A Song Of The Golem
Beginning June 20 and running
through June 27, the Jewish
Community Center of Metropolitan
Detroit is sponsoring a MusicFest that
will feature a golem of sorts.
Annette Ezekiel in the Golem band
explains how the group came up with
the name:
"We were on a kind of monstrous
rampage through the old Jewish music,
making the music sound new and
modern while still revering the tradi-
tion," she says.
This is hardly the golem's first
appearance in the fine arts, so to speak.
In 15th century Germany, both Jews
and gentiles were intrigued by the
golem, and so the creature often was
mentioned in books and poetry of the
time.
In the 19th century, when Jewish
communities throughout Europe were
murdered as part of the blood libel
(Jews were said to be killing Christian
children to use their blood for matzah),
the golem again became a popular fig-
ure in books.
The Miraculous Deeds of Rabbi Loew
with the Golem was written, perhaps, as
a warning to the gentile community.
Here, the golem was a creature said to
protect the Jews from their enemies.
Though no one in recent memory
has recounted reviving the golem, the
creature continues to fascinate. Rudolf
Lothar, of Austria, wrote short stories,
Der Golem, in 1904, while a collection
of verse on the subject, written by
Hugo Salus, was popular during World
War I.
In 1928, Bavarian author Gustav
Meyrink, who spent much of his life in
Prague, wrote a haunting tale of the
golem, reflecting equally on what hap-
pened to a society driven to despair by
the pressures of modernity.
In 1920, the golem made a film
appearance in a silent film in Germany
and saw its debut in an opera in 1936
in Der Golem. Apparently the golem
could even be quite agile. In 1962,
Vienna was host to a ballet, Der
Golem, by Francis Burt and Erika
Hanka.
Most recently, authors from Isaac
Bashevis Singer to Cynthia Ozick and
Michael Chabon have written stories
featuring the golem, while Pete
Hamill's Snow in August has a 1940s
Brooklyn golem.
Some believe the golem was the
inspiration for Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein. A golem has appeared on
The X-Files, and the next time you're
in Prague you can visit the Golem
Museum.
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