Towards the global shtetl: Golem texts in the new millennium

This article explores the post-1990s formation of a global paradigm of popular Jewish culture by European, Israeli and American authors. The author argues that golem texts show both how Jews themselves function as a metaphor for globalisation, an image with frequent anti-Semitic connotations, and for the ways in which contemporary Jewishness is currently being positively reconfigured in terms of post-modern playfulness. In the films and literary texts by directors and authors such as Amos Gitai, Marge Piercy, Ellen Galford and Michael Chabon, this article shows the golem symbolises contemporary Jewish self-constructions beyond the national and racialised delineations of the past. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.