Weekly Kibbitz
Getty via JTA
‘A Series Of Unfortunate Events’ Author to Write
Golem Horror Film
The Jewish author of best-selling children’s book
series “A Series of Unfortunate Events” was tapped
to write a horror fi lm based on the legend of the
Golem of Prague.

Daniel Handler, known by his pen name “Lemony
Snicket,” will write the movie for independent Jewish
production company Leviathan Productions, from
veteran fi lm producer Ben Cosgrove and Josh Foer, a
freelance journalist, the co-founder of the adventure
travel brand Atlas Obscura and co-founder of Sefaria,
the open-source Jewish text library.

The fi lm will update the 16th-century narrative of
the golem of Prague, where Rabbi Judah Loew ben
Bezalel created an anthropomorphic golem out of
clay or mud to protect the ghetto from antisemitic
attacks. In the upcoming fi lm, “a young woman on a college
campus fi nds herself terrorized by a creature with a
mysterious past,” Deadline reports.

In the classic golem legend, the Hebrew word
for “truth,” “emet” is inscribed on the golem’s body,
giving it its powers. Once the golem becomes
destructive, the only way to kill it is to remove the
WE DELIVER!
letter “aleph,” which leaves the remaining word for
“death,” or in Hebrew, “met.”
Handler grew up in a household that “hovered
between Reform and Conservative Judaism,” he told
Moment Magazine in 2007. And, the main characters
of his beloved gothically dark and humorous “Series
of Unfortunate Events,” which was adapted into a
2004 fi lm and a 2017 Netfl ix series, are Jewish.

“Yes. The Baudelaires are Jewish! I guess we would
not know for sure but we would strongly suspect it,
not only from their manner but from the occasional
mention of a rabbi or bar mitzvah or synagogue,” he
said. “The careful reader will fi nd quite a few rabbis.”
Handler is also the author of a children’s book,
“The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming,” about an
angry latke telling the Chanukah story while running
into various Christmas symbols who are uneducated
about Jewish history.

Leviathan Productions has acquired a number
of other projects with Jewish themes, including
“Photograph 51,” a play by Anna Ziegler about
Rosalind Franklin, the British Jewish chemist who
discovered the structure of DNA; “The Secret Chord,”
Daniel Handler, author of the popular children’s
book series “A Series of Unfortunate Events,”
will write the fi lm for a modern retelling of the
story of the Golem of Prague.

a novel by Geraldine Brooks about King David; and
“The Pledge,” a 1970 nonfi ction book by Leonard
Slater about the U.S.’s role in Israel’s 1948 war for
independence. “Jewish stories have incredible resonance because
they explore ideas that are universally identifi able,”
Cosgrove told Deadline. “Everyone knows what it
feels like to be the underdog, the outsider, or the
immigrant. Jewish stories tackle these ideas with
humor and drama, and people around the world see
themselves in our stories.”
— Jackie Hajdenberg | JTA
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