Another reposted comment; about vampires

[xiphias]

So, over on weirdjews, someone asked the perennial question, "Do crosses work on Jewish vampires?"

Of course, several people pointed to Roman Polanski's movie, "The Fearless Vampire Killers", but after thinking about it, I came up with another answer:

On a slightly more serious note:

The vampire mythology as we currently have it, largely from Bram Stoker, is strongly Christaniocentric. The idea is that a vampire is someone who has sold their portion in Heavenly Life Everlasting for earthly life everlasting.

The vampire mythology is a mishmosh of various traditions, which, in general, take the "vampire" to be a being who has, in some way or another, given itself over to pure evil, trading its reward in the afterlife for power in the temporal world.

And all the things which defeat vampires are things which, in some tradition or another, are considered holy.

You can defeat a vampire with:
Sunlight
Crucifixes
Running Water
Crossroads
Garlic
Rowan Leaves or Branches


All of these things are things which are considered holy in some tradition or another.

You can also use burning and decapitation, but those are just general good things to try for anything -- those work against, y'know, people, too.

As good Anglicans, the characters in Bram Stoker's Dracula do not believe in the inherent holiness of the crucifix -- they believe that veneration of the crucifix as an inherently holy object is a form of idolatry. Nonetheless, the crucifix works for them.

So, a more serious answer:

It seems that, since the holy symbols of multiple traditions work, even for people who don't share that tradition, anything which has inherent sanctity would work. A mogen david does not have inherent holiness.

However, tefilin would work, and a vampire would likely be unable to pass a mezzuzah, even if he was invited into the house (again, the holy traditions of hospitality and guest-law in various traditions are in play there.)

The actual belief structure of the vampire would not come into play. A vampire is not Jewish. The person whose body the vampire inhabits may have been Jewish, but the vampire itself has no family ties, cultural ties, or religious ties -- it is outside the society and culture, and cannot be considered to have any religious life of its own. It has given all that up for temporal power.
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Comments

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

If blood is needed to exist, it becomes essential medicine. Preserving life is more important than the kosher laws, so it's not a problem at all. (Vampires would have an obligation to take a small amount from each donor, so as not to risk killing the donor...preserving life is not more important than the commandment against murder. And the ethics of consent could get very interesting.) Laura Antoniou does some interesting things with the idea of blood and kashrut in "Shayna Maidel."

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That includes a number of assumptions.

First: do vampires have nefesh? If they don't, then would pikuach nefesh apply?

Vampires, according to some mythologies, don't breathe, which means that they don't have ruach. And since nefesh is a higher form of soul than ruach, and builds upon that soul, then you could argue that they can't have nefesh. And therefore, they aren't subject to the rules on pikuach nefesh.

If a vampire is dead, then how can it use the rules on preserving life?