Is the Golem the Perfect Jewish Monster?

Judaism is not unrepresented in horror, but it has to be handled with sensitivity since anti-Semitism is a far too real horror of its own. The stark fact of the Holocaust adds considerably to this caution.  Sometimes the Holocaust has been referenced in horror film, as in The Possession (Ole Bornedal, 2012), but then it’s often shown obliquely and with respect. Religion plays a regular role in horror, and frequently that religion—especially in American films—is some form of Christianity.  When a monster based on Judaism appears it’s well worth watching.

Doron and Yoav Paz’s The Golem (2018) is an Israeli horror film based on perhaps the most famous Jewish monster. Unfortunately the movie didn’t receive a wide theatrical release. Part of the reason may have to do with a general cultural discomfort surrounding fictional Jewish horror when the real-life horror is still so present. Often Judaism is poorly presented, as in Carl Schultz’s The Seventh Sign (1988), released three decades earlier.  The Orthodox rabbi that Abby Quinn (Demi Moore) seeks out refuses to help her because she tries to shake his hand, violating what is portrayed as some arcane rule. The young Avi (Manny Jacobs) has to help instead. He’s a positive character, but this is clearly a Christian apocalypse. Likewise in The Possession, gentile Clyde Brenek (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is refused help by the Hasidic community after his daughter is possessed by a dybbuk.  Only a younger Tzadok (played by Matisyahu, formerly known as the Hasidic rapper, no less) is willing to attempt the exorcism.  In both of these latter two movies the Jewish character is instrumental in helping to save either the world (The Seventh Sign) or a young, non-Jewish girl (The Possession). Enter The Golem.

Doron and Yoav Paz’s The Golem (2018)

The golem is a Jewish monster that has been represented in cinema before: Paul Wegener’s The Golem (1920), and Martin Frič’s The Emperor and the Golem (1951), are two notable examples.  Perhaps because the story is generally about Jews being protected from goyim, the theme never caught on in mainstream American films. At least not directly.

Although the golem is sometimes proclaimed as “the Jewish Frankenstein,” critics have argued that Frankenstein’s monster is actually a form of golem. In that guise, the argument goes, golems have actually been mainstreamed since the Universal monsters of the 1930s. Frankenstein monsters, however, tend to appear in Christian contexts. Is this a form of supersessionism?

Paul Wegener’s The Golem (1920)

The 2018 Golem is based on the legend of the golem of Prague.  Historians generally point to a nineteenth-century origin for this particular story, but golem folklore has much deeper roots. Oppressed Jews in Prague are delivered when Rabbi Loew creates a golem. According to Genesis, God created humans from earth, and a golem is a humanoid made of mud or clay brought to life by kabbalistic magic. The word truth (‘emet, in Hebrew) is written on his forehead (the golem is generally male) and a scroll with the shem (one of the names of God) put into his mouth.  The golem is a very capable protector, but, being soulless, he eventually kills indiscriminately and must be deactivated. This can be done by erasing the first letter of ‘emet from his forehead, leaving the word mot (death), or by removing the shem scroll from his mouth.  This account has all the elements of a perfectly serviceable monster story. Might religious sensitivities be responsible for its rarity in mainstream horror?

The Paz brothers’ Golem takes some departures from the tale traditionally situated in Prague.  Seventeenth-century Lithuanian Jews are being menaced by their gentile neighbors because the plague has struck and the Jewish shtetl, being isolated, has been spared.  The goyim assume the deviant religion of the Jews has led to the problem and physically threaten them when a local gentile leader’s daughter falls ill. Hanna (Hani Furstenberg), an educated Jewish woman, uses the Kabbalah to raise a golem.  Unexpectedly, the monster is a little boy the age of her deceased son.

Hanna (Hani Furstenberg) from Golem

The film makes use of its Jewishness much as Fiddler on the Roof does.  Since this is an Israeli film, the cultural comprehension of things like torah scrolls and the minyan can be assumed.  The golem does what it was created to do.  At first Hanna is able to control it, but as the gentiles attack after the death of the leader’s daughter, the golem begins his indiscriminate massacre.  Hanna, one of the few survivors, kisses her “son” goodbye, removing the shem from his mouth in doing so.

Jewish lore pervades this film.  During the pre-climatic scene where the minyan attempts to destroy the golem, the rabbi chants the Pulsa diNura “death curse.” This curse is found neither in the Bible nor in the Kabbalah, but it may date back to antiquity.  In the movie it leads to perhaps the first horror rendition of death by shofar as the golem impales the rabbi with his ram’s horn.  More importantly, the curse seems to be working as the golem starts to shed dust. This isn’t part of the traditional lore of the monster—stopping it requires removal of the shem or the erasure of the first letter on his forehead.  Another bit of Jewish legend may go by unnoticed unless the viewer is familiar with the story of Lilith.

Hanna is passive during lovemaking.  Unbeknownst to her husband, she’s been using a contraceptive ointment ever since the death of their young son. After the golem is conjured, she becomes passionate, taking the top position during intercourse. According to some Jewish traditions, this was the very act that led to the banishment of Lilith, Adam’s first wife. Before the creation of Eve, Lilith wanted equality with Adam and showed this by taking the dominant sexual position. After her banishment, she cohabited with Satan and became her own kind of Jewish monster.

Judaism is moving away from simply being the foil to Christian horrors, as in The Seventh Sign, to a place where it might stand on its own, creating a distinctive form of scary film.  While it seems unlikely that Mary Godwin Shelley had the golem in mind as she penned Frankenstein, she was perhaps unconsciously borrowing from a monster that had been around for centuries. The golem, raised to life from dead matter, doesn’t sympathize with humans.  The problem is that we might not even know about such monsters if their films aren’t distributed among the viewing public. It’s time to give the golem its due.

You can actually find The Golem on the free streaming channel, Tubi, and it is also streaming on Amazon Prime (ad):