Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished online in The Bal­ti­more Morn­ing Globe, On Per­pet­u­al Jan­u­ary 5th, 2021 

[Tran­script]

MC: Hi! So nice to meet you. Is it GO-lem or Go-LEM?

Golem:

MC: Right, sor­ry. I’m a bit ner­vous. I’ve nev­er inter­viewed a Golem before. My bubbe would be farsnorked to meet you. That means psy­ched, in Yid­dish, I think. Either that, or dri­ven psy­chot­ic, see­ing you here, and all. Sor­ry, let’s not go there.

Golem:

MC: I’m a big fan of your work. Or, some of your work, any­way. But any­way, so, my name’s Matthew Cohn. You can call me Matt. Do you have any nicknames?

Golem:

MC: Alright. Well, I’m the Jew­ish Affairs reporter for the Bal­ti­more Morn­ing Globe. I did a series last year on The Ten Jew­ish Entre­pre­neurs Who Are Chang­ing the World of Tech in Mary­land last Octo­ber. Well, that’s okay, nev­er mind. It’s not like I won the Pulitzer Prize or any­thing. But it was shared on Face­book over 130 times.

Golem:

MC: So, I read online that you first showed up after the Unite the Right ral­ly in Char­lottesville. Is that right?

Golem:

MC: So here’s some­thing I’ve always won­dered, and maybe you could help me fig­ure it out, as a myth­i­cal being and all. Do you think they planned to chant ​“Jews will not replace us,” or was it more of a spon­ta­neous error? Like, were they just chant­i­ng, ​“You will not replace us,” and then some­one in the crowd heard ​“Jews” and they all went along with that, but it could have just as eas­i­ly gone to, like, ​“News will not replace us?” or, uh, ​“The flu will not replace us?”

Golem:

MC: Coro­n­avirus will not replace us? Any­way, are you the first Golem to show up in America?

Golem:

MC: How do you like it here? It’s nice, right? Have you had a chance to vis­it the Nation­al Mon­u­ments or any­thing? You do know that he was Jew­ish, right? Not the archi­tect, but the guy who financed the project. No, I’m just kid­ding. I don’t actu­al­ly know who financed the Nation­al Monuments.

Golem:

MC: Do you have to fly on planes when you want to get some­where? Do they let you on planes?

Golem:

MC: Can you get Covid?

Golem:

MC: I’m just ask­ing, because I feel like that might be a prob­lem, if peo­ple, like, see this Jew­ish per­son, or maybe not-per­son, but this Jew flout­ing mask reg­u­la­tions? You have to think about the optics. I remem­ber when I was a kid, when­ev­er some­one would ask to bor­row a dol­lar, I’d always loan it to them, no mat­ter what. Even if I didn’t like them. Because I didn’t want to be the Jew who wouldn’t loan some­one a dollar?

Golem:

MC: Woof, off top­ic, sor­ry. It’s nice to meet you, real­ly. But do you have a sense of how long you’re plan­ning on vis­it­ing the US for? Because it feels like we maybe don’t need you? Now that Biden was elect­ed? Did you see how many Jews he has in his cab­i­net? Blinken, Cohen, Gar­land, Haines, Klain and Lan­der, Newberg’r, Sher­man, Isaachar, Zebu­lon, Joseph and Ben­jamin, all twelve tribes of Yis-ra-el.

Golem:

MC: Right, yeah, no. I won’t include that song in the final tran­script. Do you know the song I was refer­ring to? Don’t wor­ry, my edi­tors … I actu­al­ly don’t think it’s a great idea for any­one to point out all the Jews in his cab­i­net. Like, that nev­er goes well, you know?

Golem:

MC: I was ask­ing when you’re leav­ing, because no offense, you seem great, and all, but, like, we’re not in Prague any­more. Right?

Golem:

MC: Are we?

Golem:

MC: I go back and forth, is the thing. This one time, in mid­dle school, this group of kids went through a phase when they start­ed throw­ing pen­nies at me. But it was just a phase. And I guess there was also this time in col­lege when some­one put a sign on my dorm room that said, Zion­ist Occu­pied Prop­er­ty, but, you know, that was just, like, polit­i­cal. Any­way, enough about me.

