Man is so constituted that he always wanted to be like God is also to become a Creator, a Maker.In principle, this is probably inherent in the very nature of man, for it is said that God created us in his image and likeness.
In the Holy books such as the Bible, the Qur’an it is very detailed. For example, in the 32nd Sura “Celebities” says Allah created Adam from clay: “He Is the knower of The unseen and the visible, the powerful, the merciful, who made beautiful everything that he created, and he created the first time a man from clay” (32:6-7).
Apparently, therefore, the person sought and all the way create their own kind, in addition to the natural way of reproduction. In a later version of this Pinocchio (in the Russian version of Pinocchio), in an even higher – all sorts of humanoid robots, the creation of man from a test tube, cloning, etc. But here we don’t invent anything new, because the creation of an artificial man made of earth, clay antropologicheskikh found in the myths of many peoples, for example, Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian; in particular, there is an Akkadian legend about the creation of mankind from clay figurines, and they were created in pairs, but life in them was infused via the umbilical cord – almost as expected in nature. This is also confirmed in other sources. But to consider them is simply unrealistic, and therefore focus on one representative from ancient myths – the Golem.
The Golem character in Jewish mythology. Man from inanimate matter – clay, quickened by the Kabbalists with secret knowledge – all for the same analogy with Adam, whom God created from clay.
The word “Golem” comes from a word in old Hebrew “gelem”, meaning “raw material”, or simply “clay”. Root -GLM – is found in the Tanakh the word in the old Hebrew “, galmi” meaning “my raw form”. Then, in the old Yiddish, the word “Goyle” acquired the figurative meaning “the idol”, “stupid and clumsy person”, “idiot”, and transcends to modern Hebrew.
Jewish myths found its unexpected continuation in a very common, arising in the Prague Jewish folk legend about an artificial man created from clay for the execution of different “black” work, difficult assignments of importance to the Jewish community, and, mainly, to prevent the blood libel through the timely intervention and revelations. Further, according to the legend, the Golem, having fulfilled his task, turns to dust. The creation of the Golem folk legend ascribes the famous Talmudist and Kabbalist, chief Rabbi of Prague in Maharlu Yehuda Ben Bezalel, or Rabbi Lev (Leib), the man, by the way, is real, born in the beginning of the XVI century. This legend refers to the beginning of the XVII century. Its stated in the novel “the Golem” by Gustav Meyrink.
There are other Golems that are created according to popular legend different authoritative rabbis – pioneers of religious thought. It is also considered that the Golem is reborn to a new life every thirty-three years.
Later the theme of the Golem is often used in poetry, and in literature, and in theater plays, and movies, and even computer games. One of the first films of the 1920 film “the Golem: how he came into the world”. It then shone the stars Paul Wegener and Lyda Salmanova.
But how it was created – according to legend of old Prague? It was in the distant year of 1580. The Jews, as you know, in Prague settled heap – in the so-called Jewish town (at the time Josefov), lived quietly, no one interfered, on the contrary, only helped. Among them were jewelers, doctors, usurers (bankers) and other representatives of the useful occupations. However, periodically the Church has provided for them persecution, but somehow calmed down. And here is one priest named Tadeusz, an outspoken opponent of the Jews, once again attempted to disturb the peace and harmony and to provoke superstitious accusations against the Jews. Rabbi lion of Prague then invited the cardinal to organize a scientific theological controversy. Most interesting were the questions the Jews use during the celebration of Pesach (Passover) and the blood of Christians to blame the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Rabbi Leo proved that according to the Talmud the use of any blood, including animal, Jews are strictly prohibited. On the issue of guilt of Jews for Christ’s death, Rabbi Leo stated that Christ died on the cross in order to atone for the sins of mankind. It happened with the Jews because God decided. Christians, on the contrary, should be grateful to the Jews because otherwise, Christianity would not occur.
