dye. This success was the main stimulus for the emergence of the synthetic dye industry, which transformed coal tar waste into alizarin and a myriad of other colored textile dyes. The early dyes were based on the chemical known as aniline, which gave its name to the industry.

Theodore Herzl was so impressed that, in 1896, he was inspired to write a short story, ‘The Aniline Inn’, in which, just like the transformation, or processing, of waste tar into ‘beautiful radiant colors’, the oppressed Jewish peoples could turn their despair into highly colorful achievement. This ‘refuse of human society’ was then waiting to be processed and given purpose in the Jewish State.

The synthesis of alizarin stimulated scientific studies into the chemical constitutions and molecular structures of both natural products such as alizarin and indigo, and others without analogous colors in nature. In 1868, only a partial structure could be drawn for alizarin. Six years later, the modern structure of alizarin was published by Adolf Baeyer and the industrial chemist Heinrich Caro at BASF, a chemical company based in Ludwigshafen.

This advance drew on, and in many ways reinforced, the acceptance of Kekulé’s famous six membered benzene ring of 1865. It also led to scientific studies into all novel colorants, such that within a few years it was possible to create color by design. This was a high point of the second industrial revolution, based on chemical industry and electricity. Synthetic dyes represented the very first high-tech science-based industry.

Badische Anilin & Soda Fabrik, Anilinfarben auf Halbwolle, Ludwigshafen, 1910. From the Sidney Edelstein Collection, the National Library of Israel

By the close of the 19^th century, Germany practically dominated the industry of making synthetic dyes. This success relied on the opening of dedicated research laboratories, and collaborations between industry and technical institutes. In 1897, two German firms, BASF and Hoechst, commenced the manufacture of synthetic indigo, which within a few years displaced the blue natural product imported into Europe from India.

This revolution in the production of textile dyes, which began with synthetic alizarin, and its implications for global industries and economies, as well as for progress in science and technology, is recorded in the magnificent collection of books, pamphlets, recipes and archival documents gathered together by Sidney M. Edelstein. Today these documents are held with the Sidney M. Edelstein Library for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine at the National Library of Israel.

Philip Roth: Life in the Shadow of Portnoy

After publishing “Portnoy’s Complaint,” Roth found himself fielding accusations of anti-Semitism from Jewish leaders across the globe - and even from his own mother.

Melody Barron | 23.05.18

“She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.”

― Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint

Philip Roth wrote several books before publishing his novel, “Portnoy’s Complaint,” which hit the book stores in 1969. The book became a fast best-seller and a source of controversy that haunted Roth throughout his career and life as a novelist.

A polarizing and confrontational book, “Portnoy’s Complaint” brought to the forefront the inner machinations of the mind of a character portraying the direct opposite of the idealized Jew in America. Roth wrote the novel voiced as a stream of consciousness that many considered obscene to the point of being worthy of censorship. Indeed, for many years, “Portnoy’s Complaint” was banned in many public libraries due to the use of unpolished language and an explicit description of masturbation.

The convention of framing the story as a psychoanalytical session, the sexually explicit nature of the book, along with the main character’s, Alexander Portnoy, neurosis seemed to feed the worst stereotypes held of Jews after the Second World War, a representation that caused an outcry in American and Israeli public discourse.

The great Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah researcher, Gershom Scholem, was so incensed by the book that he wrote a scathing and contemptuous review and sent it out across the world.

[Content Warning: The text below contains language that may be inappropriate for young audiences]

Gershom Scholem’s scathing review of Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint,” found in the Gershom Scholem Collection at the National Library of Israel

“Let the pollyannas not tell us that here we have satire, although it may that into the hearts of those who say this some doubts about the work may already have crept. The hero of a best-seller, which is being grabbed avidly by the public, proclaims as the basic motto of his whole life (and lives his proclamation) that his behavior is shaped by but one lust: to get ‘shikse c**t.’

