Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

My friend Harry has carefully cultivated an online persona of professional hater. The late View From Here Podcast, alav ha-shalom, for example, was an epic compendium of Things That Suck According to Harry. Harry is a fierce cultural critic, fearlessly knighting into the Order of Suck gay-bashing Charedi Jews, hipster DJs MisShapes, Asian garden beetles and any and every loathsome black heel mark on the sparkling white tile floor of tolerability. No man, woman, living creature or abstract idea is safe from Harry’s discerning eye.

But if you hang out with Harry, you’ll find that beneath his rough, brown and fuzzy exterior, there is a wealth of delicious, brightly colored love (guess who just ate a kiwi). That’s right. Harry loves things. Among the recipients of Harry’s elusive affection and rare seal of approval are hummus, kubeh soup, his wife Ziva, comic books, melodic power pop, dogs, Israel and martial arts movies. But there is one greater, overriding love, a love for the ages, a love (and burrito) supreme. What is it?

Zombies.

Yes, Harry loves zombies. But Harry is not content merely to love and cherish the walking undead, he feels compelled to spread their Gospel, to walk the earth as a zombievangelical, illuminating, and feasting on, the minds of the living. And I am one of Harry’s victims.

It started out innocently enough, a discussion about the merits of shambling traditional “Dawn of the Dead” zombies vs. agile, vicious “28 Days Later” zombies-on-crack here, a plot outline for an Israeli zombie movie there. But it was inevitable that the minor flesh wound of zombiemania Harry bestowed upon me would blossom into a full-on zombifying infection, forcing my loved ones to ruthlessly dispatch of me before I went for someone’s brain (while crying. Of course while crying). And the catalyst? When Harry loaned me World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Written by Max Brooks, the progeny of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, World War Z provides a completely straight-faced future history account of the worldwide conflict against a rapidly-spreading zombie infection, as told in interview format by the survivors of the war. It’s chock full of clever and relevant political commentary, and also lots of zombie violence, and I will throw caution to the wind and resoundingly declare my eternal geekiness by declaring it fucking awesome.

And how I am sure that even as I write this, my blood coagulates in my veins and my rotting flesh begins to fall from my face? I know because I’ve begun to have zombie dreams. Like last night, wherein I dreamed that I was in a village on the edge of a forest where an uneasy truce with the zombies who occupied the forest had degenerated into a fullout brainmunching zombie battle (with mechs). I know it doesn’t make sense that zombies would agree to truces, but my subconscious has never been particularly coherent. Then the dream cut to a scene pretty much stolen from the book — I was in a submarine with a girl I know (although I don’t remember which girl, actually) and we watched, horrified, as a veritable army of the undead walked along the seafloor moving inexorably to land and certain carnage.

I think I liked it more when my dreams were excessively literal.

So let this post serve as a warning: be wary of Harry (it’s easy to remember because it rhymes). If you aren’t, you’ll wind up like me, determinedly shambling forth with the zombie armies waiting only for the taste of the hot brains of my next victim. Be afraid.