Loving this old episode of X-files which begins with the murder of a man called Isaac Luria. Interestingly he is murdered in what we assume is the mid-90s the time of the show, in New York, but his name bares a remarkable similarity to Isaac Luria of the mid-16th century, the creator of the modern Qabalah or Lurianic Qabalah. The show definitely features aspects of Qabalah.
In Jewish circles, 16th century Luria is sometimes referred to as Ha-Ari (“the lion”). He spent many years living in Egypt isolated from his family studying the Zohar, the primary Qabalah text. Eventually, he would return to Israel, the land where he was born, to teach Qabalah.
His teachings were passed on by his disciple Hayyim Vital. Hayyim Vital gathered up everyone’s notes on Luria’s lectures and compiled the source works of Lurianic Qabalah. It is from these notes that we derive the Tree of Life which for many modern qabalists, that’s all they know of qabalah.
We see the hand of a killer in the dark on which I think I read “Ameth” meaning truth. This is often associated with a Golem or a created creature that would serve the practitioner of qabalah. The creature is originally made of clay like God made man of clay and then a word of power is written on the creature (in many stories this is Ameth) and finally the creature is given the breath of life and lives to serve its creator. When the body of this 20th century Isaac Luria is exumed it also has the word Ameth (or what looks like it) enscribed on the hand. Moulder finds a book behind his head which appears to catch fire. Through the flames you can read that the book is Sefer Yetzirah. A short, but very popular qabalah text. I have a copy of this book in its original languages AND in English and it has never felt the need to sponteniously combust in front of me. You can read this book on sacred-texts.com.
They mistakenly call it the “book of creation” that would “Sepher Briah”. This is “Sepher Yetzirah” the book of formation.
I think my suspicion is confirmed when you see mud perhaps clay on the rabbi’s wrist.
In the show they show Sepher Yetzirah having a passage with instructions for creating the Golem using the word Emet (or Ameth). The book has no such passage, but it does talk about the power of letters and it was believed to hold the secret. If I remember correctly it features God using each letter in the process of creating the world. There is a section in the most popular translation (made by Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn creator William Wynn Westcott), which does not appear in the original so I might be getting mixed up. They mention if you remove the Aleph the remaining letters read dead which is true of the word, but it might not be how to kill a golem. In stories the word is written on a scroll and put in the head of the golem via the mouth, not written on the hand. The scroll should be removed on holy days so the golem isn’t working. If a golem were to work on the holy days it would turn evil and attack people, it could also summon the dead.
It would be unusual in media to make a golem look like a man that had already lived, but some stories suggest they are indistinguishable from humans. Many shows and media represent golems as remaining as clay, but living. The golem of Prague is said to be able to go invisible like a thought form.
The name of the episode probably means the prayer said to praise gods name after losing someone. It is a ritual of mourning where a person shows that their faith is not broken by their loss. It means to make holy (holy is qadosh).