Introduction: What is “The Golem”? How Does This Jewish Religious Icon Relate to the Most Dangerous Arsenal of Nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction on the Face of the Planet Today? The legend of The Golem, in one form or another, can be found in the most ancient days of Jewish folklore and is notably referenced in the Talmud — an extended record of discussions amongst Jewish rabbis about matters pertaining to Jewish laws, ethics, customs and history, dating back to the mid-years of the First Century, A.D. However, the bestknown rendering of the tale came in a story first published in Prague in 1847 in a collection of Jewish tales. A subsequent version was published in 1909 by Yudl Rosenberg in a collection of short stories about The Golem entitled The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague. The so-called Maharal of Prague was a real-life 16th Century rabbi, a highly-regarded authority on Jewish mysticism, who lived between 1525 and 1609. Generally known at the time as Yehudah Levin ben Betzalel Levai (or Loew) — or variations thereof — the rabbi is most commonly recalled in the legend of The Golem as simply “Rabbi Loew.” (The rabbi’s title, “MaHaRaL,” incidentally is the Hebrew acronym of “Moreinu ha-Rav Loew,” which means, simply, “Our Teacher the Rabbi Loew.”) A wealthy heir to a distinguished Jewish family which included his uncle, who was the Rabbi of the Jews of the Holy Roman Empire, Rabbi Loew was not only influential in Prague, but at one point, he later journeyed to Poland where he was named Chief Rabbi of Poland. Today his tomb in Prague, the city to which he returned during his final years, is a popular tourist attraction. Loew’s work, as a Talmudic scholar and as a teacher of Talmudic scholars, is hailed in modern times as being critical to the foundation of Jewish philosophy. So the fact that Rabbi Loew is the key figure in the story of The Golem is highly relevant indeed. He was a living, breathing human being of historical record, one highly esteemed among the Jewish people for more than 500 years. According to the basic thrust of the legend of The Golem, the Emperor of the Hapsburg Empire had proclaimed that the Jews of Prague were to be expelled or killed — an early “Holocaust,” so to speak. The legend varies, but it’s clear the emperor had ill will toward the Jews. In any case, at the time, the Jewish community in Prague was under fire — as many Jewish communities in Europe had been, time and again — because certain Jews were accused of killing Christian children and using their blood in Passover rituals. (The question of whether the Jews, as a group, or as individuals, or whether factions of Jews actually committed such crimes is a topic of serious debate, as evidenced by a recent scandal in Italy in which an Italian Jewish scholar, Ariel Toaff — based at the Bar-Illan University in Israel, suggested in a book — subsequently withdrawn from circulation for revision after a frenzied response from Jewish organizations — that there is solid historical evidence of such crimes, generally known as “Jewish Ritual Murder.”) Whatever the case, at the time, angry Christians in Prague believed the allegations of ritual murder and were waging a campaign of retribution against the Jews. It was Rabbi Loew, according to the legend of The Golem, who found a way to defend the Jewish people. The rabbi, a skilled practitioner in Jewish mysticism, gathered clay from the River Vitava and created The Golem, a large man-like figure — an early Frankenstein’s Monster, more or less — to defend the Jewish community and strike back at the evil Christians. (There are those who contend that Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was inspired by the legend of The Golem, when she first crafted her now-famous tale.) The legend says that Rabbi Loew made the clay image into a living being by placing in his mouth a parchment, known as the “Shem,” upon which was inscribed “the life-creating, ineffable Name of God,” according to Nathan Ausubel, writing in The Book of Jewish Knowledge. However, the good Rabbi’s creation, Ausubel noted, became “drunk with the immense power he was wielding, menaced the entire Jewish community, even trying to bend the Maharal to his will, which had now turned evil and destructive.” In the end, the rabbi removed the “Shem” from the mouth of The Golem and took away the mad monster’s life force. Yet, the rabbi preserved the body of The Golem and locked the monster away in the attic of Prague’s Old-New Synagogue and issued an order barring anyone from visiting there. The tale says that The Golem remains there to this day. It is claimed that not even the German Gestapo dared to enter the attic of the old synagogue during World War II and that — presumably because of the presence of The Golem — the Old-New Synagogue somehow survived destruction by the Nazis. Or so the legend goes. Writing at Jewishmag.com, Joyce Ellen Weinstein, provided a concise overview of the legend of “The Golem” noting that the Talmud actually mentions several instances of rabbis creating such man-like creatures and using them to conduct errands. However, in the popular rendition of the Golem legend, as we’ve seen, the creature ran amok, even turning on his creator. Ms. Weinstein notes:   WHAT IS THE GOLEM? 