Collect Virgin Soil - לאסוף אדמה בתולה

There is a different type of cold that reaches beyond the limitations of temperature. It’s a sterile, unemotional beast that reminds you that man is mortal and civilization is a facade that can be stripped away. This cold seeped into my soul as I trudged my way back into the truck and began removing my protective gear.

Our drilling was done. We’d removed the clay from under the tundra and had plenty of ice that hadn’t been liquid in millennia. I stared out the window as Joe drove us back to the base. It was a barren and stark landscape that offered neither comfort nor hope.

Joe had the powerful halogen lights on as we drove and the fleeting daylight gave up its fight against the twilight.

“What the fuck!?”

Striding from the snow onto the worn pathway in front of us, snow embanked on the sides, the creature lurched towards the truck. I leaned over and grabbed the wheel. The vehicle skidded, slipped, righted itself and we kept going.

Pushing me back into my seat, Joe wiped at his eyes. “What the hell was that?”

“A bear. It was a bear.”

“The fuck it was! It looked like a huge man in furs.”

“It was a bear.”

He turned to look at me but I refused to meet his eyes.

“Yeah, a bear. Sure.”

“Radio ahead. I want the helicopter picking us up tonight.”

“Can’t wait until morning, Doc?”

“No, get it here asap.”

It had found me. Again.

2 Collect Fresh Water That Has Never Been Poured Into A Vessel לאסוף מים מתוקים

The clay was in crates and the frozen water was stored in temperature-controlled containers. As the helicopter took off I wondered if I was leaving the men there to their deaths. Too tired to weep and unable to sleep, I put my headphones on again and listened to the almost endless recitation of Hebrew phrases.

Opening my dog-eared copy of Sefir Yezirah, known in English as the Book of Creation, I tried to concentrate as we flew to Williams Field at McMurdo Station. The constant drone of the engines acted as white noise and I was able to push everything else aside.

I was bone-weary and worn down to a shadow of who I used to be. The hunt was relentless. Trying to be proactive as I fled had drained me. It had been less than a year but felt like a lifetime. My eyes ached and felt dry. Eventually putting the book down, I felt myself slipping away, dreaming of long hot showers and family that was now dead, killed to satisfy a twisted karmic debt that has lived beyond mortal limitations.

3 Gather Pure White Vestments לאסוף וסטים לבנים טהורים

My money, like my future, was slipping through my fingers. One of the only benefits of having your relatives stalked and killed is that you found inheritances coming your way. A year ago I was a wealthy man. Now I was using the last of my savings to finance an impossible scheme.

The phone refused to ring and every minute I waited felt like a lifetime. I lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling fan as rippled shadows played across the room. I tried to make the most of the weeks, days, and hours I had left. My sister’s last call to me was saved on my phone. I’d listen to it over and over while staring at her picture, her voice fading into familiar sounds as the words lost meaning.

The sounds were comforting and familiar, bringing peace to my soul. Childhood memories swam forward, the two of us at the beach building sandcastles, drinking those store-brand sodas Mom bought, and throwing the crusts from our sandwiches to the seagulls.

Like the rising tide slowly encroaching on our creations, breaking them down, tearing them apart, the creature methodically destroyed my family. My parents’ mysterious deaths in Germany, my sister’s death in Brooklyn, and so on throughout the years. No one in my family died of old age.

Now I was the only one left to remember them, and if this attempt failed, I would be gone as well.

Not far from Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem, I could hear the distant voices of merchants reaching my open window, and still, I waited. The tailor was the artisan of choice for Hasidim of means. He needed wool from a snow-white ram, specially crafted scissors that had been used for no other garments, and other implements that continued to drain my money.

A minyan was formed and compensated with more of my resources. They prayed continuously as the tailor cut, snipped, and sewed. Ten Jewish men reciting ancient prayers that had been passed down from generation to generation.

Closing my eyes, I wondered how long it would be before my sister’s face would become less distinct in my memories, when it would start to fade as my parents’ had. I realized that I might not live long enough for that to be a concern when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Franks? It is done. You may pick them up anytime before sunset.”

Sighing, I sat up. “Thank you. I’ll be there within the hour.”

4 Discover The Name Of God

לגלות את שמו של אלוהים

Everything I was working on was the longest of longshots. Of each bizarre component, the most far-fetched was determining the true name of God. None of this was an exact science. The closest you were able to get to perfection in each step, the greater your chance of success, but according to legend, there was wiggle room.

If your clay wasn’t the purest, if your shaped body wasn’t worthy of Michelangelo, if your garments weren’t cut to exactly the right length the project could still succeed. If, however, the name of God was wrong or incomplete or was more of a description of an aspect of God, the resulting golem would be highly flawed.

Seven years ago I met Sarina Albohim, an Ethiopian archeologist. She was convinced that YHWH and Elohim were correct but limited. Sarina was as beautiful as she was brilliant. We spent many days drinking, eating, and passionately debating the merits of proto-Hebrew and the Gnostic Gospels. Those days were often followed by nights in her bed or mine.

I knew the horrors that had befallen my family, and I couldn’t condemn Sarina to such a fate if or when I became the creature’s prey. As much as we would have preferred our dalliances to grow into something more permanent, we distanced ourselves.

Sarina traveled and researched while I funded her efforts. The tetragrammaton needed amending, in her learned opinion. She joined the staff of Cambridge and studied under Professor Janezeeta McGillicuddy, the expert in Semitic languages.

We spoke daily. Sometimes it was a few words, other times it was hours. No matter what we spoke of on the surface, the subtext was always the same. We shared a yearning for each other, to be together, to live our lives entwined in the other’s heart and soul.

And then the creature came for me. It was odd questions at first. “Dr. Franks, did that man reach you? He said he was an old friend, but his ... Well, I thought he might be a patient. That poor man.”

There were two times when I escaped him. A glimpse of a large, incongruous body, arms long enough to snatch me and pull me into the darkness and I was gone, running, making my escape. I knew my safety was temporary. I wouldn’t always get away.

His grotesque laughter would follow after me, the echoes chasing that of my footsteps. Did he allow me to escape? Was he playing with me?

The last I spoke to Sarina she was heading home to Axum in Ethiopia. There is a priest there that attends what they claim is the Ark of the Covenant. She’d somehow arranged to have him inscribe her version of Eloha on the shem that will be inserted under the tongue of our golem.

Working with her mentor on fragments of gnostic gospels found in Nag Hammadi and sold on the black market, they came to believe that a more complete name of God included both the masculine and feminine. Without both, any attempt to create life was doomed to failure and corruption.

I had no idea how she convinced the priest to aid her, how she got past the fabled blue gates that led to the church that was the home of the supposed Ark or if her efforts would be fruitful.

All I could do was trust in her genius and dedication.

5 Craft The Body לעצב את הגוף

I rented converted warehouse space in Brooklyn, the same borough where my sister had died, and oversaw the delivery of everything I’d accumulated. Fasting for days whilst praying continuously, I had sculptors guide me as I shaped the clay and kneaded in the water.

Separated by a curtain but in the same room, I had another minyan of ten Jewish men reciting prayers as I worked. They thought me eccentric and maybe a bit mad. They were right, but my money was good and they could see no harm.

My vestments slowly took on the reddish hue of the clay as I worked. Pausing often, I would stretch my shaking hands and let them still. Unlike Jonathan, I’d waited my time and incurred no curse as I ate from the honeycomb. My blood sugar rose, the trembling halted and I went back to work.