The medium of the Embati. Not sure if that really belongs in a golem discussion.
Almost as interesting as the history of the Golem is the history of it's debunking, I think. Sure, there have always been skeptics here and there. But it seems to me that Dr. Leiman was the first to really demonstrate, both in a convincing manner, and in popular forums [ie, not for academics only] that it was just a myth. Until the turn of this century, it was almost taken for granted that the Maharal had in fact created a golem.
A few years after his tapes came out, R. Yisrael Resiman devoted one of his shiurim to the same topic. He also showed it was a myth, reaching this conclusion via a different approach than Dr. Leiman. [Though I would think he would have reviewed Dr. Leiman's tape before he gave his lecture.] This exposed the debunkment to a whole nother cadre of people.
Then I think a few years ago even the Yated/Hamodia papers expressed skepticism. That's the end of the line right there.
Thus, for almost a half-century a myth had truly come to life in America, the subject of cartoons, books, comic books. And in just a matter of years, the legend had died. Death by academics.
It depends what you mean by taken for granted. By whom? I can recall a rebbe telling us "It's not one of the yud gimmel ikkarim" to believe that the Maharal created a golem. Maybe this was as far as he was willing to go, but this was way before Leiman's Tradition article, and this rebbe was mystically -- and more importantly, Maharalically, inclined. I can also guarantee that he didn't know of Shir's argument, although I suppose he may have reached the conclusion from a similar argument of silence.
BTW I'm sure that Rabbi Reisman read the Tradition article, as did whoever did the Yated thing, although I'm not saying that Rabbi Reisman believed it before 2002, when that article was published. Like you said, it's pretty wild that the Yated would debunk it.
See
http://www.ottmall.com/
mj_ht_arc...v51i56.html#COX
and
http://seforim.blogspot.com/2007...isciple-
of.html
I agree that the history of debunking is fascinating. Since the Yated takes a rather conservative stance on what is and isn't hashkafically and emunically correct, it is interesting to see what is considered an ikkar and what is considered tafal. Evidently by 2006 Yossele Goylem was no longer ikkar. Not that I'm saying it ever was, but in the cost-benefit analysis, it is possible that attempting to maintain the myth was seen as more costly for emunah than debunking it. That's pretty interesting.
Or, less cynically, it's quite possible that everything is at face value. That there is in fact no great principle at stake in the Maharal creating a golem, and most people who accepted it did so because they didn't know the real basis for it. When they found out that there really wasn't much if any, they tended to drop it.
Had there been a lot of statements by Gedolim asserting that the Maharal made a golem, and that denying this was an example of irreligious skepticism, or if the Golem was central to some religious beliefs or practices, you'd be saying something. As it is, it's just a part of the folklore.
Obviously the Yated is never going to publish an article asserting that a myth isn't true if there are many gedolim who asserted it. That's the other side of the cost-benefit. So of course it could only be folklore.
Put it another way, do you really think the story was an "isn't this interesting?" one? I don't know in what circles you grew up or were educated in, but it seems to me that it used to be that The Maharal made a Golem, and no one disabused anyone of it. I'm not saying no one doubted it, witness my rebbe whom I referred to. But it doesn't seem to me that the Yated's style is to tell their readers that a thing which most of them believed practically in utero isn't true.
By the way, the article quotes "Rav Shlomo Shprecher," which is nice. Dr. Sprecher becomes a Rav but a real rav, R Yudel Rosenberg loses his title.
"I don't know in what circles you grew up or were educated in, but it seems to me that it used to be that The Maharal made a Golem, and no one disabused anyone of it."
I acknowledged that in my first comment. No one realized how weak the historical basis for the story was.
You're suggesting that it's no big deal, that it's a kind of human interest story? Why the story at all? The historical basis for the story is no weaker than 10,000 other stories which they won't write an article about. Let me see, the earliest reference to R Elazar ha-kalir being R Elazer berabbi Shimon is from 900 years after he lived. That's not weak? Ok, it's a Tosfos.
I don't understand the point you are making.
The article is actually is a bit remarkable.
I meant that you were making in your 1:19 post.
FP, if I'm understanding Fred correctly, it's remarkable the Yated would print this article, because there's no measurable difference between believing in the Golem and believing in so many other trappings of orthodox teachings, such as - to use Fred's example - that the Kalir was a tanna. Certainly that is also not an ikkar, yet from the Aruch on down you see this alleged "fact" printed in seforim. So if they can accept that the Golem story's a myth, they can then accept the Kalir story's a myth - and then where do you go from there? What else was Tosfos wrong about?
It's easy to say NOW that "there is no great principle at stake" in believing the Golem story or not. [Just like it's easy to say NOW that preaching in the vernacular is no big deal, girls education is no big deal, etc.] But why not extend that to the notion of creating living things altogether, as one amora was reported to have done? How many times can we come on to "it's an allegory" to explain away problematic teachings. The slope is very, very slippery. That's why, I agree, it's pretty astounding that the Yated would print it.
