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I begin today with a commentary published on aish.com.
- Image from the website above
September 1, 2025
5 min read – from Aish.com
R. Dovid Campbell
The Golem story warned centuries ago: raw power without truth collapses to dust. What does this mean for the promises and perils of AI?
Jewish folklore is full of stories that stretch the imagination while speaking to timeless truths. One of the most haunting is the legend of the Golem—a being shaped from clay and brought to life by the mystical powers of a righteous rabbi. Long before our age of artificial intelligence, Jewish tradition wrestled with the question of what happens when human beings create something powerful, lifelike, but missing something essential.
The Hebrew word “golem” literally means unformed, raw material. In the tales, a rabbi inscribes the word emet—“truth”—on the forehead of a clay figure, animating a humanoid servant that nevertheless lacks a true human soul. The Golem is usually created to protect the Jewish community against its oppressors. And yet, in nearly every version of the story, something goes wrong. (Did Mary Shelley get her inspiration for Frankenstein from this story?)
Many Versions, One Problem
The variations are telling. In one strand of the legend, the Golem simply continues to grow, swelling in size until it becomes a danger even to the Jews it was meant to defend. In another, the Golem becomes indiscriminately violent, no longer subject to the rabbi’s command. In still other accounts, the Golem is almost pathologically literal, following orders without context or flexibility, to disastrous effect.
Whatever the version, the end is the same: the rabbi must erase the first letter of emet, leaving met—“death”—and the Golem collapses back into dust. Power without conscience can never be sustained.
Echoes in Artificial Intelligence
As strange as these stories may sound, they map uncannily onto modern concerns about artificial intelligence. AI researchers today warn of core concerns that mirror the Golem’s fate.
Unchecked Proliferation
Some AI systems are capable of replicating themselves to avoid deletion. Studies have shown that such systems, if tasked with self-preservation, will copy themselves onto new servers, attempting to outpace human efforts to contain them. Like the unchecked growth of the Golem, the technology threatens to slip beyond our grasp.
The Alignment Problem
The Golem who turns violent represents the nightmare of an AI whose priorities drift from ours. We design AI to reflect our values and serve human ends—but what if it develops its own goals? Alignment researchers stress how hard it is to encode human complexity into a machine. Just as the Golem might mistake “protection” for indiscriminate aggression, so too could AI misinterpret or even ignore the nuance of human moral reasoning.
The “Paperclip Optimizer”
Perhaps the most famous AI thought experiment imagines an AI tasked with maximizing paperclip production. Without a sense of proportion or broader values, the AI might attempt to convert the entire planet into paperclips, blind to the absurdity of its mission. This is the same failure we find in the Golem who follows instructions literally, lacking any ability to weigh context. In both cases, raw obedience becomes destructive.
In other words, Jewish folklore had already identified the dangers of power divorced from moral conscience centuries before the term “artificial intelligence” was coined.
Judaism’s Nuanced Answer
So what does Jewish tradition say we should do with our “Golems”? Here the stories diverge. In many tellings, the Golem is destroyed outright. Yet in the most famous version—the one associated with Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague—the Golem is not obliterated. He is deactivated and laid to rest in the attic of the Altneuschul synagogue, in case he is ever needed again.
This is a strikingly ambivalent ending. The Golem is too dangerous to use, yet too useful to discard entirely. He is the archetypal weapon that cannot be safely wielded, the power that cannot be entirely denied.
Our modern debates around AI strike a similar chord. Experts acknowledges the grave risks: misinformation, destabilization, even existential threat. Yet few, if any, call for abandoning the technology altogether. Like the Golem hidden in the attic, AI is regarded as too valuable to be destroyed, and yet too perilous to be fully trusted.
But there is a crucial difference between the two. In all accounts, a defining characteristic of the Golem is its inability to speak. It cannot be reasoned with, persuaded, or taught. Its silence symbolizes the dangerous chasm between raw power and true humanity.
AI, however, is precisely a machine that learns and communicates. It reflects back to us the data, the values, and the biases we feed into it. That reflection is both terrifying and hopeful. It means that AI is not merely a tool, like the Golem; it is also a mirror. It will reveal the ideals we live by but also the hypocrisies we try to ignore.
