L ifestyles /C ulture
Golems, Dybbuks and Rabbis: A Look at Scary
Movies With Jewish Roots
realizes she has broken the rules
of her clan by accidentally biting
a Jew, which threatens her own
immortality. Juda, meanwhile, consults
with a rabbi about various
aspects of vampiric existence
and Jewish law: Can he enter a
room with a mezuzah? Nope.

Can he drink blood even
though kosher law forbids it?
Yes, but only if it comes from
an animal and not a human.

FI L M
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
IT’S A HORROR FILM buff’s
favorite time of year: The nights
are getting longer, the air is
getting colder and the fallen
leaves are making those eerie
skittering sounds that seem to
follow you down the street.

If you’re seeking some
Jewish representation in your
scary viewing lineup, read on:
The following movies and TV
series draw on Jewish legends to
generate some serious screams.

‘The Golem’ (2018)
Brothers Doron and Yoav Paz
directed this historical horror
film starring Hani Furstenberg as
Hannah, a Jewish woman from a
17th-century shtetl. She creates a
golem, a humanoid figure with
supernatural strength made
from clay, for protection when a
group of violent noblemen from
a neighboring village accuse
the Jews of cursing them with a
plague. She develops an attach-
ment to her creation, even as it
turns its dark powers of destruc-
tion from her enemies to her
community. Dan Ben-Amos, professor
of folklore in the Near Eastern
Languages and Civilizations
Department at University of
Pennsylvania, said stories about
golems often draw from the
biblical story of God creating
Adam from the earth. They
also may stem from Jews’ fear
of violence and persecution.

“Pogroms were a regular
Chai. 22
OCTOBER 22, 2020
A golem comes to life in Paul Wegener’s 1920 film “The Golem: How He Came Into the World.” 
Screenshot from trailer posted by Eureka Entertainment Ltd.

historic event in Jewish life,” he
said. “They could not protect
themselves, at that time, by
themselves. They needed some
stories from God that would
protect them.”
Filmmakers have been
inspired by golems for at least
100 years. Paul Wegener’s 1920
silent horror film “The Golem:
How He Came Into the World”
reimagines the legend of the
golem of Prague, who was
created to protect Jews from a
pogrom but quickly goes rogue.

young girl who brings home a
mysterious box engraved with
Hebrew letters from a garage
sale, and then starts behaving
strangely. Her
family consults
experts in Jewish mysticism
and discovers she has been
possessed by a dybbuk, an
evil spirit that possesses and
ultimately destroys its human
host. Similar to the devil in
“The Exorcist,” the dybbuk
must be forced out of the host’s
body with a ritual.

Ben-Amos said the dybbuk
‘The Possession’ (2012)
legend emerged from the
This terrifying film was Kabbalah during the 16th
directed by Ole Bornedal and century, though the idea of
stars Natasha Calis as Emily, a demonic possession is not
unique to Jewish tradition.

“Very often, when people
News for people
got some sort of a disease and
who know we don’t
began to behave in an insane
mean spiced tea.

or unnatural way — and
Every Thursday in the
sometimes people claim that
JEWISH EXPONENT
they have voices that are not
and all the time online
their own — it is considered
@jewishexponent.com. a possession by another spirit,
For home delivery,
and the magicians, the baʿale
call 215.832.0710.

shem, would be called to cure
JEWISH EXPONENT
the individual,” he said.

‘Corpse Bride’ (2005)
Director Tim Burton’s
stop-motion film isn’t techni-
cally a horror flick, but it has
enough animated corpses and
skeletons to land solidly in the
creepy camp. It tells the story
of Johnny Depp’s Victor, a
groom who accidentally puts
a wedding ring on the finger
of Helena Bonham Carter’s
Emily, a murdered woman. She
proclaims Victor her husband
and takes him to the under-
world, where he struggles to
escape back to his real fiancée.

The story is based on an old
Jewish folktale about a young
man who accidentally weds a
corpse by placing a ring on her
finger and jokingly reciting vows.

He and his friends are horrified
when the body rises from the
earth and cries, “My husband!”
Jewish folklorist Howard
Schwartz retells the tale in his
1987 book “Lilith’s Cave: Jewish
Tales of the Supernatural,”
in a story titled “The Finger.”
His source was the 17th-
century volume “Shivhei
ha-Ari,” which collected earlier
stories about Rabbi Isaac Luria
of Safed, a city located in what
is now northern Israel. In the
legend, the rabbi rules that the
marriage between the terrified
groom and the corpse is invalid
because the dead have no claim
on the living. l
‘Juda’ (2017)
Judaism and vampire stories
have a fraught history due to
the role of blood in anti-Se-
mitic conspiracy theories.

Ben-Amos said the blood libel,
which alleged that Jews mixed
the blood of Christian children
into matzah, was widespread
during the Middle Ages. Bram
Stoker’s “Dracula” and F. W.

Murnau’s “Nosferatu” were
both widely acknowledged as
anti-Semitic caricatures, from
their large noses and Eastern
European origins to their
association with vermin.

