In January of 2016, I joined a closed facebook group called “Cool Jews.” A few of my friends were in the group already, and it had been popping up in my feed for a while, recommended by facebook’s algorithms as something I might be interested in. I was curious, and so I requested to be admitted to the group. I suppose someone must have vouched for my credentials as a “cool Jew,” because my request was accepted, and I was allowed in. “Cool Jews” was my first introduction to “Jewbook,” the loosely affiliated network of facebook groups that serve as one of several digital homes for the internet’s wandering Jews.

The existence of Jewbook is an interesting phenomenon. The various individual constituent groups that make up the broader Jewish facebook zeitgeist tend to cater to a particular, and often niche subset of online Jews– affinity groups within affinity groups. Some groups place a high degree of emphasis on religious observance, while others do not. Some groups are composed of self-professed Zionists, while others are critical of Israel, and identify as diasporists. Some groups are primarily irreverent in tone, and others are communities of dedicated and sober minded scholars. Of course, debate and discussion within these groups is ceaseless– a clear demonstration of the common observation that one who gathers three Jews to discuss a given issue, should not be surprised to find among them at least five opinions. Despite the plurality of viewpoints on the topics of politics and theology, Jewbook, viewed as an overarching network, incorporates perspectives that run the gamut of modern Jewish identities and ideologies, and can be a useful resource for making generalizations about the mood, preoccupations, and concerns of internet-savvy Jews. Now, admittedly, these personal observations are anecdotal and unscientific, nevertheless, my interest was piqued when I began to notice the frequency and regularity with which users of Jewbook made posts or comments invoking the legendary figure of the Golem of Prague.Here the golem appeared as a meme. Here too, in the name of a jokey facebook group.  And here was the golem being claimed as a symbol of resistance, and worn (quite literally) as a badge of identity.

Seeing these digital depictions of the golem, I was put in mind of the work of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Cohen’s landmark work “Monster Culture: Seven Theses” sets out his method for “reading cultures from the monsters they engender” in the form of seven “breakable postulates in search of specific cultural moments” (Cohen 11-12). The second of these theses asserts that “the monster always escapes,” although Cohen’s idea might be rephrased to say that the monster always comes back, and when it does, it wears a slightly different form indicative of the particular cultural moment in which it finds itself (13). Cohen’s observation is certainly true of the golem myth, which has been dramatically reshaped over the course of numerous retellings. In her 2012 book,Golem Redux: From Prague to Post-Holocaust Fiction, Elizabeth Roberts Baer traces the development of the golem myth over the course of several of these reawakenings. Baer characterizes the golem narrative as a palimpsest,a text that has been subject to rewriting, but in such a way that traces of the original are still discernible (22). In this essay, I will draw on the ideas of Baer and Cohen to shed some light on some of the modern incarnations of the golem that I have encountered in my time as an observer and participant in the digital world of Jewbook. I will attempt to read our current cultural moment as expressed by these digital golems, I will identify what elements remain from previous incarnations and invocations of the golem (and explain their significance), and I will conclude by exploring the ways in which digital platforms have allowed artists and activists to redeploy the golem in the fight against the flesh-and-blood anti-Semitism of the Trump era.  But before I can do this, I need to provide a bit of background on golems for those of you who did not grow up immersed in the Ashkenazi folktales of my youth.

The golem is a mythic being from Jewish mysticism– the crude figure of a massive man, shaped out of mud and clay, and given life by a learned Tzaddik¹ through certain arcane rituals and secret utterances. In early golem stories, the golem is a marginal character, existing mainly as a plot device, a demonstration of the abilities, and therefore the holiness of the Tzaddik, who is ultimately the focus of the tale. In later versions of the golem myth, the mute creature takes a more central, and more practical position, serving as a domestic laborer who chops wood and fetches water (physical tasks for a creature who is all physicality) so that his sagacious creator can devote his attention to scholarship and the civic duties of a rabbi (Baer 20). By the mid 1800s, these stories had largely coalesced around one man, the 16th Century rabbi Yehudah Loew Ben Betzalel, better known as the Maharal of Prague (Maharal being a Hebrew acronym for “Our Teacher, Rabbi Loew”), but it was not until the turn of the century that the last main elements of the golem story as we know it today were set forth in a book by the Polish Rabbi Yudl Rosenberg entitled The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague (Baer 22; Leviant xvi). Rosenberg revolutionized the golem myth by introducing two key elements that would forever alter the narrative fabric of the golem tales. The first of these elements is the threat of anti-Semitic violence perpetrated as a result of a blood libel; and the second is a humanized golem, with thoughts, and desires, and, for the first time, a name (Leviant xxiii). Because Rosenberg’s version of the story so profoundly impacted the subsequent development of the golem myth, I find it necessary to briefly digress from my argument in order to discuss the curious case of Yudl Rosenberg and his book.

