Up rose the sun over the horizon of the humble town of Chełm, in eastern Poland. God’s sunlight shone past the stained glass in the attic of the main synagogue. The great rabbi of the hearth, Eliyahu Ba’al Shem, took from the table a piece of earth from a virgin mountain, kneaded it with his sweat, formed the mud into a head and, using all of the strength of his olden and crooked back, bore it to the center of the attic. Over a mound of clay he’d been working night after night, he sculpted a figure resembling a man. With his thumbs, he pressed two hollows: those of his eyes. With the same tools, he traced the sides of the face symmetrically and sank them, caving in the ears. At last, he carved its mouth.
Then Eliyahu pointed to his forehead with his index finger and inscribed אמת—Truth—, walked back to his workbench, and wrote on a piece of parchment with the purest ink, the most divine of names. And the ineffable Name he placed within the Golem, through its mouth, and the Man woke, and with his young lips he intoned.
—What is my duty, father?
The rabbi thought for hours on end… He knew the golem-tales of the Babylonian sages (for there is nothing new under the sun), but he had never, with his own eyes, seen life wrought in so deliberate a way. As his judgment was clouded and he did not know how to check whether the Golem would obey, he finally resigned himself to simplicity. As the first test, he asked him to walk to the opposite side of the attic and come back. The Golem walked all the way to the opposite side of the attic and came back. And that was it, and it was enough: that night the great rabbi dreamt of the roof of the old mill repaired, his family safe in the Golem’s shadow, the entire town protected by this godly man. But he knew he still couldn’t blindly trust him, so at sunrise he would begin to test what his creation was capable of.
In truth, he could barely shut an eye, and under the light of a new sun, he made his way to the attic where he was reunited with his newborn. He then activated him and asked for a new desk. The Golem took a hatchet from the shed and climbed the hill behind the town, the rabbi following at a distance. He felled an oak with a single blow; there was no lumberjack like him, neither in Chełm nor anywhere in the region. But the green trunk resisted, for fresh wood does not want to be furniture. The rabbi watched him wrestle with the planks till noon; he grew tired and exasperated, and went downhill to take a nap. When he woke, the desk was in his study: cured oak, joined without a single nail, polished with old wax. Beneath the tabletop, he felt initials carved, almost worn away, that did not seem his own.
—I need you to care for the community as it rests —the rabbi said to him one night, and he rested as he hadn’t done since he was but a child. Leaving the synagogue, the Golem had to bow down to go through the door.
The Golem started patrolling the streets of the Jewish quarter, halting at every corner and marching like a soldier. Every Friday, before the first star rose, the rabbi would go up the attic and take the Name out of his mouth, because the created, too, should rest during Shabbat, and the Golem would stand still all day, earth once more, waiting. But a winter of wolves and men worse than wolves came, and the rabbi thought: it is precisely on Shabbat, when no Jew can raise a weapon, that the townfolk would be as naked as ever. Clay, he reasoned, is neither son nor daughter of any pact; what law can earth break? That Friday, the Name sprouted in the Golem’s mouth. And it never came out again on any Friday.
Weeks later, the Golem worked the land, raised new homes for all the folk, and ringed the town with a wall, stone on stone, a course each night, past anything the rabbi had asked for. When the night of evil came, that of bandits mounted on beasts, beasts upon beasts, the Golem went out alone to meet them from the other side. No one saw what he did. At dawn, the horses came back riderless, and Chełm slept better than ever. He was a perfect man. The rabbi could finally dedicate himself exclusively to worship. The sentinels no longer stood guard; the smith stopped crafting tools that no one used. By now, the Golem slept outside, for he no longer fit beneath any ceiling in little Chełm.
One afternoon in Tamuz, two children played near the well, and one of them pushed the other, as children do. It was the Golem’s duty to guard the town, for no one would harm a child of Chełm. He crossed the square in three steps. The mother had no time to scream, and the Golem doesn’t doubt. He did to the child what he had done to the raiders.
The boy was buried on a Thursday. The rabbi did not sleep. He went over the orders he had given him one by one and found that every single one had been met. The Golem had never disobeyed. He always did exactly what he was asked, and now no one —not even the rabbi— knew what had been asked of him.
That night, the rabbi stood in front of him and asked why he had done it.
—What is my duty, father? —his creation replied.
The rabbi asked again and again, and the Golem’s answer was always the same. Then he remembered that he himself had made the mouth, with a single cut.
It was a dark night when Eliyahu felt that his synagogue had shrunk; he looked to his sides and understood it was the Golem who had grown. He searched for his eyes, and the void within the sockets finally filled him with terror. Did he have any authority over the Golem? Had he ever had it? He raised his hand toward the Golem’s forehead and saw that he could no longer reach it. So he asked him to pick up a book from the floor, which the Golem picked up with his arm extended and his head held high, looking him in the eye. He asked him to take off his boots; the Golem knelt with his back to him. His forehead would no longer be lower than any man’s height.