So is it possible to portray
a Jewish vampire sympathet-
ically? “Juda” director Meni
Yaish and writer and star Tzion
Baruch think so.

The Israeli series, which is
available on Hulu, follows
Baruch’s Juda, an Israeli gambler
who is bitten by a Romanian
vampire, Anastasia Fein’s Tanja,
after a poker game. As Juda spanzer@jewishexponent.com;
begins his transformation, Tanja 215-832-0729
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



L ifestyles /C ulture
Documentary Narrates Secret Mission by Teens
to Secure State of Israel’s Independence
FI L M
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
ON THE EVE OF Israel’s War
of Independence, a group of
Jewish teenagers risked their
lives to secretly manufacture
bullets for freedom fighters.

Their work was memorial-
ized in a museum near Tel Aviv,
but relatively few people outside
the country know their story.

Now, a documentary by
a production crew from the
Philadelphia area is bringing their
experience to new audiences.

“Code Name: Ayalon”
premieres at the Israeli Film
Festival of Philadelphia on Oct.

29 (the festival was resched-
uled from the spring due to the
coronavirus). It will also run
at the Mandel JCC Cleveland
Jewish FilmFest, the Miami
Jewish Film Festival and more.

Broadcast reporter and
Cachet Communications
President Laurel Fairworth was
inspired to produce the film
during a mission to Israel in
2012 to honor her late mother.

She was assigned to a bus visiting
the Ayalon Institute Museum,
a museum built on the bullet
factory where the teens worked.

“I would never have chosen,
in all fairness, a bullet factory
from the ’40s to go visit, but I
was assigned that bus, and we
went and I was enchanted by
what I found,” she said.

She learned the story of
a group of scouts who were
selected by the Haganah for a
mission they knew could cost
them their lives.

“They said, ‘We want you
to take on this dangerous
mission. We can’t tell you what
it is, but you all have to agree. If
anyone says no, we can’t go for
it — in other words, it has to be
unanimous,’” Fairworth said.

“And they said yes. They
agreed to take this on before
knowing what it was they were
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM “Code Name: Ayalon” will premiere at the Israeli Film Festival of
Philadelphia. Courtesy of Laurel Fairworth.

If you ever make a documentary, don’t
make it about a secret factory. There’s no
documentation of secret stuff.”
MICHAEL LOPATIN
going to be asked to do,” she
continued. In 1945, the Haganah built
a factory under a kibbutz on
the outskirts of Rehovot, a
small town 30 minutes from
Tel Aviv. The teenagers would
live there and produce 2.5
million bullets to be smuggled
to Jewish freedom fighters
preparing to fight Arab forces
for independence.

It had to be done in complete
secret due to rising political
tensions in the region — the
British were trying to keep
peace by banning weapons
manufacturing. If they were
caught by British forces, they
would be hanged, and if they
were caught by Arab forces,
they would be blown up.

Their mission was ultimately
a success, and Prime Minister
David Ben-Gurion credited
those 2.5 million bullets with
saving the state of Israel.

This, Fairworth thought, would
make a great documentary.

After a few months of delib-
eration, she decided to take on
the project. Michael Lopatin,
president of Ralph Lopatin
Productions and creative
director for the Marlo Group in
Los Angeles, joined as a director.

Initially, finding material to
work with was difficult.

“If you ever make a documen-
tary, don’t make it about a secret
factory. There’s no documenta-
tion of secret stuff,” said Lopatin,
who lives in Merion.

Through Fairworth’s
contacts at CNN, the produc-
tion team was able to track
down the last 10 survivors who
worked at the factory and hired
interviewers to speak with
them about their experiences.

“We commissioned these
interviews and got them on
tape and that became the
jumping off point,” Lopatin
said. “They were able to frame
the story pretty completely.”
He wanted the film to focus
mainly on the factory worker’s
memories. “We wanted the least
amount of narration as possible
and the most amount of survi-
vors to tell the story,” he said.

The former bullet manufac-
turers were happy to talk about
their work, but they had kept it
JEWISH EXPONENT
mostly quiet for decades since
the Haganah had impressed
upon them the importance of
secrecy. They also didn’t feel
like they had done anything
particularly heroic.

“They said, ‘They told us to
keep it a secret and once we left
we just never thought to tell
anyone,’” Fairworth said.

Composer Rodney Whittenberg,
who runs the recording studio
MelodyVision in Plymouth
Meeting, joined the team to
provide the documentary’s
soundtrack. “Being African American,
I’ve often found a fondness or
a connection to Jewish culture.

And so the story of the oppres-
sion of the Jews, both at the
end of World War II in Europe,
but also being occupied by the
British, it just struck me as a
story that I would like to be
involved in telling, like how
people found a way to covertly
protect themselves,” he said.

Whittenberg composed
tracks that incorporated
elements of Eastern European
klezmer and orchestral music,
as well as Middle Eastern
music and modern electronic
percussion. He focused on creating a
constant sense of tension to
convey what was at stake for
the young workers.

“If they got caught, it would
mean the fall of this new
country that they were trying
to create,” he said. l
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