The story goes that the rabbi received a divine order in a dream: “You shall create [a] Golem from clay and may the malicious anti-Semitic mob be destroyed.” So he fashioned a powerful giant creature called a golem “out of clay from the banks of the Vltava River and brought it to life through rituals and incantations,” per Kayla Green’s “The Golem in the Attic.”
At first, the Golem defended the ghetto’s Jews, but, through the rabbi’s oversight, the powerful creature ran amok and had to be destroyed.
Responding to the horrific Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel, large Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Zionist Organization of America have unintentionally created a similar monster — which has similarly run amok.


According to Jewish folklore, in the late 16th-century the Czech city of Prague was threatened with antisemitic attacks. In response, Chief Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel created an early Jewish superhero in the attic of what has become known as the Old-New Synagogue.
The story goes that the rabbi received a divine order in a dream: “You shall create [a] Golem from clay and may the malicious anti-Semitic mob be destroyed.” So he fashioned a powerful giant creature called a golem “out of clay from the banks of the Vltava River and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations,” per Kayla Green’s “The Golem in the Attic.”