Based on a now-obscure bit of Jewish (and Near Eastern) lore about a demon named Abyzou, the horror movie The Offering has as its central characters an American ḥasidic family. Chaya Sara Oppenheim notes in her review that—unlike so many cinematic and television portraits of Ḥaredim—this one is both sympathetic and attuned to the nuances of Orthodox life:

Saul Feinberg (Allan Corduner), the ḥasidic owner of a funeral home in the heart of Brooklyn, asks his irreligious son Arthur (Nick Blood) to assist in the preparation of a dead body. The deceased is an older man named Yossile (Anton Trendafilov), who died sealing a demon in his own body. Unbeknownst to the Feinbergs, the evil spirit is about to be set free.

For the observant Jewish viewer, The Offering delivers an added layer of nuance concealed in an otherwise commercial horror movie. After lighting the Sabbath candles in front of a framed photograph of his late wife, Saul explains to [Arthur’s Gentile wife] Claire that men sing to their wives every Friday night, lauding the women for their inner beauty. “We’re a very misunderstood people,” he says. “It’s the burden of investing so much in internal meaning. It’s hard for outsiders to see.”

Saul’s statement is more than a reference to the often-misconstrued portrayal of Ḥasidim in contemporary media. The film is replete with pregnant allusions founded on the kabbalistic premises that guide ḥasidic life and place importance on the inner depths of our worldly realm. It is no coincidence that the Feinberg family sits down to eat kreplach—dumplings traditionally eaten before Yom Kippur as a meditation on our outer and inner selves before our fates are sealed. In another pivotal scene, a dark shadow sweeps the hallway, and the mezuzah on the doorpost breaks violently in half—a signal that the holy parchment enclosed in the wooden case has been compromised and the spiritual protection over the house has disappeared.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.