The Golem of Brooklyn

July 31, 2023
The funny, if slight, latest from Mansbach (Go the F**k to Sleep) stretches its premise gossamer thin. Len Bronstein, a Brooklyn Heights art teacher on summer break, sculpts a nine-foot-tall statue of a golem out of clay while stoned. Once the statue comes to life, Len recruits local bodega cashier Miri Apfelbaum, herself a former member of an ultrareligious Jewish sect, to help translate the golem’s Yiddish, though the golem quickly learns English via reruns of Curb Your Enthusiasm (“Larry David remind The Golem of Hillel,” the Golem muses). The creature explains his mission to protect the Jewish community, and after Miri shows him clips from the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., the golem insists on attending a similar upcoming gathering in Kentucky. Len and Miri oblige, but as they transport the golem, they begin to fret about the creature’s bloodlust. Mansbach’s writing works best when his characters wrestle with the concept of violence, weighing pros and cons of letting the golem tear through a crowd of racists. Too often, however, the story gets mired in tangents, from the long synopsis of Len’s failed novel to the multipage poem excerpt that nods to Mansbach’s 2009 novel, The End of the Jews. These interludes act as filler, padding the slender narrative and delaying its cathartic conclusion. This is a case where the punch lines outweigh the message.

August 1, 2023
A 9 1/2-foot, 400-pound golem, built out of stolen clay by a stoned Brooklyn art teacher, heads south to tear limbs from antisemitic limbs at a post-Charlottesville rally. The Golem, we learn, is a reincarnation of sorts of the Golem of Prague, who, Jewish folklore has it, perished at Babyn Yar along with more than 330,000 Jews. He's a bit out of it at first blush, able to speak only in Yiddish and miffed that the teacher, Len Bronstein, a nonobservant Jew who somehow worked the magic that only rabbis had worked before, neglected to give him something. " 'Avu iz mayn shmok, ' he blurted." Translation: "Where is my dick." But after learning English from binge-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Golem (as he insists on being called) is ready to rampage, part Frankenstein's monster and part insult comic. "Could crush your head like walnut," he says. Committed to his role as protector of Jews, he prepares to unleash major mayhem when told of the Save Our History's Future rally in Kentucky, where chants of "Jews will not replace us" will fill the air. Len hopes to convince The Golem that "Defending ourselves is different than killing every Jew-hater," but Larry David has the humanoid's ear in encouraging him during a video call to "maybe rip their heads off." In his squishy preaching of restraint, the author of Go the Fuck To Sleep (2011) loses some of his edge. And the narrative has a difficult time staying on track with all of its digressions, including minihistories of golems, the Jewish people, the Hasidic movement, and, for good measure, the Ku Klux Klan. There also is a long, uncommented-on excerpt from a Joseph Brodsky poem about race and a weird trip to Sweden by Len to confront an Airbnb scammer. Though there is much to enjoy, the book fails to make much of an impact. A farcical spin on the Jewish plight.

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Starred review from September 1, 2023
Len Bronstein, a Brooklyn high-school art teacher, gets high and creates a figure out of Jewish folklore, The Golem. Unable to speak to his new enormous and terrifying companion, Len races to a nearby bodega where he heard the clerk, Miri, a lesbian who has fled her Hasidic community, speak Yiddish. They return to discover that The Golem has ingested a massive amount of LSD and learned serviceable English by watching Larry David on television. The Golem tells them gruffly that he's witnessed centuries of Jewish suffering and that he's only brought to life when Jews are in danger, then insists that they take him to a white supremacist gathering in Kentucky. Thus protean Mansbach (Go the F*ck to Sleep, I Had a Brother Once) launches a hilarious "crisis monster" road trip with side trips into Jewish history, epigenetics, internet scams, and Miri's struggles. The Golem's temper tantrums, superpowers, sharp sense of humor, sorrow, and courage make for mind-whirling entertainment, leading to a wild showdown at the antisemitic rally. Mansbach's rollicking, satirical fable riffs inventively, irreverently, and soulfully on matters profound and ludicrous, tragic and cathartic.

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