Then Rabbi Leo in the dream, I asked God a question, what means to fight with evil enemy. And God sent him the answer, clearly arranged in alphabetical order: Ata Bra Golem Dewuk Hachomer Wrtigzar Zedim Chewel Torfe Jisrael, which meant “Create a Golem out of clay and destroy the vulgar populace, devouring the Jews.”
Rabbi Leo, being a very strong Kabbalist interpreted “sent” a combination of words so that he can use him the open Sky of the number of letters create from the ground – clay is a living creature. He called for his son-in-law of Isaac Ben Simeon and his disciple, Levi, Jacob Ben Hayyim, Sasson, and told them the secret about the possibility of creating the Golem, but explained that one not cope: “I require your help because for him the creation need four elements: you, Isaac, will be the element of fire, are you, Jacob – the water element, I – element of air, together we will create the fourth element – earth – Golem”. He explained to them that first we must get sanctified and purified in order to prepare for the great cause of the creation of the artificial man, and taught them the need to do this. (As it should have been “sanctified” and “cleansed” – the history of the direct relationship has not.)
When two “volunteers” were all the rituals and were ready, came the fateful “Day X”, which was also calculated with the help of Kabbalistic knowledge. The work was carried out in the light of the torch and under the reading of the Psalms. All three of them together and fashioned out of clay the figure of a man and laid face up. Then began at his feet to look him right in the face. Rabbi Lev Isaac ordered seven times around the clay body, from right to left, having taught it previously to the Holy word from the book Sefer Yetzira, which you can use to animate the Golem. Isaac walked around and uttered the sacred words. After this, the clay body became fiery red. Isaac, as we recall, represented the element of fire.
Then Rabbi Leo commanded and Levi Jacob to circumvent the body from right to left is also seven times, saying, and certain elements for his words. When he completed his job, the fiery red color had disappeared, and in a clay body flowed water; from the skin broke hair, and the fingers of the hands and feet began to grow nails. Jacob, therefore, has fulfilled its function, acting in the role of the element of water.
Then Rabbi Leo himself walked the clay body, put his mouth on parchment of the Shema (a Kabbalistic combination of letters name of God and, bowing to the East and West, South and North, all three at the same time uttered the words: “And breathed into his face the breath of life; and man became a living soul”. So thanks to the three elements (fire, water and air) the fourth element – earth – is alive. The Golem opened his eyes.
Seeing this, Rabbi Lev told him, “get Up!” The Golem stood up. Then he wore clothes shames, and soon he looked like a normal person. Only the gift of speech, he lacked. But later it turned out that it’s even better. At dawn, all four went home.
As they walked, Rabbi Leo decided to educate their offspring, who is he and why did you come to this world, and said: “Know that we made you from the earth coma. Your task – to protect the Jews from persecution, you shall be called Joseph, and you’ll spend the night in the Rabbinate. You, Joseph, must obey my orders, where and when would you or I sent – though the fire and water; you have to obey my orders if I order you to jump off the roof and if I will send you to the bottom of the sea”. Josef nodded his head in assent. Rabbi Leo led “Joseph” home and told my parents that on the street met a silent stranger, and because he felt sorry for him, he brought him into the servants of the Rabbinate. However, at home he was forbidden to use the Golem for personal use.
Seven years have passed. All these years, “Joseph” fulfilled all the orders of Rabbi Loew, performed well. Later in the legend occurs the fallen Thor. It so happened that on the Day of Reconciliation in 1587 in the old-new synagogue, where the Rabbi prayed the lion, the head of the community dropped the Torah, putting it in the box after an afternoon of reading. The event has caused among all the assembled members of the community utter horror, as from time immemorial such a case was considered almost the most bad omen. Rabbi Lev also was excited, and immediately ordered all present the next day to begin fasting. On Monday, he asked in a dream from God, what sin is the cause of this bad event. This time God did not give him a clear answer, “dictated by” only a few letters, which Rabbi Leo couldn’t interpret. Then he wrote them down on a piece of paper and gave it to the Golem, instructing them to find out the answer to it.
