“Clay and culture”

The leg­end of the golem is a time­less part of both Jew­ish mys­ti­cism and lit­er­ary fic­tion. Over the years, it has evolved from folk­tale char­ac­ter to pop-cul­tur­al icon, mak­ing count­less appear­ances in tra­di­tion­al medi­ums such as lit­er­a­ture, the­ater, and film, as well as in mod­ern ones like video games, ani­mat­ed shows, and graph­ic nov­els. While each adap­ta­tion of the sto­ry offers its own unique twist on the clas­sic tale, they all con­tain nar­ra­tives of warning. 

The golem sto­ry was cre­at­ed as a reac­tion to the rise in anti­semitism through­out Europe in the late six­teenth cen­tu­ry. Dur­ing this time, Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties grap­pled with their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in the face of vio­lent per­se­cu­tion, scape­goat­ing, and dis­crim­i­na­tion. They were por­trayed in pro­pa­gan­da and pop­u­lar cul­ture as pos­sess­ing sin­is­ter and mys­ti­cal pow­ers. These car­toon­ish anti­se­mit­ic motifs were con­cur­rent with the myth of the golem, a crea­ture tra­di­tion­al­ly pre­sent­ed as a mag­i­cal Jew­ish weapon.

In the clas­sic tale, the golem is cre­at­ed by Rab­bi Judah Loew ben Beza­lel, a famous Tal­mu­dic schol­ar from Prague. He gives life to an arti­fi­cial being made of clay and tasks it with pro­tect­ing Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties from pogroms. But while some depict the crea­ture as a loy­al pro­tec­tor, oth­ers por­tray it as a destruc­tive force that betrays its cre­ator and then wreaks hav­oc on the world. Although this neg­a­tive ver­sion of the golem’s ori­gin is com­pelling in its own right, it’s often viewed as prob­lem­at­ic. It can be used to rein­force the anti­se­mit­ic trope that Jew­ish peo­ple are manip­u­la­tive fig­ures, capa­ble of unleash­ing pow­ers beyond their control.

In this fas­ci­nat­ing dual­i­ty between the golem’s role as a benev­o­lent pro­tec­tor for the Jews and a malev­o­lent threat cre­at­ed by them, I found my own ver­sion of the creature.

“Con­tex­tu­al reconstruction”

The notable rise of anti­semitism in recent years has made the return of the golem nar­ra­tive inevitable. After all, it is a his­tor­i­cal­ly reli­able vehi­cle for dis­cussing a fraught top­ic in an enter­tain­ing man­ner. The anti­se­mit­ic ​“renais­sance” that I wit­nessed in Amer­i­ca between 2016 and 2020 com­pelled me to use my cre­ative skills, born of more than fif­teen years in enter­tain­ment, to con­tribute to the pub­lic discourse.

But if every ver­sion of this mytho­log­i­cal tale was sculpt­ed to reflect its place in his­to­ry, I need­ed to ask myself an impor­tant ques­tion: what kind of golem does the world need, or deserve, in the year 2024?

My grand­par­ents were East­ern Euro­pean Holo­caust sur­vivors; their sto­ries shaped my view of Jew­ish iden­ti­ty and its place in the world. When I looked at Amer­i­ca in the year 2020, I con­clud­ed that anti­semitism was just a symp­tom of the degen­er­a­tive intel­lec­tu­al rot brought about by the mass adop­tion of iden­ti­ty politics.

Whether social media plat­forms, eco­nom­ic insta­bil­i­ty, or dis­trust of estab­lished insti­tu­tions are to blame, the frag­men­ta­tion of soci­ety in recent years has infect­ed every lay­er of our pub­lic dis­course. Yet despite our increased para­noid trib­al­ism, the public’s taste in media has actu­al­ly evolved. Tech­nol­o­gy has dri­ven the glob­al­iza­tion and diver­si­fi­ca­tion of enter­tain­ment con­tent and con­sump­tion habits. Man­ga, ani­me, comics, and video games are now main­stream in both East­ern and West­ern cultures.

Today’s con­tent con­sumers are glob­al, and they draw on an entire­ly new set of media ref­er­ences. This rise in glob­al media lit­er­a­cy has birthed a more edu­cat­ed gen­er­a­tion of media con­sumers that demands greater diver­si­ty in the con­tent it con­sumes. Clas­sic folk nar­ra­tives are easy to adapt, and in order to appeal to a mod­ern audience’s lev­el of sophis­ti­ca­tion, the golem sto­ry has had to evolve.

“Sur­vival comes first, the tears can wait”

In May 2024, my graph­ic nov­el Eden­frost was pub­lished in part­ner­ship with the inde­pen­dent com­ic book pub­lish­er Mad Cave Stu­dios. A reimag­in­ing of the myth of the golem, the book tells the sto­ry of Alex and Yulia Lowe, two young Ukrain­ian Jew­ish sib­lings who lose their par­ents in a pogrom, and use the mys­ti­cal pow­er of a golem to sur­vive the Russ­ian Civ­il War.

As implied by their last name, Alex and Yuli are descen­dants of Rab­bi Loew, the golem’s leg­endary cre­ator. How­ev­er, in Eden­frost, the golem is not an emp­ty-mind­ed automa­ton, but an intel­li­gent spir­it that is mys­ti­cal­ly bound to the Lowes’ blood­line. Know­ing that the family’s demise will bring about its own dri­ves Eden­frost​’s golem to act as both a pro­tec­tor and an agi­ta­tor. When threat­ened, it push­es the sib­lings to choose vio­lence over diplomacy.

Eden­frost​’s golem was designed with ele­ments adopt­ed from the pop­u­lar Japan­ese mecha genre, which fea­tures machines pilot­ed by humans. This golem’s nature is sym­bi­ot­ic; it is com­plete­ly depen­dent on its human hosts, appear­ing only when called upon. When sum­moned, the golem’s spir­it engulfs its sum­mon­er in a large suit of armor that is made from sur­round­ing mate­ri­als and the summoner’s own spir­it. So Alex’s pro­tec­tive and human­is­tic nature pro­duces a golem that is an icy and rocky humanoid guardian, while Yuli’s indi­vid­u­al­is­tic and fiery nature is man­i­fest as a titan­ic, wood- and rock-hewn wolf that strug­gles to dis­tin­guish friend from foe.

“From sym­bol to omen”

In the macro, Eden­frost is a sto­ry that uses the land­scape of the Russ­ian Civ­il War to explore the mul­ti­lay­ered top­ic of iden­ti­ty through the lens of anti­semitism. In the micro, it is a sto­ry about a twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry golem with an orig­i­nal, Jew­ish mys­ti­cism – inspired mag­ic sys­tem. It’s an epic adven­ture that draws on con­tem­po­rary pop-cul­ture trends while still pay­ing homage to its pre­vi­ous iter­a­tions. But above all, I believe that Eden­frost is just a crack­ing good sto­ry, full of ten­sion, dra­ma, and action. It intro­duces read­ers to a new inter­pre­ta­tion of the golem, one sculpt­ed by the very media that inspired me to pur­sue a career in the arts. But the pride I feel in this work is bit­ter­sweet; it can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from the rea­son that drove me to cre­ate it. Like its pre­vi­ous iter­a­tions, Eden­frost​’s golem was sum­moned to warn us of the rise of anti­semitism and the grow­ing social divide — which is a painful reminder that this story’s stay­ing pow­er is root­ed in a long his­to­ry of para­noia, cross-gen­er­a­tional hatred, and eth­nic bias that refus­es to go away.