The Golem and the Jewish Superhero

[Music] so okay hi hello i have to get something out of the way right at the top not this golem this ain't an essay about smeagle you can still make your my precious jokes in the comments they're all very funny and good for engagement but we're not talking about middle earth here thank you now the golem spelled like that is well it's a jewish thing do you know that to some of you that'll be very obvious to others it might be the first you're hearing of it the golem is a piece of jewish folklore in some ways it is a very specific myth and others it's quite loose and now in the 21st century it's kind of everywhere and all of this the origin its interpretations its modern permutations ties into what makes it such a fascinating cultural object but i think we need to make sure we've all got like a base level of knowledge here the golem as with many jewish stories is something i heard about as a kid i probably got pieces of it as a bedtime story at some point or maybe maybe part of a joke but i know the first complete telling of it i heard was from this book daniel wisniewski's gollum and yes this is a kids book it has big pictures but i want to give you the same introduction i had to this myth and also i think this book is good as hell so take a seat class story time okay daniel wisniewski's gollum written and illustrated by the man himself published in 1996 marked discard oops we will not be doing that before we start one thing i want to point out is that this book uses cut paper illustrations which is a style i've really never seen used in a book like this and it makes it just unbelievably striking it's probably the reason i have such vivid memories after so many years don't worry i'll make sure everyone gets a chance to see the pictures so we open in prague in 1580. as we'll get to later prague in 1580 is not the first incidence of the idea of a gollum but it is where virtually everyone puts the big gollum story the first line of the book is within the beautiful city of prague fierce hatreds have raged for a thousand years prague then was a city with a sizable jewish population and a jewish quarter including as wisniewski writes here a walled ghetto we're still on the first page when he says one of the most important parts of the story here the jews of prague were bearing the ignorant fury of others enemies had accused them of mixing the blood of christian children with the flower and water of matzah he calls this the blood lie it's also frequently referred to as blood libel it's basically the myth that jews would kidnap and ritually sacrifice christian kids the blood libels were a real thing they're a historical event were they happening in 1580 uh but i digress the jews in the story are straight up not having a good time on the next page we meet the major player for the golem story rabbi lowe rabbi lowe is a real dude who was the chief rabbi of prague around this time in the book he knows that bad vibes are on the horizon for the jews and he's not sure what to do about it then he falls asleep and has a vision of a divinely written word golem gimel lamid mem he already knows what a gollum is because he's a rabbi and they're supposed to know such things gollum was a giant of living clay animated by kabbalah mystical teachings of untold power kambala is jewish mysticism you might have heard about celebrities doing kabbalah stuff it's got a a weird place in the current day honestly it was weird back then too you just heard me say man of living clay things are a little kooky personally i'd like to think that madonna started to do kabbalah specifically because of how into the golem she was but that's probably optimistic anyway rabbi lowe realizes that this drastic step creating a golem is necessary and so he and some helpers go to the banks of a river under the cover of night they get a bunch of clay and he shapes it into a giant man-shaped lump and then as you can see from the illustration stuff gets wild rabbi lowe essentially animates his clay brings it to life ish the story mentioned earlier this is like a high level technique most people can't bring clay to life but rabbi lowe is a level 100 boss so he does it without too much trouble the lightning subsides and lammo there's the golem complete and perfect in the words of the book he's a big old dude an important part of the story happens here the thing that actually wakes the golem is the rabbi carving the word amet in his forehead alef memtav which means truth then the golem wakes up an unusual twist for this story the one wisniewski has written is that the golem speaks almost always it's a mute giant but in this one he says father was this wise to do which were incidentally also my first words the rabbi is like we'll find out and they give him something to wear and everyone heads back to chill at the synagogue they get back and the rabbi is like here's the deal you're here to protect the jews and the ways you're going to do that is to catch the people doing the blood libel this has always struck me as one of the most unusual parts of the story because the golem is basically tasked to be a detective like he's big and usually not written to be a genius but he's not killing anyone he's not a violent vigilante he's actually just really good at solving the blood bibles the rabbi wants him to go and find the actual culprit whenever someone says that jews have sacrificed someone and he's good at it he tracks those murderers down and and turns them in to be arrested i'm just saying gumshoe golem private clay eye three ideas here so the golem does detective work and he also just helps out around the ghetto i picture him like sweeping and carrying big piles of books and stuff those new ski story gives him a real childlike innocence he stops to watch the sun rise gets distracted by birds etc this isn't present in every golem story but i really like it it kind of gives him an iron giant vibe honestly the iron giant has a real gollum vibe but we're getting ahead of ourselves the gollum is so good