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"This is the first study of monstrosity in Jewish history from the Middle Ages to modernity. Drawing on Jewish history, literary studies, folklore, art history and the history of science, it examines both the historical depiction of Jews as monsters and the creative use of monstrous beings in Jewish culture. Jews have occupied a liminal position within European society and culture, being deeply immersed yet outsiders to it. For this reason, they were perceived in terms of otherness and were often represented as monstrous beings. However, at the same time, European Jews invoked, with tantalizing ubiquity, images of magical, terrifying and hybrid beings in their texts, art and folktales. These images were used by Jewish authors and artists to push back against their own identification as monstrous or diabolical and to tackle concerns about religious persecution, assimilation and acculturation, gender and sexuality, science and technology and the rise of antisemitism. Bringing together an impressive cast of contributors from around the world, this fascinating volume is an invaluable resource for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in Jewish studies, as well as the history of monsters."-- Chapter 5: A Jewish Frankenstein: Making Monsters in Modernist German GrotesquesThe Operated Jew; The Operated Goy; Monstrous Endings; Notes; Chapter 6: From Sexual Enlightenment to Racial Antisemitism: Gender, Sex, and Jewishness in Weimar Cinema's Monsters; Weimar Film and the Monster; Early German Film, Sexology, and the Jews; Sexual Enlightenment: Different from the Others and Girls in Uniform; Race and Sexual Ambiguity: Fritz Lang's M; Racializing Queerness: Friedrich Murnau's Nosferatu and Tabu versus Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr; Notes Chapter 7: Monsters in the Testimonies of Holocaust SurvivorsUnmask; Unreal; Discovery; Conclusion; Notes; Part Two: The Monster Within: Monsters in Jewish Intracommunal Discourse; Chapter 8: Unearthing the "Children of Cain": Between Humans, Animals, and Demons in Medieval Jewish Culture; "Jewish Geography" in Seder rabbah de-Bereshit; Demonizing Tevel; Humanizing Tevel; Tevel and the Antipodes; Notes; Chapter 9: Sexuality and Communal Space in Stories about the Marriage of Men and She-Demons; Jewish Versions of the Theme; Early Modern Old-Yiddish Narratives Concretizations of Time and Place and their MeaningsHuman and Demonic Figures; Sexual Descriptions and Halakhic Discourse; Demonic Marriage and Communal Identities; Notes; Chapter 10: The Raging Rabbi: Aggression and Agency in an Early Modern Yiddish Werewolf Tale (Mayse-bukh 1602); Medieval Werewolf Tales; The Werewolf Tale in the Mayse-bukh; Misogyny and Male Bonding; Autonomy and Violence; Notes; Chapter 11: Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings; Notes; Chapter 12: Rabbinic Monsters: The World of Wonder and Rabbinic Culture at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century; Notes Intro; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; List of Illustrations; List of Contributors; Acknowledgments; Note on Transliterations; Introduction: Writing a History of Horror, or What Happens When Monsters Stare Back; Notes; Part One: The Monster Without: Monsters in Jewish-Christian Intercultural Discourse; Chapter 1: Enge unpathas uncuð gelad: The Long Walk to Freedom; Entas wæron eac swylce ofer eorðan on ðam dagum [Giants were over the earth in those days.]; Enge unpaðas, uncuð gelad [Narrow path, unknown way] Swa hwylcne man swa hy gelæccað þonne fretað hi hyne45 [Certainly, any person they catch, they eat.]Hreopon mearcweardas middum nihtum [The borderlands' people cried out in the middle of the night]77; Notes; Chapter 2: Monsters, Demons, and Jews in the Painting of Hieronymus Bosch; Notes; Chapter 3: Bestial Bodies on the Jewish Margins: Race, Ethnicity, and Otherness in Medieval Manuscripts Illuminated for Jews; Notes; Chapter 4: Demonic Entanglements: Matted Hair in Medieval and Early Modern, Western, and Eastern Ashkenaz; Notes
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