Golems, fig­ures from Jew­ish mythol­o­gy who appear in books for adults and chil­dren alike, do not enter the world organ­i­cal­ly. They are cre­at­ed in order to serve a pur­pose. When Jews are under attack, these clay stat­ues become poten­tial res­cuers, but only if they are brought to life by a human through the pow­er of the Hebrew alpha­bet. Although there are sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the leg­end, many describe how the let­ters of the word ​“emet,” for ​“truth,” can be trans­formed into ​“met,” or ​“death,” by removal of the ini­tial ​“aleph.” In Golem­crafters, a new mid­dle grade nov­el by Emi Watan­abe Cohen, Faye Meisel and her broth­er, Shiloh, are strug­gling with ten­sions at home and anti­semitism in their mid­dle school. A week vis­it­ing their estranged Zeyde restores to Faye and Shiloh the prac­tice of cre­at­ing a golem, a part of their Jew­ish her­itage reject­ed by their father.

Faye and Shiloh’s moth­er is Japan­ese Amer­i­can. She was raised Catholic, and has neg­a­tive feel­ings about her reli­gious upbring­ing. At the same time, she makes a dis­tinc­tion between alien­at­ing belief sys­tems and her children’s her­itage through their Jew­ish father. Faye and Shiloh learned some Japan­ese, and Shiloh has become a bar mitz­vah, a Jew­ish adult. They remain ambiva­lent about their iden­ti­ty, and have even invent­ed a hybrid lan­guage, Effalese, meld­ing Hebrew and Japan­ese. Both Faye and Shiloh are aware that, like all Jews through­out his­to­ry, they are liv­ing in per­ilous times. Watan­abe Cohen is care­ful to avoid equat­ing their sense of threat with oth­er tragedies, but she does not dis­miss their fears. Van­dal­ism and vio­lence are part of their expe­ri­ence, and Faye even remem­bers a jour­nal­is­tic head­line, ​“This Is the End of the Gold­en Age of Amer­i­can Jew­ry.” (An arti­cle with a sim­i­lar title, by Franklin Foer, recent­ly appeared in the Atlantic.)

Faye and Shiloh’s grandfather’s apart­ment in New York City is not so dis­tant from their home in Boston. But once they arrive there, strange events begin to hap­pen. The line between dreams and res­i­dence in an alter­nate uni­verse becomes blurred. The Meisel sib­lings are acute­ly aware of remem­brance as a Jew­ish val­ue. The Oth­er Realm that engulfs them is not a par­al­lel world, but one entered through the por­tal of mem­o­ries. Ances­tors, dis­tant and recent, guide Faye and Shiloh through mul­ti­ple paths of Jew­ish cul­ture. Their grand­fa­ther has taught them the painstak­ing process of craft­ing golems from a spe­cial clay. ​“You start with the tor­so,” Zeyde instructs them, because ​“sto­ries always tell you about the head or the limbs, but a golem’s soul is in its heart.”

Both Faye and Shiloh, but par­tic­u­lar­ly Faye, bring a wealth of knowl­edge about lit­er­a­ture to their new quest. Ref­er­ences to the Nar­nia nov­els, Alice in Won­der­land, and The Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz, are woven into their con­ver­sa­tions, but so is Faye’s famil­iar­i­ty with the Mahar­al of Prague, and Bialik’s dev­as­tat­ing poem, ​“City of Slaugh­ter.” The author includes an exten­sive bib­li­og­ra­phy at the novel’s con­clu­sion, evi­dence of her exten­sive research. More impres­sive than the num­ber of sources is the way she has inte­grat­ed Jew­ish lit­er­a­cy into her work. Each allu­sion to the Jew­ish past strength­ens Faye’s con­vic­tion that anti­semitism is the fault of its per­pe­tra­tors, nev­er its vic­tims. ​“Peo­ple like us best when we’re defense­less,” she remarks in frus­tra­tion. She engages with Shiloh in a con­tentious argu­ment about the most pro­duc­tive response to hatred. The nov­el is not a defin­i­tive answer to their ques­tions, but rather a deeply engag­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed sto­ry that will res­onate with atten­tive readers.