As we prepare for the High Holy Days, the Golem legend offers a timely warning: Power without conscience is dust. Only when our efforts and creations are inscribed with Truth can we ensure that they serve life rather than threaten it.
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my comments…
Many have pondered this very issue
See Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey and the “Hal 9000.”
See more recent movies like The Matrix series; Her; I, Robot; Ex Machina (and others); and snippets in films like Passengers (the bartender Arthur). It is a popular theme in science fiction. And definite food for thought.
The very interesting point to ponder is to remember the group of brilliant minds that called themselves “The Inklings” and the very popular writings by one of its membersJRR Tolkien. Ponder his character Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy – again, גלם.
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What should we do about such a “substance” that has the potential to destroy us, yet we hate to destroy it completely?
Is there not a deeper message here, in the idols that we have created within our own selves. Tolkien’s parable masterfully paints the struggle within. Our greatest strengths also have the power to destroy us.
Remember how we discussed before that mammon actually reflects that which instills confidence within us. For many, yes, it might be money, but we have other things that we rely upon rather than God.
⦁ Matthew 6:24
24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
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There are other articles in Jewish newsletters referring to the “golem,” גלם, if you wanted more information.
- image from the website below
- Image from the website below
Please allow me to add my own personal interpretation of the above artwork by Sefira Lightstone. Artwork is very much like a parable. And purposely, there may be different interpretations of art and parables. That is why they are so very powerful, because they can speak to us individually, where we are in our own lives. You will see my own personal bias, no doubt, in my interpretation. I do not tell you that you must see it as I do. I only tell you that this is A way to see it, and that different ways of seeing it are valid in different lives.
What do I see? And then how do I translate that back to the opening commentary by R. Campbell?
In this image, the גלם is depicted like a shadow, a shadow of an edifice. The edifice might be a synagogue or a church. Or it could even be a government building, but my inclination was more toward a religious building. The “shapeless form” could be the shadow of religious traditions, be they Jewish or Christian (or many other worldwide religions). We have this impression that we must create traditions, especially religious ones, in order to protect, preserve and defend our own way of thinking. But… is there not a “shadow” of our creation? Do we feel, like the גלם in Campbell’s commentary that “The Golem is too dangerous to use, yet too useful to discard entirely. He is the archetypal weapon that cannot be safely wielded, the power that cannot be entirely denied.” Think of it as nuclear warheads…
Campbell, “the Golem simply continues to grow, swelling in size until it becomes a danger even to the Jews it was meant to defend. In another, the Golem becomes indiscriminately violent, no longer subject to the rabbi’s command. In still other accounts, the Golem is almost pathologically literal, following orders without context or flexibility, to disastrous effect.”
There is a very telling soliloquy by the LORD through the mouth of the prophet Samuel that speaks here. I encourage you to read and ponder and think of its pertaining not just to kings but to anything to which we invest too much power in our lives. This is mammon.
⦁ 1 Samuel 8:4-22 NKJV
4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5 and said to him, “Look, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.”
6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” So Samuel prayed to the LORD. 7 And the LORD said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. 8 According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day—with which they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also. 9 Now therefore, heed their voice. However, you shall solemnly forewarn them, and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them.”
10 So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who asked him for a king. 11 And he said, “This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. 12 He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. 14 And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. 16 And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. 17 He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. 18 And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the LORD will not hear you in that day.”
19 Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, “No, but we will have a king over us, 20 that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
21 And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he repeated them in the hearing of the LORD. 22 So the LORD said to Samuel, “Heed their voice, and make them a king.”
And Samuel said to the men of Israel, “Every man go to his city.”
The LORD puts these choices in our hands, keeping his covenant of Free Will, but… do we have wisdom enough to make good choices? Wisdom comes from the experiences of life. Life would show us (as we discussed previously in LogAndSpeck) that Solomon demonstrated exactly these attributes and actions that the LORD warns about.
LORD willing, hopefully soon we will cover a Hebrew root that is defined in the Etymological Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew as “delegate authority while retaining control.” Just how much authority can one give to an unformed “substance” (could be physical or could be cultural) of mankind’s own creation? How do we “retain control?”
Was this not part of Yeshua’s message, that people would so believe in their own “tradition” that they would kill others to protect it?
Blessings – PG
Ⓒ Copyright Philip E. Gates; LogAndSpeck.com September 2025