Familiar: No
Spirit Animal: No
Spirit Guide: No
Totem: Yes
Mythical: Yes
Supernatural: Yes
Cryptid: No
Urban Legend: No
Creepypasta: No
A golem, in accordance with Jewish folklore, is an animated, anthropomorphic image endowed with life which is created entirely from inanimate matter, usually clay or mud. The term is used in the Bible (Psalms 139:16) and in Talmudic literature to refer to an embryonic or incomplete substance.
The word golem occurs once in the Bible, in Psalm 139:16, which uses the word גלמי (golmi; ‘my golem’, ‘my light form’, ‘raw material’) to connote the unfinished human being before God’s eyes. The Mishnah uses the term to refer to someone who is unsophisticated: “Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one”. This is not quite being used in the same sense as what we think of a golem today. The golem, brought into being by a human creator, becomes a helper, a companion, or a rescuer of an imperiled Jewish community. In many golem stories, the creature runs amok and the golem itself becomes a threat to its creator.
It assumed its present connotation in the Middle Ages, when many legends arose of wise men who could bring effigies to life by means of a charm or of a combination of letters forming a sacred word or one of the names of God. The letters, written on paper, were placed in the golem’s mouth or affixed to its head. The letters’ removal deanimated the golem.
The oldest stories of golems date to early Judaism. In the Talmud (Tractate Sanhedrin 38b), Adam is initially created as a golem (גולם) when his dust is “kneaded into a shapeless husk”. Like Adam, all golems are created from mud by those close to divinity, but no anthropogenic golem is fully human. Early on, the main disability of the golem was its inability to speak.
The Talmud relates a tale of rabbis who grew hungry while on a journey–so they created a calf out of earth and ate it for dinner. The kabbalists (Jewish mystics) determined that the rabbis did this magical act by means of permuting language, primarily utilizing the formulas set forth in the Sefer Yetzirah, or Book of Creation. The Sefer Yezirah (“Book of Creation”), often referred to as a guide to magical usage by some Western European Jews in the Middle Ages, contains instructions on how to make a golem. Several rabbis, in their commentaries on Sefer Yezirah have produced different understandings of the directions on how to make a golem. The kabbalists saw the creation of a golem as a kind of alchemical task, the accomplishment of which proved the adept’s skill and knowledge of Kabbalah.
It was believed that golems could be activated by by the ritual use of various letters of the Hebrew alphabet forming a shem (any one of the names of God), wherein the shem was written on a piece of paper and inserted in the mouth or into the forehead of the golem. Some sources say once the golem had been physically made one needed to write the letters aleph, mem, tav, which is emét (אמת) and means “truth,” on the golem’s forehead or its tongue and the golem would come alive. Erase the aleph (א) and you are left with mem and tav, which is mét, meaning “death.” (מת)
One source credits Solomon ibn Gabirol, who lived in the 11th century, with creating a golem, possibly female, for household chores. Samuel of Speyer also was said to have created a golem, in the 12th century.
The oldest description of the creation of a golem by a historical figure is included in a tradition connected to Rabbi Eliyahu of Chełm (1550–1583). A Polish Kabbalist, writing in about 1630–1650, reported the creation of a golem by Rabbi Eliyahu thusly: “And I have heard, in a certain and explicit way, from several respectable persons that one man living close to our time, whose name is R. Eliyahu, the master of the name, who made a creature out of matter and form and it performed hard work for him, for a long period, and the name of emet was hanging upon his neck until he finally removed it for a certain reason, the name from his neck and it turned to dust.” A similar account was reported by a Christian author, Christoph Arnold, in 1674.
Rabbi Jacob Emden elaborated on the story in a book published in 1748: “As an aside, I’ll mention here what I heard from my father’s holy mouth regarding the Golem created by his ancestor, the Gaon R. Eliyahu Ba’al Shem of blessed memory. When the Gaon saw that the Golem was growing larger and larger, he feared that the Golem would destroy the universe. He then removed the Holy Name that was embedded on his forehead, thus causing him to disintegrate and return to dust. Nonetheless, while he was engaged in extracting the Holy Name from him, the Golem injured him, scarring him on the face.”
The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th-century rabbi of Prague, also known as the Maharal, who reportedly “created a golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava River and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations to defend the Prague ghetto from antisemitic attacks and pogroms”. Depending on the version of the legend, the Jews in Prague were to be either expelled or killed under the rule of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. The Golem was called Josef and was known as Yossele. He was said to be able to make himself invisible and summon spirits from the dead. Rabbi Loew deactivated the Golem on Friday evenings by removing the shem before the Sabbath (Saturday) began, so as to let it rest on Sabbath. The Golem’s body was stored in the attic genizah of the Old New Synagogue, where it would be restored to life again if needed.
According to legend, the body of Rabbi Loew’s Golem still lies in the synagogue’s attic. When the attic was renovated in 1883, no evidence of the Golem was found. Some versions of the tale state that the Golem was stolen from the genizah and entombed in a graveyard in Prague’s Žižkov district, where the Žižkov Television Tower now stands. A recent legend tells of a Nazi agent ascending to the synagogue attic, dying under suspicious circumstances thereafter.
Old New Synagogue of Prague with the rungs of the ladder to the attic on the wall. In the legend, the Golem was in the loft
The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th-century rabbi of Prague, also known as the Maharal, who reportedly “created a golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava River and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations to defend the Prague ghetto from antisemitic attacks and pogroms”. Depending on the version of the legend, the Jews in Prague were to be either expelled or killed under the rule of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor. The Golem was called Josef and was known as Yossele. He was said to be able to make himself invisible and summon spirits from the dead. Rabbi Loew deactivated the Golem on Friday evenings by removing the shem before the Sabbath (Saturday) began, so as to let it rest on Sabbath. The Golem’s body was stored in the attic genizah of the Old New Synagogue, where it would be restored to life again if needed.
According to legend, the body of Rabbi Loew’s Golem still lies in the synagogue’s attic. When the attic was renovated in 1883, no evidence of the Golem was found. Some versions of the tale state that the Golem was stolen from the genizah and entombed in a graveyard in Prague’s Žižkov district, where the Žižkov Television Tower now stands. A recent legend tells of a Nazi agent ascending to the synagogue attic, dying under suspicious circumstances thereafter.
The existence of a golem is sometimes a mixed blessing. Golems are not intelligent, and if commanded to perform a task, they will perform the instructions literally. In many depictions, golems are inherently perfectly obedient. In its earliest known modern form, the Golem of Chełm became enormous and uncooperative. In one version of this story, the rabbi had to resort to trickery to deactivate it, whereupon it crumbled upon its creator and crushed him.
The Clay Boy
A Yiddish and Slavic folktale is the Clay Boy, which combines elements of the golem and The Gingerbread Man, in which a lonely couple makes a child out of clay, with disastrous or comical consequences.
In one common Russian version, an older couple, whose children have left home, make a boy out of clay and dry him by their hearth. The Clay Boy (Russian: Glínyanyĭ párenʹ) comes to life; at first, the couple is delighted and treats him like a real child, but the Clay Boy does not stop growing and eats all their food, then all their livestock, and then the Clay Boy eats his parents. The Clay Boy rampages through the village until he is smashed by a quick-thinking goat.
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