The Golem
Explanation
The Joke
A man tells his friend that he has been sad about not having friends, so he used ancient Kabbalistic magic to create a Golem. The friend responds enthusiastically: "Hey pal! How are you? Let's watch movies together! Neat!" They discover that the Golem is holding something -- love letters from Sally that it threw away, along with other mail. The friend says "There were so many!" The Golem explains: "Well, it's not all love letters. By the time we got to my hands, we were down to the recent letters where it's obvious things are imploding. But you don't realize it." They also find that the Golem's legs were built from photos from the friend's scrapbook of a trip to Paris. In every photo, a woman (presumably Sally) is smirking -- and the man never noticed.
The Humor
The comic takes the Jewish legend of the Golem -- a creature made from clay and animated by mystical means -- and gives it a darkly comedic twist. The man created the Golem because he felt lonely and friendless, but the very materials used to construct the Golem reveal that he actually had someone who cared about him (Sally, who was writing him love letters). The Golem was literally built from the evidence of the man's obliviousness to the relationships around him. The detail that the Golem's body parts are made from different materials (love letters for the hands, scrapbook photos for the legs) adds to the tragedy: the man physically destroyed the evidence of someone's affection to build a substitute for the companionship he thought he lacked. The smirking woman in every Paris photo suggests she was enjoying an inside joke or had feelings the man was too clueless to notice.
References
- The Golem is a figure from Jewish folklore, most famously the Golem of Prague, said to have been created by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel in the 16th century. A Golem is traditionally made from clay or mud and animated through Kabbalistic rituals, often by inscribing the Hebrew word "emet" (truth) on its forehead.
- Kabbalah is a school of Jewish mysticism that includes traditions of esoteric knowledge and practices, including the creation of Golems.