2024-04-01
1 小时 47 分钟We kick of 2024 with a look at humanity's attempts to recreate itself, first with a dip into the legends of the Golem of Prague, and then an extended discussion of the role of AI in the future of medieval studies and particularly this show. Today's Texts: Eleazar of Worms, Commentary on Sefer Yezirah, fol. 15d. In Moshe Idel. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid. State University of New York Press, 1990. Letter from Christoph Arnold to Johann Christoph Wagenseil, printed in Wagenseil's Sota, Hoc est: Liber Mischnicus De Uxore Adulterii Suspecta, Altdorf, 1674, pp. 1152-1234. Munich Digitization Center, digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb11215591 [Anonymous golem-making text from MS Cambridge, Add. 647, fol. 18a.] In Moshe Idel. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid. State University of New York Press, 1990. Phillippson, Gustav. "Der Golem." Schoschanim: Ein Blick indie Vergangenheit. M. Poppelauer's Buchhandlung, 1871, pp. 77-81. Google Books. Tendlau, Abraham M. "Der Golem des Hogh-Rabbi-Löb." Das Buch der Sagen und Legenden jüdischer Vorzeit, J. F. Cast'schen, 1842, pp. 16-18. Google Books. Tendlau, Adam. "Der Golem des Hoch-Rabbi-Löb." 1842. In Hans Ludwig Held, Das Gespenst Des Golem, Allgemeine Verlagsanstalt München, 1927, pp 41-44. Google Books. William of Malmesbury. Chronicle of the Kings of England. Edited by J.A. Giles, translated by John Sharpe and J.A. Giles, George Bell & Sons, 1895. Google Books.
This is medieval death trip for Sunday, March 31, 2024.
Episode 105 concerning the voice of the Golem.
This hello and welcome to medieval Death Trip, the show where we explore the wit and weirdness of medieval texts.
I'm your host Patrick Lane.
We return to kick off 2024 just after the medieval new year, or at least one of the common New Year's dates of the Middle Ages, the feast of the Annunciation on March 25.
But the occasion of the medieval New Year is an opportunity to consider a particularly topical and modern concern for our year 2024.
This episode will be a bit unusual in structure.
We do have a big, not particularly medieval thing to explore and spend some time on, but well start out with a medieval or at least medievalistic story to set us up.
In a way.
This is a two parter episode thats been shipped out in one big package, and feel free to use those chapter marks if your player app supports them to skip around as your patience and interests see fit.
So lets kick off part one with a story.
As I alluded to, this story is not strictly speaking medieval, but it is medieval adjacent and has medieval roots.
Well dig up in a little bit and the specific text ill be reading is even less medieval, but more on that later.
Our story is set in Prague in the late 15 hundreds, when the city was a thoroughly renaissance town and the cultural center of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as home to the eras largest community of Ashkenazi Jews, comprising approximately 30% of the citys population.
Our story centers on the leading figure of that community, Rabbi Yuda luv bin Bazalil, the mahral of Prague.
Now let me just note up front that I will generally be using anglicized forms of hebrew words in this episode as well as english plurals, and apologies if any of my pronunciations are egregiously off the mark.
That said, any such errors are kind of in the spirit of our tale, where terms have been transferred from Hebrew into Yiddish, then German, and then finally translated into English.
And so here is our story in the form of a german text written written in rhyming verse and translated now into English.
One once there was a pious rabbi widely known around, and Rabbi Luv the high one was he called in Prague town.
His life was faith he knew not the world's allure, neither ore nor silver, nor jewels, nor treasure sure nights through he studied by the dim lamps glow.