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In ‘The Offering,’ the latest Yiddish-inflected horror movie, a Jewish spirit haunts Hasidic Brooklyn

(JTA) — British filmmaker Oliver Park isn’t Jewish, but he does have a deep appreciation for the Jewish roots of the horror genre that informed his work on “The Offering,” his feature debut as director about an ancient demon set in a Hasidic enclave in Brooklyn.

“Jewish horror stories have been around for thousands of years,” Park told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “All of these fantastic and rich stories come from this Jewish space.”

The first horror movie franchise, he points out, centered on the Jewish Golem monster and was produced in the 1910s, years before “Nosferatu,” the well-known silent vampire film from 1922.

The legend of the Golem, said to have originated in 16th-century Prague, has been credited with inspiring “Frankenstein.”

“Having been a lifelong fan, obsessed horror nut that I am, I’ve always wanted to get into the Jewish space,” Park said.

The demon in “The Offering” is known as Abyzou. “She is this very, very old ancient demon. For all we know, she could be Lilith herself,” Park said, referring to a spirit of darkness and sexuality found in biblical and Talmudic texts.

In the film, which hits theaters and on-demand platforms on Friday (the 13th), a young man (Nick Blood) brings his pregnant, non-Jewish fiancé (Emily Weisman) to meet his long-estranged father (Allan Corduner), a Hasidic man who works at a funeral home and morgue in Brooklyn. Long-buried tensions are revealed and revisited, and there are several lines of Yiddish dialogue.

The screenwriter and producer, Hank Hoffman, is the son of a rabbi and has a background in Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. The main producer, Jonathan “Yoni” Yunger, comes from a Jewish background as well. Hoffman worked in a morgue for a time in his youth.

“Both of them immediately, their brains just exploded with ideas,” Park said. The film was in the making for about six years. He called it “a passion project, and very much their baby.”

“The Offering” was shot in early 2021, with Bulgaria standing in for Brooklyn, and the production was able to continue during a particularly nasty stage of the pandemic. Park called the script “so rich with characters, and so rich with horror, and mythology and rituals, and the occult and esotericism, and all within this beautiful Jewish community.”

Theres has been a boom in the Jewish-themed horror realm in recent years. “The Vigil,” from 2020, took as its subject matter shemira, or the Jewish ritual of watching over a dead body. “The Unborn” was a dybbuk-themed horror movie that came out in 2009 — featuring Gary Oldman as a rabbi — and in 2021, a movie called “Dybbuk” was made in India, in Hindi. That was itself a remake of a 2017 film called “Ezra,” which was made in Malayalam, an Indian language, and involved an Indian Jewish protagonist.

“I’m so excited that in the last 30 or so years, they’ve slowly trickled back through and we’re seeing more and more of them now,” Park said of Jewish-themed horror movies. “So I’m really hoping that there are many more terrifying and disturbing tales that are inspired richly in Jewish folklore.”

Lead actor Nick Blood may have a perfect name for horror — “I think I’m destined to play Dracula one day,” he said — but he described himself as not particularly an enthusiast of the genre. However, he told JTA that the director and writers’ “passion for it convinced me straight away” to star in the film.

Blood said he had some Zoom sessions with a Yiddish teacher in New York, who helped him get words and pronunciations right. Some of the spells and incantations used in the film were in Aramaic, a language with which Hoffman, the screenwriter, is familiar.

“The Offering,” which premiered at festivals last year, comes from Millennium Films, founded by the Israeli-American producer Avi Lerner. Corduner, who plays the father, was raised Jewish, as was actor Paul Kaye (who played Thoros of Myr on “Game of Thrones”), actor Daniel Ben-Zenou and several background actors in the film.

Park and Blood both said that the Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man” was frequently cited in the production of “The Offering,” and not only because of a scene in which a Kabbalah passage appears inside a dead body — much like the Hebrew passage engraved on a dental patient’s teeth in the Coens’ very Jewish movie. In the opening scene of “A Serious Man,” a possible dybbuk appears in a 19th-century shtetl.

“There was an enormous amount of inspiration taken from that film,” Park said.


