Engolement: Once you find your inner golem, life in the shtetl will never be the same - review

As a nine-year-old, I stewed restlessly for long hours in the back of our car with my brothers as my family went on an epic camping trip across Europe. One of our stops was in Prague, and I still remember being shown a staircase with a closed attic door at the top, and being told it was where the Maharal of Prague created his golem – or perhaps even that the golem itself was still sitting up there. Either way, it was a dramatic moment for a child. 

The golem is a particularly Jewish monster, a kind of terracotta cousin of Frankenstein’s. In one version of the legend, the Maharal fashioned a human figure from earth and brought it to life by inscribing the Hebrew word emet, truth, on its forehead. To deactivate it, one would remove the letter aleph, leaving met, dead. 

So, if you had the chance to meet a golem, would you take it? Well, now is your chance not only to meet one but to be one, courtesy of Engolement. In this venture, whose title is a made-up word expressing the idea of becoming a golem, Theater and Theology continues its collaborations with other vibrant Jerusalem theater companies. This time it is Theater in the Rough, which is mostly known for its annual summer Shakespeare in the Park productions – this year’s was The Tempest – but has also staged original performances over the years. 

'Part game, part improvisation, and part theater'

Engolement is not theater in the conventional sense. It is a live-action role-playing game (known as a LARP), described as “part game, part improvisation, and part theater.” There are no actors and no audience. Rather, the participants are players who move, negotiate, explore, and make choices as their characters, in real time. No acting experience is necessary; only curiosity, flexibility, and an ability to be present in a make-believe world.

Participants play a group of a dozen golems living in a shtetl among the human residents. Each golem bears a seal – a personal tablet bearing the words that brought it to life, which are the only words it is permitted to utter throughout the game.

Life in the shtetl has been peaceful, but now things are changing. In the face of impending threat, the shtetl residents have decided to build a defensive wall. Now the golems face a fateful decision, caught between duty to the community and the urge to discover who else they might yet become. It is this dilemma with which participants will grapple over the game’s 2.5-hour duration.

Creating games based on Jewish ideas for the public to try

THE ORIGINAL Hebrew version of Engolement was painstakingly created by Lian Yedidya, Hila Meinrath, and Natan Skop, with a setting and props involving intriguing geometrical shapes, words on laminated paper, and mysterious charts with a kabbalistic ambiance, along with charcoal illustrations by Lianna Boermeester. It was developed in collaboration with Aspamia LARP (Live Action Role Play) for the 2025 exhibition, Roll of Destiny by the Schechter Gallery in Tel Aviv, where it garnered praise and enthusiasm.

The Tel Aviv exhibition’s goal was to create six games based on Jewish ideas for the public to try. Theater and Theology entered the picture when its director, Yael Valier, attended this LARP with her husband, Dan.

“I walked out of there intellectually challenged and deeply moved,” she recalls, “and the first thing I said was ‘Wow, I want to produce this in Jerusalem for English speakers.’” She adds: “If you’ve never tried a LARP before, this is a great place to investigate, and Engolement will set the bar high.”

Backstory characters are voiced by Annabelle Landgarten, Howard Metz, Yael Valier, and Natan Skop, who often perform in Jerusalem’s English-speaking theater scene.

This is a preview, and I plan to attend only after publication, so I cannot speak from personal experience. But I am already familiar with the high quality of the output of both theater companies involved, and am excited to see that quality expressed in this unusual form.

I’ve been interested in role-playing games for a while; an NPC – non-player character – was even named after me (an apothecary fox named Scarf-in-Summer, created by my friend Sam Stern). Of particular interest to me as a Jewish educator is the potential for LARPs in Jewish clothing. I was chagrined to miss out on the Schechter games, so I am delighted to be given a second chance to experience one.

Whether I will succeed in uncovering my inner golem remains to be seen.

What: Engolement, a live-action role-playing game.  
Who: Theater and Theology & Theater in the Rough. Created by Lian Yedidya, Hila Meinrath, and Natan Skop. 
Where: Mamuta Art & Research Center at Hansen House.
When: Sept 27 and 28.
Why: Because you always wanted to be a golem.