Tree of Souls

by Howard Schwartz

  Sources:

  Perush Shem shel Arba Otiyyot Ms. Florence 2:41.

  Studies:

  The Early Kabbalah, edited by Joseph Dan, pp. 54-56.

  Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid by Moshe Idel.

  357. THE GOLEM OF IBN GABIROL

  It is said about Rabbi Solomon ibn Gabirol that he drew upon the mysteries to create a woman who served him. When he was denounced to the authorities, he showed them that she was not a full or complete creature. And he restored her to the pieces of wood of which she had been constructed.

  The Hebrew poet Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021-1056) was also said to be versed in kabbalistic mysteries. In this account he creates a female golem for the purpose of serving him. There is some ambiguity about whether she was created for sexual purposes. Had he created her for some greater good, such as the protection of the community, this might have been seen as acceptable. But that was not the case. When confronted by the authorities, he demonstrated that the woman was not fully human, rather, she is a female golem.

  On the one hand the story seems to extol the powers of Ibn Gabirol, but on the other hand he is portrayed as self-serving. Also, there is a hint of the salacious about his intentions in creating such a golem. But, above all, it is evidence that the golem motif, which first appears in the Talmud in the creation of a calf that was eaten on the Sabbath, was still alive. This eleventh-century myth about creating a golem is transformed into the cycle of stories about the Golem of Prague. In the latter, however, the creation of the golem is compelled by the dire situation in which the Jews were found, suffering from regular pogroms through the Middle Ages. Since there was no solution in reality, a fantasy solution evolved, that of the golem created by Rabbi Judah Loew to protect the Jews of Prague from the blood libel accusation, in which Jews were falsely accused of using the blood of a Christian (usually a child) to make matzah for the Passover Seder, a libel that led to centuries of pogroms against the Jews throughout Europe. Yet even though the purposes in creating these two golems, one female and one male, are quite different, the knowledge and powers attributed to both figures underlie both tales.

  How was the golem of Ibn Gabirol created? The story lacks details, but the method was surely by some means of holy letters and names. In the Yudel Rosenberg versions of the golem cycle, which are probably much later than they were claimed to be—nineteenth century instead of the sixteenth—Rabbi Loew went through a magical ritual, inscribing the word emet—truth—on the forehead of the golem, and putting a paper with God’s Name on it in the golem’s mouth, walking around it seven times, till it glowed. Only then did it come to life. Later, after the golem had served its purpose, Rabbi Loew turned it back into clay. This clay is said still to be found in the attic of the Alt-Neu (Old-New) synagogue in Prague, where Rabbi Loew once served. A comparison of the two stories demonstrates that the same creation can be viewed as sacrilege or sacred.

  Others who were said to have created golems include Rabbenu Tam (Rabbi Jacob Tam, 1100-1171) and Ibn Ezra (1092-1167). Ibn Ezra is reported to have said, “See what God has given by means of the holy letters!” Then he said to the golem, “Go back.” And it became what it had been before.

  A number of modern authors have written about the golem, including Gustav Meyrink, H. Levick, David Frishman, Jorge Luis Borges, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Cynthia Ozick, Michael Chabon, Frances Sherwood, and Thane Rosenbaum.

  Sources:

  Perush R. Saadiah Gaon le-Sefer Yetzirah; Ma’aseh Ta’atu’im 118.

  358. THE GOLEM OF RABBI ELIJAH

  Rabbi Elijah of Chelm was a Master of the Name. It was he alone, in his generation, who knew the secret pronunciation of God’s Name. This gave him the power to accomplish anything. So too was he well versed in the Sefer Yetzirah, The Book of Creation. Drawing on mysteries revealed there, he made a man of clay, inscribed the word emet—truth—on its forehead, and when he uttered God’s Name, the golem came to life. Thereafter, the golem performed wonders whenever there was urgent need for them.

