Of Miracles and Golems

Dread has fallen upon us. The world is in an array of tailspins. Friends are cancelling friends. Floods, fires, tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, drought, and all the other symptoms of climate change are ravaging mammalian encampments around the globe. School shootings abound. Income inequity is abysmal. Health care is cratering. And there is a careening clown car heading for Washington D.C. due to arrive in late January with extreme mischief on tap. And on top of all of that, I’m moving!! Lord above, we need a miracle!!!

As I write this I am literally wedged between boxes filled with 34 years’ worth of accumulated books, gizmos, old school (and very sharp) shaving equipment (it’s an acquired skill and a small obsession), and worst of all, heaps of items useless but for the memories they hold, and to which I cling, lest those moments from the past be lost forever. The world is tottering on the edge of ruin and I’m freaking out about how-the-heck-am-I-gonna-sort-out-the-messy-life-I’ve-created enough to start anew elsewhere. It seems a little self-indulgent but sometimes the self insists on having the mic. Conflicting thoughts ricochet across my mind: “Am I honestly going to read these books on Hasidism?” collides with “Will there really be mass deportations on January 21st, (and, again, my self chimes in: which happens to be my birthday, thank you very much??).” Suddenly, “Where are we gonna put all this stuff in the new house???” seems to t-bone straight into “Will ad hoc militias be running unfettered and rampant when the new administration takes over?” I find myself wishing that some supernatural force would come and lift these burdens and put things right!!! OK, we do have movers coming in two days, but they won’t make it disappear. They will just enable us to move this mess to the next chapter. But what about the potential for widespread terrorism? What about climate change? What about food shortages? Who’s gonna pack that up and move it? And even if they could, where would they take it? Oy vey iz mir, di velt es heint a balagan!! Or to quote the ‘70’s TV closet dyke icon Madge: We are soaking in it, my friends. 

I’m feeling overwhelmed and fixated on personal, regional, national, and global problems. I find myself oscillating between hoping for some sort of divine intervention and golem ideation. Golems take many forms, but all share the same basic characteristics. First, they are some sort of animated and usually powerful creation fabricated by human beings (well, okay, some argue that there was one golem fabricated by God, and that would be humanity), crafted to do humanity’s bidding. And second, this plan usually goes badly. 

Of all the golem stories, the most famous is the Legend of the Golem of Prague. Allegedly formed and enlivened by the Maharal of Prague, Rabbi Judah Lowe, as a last-resort response to increasing anti-Jewish violence being perpetrated on his community, Rabbi Lowe fashions this golem by digging into his mystical toolbox and subsequently sculpting a homunculus out of river mud. He gives very specific instructions: “Golem, grow in size and might, become as big as you need to deter our foes and when they are defeated, return to me.” Golems are famously obedient and dismally svara-less, thus the Maharal’s instructions are followed exactly. The golem encounters such immense hatred in the surrounding areas that it grows to three stories tall. At last the enemy is quelled. Its mission accomplished, the golem returns. But its feet are now the size of cybertrucks which inadvertently destroy fences, paddocks, cottages, and shtetl-niks, crushing the good with the bad on the way back to the Rabbi. Upon arrival, the golem is promptly decommissioned. Rabbi Lowe is humbled by the self-inflicted damage suffered by his beloved community. He realizes that taking matters like this into one’s own hands is a complicated and dangerous business. His golem was a horrible reflection of its wise but still-human creator, holding the promise of protection alongside the capacity to inflict terror, tragedy, and trauma. 

In a world filled with surreal madcap danger, it is tempting to want to harness Divine power for some perceived benefit. Miracles are prayed for everywhere, and high tech golems are being built everyday. And it’s not lost on me that Hannukah, Judaism’s golem of a festival with its jury-rigged miracles, is just around the calenderic corner and right on time. 

