Imaginary Vampires, Imagined Jews

1897 was a watershed year in Jewish history. And now, Jewish historians may consider adding a surprising entry to the list of that year's events that proved so repercussive in Jewish history: the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Creatures of the Night  David Wolpe,  Jewish Journal.  Their day begins at sundown, they show a certain aversion to the sign of the cross, and they dress in black. Of course, I am talking about Jews.  SAVE

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The Riddle of the Satmar

A prospect terrifying to secular Israelis and Zionists worldwide has been the rapid growth of the Jewish state's ultra-Orthodox (haredi) community. Given the stranglehold of haredi political parties on recent coalition governments, and the encroachments by non-Zionist haredi clerics upon Israel's chief rabbinate, once religiously moderate and firmly Zionist, the fear is not entirely irrational.

The Satmar Hasidic Dynasty  Allan Nadler,  YIVO Encyclopedia.  A concise profile of the ultra-Orthodox sect and its founder.  SAVE

Satmar at the White House  Yeshiva World.  In July 2010, a delegation from Williamsburg to Washington, D.C., protested the activities of the "Zionist state." (Video.)  SAVE

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Spirituality Lite

A simple truth lurks behind the rise of "post-denominationalism" in Jewish religious life. It is that increasing numbers of Jews are becoming less interested in defining what Judaism means than in sampling aspects of the Jewish tradition that seem to promise spiritual vitality.

Hidden Master  Daniel Landes,  Jewish Review of Books.  A modern-Orthodox educator criticizes Arthur Green's Radical Judaism and by extension the Jewish Renewal Movement. (Green responds here.)    SAVE

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Hanna Rovina in "The Dybbuk," 1920.

Of Devils and Dybbuks

Many an enlightened reader of the New York Times must have indulged in yet another condescending laugh at the Catholic Church upon seeing a November 12 report about a conclave of bishops in Baltimore; the purpose was to discuss the urgent need for priestly experts in the task of expunging the devil from possessed parishioners. Among those chuckling, no doubt, were many Jews.

“The Dybbuk”  Michael C. Steinlauf,  YIVO Encyclopedia.  On the career of an expressionist Yiddish masterpiece and its evocation of a world in which good and evil, living and dead, are intimate, and awesome mystery inheres in the everyday.  SAVE

Exorcism in Jerusalem  Shmarya Rosenberg,  Failed Messiah.  Reports, culled from Yeshiva World News, on the progress and ultimate failure to remove a dybbuk from a young Brazilian.  SAVE

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