  Then it happened that the golem began to grow larger and larger, and Rabbi Elijah was afraid it might destroy the world. So he ordered the golem to bend down and he removed the first letter of the word on its forehead, changing emet into met—dead—and at that instant the golem turned back into dust.

  There are several versions of this famous story about the golem of Rabbi Elijah of Chelm (sixteenth century). In some versions, the golem is said to have scratched the rabbi’s face while he removed the name from its forehead, or, in other versions, even to have crushed him. Likewise, in some Christian versions Rabbi Elijah is said to have used the golem to perform hard work for him, suggesting that his motives in creating the golem were not altruistic.

  While most accounts of the golem place the word “emet” on his forehead, some describe the word “emet” hung on a chain around his neck.

  Here is the version of the golem story found in Journal for Hermits by Jakob Grimm (1808), which became widely disseminated:

  After saying certain prayers and observing certain fast days, the Polish Jews make the figure of a man carved from clay or mud. When they pronounce the miraculous name of God over him, he must come to life. He cannot speak, but he understands fairly well what is commanded. They call him golem and use him as a servant to do all sorts of housework. But he must never leave the house. On his forehead is written emet—truth. Every day he gains weight and becomes somewhat larger and stronger than all the others in the house, regardless of how little he was to begin with.

  For fear of him, they therefore erase the first letter, so that nothing remains but met—death, whereupon he collapses and turns to clay again. But one man’s golem once grew so tall, and he heedlessly let him keep on growing so long that he could no longer reach his forehead. In terror he ordered the servant to take off his boots, thinking that when he bent down he could reach his forehead. So it happened, and the first letter was successfully erased, but the whole heap of clay fell on the Jew and crushed him.

  It would appear that Jakob Grimm drew upon the account of Rabbi Elijah’s golem, although there are some interesting variations. Grimm’s version suggests that the golem was used as a servant, and that the motives of his creator were not altruistic. In the Grimm version, as soon as the holy name is removed from the golem’s forehead, it collapses on top of its creator and kills him. No such catastrophe occurs in the account of Rabbi Elijah’s golem.

  Sources:

  Shem ha-Gedolim 1:9; She’elot Ya’avetz 2:82; Migdal Oz.

  359. THE GOLEM OF PRAGUE

  Again and again the Jewish community of Prague was accused of the blood libel. Rabbi Judah Loew, known as the Maharal, prayed that he might be told in a dream how to fight against the accusation. In his dream, he received a reply from heaven in ten words, telling him to create a golem out of clay, who would protect the Jews against those who wanted to destroy them. The Maharal was convinced that the secret of how to bring such a creature to life could be found in those ten words. And at last he found it.

  The Maharal called his son-in-law and his oldest pupil, and disclosed the secret to them about how the golem could be created. They served as his assistants, each of them representing one of the elements of fire, water, and air, who together could complete the creation of the golem out of earth, the fourth element. He made them vow not to reveal the secret to anyone.

  Then on the twentieth of Adar in the year 5340 (1580), the three of them left Prague at four o’clock in the morning and went to the river Moldau. Out of the clay they dug from the bank of the river, they made a human form, which lay there like a man on his back. Each of the three of them walked around it seven times, reciting a spell that the Maharal had taught them, until the golem began to glow, and his body became covered with hair, and nails appeared at the tips of his fingers and toes. And when they pronounced the verse And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living creature (Gen. 2:7), th
e golem opened his eyes and looked at them with wonder. The Maharal called out for him to stand up, and the golem rose at once to his feet. Then they dressed him in clothes that they had brought with them, and put shoes on his feet, so that he looked exactly like a man. He saw, heard, and understood everything, but he lacked the power of speech.

  Before dawn all four of them returned home. On the way home, the Maharal told the golem that his name was Joseph, and explained why he had been created. So too did he tell him that he must obey all of his commands, no matter what, and the golem nodded to show that he agreed.

  After that the Maharal told the members of his household that he had met this poor man, who was unable to speak, in the street, and he had taken him into the house out of pity, to be of service to him. And that is how the golem was created and brought into being.