The rabbi knew of letters. He knew that the same aleph he had written — א, the first letter, the one that makes no sound of its own — stood at the head of two words: emet (אמת), truth, and adam (אדם), man. Strike it from truth, and what remains is met (מת): dead. Strike it from man, and what remains is dam (דם): blood. All the distance between truth and death, between man and blood, fit within the one silent letter he had drawn on that forehead.
Night after night, the Golem finished the wall. As tall as the sky, they say it rose higher than fifty men stacked one on top of the other, and that within the town, you could not even hear the wind go by. Then the Golem climbed onto the attic roof, where the rabbi prayed. It was a Friday, and the first star had just risen when he voiced with the same voice as on the first day:
—What is my duty, father?
—Your duty is now to receive a blessing —the rabbi said— The blessing of children. Kneel.
And the unerring Golem, which needed a duty more than anything else in the world, knelt. The rabbi felt it smiling, for the first time since its inception. He took all the air from the attic into his chest, puffing it up, straightened himself, and was taller than he’d ever been. He laid his hand on the Golem’s forehead and erased the silent letter.
From the Golem’s mouth, all the life it had contained left, and the Man became mud once again, coming down, burying the maker who thought himself its master.
The town woke up with no protector, with no rabbi. In the attic, it remained a pile of dirt that no one dared even touch, and eventually the rain leaking from the ceiling dissolved it little by little, as any mountain erodes. Eliyahu was never found. By then, a traveling salesman from Lublin was already spreading, from fair to fair, that in Chełm a rabbi had made a mud man that worked for everyone, that never slept, that was more than man. The never-ending story where it was written, Emet was left Met.
Coda:
My grandfather, Hersz Yossef Korenblit, was born in Chełm, Poland, around 1928, barely four centuries after rabbi Eliyahu and his Golem. He escaped from the Shoah and traveled the world seeking refuge, from Mongolia to Paris. He sailed from Le Havre to Paraguay and through the border, he entered Argentina clandestinely, violating the dispositions which were in place against the Jewish refugees, to find one of his remaining brothers once again. My grandfather never once told me the stories of his town; I learned of them after his death, through Isaac Bashevis Singer. And, regardless, I keep finding myself with Chełm, and its wise men now spread around the world. And I read, from time to time, what was left written on that forehead and what now can’t be erased anymore.
Addendum:
I know golems are a well-worn alignment analogy, but no one had written about my golem, the Golem of Chełm, the one the town my family comes from is supposed to have made. This town also gave Jewish folklore its wise men, the fools who reason flawlessly off a cliff, which felt like too good a coincidence to leave alone.
Out of Reach / The Golem of Chełm
Up rose the sun over the horizon of the humble town of Chełm, in eastern Poland. God’s sunlight shone past the stained glass in the attic of the main synagogue. The great rabbi of the hearth, Eliyahu Ba’al Shem, took from the table a piece of earth from a virgin mountain, kneaded it with his sweat, formed the mud into a head and, using all of the strength of his olden and crooked back, bore it to the center of the attic. Over a mound of clay he’d been working night after night, he sculpted a figure resembling a man. With his thumbs, he pressed two hollows: those of his eyes. With the same tools, he traced the sides of the face symmetrically and sank them, caving in the ears. At last, he carved its mouth.
Then Eliyahu pointed to his forehead with his index finger and inscribed אמת—Truth—, walked back to his workbench, and wrote on a piece of parchment with the purest ink, the most divine of names. And the ineffable Name he placed within the Golem, through its mouth, and the Man woke, and with his young lips he intoned.
—What is my duty, father?
The rabbi thought for hours on end… He knew the golem-tales of the Babylonian sages (for there is nothing new under the sun), but he had never, with his own eyes, seen life wrought in so deliberate a way. As his judgment was clouded and he did not know how to check whether the Golem would obey, he finally resigned himself to simplicity. As the first test, he asked him to walk to the opposite side of the attic and come back. The Golem walked all the way to the opposite side of the attic and came back. And that was it, and it was enough: that night the great rabbi dreamt of the roof of the old mill repaired, his family safe in the Golem’s shadow, the entire town protected by this godly man. But he knew he still couldn’t blindly trust him, so at sunrise he would begin to test what his creation was capable of.
In truth, he could barely shut an eye, and under the light of a new sun, he made his way to the attic where he was reunited with his newborn. He then activated him and asked for a new desk. The Golem took a hatchet from the shed and climbed the hill behind the town, the rabbi following at a distance. He felled an oak with a single blow; there was no lumberjack like him, neither in Chełm nor anywhere in the region. But the green trunk resisted, for fresh wood does not want to be furniture. The rabbi watched him wrestle with the planks till noon; he grew tired and exasperated, and went downhill to take a nap. When he woke, the desk was in his study: cured oak, joined without a single nail, polished with old wax. Beneath the tabletop, he felt initials carved, almost worn away, that did not seem his own.
—I need you to care for the community as it rests —the rabbi said to him one night, and he rested as he hadn’t done since he was but a child. Leaving the synagogue, the Golem had to bow down to go through the door.
