The Yiddish language is often treated as humorous or nostalgic in television and in movies. As an ancestral language associated with trauma and dispossession, Yiddish on screen additionally reconstructs haunted and mystical elements of the Jewish experience. The Yiddish Supernatural on Screen examines how Yiddish is used to reimagine Jewish lore and tells new stories of migration and dislocation where the supernatural looms over the narrative. The book talk considers the transformation of the figure of the dybbuk—a soul of the dead possessing the living—from folklore to 1930s Polish Yiddish cinema and on to global contemporary media; spoken Yiddish as a mystical cypher within the horror genre; and how immigrant or pre-immigrant pasts informs the present in prologues to comedy film and television such as A Serious Man.

Professor Rebecca (Rivke) Margolis is the Pratt Foundation Chair of Jewish Civilisation at Monash University, Melbourne. Her research explores Yiddish cultural production across the past century, including literature, theatre, film, and television. She is the author of The Yiddish Supernatural on Screen: Dybbuks, Demons and a Haunted Jewish Past; Yiddish Lives On: Strategies of Language Transmission; Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1905-1945; and Basic Yiddish: A Grammar and Workbook.

Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 4 PM
The Yiddish Supernatural on Screen: Dybbuks, Demons and Haunted Jewish Pasts

Rebecca Margolis (Monash University)
Moderator: Todd Presner (UCLA)

Michael and Irene Ross Program in Yiddish Studies

RSVP