According to a recent survey by Estately, New Jersey residents should all run out and purchase copies of The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. The study concludes that New Jerseyans need to study the book more than anywhere else in America.

Estately based polling results on 11 criteria and New Jersey comes up dead last  behind 49 states and Washington D.C. “If the zombie apocalypse began today, and you live in New Jersey, the odds are 100% that you’ve already been bitten and have become a zombie,” the report said.

Survival rates were determined based on the number of active military personnel, military veterans, physically active martial arts enthusiasts, people with survival skills, people with zombie knowledge, laser tag enthusiasts, gun owners, paintball enthusiasts, and triathletes in each state. Obesity was also factored in.

Each state was ranked 1-50 in each category and the lower the state’s total, the better they faired. According to the study, New Jersey is 400 percent riskier to live in than Alaska when it comes to dealing with the possibility of the undead coming after you.

Although the idea of the animated dead is in direct opposition to the idea of kavod ha’met, the undead do crop up in some Jewish lore and literature, Jewish undead spring not from a virus or saliva, as is traditional in zombie lore, but rather from the usage of names of power written on paper and somehow tied to a body. Once ‘living,’ they divulge secrets not available to the living. There are also dybbuks and demons and other mystical creatures found in Jewish literature.

One story in Jewish tradition involves reanimation of a bride through a wedding ring. The Ari, R’ Isaac Luria, wrote of a young man in a forest who, while practicing his wedding vows, places a ring onto what he thinks is a stick poking from the ground. Lo and behold, the stick is a skeletal finger and a corpse bride pulls herself from the ground. A philosophical debate regarding the halachic status of the marriage ensues and, after a rabbinic council declares the marriage to be null, the corpse bride shrieks and crumbles to dust. (Was this their solution to the agunah problem?)

When we called some local rabbis to get their take on this story, even those with a sense of humor didn’t call us back by press time. We didn’t want to bother the governor, figuring  he had enough zombie trouble because of Bridgegate. If any experts would like to weigh in, though, we’d be pleased to hear from them.

By Aliza Chasan