Leon's No News Bulletin No. 117 Mon 24th Aug 09

The Golem of Prague

The film “The Golem of Prague”, produced in Germany in 1920, was presented as part of a 3 day seminar I attended at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, on the writings and times of the Maharal of Prague, the great 16^th century Jewish scholar.

I knew about the biased, untrue image that anti Semites have of Jews but this movie made that image more ghastly and real.

The story is simple and diabolical. It presents an image of Jews as a vermin like community of pests who use magical powers, usually kept in secret like the poison of a spider or snake, to destroy the merciful, tolerant non Jewish community whose kind king has decided, justifiably, to expel the Jews from their nest.

This film sharpened the clarity of the line separating black from white; the film presents the non Jews as the forces of light and the Jews as the forces of darkness.

A bottomless, dark chasm divides me, a Jew living blissfully, in the clear, beautiful light shed by the view of Jews as kind people who strive to make the world a better place for everybody, and anti Semites living in the darkness of the view of the Jews as vermin and a danger to the peaceful functioning of the world.

The film inverts good and evil, making it impossible to decide which is which; according to it the anti Semites are living in the world of goodness and light and the Jews are living in the world of darkness.

It turns my view of what is right and what is wrong upside down and shows that the 2000 year old war described in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, between the sons of light and the sons of darkness is still in full swing.

This was proved once again in the false report of Jewish monstrosity in the Swedish newspaper last week.

Fomenting anti Semitism is only part of the film’s “success”. Its real “achievement” is that it’s convinced many scholars that Golem is the product of the Maharal’s scholarly wisdom and scientific knowledge.

To this day most people who’ve heard about the Maharal know him only for his “fame” as the rabbi whose knowledge of God enabled him to bring an inanimate, clay figure to life.

For the record; the Maharal never wrote anything about magic or bringing inanimate objects to life. He did write more than 500 books, interpretations of the Bible, Jewish law, explanations of the Midrash (Jewish Legends) books on Jewish education and others.

This must be emphasized because the association between the Maharal has been so strongly forged by this absurd, anti Semitic film that most people have only heard of the Maharal through the film and are sure that he must have written something about magic and putting life into an inanimate, clay figure.

The most studied book of the Maharal is probably his explanation of the Ethics of the fathers.

One can find a copy of this and the Maharal’s interpretation “The way of life” on the website http://www.torah.org/

The conclusion of the movie is that wisdom and scientific knowledge causes evil such as creating a monster that will destroy the good, peaceful citizens of the world.

Dissuading the masses from acquiring knowledge by threatening them with the dire consequences of acquiring wisdom and seeking scientific progress as the film does in its treatment of the Maharal, is an old tactic used by tyrants and some religious leaders who want to control the minds of their followers so that they can use them as instruments to increase their power.

The real Golem is the mass of ignorant people whose refusal to  acquire wisdom allows them to be manipulated by unscrupulous leaders in their pursuit of unholy objectives.

Wishing you a great no news day

Yours truly

Leon Gork

Come for a Jerusalem Walk with Leon Gork

Jerusalemwalks.com legork@netvision.net.il Tel: 052 3801867