Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History

Iris Idelson-Shein is Gerda Henkel Research Fellow at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She is the author of Difference of a Different Kind: Jewish Constructions of Race During the Long Eighteenth Century (2014).Christian Wiese holds the Martin Buber Chair in Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is the editor, together with Cornelia Wilhelm, of American Jewry: Transcending the European Experience? (Bloomsbury, 2016).

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction: Writing a Jewish History of Horror, or What Happens When Monsters Stare Back, Iris Idelson-Shein (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany)Part I: The Monster Without: Monsters in Jewish-Christian Inter-Cultural Discourse1. Monsters, Demons and Jews in the Painting of Hieronymus Bosch, Debra Higgs Strickland (University of Glasgow, UK)2. Bestial Bodies on the Jewish Margins: Race, Ethnicity and Otherness in Medieval Manuscripts Illuminated for Jews, Marc Michael Epstein (Vassar College, USA)3. enge unpathas uncuð gelad: The Long Walk to Freedom, Asa Simon Mittman (California State University, Chico, USA) and Miriamne Ara Krummel (University of Dayton, USA)4. Demonic Entanglements: Contextualisations of Matted Hair in Medieval and Early Modern Western and Eastern Ashkenaz, François Guesnet (University College London, UK)5. A Jewish Frankenstein: Making Monsters in Modernist German Grotesques, Joela Jacobs (University of Arizona, USA)6. “Der Volf” or the Jew as Out(side of the)law, Jay Geller (Vanderbilt University, USA)7. Stranger in the House: Gender, Sex and Jewishness in Weimar Cinema’s Monsters, Cathy Gelbin (University of Manchester, UK)8. Monsters in the Testimonies of Holocaust Survivors, Kobi Kabalek (University of Haifa, Israel)Part II: The Monster Within: Monsters in Jewish Intra-Communal Discourse9. Unearthing the 'Children of Cain': Between Human, Animal, and Demon in Medieval Jewish Culture, David I. Shyovitz (Northwestern University, USA)10. Sexuality and Communal Space in Stories about the Marriage of Men and She-Demons, David Rotman (Achva Academic College, Israel) 11. The Raging Rabbi: Aggression and Agency in an Early Modern Yiddish Werewolf Tale, Astrid Lembke (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)12. Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings, David B. Ruderman (University of Pennsylvania, USA)13. Sexorcism: On the Sexual Dimensions of Jewish Exorcism Techniques, J. H. Chajes (University of Haifa, Israel)14. Rabbinic Monsters: The World of Wonder and Rabbinic Writings at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century, Maoz Kahana (Tel Aviv University, Israel)15. End of the Demons?: Isaac Bashevis Singer's Reflections on the Eclipse of Demons and Monsters by Human Evil in the 20th Century, Christian Wiese (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany)Index

[An] excellent addition to the scholarly study of monsters … Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History presents an engaging, multi-sided dialogue … [This] book will be of interest to scholars of Judaism, medieval Europe, religion, film studies, art history, monster studies, and related disciplines.