My point is that it's unusual for the Yated to publish articles which debunk widely held beliefs which evidently were not previously thought to harm emunah, but on the contrary, perhaps they were seen to enhance it. This isn't an article about why "poo poo poo" doesn't *really* remove ayin hara. That's also folklore, but not of the same kind. If the reason is that the historical evidence is so weak, as it turns out, that's precisely the situation for many, many other beliefs that are widespread.
En hachi nami, they're not really so historical. If the Chida had mentioned the golem they'd probably consider that a source, although the Chida was born fully 150 years after the Maharal lived, and his source would have also had to be oral. But it seems to me that while there probably wasn't a big meeting and a big plot discussing whether to write or print this article, it's not like telling a 7 year old that Santa is really a myth. This is the same newspaper which prints articles speculating that electricity and the like were known to the Tannaim or whatever. They are not an Orthodox Mythbusters. This is the sort of article that Ari Zifotofzky would write in Jewish Action. I don't see what "face value" is here.
[The "pooh pooh pooh" thing is mentioned in the mishna berurah, though there it's spelled "pi pi pi".]
If the Yated can write this article, perhaps they should also print Dan Rabinowitz's article on the Dreidel, demonstrating that it comes from the teetotum game, and the whole "nes godol hoyoh shom" concept is pure fiction. And if that is fiction, wouldnt that lead some to question if the oil lasting 8 days story is also fiction? [After all, as I recall, neither Josephus nor Hasmoneans mention that aspect of Chanukah]. I'm not commenting what's true or not, I'm just saying these types of stories are PRACTICALLY considered articles of faith by the Yated crowd. So it's intressante that they would print it.
What does "there was no golem" lead to? In any case, this seems to be as far as the Yated was willing to go: "Whether or not the Maharal ever made a golem remains unclear," which it more or less states twice.
But that's sort of the point. Without getting into "what will it lead to?" it's extremely unlikely that they'll debunk the dreidel (of course, for them the fact that the *Chasam Sofer* was noheg to play it will be considered a reliable source enough), or just about anything else like it. So unless we're going to argue that somehow the golem of the Maharal is the one example of something which so widely believed, yet also not sufficiently sourced to the extent that "no one realized how weak the historical basis for the story was" (but now they do? Why, because of the Sprecher article?) so one can safely debunk it in Yated, there must be many other things like it. I would not expect articles about how unlikely those things are. Until they've got such article regularly I will continue to think this one is remarkable.
Agav, it's interesting how Artscroll siddurim refer to sources from the Ge'onim or Rishonim as "ancient" or "early," regarding authorship of various tefillos when they're far from "ancient," and are really late.
I still don't get what you're driving at.
To people like the Yated, the idea that Tosafos can be wrong about something is itself a big deal. The idea that people babbling over the past 100 years or so could be wrong is not a big deal. How do you get from one to the other? (Let alone, DF's suggestion that there's no real difference between the Golem being a myth and saying that the Talmud was wrong about something. Maybe to HIM there's no difference ...)
I wouldn't be too surprised to see the dreidel myth debunked (not so much the initials part, but the apparently mythical idea that kids in Hasmonean times played dreidel to cover for their torah study). But a bit surprised if they took it on, since dreidels are a much bigger part of Jewish tradition than golems, or at least the Maharal's golem in particular, & the Yated et al don't like saying that widespread customs are baseless. Whether the Maharal did or didn't make a golem is really something that means very little to anyone.
I never heard of anyone using the Maharal's golem to "enhance the emunah". Obviously the golem stories existed in a pre-existing framework of emuna. But I would suggest that the very fact that there is so little said by gedolim on the subject is itself an indicator of how little the golem means, religiously and traditionally speaking.
I myself told all sorts of charedim that the golem was on very shaky ground, years and years before this Yated article. It never would have occured to me that it would be taken suspiciously, and I don't recall that it ever was.
All sorts of anachronistic, uncritical sorts of things that have noting to do with rishonim pass without an article dedicated to debunking them. Didja hear the one about the etymology of davenen? People say and repeat these kinds of things routinely and they're not debunked.
Also to consider is that the argument in the article is not novel, nor is it a feat of critical thinking. 150 years ago no one noticed that neither the Tzemach David nor the Chida mention it? In fact, one could argue that it is precisely because it lacked any earlier sources that R. Rosenberg invented one. Why wasn't that article have been written in any other Orthdox outlet 50 years ago? No one ever challenged it in this way, although of course that fully 150 years ago Shir pointed out that it's baseless. Thus, to quote myself, the 2006 article is remarkable.
You may have never seen anyone use the story to "enhance the emunah," but what exactly is the reason for the things they tell you in kindergarten and the 4th grade, etc. which have nothing to do with learning or halacha? Call it edification then.
Agav, I forgot that I once did this post
http://elucidation-not-translati...-of-
prague.html
It shows two promotional blurbs, several years apart. One blurb seems more certain than the other that the golem is real (and the one that's more certain is for the scholarly book).
