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"The Golem as Zombie in Yiddish Folklore," with Marissa Herzig

 

 

The UJA Committee for Yiddish Presents a Virtual Lecture Spotlighting Innovative New Scholarship

 

 

Clay Bodies and Human Hearts: The Golem as Zombie in Yiddish Folklore

 

Marissa Herzig

 

Recorded live on Zoom, Sunday, February 8, 2026

How does a golem come to be? Where do their bodies come from, and where do their bodies go when they are gone? The uncomfortable similarities between the golem (a creature of life) and the zombie (a creature of death) are far from a modern phenomenon, but one that can be seen in the folktale, “The Homunculus of Maimonides.” This lecture will compare and contrast the oral folktale “The Homunculus of Maimonides” with Reb Nachman’s “The Tale of a Prince” to discuss how anxieties about life, death, and Otherness have often coalesced into golem-zombie figures.

By tracing these concerns of nineteenth century folklore into contemporary Jewish literature, this lecture asks how the golem has evolved into a zombie-like figure and what this reveals about shifting discourses of embodiment, the soul, and sentience in the Jewish literary and cultural imagination.

We invite you to read and enjoy one of the stories discussed in this talk,"The Tale of a Prince" by Reb Nachman of Bratslav - in English or Yiddish. Please click on the links below to download the story.

Click here to download the story in Yiddish, "A mayse mit a ben-meylekh".

Click here to download the English translation, "The Prince Made of Precious Gems".

 

Golem-Zombies/Zombie-Golems in Contemporary Jewish Literature:

  1. Woven from Clay by Jenny Birch (2025)
  2. Wrath Becomes Her by Aden Polydoros (2024)
  3. The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez (2025)
  4. Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott (2022)
  5. The Golem and the Jinni (2013) and The Hidden Palace (2021) by Helene Wecker

 

 

Marissa Herzig (she/her) is a fourth-year English PhD candidate at the University of Toronto whose SSHRC-funded dissertation focuses on the female golem in contemporary retellings of Jewish folklore from the lens of disability studies. Marissa is currently a resident Junior Fellow at Massey College, part of the Jewish Studies collaborative program, and a consultant at the Writing Centre. In her spare time, Marissa enjoys listening to audiobooks and making three cups of tea a day.