The Golem of Prague: the legend and the history behind it

A rabbi of flesh and blood

Let's start with what's documented. Judah Löw ben Bezalel, Rabbi Löw (often spelt Loew), also known as the Maharal, was born around 1525 and died in Prague in 1609. He was a man of real standing in the Jewish Town of his day. He taught in the study halls paid for by Mordecai Maisel, one of the richest men in the Prague of his day and a financier to the emperor, and he was one of the witnesses to Maisel's will.

He's buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery, where burials went on for more than three centuries and over twelve thousand gravestones survive. Many carry an animal that "spells out" the family name: for the Löws, it's a lion. His own grave still collects little slips of paper with people's requests written on them.

No giant so far. And that isn't a gap in the sources. According to the Jewish Museum in Prague and the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Golem legend wasn't linked to Rabbi Löw until the 19th century, some two hundred years after his death.

The legend, as it was printed in 1847

The version everyone tells today was published in Prague in 1847, in a collection of Jewish tales called Sippurim. Its author, Leopold Weisel, begins almost apologetically: it strikes him as superfluous to retell such a well-known legend. In other words, by 1847 it was already doing the rounds.

The tale is short. The rabbi shapes a servant out of clay and places the shem in its mouth, the word that brings it to life. The Golem chops wood, fetches water and sweeps. Weisel can't resist a touch of irony: servants like these have the advantage that "they don't eat, they don't drink and they need no wages". Nor do they answer back when they're told off.

But there's one condition. The Golem must rest on the Sabbath like everyone else, so before it starts the rabbi removes the shem. One day, he forgets. The servant runs amok, knocking down houses, hurling stones and tearing up trees. Luckily, the Sabbath hadn't yet begun at the Old-New Synagogue, and since it was the oldest, the whole quarter went by it. There's still time. The rabbi pulls out the shem and the clay falls to pieces. He never made another.

The last line is the one that matters here. According to Weisel, it's said that bits of the Golem are still to be seen in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue.

Two hundred years late

How does a clay giant end up in the life story of a rabbi who'd been dead for two centuries? It's such an intriguing question that a 2013 academic study set out to trace how the Golem came to Prague. According to the summary we've read, the Prague versions of the legend took shape in the 1830s and 1840s, shortly before Weisel's book.

What is clear is the order of events. First came the rabbi. The giant arrived much later, in 19th-century books.

A door with no stairs

The Old-New Synagogue was the perfect setting. It was built in the last third of the 13th century by masons from the king's own workshop, who were also at work on the Convent of St Agnes, and the Jewish Community of Prague, which owns it, describes it as the oldest standing synagogue in Europe. It was known as the "New" synagogue until others were built in the late 16th century. Then it became the Old-New.

It had legends of its own long before the Golem. One says its stones came from the Temple in Jerusalem "on condition" that they'd be given back one day. Another, that angels turned into doves shielded it from fire. And it survived something very real. Around 1900, when most of the old ghetto was demolished to make way for new streets, six synagogues, the Jewish Town Hall and the cemetery were spared. The Old-New was one of the survivors.

Weisel's line about the attic did the rest, and over the years more layers were added. That going up there was forbidden and the staircase was taken away. Or, in another version, that the remains were stolen and ended up in the ground at the Jewish cemetery in Žižkov. From Pařížská Street you should be able to spot, high up, a small attic door with a few iron step brackets beneath it, like stairs leading nowhere. If you find it, you'll know what it's hiding: a legend printed in 1847.

The Golem a novel invented

Literature laid the final brick. In 1915 Gustav Meyrink published his novel The Golem, and in it appears an idea with the ring of ancient tradition: that every thirty-three years or so, a stranger with a stumbling walk crosses the streets of the ghetto and vanishes. It sounds old. It's from 1915. And it's fiction.

A monument without a giant

If you go looking for Rabbi Löw on the streets of Prague, you won't find him next to a clay colossus. On a corner of the New City Hall, on Mariánské Square in the Old Town, there's a statue of him by Ladislav Šaloun, dating from the early 20th century. A naked young woman holds out a rose to him. According to legend, his death came hidden in that rose. Of the Golem, not a trace: the sculptor chose to show the end of a man's life instead.

Fact or legend?

• Fact: Rabbi Löw lived (c. 1525–1609) and is buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery. The Old-New Synagogue dates from the 13th century and survived the demolition of the ghetto. The little attic door high up really exists.
• Legend: that Löw made a Golem (a 19th-century attribution, printed in 1847); that its remains are still in the attic (also from 1847); the stones from Jerusalem, the doves, and death hidden in a rose.
• Literary fiction: the Golem who reappears every thirty-three years, invented in a 1915 novel.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on the route "Josefov, Prague's Jewish Quarter: the Golem, Memory and Kafka". It starts at the statue of Rabbi Löw and, towards the end, puts you in front of the Old-New Synagogue: first for its legends, then hunting for that little attic door.

Further reading

• Leopold Weisel, "Der Golem", in Sippurim, vol. I (Prague, 1847; 6th edn, Prague: Jakob B. Brandeis, 1883). Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/sippurimsammlun00pascgoog
• Jüdisches Museum Berlin, online catalogue Golem, chapter 4, "Legendary Prague": https://www.jmberlin.de/en/online-catalog-golem-chapter-4
• Židovské muzeum v Praze (Jewish Museum in Prague), exhibition "Cesta života: Rabi Jehuda Leva ben Becalel (kol. 1525–1609)", 2009 (in Czech): https://www.jewishmuseum.cz/program-a-vzdelavani/vystavy/archiv/29/
• Židovské muzeum v Praze, "Starý židovský hřbitov" (Old Jewish Cemetery, in Czech): https://www.jewishmuseum.cz/pamatky-a-expozice/pamatky/stary-zidovsky-hrbitov/
• Židovská obec v Praze (Jewish Community of Prague), "Old-New Synagogue": https://www.synagogue.cz/en/old-new-synagogue
• Gustav Meyrink, Der Golem (Leipzig: Kurt Wolff, 1915). Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/dergolemroman01meyr