Just a few weeks before the Jewish New Year, a new horror film, "The Possession," about the take-over of an eleven-year-old girl by a dybbuk, a malevolent spirit from Jewish folklore, opened as the highest grossing film of the Labor Day holiday weekend.

What does it mean that a film possessed by a dybbuk is number one? Are Jews still that foreign and frightening? Or is this "box" office success just another sign of our acceptance in America?
 
The plot finds the film's protagonist, Em, at a yard sale where she is drawn to a sealed box with Hebrew carving on it. Naturally, (Or should I say "supernaturally"?) she takes the box home, figures out how to open it, and by uneasy degrees is overtaken by the malevolent spirit inside.

Based on a 2004 Los Angeles Times story, "A Jinx in a Box?" by Leslie Gornstein, the film also draws some of its gloomy, outre energy from the famous Yiddish S. Ansky play, "The Dybbuk," where a rabbi is also called upon to exorcise the evil spirit.

According to a story in the Hollywood Reporter, the film along with playing "heavily to young girls and younger women," is "over-indexing in Hispanic Catholic markets." Hopefully these filmgoers, as well as others are simply seeing the plot as a crossover from the Catholicism-influenced "Exorcist"--Jews as just another religious group with weird beliefs--and not as a tale of creepy Jewish influence that threatens to take you over.

Watching the film, I wondered what Jews would make of it. We've grown accustomed to seeing elements of Jewish culture playing out on the screen in comedies like the "Focker" series, even thrillers like the "Marathon Man", or a tragedy like "The Diary of Anne Frank,"--but horror?

Surprisingly, there is precedent-- the tale of the Golem--about a giant protector of the Jewish community that a rabbi makes from clay--was made into a silent film in 1920.

Each film has an element of Jewish folktale that says: there is something about us that you don't understand and cannot fully be controlled. For some, including Jews, that may be the thing that generates the fear.

If so, how does "The Possession" play into our own preoccupations; mystical or mundane? By releasing the film at this time of year, were the producers simply taking advantage of a lull in blockbuster releases, or could they possibly have had a Jewish New Year tie-in in mind?

Not that any of us expect to encounter a dybbuk in shul saying "Ashamnu," "We have trespassed," but a few weeks before the Days of Awe, would I take the box home? Sure, it would fit right in.

The High Holy Day period in Jewish life is already filled with life/death symbolism and soul searching. It's a traditional time to visit the graves of our loved ones and the Yom Kippur liturgy is filled with references to the sefer chayim, the book of life; an image that is hard to ignore.

The days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur--called the Ten Days of Repentance--a period when we are asked to look into our mess-ups of the year and make amends might even prove an excellent time to open the box, so to speak, and let the horror out.

But of course the "possession" part is just silly--a bubbe meise-an old wives' tale.  Besides, at the High Holy Days, we are way too busy with consuming apples and honey for a sweet new year, and tossing our breadcrumb sins into water, to believe any of that folklore nonsense.