The post In ‘The Offering,’ the latest Yiddish-inflected horror movie, a Jewish spirit haunts Hasidic Brooklyn appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Jon Stewart, Here Is Your Chance to Be a Mensch

Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” on April 8, 2024. Photo: Screenshot

There is no doubt that Jon Stewart has great comedic ability and the gift of gab. In a sneak attack many years ago, he had a mic drop moment where he destroyed Tucker Carlson’s show CrossFire, telling him to stop hurting America. At that time, all Carlson did was have an aggressive political debate show — he wasn’t spewing Jew-hatred and conspiracy theories.

Stewart, who must know something about antisemitism because he felt a need to change his name from Leibowitz to Stewart, raised The Daily Show to great heights and came out of retirement ostensibly to try to make sure that President Trump is lampooned.

I know Jon Stewart is a person who cares about justice, because he fought very hard for the rights of 9/11 firefighters. The passion Stewart showed and his ability to speak truth to power was unrivaled. Some even thought he even had the potential to be a president one day. If Ukraine can have a president that was a comedian, why not America?

Of course, Stewart would be good if his focus was justice. It isn’t always. Sometimes, it’s only about haranguing Trump, no matter what. How about a few shows against antisemitism. He took on Tucker Carlson once. Why not do it again? While Tucker’s no longer wearing a bowtie, he’s saying he was attacked by a demon and Candace Owens is making claims about time machines. What about a one-hour Netflix or Apple TV+ show lambasting them both. It would be monumental.

But Stewart is hoping that Carlson and Owens continue to wreak havoc, and benefit the Democratic Party. And with only a few more years of Trump, those who want to vilify him want to get their last shots in and may not want to divert to something else. I believe that Stewart is against antisemitism. But he should call it out on all sides, and not mock Israel, a country that faced genocidal terrorists who would kill every Jew if they had the weapons to do so.

Jon Stewart is 63 and mentally sharp. He is capable of much better jokes than about physical appearance, which he recently used to attack Sid Rosenberg. Stewart would be better off criticizing Rosenberg’s positions, or perhaps that’s a bit more difficult these days.

If Stewart really wants to advance justice, he could start by attacking antisemites and racists, on both the right and left. He has the rare talent to do it in an impressive way.

Jon Stewart was the greatest mensch when he fought for firefighters. This is his time to do it again.

The author is a writer based in New York.

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Fatah Glorified Munich Olympics Massacre Ahead of 2026 Winter Olympics

An image of one of the Palestinian terrorists who took part in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

While the world was preparing to celebrate the Olympic Games in Italy, Fatah celebrated Olympic blood in Munich.

Just two weeks before the opening of this year’s Winter Olympics, Fatah — the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s ruling party — chose to revive and celebrate the most infamous act of Olympic terrorism in history: the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were murdered.

On its Facebook page, Fatah’s Commission of Information and Culture posted a segment from its Awdah TV channel, glorifying the massacre as “a surprise Israel had not experienced before” and recounting how terrorists, whom she called “self-sacrificing fighters,” infiltrated the Olympic Village, seized Israeli hostages, and issued demands.

Responsibility for the murders was subtly shifted away from the terrorists, while the operation was presented as daring and historic:

Fatah-run Awdah TV host:“In September 1972, Israel was about to receive a surprise it had not experienced before. Eight self-sacrificing fighters [i.e., terrorists] invaded the quarters of the Israeli sports delegation that was participating in the Olympic Games in the German city of Munich. They captured nine Israelis and demanded to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners [i.e., terrorists] who were in the Israeli prisons in exchange for the release of the hostages. Israel refused to negotiate, and the hostages were killed.”

[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, Jan. 22, 2026]

On the same day, Fatah’s Commission of Information and Culture also lionized the architect of the Munich massacre, Ali Hassan Salameh, as “The Red Prince.”

Fatah described him as a brilliant “security mind” and strategic genius whose operations allegedly “embarrassed Israel:”

Text on screen: “The Red Prince, the commander whom the Mossad pursued for years. Ali Hassan Salameh was not a shadowy figure, but rather a security mind who created a secret battle …

He joined Fatah in the mid-1960s and was among its first security personnel. He quickly stood out for his organizational wisdom and ability, and sensitive missions were entrusted to him … He led the security activity of the revolution outside Palestine and built a complex defense network that embarrassed Israel. He became a central target of the Mossad, and his name topped the assassination lists.

