#dybbuk adjacent

[chicago-geniza]

I have obtained testosterone. I am now listening to Agnes talk about Antigone and taking copious notes for two abandoned essays (one on Antigone allusions in literary + theatrical works re: Polish independence, one called "The Dybbuk, or: the Yiddish Antigone"). Her autism is striking my autism like a flint against another flint, it's insane lmao. I don't know how else to describe it just an absurdly generative autism feedback loop

[thetransfemininereview]

the dybbuk by shin ansky is, i would say, a psychological romantic drama in a sense! not explicitly trans but there's an element that is pretty trans in effect if not intent (hard to explain without spoilers). it's a yiddish play but available in translation.

Ha yknow you’re the second trans-adjacent person to recommend this specific play to me, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

[pyjamac]

i love all the child & child adjacent characters bc like that’s not what children talk like but also that’s exactly what children talk like. murky reminds me so much of my littlest sister when she was that age.

[torque-witch]

Okay this is a new one y’all. If this person sees this know I’m not trying to put you personally on blast (it was a message on Etsy so I don’t know how they found me specifically) - and yes they did respond so it wasn’t spam.

But I think it’s important to bring up because of how problematic the witchcraft community AND specifically it’s adjacent paranormal community can be. If you don’t know the history of something, don’t try to participate in it. Personally I have never seen a Jewish perspective on this, but I still think if it is, indeed, part of their mythology it should be left alone.

Spirit work is not entertainment. That said there is also a BIG difference between Buzzfeed Unsolved and trapping spirits in boxes for entertainment.

Just, don’t.

I’m just saying.

Don’t.

There’s no good argument to condone trapping spirits for entertainment. There’s no good argument for using Jewish mythology for entertainment. And finally while I appreciate the search for legitimacy - I’ve seen Dybbuk box opening videos and they’re just. Usually scripted and super cringy.

Blame Zak Bagans for popularizing it in his museum or whatever.

Also?? You need me tomorrow? In a worsening pandemic? Absolutely not.

[chicago-geniza]

if you interpret this in a lot's wife direction--which i do--what i love is the idea that 1) the compulsion to bear witness to suffering does not weigh a soul or a city in judgement re: whether or not its suffering is deserved, or divine/symbolic retribution for "sin"; suffering demands witness as a thing unto itself, outside categories of "guilt" & "innocence"; 2) the act of bearing witness / encounter with the ghost has the power to transform you into something no longer human, something that can no longer coexist with other humans under present-day social conditions. & i think that's what a LOT of an-sky's later work grapples with, symbolically: if bearing witness to monumental, "supernatural" suffering transforms you into a being who can no longer function within the mores of your society, *what does that say about your society*? it's not an indictment of the sufferer, nor an indictment of the witness, it's an interrogation of the community that averts its eyes, that can't abide suffering in its midst. (i really need to write that "tog un nakht" essay.)

Jon Ware, I Am In Eskew

[geshertzarmeod]

would love a queer book rec! Happy wlw, esp if they're Jewish! Or tropes: friends to lovers, or YA fantasy type stuff too but gay lol

Oooh! If you haven’t already, read @shiraglassman‘s books, starting with The Second Mango! They hit literally all of these (except I’m not sure they’re YA? But they’re very fluffy and perfect for YA fans)

Here’s a masterpost of her Mangoverse books (which I don’t think I finished? But I should go back to!!)

Not super happy/fluffy, but a wlw Jewish fantasy that I love is The Dyke and the Dybbuk by Ellen Galford. This one’s out of print so you have to find it used online, but it’s so good!

And for YA fantasy but gay, it’s mlm not wlw (but with amazing female characters) and has friends to lovers (but Its Complicated) - In Other Lands by @sarahreesbrennan. I love how it like, feels like medicine after reading so many YA fantasies that erased me, this one is snarky about typical fantasy worlds, has the bi Jewish narrator calling out every little ridiculous expectation of the universe while the stakes still feel real and important and it’s just so good.

Also not wlw, they’re mlm/mlm adjacent, but for friends to lovers, Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender and the CLASSIC Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

wlw YA fantasy, but not friends to lovers, and not always happy:

Crier’s War and Iron Heart by @ninavarelas - enemies to lovers, so good!! Some of the dialogue between the romantic leads in Iron Heart is just like, cemented in me and makes me yearn.

The Girls of Paper and Fire series by Natasha Ngan (not so happy though lol)

We Set the Dark On Fire duology by Tehlor Kay Mejia (same)

[barberwitch]

What are your thoughts on Dybbuk boxes?

