Kabbalah

8 Comments December 16, 2020 Steve Wiggins

I don’t claim to understand how the film industry works. My two books on horror and religion deal with interpreting the movies, not their native cinematic environment. I say this because I limited my treatments in them to films with a theatrical release. Mainly this was so that readers would have had easy access to them. Some films, of course, never go to theaters and it seems that happened, in the United States, to the Israeli movie The Golem. I saw a trailer for it last year and patiently waited for it to arrive. I recently found it on an online streaming service and finally had a chance to watch it. Golems, as original Jewish monsters, have shown up in a variety of popular media including The X-Files and Sleepy Hollow. Film treatments have been rare, and this one makes for a fascinating monster movie.

What makes the golem so compelling is that it is an explicitly religious monster. To create a golem (according to the film) the maker must use Kabbalah, Jewish mystical texts, to learn how to bring it to life. Hanna (Hani Furstenberg), the female protagonist, is the only one in her seventeenth-century village willing to try. The real hook, for me, is that the golem she creates is a little boy. The role must’ve been fun to play. Golems cannot speak, so there are no lines to learn. Kirill Cernyakov nails the part with an ability to portray emotionless menace. The problem with a golem, you see, is that it goes on rampages, killing even those it’s conjured to protect. Since the movie is intended to be a retelling of the classic story (involving the golem of Prague), it doesn’t have too many surprises. It is, however, a thoughtful movie.

Write-ups on it call it “the Jewish Frankenstein,” but scholars who research Frankenstein often go the other way, seeing Frankenstein’s monster as a form of golem. The basic idea is taking something inert and bringing it to life. Afterward the creator is unable to control it. It’s too bad that The Golem didn’t get a wide theatrical release. I’ve seen far worse horror films that did. Perhaps the focus on religion was too blatant? One of the points I make in Holy Horror and Nightmares with the Bible is that religion and horror belong together. Some Jewish viewers will undoubtedly spot inaccuracies (even this goy did) but the movie isn’t a religious text. It is an appropriate rebuff to Trumpian “politics” and even features a plague. It is a movie for our time.

2 Comments December 7, 2012 Steve Wiggins

Sometimes you read a book and wonder if somehow the author got into your head and fished around for material. Although I’m not Jewish, at least not that I know of, I found Eric Weiner’s Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine to be uncannily familiar at points. Not that I’ve ever been a journalist, nor have I had more than a few hundred people read anything I’ve written, but somehow I just couldn’t shake the underlying connectivity. For those of you unfortunate enough not to have read it, Man Seeks God is Weiner’s spiritual journey through various religions, seeking his God. Born culturally Jewish, Weiner never really resonated with the religious aspect until the last chapter of the book. In between, however, he shows a true pioneer spirit and tries diverse faiths, some of which are not for the fainthearted. As fits the postmodern period, he’s an authentic, intentional spiritual shopper. And he provides many laughs along the way.

Such a book must be difficult to write. There’s a lot of baring of the soul, and even a little baring of the body, at times. Weiner begins with Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. Yes, it’s based on love. He then travels to Nepal to pursue Buddhist meditation, followed by a stint with the Franciscans in the Bronx. The only one of the “big five” he doesn’t sample is Hinduism. That might have thrown a speed-bump into his ending, though, to be fair. He makes no claims of comprehensiveness. At this point the story takes a turn toward decidedly exotic selections in the cafe of spirituality. I couldn’t read his account of the Raëlians without snorting aloud once or twice on the bus. Taoism takes Weiner to China and into a distinctly more philosophical frame of mind. He explores Wicca and Shamanism, which may be more closely related than he supposes, before coming home to Kabbalah, the mystical branch of Judaism.

Spiritual seeking is as mandatory as breathing for some people. Eric Weiner is one of those teetering on the edge of active exploration and the ability to shut out the questions, if only temporarily. Reading his confessions, it’s clear that he’s a rational, intelligent man. He made it through decades without really feeling the need for religion. When the ineffable pressed itself onto him, however, he turned to the mystical traditions. I was warned, in conservative Grove City College’s religion department, to be very careful of mysticism. The professor was dry-eyed serious as he said that seeking direct experience of God would generally lead to heresy. So there it was, in plain sight. Doctrine has precedence over the truth. Long ago someone smarter than us figured it all out. Our job? Just follow their path. I have a feeling that Weiner, having had some unexplained experiences of his own, might disagree. Sometimes you have to take out a personal ad in the spiritual scandal-sheets to get an idea what the divine really is.