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The purpose of this paper is to review selected psychological theories on the meaning of the legendary Golem, which played so large a part in the literature and life of East European Jewry.
The word golem means a body without form. The term has been used to designate a person who is of low intelligence, a being without a soul. The best known of the Golem legends deals with the creation by Rabbi Judah Low of Prague of a creature from clay, which then helps protect the Jews from accusations of ritual murder by the people of Moravia.
The story of the Golem originated in the Kabbala, a system of mystic lore which came to the fore in the late Middle Ages and grew mightily in prestige during the 16th and 17th centuries. These were the years in which Jewish people desperately needed a speculative system with which to reconcile the idea of a Chosen People with the fact of repeated massacres and pogroms. In addition, the Kabbala offered the persecuted Jews specific indications about the world yet to come and thereby fortified them to endure their sufferings. In the world to come, the “rich will be punished and the righteous rewarded.”6 In essence, the Kabbalists believed in spirits and supernatural occurrences which were subject to God's will. It was supposed that