: The Golem Project :
an excerpt by Edgar Brau, translated by Andrea G. Labinger
Now, slightly more than a month since the
Council announced the conclusion of The Golem Project, it is possible to verify that the
outrageous suppositions and groundless allegations provoked by the revelation
at the time still persist, creating a state of anxiety in which uneasiness and
suspicion dangerously combine.
Misinformation, misinterpretations, omissions, and conjectures daily
establish a foundation on which the Project's origins, its results, its future,
and even the punishment that the creature-the Golem-must face, all fade in a
haze of imprecision, or worse yet, ambiguity. As one of the representatives of
the Council before the scientists in charge of the Project, I believe it might
not be without merit to interrupt the current scandal (the current chaos) with
this personal report. Perhaps a
precise spatial and temporal index of the Project and its development may serve
to lessen, even indirectly, the blows of the dark, powerful current that alarms
and overwhelms us today.
The Golem Project. The start of The
Golem Project, its genesis, can be traced to the final months of
the Second World War, when the creature's death was revealed, and we may
assume, through the efforts of a sort of dream of justice on the part of some
soldiers of Jewish descent who served in the vanguard of the Soviet Army, upon
their occupation of a thoroughly defeated Berlin. Unfortunately, neither the
names of those heroes nor the details of their actions have survived, but in
fact, approximately half a year after that death and the end of the war, a
portion of the creature's remains (stolen from the Soviets, who, in turn, had
salvaged them from a hasty German bonfire) were found in Jerusalem, protected
by those who would become military leaders when the creation of our State was
announced. According to certain documents of that period, it had been resolved
from the beginning that the urn containing the "monster's relics," as they were
then called, would remain hidden from public view. The documents did not
indicate what the remains consisted of or what their specific use might be.
Somehow, although neither those primitive documents nor subsequent ones
mentioned anything definite about the future of the remains, it was obvious
that those pioneers considered them something like a legacy, a tribute to
successive layers of Israeli leadership. Furthermore, a tacit appeal was
established and launched into time: each generation was to find the most
appropriate way to deal with that secret, symbolic urn.
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