THE WRONG BODY

A comic writer riffs anew on what it means to be Jewish.

In The Golem of Brooklyn (2023), Mansbach—author of the hit picture book Go the F*ck to Sleep—found a broader stage for his F-bombs, penis jokes, and Borscht Belt comedy. It’s all delivered in halting English and Yiddish by a 10-foot, 400-pound clay giant. In this sequel, we join the Golem two days after he abused his mandate to come to the defense of persecuted Jews by slaughtering a dozen torch-wielding, antisemitic marchers in “some shit-kicking Kentucky town.” In response, an Emergency Presidential Commission is formed, chaired by a Colorado congresswoman who advocates for Israel while describing the Jewish people as “our brothers and sisters in Christ.” To explain how the Golem gets “unmade” and “remade” over the centuries—“a repository of Jewish history” who becomes “a nuclear option” for Jews”—would require more space than this review allows. Suffice it to say he gets stuck in “the wrong body” when Ediss Rosenzweig, a Brown professor who authored The Golem of Eden, remakes him—to his great despair—with pendulous breasts and no penis. To his relief, he will be born again as a male avenger, but one confronted with questions about his purpose. “If we kill everybody who hates us we might be safe, but we’ll no longer be Jewish,” says Miri, a fallen-away believer, in a veiled reference to Israel’s actions in Gaza. “We’ll be something else.” While the Golem schtick wears a bit thin, Mansbach hits home with sharp-edged riffs on “Jews in Name Only,” The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, George Soros (who appears with Fagin and Shylock), and Jewish politics (“I hate Republicans, but I hate Jewish Republicans a hundred times more”).

An amusing and timely take on the golem legend.