It was a scorching day in June 1965, and Israel’s pioneering Weizmann Institute of Science in the southern hamlet of Rehovoth was unveiling only the second computer the fledgling Jewish state had ever seen. But in selecting a speaker for the ceremony, the institute’s chairman didn’t invite a mathematician, a scientist, or an engineer. Instead, he asked Gershom Scholem, a decorated Jewish historian, to address the gathering. Why? Because, weeks earlier, Scholem had captivated the chairman by labeling the new machine “the Golem of Rehovoth.”

In his remarks, Scholem recounted the legend of the golem, a superhuman being fashioned from clay and designed by humans with the godlike power of creation to protect embattled Jewish communities in various shtetls in Europe.