If you’re going to be ready to deal with demons and dybbuks, you need your gear. Right? Right! Last year I got to teach a class on Jewish monsters for the high school students at Temple Beth Emeth in Ann Arbor, Michigan. To make the class more fun I built some gear boxes and filled them with everything a Jewish monster hunter needs.
I’m a big fan of Larry Coreia’s urban fantasy “Monster Hunter International.” One of the minor characters is a Jewish monster hunter named Mordechai Byreika, who was born in Poland and died during WWII. I had fun imaging that these were his gear boxes. I modeled them after vintage ammunition boxes. The front stencil reads, in Yiddish, “Religious Items. For Non-military use. Republic of Poland 1918.”
The first box is loaded with gear including a Jewish exorcism kit, hardwood ash for seeing demons, gear for dealing with estries (Jewish vampires), anti-Lilith amulets, and bunch of other great stuff. I’ll detail it in later blog posts.
The other box was loaded with books. Obviously. An old family Tanach, Sefer Yetzirah and Sefer HaRazim, the Sword of Moses and the Books of Enoch and a bunch more. Again, I’ll detail them all in later posts.
Jewish Monster Hunting 