ASK THE GOLEM — TITLE SUGGESTED BY JANE HOLT

Jane and I have just finished laughing about the title of this blog. I was thinking of starting a column for a local newspaper with this as my working title. After all, what questions do you ask a golem? Before I go on I must say that I just finished a short story about 20 pages long tentatively called, “The Dis-Enchanted Golem,” the hyphen having importance. It is a part of a working collection of new short stories called, again tentatively, “Tales of the Holocaust and other Fun Stories.” In any case a golem is a kind of dolt made up out of clay, mud, earth. During the medieval period he was invoked by Cabalists (pre-Madonna kind) during moments of great jeopardy for Jewish communities which essentially is the last 2,000 years. The golem’s task was to slay those Christians who had killed Jews or were about to do so. To those of you who know more than I do about this creature, hold your horses. In any case I wanted to write a story about a golem. Inaccurate. I began to takes notes and the story just began and over three days it was finished. I will leave it to cool down and come back to it later. However, the questions I raised in the story are still with me. What is a golem except a mudpie without a neshamah, a soul? What does this jewish robot feel about killing? What happens to the Jew who brings him forth? Is he a Dr. Frankenstein? And what happens psychologically, emotionally, to the golem? Mary Shelley’s story has the influence of the Jewish golem tradition within its fabric, I give you as an aside. So, my story deals with ethical questions, explores the “feelings” of the golem as avenger? Jews invoke monsters periodically because as Jews in medieval times they could not have arms in the ghettoes of Europe. They were defenseless except in the one place goyim could not get at — their powers of conceptualization. I see the golem as a product of the Diaspora, a product of Jewry of the Middle Ages.

So reader what questions might you ask a golem. Dick Cheyney is a goyish golem. What might you ask him? A neshamah he does not have, I say with a pronounced Yiddish inflection. The golem in my story is the monster asking or beginning to ask questions of his creator — on the way to awareness, a recurrent theme in my writing, on the yellow brick road to owning a soul. I have another story which deals with a golem and I am beginning to consider that the golem has meaning for me beyond that of a story feature. Metaphorically we might argue that we are all born as golems and that our task is to acquire intention and soul, otherwise we remain sodden and sullen, clay dolts throughout our years. I am an educated golem, for that is what I have done with my life. As to wisdom? As to compassion? As to ethics and values? Issues for me, not you, to explore. However, would it not be interesting to have a golem columnist, coming to ideas and questions from his readers with the perspective of a golem?

“Dear Golem: Should I marry a man who is of the Christian  faith?”  Golem: “Go ahead. Who knows but one day I may be called forth to kill the son-of-a bitch.”

Dear Golem: Should I convert to my husband’s faith. He is Jewish. Golem: “Why would you choose to take on such a burden?”

I am open to other Golem repartee — just email this site.

In “The Dis-Enchanted Golem” our golem is invoked by a tsaddik which is a good and pious man who knows the Cabala. The story really is an examination by me of what it is to be a creature destined to avenge and subject to his creator’s needs. It is, I suppose, a story about will and the awakening of intelligence. I have written several stories of late about Holocaust victims and Holocaust experiences,  trying to dwell deeper into that horror show of the Twentieth Century. The golem is a fanciful tradition that reveals the Jewish mind’s attempt to cope with the horrors they came upon. Why not create a monster to seek out and kill one’s pursuers? Yet, from what I have read, there were rules and regulations, the rational side of the Jewish mystical tradition. The golem is raised, Frankenstein is made. Historian Jay Gonen  in his Psychohistory of Zionism suggested that like the Golem, “Israel was created to protect the physical safety of Jews through the use of physical power. In this allegorical fashion, Golem still lives.”

ASK THE GOLEM: Dear Golem: “What do you think of the ‘The Terminator’ in the movies? Golem: “As a robot he talks too much, thinks too little, acts too much; he is misdirected, flamboyant and purpose driven only. Personally, es zol dir farshporn fun fornt un fun hintn — you should be blocked up from in front and from behind.