at his detective work that the enemies of the jews get enraged because every day people are learning that jews actually don't use their blood to make matzah these are just murders being pinned on an undeserving group of people and those enemies of the jews get so mad that they riot and start rushing the ghetto rabbi low tells the golem to come help protect the jews and another interesting twist wisniewski throws in here is the golem seems to be getting taller getting bigger the golem goes to the gates of the ghetto and holds them for as long as he can but the mob eventually breaks them down using a battering ram they start rushing into the jewish quarter and that's when the golem really goes sicko mode starts sweeping aside people breaks the battering ram in half really becomes a violent protector rather than the quiet detective he had been before rabbi lowe was distraught he didn't want this kind of violence eventually the rioters run away the golem puts the gate back on its hinges and they head back to the synagogue [Applause] the next day rabbi lo goes to the emperor the emperor is like okay are you gonna kill us all with your giant clay man and the rabbi is like no he's just for protection we just want to be safe the emperor then says that he'll guarantee the safety of your people this is actually pretty similar to the purim story if anyone's familiar where a non-jewish monarch is like i i guess we'll protect you under the rule of law now rabbi lowe says great i'll deactivate the golem but just so you know if things get bad again he'll come back and he'll be even stronger [Music] we return to the jewish quarter and the golem actually knows what's about to happen and is pretty distraught about it he says father will i remember this this is also unusual among versions of the story the golems agency isn't usually so highlighted rabbi lowe says no you will be clay and then the peace day resistance the cherry on top of the whole golem story the rabbi reaches out and erases the aleph from the golem's head so it doesn't read emmet or truth anymore it reads met death at the end of the story rabbi lowe and his helpers place gollum in the attic of the synagogue and cover him in books though gollum had not truly been a man they recited kaddish the prayer for the dead then they left locking the door behind them forever since then gollum has slept the dreamless sleep of clay but many say he could awaken perhaps when the desperate need for justice is united with holy purpose gollum will come to life once more that concludes our story time now i think we have some birthdays today ari miriam come and get your tootsie pops prague in 1580 is the story in which the golem rises to cultural prominence but it's not the first incidence of the concept that would be actually adam like the first guy adam there are lines in the book of psalms that refer to adam as an undeveloped substance kind of like clay and there's also this notion of the body without a soul that is when adam was just a body created by god he was without any kind of interiority he was a gollum this is a really important through line in talking about these myths because it underscores what the golem represents it is a creation of life creating a living object in one's own image which is you know what god does this is a myth that kind of blurs the line between human and divine creation and i think it's why so many of these stories underscore the golem as being imperfect you don't want to get too close by the way virtually all of this is coming from this book the gollum redux by elizabeth bear it's very good and you should check it out as time goes on more scholars write about this topic and even this is really muddled in terms of how literally any of it was supposed to be taken the story of religion for instance there's this book the safer yatsera the book of creation that was maybe written as just a speculative work but was then referred to as literal instructions on how to make life one of my favorite aspects of the story is how language ties into the process we got a little of that with the emmett dumet life to death thing of the wiznewski story but this is actually even more important in other versions there's this concept of the true name of god that it's really powerful and unknowable but back in the day some rabbis would know some of it or all of it and they would put that name in the gollum's mouth and that's what would bring it to life when talking about this thing it's easy to get bogged down in rules what kind of writing goes on the golem who can make it what does it require but i think the minutia moves us away from what makes it interesting why is this a story that exists and has persisted let's get back to prague so here's the thing 1580 may have been the time the story was set but that's not actually when people started talking about it jews in 16th century prague weren't like wow crazy that our rabbi has a clay man walking around right it actually wasn't until the 1840s that stories were written linking rabbi lowe and the prague synagogue with the golem and not until 1909 that the canonical gollum story we know today emerged the book was called the wondrous deeds of the maharal of prague with the gollum written by a guy named udel rosenberg that's more than 300 years removed from the time period he was writing about what was the motivation well here's one i mentioned during story time that the idea of blood libels happening under rabbi lowe's watch during the 1580s was a little shaky there actually isn't any evidence of those types of crimes during that time span the 1500s were almost a golden period for jews in prague in the 1300s there were riots in which the jewish quarter was burned and looted and thousands of jews were killed jews were actually made to wear yellow badges compared to that the 1500s were pretty chill but here's the thing starting just a couple decades before rosenberg published his book in 1909 accusations of blood libel started happening again huge well-publicized trials in which state