Revelation 13:15
“But to show that the image is not actually a living personality or actual spiritual entity, or at least doesn’t have a soul or whatever, you find the false prophet & the beast being cast into the lake of fire–but not the image! (Revelation.19:20) so he’s just a phony, a fake, an imitation, a counterfeit, &, of course, apparently will be destroyed!–not indestructible like golem! I’ve heard that word “golem” before. It’s a Jewish word. It’s not one of the letters of their alphabet, is it? You know, it just could be that the jews had some kind of prophecies back there that we don’t know about–about a coming statue or image that was going to destroy the world! (: that was a pretty heavy prophecy, that in the 21st century man won’t be any longer!) at least not as he now is! he said, “if you read this, you are not a man, you’re more than a man!”–which of course he will be. but of course like all of man’s stories, they go haywire somewhere, & there will still be ordinary human beings who will survive armageddon, the wicked world over whom we’ll reign, & there will still be people. but that old jewish legend could have come from something they got about that image! (David B. Berg. ML#1522: The Talking Image)
creating the mystical golem
“Gollum was conjured using an animation technique known as performance capture or motion capture. Special cameras recorded actor Andy Serkis’ movements and expressions, from froggy hops to conflicted scowls. Computers instantly translated that visual data into a rough draft of the final creation.”
At the bottom of every monster there’s a man somewhere when you get to the bottom of it! (DDB)
Everything you take for granted in the real world, we have to think about and create,” Letteri says. Given what the industry has created so far, the tests of motion capture’s limits are likely just beginning.
power was given to the image
“In Jewish folklore, a golem is a powerful but erratic humanoid formed from earth and brought to life through Kabbalistic magic; while the golem is often created with good intentions, or even to save the Jews, ultimately it runs amok and must be destroyed.
Indeed, much like the amorphous clay from which it is usually formed, the golem is a highly mutable metaphor with seemingly limitless symbolism. It can be victim or villain, Jew or non-Jew, man or woman—or sometimes both. Over the centuries it has been used to connote war, community, isolation, hope and despair.”
Despite the meanings the golem has acquired over the years, its origins are fairly simple. The Hebrew word galmi, meaning an “unformed mass,” first appears in Psalm 139:16. In a later Midrash about human creation, Adam is said to have been a golem, a body without a soul, until the fourth hour of his existence when God breathed life into him. Although the concept of a golem as a creature artificially brought to life goes back to the Talmud, the term doesn’t come into common usage until much later. A 13th-century manuscript by Rabbi Eleazer of Worms, an early German Kabbalist, gives detailed instructions for how to create a golem; by the end of that century, summoning golems was a common part of Kabbalistic practice.
Golems are not solely about good times; there is a darker side to the tradition.
Golem the Talking Image
“For the first time, the golem is no longer simply a passive servant laboring for its master but a threatening and ominous figure. The most famous golem tale of this type is about Rabbi Judah Loew, the great 16th-century Kabbalist and Talmudic scholar of Prague, who creates a golem to defend the Jewish community against Christian attacks. The golem saves the day, but the story’s end reflects Jewish insecurities about power: Loew loses control of the monster and must destroy it. In one version, the golem turns back to mud and falls on the rabbi, killing him.”
“You create a work of art and then it takes on a life of its own.” James Sturm
Monsters “mirror the anxieties and fears of society, emerging more vigorously…when cultural stresses are keenest,” argues University of Glasgow Jewish Studies professor Mia Spiro. You can see this vividly with the golem.
As Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote in 1984, “The golem story appears less obsolete today than it seemed one hundred years ago. After all, what are the computers and robots of our times if not golems?”
July 17, 2017 in 2017 July-August, Arts & Culture, Jewish Word, Jewish World
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvUNXVs6q_C1LhVHWLd2vSQ