A funeral is held in Brooklyn for a Jewish shopkeeper and hate crime victim named Isaac Luria, but he apparently comes back to life after someone creates a man of dirt in the cemetery. Mulder and Scully get on board after one of three boys who murdered Luria is found strangled to death with Luria's prints on his body. They look to track down the other two killers, and chat with the print shop owner across the street from Luria's store after Luria's father-in-law, Jacob Weiss, shows them a hateful pamphlet slipped under their door. The print shop guy is a racist jerk who is harboring one of the murderers in the back room.
The boys dig up Luria's grave and find that he is duly buried, but something is quick to kill one of them. Mulder and Scully find a Jewish book of creation in the grave, which bursts into flames when Mulder picks it up; it is imprinted with Weiss's name. Luria's fiance, Ariel, says she and Luria were about to be married, and shows them a communal wedding ring that Weiss (a Holocaust survivor) was finally digging out again for the ceremony. Weiss is arrested after the agents find the last murderer hanging in a synagogue, but Ariel refuses to believe he's guilty.
Though Weiss gives a confession, Mulder thinks he's trying to cover for something else. The copy shop Nazi is strangled while cranking out hate pamphlets. Mulder finds that the book also allows for the creation of a golem, a creature made of mud and brought to life through mystical incantation. At Ariel's apartment, the agents find the wedding ring gone. In the synagogue, Weiss tells Ariel, who has summoned the golem, that the creature is not the man she loved. Mulder and Scully arrive to find Weiss hanging, but manage to save him. Ariel performs a brief wedding ceremony with the golem, then returns him to dust by removing a defining mark on his hand.
Justine Miceli, who plays Ariel Weiss, had a recurring role as Detective Adrienne Lesniak on NYPD Blue. David Groh, who plays Jacob Weiss and died in 2008, also played Joe Gerard in the 1970s show Rhoda. The episode is dedicated to the memory of Lillian Katz, grandmother of episode writer Howard Gordon.
Episode Body Count
Isaac Luria: shot to death in his store by three teenagers.
Tony Oliver: a 16-year-old Nazi punk who is strangled to death by the golem.
Clinton Bascombe and Derek Banks: two more Nazi kids golem'd to death. One is killed while exhuming Luria, the other found hanging in a synagogue.
Seven civilians: Scully says Weiss was part of an Israeli military underground and arrested in 1959 for a bombing that killed seven civilians.
Curt Brunjes: a Nazi print shop owner murdered by the golem.
Humans: 12
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0
Cumulative Body Count (88/202 episodes, 0/2 movies)
Humans: 1,041
Creatures: 80Aliens: 49
Grand Total: 1,170
Grand Total: 1,170
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