An English Department committee chaired by Professor Henry Hart selected Hahamovitch for the scholarship. His detailed proposal to do field research on the legend of the golem apparently attracted the attention of members of the committee.

“The golem is perhaps the most well know figure in Jewish folklore,’ Renny wrote. “This avenging monster made of mud inspired famous fictional icons from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Karel Capek’s robot. He became known among Ashkenazi Jews in the mid-19th century as a guardian of the ghetto, a man-made hero that protects Jews from horrors of pogroms, blood libels, and anti-Semitic riots. After the Nazi Holocaust and the great exodus of Europe’s Jews, the golem rose again in America, Israel and among the scattered refugees across the globe, going on to international fame.”

According to Renny, the most familiar golem legend originates in Prague. It was here that in the late Middle Ages, High Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, a leading scholar and mystic, created the golem. He fashioned it from clay and brought him to life by inserting the secret name of Jehovah, under his tongue. Rabbi Loew created the golem to protect Prague’s 16th century ghetto from pogroms.

As the legend has it, one day the golem went berserk and Rabbi Loew had to destroy him. He did so in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue, a hundreds of years old structure. It is still used as a place of worship in Prague. Many attempts have been made to enter the attic to verify the existence of the clay debris. But no one managed to do so. All this heightened the mystery of the golem legend.

“My aim is to explore the shadowy rise of the golem in the late medieval Europe and its significance in Jewish identity: its origin in folklore, its relationship with Christian occultism; its location in Prague and association there with the legendary Rabbi Judah Loew,” Renny wrote.

He plans to discuss the golem’s varied thematic transformations.

“Growing in popularity during the early 20th century, the golem became a household name and leaked beyond myth and folklore into fiction of Jews and gentiles alike,” Renny noted. “It is at this point when the symbol of golem becomes the most diverse and conflicted. He becomes a constantly metamorphosing creation: sometime sinister, sometime benevolent, a slow and stupid monster in some instances, inhumanly clairvoyant in others. He can be a hero and protector, but also an automaton, slave, and exile. … Like much of Jewish fiction as a whole, the golem struggles with identity of exile, otherness, self-hatred, fear, persecution and doubt.”

Renny plans to examine the evolution of golem mythology with the history of Jews simultaneously. He feels that the pogroms, discriminatory laws, political movements affecting Jews made the golem legend more relevant and powerful.

“Prague is, is in many ways, an ideal subject for this project,” he wrote. “In the migratory lives of eastern European Jews, Prague was an enduring hub of Jewish culture, with Jews from across Europe speaking many languages. During the initial rise of the golem myth, Prague was a major intellectual and academic center for European Jews as well as a major center for Jewish mysticism and occultism largely because of the occult interest of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II, who ruled Prague when the golem was said to have lived.”

The golem legend has attracted the attention even of our first lady, Michelle Obama. While visiting Prague, she paid her respect at the grave of Rabbi Judah Loew’s, the creator of golem. Following the Jewish tradition, she placed a written message next to his tombstone. It is not known whether there was a reference in it to the golem.

Frank Shatz lives in Williamsburg, Va. and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission from The Virginia Gazette. Shatz is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” a compilation of his selected column.