The Golem, by looking at a piece of paper, immediately took out from the bookcase a prayer, opened it and showed the head, which is a day of humility read from the Torah. The letters shown in a dream of Rabbi Levu, were reduced by the entry of the commandment “you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife”.
Seeing this, Rabbi Lev realized that the Torah dropped the head of the community was in an extramarital affair, so Thor and slipped from his hands. He called the head of the community confided to him and told him about the words from the dream. He, weeping, confessed his sin, what really is the lover of a married woman, and asked the Rabbi to appoint him a penance. But Rabbi löw went even further, terminating on the laws of Moses marriage to an unfaithful wife and her husband.
Then Golem did a lot of other assignments, but once flew into a rage. It happened on the eve of the Sabbath. Rabbi Leo introduced the custom to give the Golem on Fridays after lunch kinda day plan on the Sabbath day, because on the Sabbath he wanted to communicate with him only in a pinch. As a rule, Rabbi Lev told him not to do on Shabbat no choice but to stand on guard and be careful. But one Friday, Rabbi löw forgot after lunch to give the Golem his plan for the next day. So the Golem for the first time remained without a job. Barely Friday came to an end and everyone was preparing for Shabbat (the Sabbath of the Jews does not begin with Saturday morning and Friday evening), the Golem began to run like mad, in the Jewish quarter, to beat and destroy everything around, and nothing could resist its mighty destructive power – so it enraged and frightened the fact that you forgot about it and he has no classes. Seeing the Golem riot, people running away, shouting: “Joseph has gone mad!” There arose a terrible panic, and soon news of this came to the old-new synagogue, where they prayed Rabbi Lev. He ran out and, seeing the Golem, still screamed in the street: “Joseph, stop it!”
And then people saw that the Golem immediately stopped in his tracks, breaking the force of his rage. Rabbi Lev said, where is the Golem, the Rabbi approached him and whispered in his ear: “Go home and go to bed.” And the Golem obeyed him like a child. Then Rabbi löw returned to the synagogue and ordered them to sing again a song for the Sabbath. Agitated, the Rabbi asked all of the witnesses did not tell about this story to the authorities, because very afraid of closing the synagogue for blasphemous experiment to create an artificial man. This Friday never happened, that he forgot to give the Golem a job the next day, knowing that the Golem is able to devastate the entire city of Prague, if it is not time to calm down.
After that the Golem behaved obediently, still successfully defended the Jews, if this happened the need, but it took some time and the community is no longer threatened malicious slander – the Emperor Rudolph II promised that the attack of Christians on Jews more will not be, – the existence of the assistant had become redundant.
Then Rabbi löw summoned Isaac and Jacob, and said to them: “Now the Golem has become superfluous, since we no longer have to fear the evil accusations. Therefore, we must destroy him.” Everything had to happen secretly. It was in early 1593.
On the appointed day, the Rabbi Leo ordered the Golem to it this time not sleeping in the Rabbinate, and moved his bed to the attic of the synagogue and spent the night there. In two hours of the night to come, Rabbi Lev Isaac, and Jacob, and he asked them, whether dead, i.e., non-living, which, in theory, is the Golem, to represent, like other dead, debris. It was a very important issue, because otherwise the priest would not be able to participate in the destruction of the Golem, but the Rabbi Leo decided that this question should be answered in the negative. In other words, if initially Gaulle was not alive, then the sin of murder on the priest will not.
Having come to this decision, all three of them went up to the servant on the attic of the synagogue and began to destroy the Golem. They did everything exactly the opposite compared to that night when he created man from clay, i.e., if the night of creation, they stood at the feet of the Golem, in front of his head, but now they began to his head and looked at his feet. Kabbalistic words have also read the contrary.
After all the procedures Golem again became just a lump of clay. Rabbi Leo then called a servant, Abraham Haim, and ordered him to undress Golem up shirt. The clothes he ordered quietly burn. Frozen Golem then hid the old garments and remnants of books, stored according to Jewish tradition in the attic of the synagogue.
