The central theme that the author, Sadeh, is trying to portray is that act of liberalism. Long ago, there was no form of religious equity. There was a constant feud between the Jews and the Christians. The Jews because they were few in numbers, they found a way to protect themselves by using a Golem. The author starts by stating that the Jews underwent exiled from their land and in the hopes of carrying their faith with them; they took up stones from their land to the new one. The priests used the stones to make the synagogue in the new city, Prague.
The history of the area depicts that in this town lived a great Rabbi called Levi. He was a great priest because he was capable of making a Golem. A creature made from all four elements, the earth, fire, water and air (230). The Golem was a creature created by the faith of the Jews and molded in a human form. The scriptures of the Word of God brought him to life. It was incapable of having emotions, eating or drinking and its sole purpose was to follow the commands of the person who owed it.
During the time of priest Levi, the Christians would accuse the Jews of ritual murder. A ritual that would occur between the Purim and Passover times (229). The priest would dress up the golem in Christian attire and send it to patrol the streets to make sure that nothing malicious is occurring that would prohibit the performance of the ritual. It also saved the city and its people when great misfortune hit. The cause of the hard times was because a troll scroll dropped to the ground in the synagogue (229). After prayers regarding the event, the rabbi had a dream and with it, come to a scripture that he could not interpret but when the golem saw it, he translated it. They discovered that the reason for such tragedies was due to adultery. The presence of the Golem lead to a Jewish culture that is still present in the current times, for example, the recitation of the ninety-second Psalm twice (229). The time of the Golem ended when the city found a new monarch who ruled the city in a just way. The priest performed the ritual again to put the Golem back to its original four elements.
The theme is present in different aspects of the story. The author shows that there was the constant conflict between the Christians and the Jews. There was also the presence of inequity because the Jews went into exile. The city itself did not have the presence of equity with the current ruler, and that lead to the creation of the golem. The presence of all these acts has a contribution from the actions of a person’s decisions, which has a basis of a particular religion, personal values and the current state of Prague.
Currently, the aspect of the religious feud is not common as it was during the time of Rabbi Levi. Today, instead of facing religious conflict, the society experiences Islamic prejudice, global recessions and aggression from the Russians (Bilefsky 1). The NYC paper has different contradiction regarding the whole tale of the golem. Most state the current condition of the crisis is because the golem was walking in the street. Most state it was not a symbol of protection mostly because it had rage and created havoc.
Bilefsky says that the people are looking into different reasons to justify the state of the economy. One of those reasons is religion, which among the Jews is the Golem folktale. The different perception portrayed by the writer of NYC shows that the whole tale has undergone many changes over time, where people do not see it as the symbol of protection but as the creature, which brings chaos.
Work Cited
Sadeh, Pinḥas. Jewish Folktales. New York: Doubleday, 1989. Print.
Bilefsky, Dan. Hard Times Give New Life to Prague’s Golem. New York Times, 2009.
