There are quite a few stories told of the legendary Rabbi Loeb who lived in Prague during the 1500s. Several of them centre around his creation of a golem, an animated clay servant possessed of supernatural strength but unable to speak. This was recorded partly because my Jewish friends are celebrating Yom Kippur and partly because of the horrible terrorist attack on the Manchester Synagogue. I've always found the Jewish people I have known to be positive and supportive towards pagans, perhaps because they recognise a fellow minority religion that has often come in for violent suppression. The nauseating level of anti-Semitism that has been building in this country for some years is deeply worrying. Not only do I worry about what will happen to the people I know (not to mention the much larger numbers of people I don't know), but I am also minded of what someone so famous I have forgotten their name called the Canary in the Mineshaft. When authoritarians get away with attack...
