It’s commonly suggested that Mary Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein (1808), at least in part, by stories of Rabbi Judah Lowe’s creation of the Golem of Prague; both stories of course deal with the creation of an artificial man.
It’s less-often suggested that if the borrowing did indeed happen, that it was also reciprocal—that is, that Jewish folklore also borrowed back from Shelley. The golem stories that predate Frankenstein feature a golem, like the one in The Hidden Saint, that is an unalloyed hero. The Golem of Prague saves the Jews from a pogrom instigated by the Blood Libel and, when he’s no longer needed, Rabbi Lowe returns him to the clay from which he came. The pre-Frankenstein golem is a threat to the Jews’ enemies but never to the Jews themselves. In the several Talmudic references to the golem, the creature is never a threat to anyone at all.
But the versions of the golem story that come after Frankenstein, most famously Yudl Rosenberg’s 1909 version, end quite differently. The golem runs amok, turns on the Jews, and must be destroyed. The story becomes a cautionary tale about the dangers of delving into matters best left alone. In other words, it becomes a sort-of Frankenstein.
Except for The Homunculus of Maimonides. Master folklorist Howard Schwartz commends our attention to this story, first published in 1847 and likely based on oral versions at least several decades earlier, which would make it old enough to have been heard by Shelley before Frankenstein (Schwartz’s version is included in his Leaves from the Garden of Eden, Oxford University Press, 2009, page 245). This is a very different golem story, one that seems disconnected from Jewish tradition since the power to create the homunculus is unconnected to God and its purpose is likewise suspect. Schwartz suggests that the story is meant as anti-Maimonidean propaganda in the conflict between traditionalists and rationalists, which makes it a highly unusual inspiration for a Jewish folktale.
In any case, the story is hugely discomfiting; in Schwartz’s skilled hands, it’s a tale of growing suspense, foreboding, and ultimately horror. The unease starts early, when Maimonides’ student confesses “I do not yet understand how far it is permitted for the human spirit to enter into the secrets of nature, but such daring seems to me sinful for a son of man and can only incite the wrath of the Creator.” To which Maimonides airily replies that all knowledge “belongs to the human spirit, which can observe and employ it as it wishes.” No mention of God, the source of all knowledge.
To prove his point, Maimonides decides on an experiment. Reading from an ancient text, he quotes: “Kill a healthy man, cut his body into pieces, and place the pieces in an airless glass container. Sprinkle upon them an essence gathered from the sap of the Tree of Life and the balsam of immortality, and after nine months the pieces of this body will be living again. It will be unharmable and immortal.” Unmentioned but unmistakable is the thought that it will be greater than God’s creation of man.
Maimonides summons the Angel of Death and his student slumps to the floor, dead. The rabbi then follows the horrific instructions and leaves the room that contains the jar and its corpse. As Schwartz continues his story:
“Finally, tortured by doubt and curiosity, Maimonides returned to the room [four months later] and looked at the mass of dead flesh. And behold, there were no longer severed pieces but structured limbs, as if crystallized in the glass container.… In the fifth month the form of the human body could already be recognized. In the sixth the arteries and nerves were visible, and in the seventh movement and life in the organs could be perceived. The researcher, however, became worried…. ‘What horror threatens the human race if I let this being come into being? If this immortal man, with all his power, wanders among his brothers, will not people deify him and pray to him, and will not that holy revelation, the Laws of Moses, be denied and finally entirely forgotten?’… At the end of the eighth month, uncertain and most deeply troubled, he approached the growing being and was staggered as the almost completely developed face smiled at him. Unable to bear the demonic grim, he ran out of the room. ‘Oh, Lord, what have I done! It is true that man should not investigate too deeply; what is beyond this sphere leads to Hell.’
“At the beginning of the ninth month, Maimonides stepped into the room, intending to destroy his creation. He brought a dog and a cat with him, and he released them and let them fly at each other. In the midst of this fighting, the glass container crashed to the floor and broke into a thousand pieces. The dead man lay at Maimonides’ feet. After he recovered himself, Maimonides buried the body and took the pernicious volume and threw it into the flames of the fireplace. But nothing was the same again. Maimonides was attacked by the learned men of the court, accused of magical practices, and escaped judgment only by a timely flight to Egypt. But even there he was pursued and treated as an enemy both by his fellow Jews and by unbelievers, and from then on his life was filled with sorrow.”