A cursory google of Dybbuk Boxes shows the term copping up from an ebay listing in 2001, and then a subsequent movie being made.  It also was a term coined by Kevin Mannis, who wrote a story that was adapted into a screenplay.

Not much information (from what I’ve seen) relating to them specifically occurs before this time. That makes me think that the frequency of people encountering them, selling them, and profiting off of them (unless they are from people who are actually Jewish) may be yet another example of Jewish culture being appropriated, fanatacised and even antisemitic (the notion that it’s even a relatively frequent occurance to encounter boxes kept by Jewish families with an evil spirit in it...doesn’t sit right with me.)Then again, I’m completely out of my element when it comes to Jewish lore, mysticism, folk practice etc as I’ve only been Jewish Adjacent from some extended family, and dating partners.

Excerpt from The Jewish Virtual Library on the topic of Dibbuk/Dybbuk:

“In Jewish folklore and popular belief an evil spirit which enters into a living person, cleaves to his soul, causes mental illness, talks through his mouth, and represents a separate and alien personality is called a dibbuk. The term appears neither in talmudic literature nor in the Kabbalah, where this phenomenon is always called "evil spirit." (In talmudic literature it is sometimes called ru'aḥ tezazit, and in the New Testament "unclean spirit.") The term was introduced into literature only in the 17th century from the spoken language of German and Polish Jews. It is an abbreviation of dibbuk me-ru'aḥ ra'ah ("a cleavage of an evil spirit"), or dibbuk min ḥa-hiẓonim ("dibbuk from the outside"), which is found in man. The act of attachment of the spirit to the body became the name of the spirit itself. However, the verb davok ("cleave") is found throughout kabbalistic literature where it denotes the relations between the evil spirit and the body, mitdabbeket bo ("it cleaves itself to him").“

If you read the article, which I highly suggest, it makes no mention of boxes. I’m not saying it isn’t possible they exist, they probably do! Many practices, spiritualities and religions have a habit of including spirits attached or entrapped in objects, whether good or bad. Spirit fetiche, the Catholic Tabernacle, dolls, altars, Genus Loci, Brownies. Across cultures, spirits end up in items, or containers. My issue is the sudden “popularity” that seems to have arisen from one account that may be accurate, but I have my doubts that the 12 listings I found on ebay, etsy, and other dubious sites, are indeed “Dybbuk Boxes.”

TLDR: Here’s the thing, I’m not Jewish, and it’s a Jewish Term. Unless you are of Jewish decent, you have no business referring to every spirit vessel, container, wine cabinet or empty pill bottle as a Dybbuk anything. 

But that’s just my Goy opinion. I would much rather have the take from someone of the community than my half informed opinion who saw that same movie back in 2012.

Jewish people Please interact, correct me if I’m wrong, and I will edit this post to have the proper verified information.

🦋Cheers, Barberwitch

[chicago-geniza]

Tl;dr

"desire is transhistorical but its Form is historically contingent"

talking to Benjamin and Agnes in my head at the same time. nobody will admit they're bisexual

(has not slept all night, again) the arc of Eros is asymptotic, like Jewish messianism :) it bends toward its obscure object but never reaches fulfillment :) this is why nobody comes until the messiah does :)

Agnes read The Dybbuk by S. An-sky please

Agnes can we talk about Walter Benjamin and Jewish messianism and German Romanticism though for real

[chicago-geniza]

Latest contender for Agnes's Most Autistic Tweet (I say this with affection and admiration)

"What would [Special Interest A] think about [Special Interest B]" gotta be my favorite genre of autistic post. How many times have I tweeted "Agnes Callard read The Dybbuk by S. An-sky"

[chicago-geniza]

Happy Dybbuk Day to all who celebrate!

Some background from Teatr Żydowski:

[chicago-geniza]

Think I am going to return to that short story "Salvage Ethnography." Wanting to write fiction that is critical and a little hostile but mostly funny, biting. Tár & Zubrzycki's new book pulled me back to the story, oddly--also the feeling that if I don't do something with all this fizzing frustration re: nearly everything I read about Jewishness & Eastern Europe, it will erupt out of me like some venomous froth. Basic premise it's one of those cultural exchange programs, summer, where American Jewish teens are taken to a Polish town for Holocaust tourism & shown around/given a penitent guided tour of the heritage restoration projects local residents are now undertaking, a sort of rapprochement project where American Jewish kids learn Poles aren't all antisemites and small-town Poles get to be ambassadors of goodwill and meet Jews in real life. In my story the teens are, uh, teens, & are very [eye-roll emoji] about the roles they've been conscripted into, but become fast friends & bond over dumb teen stuff, & on the penultimate night of the program get drunk in a restored Jewish cemetery & play Truth or Dare etc. Hauntings & hijinks ensue. It's a pastiche & parody of the Dybbuk/Dziady thing I am always banging on about and also one of the ghosts is a shitty teen too