Reb Yudl Rosenberg was, by all accounts, something of a character–  an Orthodox rabbi, a best-selling author with a rare knowledge of the secular literary world, and as it happens, a highly successful literary forger in his time. As Curt Leviant writes in the introduction to his own translation of Rosenberg’s Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal:

As an Orthodox rabbi… in a community that viewed fiction as frivolous and utterly outside the Jewish tradition of Torah study, Rosenberg had to disguise his authorship of the book. He resorted to the classic ruse of the ‘discovered manuscript’… To an unsuspecting public, Rosenberg was able to pass off his own book as if it had been written hundreds of years earlier by the Maharal’s son-in-law, Rabbi Isaac Katz (xvii).

Rosenberg’s deception was so successful that many readers believed The Wondrous Deeds of the Maharalto be a genuine article.  This perceived authenticity was a major factor in the book’s significant and widespread commercial success. Within a few years of its initial publication,Rosenberg’s wildly popular book was subject to widespread plagiarism, as well as several unauthorized (and often inaccurate) translations, some of which were published in locales as distant as Africa, the Middle-East, and the United States (Leviant xxii). Most significantly, Rosenberg’s stories were repeated person to person, and along the way, they picked up the variations and deviations that are always the result of imperfect oral transmission. And so, Yudl Rosenberg’s 20th century literary fiction was retroactively entered into the canon of the Ashkenazi folk tradition (xxii).

Rosenberg’s book (and its transmitted variations) quickly became the dominant Golem text, supplanting those that had come before it, and establishing the foundational narrative that most subsequent portrayals of the golem build upon. Hillel J. Kieval, the noted historian of European Jewry, refers to Rosenberg’s version of the golem tale as “the story that everyone knows” (15).  Here I present my summary of the Golem narrative, after Rosenberg’s:

 Sometime in the 16th Century, the wicked priest Thaddeus spread a vicious blood libel among the gentile population of Prague. The spread of the lie led to threats of violence: police raided Jewish homes, curfews were imposed, Jewish businesses were forced to close, and enraged mobs congregated outside the walled gates of the Jewish ghetto. The Jews of the ghetto feared for their safety, and they brought their concerns to the Maharal. The Maharal knew the situation was dire. What recourse did the Jews of Prague have against the violence of the mob? The solution, which came to the old Rabbi in a dream, lay in the mystic texts of the Kaballah, in particular the Sefer Yetzirah, or “Book of Creation.” Armed with the secrets of these texts, the Maharal made, and by speaking certain words, animated a Golem to help expose the Jews’ accusers, and defend the residents of the ghetto against the violence of their aggressors. The Maharal named his mute creation Joseph, and set him to work as a night-watchman. With Joseph the Golem serving as his deputy, the Maharal managed to expose the corrupt and murderous Thaddeus to the authorities, thwart several anti-Semitic conspiracies, and impress upon Emperor Rudolf II the importance of quelling the blood libels. Having restored peace to Prague, the Maharal and his disciples reversed their previous rituals and incantations, and so caused the golem to return to clay. The Maharal had the golem placed in the attic of Prague’s famous Old-New Synagogue, and covered him with books. The attic was sealed shut, and the Rabbi forbid all from entering, although he made an exception for a future rabbi, should need of the golem arise again.

