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Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters by Maya Barzilai (review)

2019; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 43; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ajs.2019.0072

1475-4541

Klaus Davidowicz,

Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

Reviewed by: Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters by Maya Barzilai Klaus Davidowicz Maya Barzilai. Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters. New York: New York University Press, 2016. 288 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000734 The golem is the Jewish variant of humankind's primarily male-occupied search to create life like the gods. (A female creator and a female golem appear for the first time in Cynthia Ozick's novel The Puttermesser Papers [1996].) Scholars such as Gershom Scholem and Moshe Idel showed the development of [End Page 479] the golem idea from rabbinic through kabbalistic literature. In several mystic texts from the circle of the Hasidei Ashkenaz, including Eleazar of Worms's commentary on the Sefer Yeẓirah, we find the first real prescriptions for "golem creations." Are these reports based on concrete experiences, and did medieval Jewish mystics really create artificial beings? Scholem explained these reports as a sort of a final ritual for adherents of the mystics' circles. The golem would have been created only in the mind and destroyed again afterwards. The golem films that are the subject of Maya Barzilai's volume drew on the background of these golem legends. All the golem movies were shot around the First and Second World Wars. In 1914, the golem flickered for the first time across the "demonic screens" of German silent film theaters, portrayed by Paul Wegener, who also collaborated on the screenplay of the movie directed by Henrik Galeen (Heinrich Wiesenberg). In 1943, Galeen attempted to produce an antiwar film with the golem as a fighter against the Nazis, with a screenplay he wrote with Paul Frankenberg and presented to director Fritz Lang, but the film was never made. Galeen's first golem film, from 1914, has not survived; all that remains of it is the screenplay and a short four-minute fragment. In 1917, Wegener wrote the screenplay for a new golem film that he starred in and also directed, The Golem and the Dancing Girl, which was in fact not a "real" golem film, but rather a comedy about movie stars. Unfortunately, this film, too, has been lost, and portions of the screenplay are all that survive. Finally, in 1920, Wegener shot his third and most impressive golem film: Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (The golem: How he came into the world). The film combines elements of the legends of Prague and Chelm and the German legends of the magician "Doctor Faust." Wegener's golem was undoubtedly a milestone in film history. With his excessively Faustian interpretation of Rabbi Loew's creation of the golem, Wegener strayed very far indeed from the traditional legends. Nowadays, seen by viewers with much more heightened sensitivity to antisemitic imagery, the controversial scenes probably appear much more scandalously execrable than they would have been for audiences at the time. In other sequences, though, Wegener created poetic images of a medieval Jewish ghetto that have been unsurpassed by any director since. The next golem movie, Le Golem, was shot in Prague 1936 by French director Julien Duvivier. This French/Czechoslovak coproduction was a kind of hidden propaganda film against the Nazis. The Jews are suppressed, and Rabbi Loew's successor (Charles Dorat) wakes the golem (Ferdinand Hart) to protect the ghetto. The golem became a "Jewish Superman." Readers looking for a general introduction to the cultural history of the golem legends, including the numerous golem novels or films, are not well served by Barzilai's study. She does not provide us with a revised overview of the history of the golem, but focuses solely on cultural images of wartime violence in Germany, the United States, and Israel. In the first chapter, Barzilai gives new and unique interpretations of Wegener's golem films. The chapter's focus is not on Der Golem's antisemitic ambiguity and the unbelievable ending, in which the golem is redeemed by a blond Christian child, but rather the film's context in the history of the First World War. The second chapter, on "The Golem Cult of 1921 New York," is the product of excellent research, including on Yiddish plays. By focusing on the United States and [End Page 480] Israel, Barzilai...