…And all of this in order to square accounts with that demonic figure, the Yiddishe Mame, who had not been told all that she deserved until this author came along and ‘artistic’ release to his secret drives. This hero is no longer some miserable individual writing in his lust; he is the Jew taking vengeance of his upbringing in the Jewish home, which has become detestable to him, and going forth to lay shikses, thereby freeing himself from his nightmare of mame.

This is the book for which all anti-Semites have been praying. I daresay that with the next turn of history, which surely will not be long delayed, this book will make all of us defendants at court.”

Scholem was part of a vocal contingent of Jewish readers and critics who would continue to call Philip Roth “self-hating” and an “anti-Semite” for the ways in which he portrayed Jews in his fiction. Philip Roth actively engaged with the storm of criticism more than once and was very self-aware of his position as an American Jew and as an author of Jewish characters in America.

“Reading Myself and Others,” by Philip Roth, Jonathan Cape LTD, 1961

In “Reading Myself and Others,” Roth responded directly to the sort of criticism that Scholem pitched at him in the interview, “On Portnoy’s Complaint (1974),” where he was asked by George Plimpton about the accusations of anti-Semitism:

“… I have always been far more pleased by my good fortune in being born a Jew than my critics may begin to imagine. It’s a complicated, interesting, morally demanding, and very singular experience and I like that. I find myself in the historic predicament of being Jewish, with all its implications. Who could ask for more? But as for those charges you mention- yes they probably will be leveled at me. Because of the U.N. condemnation of Israeli ‘aggression,’ and the anti-Semitic rage flaring up in the black community, many American Jews must surely be feeling more alienated than they have in a lone time; consequently, I don’t think it’s a moment when I can expect a book as unrestrained as this one to indulged or even tolerated, especially in those quarters where I was not exactly hailed as the Messiah to begin with.”

Though it was “Portnoy’s Complaint” that skyrocketed Roth into literary stardom, his other books and stories like “Goodbye, Columbus,” only gave fodder to the rabbis who charged him with the aforementioned “self-hatred.” In his essay, “On Writing Jews,” published in 1963, Roth explained:

“Among the letters I receive from readers. There have been a number written by Jews accusing me of being anti-Semitic and “self-hating,” or at least tasteless…

Furthermore, it is charged that such criticism as I make of Jews- or apparent criticism- is taken by anti-Semites as justification of their attitudes, as ‘fuel’ for their fires, particularly as it is a Jew himself who seemingly admits to habits and behavior that not exemplary, or even normal and acceptable. When I speak before Jewish audiences, invariably there have been people who have come up to me afterward to ask, “Why don’t you leave us alone? Why don’t you write about the Gentiles? – ‘Why must you be so critical?’ – ‘Why do you disapprove of us so? …’

It is difficult, if not impossible, to explain to some of the people claiming to have felt my teeth sinking in that in many instance they haven’t been bitten at all. Not always, but frequently, what readers have taken to be my disapproval of their lives lived by Jews seems to have to do more with their own moral perspective than with the one they would ascribe to me: at times they see wickedness where I myself had seen energy or courage or spontaneity; they are ashamed of what I see no reason to be ashamed of, and defensive where there is no cause for defense.”

“Portnoy’s Complaint,” cover by Lowe and Brydone Limited, London, 1969

It is not with a little irony that Roth’s own mother questioned his position:

“My mother did say to me at one point, ‘Philip, are you anti-Semitic?’ And so I said, ‘Ma, what do you think? You’ve known me since kindergarten and before.’ But they were getting that from the Rabbi, you know?”

Philip Roth, through his fictional works, never stopped exploring his complicated existence as an American Jew in an America in which he happened to be Jewish. His characters beyond Alexander Portnoy, including Nathan Zukerman and his own fictional alter-ego, Philip Roth, made up a collection of unforgettable stories that influenced the literary world far beyond the scope of Jewish-American writing.

Philip Roth died on May 22, 2018 at the age of 85.