Rosenberg’s Golem stories provide ample ground for the application of Cohen’s ideas about the ways in which eternally renewing monster narratives are shaped and reshaped by the shifting currents of culture. Cohen writes:

Each time the grave opens and the unquiet slumberer strides forth (“come from the dead,/ come back to tell you all”), the message proclaimed is transformed by the air that gives its speaker new life. Monsters must be examined within the intricate matrix of relations (social, cultural. and literary-historical) that generate them. (13)

With this observation in mind, it is worth exploring the most significant of the many historical inconsistencies at the heart of Rosenberg’s Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal, namelythe blood libel, and the ensuing threats to the Jews of Prague. This is not to say that Prague’s Jews were not, from time to time threatened with violence, or even with blood libels, but no such incidents occurred during the period in which the Maharal served as head Rabbi (Leviant xxix). Indeed, Hillel J. Kieval emphasizes that the reign of Rudolph II, corresponding with the time of the Maharal, was a relatively peaceful period for Czech Jews, calling it a “golden age,” and saying “during this time imperial policy demonstrated remarkable tolerance toward Jews… Jewish cultural life flourished, and the Jewish population—particularly in Prague—grew significantly” (5).  So, if Yudl Rosenberg’s portrait of a fearful and desperate Jewish populace did not reflect the reality of Jewish life in Prague under the Maharal, from whence did it arise? Most scholars point to the social and political zeitgeist in which Rosenberg was mired- that of Poland in the early 1900s. Elizabeth Roberts Baer writes the following, incorporating a quotation from Kieval:

There are no documented cases of blood libels occurring in Prague during Rabbi Loew’s residence there. But blood libels did occur subsequently and a resurgence took place during Rosenberg’s lifetime. “It was the Europe of Reb [Rosenberg], not of the Maharal, that witnessed a proliferation of accusations– and even formal, criminal trials– against Jews on the charge of ritual murder…” So Rabbi Rosenberg anachronistically injects demonstrations of antisemitism from his own period into his golem tales. (32)

It is worth noting that, in Rosenberg’s stories, the Golem and the Maharal take on the role of detectives², gathering evidence of false blood libels and obtaining confessions from the perpetrators, which they then present to the police, the law courts, and ultimately the emperor. In Rosenberg’s original narrative, the authorities that govern Prague are depicted as benevolent and just, and these legal measures are sufficient to diffuse the threat of violence (Leviant xxvii-xxviii). However, post World War I, and post-holocaust adaptations of Rosenberg’s text tend to paint a different picture– one in which the golem must respond to physical violence with physical violence, and which implicitly connects the golem to newly manufactured industrial machineries of war. After the carnage of the two great wars, there was no going back to Rosenberg’s initial idealistic vision of justice. Now the golem is almost always depicted as a creature with the potential for horrifically destructive violence.

Now that we have observed the ways in which early 20th century anti-Semitism shaped the  depiction of a golem supposedly made in the late 1500s, I would like to finally return to the 21st century, and to Jewbook, so that we can take a look at some of the 21st century depictions of golems one may find there. To understand both Jewbook, and the contemporary fascination with the golem, we must first acknowledge the sobering truth that the climate in which we now find ourselves living is not as far removed from that of the early 20th century as we might have hoped. Nazis march openly in American cities, emboldened by the rise of a nationalist demagogue, anti-Semitic and far right ideologies are on the rise at home and abroad, and incidents of anti-Semitic aggression have increased at a dramatic rate across the United States.³ According to data gathered by the ADL as part of its annual “Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents,” almost two-thousand anti-Semitic incidents were reported last year, representing a 57% increase over the year before, and more than doubling the 751 incidents reported in 2013, the last year in which the numbers were seen to be declining. This represents the largest single year increase in bias crimes against American Jews on record. Notably, the ADL report indicates that these incidents are not the lingering vestiges of antiquated prejudice, but are in fact emblematic of a growing hostility among young non-Jews. The rise in bias incidents is partially due to“a significant increase in incidents in schools and on college campuses, which nearly doubled for the second year in a row” (Anti-Defamation League).The success of Jewbook is largely a response to the hostile and threatening atmosphere of the times. Young Jews, including those who tend to eschew participation in mainstream Jewish organizations, are defiantly banding together, and forging new web-based communities that are rooted in resistance, and solidarity, mutual values, and shared cultural experiences. The internet, and the facebook platform helped facilitate the emergence of these networks, while also enabling their members to form close-knit communities that defy geographic limitations, and expand beyond the immediately local.