Golem:

MC: Can you talk a bit about your rela­tion­ship to Israel? Well, right, not talk, I guess, but tell me? Do you agree with the state­ment that we are safer in Amer­i­ca thanks to Israel? I guess, in a sense, could Israel be seen as our geopo­lit­i­cal Golem? Like your mus­cu­lar, tanned cousin, or some­thing, not so pale, and all … I mean, like, maybe it would be a bit dopey, and kin­da mean, and maybe not so pop­u­lar among the nations, but there to pro­tect us, which is real­ly what you all are about, right? By ​“you all” I mean Golems. Golemim? Gole­mot? Are there mul­ti­ple Golems, or are you, like, a rein­car­na­tion of the oth­er guys? Sor­ry, uh, oth­er things. Oth­er Golems.

Golem:

MC: So, switch­ing gears a bit, I guess I won­dered if you could tell me a lit­tle about your deci­sion to start attend­ing anti-ICE protests and pray­ing about wild­fires, and stuff? I mean, I know it’s not my place to say, but don’t you think you might be spread­ing your­self a lit­tle thin? And also, aren’t you, like, here to pro­tect us?

Golem:

MC: ​“You/​will not/​pro­tect us.” The thing is, it feels like no one real­ly wants to pro­tect just us, you know? Like, if these guys hadn’t been chant­i­ng ​“Jews will not replace us” in a far right-wing gath­er­ing where they were also talk­ing about how they hat­ed African Amer­i­cans and immi­grants and stuff, would you still have showed up? Would you have shown up if the chant ​“Jews will not replace us” had been the theme of, like, a hous­ing protest in Boro Park? Or if it had been chant­ed at a pro-Pales­tine ral­ly at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Federico?

Golem:

MC: I don’t mean to push, it’s just that I feel kind of lone­ly. Not lone­ly, like, I have a great shul that I go to every week­end, and stuff, and I like my job, and my fam­i­ly, and I have a gold­en retriev­er named Furfy. But, like, Jew­ish­ly lone­ly, you know? As in, does any­one real­ly care about what hap­pens to us? Even the myth­i­cal beings who are meant to pro­tect the Jews? Is any­one who’s not Jew­ish even going to have read this far into my interview?

Golem:

MC: Do I even care about the Jews, is the thing?

Golem:

MC: Do you hate yourself?

Golem:

MC: I hate myself, if I’m being hon­est. This one time, like halfway by acci­dent, I was sort of brush­ing my hair, and I tugged my side­locks for­ward a lit­tle bit, and then looked at myself in the mir­ror for a moment. And I want­ed to, like, smash the mir­ror. Or, like, the face of the guy look­ing back at me. That’s not good, right?

Golem:

MC: I see that you have payos, too, and it doesn’t seem like you dis­like your own face. But I feel like, some­times, I’ll see a Jew with payos, and his big beard and hat, and I’ll be like, ​“Do you have to be so Jew­ish?” Like, can’t you just put on a base­ball cap? Wear what­ev­er you want at home, but, you know, go easy in public?

Golem:

MC: Hon­est­ly, I kind of felt that when I first saw you, too. Like, couldn’t you just be a sec­u­lar Golem, and do the same thing? Did you need to let every­one know you were that Jew­ish? And if you do some­thing bad, am, like, I and the rest of Tem­ple Beth Israel, going to pay for it? Which, by the way, does not have a sign on its door, it’s just a dumb old brick build­ing, which yeah, sure, is sad, but isn’t it bet­ter that way? I mean, I guess our oth­er option is to hire some mus­cu­lar kid who just fin­ished serv­ing in the IDF and who can stand out­side our door with a gun and look bored and cool as heck.

Golem:

MC: Hey. Are you look­ing for work? Maybe … you’d want to stand out­side the door to Tem­ple Beth Israel?

Golem:

MC: Is there any chance you could take a look at my tax­es? No, I’m just kid­ding, my uncle’s an accoun­tant. Of course.

Golem:

MC: I guess I’m just scared, you know, Goley? I guess it’s like this feel­ing of, if Yankel Shmu­ley Bloomen­berg does some­thing bad, it’s going to come back down on all our heads. And I like my head, even though I some­times hate my head. Sor­ry. I know I’m talk­ing a lot. I did have some more ques­tions I want­ed to ask before you go. Can we do, like, a light­ning round to wrap up?

Golem:

MC: So, do you have any sib­lings? Or pets?

Golem:

MC: Do you keep kosher? Do you eat, in general?

Golem:

MC: How old are you?

Golem:

MC: Do you think that there will be a wave of pogroms in Amer­i­ca this decade?

Golem:

MC: Will you pro­tect us?

Golem: