“After saying certain prayers and observing certain feast days, the Polish Jews make the figure of a man from clay or mud, and when they pronounce the miraculous Shemhamphoras [the name of God] over him, he must come to life. He cannot speak, but he understands fairly well what is said or commanded. They call him golem and use him as a servant to do all sorts of housework. But he must never leave the house. On his forehead is written emeth [truth]; every day he gains weight and becomes somewhat larger and stronger than all the others in the house, regardless of how little he was to begin with. Fore fear of him, they erase the first letter, so that nothing remains but meth {he is dead], whereupon he collapses and turns to clay again.”
Jakob Grimm, Journal for Hermits, 1808
“In the preface to an anonymous commentary, known as Pseudo-Saadya, on the Book Yetsirah [Book of Creation], we read a few lines about Abraham and then the author continues: ‘It is said in the Midrash that Jeremiah and his son Ben Sira created a man by means of the Book Yetsirah, and on his forehead stood emeth, truth, the name which He had uttered concerning the creature as the culmination of His work. But this man erased the aleph, by which he meant to say that God alone is truth, and he had to die.’ Here it is clear that the golem is a repetition of the creation of Adam, concerning which we learn here for the first time that then too the name ‘truth’ was uttered. According to the a well-known Talmudic saying ‘truth’ is the seal of God. Here it is imprinted on His noblest creation.”
Gershom Scholem, On The Kabbalah and Its Symbolism
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