Fascinating.
However, the Life magazine is mistaken. The statue by Ladislav Šaloun, part of the New Town Hall in Prague, was originaly named the Iron Knight, and is based on a popular Czech folk tale. It is often confused with the Golem because it is part of the same building as the statue of Maharal (same year and author).
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki.../27/
Maharal.jpg
Thanks. Actually, I had trouble believing that it was from 1905 (that is, the statue of the Golem) so I just left it as "Life magazine says..."
Shir's comment on Maharal can be found here:
http://books.google.com/books?id...5%D7%93&
f=false
Beat me to it, Shimon. (I heard that from R' Leiman.) The same error is made in Winkler's book.
The Maharal probably never thought of Descartes because the former died when the latter was thirteen years old. :-)
In any event, the Golem could *not* think, so where does Descartes enter into it?
By the way, these stories certainly don't reflect the common "golem created to save the Jews" story- some seem to imply quite the opposite.
I've seen "chalet" elsewhere, by the way.
Fred, it looked like you were heading towards disproving the claim that Reb Yudel was the first to claim the Mahral's golem stories were based on an old manuscript. But I think you veered off. Did you post anything ( or do have material) to show that others before R. Yudel were claiming the legend was contained in a manuscript hundreds of years old?
2 British points:
1. it is more common to speak of halacha, but people do use "din" as well (ie, my succah fell down on yomtov and the Dayan explained teh din in his shiur") - is this really just a British thing?
2. not duchanning on Shabbat is still the minhag in the UNited Synagogue. There is a tshuva on this in Iggeret Moshe addressed to a well known UK Rabbi. It is apparently a gezeira lest the cohen have the minhag to go to the mikva before duchenning and use a towel; obviously a pretty far-out reason given that the United Synagogue clientele is not well-known for its use of male mikvaos. Nonethless it is still the majority practice
With a change of rabbis in the early 1980's, the Yonkers shul I grew up in made the switch to Shabbos duchening on Yom Tov, based on the Rav's view, but not without some grumbling from the oldtimers. Every shul I've been to since then has had Shabbos Yom Tov duchening, the only difference from weekdays being the omission of the so-called "ay-yay-yays" between each phrase of the bracha, because on Shabbos the congregation does not say the intervening tefillah for bad dreams.
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