The supernatural

Dybbuks, devils, imps, and evil spirits populate these stories in a recurrent pattern. In The Gentleman from Cracow, for example, Satan rides into the Polish town of Frampol in a splendid carriage, posed as a wealthy physician from Warsaw. He buys flour for the struggling bakery and hands out gold coins to the residents. Mothers groom trheir daughters in hopes they may become his bride. The rabbi warns the Jews that evil is afoot. At a huge feast, Satan brings down lightening bolts that set fire to the town, which burns to the ground in a blinding rainstorm. In The Dead Fiddler, a woman is possessed by not one but two dybbuks until an exorcism is performed by the rabbi. In other stories, there is usually a sense of an inchoate evil in the world and in other men that isn't always objectified in the form of...