The Ballad of Golem Grunweld
“I’m [not on drugs] and I want...to...take his place” -Jonathan Richman The word ‘Golem,’ incidentally, is the smoking gun that outs JRR Tolkien as a raving anti-semite. For most people, ‘Golem’ is the corrupted ring-junckie from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings; however, close students of the Kabbalah or Dungeons and Dragons know that ‘ a golem’ or ‘ the golem’ is a kind of magical robot from Jewish mythology. The famous one was built by Rabbis in medieval Prague and is the subject of a kind of dumbed down Frankenstein/Pygmalion type story. The fact that Tolkien borrowed a word from Jewish mysticism for his embodiment of corruption and greed really should end the debate about who he was and what he was about. For anyone who wants to extend the debate by pointing out that Golem is redeemable: the offer of redemption means a lot more to the ‘in group’ offering it, than the ‘out group’ that ‘needs’ it. To Tolkien Jews are defined by materialism an...