19 ___________________________________________________________   The word golem comes from the Hebrew word gelem, meaning raw material. The golem is outwardly a real person, yet he lacks the human dimension of personality and intellect. Life is interjected into him through a mystical process using God's special name. He is created from the ground, as was the first man. When his mission is over, the name of God is removed from him and he returns to the ground. Many trace the golem to the mystical teaching of the Kabbalistic book called "Sefer HaYetzera", the book of formation. This ancient book is still in print today and studied by Jewish mystics. The book deals in great length with the actual process of creating the universe. Essentially, the Golem legend suggests that human beings — in this case, Jewish rabbis — have a power almost equal to that of God: being able to create a living creature that is almost human, but not quite. And this is significant, from a theological standpoint, in that — quite in contrast to the Christian and Muslim traditions — such power is reserved to God and God alone: It is only God who can create life. But the Jewish tradition evidently grants superior powers to rabbis, skilled in magic arts that they have used (or perhaps abused or misused, however one defines it) for their own earthly purposes and — in the popular legend of The Golem — Rabbi Loew used supernatural power to bring to life the man-like creature crafted from the natural elements given to man by God, in this instance, the clay of the River Vitava. So it is that in the Hebrew Bible (see Psalms 139:16) and in the Jewish Talmud, the term galem or gelem — or Golem — refers to an “unformed substance.” The 1971 edition of an Israeli edition of The Encyclopedia Judaica noted the evolving concept that The Golem, as a servant of his creator, “developed dangerous natural powers . . .[and that the underlying theme of The Golem] is joined by the new motive of the unrestrained power of the elements which can bring about destruction and havoc.” The very point that The Golem of Jewish folklore was created from the earth as a means by which to defend the Jewish people, only to have The Golem become a force for evil — one that could even redound against his creator and the Jewish people — is a point that bears repeating, and one that calls out to be brought to the attention of the world at large. For today, a very real Golem stands at the brink of bringing the globe to the long-awaited Armageddon.   20 MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER __________________________________________________________   The legend of The Golem has been told in literature, on the stage and on film. In 1915 Gustav Meyrink commemorated the tale in a Geman-language novel entitled Der Golem, although the latter-day 20th Century Yiddish-language writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, brought more widespread commemoration of the legend in his own short story first published in 1969 in Yiddish, later translated into English. Beyond question, the best known film production of the tale (one which introduced a visual image of The Golem to the world) came in a three-part silent film series (from 1914 to 1920) by German actor and director Paul Wegener, the best known installment of the series of which is the final film, The Golem: How He Came Into the World, an expressionist drama in which Wegener himself played The Golem. That film was released in the United States in 1921 under the title, The Golem. The image of The Golem, appearing on the cover of this book, is reproduced from Wegener’s film. The film is considered a classic, by all estimations. An often-produced stage production of the tale, also entitled The Golem, was written by a famed Yiddish writer, H. Leivick, and was first introduced in 1924 in Moscow. It’s been replayed time and again and in 2002 David Fishelson produced it in New York City through his Manhattan Ensemble Theater. On April 7, 2002 The New York Times discussed the play in a review entitled, “A Jewish Avenger, a Timely Legend.” Of the Jewish-themed play, the Times noted: “Its central concern is the self-destructive consequences of Jews resorting to violence to defend themselves . . . The Golem wreaks fierce retribution and the Jews proclaim him a hero. But he gets carried away. He goes on a rampage, spilling the blood of those he was meant to protect.” In 1984, the aforementioned much-beloved Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (who, as noted, had previously adapted the story of The Golem) wrote of the legend of the Golem and, quite aptly, compared the Golem to the nuclear arms race: “While we attempt to surpass our enemies and to create new and more destructive golems, the awful possibility is lurking that they may develop a volition of their own, become spiteful, treacherous, mad golems.” Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Jewish journalist, invited controversy by issuing, The Samson Option, his revealing book on Israel’s nuclear ambitions, in 1991. But since then, Israeli journalist Avner Cohen, in his 1999 book, Israel and the Bomb, has not only validated Hersh’s earlier work, but provided an even more detailed exposition of the history of Israel’s nuclear weapons of mass destruction.   WHAT IS THE GOLEM? 21 ___________________________________________________________   In that volume Cohen wrote of how David Ben-Gurion — the great Israeli (and Jewish) icon, one of Israel’s founding fathers and then its prime minister — focused on the development of an atomic bomb and how Ben-Gurion viewed nuclear weapons as being central to Israel’s very survival. Ben-Gurion, in fact, was obsessed with the bomb. Describing Ben-Gurion’s obsession with Israeli nuclear supremacy— and of his dissatisfaction with the efforts by President John F. Kennedy to bring an end to Israel’s nuclear ambitions — Cohen wrote: Imbued with the lessons of the Holocaust, Ben- Gurion was consumed by fears for Israel's security . . . In his public speeches and writings as prime minister Ben-Gurion rarely discussed the Holocaust. In private conversations and communications with foreign leaders, however, he returned to the lessons of the Holocaust time and again. In his correspondence with President John F. Kennedy in 1963, he linked Arab enmity to Israel with Hitler's hatred of the Jews, and wrote: "As a Jew I know the history of my people, and carry with me the memories of all it has endured over a period of three thousand years, and the effort it has cost to accomplish