It is difficult to measure the influence of Jewbook on the Jewish community as a whole, but it should be noted that the number of individuals who participate in these groups is not insignificant. At the time of this writing, “Cool Jews,” one of the smaller Jewbook groups, is just shy of two thousand members. “Sounds goyish but ok,” a group dedicated primarily to the profoundly Jewish exercise of finding humor in situations of cultural alienation, has around twelve-thousand members. “God Save Us From Your Opinion,” a group for serious theological discussion, has numbers approaching twenty-thousand. For scale, consider that the largest synagogue in the world, the Belz Great Synagogue, has the capacity to seat only ten thousand. When one considers that many of the members of these groups are rabbis, organizers, and community leaders in their non-digital lives, one may conclude that the ideas expressed within these groups are filtering out into the Jewish mainstream, which is why it seems so significant that, within the past two years, Jewbook has developed a fascination with the legend of the Golem.

The golem pops up in a number of different guises on Jewbook. Some of these uses are humorous. A news headline about an anti-Semitic incident, or an ignorant statement from a politician might cause a Jewbook user to vent in  a group called “I will command the golem of Prague to destroy this goy!” Another user might respond to such a post with a popular meme, a picture of an elderly orthodox rabbi captioned with the command “Isaac… get the golem.” Such uses are noteworthy (and amusing), but not necessarily fruitful for the purposes of close reading or analysis. Instead, I would like to focus on a particular image, which has been widely shared on Jewbook. This stark black and white icon was created by Aaron Goldstein, a Jewish activist and graphic designer living in the Bay Area. Goldstein was inspired to design the image after a friend came to him shaken in the aftermath of an incident of anti-Semitic harassment. The friend proposed that Goldstein design a wearable patch based on the patches worn by antifascist activists, in particular the iconic “Good Night White Pride” design, but with an explicitly Jewish bent (Personal Interview #2). The patch had to suggest strength, resilience, protection. Goldstein began to work on his design, producing a number of different drafts. Before long, it became clear that the central image of the piece was going to be the golem. Once the image was completed, Goldstein uploaded it it, and shared it in a popular Jewish facebook group, then he placed an order for the manufacture of 613 physical patches.⁴ Almost immediately, users in that facebook group began to replace their profile pictures with the circular design, and others began to inquire how they could get the image printed on T-shirts, or coffee mugs.⁵  Goldstein’s initial shipment of patches sold out in just a few days (Personal Interview #1). Of all the ways in which his image has been used, Goldstein seemed most proud to see it incorporated into ritual use, and printed in the pages of self published revolutionary haggadot.⁶ Speaking with me, Goldstein expressed surprise at how quickly Jewbook had taken to his design. He attributed the patch’s success to its “resonance,” stating “It was clear that many young left Jews were searching for images which corresponded to their Jewish practice and antifascist / antirascist work. I think the golem touches both these things” (Personal Interview #2).In contrast with the fairly straightforward patches that inspired it, the image Goldstein designed features an abundance of symbols. The words “Mazal Tov Cocktail” humorously evoke the crudely improvised weapon often wielded by civilians against an armed force, but also the malapropism uttered by a Trump surrogate days before the 2016 election. The words “Goodnight, Alt-Right” recast the original “Goodnight, White Pride” using more contemporary terminology. The paired billiards balls display the Magen David (star of David), and the number 18, the numerological representation of the word Chai, or life. The hebrew text, taken from Deuteronomy, reads “tzadik, tzadik tirdof” (“Justice, justice you shall pursue”). The Yad, a ritual object used to hold one’s place while reading the torah, is recontextualized as a hand pointing towards the heavens. But the most striking image of all is that of the golem of Prague, presented without master or maker, climbing down the ladder that leads from the sealed attic of Prague’s famous Altneuschul (Good Night Alt-Right).

