#golems

[nightmaresyrup]

Iron Golems, J-33VE5 and IVIAR-1A

[jhscdood]

Golem paintings!!

[dunmeshistash]

Dungeon Meshi - Golems

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

Ok so, goy here, & I don't even know what the question I'm asking here is but I'll give you at least something to work with.

I've recently finished rereading Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett, & it's a very good story about personhood if I do say so myself.

The book is about Golems, & a few of the names of the Golems are derived from Yiddish words so obviously there's a lot of Jewish influence but how Jewish is it?

Rating: Jew-ish

First of all, everyone should go read Feet of Clay because it is a fantastic book. Second, golems are always Jewish the way that leprechauns are always Irish— they come from Jewish folklore (look up “the Golem of Prague”) and cannot be truly separated from that context. Third, the golems in Feet of Clay are also definitely fantasy-Jews. 

From my perspective, the golems in Feet of Clay are a good example of cultural appreciation as opposed to cultural appropriation. By giving the golems Yiddish names, Pratchett explicitly recognizes the origin of golems in Ashkenazi Jewish culture, unlike various RPG golems where they are simply co-opting the word to mean “construct” or “fantasy robot,” and where the creator is usually evil. (Don’t get me started on what DnD does with “phylactery.”) It’s fundamental to the golem folktale that it is originally intended for protection, and while the golem of legend does go off the rails, it begins with the best of intentions— which Pratchett pays tribute to in the plot of Feet of Clay. 

One of the in-world broadly known facts about Pratchett’s golems is that they occasionally have holy days on which they won’t do any work but no one else really knows when those days are, which, as I carefully hoard my vacation time to make sure I’ve got enough to take the holidays off, I find hilarious. 

Another moment in Feet of Clay that felt extremely Jewish to me (under the cut as this as it is at the end of the book)

is when Dorfl declares that he’s an atheist, gets hit with a lightning bolt, survives unscathed since he’s made of fireproof clay, and tells the priests that he hardly considers that to be a compelling or logical argument. It bears a striking resemblance to the Talmudic tale of the Oven of Akhnai in which one rabbi’s appeal to divine power for miracles to “prove” he is correct is deemed invalid because miracles are not source-based evidence, they’re just miracles. Truly, a deeply Jewish moment.

Pratchett himself was a staunch atheist who was extremely critical of organized religion, particularly state-sponsored religion. Jewish readers can reasonably have a range of reactions and opinions to his fantasy-Jews (we have another ask about his dwarves in the pipeline), but we sure come off better than his fantasy-Catholics— please see Small Gods for more on that.

[pratchettquotes]

Flames died. Sound died. Light died.

ANGHAMMARAD.

Anghammarad looked at his hands. There was nothing there except heat, furnace heat, blasting heat that nevertheless made the shapes of fingers.

ANGHAMMARAD, a hollow voice repeated.

"I Have Lost My Clay," said the golem.

YES, said Death. THAT IS STANDARD. YOU ARE DEAD. SMASHED. EXPLODED INTO A MILLION PIECES.

"Then Who Is This Doing The Listening?"

EVERYTHING THERE WAS ABOUT YOU THAT ISN'T CLAY.

"Do You Have A Command For Me?" said the remains of Anghammarad, standing up.

NOT NOW. YOU HAVE REACHED THE PLACE WHERE THERE ARE NO MORE ORDERS.

"What Shall I Do?"

I BELIEVE YOU HAVE FAILED TO UNDERSTAND MY LAST COMMENT.

Anghammarad sat down again. Apart from the fact that there was sand rather than ooze underfoot, this place reminded him of the abyssal plane.

GENERALLY PEOPLE LIKE TO MOVE ON, Death hinted. THEY LOOK FORWARD TO AN AFTERLIFE.

"I Will Stay Here, Please."

HERE? THERE'S NOTHING TO DO HERE, said Death.

"Yes, I Know," said the ghost of the golem. "It Is Perfect. I Am Free."

Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

[cottoncandytrafficcones]

STORYTIME

So I just started working in a yeshiva/Jewish day school. And what do I wear on my first day but my golem sweater? Basically it's a sand-colored sweater by this Etsy artist named AtaraZev that has little three golems on it: a white one holding a blue flower with a yellow center, a grey one looking at a blue and green butterfly, and a brick-red one with an orange cat on its head.

So. I wear this to my first day of work, where part of what I'm doing is Kriya (learning to read Hebrew letters and vowels/nekudot). And the second graders I'm working with are like, what's that on your shirt? Ima? To which I internally responded "Do I LOOK like your ima?" and externally responded, "No it says 'emet.'" I then proceeded to explain what golems are and how you make one.

THEY. ARE. OBSESSED.

Every day I go in they crowd around my table for kriyah, which is usually only limited to five students in a group at a time. They call golems "Emets" and keep saying how they tried it at home, asking if I've ever made one, and do they speak, and what do they eat, and if they have ears and if not how they can hear, and how can they understand you, and are they little or big, and can they do work for you? When I explained that they can be any size and that generally they protect communities, one of them was like "Like firefighters?" and proceeded to act out a tiny golem with a fire hose.

Anyway, point is: I got a bunch of second graders obsessed with golems. It's adorable.

[discworldquotes]

Sombre, he'd said. You had to hand it to golem tailoring. The suit was so black that if it had been sprinkled with stars the owls would have collided with it.

Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

[notaplaceofhonour]

if fantasy has to have goylems, you can do a lot worse than dungeon meshi

they’re one of the few monsters that the party doesn’t kill and eat because senshi has a symbiotic relationship with them, planting crops on their back & recognizing their role in defending the surface from monsters from the deeper levels of the dungeon