[chicago-geniza]

Also while I am still too fever-delirious and Painsomnia to sleep and waiting for the sleeping pill Tylenols to work: everyone argues over the cultural provenance of Leah's lullaby and monologue at the end of The Dybbuk, is it Jewish folklore, is it ~Slavic, how does it differ in Yiddish/Russian/Hebrew manuscripts, and like. My dudes it is literally a condensed version of the scene from Antigone where the titular Antigone is going to bury herself alive. It is a tale as old as time, and specifically, Sophocles, Logos- and Melpomena-wise

[chicago-geniza]

Ernest Bryll translating The Dybbuk for the 1988 Wajda production and then adding a poem in the program that just tweets out the whole entire premise of my paper re: the dybbuk motif/hauntology turn is Poles talking about Poland & ventriloquizing through the figural Jew. Fast and loose translation but this man literally said "When the butchers murdered that nation, it couldn't forgive or forget, it still had too much life left to live, so it must return to us as a dybbuk". Cool! Thanks for playing! Why do I even need to write my paper, he just said the thing!

[chicago-geniza]

ok, we have to read:

- this history of the laboratorium & atelier falanga

- more about rotmil & norris's scenography/decoration firm

- more about dybbuk 1937 costumes, more about polish & yiddish theater costumes of the period, more about lwów avant-garde arts scene of the early-to-mid 1930s because i once again have a Hunch

also:

- do more digging re: hunch that stefania was somehow involved with the script for dziesięciu z pawlaka (1931) (if i'm right & i can prove it, this will actually be...a not-insignificant ~discovery for my extremely niche, cobwebby little corner of polish film history) (but i mostly need the info to build very, very deep context about her dybbuk review, as per usual)

[chicago-geniza]

Bought this volume of Boy's theater critique in hard copy because it had both Andrzej Marek's Polish Dybbuk & Tog un nakht. Then saw the first review, remembered "M. Jewreinow" is Nikolai Evreinov, the Russian Symbolist, who--iirc this year while he was in Poland to mount THIS play--gave an interview where he discussed his fascination with the exotic, primitive allure of Judaism on the Yiddish stage as represented by The Dybbuk. Anyway he emigrated to France & became a hardcore freemason lol

[chicago-geniza]

ok so stefania opens her dybbuk review by saying "że dramat Anskiego, na którego tle został film zrobiony, jest przesiąknięty romantyzmem Dziadów, romantyzmem Wyspiańskiego -- *o tym wiemy wszyscy.*" this is the line people point to when they say she's dismissing the play's jewish specificity, trying to impose polishness on a yiddish text. but i now "know" stefania quite well; she wouldn't make a claim that "everybody knows this" unless a critical consensus had been reached among the majority of ~reputable theater reviewers. she states it like this is "received wisdom" or "common knowledge," not an original observation; it has to reflect an opinion that respectable people have put in print. (also: we have not even touched on the issue of translation, or andrzej marek's polish-language production in łódź circa 1925.) ergo, a cursory search turns up boy's review of the vilna troupe dybbuk “pre-premiere” in 1920 warsaw, which opens like this:

“Element buntu i marzenia, udrapowany romantycznie, wciela tutaj młody jeszybotnik (uczeń wyższej szkoły rabinackiej) Chonen, myśliciel, kochanek, indywidualista, młodzieniec noszący na czole piętno fatalności.”

i am going to find as many reviews as i can, following this hunch, because my “Everybody Is Wrong About Stefania’s Dybbuk Review” paper has metastasized into “probably a monograph about attempts to ‘build bridges’ between polish & yiddish theater/film during the interwar period, the role of translation & cultural translation, the role of aesthetics, set design, & in this case, camera angle, to ‘visually’ translate in a sense-for-sense way what the audience loses in an unfamiliar language, & the discursive function of romanticism-->oh no! WWII happened! you’ve lost access to the cultural context in which this discourse was taking place! now you’re trying to revive it in order to recover the polish/jewish past, but you’re just using dybbuk possession to talk about dead jews as poland’s guilty conscience!”