The Golem Drones

Golems are no longer just clumsy clay monsters

In the heart of a bustling city, the Jewish quarter of Beth Shalom thrived with the hum of tradition—families gathering for Shabbat, children chasing each other through narrow cobblestone streets, and the scent of fresh challah wafting from bakeries. But the year was 2025, and a shadow had fallen over the community. A wave of targeted attacks—vandalized synagogues, threatening drones buzzing overhead, and whispered rumors of worse to come—had left Beth Shalom on edge. The authorities were slow to act, and fear crept into every home.


Ezra Cohen, a wiry 16-year-old with a knack for tinkering, felt the weight of it all. His bubbe’s stories of the old world, of golems crafted from clay to protect Jewish villages, echoed in his mind. In those tales, rabbis breathed life into mud with sacred words, creating guardians to shield their people. Ezra wasn’t a rabbi, but he had a soldering iron, a scavenged 3D printer, and a stubborn streak. If the stories were true, maybe he could adapt them. Maybe he could build protectors of his own.


In the cluttered garage behind his family’s apartment, Ezra worked late into the night. He’d been experimenting with drones for years—cobbled-together machines made from salvaged parts, programmed with open-source code he tweaked on his ancient laptop. But this was different. He wasn’t just building drones; he was trying to make them alive.


Ezra pored over his bubbe’s old books, yellowed pages filled with Hebrew letters and Kabbalistic diagrams. The golem ritual required a body of earth, a spark of divine will, and the Name of God inscribed on its form. Clay was too heavy for flight, so Ezra used lightweight polymers, shaping sleek, birdlike frames in his printer. For the spark, he rigged a neural network, trained on scraps of AI code he’d found on the dark web. And for the Name? He hesitated, his hand trembling over the keyboard. The Tetragrammaton, the unspeakable Name of God, was forbidden to misuse. Instead, he carved a simpler word into each drone’s chassis: Emet. Truth.


The first drone was a disaster. It buzzed, sparked, and crashed into a pile of spare parts. The second caught fire. By the third, Ezra was ready to give up, but then he remembered his bubbe’s words: “A golem answers to the heart, not just the hands.” He closed his eyes, whispered a prayer he barely understood, and powered on the drone. Its rotors hummed, and its sensors glowed a soft blue. It hovered, steady, as if watching him. Ezra’s heart raced. “Fly,” he whispered. The drone obeyed.


He named them the Shomrim—guardians. Over weeks, he built a dozen, each inscribed with Emet, each programmed to patrol and protect. They were small, no bigger than hawks, with cameras for eyes and tasers for claws. Their neural networks let them learn, adapt, even communicate in faint, eerie chirps. Ezra wasn’t sure if it was the tech or the ritual, but they felt alive, bound to him like the golems of legend.


The attacks came on a moonless night. Drones not of Ezra’s making descended on Beth Shalom, their red lights slicing through the dark, dropping incendiary pellets that sparked fires in the streets. Screams echoed as families fled. Ezra, crouched on his rooftop, unleashed the Shomrim. They rose in a swarm, their blue glow a stark contrast to the attackers’ crimson. The enemy drones were fast, military-grade, but the Shomrim were something else. They darted with uncanny precision, dodging blasts, disabling foes with targeted shocks. One Shomrim sacrificed itself, ramming an enemy drone to save a family trapped in an alley.


Below, the community fought back—men and women hurling stones, dousing flames with buckets of water. Ezra’s best friend, Leah, rallied a group to barricade the synagogue, her voice steady despite the chaos. But the Shomrim were the tide-turner. They outmaneuvered the attackers, herding them into a tight cluster before frying their circuits in a synchronized pulse. The enemy drones fell like dead flies, and the night grew quiet.


By dawn, Beth Shalom was scorched but standing. The Shomrim returned to Ezra, hovering silently, their casings scratched but intact. The community gathered, awestruck, as Ezra explained what he’d done. The rabbi, an old man with eyes like fire, studied the drones. “You’ve woven old magic with new,” he said. “But Emet is a heavy burden. Truth must be guarded, not just wielded.”


Word spread, and Beth Shalom became a fortress of sorts. Ezra trained others to build and maintain the Shomrim, but he never forgot the rabbi’s warning. Each night, he checked the drones, ensuring Emet remained their guide. The attacks didn’t stop entirely, but the community was ready now, bound by tradition and a teenager’s impossible dream.


And in the quiet moments, when the Shomrim patrolled the skies, Ezra wondered if his bubbe’s stories were smiling down on him.