- Koran phrases appear on Russian baby’s skin -

A year ago, the words begin to appear on arms, legs and stomach of the nine month old Ali – before fading away and being replaced with new verses. Local MP Akhmedpasha Amiralaev said: ‘This boy is a pure sign of God. Allah sent him to Dagestan in order to stop revolts and tension in our republic.’  

The boy’s mother claims, ‘Normally those signs appear twice a week – on Mondays and on the nights between Thursdays and Fridays.’ Ali always feels bad when it is happening. He cries and his temperature goes up. It’s impossible to hold him when it’s happening, his body is actively moving, so we put him into his cradle. It’s so hard to watch him suffering. 

The local doctors deny that the marks are from someone writing on the child’s skin. Local imam Abdulla has told locals that the Koran forecasts that before the end of the world, there may be people with its sayings on their bodies. 

Regardlessly of our beleifs or scepticism, it is important to understand that the parrents are creating here a specific character out of their own child. It is some kind of monstruous being, with a sign on his body either of god (as Cain) if we beleive the story, or, if we don't, by someone else, a man or a woman or rabi Loew (as Golem). Every symbolic contextualization here is pure exploatation and abuse, and in political instrumentalization, as well as in religious the end always justifies the means.

- forehead inscription as identification of a character -

In Jewish tradition, the golem is most widely known as an artificial creature created by magic, often to serve its creator. The word "golem" appears only once in the Bible (Psalms139:16). In Hebrew, "golem" stands for "shapeless mass." The Talmud uses the word as "unformed" or "imperfect" and according to Talmudic legend, Adam is called "golem," meaning "body without a soul" (Sanhedrin 38b) for the first 12 hours of his existence. The golem appears in other places in the Talmud as well. One legend says the prophet Jeremiah made a golem However, some mystics believe the creation of a golem has symbolic meaning only, like a spiritual experience following a religious rite.

The Sefer Yezirah ("Book of Creation"), often referred to as a guide to magical usage by some Western European Jews in the Middle Ages, contains instructions on how to make a golem. Several rabbis, in their commentaries on Sefer Yezirah have come up with different understandings of the directions on how to make a golem. Most versions include shaping the golem into a figure resembling a human being and using God's name to bring him to life, since God is the ultimate creator of life.

According to one story, to make a golem come alive, one would shape it out of soil, and then walk or dance around it saying combination of letters from the alphabet and the secret name of God. To "kill" the golem, its creators would walk in the opposite direction saying and making the order of the words backwards.

Other sources say once the golem had been physically made one needed to write the letters aleph, mem, tav, which is emet and means "truth," on the golem's forehead and the golem would come alive. Erase the aleph and you are left withmem and tav, which is met, meaning "death."

- number as identification of a person -


Numbers as identification of a person was used by SS in Auschwitz concentration camp. They used tattooing, and victims were stamped with the indelible number in a dehumanizing effort to keep track of them like widgets in the supply chain.

These numbers obviously weren’t chosen at random. They were part of a coded system, with each number tracked as the unlucky person who bore it was moved through the system.

Edwin Black made headlines in 2001 when his painstakingly researched book, IBM and the Holocaust, showed that IBM machines were used to automate the “Final Solution” and the jackbooted takeover of Europe. Worse, he showed that the top levels of the company either knew or willfully turned a blind eye.

A year and a half after that book gave Big Blue a black eye, the author made more startling discoveries. IBM equipment was on-site at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Furthermore:

Thanks to the new discoveries, researchers can now trace how Hollerith numbers assigned to inmates evolved into the horrific tattooed numbers so symbolic of the Nazi era. (Herman Hollerith was the German American who first automated US census information in the late 19th century and founded the company that became IBM. Hollerith’s name became synonymous with the machines and the Nazi “departments” that operated them.) In one case, records show, a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, arrived at Auschwitz in August 1943 and was assigned a characteristic five digit IBM Hollerith number, 44673. The number was part of a custom punch-card system devised by IBM to track prisoners in all Nazi concentration camps, including the slave labor at Auschwitz. Later in the summer of 1943, the Polish timber merchant’s same five-digit Hollerith number, 44673, was tattooed on his forearm. Eventually, during the summer of 1943, all non- Germans at Auschwitz were similarly tattooed.

The Hollerith numbering system was soon scrapped at Auschwitz because so many inmates
died. Eventually, the Nazis developed their own haphazard system.

- character names reduced to a letter or a number -


The parallel between character as personality in literature, theatre or film and character as a letter or a number go back to "K", character in Kafka's novels that actually represent the writer himself. 


Other characters with names reduced to letters or numbers usually represent personalities unworthy or unwilling to be named publicly because of taboos connected to sexuality, "O" in "Histoire d "O" , or some mysterious personalities associated with crime or terrorism ("M" from Fritz Lang film, "V" from "V for vendetta").


In Slavko Vorkapitch "Life and death of Hollywood extra 9413" a character (personality) is reduced to a character (number) by power of bureaucracy.