The Dybbuk Between Several Worlds

Abstract

 The dybbuk is a malevolent spirit that possesses the bodies of the living. Rooted in Jewish folklore and mysticism, the dybbuk is believed to be the soul of a dead person who cannot find rest. The purpose of this article is to reconcile Tony Kushner’s glimpse of apocalyptic anxiety in adapting S. Ansky’s text, The Dybbuk (2000). By placing ghostly characters on stage that echo the past and its resonance by bringing in a demon who now considers not only the claims of this past on the present, but also the historical devastations projected into the future, I look at Kushner’s play in light of the immateriality of its characters in relation to the uncanny experience of recognizing theater as the possibility of materializing a link between Sigmund Freud’s concern of the unfamiliar (or the unheimlich) and Walter Benjamin’s concern of experience.