Golem

Legend says 16th century rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezazel, the Maharal of Prague, made a man from clay and named it Golem. By writing the Hebrew word for 'life' on a slip of paper and putting it in the Golem's mouth, it came to life. Jorge Luis Borges described the Golem's awakening in a poem:

El rabí le explicaba el universo

"esto es mi pie; esto el tuyo, esto la soga."

y logró, al cabo de años, que el perverso

barriera bien o mal la sinagoga.

The rabbi explained the universe
"this is my foot; that is yours, this is rope."
and succeeded, after years, that the perverse
swept well or poorly the synagogue.

According to other tales, the Golem not only swept the synagogue but protected the entire Jewish ghetto. But one day the Maharal forgot to remove the slip of paper from the Golem's mouth and he went mad from lack of sleep, throwing Praguers into the river and tearing up the streets. The Maharal rushed out in the middle of a sermon and stopped the Golem.

Its large clay body was stored in the attic of the Old New Synagogue, the oldest active synagogue in Europe. Hundreds of years later, a Nazi officer crept into the attic to see if the stories were true. They found his crushed body in the middle of the synagogue lawn. Pictured here are the rungs leading to the door of the synagogue's attic.

The synagogue itself is simple, but pretty. They say it was built with stones taken from a temple in Jerusalem, to be returned again once the Messiah appears. Not a bad deal, if you ask me.