SWORD OF THE GOLEM by Abraham Rothberg (Bantam 1973)

As persecution hangs over and encroaches on the ghetto of Prague, Rabbi Low [sic] creates a golem from the clay of the river to defend the Jewish people against the inevitable pogrom. Until that horrible climax, we see a community struggling to find a balance between survival and dignity, a creature struggling to be more than a mere instrument, and an ambivalent creator groping his way into a future that is both blindly uncertain and all too tragically certain. With very few exceptions, the parties to all these conflicts are presented with a subtle, complex blend of sympathy and severity.

This is much better, I'd say, than Meyrink's Golem. And it's better than Frankenstein, too, in its treatment of similar themes; not least because it treats them less abstractly, by deeply embedding them in religious, cultural, and vividly personal contexts.

I'd highly recommend this, but not for light, trashy fun. Between the relentless humiliation and escalating threat to the Jews, the Rabbi's agonized and agonizing refusal of the golem's humanity, and the regrets that so many of the characters brood over in the course of the story, it can be oppressively downbeat at times. But it's a tale well told, with characters that come to life on the page, and deeply moving--not always negatively, either.

In the more usual spirit of Groovy Age, I'd add that the golem is awesome and genuinely supernatural. He dishes out extraordinary violence, at one point even cleaving a man in two "from head to groin" with his ax. Like so many Groovy Age Frankensteins, he also enjoys a little carnal knowledge--though that's conveyed afterward and indirectly.

Finally, that cover. Wow. You really must click to the larger version, to check out some amazing detail in the golem's torso.