From: jdale@cats.ucsc.edu (Jonathan Dale)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: New Name for Flesh Golem wanted!
Date: 30 Jul 92 06:58:09 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: si.ucsc.edu


In article <Bs6CEE.9C6@knot.ccs.queensu.ca> dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca (David Lamb) writes:
>In article <1992Jul29.171022.9040@uoft02.utoledo.edu> steiner@jupiter.cse.utoledo.edu (jason steiner) writes:
>>jonathan@mantis.co.uk (Jonathan Egre') writes:
>>> The name "golem" does indeed come from an Eastern European/Jewish myth.
>>> The original "golem" was made from clay, and animated by writing "golem"
>>> (in Hebrew) on the clay, I believe.
>>the story i read mentioned a ghetto's holy man writing something
>>on a piece of paper and placing it in the golem's mouth. the golem
>>then protected the people from their oppressors or somesuch typical
>>thing. just as typical, when the paper was taken from its mouth
>>it collapsed on its creator.
>As with a lot of legends, I wouldn't be surprised if this one exists
>in several variations.  The one I read was of Rabbi Loew (or perhaps
>Lowe) creating the golem from clay and animating it to protect the
>Warsaw Jewish ghetto.
>
>"The Red Magician" by an author whose name I forget (Ellen? Edith? /
>Goldstein? Goldman?) has said magician discussing with a rabbi what
>word might have been used to animate the original golem.  The magician
>eventually makes a golem and picks "Adam" ("clay" but also the name of
>the first man).  The rabbi is enraged, considering this blasphemy
>(imitating God), and manages to strike out the aleph, leaving "dam"
>("blood"), whereupon the golem bleeds copiously and collapses.
>
>Some comic, probably a Marvel, once had a golem animated by the word
>"emeth" ("truth") on its forehead.  I take both these variants as
>support for the "writing on the forehead" school - but I have vague
>memories of the "paper in the mouth" variant, too.
>
>It strikes me that all these variants have the golem being rather too
>easy to destroy.

Nice cascade we've got here, eh?  Just to add my $0.02 worth....  I understand
that the rabbi (who's name I have forgotten) was in Prague.  The word on the
forehead of the golem was "EMET", which means truth, and it was killed by
erasing the E to leave "MET" which means death.  This would mean that, 
bizarrely, Marvel is a more accurate source than yours.... :)  Incidentally,
my source is NOT Marvel, but a friend who had recently returned from Prague,
where she saw the rabbi's grave (among other things).  

And just as a sidenote, the rabbi destroyed the golem because it was getting
out of hand, and becoming a danger to the people it was supposed to protect.
(Like Shelley's Frankenstein's Monster Adam getting out of hand (Frankenstein
didn't get out of hand, he was just a typical mad scientist type)).  The 
rabbi stood on a ladder and erased the letter, and it fell on him, crushing
him to death.  A moral about the use of power....  One should note that it
was the golem's creator that killed it.  It probably wouldn't stand still for
anyone else to do this, which takes care of the problem of it being easy to
kill.  Since most weapons won't do anything to a big piece of clay, your
puny humans have a problem.  They'll have to use magic or trick it (like, one
hangs on a bar sign while the others make it chase them underneath, so he
can make a DEX roll and try to erase a letter).  And if you get the wrong
letter, something odd could happen (Sorry, I don't know what EME means....).
Another way to kill it would be lots of heat, baking it into solid, immobile
form, or water to wash it entirely away (trick it into a river, maybe).

Well, there we go: a little Kabbalistic legend, with some game mechanics
mixed in to boot.