An artistic golem for trying times

California artist Joshua Abarbanel’s sculpture, which is on view in Germany, draws inspiration from Jewish mysticism born from desperate pain.

Six years after he arrived in the German town which would shape his moniker, Jewish scholar and mystic Eleazar of Worms suffered unimaginable tragedy. In 1196, crusaders murdered his wife and two daughters and injured his son. As California artist Joshua Abarbanel tells it, Eleazar (c. 1176-1238) pored over his books in search of an explanation for what occurred. He penned a commentary on the Book of Creation—a Kabbalistic work which some attribute to the biblical Adam—and laid out the configuration of numbers and Hebrew letters with which to create a golem.

“This is thought to be the first-known account of how to create a golem, and it’s incredibly moving to me that Eleazar’s motivation to conjure a golem was this deep personal tragedy,” Abarbanel said.

Abarbanel’s 2016 sculpture “Golem”—which weighs 250 pounds and measures seven-and-a-half feet long and arm span—is currently on view at the Jewish Museum in Worms. The sculpture appears on the lower level of the building, which dates to the Middle Ages around when Eleazar lived in the town and which is thought to have been the yeshiva where Jewish commentator Rashi taught. “Golem” is installed near a small pillar memorializing Eleazar’s wife Bellette.

Courtesy: Jewish Museum Worms

“It’s mind-blowing to have my sculpture in this ancient, deeply-relevant space,” said Abarbanel, who is “immensely gratified that my work continues this conversation about creation, protection, and power that Jewish thinkers, writers, and artists have been having for centuries.”

When he learned about Eleazar’s tragic story, Abarbanel better understood the desire to make a golem.

“He was seeking solace from a deep personal trauma: the loss of his wife and daughters. That’s the makeup of my nuclear family, too,” he said. “So the dilemma of whether or not to create the golem is always there, but Eleazar’s story allowed me to imagine how a trauma of that magnitude could push one to want to make a golem, in spite of the understood risks.”

That unleashing a lumbering giant on the world would come with risks is understandable to anyone who can picture King Kong visiting New York. (I wrote about the golem and Prague earlier in these pages.)

“The golem is a creature brought to life from inanimate material and through the incantation of words to act as a protector, but that inevitably becomes a threat to the very thing they are trying to defend,” Abarbanel said. “In a sense, they represent the dilemma of ‘Should I act, or should I not?’”

Courtesy: Jewish Museum Worms

That Eleazar’s interest in the golem relates to exacting revenge as much as protecting and serving intrigued Abarbanel. “In the end, a wounded state of consciousness cannot channel power in a manner that will bring justice or healing,” he said.

He also thought about the Hebrew word—emes (truth)—through which the golem was said to be activated (when written upon the forehead) and deactivated (when erased). Many iterations of those three letters aleph, mem, and taf comprise Abarbanel’s sculpture. The work’s origins are in a 2013 exhibit about sacred texts and words, for which Los Angeles curator Georgia Freedman-Harvey invited him to participate.

Abarbanel experimented with the forms of Hebrew letters and the meaning of various configurations. Eventually, he recalled the golem story, in which one “kills” a golem by erasing the first letter of emes, replacing “truth” with “dead” (mes). (The playground claim that “words can never hurt me” doesn’t extend to golems.)

After a small version of the sculpture went on view in the Los Angeles show, curator Emily Bilski commissioned a large-scale version for the 2016-17 exhibit “Golem” at Jewish Museum Berlin. Abarbanel was honored that his work was a show centerpiece, “and especially to have a golem, a protector of sorts, be on display in Berlin, the seat of Nazi power during WWII,” he said. “Now that it’s back in Germany in Worms, a whole new set of historic resonances come into play.”

The golem’s journey is part of the power and longevity of its story, and the same goes for the sculpture.

“In the midst of chaos, people’s need for protection and order are perennial and universal,” he said. “Whether the context is personal, communal, or even global, we live inside our own stories, and I hope viewers take away whatever they need from the work at this moment.”