Later that night as the cemetery is whipped by a thunderstorm, someone comes back to the grave of the young man and fashions a lifesize image out of mud. As the mysterious sculptor leaves, the mud figure begins to breathe.
Mulder and Scully are in their office, discussing the case of Isaac Luria, a Hassidic Jew from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, murdered in his store two days previously. The motive was not one of theft, but of hate. The only thing taken in the incident was the store's surveillance videotape, found in the VCR of a boy named Tony Oliver. Tony is seen on the videotape with two of his friends, beating and finally shooting Isaac Luria to death. But Tony has not escaped - he was found strangled, and the fingerprints lifted from his body were those of Isaac Luria. Scully explains that the Bureau has been called in to find out why the fingerprints of a dead man appear on the boy's body.
Mulder and Scully go to the apartment of Jacob Weiss, looking for his daughter Ariel. A group of Jews are sitting in mourning in the living room. The agents speak with Ariel in an attempt to get her permission to have Isaac exhumed to check for evidence in Tony Oliver's death. Scully has taken the lead in the investigation. Mulder seems oddly diffident, almost embarrassed at the intrusion they are making. Jacob shows him a pamphlet that has been pushed under his door - "How the Jews Caused the AIDS Epidemic" - the product of bigots who have been persecuting the Jews in the neighborhood. Ariel finally tells the agents to do what they feel is necessary, but leave them in peace.
In the car, they talk about the case. Scully feels that Jacob knows who killed Tony Oliver. Mulder, on the other hand, thinks that the publisher of the anti-Semitic propaganda would know both the boys who killed Isaac (and who may possibly be in danger themselves) as well as who killed Tony Oliver. He feels the pamphlets may well have incited the boys to kill Luria.
They go to Brunjes Copy Shop where the pamphlet was printed. The publisher is a bigot, a neo-Nazi who is proud of his prejudices. Scully is angered by his rhetoric, but Mulder seems calm and holds his temper, even when Brunjes implies that not only is the FBI controlled by Jews, but that Mulder "looks like he might be one himself". Mulder's only response is a chuckle. Scully is more and more disgusted by the man. Coldly, she tells him to look at the photographs of the remaining two suspects in Isaac's murder - that this might be his only chance to save them, since they might well be in danger of being killed like Tony. In the back room of the shop, Derek Banks, one of the suspects, sits, watching the interview as Scully tells Brunjes that the rumor is that Luria is back from the dead, seeking vengeance for his murder.
Late that night, Derek and the third suspect, Clinton, are digging up Luria's grave, to ensure that he is really dead. A muddy figure watches them, and when Clinton goes to the car for tools, the boy is killed. From down inside the grave, Derek calls out to Clinton. When he gets no answer, he crawls out and discovers Clinton's body.
The police and the agents arrive at Luria's gravesite. After a brief examination of the body, Mulder and Scully jump down into Isaac Luria's grave. According to custom, the body has not been embalmed, so the smell of decomposition is terrible. They examine Isaac's body, finding some marks that look like writing on the back of his hand. Mulder also notices a book on which Isaac's head is resting. When he removes it to look at it more closely, it bursts into flame.
Brunjes is seen in his copy shop the next day. Derek is there, scared to death. He demands his back pay. Brunjes asks if he killed Isaac, saying he didn't mean for anyone to be killed. Derek is disgusted by Brunjes' attitude, saying that "sitting in the dark...and calling them names" won't get rid of the Jews. He tells the printer that Clinton is now dead too.
Mulder and Scully take the partially burnt book from Isaac's grave to the Judaica Archives to discover its significance. A scholar there tells them that it's called the sepher yetzirah, the earliest known Hebrew text on the mystical communion with the divine. It should not have been in the coffin, and there's no reason for it to have burst into flame. The name inscribed in Hebrew at the bottom of the book is Jacob Weiss.
Now feeling that they have evidence linking Weiss to the murders of Isaac's killers, they go to his apartment. Ariel is there alone. They have assumed she is Isaac's widow, but in fact they were only engaged, and were to have been married that very day. Her father, a survivor of the Holocaust, had been looking forward to the marriage, and had given Ariel a special ring for the ceremony. The ring was traditionally worn during weddings in his village in Czechoslovakia - a village wiped out by the Nazis in 1943. She denies that her father could have killed anyone.