  Almost no Jewish legend has captured the popular imagination as has that of the golem, the creature made out of clay by Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague (known as the Maharal) and brought to life by the use of various magical incantations, including holy names. This creature, according to the legend, protected the Jews of Prague from various dangers, especially that of the blood libel accusation—that is, the use of the blood of Christian children to bake unleavened bread for Passover. This lie had consistently disastrous consequences, leading to many pogroms against the Jews. Here the golem discovers the body of a murdered Christian child who has been carried into the Jewish ghetto, and carries it back through tunnels into the basement of the actual murderer, the sorcerer Thaddeus, thus staving off a pogrom.

  Knowledge of this myth cycle is primarily derived from Niflaot Maharal, a collection of tales about Rabbi Loew and the golem, published in 1909 by Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg, who claimed that they had been compiled in the sixteenth century by a relative of Rabbi Loew. Recent scholars, including Dov Sadan, Gershom Scholem, and Eli Yassif, have insisted that Rabbi Rosenberg himself was the author of the book, which he based loosely on the existing oral legends and written versions of the golem myth. Such legends certainly existed, such as Jakob Grimm’s description of the myth in 1808 in Journal for Hermits.

  The issue here is whether these are authentic sixteenth-century legends, deriving from the period in which Rabbi Judah Loew lived in Prague or immediately afterward, or if they were in fact largely drawn from nineteenth-century folklore, embellished in the twentieth century by Rabbi Rosenberg. Some of the earliest tales about Rabbi Loew are those found in the first volume of the Sippurim series, edited by Wolf Pascheles, first published in Prague in 1845. There are a number of precedents for the creation of the golem in earlier Jewish literature, including the description of a calf that was created magically found in the Talmud: “Haninah and Oshaya spent every Sabbath eve in studying the Laws of creation, by means of which they created a calf and ate it” (B. San. 67b). See also “Rava Creates a Man,” p. 279.

  Sources:

  Niflaot Maharal.

  Studies:

  “The Idea of the Golem” by Gershom Scholem in On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, pp. 159-204.

  Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artifical Anthropoid by Moshe Idel.

  The Golem of Prague by Gershon Winkler.

  The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning by Eli Yassif.

  360. THE END OF THE GOLEM

  After the emperor issued an edict that there must be no more cases of the blood libel accusation, Rabbi Loew felt that the golem would not be needed any longer. So he called his son-in-law and his oldest pupil, who had taken part in the creation of the golem, and at two in the morning they went up to the loft in the Alt-Neu synagogue, where the golem was sleeping.

  The three of them placed themselves at the head of the golem, and began to circle around him from left to right. There were seven circuits, and after each one they stopped and pronounced the spell that the Maharal had taught them, drawn from the Book of Creation. It was the same spell they had used to create the golem, only they recited it in the opposite order.

  After the seventh circuit the golem was reduced to a mass of clay in the shape of a human being. They wrapped it in two old prayer shawls, and hid the mass among the fragments of books in the loft, so that nothing of it could be seen.

  The next day it was reported that the golem had run away. Very few people knew what had really taken place. After that the Maharal ordered that no one was to enter the loft of the synagogue. People thought it was a precaution against fire, but confidants of the Maharal knew that it was because the remains of the golem were lying there.

  Here the golem is uncreated and returned to a mass of clay in the shape of a man by reversing the process by which it was created. The remains of the golem are still said to be in the loft of the Alt-Neu synagogue in Prague.

  Sources:

  Niflaot Maharal.

  361. THE GOLEM IN THE ATTIC

  In the attic of the Alt-Neu synagogue of Prague lie the remains of the golem in the shape of a man. These remains have been there since the Maharal returned the golem to a mass of clay. At that time the Maharal is reported to have said, “You will lie here until the time of the Messiah.”

