Roger Simon's Golem Is a Zionist

Substack

Roger L. Simon's latest novel, Emet (Truth), is about divine intervention, and I, for one, could not put it down. It is a fast paced and rather thrilling read. Simon has managed to fuse magic realism with contemporary political issues, specifically those that concern Jewish history, American Jews, the relentless wars against Israel, including the one that Hamas/Iran/Qatar launched on 10/7--plus techie genius children, and the American foreign policy establishment.

The novel time-travels through Jewish history--and both reader and narrator are everywhere. Sometimes we are led to safety by an angel. Really, it's all very Biblical.

Really wanna know how Yahya Sinwar was captured or rather found dead? Just as two terrorist men wearing burqas were about to blow up the Israeli soldiers who were in the process of rescuing some wounded companions, an unearthly beam of light blew up the terrorists and collapsed the building in which Yahya Sinwar had been hiding. Absolutely no one can explain this. The Israeli top secret guys are baffled. Suspicious. But attentive.

Those beams of light were the work of a Golem that was unintentionally created by a humble rabbi living in Nashville, Tennessee named Benjamin Golub.

What else, who else but a Golem could have done this? Or freed an Israeli hostage because her cries so unsettled Reb Golub that the Golem did what he thought? Felt? Knew? that his Master had wanted.

Or, better yet whom else could have, quite on his own initiative, ship a certain Jew-hating Congresswomen back to Somalia in a package marked "Return to Sender?" Of course, with enough food and water to keep her healthy and alive until someone could hear her cries.

No one else but a clever and powerful Golem.

Rabbi Benjamin Golub is no Rabbi Yehuda Lowe ben Bezalel, also known as the Maharal. In 17th century Prague, the ghettoized Jews were either about to be expelled or exterminated and a Golem was created to protect them.

What's a Golem? Just as God created Adam from the dust of the earth, so, too, are Golems supposedly created by a human being, ("b'zelem"), who is in God's image. A golem is also created from earth, mud, or clay. Doing so is one way of emulating God's magical creation of humanity from an inanimate substance. Perhaps God hoped that human beings might be "good" or obedient. Just as we have failed God's expectation, the best Golems also fail their rabbinical Masters. They are known, in myth, in fiction, even in Scripture, to both follow orders but also to "run amuck."

Rabbi Golub writes on what would be the Golem's forehead three letters: Aleph, Mem, Tof which is "truth." If one wants to disable a Golem, one removes the Aleph--and what's left spells our Met or Death and that's the end of the Golem.

Other Jewish writers have also imagined golems in their fiction. I.B. Singer for one, Cynthia Ozick for another. Ozick's golem was created by a Jewish female lawyer, (Puttermesser), and she names her female golem: Xantippe. Ozicks' golem comprises I.B.'s greatest fears about women--that they are temptresses, sent by the Devil to ruin men. Ozick's golem does become sexually insatiable and in so doing, destroys all the good she has managed to accomplish.

But not Simon's. Like Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, Simon's unnamed golem does, rather poignantly, yearn for love.

Simon's latest novel is not only a quick and enjoyable read. "Emet" is also an easy way of being brought right into all things Israeli post 10/7; all things technological; and into the inner sancta of both the American and Israeli secret services and foreign policy establishments.

It should be a movie. I'd be first in line to see it.