what has been achieved in this country in recent generations . . . Mr. President, my people have the right to exist, both in Israel and wherever they may live, and this existence is in danger" . . . Anxiety about the Holocaust reached beyond Ben-Gurion to infuse Israeli military thinking. The destruction of Israel defined the ultimate horizon of the threat against Israel. Israeli military planners have always considered a scenario in which a united Arab military coalition launched a war against Israel with the aim of liberating Palestine and destroying the Jewish state. This was referred to in the early 1950s as mikre hkol, or the "everything scenario." This kind of planning was unique to Israel, as few nations have military contingency plans aimed at preventing apocalypse. Ben-Gurion had no qualms about Israel's need for weapons of mass destruction . . . Ben-Gurion saw Arab hostility toward Israel as deep and long-lasting . . . Ben-Gurion's pessimism . . . influenced Israel's foreign and defense policy for years. Ben-Gurion's world   22 MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER __________________________________________________________ view and his decisive governing style shaped his critical role in initiating Israel's nuclear program . . . Ben-Gurion believed that science and technology had two roles in the realization of Zionism: to advance the State of Israel spiritually and materially, and to provide for a better defense against its external enemies. Ben-Gurion's determination to launch a nuclear project was the result of strategic intuition and obsessive fears, not of a well-thought-out plan. He believed Israel needed nuclear weapons as insurance if it could no longer compete with the Arabs in an arms race, and as a weapon of last resort in case of an extreme military emergency. Nuclear weapons might also persuade the Arabs to accept Israel's existence, leading to peace in the region [he thought]. On 27 June 1963, eleven days after he announced his resignation, Ben-Gurion delivered a farewell address to the employees of the Armaments Development Authority in which, without referring to nuclear weapons, he provided the justification for the nuclear project: "I do not know of any other nation whose neighbors declare that they wish to terminate it, and not only declare, but prepare for it by all means available to them. We must have no illusions that what is declared every day in Cairo, Damascus, Iraq are just words. This is the thought that guides the Arab leaders . . . I am confident . . . that science is able to provide us with the weapon that will secure the peace, and deter our enemies." To summarize: The "nuclear option" was not only at the very core of Ben-Gurion's personal world view, but the very foundation of Israel's national security policy. The Israelis were essentially willing, if necessary, to "blow up the world" — including themselves — if they had to do so in order to destroy the Arab neighbors they hate so much. This policy is better known by what Jewish-American Pulitzer Prizewinning author Seymour Hersh referred to, in the book by the same name, as “The Samson Option” — that, as Samson of the Bible, after being captured by the Philistines, brought down Dagon's Temple in Gaza and killed himself along with his enemies. As Hersh put it: "For Israel's nuclear advocates, the Samson Option became another way of saying `Never again,'" (in reference to preventing another Holocaust).   WHAT IS THE GOLEM? 23 ___________________________________________________________   When the late Winston Churchill said that two ancient peoples — the Greeks and the Jews — suffered from a strong impulse of self-destruction, he was not far off the mark. Most Americans have no idea that the possibility of a full-fledged nuclear “suicide bombing” by the state of Israel itself is a cornerstone of Israel’s national security policy. And the frightening fact remains that Jewish (and, in particular, Israeli) attitudes toward non-Jews could play a major role in triggering the activation of Israel’s modern-day (and very real) Golem: its nuclear arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.. To understand this danger, we must turn to the fascinating revelations and insights of the late Israeli writer Israel Shahak, a native of Poland who spent a portion of his childhood in the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau, and who emigrated to Palestine in 1945. As years passed, Shahak became an open and very vocal critic of Israeli policies, both foreign and domestic, a valuable source for facts about Israel that few Westerners would dare to address. While admirers have called Shahak a “prophet,” and his critics have called him a “self-hating Jew,” there is no doubt that Shahak was an outspoken, articulate and fearless analyst and critic of Israeli foreign policy and Shahak’s written works provide a dramatic testament to this. In his book Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies, Shahak said that — contrary to the general perception — Israel does not seek peace. It is a myth, he said, that there is any real difference between the supposedly “conflicting” policies being pursued by the “opposing” Likud and Labor blocs whose rivalries have been played out on the global stage and which have overflowed into the American political process, pitting American Likud supporters against Labor backers in America. Shahak contended that the Israeli lobby in the United States — with all its factions — is ultimately propping up Israel’s policy of expansionism with the final aim of consolidating “Eretz Israel” — an imperial state in complete control of practically the entire Middle East. Shahak dared to point out that Israel’s nuclear policies — and the influence of the Israeli lobby on the American political process — are a very real danger in a certain respect that few would dare to imagine. Not only is Israel prepared to destroy