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Hi welcome to my Fa'e quest blah blah blah. I'll come back to it, it's not as important as, you know...everything else.

A quick note:

There have been stories written and stories told about the Rabbi Loew and the Golem he created to save the Jews of Prague. Like all stories handed down from generation to generation, it has changed in the telling; while the theme remains the same, the details seem to change depending on the source. This version is no different: while I WILL stick as closely to the story as I can, I likely won't include minor things that I've only read about in one source that haven't been in any of the others. Major things that I can't find information on, like the scar across the golem's chest, have been fudged a little.

The Golem of Prague

In the year 1580, the Jews of Prague were accused of of mixing the blood of Christian children into the flour and water they used to create matzoh*. This grave charge, which came to be called the "Blood Lie," came from their enemies who were not only Christians themselves, but Protestants, Catholics, and German immigrants as well. The Jews, easily identifiable by patches sewn onto their clothes, were afraid to leave the walled and barred ghetto they had been confined to, and with good reason: it was illegal for them to carry weapons and the law would not protect them otherwise, so they were essentially defenseless.

Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the ghetto's chief rabbi, knew that terrible times were ahead. Desperate for a way to save his people, he barricaded himself in his study to fast and pray for a solution. In time, he slept; his dreams were troubled, showing him the destruction that had yet to come, the ultimate demise of the very people he led. When all seemed lost, a hand of light appeared and wrote a single glowing word upon the smoldering ashes: golem.

The following morning, Rabbi Loew sent for two of his best pupils and explained the situation to them. The trio spent the day in prayer and when night fell, they left the ghetto of Josefov through a secret opening in the wall. They then made their way through the streets of Prague towards the river Vltava, where they began to dig up the clay from the river's bank. By midnight they had amassed a huge mound of wet clay, which Rabbi Loew then began to shape. When pre-dawn light started turning the night sky a soft grey, a crude clay giant lay lifeless before the Rabbi and his students.

The rabbi raised his arms to the sky and chanted spells from the Kabbalah. The sky clouded over as his words reached it, thunder rumbling in the distance. The rabbi's recitation grew more fervent and flashes of lightning streaked across the sky, striking the ground around the rabbi, his pupils, and the man-shaped clay. Sheets of rain and howling winds didn't prevent Rabbi Loew from reaching the ritual's climax and as he did so, a bolt of lightning struck him, going through him and into the clay at his feet, passing the power of life from creator to creation. With that, the storm began to abate. Rabbi Loew knelt beside his creation and engraved in Hebrew the word emet**--"truth"--upon the golem's forehead. As the golem took its first breath, the clouds dissipated; as it opened its eyes, the first rays of sunlight broke over the horizon.



The golem was a simple creature, not built for great intellectual undertakings, and so Rabbi Loew gave it a single command: protect the Jews of Josefov. The Jews, however, were afraid to leave their ghetto and faced no immediate danger, so the golem served as a shamash*** in the temple during the day and patrolled the ghetto at night. The fear among the community seemed to abate with the appearance of this stone protector and for awhile, life was calm. The golem captured those who tried to enter the ghetto and turned them over to the police. With these troublemakers inprisoned, the people of Prague began to see the Blood Lie for the slander it was. While many people became sympathetic to the Jews' plight, just as many became angry. One night, the inevitable happened: the ghetto of Josefov was attacked!

In the weeks of peace between the golem's creation and the ghetto's attack, the golem had grown larger. When the mob reached the gates with torches and bricks and a battering ram, they weren't able to see the ghetto's stone defender; as they stormed the gates, however, the golem seemed to grow larger still, until he was tall enough to peer down at the ghetto's attackers from over the wall separating them. Not to be deterred, they determined that this must be some trick of the Jews' to scare them off and battered the gates open.

Those same attackers screamed in terror when they saw that the golem was indeed real. The golem swept them aside in droves. The wave of antagonists increased and the golem took their battering ram, snapped it in half, and began carving bloody swaths through the crowd. The mob, seeing that they were greatly overpowered, turned and ran, leaving their dead and wounded. The golem, unscathed save for a deep crack in his chest, calmly replaced the ghetto's gates upon their ruined hinges and headed for the temple.



The next day, Rabbi Loew was summoned to Prague Castle. There, he met with the emperor, who demanded to know if he intended to use the golem to conquer the city. The rabbi informed the emperor that they, who were celebrating the end of their own slavery, had no wish to enslave others. The golem, he said, was created to protect the Jews and would remain alive as long as they were in danger. The emperor, mind whirling with all the things that could happen to his precious city if the stone monster was let loose, immediately guaranteed the Jews' safety. With that, Rabbi Loew agreed to deactivate the golem, leaving the emperor with the promise that should his people ever be threatened again, it would come back stronger than before.

It was with a heavy heart that the rabbi returned to Josefov. He did not need to look for the golem; it was quite easy to see, having grown as high as the ghetto's tallest house. The Rabbi entered the temple, stepped onto the balcony, and reluctantly called the golem to him. Obedient as ever, it obeyed, but both it and the rabbi sensed something was off. They stared at each other for endless minutes, creation to creator, before the golem moved as if it intended to turn, to run, to prolong its temporary life. It was a slow creature, however, and before it could fully turn, Rabbi Loew reached up and erased the first letter--aleph****--from the golem's forehead. With that, emet--truth--became met: death.

The golem immediately began falling apart, turning from stone to clay and dust. For the rest of the day, the rabbi and his people wheeled what they could of the golem into the synagogue's attic. As night fell, Rabbi Loew covered what was left of the golem with old siddurs***** and recited Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, even though the golem was not human. Then everyone left the attic and they locked it behind them, sealing it forever.

"Since then, Golem 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, Golem will come to life once more..."


*Matzoh is an unleavened bread used primarily during Passover.
**Emet is Hebrew for "truth."
***Shamash essentially means "helper."
****Aleph is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
*****Siddurs are prayer books found in synagogues.

Excerpt is from Golem, by David Wisniewski.

Vitals:

History, maybe:

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Personality:

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Links to a bunch of sites containing stories about the Golem.

9/9

Feel free to post*, though I don't know why'd you want to seeing as there's nothing here yet. Things will be filled in as time and computer-workage allow.





*Unless you're Ithums, in which case GTFO talk2hand no srsly heart :-*

:-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-*

talk2hand Stop being retarfref, Ithums!

no u

Working, srsly~

biggrin I'm looking forward to going there, Vashy! Just have to get my brain and my computer to work at the same time! xd