Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters by Maya Barzilai

Author:Maya Barzilai [Barzilai, Maya]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: REL040000 Religion / Judaism / General
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2016-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.5. The yarmulke-bearing golem hands the Jewish girl over to her grandfather and breaks out of the ghetto. From The Invaders #13. (© Marvel Comics)

Most recently, in 2013, Steve Niles, Matt Santoro, and Dave Wachter published a comic book trilogy, Breath of Bones: A Tale of the Golem, which once again stages the golem as defender of the Jews from German violence. Setting the narrative in World War I, rather than World War II, they depict a modern David and Goliath story: a small and peaceful Jewish village is attacked by German tanks after its residents hide a British pilot and kill an investigative German officer. The dying Jewish grandfather, reminiscent of Strange Tales’ “Uncle Abe,” devotes his last hours to creating and animating a golem that might defend the village. As he explains, “Sometimes it takes monsters to stop monsters.” His young grandson orders the golem to attack the soldiers pursuing the escaping Jews, and the clay giant does not spare the life of a single German man. These German attackers are described as “monsters, . . . men in metal helmets riding tanks with treads clogged with blood,” whereas the golem is a hero and a “friend,” a humanoid that will even be “mourned” once it becomes lifeless again.51 The third comic book ends in medias res: the boy has grown and become a soldier fighting in World War II, now against the Nazis, and he too attempts the impossible feat of stalling the Germans’ progress in order to save his comrades.

Most vividly and dramatically drawn are the scenes of the golem’s battles against the German tanks and weapons. Using oversized panels, Wachter depicts the golem crushing enemies with its bare fists and tremendous body. We can enjoy these violent images because we identify with the Jewish protagonists, and the World War I Germans appear to us as evil proto-Nazis. But in setting the action during this earlier war, Breath of Bones avoids the pitfall of depicting the atrocities of World War II and accounting for the failure of the savior fantasy. The golem is aligned here with the childhood fiction of Jewish power, whereas the battles of World War II are fought by flesh-and-blood men, against all odds. Breath of Bones reveals, nonetheless, that the golem has remained a welcome defender and even avenger in the realm of American popular culture and especially comic book culture. Planned as a trilogy, rather than abruptly cut off as in the case of the Strange Tales, the 2013 comics does not aim to sustain a supergolem of sorts but weaves a visually stunning tale of satisfying Jewish/golem violence. The ambivalent role of golem as avenger was revisited around the turn of the millennium also in popular fiction like Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and film like Tarantino’s The Inglourious Basterds, both works that reconsider the memory of the Holocaust in popular culture.

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