The agents go to the Park Street Synagogue, where they disturb a service, looking for Jacob Weiss. They spot him going upstairs and follow him up to the attic. There they find Derek's body, hanging from a rafter. Something scurries away in the dark, knocking Mulder and Scully down. They see something move, and Scully draws her weapon, telling the figure to halt. Her flashlight picks out the face of Jacob Weiss. She places him under arrest and cuffs him, but Mulder has a suspicion that there's someone or something else up there with them in the attic. As the camera pans back, we can see a hand holding onto a beam - a hand with writing on it like Isaac Weiss's.
Ariel rushes down to the Twenty First Precinct where her father is being held. Scully feels terribly sorry for Ariel, and agrees to let her see her father, who is being questioned by Mulder. Weiss seems to be accepting blame for the murder of Isaac's killers. But when Mulder tells him that they found his sepher yetzirah in Isaac's grave, his eyes widen in surprise. Mulder feels he is covering up for the real killer, but the man adamantly insists he's guilty. Scully meanwhile has found out that Jacob belonged to the Irgun, a radical militant Jewish organization in Israel, so he has a record of violence. Mulder tells her of his suspicions that there was someone else in the attic when they arrested Jacob, someone that he's protecting, someone big and strong enough to have knocked the both of them down. Mulder leaves to go check out a theory.
As Scully watches from the observation window, Ariel joins her father in the interrogation room. She is shocked that he has confessed to the murders, and asks why he's doing this. "I think you know," he says.
At Brunjes Copy Shop, Curt Brunjes is printing a new edition of his anti-Semitic pamphlet when he hears a noise and goes to investigate. Suddenly, his throat is grabbed by a hand - a hand with marks on it, like Hebrew script.
Mulder goes back to the Judaica Archives. He asks the scholar there to tell him about the myth of the Golem. The Golem, he is told, was a being created from mud or clay, brought to life by the power of a secret letter combination written on the back of the Golem's hand. The scholar points out the letters in the text of the sepher yetzirah. Mulder mumbles that he can't speak Hebrew, and seems a bit disturbed or embarrassed by the fact. The scholar explains that the word written is "emet", the Hebrew word for truth. The Golem, a creature without a soul, essentially a monster, could be destroyed by erasing the first letter, and forming the word "met", or dead. Scully calls Mulder on his celphone and announces that Curt Brunjes has been murdered. SInce Weiss obviously could not have committed this latest murder, with an MO identical to the others, he is released from jail.
At the copy shop, Mulder and Scully watch the surveillance video which shows someone entering the shop. "Oh, my God," Scully gasps. "It's Isaac Luria - he's still alive!" "I'm not so sure about that," contradicts Mulder. She asks if what they're looking for is a ghost. Mulder explains that a ghost is a spirit without form. What they're looking for is a Golem - form without spirit. "I don't think it was hate that created that monster, Scully. I think it was love."
They go to Weiss's apartment. No one is there and the wedding ring is gone. Mulder thinks he knows where Ariel is. They drive to the synagogue.
Weiss is there, looking for his daughter. He finds her in the attic, dressed in her wedding gown, waiting for Isaac. Jacob says he knows that she tried to bring her beloved back, but what she brought back isn't him, it's an abomination. Ariel admits she created the Golem, that she wanted to be able to say goodbye to the man she loved so much. Jacob hears a noise and goes off to investigate.
Mulder and Scully arrive at the synagogue. They find Jacob, a rope around his neck, choking and struggling from where he's hanging. While Scully calls the paramedics, Mulder dashes up to the attic to find Ariel. She refuses to leave, and while he's trying to persuade her, the Golem smashes him to the floor. Stunned, Mulder watches as the Golem goes to Ariel. She is wearing the tradtional wedding ring, and recites the words of the marriage ceremony. Kissing his hand, she tenderly wipes away the first letter inscribed there. Before Mulder's eyes, the Golem starts to decompose. Scully rushes up to the attic to check on Mulder, and sees Ariel kneeling over an indistinct form, no more than a pile of dust, caressing it and speaking in Hebrew.
"What's she doing?" Scully asks.
Incredibly moved by the scene, Mulder murmurs, "Saying goodbye."
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