The owners of this country…have got you by the balls
"Vampires in Ancient Jewish Texts: What Were They Doing There?"
Some of the earliest texts on vampires were written in Hebrew by their coreligionists, albeit after learning about the plague of the undead from their neighbors. Some authorities mention Lilith as an early example of a vampire. It is true that like a classic vampire, she kills at night, but there the similarities end. Lilith would better be categorized as a demon. The first references to vampires in Judaism are in three Hebrew books written in the Middle Ages: Midrash Shmuel (the aggadic commentary on the Book of Samuel); Sefer Hasidim, an important book on the laws, customs and traditions of German Jewry at the turn of the 13th century; and the related book Sefer HaRokeah…
Where would Jews of the Middle Ages have come up with these superstitions, as no such things are mentioned in the Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud or any other ancient Jewish text?
Belief in "striyas" was probably borrowed from their gentile neighbors, who believed in living-dead beings called strigoi in Romanian, shtriga in Albanian, and strzyga in Polish. So it seems some Jews believed in vampires after all, but this belief never caught on and became widespread.
Today nobody believes in vampires anymore. But when the vampire fiction making the rounds in the West began to be translated into Hebrew, revivalists needed to find a word for the imaginary being of the night. They did: the modern Hebrew word for vampire is arpad – taken from an obscure Aramaic word in the Talmud for bat (Bava Kama 16a).
more:
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/did-jews-once-believe-in-vampires-1.5403277