Here’s a brief snipped from Beliefnet’s article on the Christian undertones of the Superman story on the origins of Superman:

Jews have often claimed the archetypal superhero as their own. Superman sprang from the imaginations of two Jewish cartoonists, and scholars have compared him to the golem myth—the supernatural creature who vanquishes the Jews’ enemies (early on, Superman battled the Nazis directly).

And here’s Roger Kamenetz onPrague and the Golem myth.

Golem is a magical creature made of mud. According to legend, the great Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague made such a golem from the mud of the river Vltava, and used it to defend the Jews of his time against the blood libel, the oft-recurring accusation that Jews bake matzah with the blood of a Christian child.

The Hebrew word golem occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible–Psalm 139:16–where it means, perhaps, “unformed matter.” However, perhaps to make up for that, the concept of the golem became an object of intense study among kabbalists, and later the “unformed matter” spawned legends that grew into novels, short stories, films, comic books, television programs, plays, and, in Prague at least, a restaurant (The Golem) and strange pieces of ceramic.

Mr. Chattering once purchased for the boys this audio CD which features Leonard Nimoy telling the golem story.

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