The Golem

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WRITER’S NOTE:

The golem originates in Jewish folklore as a figure formed from clay and animated through sacred language. Created for necessity rather than companionship, the golem exists to protect, labor, and endure. They are believed to be emotionless.

This story draws on that tradition as an allegory for the social and relational purpose often assigned to men: to provide stability and protection while remaining unaffected and emotionally peripheral to the worlds they sustain.

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The Golem: Sentient Clay Protector

They did not make him as an expression of their love, as if they were overflowing with extra and needed a manufactured being to share it with. The golem would serve a purpose.

He was created because fear in their village had become a daily language, because prayer alone no longer held the evil of the world at bay. The elders fasted, wailed, and argued. They reminded one another that to shape a golem was to create something humans were never meant to create. That clay took the imprint of the hands that created it. The implications of speaking these words, which could have more power than their previous, less effective weapons.

They chose to make him anyway. They formed the golem from river clay because it was moldable but had also endured pressure for centuries without complaint. They paid no mind to the fact that he would be made from the same material their god had used to shape the first man. Perhaps it was because they ignored the possibility that this was proof of their hubris.

They moved forward, shaping him in an image that suited their purpose.

When the approved form was finished, they placed a word in his mouth. One word. His mandate. Written, then folded inward and shoved down his throat like an imposed vow meant to serve the greater good of the overall community.

Protect.

With the ritual completed, he rose.

They made his purpose clear carefully; there was no room for confusion.

“Protect,” they said.

“Provide,” they added; the two ideals went hand in hand.

Protection, they reasoned, would often require provision.

The word warmed inside him. The fear of uncertainty settled. The village slept soundly in the confidence of their new protector.

From the beginning, he understood the cost of clarity. He did not think about his wants or needs. He maintained the line where danger and people could collide. Wolves turned away. Thieves learned the shape of his shadow and chose other roads. Storms broke against him first.

Confidence in their creation grew slowly. Little by little, their previous fortifications fell into disrepair. They were outdated and no longer necessary. The golem now provided all of their protection. Soft green grass grew under his feet in places where previously there were stones and struggle.

People called him reliable. They said he was simple, basic. They liked that he never asked for their gratitude. He had a job to do, and he found satisfaction in serving his purpose.

Then the woman came.

She had been married young, abused, and abandoned. She felt that the village merely tolerated her presence. She distrusted assistance, unwilling to submit to anything that resembled a transaction. Loneliness and vulnerability followed her anyway.

One evening, she wandered the town square alone.

He watched her with the full attentiveness of his sentient post. She felt his gaze, steady and prepared. She drifted closer to his massive form. He was frightening to behold, but she sensed his devotion to her safety.

She touched his arm without hesitation, as though touching a landmark.

She spoke to him because his stoic silence invited confession.

“You’re kind of cute,” she said. “In a broody sort of way.”

She studied him, then asked, “You don’t feel anything, do you?”

“I feel obligation,” he replied.

She smiled, surprised he could speak at all. A smirk flickered across her face, then disappeared.

“You should come home with me,” she said. Then corrected herself. “No. I insist. You belong to me now.”

The conditioning of his creators compelled him to comply.

She chose to keep him because he did not waver. Because nights felt shorter near him. Because life became easier in his presence.

She built a home inside the space he held.

The elders allowed it. A golem belonged to the community, but the community benefited when someone assumed the cost of his upkeep. The word in his mouth did not change, but its focus narrowed.

She would still, on occasion, ask him about his feelings.

“It is not my job to have feelings,” he said.

She found his answer disappointing, but he knew it was less inconvenient for her than the truth.

In truth, golems were never empty. That was a lie people told themselves so they could sleep in the comfort of another’s sacrifice for their security. Golems kept their feelings inward, knowing that no one was interested in holding space for them. Acknowledgment of any personal needs would not serve them or others. It was loyalty to their purpose that anchored them into the ground, stabilizing things that would otherwise drift apart for themselves and the ones he was sworn to protect.

Faithfully, each night, he stood between her and the door. When the world outside grew unstable, he absorbed it. When provisions were needed, he worked until his joints cracked and the clay bled back into the earth.

Because of him, her days expanded.

She laughed more. She took risks. She spoke about freedom, about self-discovery, about wanting more from life.

The village grew quiet enough that fear became theoretical. Appreciation for protection, when it succeeds, disappears. That is when complacency sets in.

She told others that he was distant. That he never opened up. That sometimes she wondered if he even cared about her.

She would say these words in front of him, truly believing that they had no effect on him. But each of her words became a fingerprint on the soft areas of the clay from which he was materialized.

Where she once only required protection, she now wanted intimacy.

Where she only wanted strength, she now wanted him to expose weakness.

The very cold exterior that had sheltered her became something she wished to throw into the fire of a kiln to shape, harden, and display as an ornament in her improved life.

He knew what would happen if he stopped, though. He knew the dangers lurking in the dark without him. But this knowledge was not useful to her, so he held it alone.

In the old stories, golems were destroyed when they became too literal, too loyal. When they were past the point of serving their original mission. He wanted to avoid that fate by enduring. Despite her complaints, he did, in fact, love her deeply. This was the only way he had been commissioned to show it.

When she pressed him for words, he offered silence. When she demanded vulnerability, he offered constancy. He understood that the world she enjoyed was built on effort she no longer had to notice.

Once, when she said, “I just want to feel chosen,” the word in his mouth burned.

“I have chosen you every night,” he confessed. “You sleep because I do not.”

She turned away, already tired of the answer.

Years passed. The village changed. Children who had never known danger called him unnecessary. Protection that works is indistinguishable from absence, and his absence became a viable reality for them.

They came with old prayers and careful hands. They said the word would be removed. That the village had outgrown him. That strength without warmth was no longer needed.

As the word left his mouth, his mind and body began to fail. Despite their misconceptions, the golem felt things. But this feeling wasn’t fear. He felt release, and something sharper beneath it.

Grief turned to acceptance.

He had held the world still long enough for others to believe it moved on its own.

The winter after he fell, the river rose too fast. Roofs collapsed. Doors splintered. People slept lightly again. The woman stood in her house and felt, for the first time, how thin the walls really were.

They spoke his name like regret. Like a moral learned too late. They rebuilt, but higher walls cost more. Vigilance demanded attention.

No one spoke about the nights he erased so others could live inside the morning. It had become inconvenient to believe he ever served a purpose or why he was chosen for it. He just existed until he didn’t. And life moved on either way.

But he knew in his existent heart that he served them well when they needed him and recognized that that was all the gratification he would receive.