It's a Joy Ride, and the Kids Are Driving
By A. O. Scott
August 11, 2002

As Hollywood sets its demographic sights ever lower, movies aimed at children become more interesting.

The NY Times critic suggests the quality of movies aimed at children is going up, even beyond that of movies aimed at grown-ups. Family-friendly movies are getting better production values and marketing (and sometimes, even better stories) because the "adult audience eager to be challenged and engaged" that defined the mainstream during the 70s is "increasingly seen as a niche market... The mainstream belongs, increasingly, to the young."

For the uninitiated, the golem is a figure out of Jewish folklore and mysticism—roughly speaking, the Jewish equivalent of the Frankenstein monster. (The most popular sources for golemology are the scholarly essay by Gershom Scholem, "The Idea of the Golem," and the retelling of the legend by Elie Wiesel, The Golem.) The word "golem" itself comes from Psalm 139, verse 16, in a passage praising God the creator: "My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance." From this humble origin, Jewish tradition constructed a whole theory of golem-making as man's daring and ambiguous imitation of God's creation of humanity. In the Sefer Yetsirah, the third-century book of creation, a Jewish mystic tried to figure out the formulas God used to create Adam, using the alphanumeric codes to which Hebrew lends itself.

But it is in 16^th-century Prague that we find the classic golem story. In 1580 or thereabouts, Rabbi Judah Loew, known as the Maharal, was said to have created a golem from the mud of the River Vltava. The golem's mission was to protect the Jews of Prague from blood-libel pogroms, to meet the force of anti-Semitism with a counter-force. As Wiesel puts it, the golem was "without pity for the wicked, fierce toward our enemies." Legend assigns the golem various exploits, thwarting plots and punishing evildoers, but finally Rabbi Loew turned him back into dust. He is said to remain in the attic of the Altneuschul synagogue in Prague, possibly to return, like King Arthur, in time of need.
— Adam Kirsch, Idol Worship

An interesting overview of recent golem novels from Slate, which might interest literature and mythology types, not to mention X-Files fans, Diablo gamers and DC Comics geeks.