Rabbi Menachem Weiman
Aish, no date
“The Shema, the declaration of one God, is what finally vanquishes the demon.”
Who knew that Judaism could scare the bejeebers out of you? The movie The Vigil shows it can. This unnerving film is frightening and thought provoking, and has a surprisingly authentic feel true to observant Judaism. And a good chunk of the dialogue is in Yiddish.
Spoilers ahead. The setting: a young man in Brooklyn suffered a severe tragedy from anti-Semites while he was living as a traditional Hassidic Jew. He has since left observance, yet his old rabbi still reaches out to him. The rabbi asks him if he’d accept a job offer for one night be a shomer, to sit vigil over a recently deceased old man, (it is the traditional custom not to leave the deceased alone until burial). The deceased is possessed by a demon called in Hebrew a “mazzik”, that haunts the old man due to his own trauma that he suffered during the Holocaust. The demon apparently seeks to switch from housing the deceased to haunting and housing the young man.
While the surreal illusions that make the young man feel as if he’s losing his mind are not part of Jewish tradition, the basics of the story and its depiction of negative spiritual forces are derived from Jewish sources. Let’s unpack some of salient Jewish points from the film.
Death and Dying
The passage from one realm to another for the soul is very intense for all who know the person. And despite the fact that the soul leaves the body, Jewish tradition states that the soul hovers near the body until burial. So while the body may lie cold on the table, there’s still an eerie feeling near the body. We treat the body with utmost respect since it housed the soul of our loved one.
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