Golem

In Jewish folklore, the Golem is an animate being sculpted from clay or mud and brought to life through sacred Hebrew names or letters, most famously by Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague.

The Golem is animated through Kabbalistic ritual: its creator inscribes or places sacred Hebrew letters or divine names upon it, most commonly the word "emet" (truth) on its forehead, or a parchment bearing the Tetragrammaton placed in its mouth.

To deactivate the Golem, the animating inscription is altered or removed, as in the well-known motif of erasing the first letter of "emet" to leave "met" (death), which causes the creature to collapse back into inert clay.

In most tellings the Golem has no independent will or moral judgment of its own; it acts as a literal, obedient servant of its creator, carrying out instructions without nuance or the capacity for ethical reasoning.

In some tellings of the Prague legend, the Golem grows increasingly large, violent, or uncontrollable over time, and Rabbi Loew is ultimately forced to deactivate it and store its remains in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue, where legend holds they remain hidden to this day.

It is usually depicted as mute and as possessing immense physical strength far beyond that of an ordinary person.