[Then Israeli Prime Minister] Golda Meir gave the order to eliminate him, and the pursuit after him crossed continents … On Jan. 22, 1979, the Mossad assassinated him in Beirut using a car bomb. His assassination did not put an end to his presence, rather it established his status as one of the most dangerous minds of the revolution. Ali Hassan Salameh, a security commander and one of the symbols of the hidden strugglewith the occupation.” [emphasis added]

Posted text:“The Red Prince Ali Hassan Salameh, the commander whom the Mossad pursued for years”

[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, Jan. 22, 2026]

Even more than 54 years later, the PA’s ruling party still treats the Munich Olympics massacre as a legacy to be celebrated.

By deliberately highlighting this massacre just before the Milano Winter Olympics, Fatah yet again shows how it is proud to promote terrorists and terrorism.

Ephraim D. Tepler is a researcher at Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), where a version of this article first appeared.

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How NPR Whitewashes the Palestinian Authority’s ‘Pay-for-Slay’ Program

Stuart and Robbi Force (left), parents of Taylor Force, with Reps. Doug Lamborn and Lee Zeldin. Taylor Force was killed by a Palestinian terrorist while visiting Israel. Photo: Algemeiner.

Even for NPR, the latest segment on its popular “All Things Considered” program crossed the line.

Headlined “Palestinian Authority tries to reform, but one measure is sparking a backlash,” the segment focused on the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s controversial “pay-for-slay” program, where imprisoned Palestinian terrorists and their families, or the families of Palestinians who were killed while committing acts of terrorism or trying to harm Israeli security forces, receive financial stipends.

However, instead of taking a critical look at “pay-for-slay,” NPR provided cover for the insidious PA program.

To begin, NPR immediately whitewashed the program in the subheading, referring to it merely as “payments to families whose relatives are killed or jailed by Israel.”

There was zero mention of the fact that this program incentivizes violence and terrorism by paying out more to families of terrorists than the PA’s regular social welfare pay-outs. In addition, there was no mention that these payments are based on the length of prison sentences rather than actual financial need.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Throughout the story, NPR’s Emily Feng downplayed the vile nature of “pay-for-slay.”

“Pay-for-slay” wasn’t presented as a dangerous incentive for the murder of innocent Israelis, which was the target of American legislation (The Taylor Force Act).

Instead, the program was merely characterized as “controversial.” But using public funds to incentivize terrorism is something much more grave and consequential.

Along with this false characterization, NPR also portrayed the truth about the program as Israeli criticisms that “the PA pushes back against.”

It would be hard to find a more watered-down depiction of “pay-for-slay.”

Further on in the segment, Feng interviewed a Palestinian woman named Inaan who was receiving a monthly payment of 1,400 shekels ($440) since her son had been killed by the IDF.

This doesn’t seem like a lot of money. However, Feng failed to inform her audience that this is only the payment for family members of those killed by Israeli security forces (after a one-time payment of 6,000 shekels).

Terrorists in Israeli prisons can receive up to 12,000 shekels (roughly $3,900) per month.

This presentation of the monthly payments being inconsequential and of limited value is further emphasized by Feng’s next interviewee, Qadura Fares, who is quoted as saying, “The money — it’s mean [sic] nothing for those have believed [sic] that this occupation should be ended and to fight the occupation.”

Fares is the former head of the PA’s prisoners’ affairs commission. In passing, NPR also informed its audience that Fares served time in Israeli prison for “trying to kill Israeli soldiers.”

That’s right, NPR platformed a convicted terrorist.

Perhaps the words of someone who used to target Israelis should be taken with a grain of salt when discussing payments for imprisoned terrorists.

Fares resigned from his position after PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced an end to the “pay-for-slay” policy, stating that the only recipients would now be those who require economic assistance. Many groups, including Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), have provided documentation that the PA is still continuing “pay-for-slay” — though the PA is trying to hide the payments.

Along with Fares, Feng interviewed a couple of other Palestinians who were upset with this alleged reform and complained that the new system is not working properly.

What Feng failed to inform her audience is that this “reform” is alleged by analysts like PMW to be a ruse, with Abbas promising a Palestinian audience that imprisoned terrorists and the families of “martyrs” would continue to receive funds, and that the “reform” is more of a restructuring than an outright end to “pay-for-slay.”

Nearly a year after this “reform” was announced, many beneficiaries were still reportedly receiving their payments.

Perhaps the cherry on top is when Feng referred to the alleged reform as “trying to please outside powers.” As if the program didn’t require serious reform, but rather that the PA capitulated to foreign interference.

A whitewash indeed.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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