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Shadows lengthen, the cool air begins to bite, trees do their best Van Gogh impression and somewhere in the distance a synthy John Carpenter score is playing – Halloween cometh. A holiday as ancient as Irish paganism took America by storm in the early 20th century where it was more playful than spooky and captured the libidinal imagination with creature features and hard-core horror films as the century grew on. This holiday, both celebrating and recoiling at the notion that the barrier between the living and the dead is at its thinnest on October 31 has no real analog in Judaism. In fact, orthodox Judaism would likely consider its celebration by Jews as “avodah zarah,” tantamount to paganism. Reboot Network member Dr. Justin Sledge expands on why Jews don’t celebrate Halloween and explores Jewish mystical rituals that are Halloween aligned in his blog. Read more here.

As we prepare for Yom Kippur and the ritual of the fast, we are looking around the world for inspiration for the Break Fast. While noodle kugel and blintz casserole may be a fan favorite for some families and communities, there are many other traditions. Dietician and food writer Micah Siva has shared some tips with Reboot with inspiration from Break Fast menus of Jewish communities far and wide. Read more here and download our High Holidays Resource Guide here.

2021 was a busy, big year for Reboot. We look back on the last 12 months with a deep breath of accomplishment while digesting all the high-quality and exciting work we have done and how we have grown as an organization.

Instead of slowing us down, the challenges of the pandemic forced us to change. We grew the quality and quantity of our projects, finding new ways to connect with and deeply engage new audiences.

We often turn the lens on ourselves to make sure that we have impact, and we have found through evaluations that our work is resonating with participants and helping them lead richer Jewish lives. In 2021, we more than tripled the number of new projects and vastly increased the number of participants in our programs, bringing us to nearly 4 million viewers/participants in the past 24 months.

Reviving the 1920s film, The Golem: How He Came Into the World, Reboot reimagined the classic horror film as eight-part episodic series, each segment newly scored by renowned musicians and hosted by leading scholars, composers and film historians. Together, they explored the film’s lasting impact, its haunting music and its rich connections to Jewish history, occultism, Hollywood, tradition and astrology. In this episode, scored by Threshing Floor, we explore the themes of magic and mystics, Jewish folklore, Talmud and philosophy with Dr. Justin Sledge, a professor of philosophy and religion in the Metro-Detroit area. He looks at the mystical spiritual leader Judah Loew ben Bezalel or “Rabbi Lowe” in The Golem film, who, in an effort to protect his people and avoid their expulsion, creates a massive warrior out of clay, using magic to bring him to life. Watch here.

Episode number two features a score from Jeremiah Lockwood, Meg Baird and Charlie Saufley. In this episode, we explore themes of music and mysticism and the interpretation of image through musical score, looking at the relationship between sound and image with Jeremiah Lockwood, a student of Jewish Mysticism and the blues. Film is a medium greatly focused on the image. But the music and the words that undergird those images are equally important in cinematic storytelling. And in the world of silent film, the music carries that entire load. Watch here.

In this episode scored by Michael Morley, we look at different iterations of the Golem throughout film, myth and pop culture. The world of mysticism draws us all in and as we see in The Golem, the power of magic is often used to animate a great story. In his creation from mud, we see connections to the Genesis story through Frankenstein’s monster. But what draws us to those mysteries beyond our comprehension? We delve into the question with Mitch Horowitz, a historian of alternative spirituality, Award-winning author, and a writer-in-residence at the New York Public Library. Watch here.