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Title details for The Golem of Brooklyn by Adam Mansbach - Available

The Golem of Brooklyn

A Novel

by Adam Mansbach
Danny Hoch
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
The dazzlingly imaginative, ferociously funny story of an art teacher, a bodega clerk, and a five-thousand-year-old clay crisis monster, from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the F**k to Sleep.
“A devastating romp through history, a bonkers road trip through America, this novel could not be any funnier—or any more important.”—W. Kamau Bell
In Ashkenazi Jewish folklore, a golem is a humanoid being created out of mud or clay and animated through secret prayers. Its sole purpose is to defend the Jewish people against the immediate threat of violence. It is always a rabbi who makes a golem, and always in a time of crisis.
But Len Bronstein is no rabbi—he’s a Brooklyn art teacher who steals a large quantity of clay from his school, gets extremely stoned, and manages to bring his creation to life despite knowing little about Judaism and even less about golems. Unable to communicate with his nine-foot-six, four hundred-pound, Yiddish-speaking guest, Len enlists a bodega clerk and ex-Hasid named Miri Apfelbaum to translate.
Eventually, The Golem learns English by binge-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm after ingesting a massive amount of LSD and reveals that he is a creature with an ancestral memory; he recalls every previous iteration of himself, making The Golem a repository of Jewish history and trauma. He demands to know what crisis has prompted his re-creation and whom must he destroy. When Miri shows him a video of white nationalists marching and chanting “Jews will not replace us,” the answer becomes clear.
The Golem of Brooklyn is an epic romp through Jewish history and the American present that wrestles with the deepest questions of our humanity—the conflicts between faith and skepticism, tribalism and interdependence, and vengeance and healing.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 26, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593822524
      • File size: 188161 KB
      • Duration: 06:32:00

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 31, 2023
      The funny, if slight, latest from Mansbach (Go the F**k to Sleep) stretches its premise gossamer thin. Len Bronstein, a Brooklyn Heights art teacher on summer break, sculpts a nine-foot-tall statue of a golem out of clay while stoned. Once the statue comes to life, Len recruits local bodega cashier Miri Apfelbaum, herself a former member of an ultrareligious Jewish sect, to help translate the golem’s Yiddish, though the golem quickly learns English via reruns of Curb Your Enthusiasm (“Larry David remind The Golem of Hillel,” the Golem muses). The creature explains his mission to protect the Jewish community, and after Miri shows him clips from the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., the golem insists on attending a similar upcoming gathering in Kentucky. Len and Miri oblige, but as they transport the golem, they begin to fret about the creature’s bloodlust. Mansbach’s writing works best when his characters wrestle with the concept of violence, weighing pros and cons of letting the golem tear through a crowd of racists. Too often, however, the story gets mired in tangents, from the long synopsis of Len’s failed novel to the multipage poem excerpt that nods to Mansbach’s 2009 novel, The End of the Jews. These interludes act as filler, padding the slender narrative and delaying its cathartic conclusion. This is a case where the punch lines outweigh the message.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Danny Hoch takes on this contemporary satire of the Hebrew folk figure called a golem--but this one lives in Brooklyn, rather than Eastern Europe. When Brooklyn-born-and-bred Len Bronstein, a secularly Jewish art teacher, molds a nine-foot golem from clay, he finds he's got his hands full. Former Hasid Miri Apfelbaum joins them to translate the golem's heavily accented Yiddish into English. The trio set out to right 21st century injustice against Jews. Hoch adopts a host of accents that stereotype characters who range from Brooklyn to Eastern Europe, from Scandinavia to backwoods Kentucky. Hoch interlaces offensive language with caricatures of Jews, white supremacists, and scam artists. To top it off, Hoch's evenly paced narration is frequently marred by mispronounced words. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      June 10, 2024

      In Jewish folklore, a golem is a Frankenstein-type creature made of earth, created and brought to life to protect the Jewish people in times of crisis. According to legend, the golem was given life by the great rabbi of Prague, Judah Loew. However, in Mansbach's (The End of the Jews) latest, secular Jew Len Bronstein steals clay from the upscale school where he is the art teacher and, while high on drugs, creates his own nine-and-a-half-foot, 400-pound golem. Since Len's golem only speaks Yiddish when he first comes to life, Len finds Miri, a lapsed young Chasidic woman, to translate for him. Soon the golem learns English by binge-watching Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Then Miri, Len, and the golem travel to an antisemitic rally in Kentucky. The book becomes serious at this point, and the three confront a complex problem. Narrator Danny Hoch's Yiddish pronunciation is spot on. When the golem speaks English, he has an Eastern European accent that adds fun to Mansbach's romp of a novel. VERDICT Mansbach's irreverent and farcical retelling of Jewish golem folktales will have listeners laughing aloud.--Ilka Gordon

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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