Many stories are known about clay figures animated by magical means, but the most famous of them is the legend of the Prague golem. According to ancient texts, on one of the starless nights in 1580, the famous Prague rabbi Yehuda Lev ben Bezalel sculpted a huge human figure out of clay. When Bezalel put a piece of parchment with the name of God written on it in his clay mouth, the golem came to life! The creature was given a single order - to protect the Jewish community from aggressive Poles. In the beginning, the clay man excelled at this task due to his incredible strength. But one day, when the evening service before the festive Saturday was in full swing, the unexpected happened.
Every Friday, Rabbi ben Bezalel removed a piece of parchment from the golem's mouth, putting it into deep sleep until Monday. But on that day, the rabbi forgot about the parchment, and the captive spirit living inside the clay body tried to regain its freedom. Having broken through the wall of his room, the golem got out into the streets of the Jewish ghetto. The raging clay man smashed everything that came his way, and the frightened people ran to the synagogue. The crowd burst into the temple as Bezalel read Psalm 92. The rabbi, interrupted in the middle of the reading, listened to the confused story of the people who had come running and hurried out into the street. Soon he found the golem, walked over to it and pulled the magic parchment out of its mouth. The golem froze, and Bezalel returned to the synagogue and repeated the unfinished Psalm 92 again. That same night, he transferred the immobilized body of a clay man to the attic of the synagogue and hid it in a secret niche. Since then, and this is no longer a legend, the entrance to the attic has been prohibited for everyone, and the staircase that once went up to the domed rooms has been destroyed and should never be restored.
The debate about whether the legend of the clay man is fiction or whether it is based on real events does not subside to this day. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the library of the French city of Metz, researchers accidentally stumbled upon a manuscript about the Prague golem, written by Ben Bezalel's adopted son. The text mentioned the names, dates and names of places associated with this mysterious story. Recently, however, the historian Ivan Makerl carefully checked the truth of the document and came to the conclusion that the manuscript from Metz does not contain a word of truth. Moreover, Makerl found documentary evidence of Ben Bezalel's absence from Prague between 1584 and 1588. And nevertheless, in the Prague synagogue, the 92nd psalm is still repeated twice in memory of the pacification of the raging golem. Therefore, Makerl concluded, there is some real reason for the emergence of this tradition.
The answer was hidden in the very word "golem". Translated from Hebrew, it means "artificial man created with the help of magic", as well as the word "fool"! When Mackerl found out about the second meaning, it dawned on him. What if the famous Prague Golem was just a mentally ill person of enormous strength and stature? Then the unusual method of reviving the golem is explained, when, according to legend, a piece of parchment was put into its mouth. Mackerl suggested that the rabbi was simply trying to heal the patient by giving him medicines, which were then transformed into a "magic piece of parchment" in legend.
Luck was with Mackerl. In ancient archives, he managed to find a mention of a dumb, mentally ill Jew named Jossil. He worked for the then-rabbi of the Old New Synagogue, who treated him regularly with medication. Records about Jossil are scarce. It is only known that he was distinguished by great strength and obeyed only the rabbi. Probably, Mackerl suggested, one Friday the rabbi forgot to give Jossil the medicine. The "golem" had an exacerbation of the disease, he fell into a rampage and, getting out into the streets of the Jewish ghetto, attacked its inhabitants. They turned to the rabbi for help …
The researcher suggested that Jossil was given a sedative, and then transferred to one of the premises of the synagogue, where he soon died. To avoid unwanted rumors, the rabbi buried the body of the madman in one of the secret niches of the attic of the Prague synagogue. The entrance was banned without explanation, and the famous legend of the golem was born in the Jewish ghetto of the city of Prague.