itself, but because of its underlying religious and racial bigotry toward non-Jews — the Gentiles — Israel’s outlook toward the world at large is driven by a deep-rooted hostility, founded in the religious teachings of Judaism itself. Shahak’s writings in the realm of Israel foreign policy were based almost entirely on public pronouncements in the Hebrew language   24 MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER __________________________________________________________   press in Israel and, in that realm, Shahak pointed out that what the Israeli government tells its own people about its policies is entirely inconsistent with Israel’s insistence to the West and the world at large that Israel “wants peace.” Israel, Shahak contended, is essentially a militarist state and an undemocratic one at that, evidenced by the second-class status accorded its Arab inhabitants and those Christian and Moslem Palestinians in occupied territories. One cannot understand Israel until one understands this vital fact. The nation’s very foundation rests upon its military and defense policies, which, as Shahak made clear, ultimately stem from the fanatic religious tendencies that dictate the thinking of its military and intelligence leaders who are the prime movers behind the engine of state. Although Israel is quite capable of forging temporary (and often covert) alliances and strategic arrangments even with Arab states — even to the point of dealing with the hated Saddam Hussein when it was in Israel’s immediate interest — the bottom line is, quite simply, that — as Shahak demonsrated quite chillingly — Israel will say and do anything to pursue its determined goal of winning total domination at all costs. If it fails, Israel is perfectly willing to choose “the Samson Option.” The legend of The Golem, first in the tales of the Talmud and later brought forth into popular (or rather Jewish) consciousness in the story of Rabbi Loew of Prague, is a very real warning for our modern world. The state of Israel mined the earth for uranium in order to produce its atomic “Golem,” much as Rabbi Loew took the clay from the River Vitava to produce his own. And Israel proclaims its Golem as its means to protect Israel from its enemies, real and perceived. So, now, today in Israel, increasing religious fanaticism, coupled with growing hysteria about purported threats to the nation’s survival, raise the very strong possibility that its Golem might be put into force. Israel is determined to prevent other nations of the Middle East from assembling their own nuclear weapons or even having access to peaceful uses for nuclear power. But like the Golem of Prague, Israel’s Golem could produce ugly results that not even the Jewish people might be able to imagine. And that is why Israel’s very real modern day “Golem” is a danger to the world, one that must be dealt with. Can there be any doubt that the singular and central mission of the modern, civilized world must be to ensure, once and for all, that Israel’s nuclear Golem is dismantled, before it’s too late? While there are those who might be inclined to suggest that we are   WHAT IS THE GOLEM? 25 ___________________________________________________________   unfairly targeting “little Israel — the nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust, a nation that rightly feels the need to defend itself from yet another Holocaust,” the fact is that — as we shall demonstratein the pages that follow — it is the very existence of Israel’s Golem that could indeed lead to another Holocaust — a very real Holocaust in the dictionary definition of the word. The potential of a nuclear catastrophe arising from the problems surrounding The Golem could lead to the absolute destruction of not only the state of Israel but spark a global conflagration that could bring about the end of life on Earth. At the very least, the existence of Israel’s nuclear Golem — and the troubles it has brought to the Middle East and the world at large (particularly because of the iron-clad “special relationship” between the United States and Israel) — could very well ultimately set in motion a worldwide wave of anti-Jewish fervor. Neither Israel nor the Jewish people in diaspora want that. In such works as Future Fastforward and Brainwashed for War, Programmed to Kill, Malaysian diplomat and attorney Matthias Chang demonstrated that the Zionist global war agenda is operating through a military-industrial-media complex central to the world of warfare that plagues mankind today. And according to Chang, Israel and its intrigues will be the linchpin for forthcoming — and inevitable — nuclear warfare. Although Chang foresees a “meltdown” of the far-reaching financial forces that drive this war machine, this meltdown will not come without a struggle — and indeed, he says, that struggle has already begun, that we are facing a Long War of the 21st Century. The prospect is not appealing for those who seek peace. This maelstrom of violence swirls around Israel and its Golem, a direct result of the imposition of the state of Israel upon Palestine in 1948 and the consequences that have come in its wake, particularly as Israel has sought to assert itself — supported by the United States — as a regional power, with the United States waging wars (covert and otherwise) to advance Israel’s interests in a variety of realms. But we must bear in mind that Israel’s institutional philosophical and religious outlook toward the rest of the planet is the foundation of the problem we face as a consequence of the existence of The Golem. As such, in the chapter which follows we will review some of Israeli dissident Israel Shahak’s earlier work on the topic of Jewish racism and its attitudes toward “the other.” As we shall see, this institutionalized Jewish racial and religious outlook has significant bearings when one considers the fact that Israel does indeed have its own nuclear Golem.