In the morning in the Jewish quarter of people said that Joseph had disappeared from the night city. The truth known only to a few people. Rabbi Lev was ordered to announce in all synagogues and houses of prayer that it is strictly prohibited to enter the synagogue attic.
Here is a legend… For some time about her somewhat forgotten, however, about the Golem talking again at the end of the XVIII century, when the Polish Rabbi Eliya from Chelm put forward his version of what happened in Prague and he allegedly created a Golem.
They say, however, that the Golem of Prague to the end and failed to destroy that clay man continues to walk the streets of the Jewish quarter of Prague and scare passers-by. What it supposedly even seen, more than once. But it is exactly true to the legends the mysterious city of Prague, and more modern.
And here it is time to move from legends to reality. If you analyze the legends and historical data, identifies three facts that aren’t exactly fiction. The first of these – the suspension of the Friday prayer services, the Rabbi Left to stop the misdeeds of a certain Joseph. The second is to request the congregation (or on the story) not to inform the authorities about some kind of experiment. And the third is the prohibition of entrance to the synagogue attic. Prohibition really existed, and was even disassembled an external staircase, to any curious would not penetrate there. In front of the door to the attic at a height of 10 m before there was a Playground, which was led by a wooden staircase. This was evidenced by holes in the wall for girders. Later they were immured. In the eighteenth century chief Rabbi of Prague in Ezechiel Landau (1713-1793) visited the attic of the synagogue – having put to the wall of a portable ladder. Before you go upstairs, the Rabbi passed a rigorous purification, fasting and praying. Then in the prayer garb and strap on your head tefilin entered the mysterious attic of the synagogue, while his disciples waited at the bottom. Upstairs, however, he spent only a few minutes, and when he returned, trembled very much. What he saw in the attic, didn’t tell anyone. “Let no one else dares to go up there and not bother the rest of the Golem!” – updated a Rabbi, a strict ban of entrance to the attic.
Today at the synagogue attic there are no remains of the Golem. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. On a single beam over the door carved with date of 1883, which says that in the attic there was someone who could clean up the remains. By the way, the entrance to the attic of the synagogue is prohibited, and in our days. For what reason? If the legend of the Golem, this ban proves that it is not a legend!
Another confirmation of the reality of the Golem may be a repetition of the 92nd Psalm during worship in the old-new synagogue. This tradition can be a reminder of a long suspension of the sermons of Rabbi because of drunkenness Golem. Such a tradition not found in any other synagogue.
Mystery of the attic of the synagogue and the legend of the Golem very much interested in Czech researcher and writer Ivan Markel, who has worked on this issue for about thirty years. In 1984, he got permission to go to the attic of the synagogue, searched with the radar the entire attic, listened to the walls, but nothing, of course, is not found.
By the way, for the entire twentieth century Markel was the second person allowed in the attic. The first was the writing in German of the Jewish origin of the journalist Egon Erwin Kisch (1885-1948), is also fascinated by the legend of the Golem. He had been in the attic in 20-ies. He had a friend, also a Jew, no less passionate about this topic. With him Kish met in 1915. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army and rewrote some parts of the manuscript. In the book, which he bought in the Polish city of Premysl, described the fate of the Golem, an ancient clay robot. It is written immediately after the death of Rabbi Loew. From the text it follows that the body of Golem, probably, did not remain in the synagogue attic. It may be, is temporarily hidden in one part of the current of Josefov.
Markel believes that traces of the Golem body can lead to a variety of places in Prague. To best understand this story, he studied the book, which in 1909 produced a Polish Jew Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg. This book is the first detailed account of the life of Rabbi Loew and the Golem possible. Rosenberg claimed that he translated the original Hebrew text – “Wonders of the Maharal”, written by Isaac Katz, son-in-law and disciple of Rabbi Loew. According to this essay the Golem is actually enlivened with the help of Shem, which correspond to the other versions of this story. It’s possible that his friend Keisha told it about the book that was the basis of the work of Isaac Katz.
