I Love Remixes: Tauf Aleph
I am full of interesting (yet mostly useless) interesting facts. As far back as I can remember I was never interested in memorizing prime ministers, countries, provinces, PI to 60 decimals (although that would be kind of cool). I was more interested in things like “When a horse gallops all of its feet are off the ground” and “In Anglo-Saxon they called the sea a Whale Road” and things of that sort. Sometimes it pays off, most of the times—not so much.
We were supposed to be reading Phyllis Gotlieb’s Sunburst this week, but apparently there was a book store mix up and the book never came in. So instead, for those that couldn’t get a hold of the book, the prof decided that we could read another piece of Gotliebian fiction titled “Tauf Aleph”
I have to say, I enjoyed this piece although I know very little about Judaism. I enjoyed it because a very long time ago I heard the traditional story of the Golem. Apparently it was some kind of protector of the Jewish faith and it’s believers. It could be summoned in times of needs, but almost always ran amok sometime after being summoned. I’m quite aware that there are various incarnations of this story, but the one I heard went something like this.
There was a Rabbi in Prague and for some reason that I can’t remember the people of Jewish faith there were having problems with anti-Semites. Anyway, this Rabbi decided he would raise a Golem out of clay to protect the people. Part of the ritual involved writing the word “Emet” in the Golem’s forehead, which in Hebrew meant “life” or “truth”. When the Golem was summoned it could do only what the Rabbi asked him, so the Golem did the Rabbi’s bidding and for a while the people lived in peace. But as time wore on the Golem continued to grow and with it his violent intentions had grown. The people, now scared of their protector, asked the Rabbi to destroy the Golem. The Rabbi agreed and when he got the chance he rubbed the first letter from “Emet” and left “Met” (which is Hebrew for “Death”) on the Golems forehead. The golem dried up and crumbled in to piece of clay.
Gotlieb’s story about the “Golem” O/G5/842 is an interesting one because it is a revision of a classical Hebrew mythic. I love remixes, by the way, and this one is a doosey. First off, the Golem in Gotlieb’s story is self aware. He has the ability to use a facsimile of “reason” which is dubbed “logic”. The “prime directive”, if such a term can snagged from both Robocop and Star Trek, is to venture to a distant planet where the last Jewish person lives. He is sent there because Samuel Begelman is near death and (I gather) it is important for Samuel to have some prayers said over him when he dies. So what the Galactic Federation does is program an old mining robot with all the prayers and textual accoutrement required to give Samuel his last rites. Anyway, long story short, Golem gets there, finds out that there are other sentient beings that Samuel has been teaching Judaism to, but since they are lizard-like and not humanoid, and since they reproduce hermaphroditically Samuel ends the listens and banishes them out into the wilderness (Doesn’t that just scream appropriation of biblical stories?) Golem being the semi-sentient being he is, or rather a reasonable facsimile, convinces Samuel that it doesn’t matter what they look like as long as they believe. This whole thing about the robot being a better Jew than the human is being is fascinating to say the least.
For one, this is not merely a commentary on Judaism, it’s a commentary on all religions. Each religion is filled with rules, regulations, and veritable lists that amount to “Do this and God will be nice to you, do that or God will fucking spank you.” What ever happened to believing for the sake of belief? Faith is not rules and measures, it’s about having it in you heart, or in Golem’s case in his matrix.
There are two things I want to talk about before I post this post to the net:
The title
The Revision of the Golem story
From limited research for this post I found out that “Tauf” and “Aleph” are, respectively, the last and first letters of the Hebrew alphabet. What possible meaning could this have? Well, if we think about the fact that Samuel is the last human Jew, and that the Cnidori become the next evolution of believers in Judaism we might being to understand what the significance of the title is. There is also something nagging about “First and last, last and first” that I can’t seem to pin down.
As I said previously, I love remixes. Especially when they breathe new life into a piece while keeping true to specific, integral elements of a given myth or story. The fact that this Golem is benevolent and introspective opens the story to many questions, questions such as “If the Golem is a better Jew than Samuel is, is it because he knows the texts or is it because of something more ‘human’?” I don’t usually answer my own questions because they’re usually rhetorical, but in this case I have to say that I don’t think it is that Golem is a better Jew than Samuel. I think that Golem is the personification (or rather, robotification—har-har-har.) of “the word”. He helps Samuel to see how he goes wrong, and how the physical attributes of the Cnidori are blinding him to the fact that they believe.