governments prosecuted jews on basically the claims that they used christian blood in rituals all across europe and so you can see why this particular story might resonate a resurfaced myth made directly relevant to the plight that people were facing at that particular time for jews the idea that we've been through something like this before we survived is a pretty dang powerful one is it any wonder that the story of a gollum a larger than life figure that protected jews from angry mobs and false accusations would provide a little comfort but that's just one version just util writing his little story at the turn of the century that's just the start of all the places this story would go [Music] given that the golem story really only emerged in full in 1909 it's fairly remarkable how quickly adaptations of it including adaptations by non-jews sprung forth one of the most prominent of these was a german silent film called dergalum via or the golem how he came into this world this rather protracted title is because this movie was actually a prequel to a 1915 german silent horror movie just called the golem presumably german audiences were like how did he come into this world in the same way or like why is he named han solo there's even another silent movie in this period called the golem and the dancing girl which your guess is as good as mine but both of those were destroyed and how he came into this world was the one we got so let's talk about it [Music] dergalum was directed by paul wegner and fit squarely into the german expressionist period of silent film along with other films like the cabinet of dr coligari which came out in the same year i'll be honest i don't like this movie it is tremendously slow and many of the main characters are just kind of grotesque and i think that's probably the point but it's just not quite for me [Music] paul wagner himself plays the gollum and certainly forms a striking silhouette but he's also very much a movie monster and honestly also way too close to menstrually for me to feel comfortable the rabbi in the story basically borrows the power of a demon to bring him to life and he's just kind of a dumb brute and at the end he throws a guy off a roof [Music] i don't think the movie is specifically anti-semitic but i would also not say it's particularly flattering to jews and this was made in germany in 1920 so that fact is kind of hard to ignore however the one place that i can praise this movie without reservation is the set design done by a german architect named hans polzick it is truly remarkable a massive and three-dimensional version of the ghetto that's bending in on itself almost like the jewish quarter is buckling under the weight of oppression i mean look at this thing tim burton eat your heart out it is the one part of the movie that gives me the same feeling as my favorite expressionist art there's so much to like here the way the fire consumes a room the lighting in a basement the truly unbelievable density of the crowd scenes pulsar's other major architectural contribution was a theater in berlin called the grossest shouse field house and i bring this up just to say look at it i have genuinely never seen a built space that looks like this towards the end of his career polzig made plans to flee germany the nazis called his expressionist theater degenerate art and covered the ceiling they accused polzig of cultural bolshevism he died in 1936. where were we i don't think it's an accident that the visual representations of the gollum are so enduring the golem itself is a sculpted object a man made out of clay and as such the story seems to pull incredible visual representations out of people they're pulsing sets wisniewski's cut paper illustrations clay models just like this one another version of the story with a beautiful visual language is the golem by ellie wiesel illustrated by mark podwall and podwell's art the hebrew alphabet rises out of the streets and objects of prague the resonance with the story is clear just as the golem is animated by the powerful words of rabbi low so too does the entire jewish quarter exist because of the power of language judaism is a culture built on study examination argument the gala may be the most literal manifestation of the power of those words but potholes illustrations imply that everything built is in some way fueled by the same power wiesel's story is kind of a meta meditation itself called generations removed from the actual events it begins i owe this legend to an old beggar named schmeike he would tell only one story always the same story which he allegedly inherited from his uncle this uncle had been told the story by his maternal grandfather rabbi issachar who had attributed it to his master the famous rabbi ephraim rabbi ephraim had heard the tale from a gravedigger reuven son of a yaakov who claimed to have witnessed the numerous miracles that legend attributes to the golem right off the bat we're presented with the story as completely distant from its point of origin past through the years as jewish stories are the anachronisms like the blood libel make complete sense in wiesel's telling of course somewhere along the chain someone would have modified the story to coincide with whatever the jews were currently up against it also makes certain lines in this version all the more wrenching if you know who wiesel is you probably have some idea but we're not quite there yet other interpretations of the golem are quite infatuated with this idea of language possibly greatest living sci-fi author ted chang has a short story called 72 letters that dives into an immensely complex gollum industrial world in which columns are animated to do all sorts of things by different permutations of commands given to them using an almost scientific formula derived from an object's true name chang casually drops lines like current thinking held that there was a lexical universe as well as a physical one and bringing an object together with a compatible name caused the latent potentiality and it's all very