Amongst my family, friends, teachers, students, and colleagues, it is well known that the mere mention of anything pertaining to Hannukah is likely to incur, at best my ire and at worst a noisy sermonetta. There are so many reasons for this (including a few I covered in last year’s pre-Hannukah HOTS rant), not the least of which is the trespass of the fine line between the farkakte rabbinic fairy tale of a single cruse of oil burning for a preposterously long and convenient amount of time (Shabbat 21b) and the fervent belief that said tale is evidence of a Divine Miracle. The latter is expressed with the blessing:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלוֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם שֶׁעָשָׂה נִסִּים לַאֲבוֹתֵינוּ בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם בַּזְּמַן הַזֶּה

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, she-asah nisim la-avoteinu v-imoteinu ba- yamim ha-heim ba-z’man ha-zeh. 

Blessed are you, Our God, Ruler of the Universe, who performed miracles for our ancestors in their days at this season.

Really?!? It is important to note here that the story of the Maccabees is one of ruthless violence and brutality in a guerilla war followed by a century and some change of corrupt and oppressive rule. The Maccabees made themselves into a golem. Driven to defeat the Assyrian Greeks at all costs, they do tap into some seriously impressive (if below the belt) warrior skills, but then they come back, with gigantic egos and an insatiable thirst for power and adoration. They establish a festival for themselves that rivals God’s nature festival, sukkot. Gotta hand it to them for chutzpah. But in the end they are so despised by their people that their story is left on Jewish Scripture’s cutting room floor. 

But a century or so after the Maccabees are defanged, the cheeky old Rabbis salvage the damn festival. They cut two books of grisly bloodlust, war and gore, and wild-eyed zealotry down to one very vanilla paragraph, including their famous addition of a little miracle regarding one jar of oil burning for an unheard of eight days and nights. 

My goat is well gotten because, more often than not, those who bless something a “Divine Miracle” are those who benefit from it. Such blessings boldly suggest that God is on our side, here to do our bidding. Certainly, it is rare that one refers to some incomprehensible occurrence not in one’s favor as a Divine Miracle.  

Our radical pal Baruch Spinoza got himself thrown out of Judaism on his ear for, among a slew of other heresies of the time, asserting that God doesn’t do miracles on our behalf. Chapter 6 of his Theological-Political Treatise is all about it. Here’s a snippet front the first page:

“Therefore unusual works of Nature are termed miracles, or works of God, by the common people; and partly from piety, partly for the sake of opposing those who cultivate the natural sciences, they prefer to remain in ignorance of natural causes, and are eager to hear only of what is less comprehensible to them and consequently evokes their greatest wonder. Naturally so, since it is only by abolishing natural causes and imagining supernatural events that they are able to worship God and refer all things to God’s governance and God’s will; and it is when they imagine Nature’s power subdued, as it were, by God that they most admire God’s power.”  

People like the idea that God cares about us enough to intercede on our behalf. Though the Rabbis have diverse opinions on this matter, here’s an exchange between Rav Yosef and his student, Abaye, that illustrates the tension with which Spinoza was concerned. The set up: the gemara is discussing what measures can be taken to support healing or avoid injury on Shabbat. Somehow the conversation turns to goats with leaky and/or extremely large udders and whether it’s okay to tie a pouch around them to keep them from dragging on the ground. An anecdote is inserted here about a woman who dies and leaves her husband with an infant. The papa couldn’t afford a wet nurse.

וְנַעֲשָׂה לוֹ נֵס וְנִפְתְּחוּ לוֹ דַּדִּין כִּשְׁנֵי דַּדֵּי אִשָּׁה וְהֵנִיק אֶת בְּנוֹ

…and a miracle was done for him and he developed breasts, like the two breasts of a woman and he nursed his child. 

אָמַר רַב יוֹסֵף: בֹּא וּרְאֵה כַּמָּה גָּדוֹל אָדָם זֶה שֶׁנַּעֲשָׂה לוֹ נֵס כָּזֶה! אֲמַר לֵיהּ אַבָּיֵי: אַדְּרַבָּה כַּמָּה גָּרוּעַ אָדָם זֶה שֶׁנִּשְׁתַּנּוּ לוֹ סִדְרֵי בְרֵאשִׁית.

