The Dybbuk and the Yiddish Imagination: A Haunted Reader

by Joachim Neugroschel (Editor)

Book by

Genres: Jewish, Horror, Folklore, Plays, Fiction

412 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2000

About the author

Joachim Neugroschel (1938-2011) was the translator of some two hundred books, including works by Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and Thomas Mann. He won three PEN translation awards and a French-American Foundation Translation Prize.

Reviews

[Virginia]

The author is S. Ansky, not what this silly Goodreads program listed. This volume is edited and translated from Yiddish by Joachim Neugroschel. JN's introduction is fascinating and the material he has collected --- folktales, stories, poetry -- related to the Ansky play is wonderful and lends a lot of depth to the whole set of topics. Haunting, possession, erotic longing, right partners/"true" lovers frustrated by (usually) fathers or rabbis who have the wrong kind of motives (ambition, status, wealth, upside down priorities), as well as persecution generally and a few specific pogroms. I picked this up at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst after asking the Nice Young Man there which of several editions he recommended --- there was a book I started to read several years ago but lost before I read it called the Dyke and the Dybbuk -- and as of Thursday, I still didn't know what a dybbuk was. Only golems. So that's what attracted me to the Dybbuk play and fortunately I bought this edition rather than another. Rich!!!!

One of my favorite pieces in here is a long poem by Ansky called "Ashmedai" (roughly the devil). It is fantastic. Sort of reminds me of Paradise Lost but much funnier than I remember PL (but I read that in the fall of 1975 in our equivalent of freshman english; I'm sure I didn't get it all). The encounter between Ashmedai and Lillith is the high point for me; her punishment is brilliant. I want to carry this around. In fact Lillith's punishment reminds me a lot of the end of C.S. Lewis's _Till We Have Faces_ , another favorite book that I haven't read in at least ten years but now I remember it I should. Stephanie gave me that and I bought several more copies and used them as gifts to others. What a wonderful book. Anyway the C.S. Lewis _Till We Have Faces_ and the S. Ansky _Ashmedai_ really speak to each other. Oddly enough.

Also (coincidentally? or not?) a great complement to "Agunot," the short story by Agnon that Cantor B recommended that Louis read b/c it is about his, Louis's, Torah portion. Friends, please mark March 1, 2008 on your calendars. I'll stop here and let Louis and Suzy (his sponsor) run with it. . . . .

[shahar · Rating 3 out of 5]

if my bride doesn’t die and possess me as a dybbuk on our wedding night, i’m getting a divorce

[Elan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for Yiddish enthusiasts, exorcism fiends, any one interested in pre-WWI Jewish modernist writing. S. Ansky wrote this play after he went on a years-long ethnographic expedition to dying shtetlech (Jewish villages, primarily in Eastern Europe) collecting stories, legends and songs.

The piece he wrote, "The Dybbyk" weaves hundreds of years of ghost stories, with modernist anxieties about assimilation, and his own urges for autonomy. There are waltzes with ladies in white rising out of graves, demons entering and exiting the bodies of their beloved, life long friendships betrayed and forgotten, cash prized, the old way trampled, the future unclear. It's deliciously prophetic and gorgeously staged. If you can't deal with the book, watch the movie.

This book has the original translation of Ansky's play, along with a slew of old Yiddish folktales - funny, sexy, horrifying, revealing.

Reading these stories is my favorite way of imagining a history for the Jews in Eastern Europe that isn't centered on exile and genocide. These tales reveal all kinds of fantasies, anxieties, suspicions, and longings. They make me feel like my people were all flesh, and not just the pile of bones the museum shows me on slide.

[Stephanie Angelini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting collection, which includes the play The Dybuuk as well as many other work and studies on Yiddish supernaturalism and folklore with preceded it. An excellent and interesting read for those interested in folklore, Jewish studies or just learning about different time, place and way of seeing the world. The cover, however, is unfortunate and a little off-putting, but don't let that stop you.