heady stuff but ultimately it centers on again the power of language the story ends with the epiphany that language imprints on us as much as on any golem that it is in fact necessary for her own reproduction although scientific when compared to wiesel's traditional the theme of words carrying through time remains the same finally honorary king of this channel jorge luis borges has a poem called el gollum in which he too ponders this power he starts the poem by ruminating on the power of names and humanity's vain quest to understand the power that lies within them in the poem rabbi lowe shuffling letters endlessly stumbles upon the one true name speaks it and animates the golem but the golem is imperfect flawed tragic and low is overcome with guilt ultimately borges draws the final connection between the failure of lo and that of god also this poem was originally in spanish so this translation like the golem is imperfect the rabbi observed it with tenderness and with some horror how he asked could i be get this sorry son and abandon in action where insanity lies why did i add to the infinite series another symbol why to the vain skein that winds in the eternal did i give another cause another effect and grief in the hour of anguish and lack of light his eyes on his golem would rest who will tell us the things god felt when looking at his rabbi in prague in 1938 two jewish kids from cleveland created a nigh invincible protector quite literally put words in his mouth and sent him out into the world they called him call l or superman it's pretty clever huh it's kind of remarkable how much of superheroes as we know them were created by jewish artists jerry siegel and joe shuster create superman stan lee jack kirby bill finger and bob kane will eisner gene colin would you like me to keep going there is the simple statement that these were jewish american artists creating heroes to beat the out of nazis which is true but i can't ignore the fact that so many characters especially the incredibly strong nigh invincible ones feel so gollum-esque i mean superman exists as a protector he doesn't have truth written on his forehead but he might as well there have been more literal examples there is a short-lived character called the gollum that was more or less the myth we know but purple there are a couple higher brow graphic novels cavalier and clay and the golems mighty swing that are very explicitly jewish and dissecting the golem's legacy there's our old friend ben grimm aka the thing who's extremely jewish like the most jewish and but he's a big thing made of rocks that clobbers people that's the golem it kind of amazes me just how clear the allegory is no these figures are not sculpted from clay and yes they can speak and stuff but you have these strong benevolent creatures fictional but often fighting real oppression brought to life with art and animated with the power of language i mean come on also you know like this scene in every comic book here's a scene from dirk gollum in 1920 he's been super heroin for a while golems in our current world are everywhere i'm not going to be able to hit everyone but to name a few there's an x-files episode called kaddish that handles the golem shockingly well although there's a twist that the animated figure is sort of re-animated he's taken the form of a woman's fiance who was killed three letters alif mem tough creates the word emmet it's fashioned from mud and then animated through mystical incantation mud the myth is told quite accurately and handled with respect the golem goes around and kills a bunch of nazis praxis but ultimately the story is about the lingering trauma of the holocaust and how that loss can leave a person or even a community feeling like it's lost its soul it's a really good episode of the x-files also scully doesn't even get to provide an alternate explanation in this you know how in every episode she's like that wasn't aliens it was just swamp gas or whatever she doesn't do that here i guess she just believes in gollums frankenstein is a pretty obvious analog there's some circumstantial evidence that mary shelley came into contact with a gollum myth before writing her book and at one point she refers to the monster being sculpted from lifeless clay but i would say the closer parallel would be their filmic adaptations the silhouette of wegner in der gollum is immensely frankenstein-esque and both have fairly iconic scenes with little girls and then moving into the fantasy world gollum has really just come to mean a robot in a non-sci-fi environment final fantasy is full of golems dark souls minecraft pokemon has a golem ghastly horsey i don't think that one really counts in video games it's hard to escape the enormous shadow of the colossus a game that is packed to the brim with creatures made of stone and earth brought to life through magic protecting a land from a violent invader there are also many versions of the golem story or golems and other media that lose control at some point go kind of wild and have to be brought down i have to say i don't really love this beat i mean i get it a point about the hubris of people to think they could create life like a god but it really gets away from the story's original themes of protection the one exception to this is something like the iron giant as i mentioned earlier the idea of a being capable of great violence yet choosing to be gentle and a shield instead that's the good stuff right there listen i'm not saying this was intentional but if you view the iron giant like a gollum story oh boy it works [Music] the gallum has been appropriated into basically every corner of culture at this point and i don't use that word judgmentally i don't feel that the original story of the golem is lessened because it's also a dark souls boss there are i'm sure other jews that feel differently we're not a monolith in fact we're probably best at arguing with each other [Music] i've done a lot of talking about a mythical creature in this video and on one hand maybe that's enough it's fun