The golem is the prom king of Jewish monsters, everyone knows its name

October 31, 2021 10:29 AM

Some of the most frightening monsters in the Jewish imagination. Deuteronomy mentions that a prediluvian king named Og was the last of the giants, a species that thrived before the flood... but wasn’t all life not in Noah's ark destroyed during the torrent? How did Og survive? The answer is scarily simple. He hung onto the side of the ark for the entire storm, eating scraps Noah fed him through a hole in the wall.
posted by spamandkimchi (10 comments total)

But what about Og's mate? Or can the giant reproduce asexually like condors?
posted by goinWhereTheClimateSuitsMyClothes at 10:54 AM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]

Don’t forget the giants of Gath (in Samuel), Goliath, then Ishbebenob, Saph, Lahmi, and perhaps another with extra fingers (or maybe that refers to one of the aforenamed). There’s even a proposed pedigree.
posted by sudogeek at 10:56 AM on October 31, 2021 [2 favorites]

Og was the last giant, so he didn't need a mate to die and complete the extinction.
posted by deadaluspark at 11:31 AM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

...It seems that the largely secular American Jewish community simply hasn’t been introduced to the horned Re’eh, the seven-headed demons, ancient kings the size of mountains, or angels shaped like eye-covered wheels.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

...horned Re'eh? Seven headed demons? Ancient kings the size of mountains? This sounds like Lovecraft Country with a Circle K on the tin.
posted by y2karl at 12:22 PM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

It gets even more eldritch when you dive into Kabbalistic lore. Then you have such things as the Qlippothim (broken shells of the worlds before the worlds, antithical to our universe), and the Qashmallim (angels in strange geometric forms and patterns- where Hideaki Anno got his ideas for Evangellion).
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:40 PM on October 31, 2021 [4 favorites]

It seems that the largely secular American Jewish community simply hasn’t been introduced to...angels shaped like eye-covered wheels.

I don't know about that community, but the eye-wheeled angel abounds in online art, including this riff on the virgin/Chad meme. I've also seen art of a more quote-end quote "accurate" version of Aziraphale from Good Omens.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:44 PM on October 31, 2021 [5 favorites]

the sages go on to offer detailed instructions for a ritual to reveal the presence of these demons, known as shaydim. Find a firstborn female black cat. Then take her first female offspring and separate its afterbirth. Burn it. Sprinkle the ash in your eye. When the world blinks back into coherence, you’ll start seeing the shaydim

You're going to see lots of weird stuff with your messed up cornea.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:10 PM on October 31, 2021 [7 favorites]

As a kid attending synagogue, I didn't know enough Hebrew to follow along with the Torah portion, so I would read the translation of the text while the rabbi read it, and a lot of that stuck with me, essentially encountering the five books while sitting there in my little suit, with two options: understand nothing and be quietly bored, or read anything with the hope of something interesting popping out at me.

And, wow. Genesis has some amazing stuff to it, and it struck me that each of these single lines that stood out was its own epic saga, something profound and noteworthy, yet all these thousands of years later, it merits only a single line, a passing mention. Things like "there was Nimrod, the first hunter" or the random one line exultation "Ah, there were giants in the land in those days" with that "Ah" standing out to me, a sudden change in the tone and style of the text.

Each one of those lines, with a whole story behind it. The giants? Were they "real" giants, or were they people whose actions rendered them great among their groups? And what about Enos (or Enoch) who built the first city? Yet, here they are, given scant mention at the beginning of all things. For their deeds to have been great enough to merit even that mention that always fascinated me.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:15 PM on October 31, 2021 [17 favorites]

Bookmarking this for my long-dreamed-of philosemitic D&D campaign.
posted by HeroZero at 5:37 PM on October 31, 2021 [8 favorites]

Rock Giants in Noah – Can the Book of Enoch shed light on Noah the movie?, Biblical Archaeology Society > Bible History Daily, Megan Sauter; August 22, 2021:

Who—or what—are the rock giants in Noah the movie? [*]

Genesis 6 makes no mention of rock giants—or fallen angels—helping Noah build the ark. Where then did the rock giants in Noah the movie come from? Are they merely an invention by Hollywood scriptwriters?

The Hollywood blockbuster Noah has generated its fair share of controversy, with some saying the movie took too many liberties with the Biblical text. Certainly it is not a straightforward retelling of the flood story in Genesis 6, but as Ronald S. Hendel points out in his Biblical Views column “Noah, Enoch, and the Flood: The Bible Meets Hollywood,” which appears in the July/August 2014 issue of BAR, the flood story has been reimagined in Christian and Jewish texts, such as the apocryphal Book of Enoch, for millennia.

While rock giants are absent from the Book of Genesis, the Book of Enoch might shed light on their identity….

*The Watchers Supercut from Noah (YT).
posted by cenoxo at 6:52 AM on November 1, 2021