The Fellowship of the Golem (article summary)

Here is a summary of my article from this past week, The Fellowship of the Golem. You can read it in full in the image below, or else: paywalled Substack with hyperlinks, Jewish Link website, flipdocs. Bullet point summary below. In the image, a typo: It should say “who propose (g), not who propose (f)”.

followed by:

Here is the briefer summary:

1. Refresh memory of Rava / Rabba / Rabbi Abba II sending a golem to Rabbi Zeira I / II, and the latter’s reaction, you are from the חבריא, return to your dust. And also about Rav Oshaya and Rav Chanina mystically creating the calf, where these might be Rabba bar Nachmani’s brothers.

2. For חבריא, a listing of possible meanings. One of them is chabbaraya, charmer / magician. Explore the weakness of that — does a charmer create, but defend it, as a chover chever, which can include magic. And it makes good sense in context.
   
   Still, going forward, explore it to mean Sages or members of the fellowship, and see how that might impact our attempts at identification.

3. Rav Oshaya and Rav Chanina moved to Israel, but didn’t get ordination, so they were חברים, rather than rabbanan.

4. There’s a recurring personality, “the Lion of the Fellowship”, which is Rabbi Zeira or often someone else. But it is a scholastic social circle to which Rava belonged. Unless… there is a remote possibility that it is Rabba who talked about “I, and the lion of the fellowship said it.”
   
   You could read more about this in this Scribal Error post:
   

   So that might tell us who the חבריא are.

5. In Yerushalmi, Rabbi Zeira interacts with the Chavraya. Also, Rabbi Zeira interacts with Rav Oshaya and Rav Chanina, the חֲבֵרֵיהוֹן דְּרַבָּנִן. And we see Rabbi Abba as the חבריא or Rabbi Zeira, or vice versa.

6. It still remains undetermined, but maybe we can ruminate on it and come to a more solid conclusion.

7. What about pesak? It is alright to fashion a golem? I think so. Rabbi Zeira may have been under a mistaken impression that it was the work of sorcerers; even if not, Rava or Rabba disagree and maintain it’s OK. I see no text-internal reason to distinguish between creating a calf or creating a golem via Sefer Yetzira, so we can add Rav Oshaya and Rav Chanina to the mix. And, there’s a later statement of Abaye that endorses the lechatchila aspect of mystical creation, and thus Rav Oshaya and Rav Chanina. This either adds to the majority or might be a batrai, depending on if it was Rabba / Rabbi Zeira I or Rava / Rabbi Zeira II.

8. Joke about pitom / Python, and creating speech in this way.