The Golem started patrolling the streets of the Jewish quarter, halting at every corner and marching like a soldier. Every Friday, before the first star rose, the rabbi would go up the attic and take the Name out of his mouth, because the created, too, should rest during Shabbat, and the Golem would stand still all day, earth once more, waiting. But a winter of wolves and men worse than wolves came, and the rabbi thought: it is precisely on Shabbat, when no Jew can raise a weapon, that the townfolk would be as naked as ever. Clay, he reasoned, is neither son nor daughter of any pact; what law can earth break? That Friday, the Name sprouted in the Golem’s mouth. And it never came out again on any Friday.
Weeks later, the Golem worked the land, raised new homes for all the folk, and ringed the town with a wall, stone on stone, a course each night, past anything the rabbi had asked for. When the night of evil came, that of bandits mounted on beasts, beasts upon beasts, the Golem went out alone to meet them from the other side. No one saw what he did. At dawn, the horses came back riderless, and Chełm slept better than ever. He was a perfect man. The rabbi could finally dedicate himself exclusively to worship. The sentinels no longer stood guard; the smith stopped crafting tools that no one used. By now, the Golem slept outside, for he no longer fit beneath any ceiling in little Chełm.
One afternoon in Tamuz, two children played near the well, and one of them pushed the other, as children do. It was the Golem’s duty to guard the town, for no one would harm a child of Chełm. He crossed the square in three steps. The mother had no time to scream, and the Golem doesn’t doubt. He did to the child what he had done to the raiders.
The boy was buried on a Thursday. The rabbi did not sleep. He went over the orders he had given him one by one and found that every single one had been met. The Golem had never disobeyed. He always did exactly what he was asked, and now no one —not even the rabbi— knew what had been asked of him.
That night, the rabbi stood in front of him and asked why he had done it.
—What is my duty, father? —his creation replied.
The rabbi asked again and again, and the Golem’s answer was always the same. Then he remembered that he himself had made the mouth, with a single cut.
It was a dark night when Eliyahu felt that his synagogue had shrunk; he looked to his sides and understood it was the Golem who had grown. He searched for his eyes, and the void within the sockets finally filled him with terror. Did he have any authority over the Golem? Had he ever had it? He raised his hand toward the Golem’s forehead and saw that he could no longer reach it. So he asked him to pick up a book from the floor, which the Golem picked up with his arm extended and his head held high, looking him in the eye. He asked him to take off his boots; the Golem knelt with his back to him. His forehead would no longer be lower than any man’s height.
The rabbi knew of letters. He knew that the same aleph he had written — א, the first letter, the one that makes no sound of its own — stood at the head of two words: emet (אמת), truth, and adam (אדם), man. Strike it from truth, and what remains is met (מת): dead. Strike it from man, and what remains is dam (דם): blood. All the distance between truth and death, between man and blood, fit within the one silent letter he had drawn on that forehead.
Night after night, the Golem finished the wall. As tall as the sky, they say it rose higher than fifty men stacked one on top of the other, and that within the town, you could not even hear the wind go by. Then the Golem climbed onto the attic roof, where the rabbi prayed. It was a Friday, and the first star had just risen when he voiced with the same voice as on the first day:
—What is my duty, father?
—Your duty is now to receive a blessing —the rabbi said— The blessing of children. Kneel.
And the unerring Golem, which needed a duty more than anything else in the world, knelt. The rabbi felt it smiling, for the first time since its inception. He took all the air from the attic into his chest, puffing it up, straightened himself, and was taller than he’d ever been. He laid his hand on the Golem’s forehead and erased the silent letter.
From the Golem’s mouth, all the life it had contained left, and the Man became mud once again, coming down, burying the maker who thought himself its master.
The town woke up with no protector, with no rabbi. In the attic, it remained a pile of dirt that no one dared even touch, and eventually the rain leaking from the ceiling dissolved it little by little, as any mountain erodes. Eliyahu was never found. By then, a traveling salesman from Lublin was already spreading, from fair to fair, that in Chełm a rabbi had made a mud man that worked for everyone, that never slept, that was more than man. The never-ending story where it was written, Emet was left Met.
Coda:
My grandfather, Hersz Yossef Korenblit, was born in Chełm, Poland, around 1928, barely four centuries after rabbi Eliyahu and his Golem. He escaped from the Shoah and traveled the world seeking refuge, from Mongolia to Paris. He sailed from Le Havre to Paraguay and through the border, he entered Argentina clandestinely, violating the dispositions which were in place against the Jewish refugees, to find one of his remaining brothers once again. My grandfather never once told me the stories of his town; I learned of them after his death, through Isaac Bashevis Singer. And, regardless, I keep finding myself with Chełm, and its wise men now spread around the world. And I read, from time to time, what was left written on that forehead and what now can’t be erased anymore.
Addendum:
I know golems are a well-worn alignment analogy, but no one had written about my golem, the Golem of Chełm, the one the town my family comes from is supposed to have made. This town also gave Jewish folklore its wise men, the fools who reason flawlessly off a cliff, which felt like too good a coincidence to leave alone.
Let me know if this is any good! (Or if I erred.)