There is no difference between erring with respect to a tradition about the golem, and erring with respect to the transmission of a halacha. Any distinction you can create is artificial.
It's not just me who says that,agav. It's every Charedi teacher or writer who tries to tackle the point. That is why such people argue so strenuously [and disingenuously] that nature has changed, medicine was different in their days, chazal never erred in science, etc ad nauseum - all the classic arguments. It's because they realize that if chazal are wrong on these items, then they could also have been wrong on interpreting pesukim, the grounds for various takonnos, etc. In short, if youre fallible for X, then you're also fallibe for Y.
You can also sense for yourself, FP, the forced nature of your distinctions. Dreidel is a bigger part of tradition than golems? Come on. They're both the same. Same with the Lag Baomer legends, and countless others. Each of them are another stitch in the tapestry of legend and lore that make up orthodox religion. You can put the whole corpus of kaballah in that weave also. And if one stitch can become unfrayed - like the Yated announced concerning the Golem - who's to say the whole thing is also not so tenuous?
Anyway, I express no particular opinion here, other than to say I'm surprised the Yated wrote about it. To be unnecessarily snarky, I would say it's readers are more interested in the ads than they are in following articles to their logical conclusions.
FWIW I would be surprised if the Yated would ever print "Isn't this interesting? It turns out that the dreidel is a European gambling toy, and not even an ancient one. Not only that, we know of no one connecting it to Chanuka until after the Declaration of Indepdendence. Ha! And the Chasam Sofer played it. Happy Chanuka!"
>There is no difference between erring with respect to a tradition about the golem, and erring with respect to the transmission of a halacha. Any distinction you can create is artificial.
F-P is correct that the issue is the Yated, not you. For the Yated and most of its audience, you just don't consider the possibility that a Tosafos made a mistake. Think about the flak Slifkin got for writing that elephants don't jump.
So some sort of slippery slope likely doesn't occur to the Yated. The article doesn't begin to question if making a golem is really possible, or ask as JD Eisenstein did, if it was Jews or gentiles who came up with the idea first. No, it safely relates that R Eliyahu Baal Shem really did make a golem. By the way, he died in 1583. Who do they cite? The Chida. Again, born in 1724.
So F-P is correct, that we're talking about a completely different set of assumptions and world view. However, I still don't see them debunking or casting doubt on the toras imecha of the vast, vast majority of its readers in other cases. I guess the point is that they only pulled one thread, but they'll never pull a hundred threads, so it doesn't matter?
DF, F-P said that dreidel is a bigger part of tradition than the *Maharal's* golem, not necessarily golems. But I think he's wrong because they're both late traditions and equally non-essential. To put it another way, in a recent post I noted my thought that JD Eisenstein died in the mid 1950s, yet he wrote a letter when he was already 30 years old, to Montefiore, a man who was born in 1784. That's roughly around the time that the first mention of dreidels being connected with Chanuka occurs. So it's a big part of tradition, but it's late, really, really late. Not only that, it has a laughably ironic origin.
Also, in fairness, wrt "each of them are another stitch in the tapestry of legend and lore that make up orthodox religion" he will probably retort "popular religion," not "orthodox religion," which must be why he keeps on mentioning the gedolim.
Search for the word yated in this book. Looks like the Israeli Yated took a foray into Golem Criticism in 1987, and it didn't generate a warm reaction.
So . . . I guess the truth is that the article in 2006 may not be so remarkable after all, although it does indicate that expectations were different in 2006. And it seems the lack of reaction bore out that expectation. That's a little remarkable, no? What changed in 20 years? We all became so mature and critical? As I said, the arguments themselves should not have taken until the turn of the century to be thought of, so that can't be it.
Edited for clarity
I think it was the Bnei Yissaschar who has a nice vort why on Chaanukah the handle of the draydel is on top, while on Purim the handle for the megillah is on the bottom. [hisoirirusa d'leila ude'latta, respectively.] That's OK, drashas based on non-Jewish items are common. Right here in Marcheshvan there are all sorts of nice derashos about the name of the month, almost as many as there are acronyms for Elul.
I'll bet if I tried I could come up with a nice vort to explain "December".
DF: "That is why such people argue so strenuously [and disingenuously] that nature has changed, medicine was different in their days, chazal never erred in science, etc ad nauseum - all the classic arguments. It's because they realize that if chazal are wrong on these items, then they could also have been wrong on interpreting pesukim, the grounds for various takonnos, etc. In short, if youre fallible for X, then you're also fallibe for Y."
The whole point is that Chazal (nor rishonim nor achronim) never said anything about the Maharal making a golem. So no one is shown to be fallible if it turns outto be bogus.
I can't understand why you ignore this.
S.: "F-P said that dreidel is a bigger part of tradition than the *Maharal's* golem, not necessarily golems. But I think he's wrong because they're both late traditions and equally non-essential."
Dreidels are much bigger because almost every kid in the world plays dreidel on channuka, and teachers teach the ancient history of it. The Maharal's golem almost never comes up. It's a very very small deal.
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