We also find Jewish tales of female vampires, or estries, and some have suggested that Adam’s first wife Lilith was one of them. Estries are typically beautiful and seductive, like succubi, and they gain powers of flight when they loosen their long hair. They are also able to transform at will into cats, birds or other creatures, making them especially capable of trapping their prey. So how do we understand the presence of these monsters in Jewish lore? First off, we can’t be so sure that the creatures are to be considered Jewish simply because they appear in Jewish stories. Thus, the encomium to keep kosher would never have applied to them. More importantly, I think, thanks to an early understanding of epidemiology, Jews equated bloodsucking with monsters because consuming the blood of any living creature was considered a dangerous, and thus monstrous, practice. The didactic element of Jewish stories, therefore, was alive and well in these stories. Why would anyone want to drink blood, or spend too much time with a corpse, if the practices were equated with such evil?