The Yiddish Supernatural on Screen

Reviews / Votes

A welcome addition to the scholarship on Jewish cinema and television and the representation of Jews, Jewishness and Judaism on screen, The Yiddish Supernatural on Screen: Dybbuks, Demons and Haunted Jewish Pasts by Rebecca Margolis takes a particularly timely topic as its subject: how screen production in Yiddish reconstructs magical pasts and haunted presents within global film and television. Very much recommended. -- Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor University, Wales and author of <i>The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema</i> Twenty-first century Yiddish cinema is full of ghosts. In this brilliant study, Rebecca Margolis simultaneously introduces the contemporary genre of Yiddish Supernatural film and sheds new light on the continued relevance of a language caught between past and present. Yiddish speaking characters are haunted by treacherous pasts and in turn haunt the contemporary world. By turning our attention to a recent genre in Yiddish art, one that includes remakes, new cinema, and cameo preludes, Margolis offers a fresh take on the meaning of Yiddish eighty years after the Holocaust. -- Amelia M. Glaser, UC San Diego