  None of the Jews of Prague dared to go up to the attic where the remains of the golem are to be found. There was a deep fear of that place. But once some children went up to the attic to see if the remains of the golem were still there. After they went up, they were unable to come down. After reciting psalms and prayers, the Jews of Prague climbed up the big ladder that led to the attic. There they found that the children were lying on the floor of the attic, in a deep sleep, nor could they wake them until they carried them out of that place.

  After that, no one in the city of Prague dared to go up there. They left the remains of the golem alone until the days of the Messiah, when the Maharal said he will come back to life.

  This is an oral tale about the golem collected in Israel from a Jew from Czechoslovakia. It is clear evidence of the continuing power of the golem myth among the Jews of Czechoslovakia.

  Sources:

  IFA 6554.

  362. THE HOMUNCULUS OF MAIMONIDES

  Among the enemies of Maimonides it is told that he created a monster, a homunculus. How did it happen? Maimonides had an assistant, a young man, to whom he taught many of the secrets of creation. In time the two became inseparable. Their researches were pursued largely in common, and when one of them was at a loss, the other came to his assistance. Thus together they studied almost all branches of knowledge. In time the student almost surpassed his master in learning, and they decided to follow a path together that past generations had never pursued. They wanted to observe the secrets of creation and destruction in nature and then solve the great riddle of creation.

  Maimonides showed his assistant a passage in the Book of Creation, where it said, “Kill a healthy man, cut his body into pieces, and place the pieces in an airless glass container. Sprinkle upon them an essence gathered from the sap of the Tree of Life and the balsam of immortality, and after nine months the pieces of this body will be living again. It will be unharmable and immortal.”

  But who were they to get for this dangerous experiment? They decided it would have to be one of them. So they cast lots to decide. But first they swore, in God’s Name, that whoever lived would permit the dead to ripen, and would not, for whatever reason, destroy the apparatus prematurely, in order to destroy the embryonic life. Both men laid their hands on the Torah and swore. The lot was cast and fell to the pupil. Maimonides conjured up the Angel of Death, and the young man fell lifeless to the ground. Maimonides cut the body into pieces, placed it in a glass container, sprinkled it with the wondrous essence, and left the room, which he carefully locked and did not enter for four months.

  Finally, tortured by doubt and curiosity, he looked at the mass of dead flesh. And behold, there were no longer severed pieces but structured limbs, as if crystallized in the glass container. Happy about the restoration of his student, he left the room and waited a month. In the fifth
month the form of the human body could already be recognized. In the sixth the arteries and nerves were visible, and in the seventh movement and life in the organs could be perceived. The researcher, however, became worried. Maimonides was now convinced of the veracity of The Book of Creation. And he was terrified about the future.

  Maimonides was afraid that a horror threatened the human race if he let it come to fruition. For such an immortal man might be deified, and people would pray to him, and the Laws of Moses would be denied and finally entirely forgotten. At the end of the eighth month, uncertain and deeply troubled, he approached the growing being and was staggered as the almost completely developed face smiled at him. Unable to bear the demonic grin, he ran out of the room ashamed of what he had done. He finally realized that man should not investigate too deeply; what is beyond this sphere leads to hell.

  A few days later Maimonides appeared before the Great Council and explained the case. After lengthy reflection the learned rabbis agreed: to protect against a horror for mankind, and to preserve God’s honor, a vow might be broken and such a man killed. This decision they based on a verse in Psalms: It is time to act for the Lord, for they have violated Your teaching (Ps. 119:126).

  At the beginning of the ninth month, Maimonides stepped into the room, intending to destroy his creation. He brought a dog and a cat with him, and he released them and let them fly at each other. In the midst of this fighting, the glass container crashed to the floor and broke into a thousand pieces. The dead man lay at Maimonides’ feet. After he recovered himself, Maimonides buried the body and took the pernicious volume and threw it into the flames of the fireplace. But nothing was the same again. Maimonides was attacked by the learned men of the court, accused of magical practices, and escaped judgment only by a timely flight to Egypt. But even there he was pursued and treated as an enemy both by his fellow Jews and by unbelievers, and from then on his life was filled with sorrow.