We were supposed to be reading Phyllis Gotlieb’s Sunburst this week, but apparently there was a book store mix up and the book never came in. So instead, for those that couldn’t get a hold of the book, the prof decided that we could read another piece of Gotliebian fiction titled “Tauf Aleph”
I have to say, I enjoyed this piece although I know very little about Judaism. I enjoyed it because a very long time ago I heard the traditional story of the Golem. Apparently it was some kind of protector of the Jewish faith and it’s believers. It could be summoned in times of needs, but almost always ran amok sometime after being summoned. I’m quite aware that there are various incarnations of this story, but the one I heard went something like this.
There was a Rabbi in Prague and for some reason that I can’t remember the people of Jewish faith there were having problems with anti-Semites. Anyway, this Rabbi decided he would raise a Golem out of clay to protect the people. Part of the ritual involved writing the word “Emet” in the Golem’s forehead, which in Hebrew meant “life” or “truth”. When the Golem was summoned it could do only what the Rabbi asked him, so the Golem did the Rabbi’s bidding and for a while the people lived in peace. But as time wore on the Golem continued to grow and with it his violent intentions had grown. The people, now scared of their protector, asked the Rabbi to destroy the Golem. The Rabbi agreed and when he got the chance he rubbed the first letter from “Emet” and left “Met” (which is Hebrew for “Death”) on the Golems forehead. The golem dried up and crumbled in to piece of clay.
Gotlieb’s story about the “Golem” O/G5/842 is an interesting one because it is a revision of a classical Hebrew mythic. I love remixes, by the way, and this one is a doosey. First off, the Golem in Gotlieb’s story is self aware. He has the ability to use a facsimile of “reason” which is dubbed “logic”. The “prime directive”, if such a term can snagged from both Robocop and Star Trek, is to venture to a distant planet where the last Jewish person lives. He is sent there because Samuel Begelman is near death and (I gather) it is important for Samuel to have some prayers said over him when he dies. So what the Galactic Federation does is program an old mining robot with all the prayers and textual accoutrement required to give Samuel his last rites. Anyway, long story short, Golem gets there, finds out that there are other sentient beings that Samuel has been teaching Judaism to, but since they are lizard-like and not humanoid, and since they reproduce hermaphroditically Samuel ends the listens and banishes them out into the wilderness (Doesn’t that just scream appropriation of biblical stories?) Golem being the semi-sentient being he is, or rather a reasonable facsimile, convinces Samuel that it doesn’t matter what they look like as long as they believe. This whole thing about the robot being a better Jew than the human is being is fascinating to say the least.
For one, this is not merely a commentary on Judaism, it’s a commentary on all religions. Each religion is filled with rules, regulations, and veritable lists that amount to “Do this and God will be nice to you, do that or God will fucking spank you.” What ever happened to believing for the sake of belief? Faith is not rules and measures, it’s about having it in you heart, or in Golem’s case in his matrix.
There are two things I want to talk about before I post this post to the net:
The title
The Revision of the Golem story
From limited research for this post I found out that “Tauf” and “Aleph” are, respectively, the last and first letters of the Hebrew alphabet. What possible meaning could this have? Well, if we think about the fact that Samuel is the last human Jew, and that the Cnidori become the next evolution of believers in Judaism we might being to understand what the significance of the title is. There is also something nagging about “First and last, last and first” that I can’t seem to pin down.
As I said previously, I love remixes. Especially when they breathe new life into a piece while keeping true to specific, integral elements of a given myth or story. The fact that this Golem is benevolent and introspective opens the story to many questions, questions such as “If the Golem is a better Jew than Samuel is, is it because he knows the texts or is it because of something more ‘human’?” I don’t usually answer my own questions because they’re usually rhetorical, but in this case I have to say that I don’t think it is that Golem is a better Jew than Samuel. I think that Golem is the personification (or rather, robotification—har-har-har.) of “the word”. He helps Samuel to see how he goes wrong, and how the physical attributes of the Cnidori are blinding him to the fact that they believe.
posted by n3rd-0 at
8:28 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home