The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague. Review

Yudl Rosenberg’s 1909 version of the traditional Jewish folktale of the Golem transformed this story forever. The Golem is a man made by rabbis from clay and given life, usually by means of Kabbalistic practice. Rosenberg’s book became an immediate bestseller and was immensely influential. It masqueraded as an original account of sixteenth-century events, divided into self-contained stories, which centred on the “Maharal,” the maker of the Golem. “The Maharal of Prague” is another name for Rabbi Judah Loew Ben Bezalel (1525–1609). Rosenberg’s book ensured that he was best known for his fictitious role in the Golem legends, but his reputation as an important thinker of the post-Medieval period is growing. Loew developed an entirely new approach to the aggadah of the Talmud. He was also a progressive educationalist and an enlightened student of science. Far from being a practitioner of the secret arts, his reputation for mysticism rests on his translation of Kabbalistic ideas into clearly accessible terminology. In Rosenberg’s stories this historical personage is transformed into a protector of the Jewish people, whose knowledge of Kabbalah gives him superhuman powers.

An important reason for the success of Rosenberg’s book was a very strong interest in the occult, widely shared by his contemporaries, both Jewish and non-Jewish. This partly explains why this version of the ancient Golem tale transcended a Jewish audience and became widely known. The importance and influence of Rosenberg’s version is beyond dispute, which means that Curt Leviant’s translation performs a vital role in making this book available to a broader audience.

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Robbery

Excerpted from an article which appeared in The Dublin Times about a bank robbery on March 2.
Once inside the bank shortly after midnight, their efforts at disabling the security system got underway immediately. The robbers, who expected to find one or two large safes filled with cash & valuables, were
surprised to see hundreds of smaller safes throughout the bank.
The robbers cracked the first safe’s combination, and inside they found only a small bowl of vanilla pudding.
As recorded on the bank’s audio tape system, one robber said, ‘At least we’ll have a bit to eat.’
The robbers opened up a second safe, and it also contained nothing but vanilla pudding. The process continued until all safes were opened.
They did not find one pound sterling, a diamond, or an ounce of gold.
Instead, all the safes contained covered little bowls of pudding.
Disappointed, the robbers made a quiet exit, each leaving with nothing more than a queasy, uncomfortably full stomach. The newspaper headline read:
‘IRELAND’S LARGEST SPERM BANK ROBBED EARLY THIS MORNING’….

City Limits

It was with mixed horror and depression that I read Ryan Scott’s preview of SimCity: Societies, a game which purports to “return to SimCity’s roots” while stripping out everything that’s made a SimCity title for the last 18 years. No zoning? No power and water grids to worry about? No roads beyond the terribly unrealistic-looking, squashed four-lane things there now? The ability to make haunted theme parks, mime factories, Stalinist cryo-prisons, and a whole city that looks like something out of Willy Wonka’s franchising-opportunities guide is supposed to appeal to lifelong fans of the series?

I humbly beg Maxis to not allow this kind of dumbed-down gameplay style to pervade and become the whole of the SimCity universe. From every screenshot and preview of this game I’ve seen, the hype is all about making totally unrealistic fantasy-type cities: Orwellian slums. Candy Land nonsense, industrial hellholes, things out of the great stereotype playbook, Surely there’ll be fans of this type of city-building genre, a type in which what you plop down and where doesn’t appear to be half as important as what little giggly coiorfui stimulus responses you get from watching it I, however, and many hundreds of thousands of others, I would venture to guess, are not fans of this and were hoping for a rTiore streamlined but also more realistic sim - as in simulation - version of SimCity that would get us ever closer to being able to model our hometowns and cities with better accuracy and fun bells and whistles.

More types of roads. Perhaps a preindustrial starting period that would let us watch our cities turn into the skyscraper ferms that SC3 and 4 would generate over time as technology advanced. But all that possibility is thrown out for cheap graphical gimmicks and simplified gameplay. It’s a shame.