The iconic silhouette of the famous synagogue makes clear that this golem is the very same one that figures in Rosenberg’s golem mythos, although the scene depicted is not one found in Rosenberg’s writing, nor in any of those adaptations working from Rosenberg’s text. What Goldstein has depicted is the fulfillment of the Maharal’s pronouncement that, in a future period of crisis, the golem will reawaken and take up his role as guardian of the oppressed, and a terror to the enemies of the Jewish people. Liberated from the confines of any pre-existing narrative, Goldstein suggests that the ending of the golem story is happening now, all around us. Because the golem is shown alone, we can interpret the absence of the master as a sign that the golem is acting of its own volition. This nontraditional image of the golem serves to collapse the dichotomy between us and it, between monster and man. By merging the golem with the badge that traditionally marks its wearer as an anti-fascist combatant (or sympathizer) Goldstein has created a marker of Jewish strength and resistance- a sign proclaiming: the golem returns, and here it is/I am. The message is a timely one. As an article in The Forwardproclaimed last year:

In response to an energized American white nationalism, some Jews are gravitating toward “anti-fascist” activism. They’re embracing the idea that the best way to combat your enemies — in this case, white supremacists — is through direct confrontation, even violence. Organizers say their members number in the thousands.” (Kestenbaum)

Goldstein is sympathetic to the anti-fascist wing of Jewish activism, saying:

[Jews] will not lash out in violence against our enemies, but if our community or communities we stand in solidarity with are under attack, as they are now, we view violence in its various forms as viable, legitimate and, at times, necessary. (Personal Interview #1)

However, he maintains that this is but one of the many different forms Jewish resistance can take. “We do not necessarily have to be muscle-jews or street fighters, (which is not to say that Richard Spencer should not be punched, without mercy, by anyone who encounters him)” (Personal Interview #1). Indeed, synagogues, and non-violent Jewish activist groups also report recent surges in membership and involvement– which is to say nothing of the emergence of Jewbook as a new platform for education, solidarity, and resistance. Dark times are upon us, but the Golem is waking up.

 I would like to give the last words of this essay to Aaron Goldstein—and then conclude with a quotation from “Zog Nit Keyn Mol,” a popular Yiddish song written by the poet, resistance fighter, and Vilna ghetto inmate, Hirsch Glick, only one year before his death at the age of twenty-two.

When we rely on each other, when we protect each other and present a unified front, we are as a golem… The golem calls on us to consider different possibilities of Jewish strength….There is a strength in solidarity, there is a strength in organizing, there is a strength in perpetuating ourselves and our traditions, in meeting in secret internet groups and grappling with Jewish questions as our ancestors did, in being Jewish in public in whatever way feels good and meaningful (Godlstein, Personal Interview #1).

“Kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sho – s’vet a poyk ton undzer trot: mir zaynen do!”⁷ (Glick)

Work Cited

Anti-Defamation League. “2017 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents.” Anti-Defamation League,

www.adl.org/resources/reports/2017-audit-of-anti-semitic-incidents.

Baer, Elizabeth R. Golem Redux: From Prague to Post-Holocaust Fiction. Wayne State UP, 2012

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monsters, edited by Brandy Ball Blake and L. Andrew Cooper, Fountainhead, 2012, pp. 11-34.

“Cool Jews” (facebook group). Facebook, www.facebook.com/groups/1079173142123129/

“God Save us from Your Opinion: A Place For Serious Discussion of Judaism” (Facebook group). Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/562089430558585/

Glick, Hirsch. “Zog Nit Keyn Mol (Hymn of the Partisans).” YIVO Institute For Jewish Research, 2004, www.epyc.yivo.org/content/11_7.php.

Goldstein, Aaron. Mazal Tov Cocktail (Antifascist Patch). 2017, Golemforyou.

—. Personal Interview #1. 8 April 2018

— . Personal Interview #2. 24 April 2018

“I will COMMAND the GOLEM OF PRAGUE to DESTROY this GOY” (facebook group). Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1433248033392107/

Kestenbaum, Sam. “Pulling No Punches in Fight Against ‘Alt-Right’ and Neo-Nazis.” Forward, 8 March 2017, www.forward.com/news/364726/pulling-no-punches-in-fight-against- alt-right-and-neo-nazis.

Kieval, Hillel J. “Pursuing the Golem of Prague: Jewish Culture and the Invention of a Tradition.” Modern Judaism, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Feb., 1997), pp. 1-23.            www.jstor.org/stable/1396572

Leviant, Curt. Introduction. The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague,by Yudl Rosenberg, translated by Leviant, Yale UP, 2007, pp. xiii-xxxiv.

Rosenberg, Yudl. The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague. Translated by Curt Leviant, Yale UP, 2007.

“Sounds Goyish But Ok” (facebook group). Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1753070391614797/