Shonaleigh Cumbers:
The Golem
Sunday 28 September
Extra chairs were hurredly moved into place as the audience gathered for the second in the storytelling events at the Literature Festival. Festival director Alison Lister introduced Shonaleigh Cumbers (left), who comes from a Dutch Jewish family, and who prefaced her story by telling us about that family, and in particular her grandmother who had moved to England at the end of the Second World War, after suffering that Shonaleigh only hinted at. On her death, a notebook was found which could not be read until they found, in Leeds, someone who could understand Yiddish shorthand. This was the story of The Golem.
The Golem is set in Prague in 1599, when the Jewish population were confined to the Ghetto and being constantly persecuted. To protect them, their Rabbi, Rabbi Loew, creates a Golem, from the clay of the river. This man-made benign monster is seen by many as a precursor to Frankenstein's creation. Shonaleigh's retelling had many sub-plots, some humorous, some poingnant, but always returning to her central theme. She kept the audience spellbound to the end.
Shonaleigh Cumbers admitted, as the applause died down, that she had a hidden agenda. "The next time someone tells you that storytelling is only for children", she said, "tell them you know differently."
