Film als Midrasch

The book explores the conscious usage of Jewish mystical themes and motifs in popular (as well as arthouse) cinema from the silent film era to the present. This historical, as well as geographic, arc spanning from Paul Wegener's Golem (1920) to films such as David Goyer's The Unborn (2009), Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012) or David Aronofsky's Noah (2014), is held together by a tightly argued and detailed discussion of both the kabbalist elements themselves and their presence in film and television. Organized in four interrelated parts, the study focuses on mystical secrets of the Hebrew alphabet (where each letter is attributed a numerical value and each number has a hidden meaning), the idea of the Dybbuk as an exiled soul looking for a bodily home, the Lurianic concepts of Tzimtzum (contraction) and Tikkun olam (repair of the world) and, finally, the legend of the Golem, whose Prague origins have been reworked not only in numerous movies but also in popular US television shows including the X-Files and The Simpsons.