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Many
of the characters in Golem Stories have their basis in historical
figures, though sometimes liberties are taken.
Here are the biographies of the real life people who correspond to the
characters found in the golem legends.
Rudolf II
The Emperor Rudolf II of Austria (1552-1612) was
born on July 18, 1552 as the eldest son of Maximilian II. He became King of
Bohemia in 1575 and was made Emperor in 1576.
In 1583, he moved the imperial court to Prague and proceeded to
transform Prague into a city filled with astronomers, alchemists, artists,
craftsmen, and
humanists. He was fascinated with any
sort of new knowledge, whether it was in science or the occult. He gathered an enormous collection of art,
including (among many others) the works of Bosch and Arcimboldo, and filled the
castle with a menagerie of exotic animals.
His longtime lover, Anna Maria Strada, daughter of Ottavio Strada, the
Court Painter, bore him numerous illegitimate children. The oldest of them, Julius Caesar,
notoriously murdered his mistress in 1608.
Emperor Rudolf was also rumored to have many other lovers, some of them
men.
It is known that Emperor Rudolf met with Rabbi Loew
at the palace, though the full details of that meeting are not known. Rumors and reconstructions of that meeting
have been many, usually focusing on Rudolf’s interest in the mystical and Rabbi
Loew’s familiarity with the Kabbalah.
The Rabbi’s knowledge of the ancient texts was extensive and sometimes
quite different from prevailing opinions, especially in his interpretation of
the Sephirot, the ten aspects of God.
There are also rumors of other, unrecorded meetings. Emperor Rudolf’s relationship with the
Jewish community was positive on the whole—he changed the laws to allow Jews
fair trials and removed restrictions on trade.
However, he still required them to wear the yellow circle that was the
mark of Judaism in Prague at the time.
As Emperor Rudolf grew older, he suffered
increasingly from the mood swings that had plagued him somewhat in his younger
days, becoming more depressive and reclusive.
In 1611,
Rudolf's brother, heir, and longtime rival, Matthias, used those depressive
spells and fears of a Protestant take over as an excuse to march on Prague
Castle. Matthias forced Rudolf to turn
over the rulership of Hungary, Moravia, and Bohemia, although Rudolf kept the
Imperial Crown and his residence in the castle. Emperor Rudolf died on January 19, 1612.
Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel (the Maharal)
There are disputes as to when and where the Rabbi
Loew was born—possibly in Posen, Poland in 1512, possibly in Worms in
1520. Regardless, after studying and
becoming a rabbi in a Polish yeshiva, he came to Prague to marry his wife, Pealrla,
in 1544. She was 28 at the time. Afterwards, he became Chief Rabbi for the
Moravian Jews, until 1573, when he returned to Prague.
Rabbi Loew was a distinguished scholar and an
expert on the Kabbalah, and his reputation earned him the nickname the Maharal (a Hebrew abbreviation that stands for
“Our Teacher, Rabbi Loew”). He was
also a prolific writer and some of his writing was a forerunner to Hasidic
thought. Rabbi Loew was conservative in
his approach to Judaism, decrying the drinking of unkosher wine in the
community and declaring that the Talmud should not be taught to the young, only
those who are intellectually ready. He
also did not believe that advances in science had any relevance to the
interpretation of the Torah.
The story of the golem didn’t become attached to
Rabbi Loew until the 1800’s, the first published record of it being in 1838, by
the German Czech journalist Franz Klutschack, though he was recording an
already existing legend. Many other
miraculous stories have accumulated about the Rabbi as well, and the Hasidim consider
him a Zaddik, a holy man whose connection with God allowed him to perform many
miracles.
Rabbi Loew died on August 17, 1609, and he was buried in the
Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, where he gravestone still gathers much
attention.
Pearla (Rebbetsin Loew)
Pearla was the daughter of Reb Samuel Schmelke
Reich, a rich merchant, and she became engaged to the future Rabbi Loew at a
very young age. However, her father
reportedly lost his fortune and was unable to pay her dowry, as promised. Rather than abandon Pearla, Rabbi Loew
waited for their fortunes to improve, and, the legend is, Pearla’s fortunes
were restored when she found a bag of gold mistakenly thrown at her by a
soldier. The legend further states that
the soldier was the Prophet Elijah in disguise.
Pearla worked for many years at a bakery shop,
doing the accounting, as she later did at the synagogue, like many of the women
in the Jewish community. Together, she
and Rabbi Loew had six daughters and a son.
Pearla died in 1619, ten years after Rabbi Loew, and was buried at his
side.
Rivka and Devorah (the Rabbi’s children)
Rabbi Loew and his wife Pearla had six daughters,
who were, from oldest to youngest, Leah, Feigeleh, Gitteleh, Reichel, Tillah, and Realina. They also had a son, Bezalel, who was killed
during a progrom in Germany. He was
serving as a Rabbi there at the time.
All of Rabbi Loew’s daughters married Rabbis, as well. Chronologically, Tillah would have fit
Devorah’s role and Realina would fit Rivka, though their similarities end
there. Realina, in fact, reportedly married
Rabbi Loew’s brother, Rabbi Chaim, the Chief Rabbi of Worms.
The Golem
Golem originally meant, depending on the source,
“embryo” or “imperfect matter,” though now it is a Hebrew and Yiddish slang
term for a thick-skulled person.
Stories of a creature of clay by that name appear as early as the twelfth
century. In the Sefer Gezirah,
published at that time in Worms, it states that in a magic ritual, gestures are as
important as numbers (or letters) in its creation. In the sixteenth century, an early golem was credited to Rabbi Elijah
Ball Shem of Chelm.
The modern stories of the golem are many. In almost all of them, the golem is summoned
in response to Christian attacks precipitated by the blood libel, the once
commonly held belief that the blood of Christian children was a main ingredient
of matzah. In almost all of them, the
golem goes out of control and the Maharal must turn him back into clay. A number of smaller stories have also
cropped up along with the main legend.
Among the best known is the story of how the golem was asked by Pearla
to get water, despite warnings from the Maharal not to use him as a
servant. The incident nearly ends in
disaster, for she forgets to tell the golem when to stop, resulting in a near
flood.
In some legends, the golem is animated by something
written on his forehead, in some a paper placed under his tongue, and in some
an amulet. The fact that the Golem is
named Joseph and the idea that it is half demon also commonly occurs within the
legends. However, Joseph’s earlier
relationship with the Maharal’s daughter is purely and invention of the
adaptation.
The golem belongs to a small sub-genre of Jewish
legends of demons and other mystical apparitions such as dybbuks, dead lovers
whose souls inhabit the bodies of the women they once loved.
Perhaps the most famous adaptations of the golem
legend are the play by Yiddish playwright H. Levick; the German expressionist
silent film written and directed by Henrik Galeen and Paul Wegener; the book by
Isaac Bashevis Singer; and Michael Chambon’s recent incorporation of the legend
into his book Kavalier and Clay.
Of course, many similar creatures to the golem, perhaps inspired by the
Jewish legend, have popped up in literature, ranging from Frankenstein to
The Incredible Hulk (originally, the Hulk’s skin was gray, like clay, rather
than the later green coloring).
The golem is supposedly locked in the attic of the
Alteschul, the ancient synagogue which still stands in Prague. In recent years, a journalist went into the
attic to investigate, but he found nothing.
Father Thaddeus
There is no
evidence of a historical figure that corresponds to Thaddeus, though he is
found in most versions of the golem legend.
However, it is true that the Bohemian Jesuits in particular were very anti-Semitic
at that time and that many of the priests perpetuated the blood libel. Thaddeus is probably just a compilation of a
number of real life figures.