Rav Yosef said: Come and see! How great is this guy!? That such a miracle was done on his behalf!!  Abaye (his student) said to him: On the contrary, how deficient is this guy? Because of that schmuck the order of creation was disrupted!
(BT Shabbat 53b)

Abaye is not upset that the man was suddenly and conveniently able to nurse his child. Rather, he was incensed, enough to take a potshot at his teacher, by Rav Yosef’s assumption that this “miracle” was done, davka, because the man was deserving. Miracle, schmearacle! God shouldn’t mess with the order of creation for anyone, ever, on any account.  

Interestingly there is a parallel rabbinic teaching about golems as well. In the midst of a convoluted conversation about necromancy and oracles lies a pithy exchange between Rava and R. Zeir:

אָמַר רָבָא אִי בָּעוּ צַדִּיקֵי בָּרוּ עָלְמָא שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר כִּי עֲוֹנוֹתֵיכֶם הָיוּ מַבְדִּלִים וְגוֹ’

Rava said: If the righteous wish, they can create a world, as it is stated: “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2). 

Meaning that a righteous person who is sin-less, is indistinct from God and therefore, if God created the world, so can the purely righteous. That sounds pretty good, except for the sin-less part, because really and truly what’s the point of being human without a bit of sin here and there? Isn’t that a huge part of what being made flesh is all about? The gemara continues and this point is not lost on R. Zeira:

רָבָא בְּרָא גַּבְרָא שַׁדְּרֵיהּ לְקַמֵּיהּ דְּרַבִּי זֵירָא הֲוָה קָא מִשְׁתַּעֵי בַּהֲדֵיהּ וְלָא הֲוָה קָא מַהְדַּר לֵיהּ אֲמַר לֵיהּ מִן חַבְרַיָּא אַתְּ הֲדַר לְעַפְרָיךְ

Rava created a man. A golem, using the same creative process that God used to make the world. He sent his creation before Rabbi Zeira. Rabbi Zeira would speak to it but it would not reply. Rabbi Zeira said to it: You were created by one of the members of the group, one of the Sages. Return to your dust.

Like Rabbi Zeitra, some of the ancient sages recognized that humans already have enough on our psycho-spiritual to-do list just coping with the needs of the body and soul to be adding things like making golems that are truly out of our league. But miracles? Well, wishing for a few of those is pretty hard to resist. The Hanukkah story as it is found in the scriptural account (found in the apocryphal writings maintained by the Jesuits, i.e. the other J’s, among a handful of other Christian sects) Maccabees I and II gives us the makings of a golem: the Maccabees as a superpower gone wrong. Meanwhile, the rabbinic version (found in BT Shabbat 21b) diminishes the importance of the Maccabees’ brutality and gives us a miracle instead. I’m guessing that the Rabbis were trying to come up with a reason to kick the Maccabees out while holding onto an already established excuse to party in the winter time. And I bet we all get that. (I’ve been to a lot of 4th of July parties with anti-war anarchists over the years–basically any excuse to feast and frolic will do.) And the Rabbis certainly did a good job of shifting the emphasis from human brutality to God’s wonders. That being said, I’m left wondering.

What if the Rabbis had just named it? What if they had not resorted to calling God in and saying whack stuff like, “God did miracles for our ancestors”? Couldn’t they just have said, “Hey y’all. Since we were treated really badly by the Maccabean dynasty, what if we take the holiday they established and repurpose it for celebrating our resilience and communal strength? How about we light one candle every night to raise up one amazing quality of our family or spiritual practice, or an aspect of God that helps us stay the course? Who’s in?”

Looking at the physical mess I’m literally mired in right now, and thinking about the chaotic world we’re all living in, I’m trying to hold it all as work that simply needs to be done. With acceptance and as little blame as possible. My friend, colleague, thought buddy, and fellow contrarian, David Green, said that where difficult situations between the self or with others are concerned, he tells himself the following: “If you think it’s about you, it’s not. But if you think it’s about someone else, then it’s about you.” I’m hoping we can be mindful of the story lines we are laying down as these personal and world crises unfold. And I’m hopeful that we can be honest in the here and now about what role we play in this tangled drama. I’m wondering what people will think and what they will highlight a century from now about this time we are living through? This much is always true: we are leaving the elements of a story for someone in the future. May it be that they find more than golems and miracles.

And as ironic as it may be for me to say it: Chag Hannukah sameach, friends!!