Markel in his studies and relied on an article by Egon Erwin Kish, in particular, to an article in the Sunday Supplement to the newspaper Prager Tagblatt from 12.9.1920. It Kish writes that the most successful will be linked with the disappearance of the servant Golem, Rabbi Loew Abraham Haim, who took part in the destruction of the body. Probably Haim with their relatives secretly moved the Golem in the underground room pinkasova the Prague synagogues. A few days later he moves it to another basement at the former Gypsy street – house, which was then partially owned by the Prague Jew Asher Balbirer. From there, Asher Balbirer moved the body to a partially abandoned Jewish cemetery near the TV tower in Zizkov, on the former Gallows Hill Sibenicni vrch is now Fibichova the street.
You’re not leaving any Golem today? Isn’t this a fiction? The origin of the translation keisha is impossible to trace, and in his manuscripts there are some historical inaccuracies, though not very important, and who is immune from inaccuracies, especially since we are talking about the events of five hundred years ago. The most important of the inaccuracies – that the Jewish cemetery for the dead from the plague at that time existed, it appeared after ninety years. But could in fact be another cemetery?
The second trail leads to the Old Jewish cemetery in Josefov. The trail is very plausible. The fact that in the Prague archives were recording that in 1883 the synagogue was under renovation, which also replaced rotten beams in the attic (that’s where on the beam the figures 1883) and on the outer side temporary assembled a ladder of metal brackets. The attic was cleaned, and discovered things lowered down and buried at the old Jewish cemetery. What were the things no one knows, and archive records bypassed this moment with silence: things. Along with the items could bear and the body of the Golem. If we assume that the members of the Jewish community in 1883 found among the sacred books and prayer vestments of human bones (or something obscure – like shapes from clay), then discovery would have hidden or secretly buried in the cemetery, because at that time, again raised a wave of anti-Semitism, and Jews were again accused of ritual using the blood of Christians.
By the way, handed down and buried things: what is the need was to bury the old stuff four hundred years ago and remnants of books? And that in a cemetery?! Would it not be easier just to burn it?
Further, the story makes an unexpected turn, which no one expected. In 1999 Ivan Markel addresses the Indonesian Teddy Sunardi, who is studying law at Charles University. He contributes to the investigation of a surprising turn. The Indonesian, whose mother is Czech, since childhood, is visited by strange visions and dreams with a strange old square with a column or other unknown to him places, reminiscent of the streets of some old European city. He’s sketching these places and terribly surprised when his mother finds out drawings of the old town square! Indonesian later identificeret your dreams and Prague with other places, primarily with the old Prague Jewish city in the form as it was before extensive rebuilding in the late nineteenth century. A young man came to Prague only to study in his childhood his mother didn’t take, and he did not see these places even in the photos. But Indonesian student knows such details about old Prague, which can know only its history. The Chairman of the club For old Prague” Ph. D. kateřina, Beckova checked his memory by showing him old photographs of different places of the Jewish quarter before the restructuring. Teddy tried to answer, what where. The results were astounding – approximately 80% precise results!
Psychics, connected to the research, I found out that Sunardi in a dream talking to long dead people, among which the Prague Rabbi Jakub Smiles (1570-1634). He’s one of the dreams told the student that the body of Golem lies in the Josefov in Prague the house where sixty days a man die. Calculated date fell on 31 July 1999, when death visited the house №849/6 on the Prague street From the Merciful. In the basement of this house Markel then searched for a buried Golem, and again with radar. The search was not successful, but the Czech researcher came to a shocking relationship: this house is located a few metres from the former Roma streets, which mentions the manuscript quiche! Or the body of Golem (a human skeleton, a clay figure or the remains of a mysterious mechanism, this version also took place, as Rabbi Leo was known for his wisdom, broad knowledge of the natural and arcane Sciences. He could, for example, to build an artificial mechanism. Although this seems less plausible, but this version cannot be ruled out completely) buried in another place and lies somewhere in the vicinity of this Prague streets and waiting for its discoverer?