to track influences through history see the origins of our cultural tropes but i don't know i feel like there's more to this story than that more to my fascination more to this idea that's permeated through history i mean actually i know what it is i mentioned ellie wiesel's version of the gollum story a while ago one that i like very much but there's another layer to his telling because ellie wiesel you might know was an immensely talented and prolific jewish writer and he was also a holocaust survivor you might have read his book at in school maybe and that history makes wiesel's telling of the gollum story hit harder than virtually any other that i've read this is true of all of wiesel's writing there are lines in the story that are simple and yet just tear me apart there's one where he says father was always happy or at least he seemed to be i really loved my father and that's i mean that's that's nothing that's just a line about a family but if you've read knight or know weasel's history you know how he was orphaned while in the death camps and it's just my point is that wiesel's writing explicitly or not like so much of a jewish art of the last 70 years is unavoidably post-holocaust it's inescapable and you don't have to stretch to find wiesel's reflection on the holocaust and the golem story he puts them in the first chapter and he manages to sum up my own thoughts while writing these thousands of words better than i ever could and we miss him the golem more than ever we need his presence and perhaps even his mystery as usual the year promises to be one of punishment i feel it in every bone of my body i have lived through too many ordeals not to be able to predict what the future has in store of course i have faith in god i would not be a jew if i did not have faith but neither would i be a jew if i were not afraid i know that sometimes there are men who choose death because they wish to escape this wretched earth which first bears us and then devours us 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 felt that we no longer needed a protector a shield tell me please for maharal who knew everything did he not know that exile after him would become harder than before even more cruel that the burden would become heavier more bloody he could have left us his golem he should have what did he fear and what can we say to that what purpose does the golem story serve to iselle or the millions of others that lived through reality too hellish to imagine the jews and non-jews who continue to live in that reality to this day and yet it's wiesel who wrote the book he is the one continuing the legacy of the golem so clearly it serves some purpose to him right the gallum is a story about many things but at its most basic it is a story about creating something creating art and then that art going on to protect you it is a created object that was built to preserve the jewish people and in that way the hundreds of stories about different golems aren't simply retellings of the original a concept that barely exists instead they are their own sculptures continuing that legacy each one of them is a form of remembrance and renewal and preservation they are golems in themselves art is not the only form of protection we need in the modern world there is not a clay figure that will stride in to stop injustice to protect refugees to prevent state oppression that's us we got to do that now the golem has always been an imperfect creation that's baked into its existence it isn't a replacement for you know us but the continued existence of art of stories is the continued existence of a people ellie wiesel continues to tell the story of the golem because the nazis were unable to take that from him and i am telling it to you now and presumably some of you will go home and say hey did you know the golem is a jewish thing so it is a form of protection quiet maybe but the golem has never been a noisy figure and it's our words not its that keep it alive [Music] this video was sponsored by skillshare you have probably heard of skillshare and the thousands of classes they offer on all sorts of subjects and often i and other youtubers will hit some classes that we've used to make ourselves better at technical skills how to handle cameras or edit or something that's not what i want to do for you today look listen to me pick up some clay there's a woman named stephanie kilgast on skillshare that has videos for every level of artist from the simple to the dang i better organize a bug-themed party so i can show everyone else up this is from her class how to sculpt mods and butterflies from polymer clay by the way art is like any other skill you don't get better at it by thinking really hard you get better with practice and help skillshare is perfect for that no pressure practice with a really helpful teacher and as you might have guessed the first thousand people that follow the link in the description get a free trial of skillshare premium and it's only 10 bucks a month after that with an annual plan make some bugs or a little succulent garden or come on make a golem just a little dude you already know what to write on its forehead learning a new skill doesn't have to make you better or more efficient at your job it can just be that little extra push to starting a hobby you've always been curious about or one that you've recently discovered and want to leg up on so like i said use the link in the description get a free skillshare trial pick up some clay breathe some life into your art and then show it to me because i would love to see it [Music] you

Channel: Jacob Geller

Views: 418,953

Keywords: golem, jewish, jacob geller, essay, analysis, superhero

Id: pUBVSH6hBvY

Length: 38min 5sec (2285 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ButFirstALecture]

Geller’s stuff is so good.

[u/Bradley271]

I just got to the 10m mark and I actually started crying when he reached the end of the story. I'm guessing this'll be a pretty good video.

[u/RaptorJesusDotA]

Anyone know the name of the song?